Xref: utcsri rec.games.empire:15338 Path: utcsri!utnut!torn!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!usenet.ucs.indiana.edu!silver.ucs.indiana.edu!cashman From: cashman@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Geoff Cashman) Newsgroups: rec.games.empire Subject: Thematic 1: Game over - Game Summary Date: 26 Sep 1995 13:58:50 GMT Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington Lines: 151 Message-ID: <4490uq$3hv@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: silver.ucs.indiana.edu The first Thematic game is over. It didn't go out with a bang though, more like a dull thud. This game featured as the theme, the 'lost continent'. Everyone had start islands of ~30 sectors, and were located a significant distance away from the continent. My closest sector to the continent on my start island was two updates cruising in a cargo ship 2 away. Everyone knew that the only free land was the huge continent, and thus finding it became a pretty high priority in most countries. Several countries found the continent early, but only a handful managed to make a colony there, even if short lived. Barsoom, Cathouse, and ST:TEG managed to make the biggest sustained colonies on the continent, which had something near 400 sectors on it. Other countries had "temporary" colonies that were removed at most within a few updates after they were established. Barsoom and Cathouse formed an alliance early on, and ST:TEG was left to fend for himself on the continent. Despite overwhelming superiority on the continent, Barsoom and Cathouse requested peace after a lengthy war. In the opinion of this player, had that peace not been made, this game would have been over weeks ago. Peace, however, did not last long. In an incident that is still hotly debated, Barsoom broke the treaty and attacked ST:TEG for breaking the treaty. When this occured, the game was over for all intents and purposes. With ST's forces smashed on the continent, resistance against a unified continent became futile. Barsoom and Cathouse called a win declaration at that point. Nobody in the game denies that Barsoom is the winner, but apparently every country with more than a few sectors left believes that Cathouse should not be part of that win declaration. For me, I entered this game late, taking over a country that was stuck in second gear in some ways, and first gear in others. I began in 14th place and gradually moved up the power charts. The big event that was the catalyst to the previously mentioned incident was my on-continent invasion of Cathouse, resulting in the sacking of three fully stocked banks and the capture (if short lived) of approximately 50 other sectors. Despite the negative outcome for myself and my ally, ST:TEG, I'm happy to have gotten as far as I did with the country I took over and to have had a hand in the final playout of things. What stands out for me in this game is that the 'winner', Barsoom, did not kill a single country in winning the game. I do not recall any game in the history of empire where this was the case. In addition, Barsoom was not the tech leader nor was their economy very strong. The main critical component behind their win was establishing control of the continent, with it's wide open space for growth, and apparently huge resources. The main problem with this game was the theme's implementation. The deity realised at too late a point that something should have been done on the continent to check explosive expansion, such as 20 deity mil in each sector. Nevertheless, I feel that the deity did an outstanding job. This game ran on a linux machine, and the game was not without its share of bugs. The deity worked hard at removing these bugs, and keeping players informed of what was going on. Early on, he also made some good game update posts to this newsgroup. Many, many thanks and pats on the back to the deity for a job well done. According to the deity, there will be future thematic games. I've discussed some ideas with him and some of them are quite intriguing. These games are sure to be some of the most unique games in quite some time. And here's the power report as of this morning. The game is still up and running, mainly because the win declaration was contested. Despite this, the game is essentially over since no country is willing to oppose Barsoom now. - = [ Empire Power Report ] = - as of Tue Sep 26 09:49:22 1995 sects eff civ mil shell gun pet iron dust oil pln ship unit money Barsoom 455 94% 319K 15K 6.3K 755 9.0K 82K 10K 19K 280 110 230 110K Solvind 220 95% 156K 6.2K 5.5K 765 4.5K 60K 3.0K 11K 60 130 80 30K ST:TEG 200 95% 158K 7.0K 2.9K 440 2.8K 53K 900 11K 30 110 70 255K Cathouse 200 92% 146K 13K 3.5K 645 1.9K 22K 9.1K 3.0K 80 110 130 35K Mithrilie 100 96% 82K 4.2K 4.3K 400 950 29K 800 5.7K 20 60 40 80K Heartland 60 100% 55K 1.5K 3.5K 360 1.2K 19K 550 5.0K 8 10 20 25K Dristonia 30 100% 28K 1.1K 3.0K 290 800 7.3K 15 800 20 40 20 20K Ravenwood 60 99% 54K 3.1K 1.9K 130 2 8.0K 250 1.6K 0 10 20 55K Lorphos 30 96% 27K 1.1K 500 100 650 6.4K 150 1.1K 2 5 4 10K Megaloman 25 99% 18K 1.8K 2.1K 85 700 3.3K 50 750 8 10 7 15K Orca 30 97% 19K 1.7K 550 100 950 11K 650 450 8 20 10 20K ghost 15 90% 3.8K 800 175 20 13 2.7K 50 150 0 1 0 -490 gotham 0 0% 0 32 10 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 30K Wirikidor 1 100% 850 0 0 0 0 1 3 2.5K 0 0 0 -7.2K TepeYahya 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15K Andor 0 0% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 213 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- worldwide 1.4K 95% 1.1M 56K 35K 4.1K 24K 304K 26K 61K 510 620 640 590K Some off-the-cuff awards: Best Run Little Country award: Dristonia. He was in the tech race early on and continued to run a solid country for the remainder of the game, though he never did manage to get a permanent foothold on dry land elsewhere. Swiss Waffle award: Solvind. Early on, he aligned himself with certain countries, then backed out and became neutral for the remainder of the game. Kid Brother award: Cathouse. His power paled in comparison to Barsoom's for the last few weeks and he couldn't manage to take a 30 sector island from Megalomania without taking a few updates to do it. Now that the game is over, he's decided to try to make himself look strong and impressive for the final power report. Weirdest Country Name award: ST:TEG. 3 guesses what it means. Give up? Star Trek: The Empire Game. This was a co-ruled country (as was Barsoom). One of the players was Pat Loney. He gets the credit for this one. Best Unattended Country award: ghost. This country was apparently without a leader for quite some time before I sacked him. Not a peep was heard out of him for weeks either before or after the sacking. Despite this, he had a strong economy before the attack, and was in 6th place I think, and had a nice tech level. Happiest Country award: Mithrilien. That's me :-) I don't have any evidence to support this, since I don't know anyone else's happiness level, but if anyone has a higher happiness than my 57, I'd be surprised. Having units with a retreat percentage of 18% was cute :-) "Sir! 80% of the unit is destroyed! The enemy is coming from almost every direction! Shouldn't we retreat?", "80%? so what...remember! we're happy! Keep fighting until the whites of your eyes are in their stomachs, and be happy about it!" And one last award...I think this one should be recognized and compared against events in every game in the history of Empire. No one's keeping a Subby style Hall of Fame anymore, but I think that the following award should be considered for the history books: Lamest Win Ever award: Barsoom. Ok, sure, they got the win... and did it without killing a single country, without having the tech lead, without a strong economy, and took several weeks longer than it should have to clinch the win. - Geoff aka Mithrilien