From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!duke!unc!bch Newsgroups: net.games.emp Title: Re: hullo... Article-I.D.: unc.3711 Posted: Mon Jul 19 10:22:57 1982 Received: Sat Jul 24 01:43:28 1982 At unc we have agreed that The Deity should not be a player. No matter how scrupulous or careful a player may be, there is always knowledge in being a Deity that gives you a distinct advantage over the other players even if you don't want that advantage (i.e you are informed of plague contraction before anyone else, you are informed of ship sinkings and, of course, must answer prayers.) Solutions to the problem of having essentially no Deity except for the creation are systemic: (1) Run empire in its own group, with an id which is the only id in that group. Have someone set up all the empire distribution files under that id and prepare them for execution with that id as the privileged user. (This should be done for security reasons anyway.) (2) run empcre and some form of randomized nation assignment program such as mkemp (distributed earlier on this list.) (3) Turn the id over to someone uninvolved and have them change the password! (4) While there are still ways to breach security and gain access to other countries data, at least now everyone has the same chance to do so. If your local Deity refuses to do this, well.... Byron Howes