"On air. On sea. On land. Still the Internet's greatest wargame simulation."
"All the news that fits, we print."
October 16, 1994
In This Edition
o The new game "Dwarven Chowder II" run by Dustin Graham and Samuel Tetherow has started up (see "Long Term Games").
o The new game "UAlberta Nukefest" run by Ken Huisman and Bob Beck
has started up (see "Long Term Games").o The name "Redline" was added to the EMPIRE NEWS Hall of Fame this month as the winner of the "UAlberta Open" game (see "Long Term Games").
o The game "Outremer" has ended with no winner (see "Long Term Games").
o Some new names were added to the EMPIRE NEWS Hall of Fame for
previous games (see "Hall of Fame").o Two new coders have announced that they are planning to write
clients for the PC and Macintosh (see "Current Projects").o Ken Huisman has taken over the job of maintaining the Empire WISH LIST (see "Current Projects").
o Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow have released pei.1.2.4, with some great new features (see "Clients").
o The server team is waiting for coders to fix two bugs in the new server
(see "Server") so that they can start coding the WISH LIST.
The two games that were announced this month have already started up.
These are the long term games currently being run:
game name host port country password started ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PP Romulus empire.engg.ksu.edu 1617 Visitor Visitor 16 Aug 94 PP Remus empire.engg.ksu.edu 3000 Visitor Visitor 16 Aug 94 ARCTIC BLAST isumataq.eskimo.com 13715 Visitor visitor 12 Sep 94 Hidden III spoke.law.cornell.edu 1617 12 Sep 94 Dwarven Chow II woodbine.ewl.uky.edu 7777 Visitor visitor 4 Oct 94 UAlberta Nuke brule.forsci.ualberta.ca 1617 Visitor Visitor 11 Oct 94game name deity updates: frequency ETU's time ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PP Romulus ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1/3 days 60 00:00 EDT PP Remus ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu 1/3 days 60 00:00 EDT ARCTIC BLAST davef@eskimo.com 1/2 days 60 23:30 EDT Hidden III waffen@spoke.law.cornell.edu 3/week 60 18:00 EDT Dwarven Chow II empire@ewl.uky.edu 1/day 48 22:00 EDT UAlberta Nuke empire@forsci.ualberta.ca 1/day 48 22:00 EDT"Outremer"
The famous "French Empire" didn't end with a bang, but with a whimper. The "administration" pulled the plug on the host machine and that was that. The weeks preceeding this "arret-de-jour" were plagued with unreplaced countries and unplayable net lag ("pas-des-packets"). But keep your eyes peeled for the next "French Connection" which will be announced as soon as a host is found."UAlberta Open"
The UAlberta Open game has come to a conclusion, and Redline has been
declared the winner. Park Place was second place, and Khazad'ur was
third. It was a well-played game by Redline, who led right from the
start. No other player could keep up with his relentless pace of
capturing new territories. Park Place and Khazad'ur also played very
well. Two names to look out for in the future are BigFish and Raupo,
who, against overwhelming odds, valiantly fought on to save their
countries ( both against Redline ). Neither were successful, but they
deserved some mention since they both didn't just roll over and play
dead when they were attacked."PuddlePlanet"
To quote from the movie JFK, "Nobody _knows_ who killed the
PuddlePlanet, it's a mmmmystery!"One day as we were all happilly killing one another, CrackHouse
announced that due to some "unforseeable circumstances" the game would have to stop that evening, and he may be loosing his account. Within an hour, a new host was found and the data files were quickly
transferred over to their new home. CrackHouse began working very hard trying to compile an Empire server on this new host. At one point, he posted an announcement asking for the man page for the system call
"waitpid" which I dutifully sent him in a telegram. Then suddenly, about four days ago, he disappeared. No-one has heard from him since. The game is still up on the old host with updates disabled but tempers are becoming quite enabled.Here is a description of what this game was until it suddenly froze.
There are two planets Remus and Romulus. Players began with small
start islands with limited resources separated by 12 sectors of sea.
Updates of the two games are staggered. It was planned that the games
would run until 15 December at which time the top 20 countries (by
power chart rating) would be taken from both games and thrown into a
new 128x128 world with larger start islands.Here are the top four countries of the tournament:
sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money Manifold 40 97% 26K 950 300 35 0 4.5K 450 2.4K 0 10 2 1.2K Tanelorn 50 96% 29K 850 250 40 0 4.8K 1.0K 2.1K 0 10 20 5.0K Sardar 65 75% 28K 1.1K 200 20 0 9.2K 3.2K 850 0 10 6 5.0K LV426 85 58% 28K 750 300 35 0 7.6K 850 900 0 30 10 5.0KManifold and Sardar are on Romulus, and Tanelorn and LV426 are on Remus.
