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- Amiga Empire by Chris Gray - Being an Empire Deity
-
-
- A deity in Empire has considerable power. He (I'll use 'he' to avoid having
- to type 'he/she' all the time) can examine and alter any country, sector or
- ship, and can change dozens of parameters which affect the play of the
- game. Ideally, a deity would be the person on whose machine Empire is
- running. He would use EmpCre to create the world, look it over to make sure
- it doesn't have any problems, perhaps fix up some problems, or go with an
- entirely new world, and then would supervise the running of the world,
- being ready to fix up anything that might need it. In practice, everybody
- wants to have a country, so no unbiased individual is available to be a
- deity. I've gone to some trouble to try to make EmpCre always create a
- playable world, and hopefully Empire doesn't have any bugs that would
- require fixup by a deity, so most games can proceed without one. For your
- first one or two Empire games, you can probably play without a deity, so
- you do not need to read this writeup.
-
- The presence of an active deity can change the nature of the game, so you
- should be sure that all of the players want an active deity before becoming
- one. For example, the original Peter Langston documentation suggests that
- prayers, in the form of telegrams to a deity, can often result in sector
- improvements, terrain rearrangement, etc. in return for offerings of gold,
- ships, efficiency, etc. This sort of thing may be just what your group
- wants (especially if you are becoming bored with "standard" Empire), but it
- might ruin the game as far as others are concerned.
-
- A deity can also change many parameters which affect the progress of an
- Empire game. For example, the production costs of shells, guns, planes,
- bars of gold, and ships can all be changed. Doing so before the game gets
- under way, with the full knowledge of the players, can result in a game
- with a different flavor. Doing so without the knowledge of the players can
- result in an adventure-like touch - the players will have to try various
- things to see how they go. These changes can also be made during the course
- of the game, (perhaps as a result of "inventions", "strikes", or whatever),
- forcing the players to re-evaluate their strategies.
-
- There are also some parameters that can be changed during the creation of a
- world with EmpCre. These affect such things as terrain distribution, iron
- and gold deposits, etc. These can, of course, only be done before the game
- is underway.
-
- Several Empire commands have special code to handle a deity. A deity can
- see all ships and sectors (sunk ships show up with an asterisk). He can
- also designate any sector (including mountains and sea) to be anything else
- (including mountain and sea). More special case code could be added, but so
- far there has been no need for it.
-
- There are a few Empire commands that are available only to a deity. These
- are: edit, examine, translate, untranslate, flush and tickle. The dump
- command also produces slightly more information when used by a deity - see
- the command description for more details. The new commands are described in
- detail here:
-
- translate <country> <sector>
- translates a sector given in the coordinate scheme of <country> to
- the universal coordinate scheme (which deitys use). This allows
- a deity to locate a sector described by another player.
-
- untranslate <country> <sector>
- translates a sector given in the universal coordinate scheme into
- the coordinate scheme of the given country. Allows a deity to talk
- about sectors in terms the country understands.
-
- examine
- displays information about the requested item, usually in a not
- very readable format. In particular, the various forms display:
- examine country <country>
- - password
- - origin (absolute coordinates of capital)
- - technology and research levels
- - sectors owned, money held, btu's left, last play time
- - minutes left, country status, name
- - value of all 6 realms
- - telegram pointers
- - relations to all other countries (Neutral/Allied/at War)
- - fleet numbers of any active fleets
- examine sector <sector>
- - designation, row, column, last update time
- - iron and gold deposits, checkpoint code, number of ships there
- - production units, mobility, efficiency, plague stage and time
- - defender code, contract price
- - unscaled quantities, delivery direction and delivery thesholds
- examine ship <ship>
- - last update time, owner, price per ton if for sale
- - which fleet it is in (relative to the country which owns it)
- - its position in absolute coordinates
- - efficiency, mobility, and the stuff it is carrying
- examine fleet <fleet-number>
- - shows the ships that are in the fleet
- examine loan <loan>
- - who it is from and who it is to
- - date of last payment and the due date
- - current amount, amount paid, duration (half hours), interest rate
- - current state - offered, declined, outstanding, paid-up
- examine world
- - number of rows and columns in the world
- - number of countries active and allowed in the world
- - current maximum connect time in half-hours
- - country creation password
- - number of loans, treaties, offers and ships currently existing
- - weather factors - speed, position and value of the high and low
-
- edit
- allows a deity to change all sorts of things. Most things will be
- numeric, and will be displayed after a description of it, followed
- by the description again as a prompt. If you just hit RETURN, the
- value will be unchanged. If you enter something that is invalid or
- out of range, the prompting will continue. Several random factors
- in Empire are determined from two values. One is the base value,
- which represents the minimum, the other is the random value, which
- represents the maximum amount that will be added to the minimum.
