A Wolfpack Empire Publication
"All the news that fits, we print."
November, 2003

In This Edition

• What's New?
• Links/Resources/Getting Started
• Games --
  • Upcoming
  • Current
  • Recently ended
• Clients and Player Tools
• Server and Deity Info
• Hints of the Month
• Anno of the Month
  

What's New?

WinACE has a new maintainer! Ron Koenderink is now at the helm. He
made several releases, which were well received by players. The
change log is far too long to be summarized here; it lists numerous
enhancements and bug fixes.

Lord of the Rings Empire II saw carnage and destruction both on the
battlefield and in the update schedule. See `Current Games' below.

Marc Olzheim quietly released eif 1.3.2 to quickly get out a fix for a
bug in the installation procedure after your over-eager editor pointed
the public to 1.3.1.

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Links/Resources/Getting Started

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New Games

Please contact us if you want your game listed here!

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Current Games

Lord of the Rings Empire II is running at empire.tau.ac.il, port 1617.

The game experienced serious update problems since the break. Missed
updates, unwanted updates, you name it. The deities struggled to
minimize the damage, and to work around / fix the suspected cause.
Players' patience was taxed. The last few updates fired according to
plan, so hopefully the troubles are over.

Of course, nothing short of a complete game breakdown can stop Empire
players from laying waste to large parts of the world. Several
countries have been wiped out, and there's the faint buzz of frantic
diplomatic manoeuvring in the air.

A new game report can be found at
http://groups.google.de/groups?selm=bnuip2$n8i$1@hood.uits.indiana.edu

Newbie IV running at 208.187.205.245, port 5000. The Newbie game
series is designed for relative newcomers. Things are starting to
heat up, and the first victims are going down. Tech leaders have
passed the 150 mark.

   - = [   Empire Power Report   ] = -
    as of Wed Nov  5 14:44:26 2003


         sects  eff civ  mil  shell gun pet  iron dust oil  pln ship unit money
   Epirus 215   99% 400K 3.1K 2.5K 740   16K  26K 2.8K  41K  80   70   50  645K
 Armengar 270   94% 260K  10K 5.5K 705   27K  60K 2.2K  13K  90  100   80  380K
EmpireKin 160   99% 277K 5.2K 4.6K 765  7.8K  37K 1.2K 7.2K 180  130   80  290K
  RimFire 195   72% 227K 5.5K 1.7K 565  3.1K  21K 4.9K 1.8K  70   50   60  180K
     Nova 200   77% 155K 4.3K 3.9K 620  4.5K  68K 5.5K 5.4K 110   70   60   75K
   Salann 150  100% 147K 4.2K 3.1K 425  8.9K  19K 6.8K  13K  80   50   40  175K
    Raist 145   97% 155K 4.9K 3.0K 585  7.6K  23K 3.8K  17K 140   50   70  170K
 POGOland 100  100% 146K  12K 3.0K 360  5.0K  20K 1.9K  14K  20   40  220   20K
 SkyBunny 135   98% 142K 8.3K 2.0K 315   14K  20K 700  2.6K  60   50   50  100K
PromisedL  60   94%  47K 350    2    1    8   32K 1.6K 4.6K   0   20    0  175K
 Diondega   2   52% 100   50    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    3    0   80K
          ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 1.6K  92% 2.0M  58K  29K 5.1K  94K 327K  31K 119K 810  610  690  2.3M
  

Havok I - "Scurvy Dogs on the High Seas" just started and is running
at 66.92.172.65, port 6665. Deity is Bob Marchese.

   - = [   Empire Power Report   ] = -
    as of Wed Nov  5 16:15:50 2003

         sects  eff civ  mil  shell gun pet  iron dust oil  pln ship unit money
SalManill  50   59%  12K 250    0    0    0  2.8K 350  100    0    9    2  5.0K
   Wicked  45   56%  12K 300    0    0    0  2.1K 350  250    0    8    1   10K
  nuke_em  45   64%  12K 300    0    0    0  1.8K 350  100    0    9    0   10K
  Minimax  40   77%  12K 150    0    0    0  1.1K 400  250    0    3    0   15K
Fodderton  40   64%  12K  50    0    0    0  1.8K 400  250    0    3    0   20K
          ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 220   64%  60K 1.1K   0    0    0  9.6K 1.9K 1.0K   0   30    3   60K

The Changeling Blitz is running at blitz.wolfpackempire.com, port
6789. This blitz resets at 7:00pm US/Eastern (currently 00:00 UTC)
every day. Updates are enabled at 7:30pm. There is a 60 ETU update
every 10 minutes. Note that world size and some options change daily.
It is up to players to figure that out each day, but typing `version'
helps.

The Zebra Blitz is running at blitz.wolfpackempire.com, port 5678.
This blitz resets at 6:00pm US/Eastern (currently 23:00 UTC) every
Sunday. Updates are enabled at 6:30pm. There is a 48 ETU update
every hour on the hour.

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Recently Ended Games

No games known to the Empire News ended in the previous month.

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Clients and Player Tools

The basic Empire client can be found at
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/clients.html, source as well as binaries
for many platforms.

The latest version of WinACE is 2.2.23. Read the announcement at
http://groups.google.de/groups?selm=ae2bf018.0310221905.c167902@posting.google.com
and download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/winace/

The latest version of PTkEI is 1.18.1. See the PTkEI home page at
http://www.lfmm.org/ptkei/

The latest version of eif is 1.3.2. See the eif home page at
http://www.stack.nl/~marcolz/empire/

The latest version of LAFE is 1.0. Get it from
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/e/empire-lafe/
or any other Debian mirror.

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Server and Deity Information

The current Empire server is 4.2.12. Download it from
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/server.html

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Hint of the Month

When a land unit takes a casualty in ground combat, it loses 100/m
points of efficiency, where m is its military capacity. For example,
a gondor guard, which can carry 100 military, loses 1%, while a nazgul
(9 military) loses 11%. Since a nazgul costs ten times as much as a
gondor guard, repair costs differ by a factor of 110!

When you sustain a hit in ground combat, the casualty is applied to
first to `loose military' (those attacking from sectors, not in land
units), then to the land unit with the most military. You can use
this to `shield' small, expensive units with larger, cheap units or
military.

Consider an attack with a lone nazgul. Say it takes six casualties.
Not only is your nazgul mission killed, it could easily fail a morale
check and break off the attack. Now throw in a lowly orc band. It
won't noticeably improve your raw combat odds, but it can easily and
cheaply absorb six casualties.

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Anno of the Month

From Lord of the Rings II:

> Announcement from Rhun, (#20)  dated Tue Oct 14 15:33:51 2003
The deity named Mithrilien was awake
The mortals had preparations to make
His voice told all to hear
That the update was near
But his warning was obviously fake

Grhun of Rhun

> Announcement from Gondor, (#29) dated Mon Oct 27 11:13:30 2003
From the very secret diary of Denethor:

Day 37:
Sacrificed Chief Astrologer to my lord Melkor. Perhaps the next
one will be more accurate at predicting the update.

 

Special prize: Newbie Anno of the Month (From Newbie IV):

>Announcement from EmpireKing, (#4) dated Wed Oct 29 11:54:34 2003
>BANG! thump!
>Wanted: experienced civil engineer for recently vacated position of EK
>Minister of City Building.
>
>City kits still on sale! Now only $2700!
>-EK

[After another player pointed out his `city kits' had more hcms than a
city requires]
   

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