"On air. On sea. On land. Still the Internet's greatest wargame simulation."
A Wolfpack Empire Publication
"All the news that fits, we print."
October, 2004
In This Edition
:*: Wolfpack released Empire 4.2.18 Server, fixing several abusable
loopholes.Player visible changes include changes to fishing and offshore oil
drilling, and new and fixed selectors. Deity visible changes include
configurable announcement and news expiry.More information is posted on rec.games.empire, including links to
server downloads, athttp://groups.google.com.au/groups?selm=87zn3t9pv1.fsf%40pond.sub.org
:*: Ron Koenderink announced the release WinACE 2.4.18, including a
few bug fixes and minor enhancements.Besides several bug fixes and minor enhancements, WinACE now saves all telegrams when reading them in quick mode, which helps co-rulers to
get all telegrams.Ron is working closely with Wolfpack to support the new xdump server
command. Ron also continues to provide client support experimental
servers and games, notably Twisted Minds 2K4 - Blind Date Empire and
Star Wars Empire - Battle for New Byss.More information is posted on rec.games.empire, including links to
client downloads, athttp://groups.google.com.au/groups?selm=ae2bf018.0409291732.144cd9ab%40posting.google.com
:*: Star Wars Empire - Battle for New Byss was won by the dark side -
Yinchorr and R56.:*: Twisted Minds 2K4 - Blind Date Empire has started.
:*: Petting Zoo III - Rock, Paper, Scissors has been announced.
Links/Resources/Getting Started
| Home of Wolfpack Empire : | http://www.wolfpackempire.com/ |
| FAQ : | http://www.wolfpackempire.com/faq.html |
| Usenet : | news:rec.games.empire |
| More : | http://www.wolfpackempire.com/links.html |
:*: Deities, advertise your games here. Email
empnews@wolfpackempire.com with the details.:*: Announcing Petting Zoo III - Rock, Paper, Scissors
Deity: Bungholio
Registration Begins: 20:00 (EST) FRI 15 OCT 2004
Registration Ends:?? 23:59 (EST) SUN 31 OCT 2004
Website: http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/bungholio/PettingZooThree_GameSettings.htmlTrue to the spirit and theme, "56-flavours" Bungholio is offering
another three interesting flavours in the upcoming Petting Zoo III -
Rock, Paper, Scissors.Of course there will be the standard set of units included in the
game, but wouldn't it be cool if Rock units had a tactical advantage
over Scissors units, etc.?PZII was well subscribed, with around 20 players, and Doug did a great
job as deity. Sign up now:HOW TO REGISTER:
Send email to: empire_bungholio @ verizon.net with:Subject: Empire PZ3
Country Name: (limited to 15 characters and must start with an alpha
character a-z/A-Z)
Password: (limited to 15 characters)
Map Selection: (choose from Rock/Paper/Scissors/Random-deity-selection)
Email Address: (preferred email addresses)
Co-Ruler Info: (if you would like to have a co-ruler be informed of
any game info via email)
:*: Twisted Minds 2K4 - Blind Date Empire
Deity: Pat Loney (a.k.a Overlord)
Start Date: October 1, 2004
Host/Port: multi.usr.ch / 6665
Website: http://retro.wolfpackempire.com/
Official Deity Report:
http://groups.google.com.au/groups?selm=ckojfg%24olj%241%40multi.usr.chTwisted Minds 2K4, deitied by long-time player Pat Loney is
underway. Twisted Minds offers a number of cool source modifications,
both major and minor.Minor:
Major:
The country/nation attributes are Warrior, Tech Monger, Engineer,
Informant, Producer, Financier, and Distributor.Log into the TM 2K4 visitor account and type 'info 2k4' for more
information.:*: The Changeling Blitz
Restart Cycle: Every day at 7:00 pm US/Eastern (currently 23:00 UTC)
Updates: Enabled at 7:30 pm, 60 ETUs every 10 minutes
Host/Port: blitz.wolfpackempire.com / 6789
Website: http://www.wolfpackempire.com/default.htmNote that world size and some options change daily. It is up to
players to figure that out each day, but typing `version' helps.
