Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!unisoft!hoptoad!xanth!kent From: kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: "Empire" game reviewed Keywords: game review conquest wargame Message-ID: <5828@xanth.cs.odu.edu> Date: 12 Jul 88 06:02:48 GMT Reply-To: kent@cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan) Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va. Lines: 105 My news reading has been a bit spotty recently, so forgive me if a review has already been published for Empire. Anyway, here goes mine. "A STAR FLEET Planetary Campaign" EMPIRE "Wargame of the Century", Amiga version 2.03, published by by interstel (tm), written by Walter Bright and Mark Baldwin. Includes game disk, quick command reference card, and 70 page manual. "Word in manual" copy protection. First, for those who have played the Unix(tm) version, this is the same game, but considerably simpler, since only cities do production, and the only production is combat units. Second, this is a _long_ game, just like the original. One person can take out two computer opponents in about 26 hour of play. Human against human is much slower. There is a "play by mail" version, which I haven't had a chance to test yet. A "typical" game lasts around 150 to 300 moves. Empire is a game of "world" conquest, played on a rectangular map 60 cells high by 100 cells wide. The game supports two or three players, of whom all or none may be computer players, so that possible play modes are human against computer, human against two computer players, human against human, human against human against computer, human against human against human, or computer against computer or computer against computer against computer. There is a demo mode, a two or three way computer only game, that can be got to without the copy protection check, which is a nice advertising feature. I turned it on, and *** eight hours later *** a two player game was still underway, when I had to shut it down for a thunderstorm. The game has an excellent "Amiga feel", with requestors, gadgets, menus, lots of mousing around, graphics and sound used (neither spectacular), excellent windowing, multiple screens (two, workbench plus game), multitasks OK, and so on. Playing this game will make you very appreciative of the Amiga software design. Besides play mode, there are lots of other nifty features, like "design your own world", that let you play with the game. Normal play is with a subset of the world on the screen, but there is a "world map" that shows you (what you know about) the whole world that can be called up in addition. Attention to detail is very nice in terms of playability; when a turn ends, a full screen requestor is put up for the next player, the map sliders go back to zero so you don't know where the other player was working. If you spot an enemy or neutral unit, and leave without combat, that unit is carried on your map in the position and status you last saw; this may well _not_ be the position and status when you send a unit back in that neighborhood, but it is a good reminder of "things to check up on" for later. Each player has a private map of the world, and starts with a single city somewhere. From that small start, the player goes on to conquer first neutral territories, then, after more of the world is known, to fight enemy units. Conflict is accomplished by trying to move a unit onto an opposing unit. Cities are the primary targets, because each city is a production entity, capable of working on just one product at a time, but can be changed with a small time penalty (and loss of any partially completed unit) to work on another item. Landlocked cities can only produce armies and planes. Armies are produced quickly, large ships slowly, and other units somewhere between. Cities are named after real cities famous in the history of warfare (Marathon) or current military might (Hampton Roads). I can't tell you how delighted I was to conquer the latter (the larger Norfolk vicinity, where I live, is known as Hampton Roads.) Combat units are armies (the only unit that can conquer a city) fighter planes, and ships: troop transports, submarines, destroyers, carriers, battleships, and aircraft carriers. A unit either wins a battle, or is destroyed, winning (naval) units can sustain damage, and can return to a friendly port for repairs. Since only armies can conquer cities, and since the world usually has a couple of dozen major land masses, and five or six dozen cities, troop transports are necessary to win. The game is a study in managing complexity, and provides many aids to the player. Even in the midst of world wide conflict, an experienced player can accomplish a move in about 15 minutes, one eighth the time for the (admittedly more complex) Unix version. Units can be set to patrol certain pathways, aircraft can be automatically routed from production areas to the battlefront, units can be put on sentry, and many other options. Hmm. I guess I could go on until I'd rewritten the manual. ;-) Enough to say that this is an excellent game for the war game enthusiast or for someone who has worn out the thrill of arcade games on the Amiga. The only design bug I've found so far is that I can't find a way to get non-army units out of a city if they have been put on sentry duty there, and that is a minor problem at best. The sellers could have completely left out the attempt to tie the game into the Star Fleet I and II series, for my taste, but that's a quibble. Lots of fun. Oh, yes, the game keeps a combat ranking for commanders, and can be (the manual says "do") freely copied from the original for a playing copy, or run from hard disk. Enjoy! Really worth the ~$40 price. Kent, the man from xanth.