"On air. On sea. On land. Still the Internet's greatest wargame simulation."
A Wolfpack Empire Publication
"All the news that fits, we print."
April, 2004
In This Edition
Retro Empire started! See `Current Games' below.
Wolfpack released Empire 4.2.14! This release concentrates on making
the code easier to maintain and more consistent. Player visible
changes include slightly changed meaning of '?' in map and radar,
improved deliver command, and improved formatting of info files.
Deity visible changes include further improvements to the edit
command.Ron Koenderink released WinACE 2.4.4 and 2.4.6. These are primarily
bug fix releases, with an enhancement to Export/Import Intelligence
and support for the Retro game.
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 |
New Byss, the next installment in Jeff Cotter's St@r W@rs Empire
series is in design stage. Check out
http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/jcotter/SWE/Endor.htmAnother `Petting Zoo' game is expected this summer.
Retro Empire is running at retro.wolfpackempire.com, port 6665.
Deities are Mark Ballinger (Uesugi) and Geoff Cashman (Mithrilien). A
blitz with the same configuration (except food) is running at
blitz.wolfpackempire.com, port 6665.Retro Empire is an attempt to emulate what could be called the
classical age of Empire: the early '90s. No infrastructure. No
missions. 24 ETUs per update. Fewer ship and plane types, and no
land units. Completing a ship or plane takes several updates. Start
islands are large, but resources are scarce.The game has seen five updates so far. Parpara, Uruk and Zapotek were
the first to find land. The peaceful citizens of beep lead the tech
race, with Manetherin and Draenor in hot pursuit.- = [ Empire Power Report ] = - as of Sun Apr 4 10:46:23 2004 sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil food pln ship money Land_Of_F 100 35% 10K 100 0 0 0 500 450 200 1.9K 0 2 20K UTOPIA 100 29% 11K 0 0 0 0 800 200 150 1.6K 0 0 20K Pern 100 23% 11K 0 0 0 0 550 1.6K 300 1.8K 0 0 25K Tormalin 100 25% 11K 50 0 0 0 700 300 300 1.6K 0 7 25K TZIA 100 23% 11K 100 0 0 0 1.3K 400 37 1.6K 0 6 20K Azwhepay 100 23% 11K 0 0 0 0 850 650 100 1.9K 0 5 25K Zapotek 105 22% 11K 35 0 0 0 900 400 34 1.6K 0 9 20K Aridon 100 22% 11K 0 0 0 0 600 1.1K 0 3.6K 0 2 25K Uruk 100 23% 11K 12 0 0 0 700 400 43 1.6K 0 10 20K Indetermi 100 24% 10K 250 0 0 0 550 300 43 1.6K 0 5 20K pandatrax 100 20% 11K 0 0 0 0 800 1.1K 0 2.7K 0 5 25K Parpara 100 22% 10K 100 0 0 0 850 100 50 1.6K 0 9 20K Kamoria 100 22% 11K 0 0 0 0 700 500 100 1.6K 0 3 20K U.S.Madis 100 22% 11K 40 0 0 0 600 900 150 2.0K 0 0 20K KingJohan 100 23% 10K 0 0 0 0 1.1K 650 100 1.6K 0 0 20K Savoia 100 17% 11K 0 0 0 0 1.2K 1.0K 200 1.6K 0 1 25K Draenor 100 20% 10K 100 0 0 0 950 350 100 1.6K 0 4 20K Manetheri 100 20% 11K 16 0 0 0 800 250 100 1.6K 0 4 20K Golgoth 100 17% 11K 0 0 0 0 1.4K 600 100 1.6K 0 2 25K DiudeLand 90 20% 10K 41 0 0 0 500 1.2K 200 1.6K 0 2 25K BlackBox 80 23% 11K 20 0 0 0 750 250 50 1.6K 0 8 25K beep 100 18% 11K 32 0 0 0 500 350 100 1.6K 0 0 15K ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- worldwide 2.2K 22% 233K 900 0 0 0 18K 13K 2.5K 39K 0 80 485KThe 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. Further surprises are possible, as Changeling runs snapshots
from the latest Wolfpack server development.
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.
St@r W@rs Empire `Bidder's War', deitied by Jeff Cotter, was won by
Lwhekk and TrojanHorse.This game was packed with ideas. Besides ordinary players, there were
`indigenous life forms', severely handicapped in land and even more in
tech. Mike Mackubin, Ron Koenderink and Laurent Martin graciously
accepted the deity's invitation to play these critters. Amazingly,
they all made it to the end, and TrojanHorse (Mike) even secured a
victory ticket!TrojanHorse drew first blood and attacked Saiph, substituting audacity
for technology. Lwhekk invaded and knocked out first Wookieland
(formerly Kashyyk) and later Gemini and Wayland. Gemini earned the
`Newbie Badge' for best newbie performance here. Meanwhile, Lwhekk's
ally TrojanHorse used every trick in the book to hold ground against
Saiph's superior forces. To the deity's surprise and embarrassment,
Lwhekk tracked down and destroyed the mysterious Sith (run by the
deity for added flavor). Lwhekk and TrojanHorse then declared
victory, but Saiph and Plorn refused to concede. However, Plorn went
bankrupt soon after, and that was that. Lwhekk's newly laid down
Death Star didn't see action.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = - as of Sat Mar 13 12:27:03 2004 sects eff civ mil shell gun dust oil pln ship unit money Lwhekk 372 93% 429K 18K 7.4K 239 7.0K 14K 397 99 64 143K 29506.35 Saiph 91 92% 142K 5.8K 1.1K 203 2.3K 1.3K 76 62 45 19K 8220.40 TrojanHor 61 97% 70K 2.4K 1.5K 138 4.0K 4.0K 61 61 49 13K 3681.59 Zhar 31 100% 45K 1.8K 2.2K 314 1.5K 266 40 8 10 66K 2094.98 Agamar 31 100% 54K 2.8K 2.2K 290 545 82 83 5 74 99K 1445.94 Sith 0 0% 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 5 62K 229.37 Wayland 2 100% 1.8K 149 0 2 88 62 0 5 0 50K 211.14 Wookielan 0 0% 0 90 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 39K 83.34 Plorn 0 0% 0 400 101 18 0 0 0 13 0 -2.3K 68.24 Gemini 0 0% 0 60 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 4.5K 33.86 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- worldwide 590 94% 743K 31K 15K 1.2K 16K 20K 660 260 250 490KAwards, deity's game reports and diary are available at http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/jcotter/SWE/BiddersWar/BiddersWar.htm
`Intro to the Petting Zoo' was won by Doorbell. Deity was Doug `Bungholio' Wescott.