"ARCTIC BLAST"
The connection problems to ARCTIC BLAST have been fixed and the game is moving along well. Arctic Blast is being played on a 160x80 world, with 40 sectors start islands and lots of sprinkle islands. Here are
the top four countries:sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money AUJ 135 81% 63K 2.2K 275 50 0 8.7K 7.5K 4.7K 0 20 20 20K Arrakis 105 70% 39K 1.1K 325 35 0 6.8K 2.8K 650 0 10 10 40K BigFish 65 95% 40K 500 300 30 100 5.0K 3.9K 900 0 9 2 1.9K FortWhoop 110 74% 41K 950 275 20 700 9.3K 5.2K 2.2K 0 20 7 5.0K
Hidden III
is played on 140x100 medium resources world with 26 sector start
islands. Other countries are "hidden" from you in the sense that:
Power: Will only display your country's power.
Report: Will only report on contacted countries, and no status.
Relat: Will only display contacted countries.
News: Will only show news about contacted countries.
Accep: Will only display contacted countries.
Tele: Only allowed with contacted and deity countries.
Hidden III has the following "non-standard" parameters:
- Ships gain a max of 60% eff per update.
- Civs suffer higher damage from shelling, etc.
- Mob used in an attack is: 10 (normally 5)
- Research must be 50% of tech for nukes.
- Mob costs to place units on a mission is: 32
- Tech is lag base 2.55, with 1 easy tech.
- Tech bleed is higher than normal.
- War declaration costs: $100, not $1000. (sneak attacks are still $5000)"Dwarven Chowder II"
a.k.a. "The Archipelago" is a medium sized world with little water.
35 sector start islands with 25 sectors free land each. The entire
world is bridgeable. The game will go down on Wednesday November 23rd for Thanksgiving (a US holiday) at 0000 and will come back up on
Sunday November 27th at 24:00EDT. If the game runs long enough it will
go down again on Wednesday December 21st at 00:00EDT for Christmas and will come back up one week later on Wednesday December 28th at 00:00EDT.In case of a failed update, notification will be given within 30
minutes concerning the forcing of an update. There can be, at a
maximum, two winning countries. This game has no nuclear weapons,
tech bleed is log base 2.55 (slow tech), and tech bleed is unbiased to
everyone. Here are the top four countries:sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money Xylum 115 35% 17K 450 25 5 0 1.1K 650 150 0 8 3 10K Shockwave 80 45% 15K 500 25 3 0 1.4K 1.1K 100 0 5 6 3.4K beep 125 42% 17K 650 21 4 0 2.8K 550 450 0 7 7 4.8K Raupo 90 44% 16K 150 50 5 0 1.9K 1.4K 700 0 3 0 5.0K"UAlberta NUKEFEST" just started on a 128x128 world. All countries began at tech 190 with the first nuke available at tech 235 and the first "good" nuke at tech 300 (there will be some very large nukes in this game). Start islands were 80 sectors (so you wouldn't get taken completely out by a single 100mt blast) using the Riverworld setup (see "Blitzes"). Every country started with $100K. Continents are 6 sectors apart (i.e. not bridgeable). The game is played with the MAD option (auto nuke retaliation).If you want to receive mail regarding new games starting up, send mail
to empire-announce-request@engg.ksu.edu with the subject line "subscribe".