Further surprises are possible, as Changeling runs snapshots from the
latest Wolfpack server development.:*: The Zebra Blitz
Restart Cycle: Every Sunday at 6:00 pm US/Eastern (currently 22:00 UTC)
Updates: Enabled at 6:30 pm, 48 ETUs every 60 minutes
Host/Port: blitz.wolfpackempire.com / 5678
Website: http://www.wolfpackempire.com/default.htm
:*: Star Wars Empire II --- The Battle for New Byss
Deities: Jeff Cotter, Ron Koenderink, Markus Armbruster
Start Date: Second week of August
Website: http://202.172.121.119/SWEmpire/Endor.htm
Deity's Game Summary:The second game in the Star Wars Empire series ended with a dark side
victory declaration by Yinchorr and R56. By the end, the victors
occupied more than 90% of the world.Yinchorr gained an early edge when light side player Gemini was
removed from the game due to computer woes. Yinchorr absorbed the
better part of Gemini and then Saiph, who was the first country to
fall.R56 played a balanced game, laying low until mid game, then absorbing
parts of TrojanHorse, SoroSuub and The_Base.TrojanHorse had a most interesting game, being the first country on
the offensive, against SoroSuub. SoroSuub absorbed Troj's attack,
stiffened then pushed Troj back past their original border. Troj
should have been one of the early countries to go, but some clever
diplomacy saved him and he lasted until the very end.Everyone else was properly munched by Yinchorr and R65, in character
with the evil dark side of the force.The game featured a host of code modifications that, for the most
part, worked out pretty well. The deities gratefully thank the players
who responded to the player survey, which will be posted to the (newly
relocated) website soon along with a survey of the game by the
deities.The final power report:
Command: power new - = [ Empire Power Report ] = - as of Mon Oct 18 23:01:10 2004 sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money Yinchorr 433 98% 351K 8.4K 4.7K 394 14K 21K 3.4K 16K 222 19 79 85K 21136.29 R56 398 98% 295K 11K 3.7K 651 6.4K 24K 3.3K 12K 207 14 112 17K 18613.37 TrojHorse 71 97% 56K 2.0K 262 77 928 3.4K 467 3.7K 16 2 22 7.5K 2525.27 SoroSuub 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14K 45.87 4th-Assau 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6.5K 22.29 The_Base 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.3K 3.74 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- worldwide 900 98% 703K 21K 8.6K 1.1K 21K 48K 7.3K 32K 450 40 210 125KJeff is probably going to offer the Battle for New Byss game a second
time, exact same setup, but with attention paid to the player
feedback. More on that later.
The Dig
:*: Empire News 1 Year Ago
One year ago around this time, LOTR II was down due to some problems with the server. Players, restless while waiting for the repairs, told parts of the story of two Empire's most "creative" players - Barsoom and Lothlorien. By creative, I really mean the (ab)use of "undocumented features", like creating hundreds of thousands of dollars every update using tradeship features even the deities didn't know about. Drake Diedrich described what was not really a bug, but what Markus calls unintended information - the torp news selector bug.
The MOB_ACCESS feature was a hot topic of discussion.
Ron Koenderink was cruising on WinACE, releasing two versions during October.
Robert Marchese announced Havok I.
Thomas Johnson asked the question "How were games played before and units? ?How did an attacking country advance on a defender? ?If all attacking is with standing mil and sector mob, it appears to be a stalemate?" Was this the seed of Retro 2004
Ten years ago around this time, Arctic Blast, Dwarven Chowder II,
Hidden Empire III and UAlberta Nukefest were up and running. UAlberta
Open was won by Redline.Topics of discussion during October, 1994 spanned a wide range. Andy
Frakes et al. discussed the time requirements of playing a game;
Andrew Norris et al. debated which was better, the Chainsaw III code
or the KSU code; Thomas Ruschak lamented forts firing and compared
battleships against forts; Walter Smith et al. compared notes about
using wings of transports to take entire islands; William Kaster
lamented the growing appeal of MUDs over empire; Drake Diedrich et
al. described tools and cron jobs to calculate and automate food
production; and Jim Ortlieb explained the reasoning behind civs on
ships not paying taxes.
The basic Empire client can be found at
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/clients.html and
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=24031
source as well as binaries for many platforms.The latest version of WinACE is 2.4.18. Read the announcement at
http://groups.google.com.au/groups?selm=ae2bf018.0409291732.144cd9ab%40posting.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 1.3.4. 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.The latest version of pei is 3.0.1. See the pei home page at
http://empire.tau.ac.il/~romm/emp/
The current Empire server is 4.2.18. Download it from
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/server.html or
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=24031
In case anyone is wondering, it generally doesn't matter to the
missus, spouse, better-half or girlfriend that you're *deitying
empire*, not actually *playing empire*. Yep, I've tried it out on the
gf, and she wasn't at all convinced."No, hon, really, I'm not *actually* playing. I'm just looking after
everyone else who's playing a game that I'm hosting." I tried."Well, you're staring at your computer and ignoring everything I say,
just like when you're playing." she challenged."What, hon? Ignoring the computer and staring at everything you're
saying?" I said, after an epileptic moment.Busted.