The deity limited this game to 25 updates and defined victory conditions. However, players conceded the game to Doorbell after 18 updates. At the tenth update, Doorbell surprised and knocked out harmless, who was focusing on tech and growth and didn't have defenses ready yet. With harmless knocked off of his start island, and Doorbell allied with Gormania, it was all over.
- = [ Empire Power Report ] = - as of Mon Mar 29 20:05:00 2004 sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money Doorbell 169 91% 93K 1.9K 2.0K 117 5.0K 20K 182 6.5K 41 40 30 4.4K 3144.56 Mithrilie 117 99% 103K 3.3K 1.9K 268 5.2K 11K 76 7.9K 15 85 31 6.8K 3023.54 Gormania 102 95% 64K 1.9K 2.2K 305 4.4K 11K 84 1.5K 53 34 30 3.3K 2331.98 harmless 24 83% 16K 821 350 92 0 6.4K 0 95 0 11 0 365 538.67 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- worldwide 410 94% 275K 7.9K 6.5K 780 15K 48K 350 16K 110 170 90 15KMore information can be found at
http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/bungholio/PettingZooIntro_Summary.html
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 2.4.6. Read the announcement at
http://groups.google.de/groups?selm=ae2bf018.0404010744.6409eb69@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 1.3.4. 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 current Empire server is 4.2.14. Download it from
http://www.wolfpackempire.com/server.html or
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=24031
The phenomenon of old farts raving about how much better the old times
is probably as old as mankind. That doesn't mean they can't be
occasionally right.We're currently witnessing (and some of us playing) an interesting
experiment: Retro Empire. Nothing can take you back in time to
Harvard Fall Empire, but Retro attempts to be close. It allows us to
study differences between the Empire of today end the Empire of the
early '90s without relying on dubious memories.Empire changed since the early '90s. Change is good. But evaluation
is required to provide mutation with selection. And the most
important form of evaluation is player feedback. Tell us about your
experience in Retro. Telegraph to Diary, post to rec.games.empire, or
e-mail to wolfpack@wolfpackempire.com.Markus, a.k.a. Dorwinion
This month's hint is about choosing and securing beachheads.
Attacks that can use sector military are both cheaper and more
powerful. The key to secure beachheads against counter-attack is to
gain enough depth to put part of the beachhead out of the reach of
military. This is particularly effective when the enemy has neither
land units nor paradrop-capable planes.You can gain depth by exploiting geography. Consider this map:
- . . . . . - - . . . . . - - - - - . - - - - - 1 . - - - - . . . - - - - 2 . . - . . . . .Landing zones 1 and 2 can be both cut off by assaulting all the
adjacent sectors as well.You don't have to *take* a sector to make it useless for counter-
attack. Shelling and strategic bombing reduce sector mobility and
thus can deny attacks. Revisiting our example, you could assault all
sectors marked A and shell down sectors marked F:
- . . . . . - - . . . . . - - - A A . - - - F A A . - - F A . . . - - A A A . . - . . . . .Assaulting more of the coastline gives you more options for attacking,
and multiplies the defender's problems.Always bring enough ships and military to do the job on the first try.
Getting good intelligence before attempting the landing is critical.Thanks to Ray Hyatt (Plundaria) for the suggestion and a detailed
draft.
From Retro Empire:
> Announcement from visitor, (#35) dated Sun Mar 28 16:38:42 2004 You call this a retro game? islands? resource distributrion? What were you clowns thinking? Anybody that has been around this game for more than 10 years knows the only good setup "back then" was when the world was set to look like a map of Europe and every sector had 65 iron, 10 dust, 12 oil, and 25 fert. You're probably letting them use the move command that finds the best path for them automatically too. This isn't a Retro game. this is a Whimp Game. Pat AKA Overlord, Retired (and still waiting on his first pension check and medical card so he can pick up his meds) And another thing! This anno is over 512 characters! Back in the old days Subby and Mirkwood could shoehorn in 2 side splitters and a pants wetter in one anno. Life is too easy for this newer generation. I hope you all wake up looking like Michael Jackson tomorrow. Oh great - Looks like Geoff called the men in white uniforms again. They're talking away my keyboard now. I'll have to be good for a week to get it back.
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