I'd like this list to be as comprehensive as possible. Please send
me email with "EMPIRE NEWS" in the subject line informing me of the
winners of any past games that you know of. Please use the following
format for your submissions:Game Started Ended Winner(s) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- UAlberta Invitat'l I ----fall 1992---- Graahoeje Vulgaria UAlberta Spring ---Spring 1993--- Revelstone Unnamed ---spring 1993--- Sioux UAlberta Invitat'l II ----Fall 1993---- Revelstone Junkiefest II Apr 94 30 May 94 BLT Hidden II Jan 94 30 May 94 Menace_2_Society (Lothlorien) Mr. X (Mantarr & duckland) children Kaos Riverworld Nov 93 23 Jul 94 Mirkwood JunkieFest IV 17 Jun 94 8 Aug 94 Darkland Stalker Second_Foundation Dwarven Chowder I 17 Jun 94 8 Aug 94 LV426 Pepsi (Mithrilien & CrackHouse) Fodderland (Krikkit,Mantarr & duckland) Smorgasboard 22 May 94 8 Aug 94 LV426 Lothlorien European Empire VI 19 Jul 94 30 Aug 94 Arkhangel (Temekula) Paris (Lothlorien) UAlberta Open 7 Aug 94 22 Sep 94 Redline
Current Projects
These blitzes reset every day:Name host port coun pass updates resets --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverworld random.chem.psu.edu 1618 1-10 1-10 10 min 20:00 EDT Levante zwetsche.ethz.ch 3000 1-15 1-15 10 min 03:30 EDTThe first update is at 20:30 EDT. To give late-starters a better chance, Drake has changed the start configuration of this game somewhat--you begin with 30 sanctuaries, each containing 550 civs. You can login to the Riverworld blitz as a visitor using either "Visitor/Visitor" or "visitor/visitor". One neat thing about the Riverworld blitz is that every night, the game gets videotaped, and the next day you can download a video of the game (see "World Wide Web" for more details). This game now has HUGE nuclear weapons with bleed to sanctuary nations enabled, so if you connect in the afternoon, you should be able to try out the big nuke toys.
The Levante blitz runs modified code which decays commodities every update.
If you want to receive mail regarding new blitzes starting up, send mail
to blitz-announce-request@engg.ksu.edu with the subject line subscribe".
These are the projects that Empire coders are currently working on:
project coder language --------------------------------------------------------------- Mac Client Ashley A Thomas C PC Client Jamie Baswell C pei 2.0 Ken & Sam perl Win3 client Pat Loney C Users.Guide Geoff Cashman WISH LIST Ken HuismanMac Client
Ashley Thomas is writing an empire client for the Macintosh. He has a pre-release version (v0.1) available if anybody would like to try it. It requires MacTCP and a connection to the Internet (it doesn't dial itself). It doesn't have menus or text editing, and as Mac programs go, it's ugly. But if you want to play empire without a unix account it'll do the job. If you'd like to try it, send him email (see "Who's who") and he'll send you a copy (about 15K). He's looking for beta-testers. v1.0 will be a real event-aware macintosh program. It will have menus and a text window that mimics the empclient-1.1 version of the basic unix client. That will be the first version he submits to ksu. After that he plans to add aliasing, macros, and tools.PC Client
Don't have any info on this other than Jamie Baswell announced to
r.g.e that he's planning on writing an Empire client for the PC.pei 2.0
Ken Stevens and Sam Tetherow are working together to improve pei. Sam has been working on alot of extensions for deities recently which
should be available soon. They hope to add many new features which
may be found in the "WISH_LIST" file in the package. The big change
from the pei 1.* series to the pei 2.* series will be the way pei
communicates with the socket. The most recent version of pei is
always available on euromath.dk in /pub/incoming (see "Clients" for
more info on the current version of pei).Win3 client:
Pat Loney is writing a Win3 client using winsock and tcpip. He is
still looking for someone with win3 programming expertise to help him
finish the project.WISH LIST:
If you know of any bugs in Empire or if there are any features you'd
like added to Empire, then please mail them to Ken Huisman (see "Who's
Who?) with the word "wish" in the subject line. The criterea for
new features being added to the wish list are:
1) It shall improve the player's experience
2) It shall not be complex
3) It shall not change the game in any fundamental wayUsers.Guide:
Geoff Cashman is revising the Users.Guide, adding documentation for
land units, missions, starv, budget, bestpath, and other features
which have been added in the Chainsaw code.