Ok. I've got a few fallback positions for this kind of situation, and
you probably do, too. I'm gonna share one of them with you. He's my
long time empire ally and "tech bleed" partner, the Naked Chef, Jamie
Oliver.If you don't know, Jamie Oliver is a UK chef with a contemporary
cooking television show. As far as the missus goes, he's hip, funny,
charming, handsome and has a sexy British accent. He also has a band
of metropolitan friends who pop in for wine and dinner and have a
smashing time. Most importantly, he has that one ability that ladies
really appreciate and that most of us men can only pretend to
understand...he can cook food.Now, I've noticed that I can get much of the Jamie Oliver mystique and
aura just by cooking something from his cookbook. (That's the "tech
bleed" part of it.) Most recipes are easy enough and they actually
taste really good.(You can get much more of that Jamie Oliver mystique by faking a
British accent while describing what you are cooking. That's always a
laugh, unless your missus is actually from the UK and you're not.)In times of need, after focusing way too much for way too long on a
game of empire, a little Jamie Oliver cooking and fun works wonders to
get back into the good graces of the missus. Gentlemen, I recommend
keeping a few good recipes handy for a rainy day!This one always saves me: Fantastic Roasted Chicken - Serves two with
leftovers1.8 kg chicken
1 large lemon
8 slices prosciutto ham (from the deli or deli section)
1-2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 handful of fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped (stems removed)
Salt and pepper
115 gm softened butter
1 kg peeled potatoes, cut into halves
3 large onions, skins removed and cut in half
5 or more large carrots, skinned and cut into 5 cm lengthsPreheat oven and roasting tray to 220oC or 425oF
Wash the chicken inside and out and dry with paper towel. Using your
fingers, carefully part the breast skin from the breast meat. It's
important to try to push your hand gently down the breast, taking care
not to rip the skin.With a potato peeler, peel and chop the fragrant yellow skin of the
lemon, keeping the peeled lemon for later. Tear up the prosciutto into
small pieces and add to a bowl with the lemon skin, garlic and
thyme. Season with salt and pepper and scrunch it all into the butter
with a pinch of salt and pepper. Push this into the space between skin
and breast meat - spread some of the remainder around the outside of
the bird, especially on the breast skin. It will cook off the outside
of the bird, leaving the seasonings baked on for a beautiful
appearance.Slash the thigh meat with a knife two or three times so it cooks
through faster.Cut the peeled lemon in half and push the halves into the chest
cavity. The lemon keeps the breast meat from drying out too quickly.Roast for 25 minutes.
While the chicken is cooking, parboil the potatoes in salted water for
10 minutes. After 25 minutes, remove the chicken from the oven - the
butter will have melted and absorbed the seasoning and collected in
the roasting tray. Carefully lift out the chicken temporarily and put
all the veggies in the bottom of the tray, coating generously with the
melted butter. Put the chicken back right on top of the veggies and
cook for another 45 minutes.Remove the chicken and let stand for 10 minutes. Make a gravy from the
drippings (I never do this part). Carve and serve with veggies and a
nice white wine.Very Important note: DO NOT attempt to play empire and cook at the
same time. There is no recovering from a fouled meal caused by trying
to play empire while cooking! Trust me, on this one, please!Tip: If you get bored waiting around, open the oven every 5-10 minutes
and waft the wonderful smells of the cooking bird around the house (I
use a cookie baking sheet). Also, it's a good time to pour out the
wine (or scotch) to get everyone in the mood for a good meal. Maybe
feed and bathe the kids, and put them to bed early :-)Enjoy.
Jeff, a.k.a. Dexter
:*: Managing your Budget Part I - The spend-down phase
One common newbie pitfall is overspending cash reserves. Send your
balance sheet into the red, and production stops and your units lose
efficiency, among other bad things. Worse, the power chart shows a
negative number under your country and the wolves circle in for an
easy kill.The game checks your budget when you spend on new units, make loans or use the market/trading block, so you're generally protected from deficit spending by your own hand. The danger comes during the update, when spending happens automatically.