- I.e. they are used as value := random(rand) + base
- The following descriptions will often have notes about the effect
- of changing a given value:
- edit country <country>
- - name - change the country's name. You should only need to do this
- when creating a visitor country.
- - status - country status. The assigned codes are:
- 0 - deity - if you create additional deitys, make sure their
- origin is 0,0.
- 1 - active - the normal status
- 2 - dead - no sectors left
- 3 - quit - the country has dissolved
- 4 - idle - no one has claimed the country yet. In a pinch you
- can un-claim the last claimed country by setting its status
- back to this, decrementing the number of active countries
- (edit world), and undoing any changes that the player made.
- 5 - visitor
- - sectorCount - the number of sectors that the country owns. This
- is used to tell when a country has become dead. It is updated
- whenever the country gains or loses a sector. In case I missed
- one or two, it is also recomputed when a 'power force' is done.
- If the 'force' is done by a deity, the deity is informed of any
- discrepancy between the new count and the count stored with the
- country. In such cases, it is wise to edit the country and fix
- the sector count. Be sure to update these values if you change
- the ownership of a sector. If for example, you decide to build
- a river between an overzealous aggressor and a weak neighbor,
- decrement the count of whoever used to own the sectors (and
- change the owner field of the sectors).
- - technology and research levels, money in the bank
- - BTU's remaining - additional BTU's are probably the least radical
- gift that can be given to a country in trouble. Don't try to go
- over the maximum allowed by the world, however.
- - timer - minutes of connect time left today. These are reset to
- the maximum (see edit world) the first time the country logs in
- after midnight. Gifts of additional time can also be useful for
- countries with problems.
- - coordinates of capital - you could change these to move a new
- country that is in a poor position. Remember to change the
- ownership, etc. of any relevant sectors.
- - password - Any non-null reply will set the new password for the
- country.
- Entering a null string leaves the password unchanged.
- - Telegram pointers. If the system crashes, it is possible that the
- telegram pointers will be wrong. You have the option to reset
- them to 0, thus the next telegram will overwrite any previous
- messages. You should NEVER delete a countries telegram file,
- as the server will not create a non-existant file. The file will
- be cleared as soon as the country receives a telegram and
- deletes it.
- edit sector <sector>
- - owner - change the ownership of the sector - remember to change
- the sectorCounts of the relevant countries.
- - iron - iron ore deposit richness
- - gold - gold ore deposit richness
- - checkPoint - why would you want to change this?
- - shipCount - each sector contains the count of how many ships
- Empire thinks are there. This is used to speed up flying -
- Empire doesn't have to check for anti-aircraft fire from sea
- sectors that have no ships. Nothing TOO serious would go wrong
- if this count was wrong, but you should fix them up when you
- move ships around anyway. If you find a case where it gets
- wrong, please let me know. Note that sunk ships don't count.
- - production, mobility, efficiency - straightforward
- - plague stage - see the pseudocode for sector updates in the
- 'update' file for details on the various stages
- - plague time - time remaining in the current stage (ETUs)
- - contract price - in nickels - a nonzero here is how Empire knows
- that the sector is contracted.