Clients are available via anonymous ftp to ftp.cis.ksu.edu in the
directory /pub/Games/Empire/clients.submitted name size author system lang works? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jun 23 1993 empclient-1.1.tar.Z 20 Dave Pare & company Unix C yes May 27 1994 eif1.0.2.tar.Z 160 Doug Hay Unix C yes Oct 16 1994 pei.1.2.4.tar.Z 133 Ken & Sam Unix perl yes May 12 1994 hpc.sh 56 Drake Diedrich Unix perl yes May 12 1994 pec.2.0.sh 14 Sam Tetherow & comp Unix perl yes Apr 19 1993 xemp5.0.02.tar.Z 1333 Etienne X-windows C yes (not on ksu) myxec-0.2.tar.gz 529 Ulrich Drepper X-Windows C yes (not on ksu) GENIE ??? Markus Armbruster Emacs elisp yes Apr 19 1993 emp_mux.tar.Z 12 Alan M. Levi Unix C ??? Apr 27 1993 VMS/* 93 Donald Harper VMS C yes Apr 19 1993 VM_CMS/* 55 Sam Tetherow VM/CMS REXX yes Apr 19 1993 client2.0.tar.Z 13 Dave Pare & company Unix C ??? Aug 16 1994 baseemp.tar.Z 7 Sam Tetherow IBM PC C noTo add your client to the archive, send email to Karl S. Hagen (see
"Who's Who?") and he'll tell you what to do.empclient-1.1 - Empire Client
This is the standard bare-bones Unix client.eif1.0.2 - Empire InterFace
has multiple-game support, command scripting, aliases, history
substitution, access to system files and programs. Recent bugfixes by
Jim Gillogly (fixed the "kill" command) and Ken Stevens (fixed
highlighting for the "sect" command) are included in version 1.0.2.pei.1.2.4 - Perl Empire Interface
is a powerful tool for playing Empire written by Ken Stevens and Sam
Tetherow. There are too many features to list here. Suffice it to
say that if you're an experienced Empire player, you'll appreciate all of
the sophisticated time-saving tools that are built into it. Download
the latest version from euromath.dk in pub/incoming and never reach
for your calculator again.hpc - Harmless Perl Client
is the bare-bones perl client upon which pei was based.pec.2.0 - Perl Empire Client
by Sean "Elven King" Eddy, Michael "the Elf" Feuell, and Sam
"Drazz'zt" Tetherow. It is a perl client with functionality somewhere
between hpc and pei.xemp5.0.02 - X Empire
is an X-Windows interface for playing Empire.myxec-0.2 - My X Empire Client
is a new colour X-Windows Empire client. It is not yet available on the ksu
archive, but you may ftp a copy from:
i44ftp.ira.uka.de:pub/misc/empire/myxec/myxec-0.2.tar.gz
He will put version 0.3 on the ksu archive when it is ready. Due to a
recent disk-failure, this could take longer than expected.GENIE - GNU Emacs client
Markus Armbruster has released his GNU Emacs Empire client. It has
the basic functionality of emp_client, Emacs comint mode features
(like shell mode), plus a map window, variable and function
substitution. Function substitution remotely resembles shell
functions, but the functions are written in Emacs Lisp, of course.
Predefined functions include one to define ordinary aliases.
The most recent version is available at:
i44ftp.ira.uka.de:pub/misc/empire/emacs/genie.*
(This description was written by Markus)emp_mux.tar.Z
is a client "multiplexer" to allow two people to connect to the same
country at the same time.VMS client 4.0
is a client for VMS systems.VM/CMS empclient
is a client for VM/CMS systems.client2.0
is a modification of the standard client for "BSD Empire" (a version
of the server no longer supported).baseemp.tar.Z
is a bare-bones client for the IBM PC which coders can use as a base
for writing their own clients.
Empire documentation is available at ftp.cis.ksu.edu:
Empire FAQ:
/pub/Games/Empire/FAQ.*Empire Description:
/pub/Games/Empire/WhatIsEmpire-FAQ.txtChainsaw info pages:
/pub/Games/Empire/docs/chainsaw.3.0.info.tar.Z
The info pages are also available on WWW at:
http://random.chem.psu.edu/empire/info/Users Guide (presently being revised)
/pub/Games/Empire/docs/Users.Guide
If you want to run a game, you can get the source for the server from
ftp.cis.ksu.edu: /pub/Games/Empire/source/chainsaw.3.31.tar.Z
If you do not have GNUmake or mkmf on your system, then you will also
need to get /pub/Games/Empire/tools/Deity/emptools.tar.Z so that you can compile the server.Please mail Ken Stevens for his "How to Run a Game" document before
making a game announcement to r.g.e (this document will be included in the next release of the Empire Server code.)Kevin Klemmick has modified the plane code to generate more readable air combat reports. Deities are encouraged to replace the aircombat.c and mission.c files in chainsaw.3.31.tar.Z with ones found in:
pub/Games/Empire/source/newplanes.shDrake Diedrich has uploaded a diff file containing all the bug-fixes
to Chainsaw 3.31 used in the Riverworld games (mostly changes in the
info files and spelling corrections): pub/Games/Empire/source/diff.cs.river.ZServer Project
A team of coders has been working on improving the Empire Server.