A more subtle danger can occur during the budget spend-down phase of
the game whereby you quickly deplete your cash reserves (by
overspending on tech production, for a common example), reaching a
point where you cannot operate your empire because of cash
limitations.Here are some econ tips for new players pertaining to budget
management during the spend-down phase of the game.:*: Get to Know Budget Tools
1. Get to know the basic budget command. The budget command is
invaluable for managing your empire's finances, so all new players
should learn to use it effectively. For example, I use the budget
command more than two dozen times each update. The most useful
feature of the budget command is the balance sheet it produces for
the upcoming update. It's fairly complete and accurate, even
accounting for the effect of starvation on income and expenses.2. Get to know the more advanced budget feature - budget priority
settings. With these settings, you can stipulate the priority of
expenditure by types (i.e. unit maintenance, production of
happiness, etc.). Specifying a priority of zero will stop
production of a given type of expenditure.3. Be sure you know how to use the stop command. In a budget pinch,
you can stop one or more sectors from producing, thereby saving on
the costs associated with that sector's production.4. I sometimes use a spreadsheet for budget planning, especially
during the budget spend-down phase. Each expense fills one column
and each update fills one row. With a good estimate of future
expenses, it's possible to plan out your budget a few updates in
advance.:*: Maximise Income
5. Bars, bars, bars. Devote as much effort to mining dust and making
bars as possible. Bars pay for themselves in almost no time - 40
ETUs, which is typically less than one update.6. Did I mention make bars? This is very important for generating
income - bars typically account for half of an empire's
income. And, make sure you keep the bars in a 100% efficient bank.7. Keep your civs in 100% sectors and be wary of moving civs into 0%
efficient sectors. Building efficiency costs money, however,
putting civs into a 0% efficient sector costs even more. 1000 civs
in a 100% efficient sector will earn $500 (for a typical game
setup). Putting the same 1000 civs in a 0% efficient sector will
earn $0 plus cost $100 to improve efficiency - a $600 difference.Overall it's cheaper to tear down a sector you have already improved
to 100% sector and build it up back up to 100% compared to building up
a sector from 0%. (Unless you tear down the sector to 0% and finish
building it back up during the following update.)8. Your civilians pay taxes. Avoid starving them (or keeping more than
Max_Safe_Civs in a sector) so you can grow as many as
possible. Captured populace pay reduced taxes (1/4 of the
rate. Capture as many as you can. Uws also pay taxes. Look after
them, too.9. Get an early capital sack. A few thousand dollars is a lot of money
when everyone else is cash strapped during the budget spend-down
phase.:*: Minimise Expenses
10. Make stuff efficiently. See previous two Empire Econ
Hint-of-the-Month columns.11. Don't make stuff you don't need. Some players wait until the last
minute before making happiness, for example.:*: Spend Everything
12. In general, your well run economy will spend down its initial cash
reserves nearly to zero without large or sudden changes in
expenses. If you spend down too quickly, you will be cash
strapped. If you don't spend down all the way to nearly zero,
you're probably not making enough of something.13. Leave a reserve of about $1K to $2K as working cash each
update. Avoid pushing your econ to the point where you have too
little cash on hand after an update. You'll need some cash to
build units (10% upfront cost for land and plane units and 20% for
ships).For some more discussion on the matter of managing your empire finances.
:*: Quiz question:
:*: Last Month's Question: You sail up next to a newly discovered
country with two destroyers, each with a full load of 80 mil on
board. You do a quick lookout and Whoa! the fool has put his forward
airfield right on his coast. The lookout report says there are 30 mil
in the sector. You are determined to sack the airfield and kill any
planes in there, plus use the petrol and shells there (if any) for
your own wing of raiders.Using only the mil on board the two destroyers, is it possible to assault and take the airfield? (Assume no reserves, interdiction or support fire.) If so, how?
Answer: You can only assault with 10% of your mil from a destroyer. So, that's 8 mil in the first wave, 7 in the second wave, then 6, then 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, etc. Problem is that your attack rate falls off with each successive wave of assaults, making successive attempts less effective. A better way is to use the second destroyer to tend mil over to the assaulting ship to keep it topped up with mil. Then you can assault with 8 mil in the first and nine following assaults, greatly enhancing your chances of success.
:*: This Month's Question: Uw's grow so slowly. Name some schemes to get more of them.
Deities, send nominations for Anno of the Month to
empnews04@wolfpackempire.com:*: This month's award goes to FodderLLC, playing in Twisted Mind 2K4
- Blind Date> Announcement from FodderLLC, (#7) dated Fri Oct 15 17:31:39 2004
"Hey, is this thing on?"
Bhwoooooooooooooo[snip]
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