- - item (commodity) quantities - these ARE scaled, so if you want to
- put 1270 guns into a warehouse, enter 1270
- edit ship <ship>
- - owner - country number of the owner
- - price - sale price per ton of the ship (0 => ship not for sale)
- - efficiency
- - mobility - can go negative for ships (see torpedo command)
- - row, column - in absolute (deity) coordinates. If you move the
- ship, remember to change the shipCount of the relevant sectors.
- - techLevel
- - crew, shells, guns, planes, ore, bars - straightforward
- edit world
- - maximum number of users - you could decrement this to get rid of
- a country that no-one has taken, to prevent anyone from taking
- it. It is conceivable that you could create a new country, but
- I haven't tried it - you would have to increment this number,
- find a place for the sanctuaries, build them, change their
- ownerships, totally initialize the new country, etc. "edit
- country" does not let you edit all of the values in the
- Country_t structure, but the full array of them is initialized
- by EmpCre, so you'll probably be OK.
- - current number of users - you could decrement this to wipe out
- the last country created - see "edit country"
- - maximum connect time in minutes - range is 1 to 1440. If you want
- the change to immediately affect all of the countries, you'll
- have to go edit them appropriately.
- - maximum BTUs help by one country - increasing this value lets
- players save up more stuff for sudden attacks, etc.
- - creation password - the current password is displayed, and can
- be changed to any non-null string. (Entering a null string
- leaves the password unchanged.)
- - next loan, treaty, offer, ship, fleet - changing these can undo a
- slipup, but be careful, and backup before you do it.
- - Winner of the last game
- edit weather
- Empire weather is based on a pair of pressure centers - one high
- and one low. The strength of the two centers, combined with the
- distance of a sector from them, yields the weather in that sector.
- The two centers move in a semi-random walk. The row and column
- increments (range -4 to +4) are the speed in quarter sectors per
- half hour that the centers move. The current positions (row and
- columns) are also in quarter sectors, thus they range from 0 to the
- size of the world * 4 - 1. The given pressure values should range
- between the relevant minimum and maximum. Bad weather is the only
- important kind. To make more bad weather, decrease the values of
- loMin and loMax (and perhaps of hiMin and hiMax). You can move the
- systems directly, but its more realistic to guide them to the
- desired places over time.
- - hiRowInc, hiColInc - speed of the hi pressure center
- - loRowInc, loColInc - speed of the lo pressure center
- - hiRow, hiCol - position of the hi pressure center
- - loRow, loCol - position of the lo pressure center
- - hiMin, hiMax - range of the hi pressure
- - loMin, loMax - range of the lo pressure
- - hiPressure, loPressure - values of the centers
- edit production, mobilities, plague, costs, scales, updates, fighting,
- sea, air, miscellaneous, naval, flags
- - these are the factors that the players can see with the 'info'
- command. They are edited in exactly the same format. See the
- 'factors' document for details.
-
- flush - this command instructs the server to write out and close all
- data files, then open and read them again. This is also done when
- any country leaves the game. It is most useful for games with small
- Empire Time Units, where none of the players ever leave.
-
- tickle - In a game with small Empire Time Units, leaving the game for
- a few hours to sleep is like leaving a regular game for a month or
- two. This is undesireable. The program stores the time at which the
- last player left the game. The 'tickle' command goes through all
- sectors and ships in the world, and brings forward (WITHOUT
- updating them) their update time by a fixed amount which is the
- difference between the current time and the saved last play time
- when the 'tickle' starts. Thus, if you are hosting a small ETU
- game, and have shut it down for a while and want to bring it up
- again, log in as a deity before anyone else does, and issue the
- 'tickle' command. Do NOT log in and out before doing the 'tickle'
- as that will modify the last used time.
-
-