Dave Pare merged the three main server programs into one monolith
server and has been working on ironing the bugs out of it so that the
rest of the members of the team can begin coding the items on the WISH
LIST. The most recent two bugs in the new server are that dump stops
half way through for large countries and there seems to be some
problems with ships.Server Mailing List:
The mailing list, a forum of discussion regarding changes to the
server, has been established (with current traffic about 2 mail
messages per month). If, and ONLY IF you are very familiar with the
Empire source code, have experience modifying the Empire source, and
have time to help with the Server project, send mail to
empire-list-request@engg.ksu.edu with the body content: subscribe
Karl S. Hagen maintains an Empire WWW page at:
http://www.engg.ksu.edu/empire/ which includes the Empire FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), back issues of this newsletter, and a WWW interface to the KSU Empire software archives.Drake Diedrich maintains an Empire WWW page at:
http://random.chem.psu.edu/empire/ which includes the up-or-down status of currently running games, the Chainsaw 3.31 info pages (in hypertext format), and reports and mpeg videos of recent Riverworld blitzes.What's the World Wide Web? See for yourself. To quote Drake Diedrich, "It is way cool." If you have emacs, then you can connect to the World Wide Web using "w3". Just ftp the following two elisp packages and install them:
diredall.tar.Z available at ftp.thp.Uni-Koeln.DE /pub/gnu/emacs
w3.tar.gz available at cs.indiana.edu /pub/elisp/w3Other ftp locations for WWW browsers:
info.cern.ch:/pub/www
ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu:/Web
cs.indiana.edu:/pub/elisp/w3
www.ufl.edu:/pub/vm/wwwThere are also more graphical WWW clients available (e.g. X-windows),
but I don't know where they are--once you get into WWW with the emacs client, you should be able to find them.
In alphabetical order, here is a list of Deities and Empire coders:Name Country Deity of email ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Markus Armbruster armbru@pond.sub.org Jamie Baswell baswell@cs.unca.edu Dan Bennett (retired) Eurasia (Kent State) Geoff Cashman Mithrilien cashman@silver.ucs.indiana.edu Drake Diedrich harmless Riverworld dld@random.chem.psu.edu Ulrich Drepper drepper@ira.uka.de Sean Eddy (retired) Mirkwood sre@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk Chris Farrel Geravik cfarrell@yar.cs.wisc.edu Michael Feuell Krikkit (Carnage) David Fish Imzadi ARCTIC BLAST davef@eskimo.com Monte Freeman Fizban (P.I.N.G) empire@empire.ping.com Jim Gillogly Banzai, POE Dustin L Graham Dwarven dusty@mik.uky.edu Karl S. Hagen Greyhelm greyhelm@engg.ksu.edu Don Harper Duckland harper_d@uhdux2.dt.uh.edu Stefan Hauser Rohan etienne@imp.ch Doug Hay (retired) Aliens Ken Huisman UAlberta ken@forsci.ualberta.ca Kevin Klemmick Waffen Hidden kklem@netcom.com Andrew Lasda (Flatland) alasda@nyx.cs.du.edu Pat Loney Overlord (European) loney@kaos.lerc.nasa.gov Dave Nye EvilEmpire (BBN) david_nye@wellfleet.com Jim Ortlieb CrackHouse PuddlePlanet ajortlie@gsbux1.uchicago.edu Dave "H.D." Pare mr-frog@xcf.Berkeley.EDU Stephane Perennes (Outremer) sp@essi.essi.fr Thomas Ruschak The_Scum (Chainsaw) ts@ecn.purdue.edu Chuck Simons (retired) Metzada simons@plains.nodak.edu Ken Stevens children (Kaiserdome) stevens@math.toronto.edu Sam Tetherow(Drazz'zt) Khazad'ur Dwarven tetherow@cse.unl.edu Ashley A Thomas ase@cyberspace.org Damon E. Wilkinson Mantarr st1dg@jetson.uh.edu Scott Yelich AO (Santa Fe) scott@santafe.edu Chad Zabel Rad_Zone (BloodBowl) zabel@cs.und.nodak.edu
If you have any additions/corrections/changes/feedback to the information in this post, please email me at stevens@math.toronto.edu with "EMPIRE NEWS" in the subject line.
Ken Stevens a.k.a. Buster, ruler of children
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = The Empire News is a publication of Wolfpack Empire, bringing = = you the best in Empire since 1996. If you would like to add = = content (new games, games ending, new web sites, hints, = = Anno of the Month submissions, etc. to the next edition of = = the Empire News, please contact the editor at = = empnews@wolfpackempire.com = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Copyright © 1998-2013 Wolfpack. All rights reserved.
Maintained by Wolfpack and Hosted by www.wolfpackempire.com.
Questions and comments