EnigmA Amiga Run 1996 February

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Text File | 1994-08-09 | 23KB | 438 lines

I. Introduction II. Running Your Empire III. Battle IV. Extra Info I. Introduction The object of Space Empire is simple. You are the absolute ruler of a set of worlds. Your goal is to be the most powerful empire through diplomacy, economic plays, and most of all, war. The first person to be "Space Lord" for seven days in a row ascends the iridium throne of the galaxy and becomes Lord of the Universe and is put into the "Space Lords Hall of Fame". To become a Space Lord, you must achieve the score set by the sysop. Usually it is between 100,000 and 500,000 points. II. Running Your Empire Space Empire (hereafter referred to as SE) is a simple, yet intricate game. The actual "play" of the game is quite easy - everything follows a natural, logical rhythm and the choices are virtually identical on every turn. What you decide to do at each prompt, however, can greatly affect your Empire, the Empires of others, and other game options that you will be faced with. SE is almost entirely pure strategy - indeed, it can be compared with Checkers or Chess, where the moves are logical and physically simple, but WHAT YOU DO with each game piece determines the outcome as a whole. Here are your "game pieces" in SE: PLANETS - There are three types of planets: Agriculture, ORE, and DEFENSE. Agriculture planets are absolutely essential to the functioning of your Empire - after all, you have to feed your hungry population and your fighting forces! ORE planets are your income-producers. You will undoubtedly have many more ORE planets than any other type when you play the game; indeed, if you don't, your Empire will collapse in poverty. DEFENSE planets, quite obviously, produce defense forces, which add in automatically at the commencement of each turn. When it comes to Planets, you have to keep one important thought in mind: Planets costs money - money to buy, and money to maintain. If you have too many DEFENSE planets and not enough Agriculture or ORE Planets, you may be overwhelmed with too many defense forces that will eventually overthrow your Empire. If you have too many Agriculture Planets and not enough ORE Planets, the cost of maintaining the Agriculture Planets alone (beyond any Agriculture they produce) may be too much to bear. Remember, too, that Agriculture and soldiers can be individually purchased within the game as a commodity. The SysOp has the power to adjust the amount of production received from the different types of planets. Check the status option from the main menu to view these values. Defense planets production is listed as how many fighters they produce. 70% of that number is the number of defense stations, and 30% is heavy cruisers. A good rule of thumb is to keep about half the defense planets as agriculture, and about the same number of ore planets as the total of defense plus agriculture. You may want to vary this in the early stages or the game, but this is a fairly safe ratio: 1 Def, 2 Agr, 3 Ore. SOLDIERS - the "backbone" of your fighting equipment, Soldiers are essential to a successful Empire. Too many at once, however, and you may not be able to feed or pay them all. Too few, and you'll be a weak target for other players. (Used for Offense and Defense). If you attack another player, you must have soldiers to take planets(after you win). FIGHTERS - Fighters are useful when attacking other players, and can only be used if you have CARRIERS (another game piece). (Offensive weapon only) If you attack another player, you will need fighters to take planets. CARRIERS - Used to transport Fighters to the battle front, 100 Fighters per Carrier only. DEFENSE STATIONS - Help protect you from enemy attacks. They're relatively inexpensive, and you can't have too many. (Defensive Weapon Only) CRUISERS - Yet another fighting piece. These are the "battleships" of your fighting forces. You need them for effective battles, and they help protect you in times of attack. Buy, buy, buy!! (Used for Offense and Defense) COMMAND SHIP - What is a command ship? A command ship is a specially designed ship in which the ruler of a particular empire may sit and observe the battle and issue orders to his/her military forces. Without one, the ruler must sit at home and await reports from his/her forces, which normally results in not finding out until the end of the battle. COVERT AGENTS - Spying and Covert Operations are a fun and exciting part of playing SE. In fact, an entire menu is devoted to just Covert Ops! In order to partake of these activities, you must own Covert Agents. Like Soldiers, Fighters, Defense Stations, etc., Covert Agents are purchased in the market. The more you have, the better off you are, generally speaking. They also protect your empire from being spied on and other various covert activities. The above "playing pieces" are the basic building blocks of your Empire. How wisely you use them and the proportions you have of each will determine your fate in the game. At this point, I would urge you to review the playing pieces again, and make sure you are completely familiar with each. At the beginning of each turn, you collect money in the form of taxes from your people and ore mined from planets. You also get a stock of Agriculture from agricultural worlds and a flow of weaponry from defense planets. Your governing planets, which are purely administrative worlds, don't do you any good and just sap your funds -- but you need one of them for every 50 other planets. It is not wise to have too many or too few. Having too few will mean you will not have very much control and having too many will mean spending excessive amounts of money for political reasons. You must also keep at LEAST 26 million people per planet to mine ore, grow food, run the government, or build industrial war machines. Failure to have the required amount will result in a loss of income, food, and industrial output. It is even possible at times to completely lose production. If you keep your people happy, in return they may produce MORE. MESSAGES: You will receive messages sent to you by other players, and notification of actions taken against you at the first of your logon. You may also send messages to other players by selecting it from the main Space Empire menu. To end a message, type a "." as the first character on a new line, and then either a S or an A to save or abort the message, respectively. If you enter a '*' for the user name, it will send the message to all active players. A '@' will send the message to your entire alliance. All messages have a 25 line limit on then. Next we have the Alliance routines which you enter into now. Alliance round -------- ----- [D]issolve alliance [E]xpell empire from alliance [I]nfo on your alliance [J]oin an alliance [L]ist existing alliances [R]eview defense forces [S]tart a new alliance [T]eam members [W]ithdraw from alliance [Q]uit DISSOLVE: This option will be displayed if you are a leader of a team. At which point you have the option to break off the team. Every soldier, cruisers and defense stations will be put back into the team members empire. EXPEL: This option is only displayed if you are the leader of an alliance. T his option lets you kick out certain members which you don't want in your alliance anymore. INFO: This option will list out all the soldiers, defense stations and cruisers which are in the alliance. Also, will show how many of those are yours. JOIN: If you don't want to be a leader of a team this option is for you. This will let you try to join another alliance team. The next time the leader of that team plays the game will get an option that you wish to join his alliance. The next time you get a message back saying that the leader accepted your application or rejected it. If accepted into the alliance then you have the option to put soldiers and such into the alliance to help out your team members verse attackers. LIST: This will list out every alliance and show how many players are in each alliance at that time. REVIEW: This is where you are allowed to put soldiers and such into the alliance if you belong to one. If so, it will show how many is in there right now and asks how many soldiers, defense stations and cruisers you wish to put into it. If you have already had some soldiers in the alliance everything is taken out and put back into you empire. So if you want to put 50 more soldiers into the alliance and already had 25 soldiers. You would have to put 75 soldiers into the alliance to add the 50 soldiers you wish to put into it. START: This is where you are allowed to start a new alliance if you are not already in alliance of that time. If your not in another alliance it will ask for your alliance name and then from then on will be the leader of the alliance. Then from that day one, if someone wishes to join your alliance you will be prompt the next time your play if you wish to let them join your alliance or not. MEMBERS: This will show you everyone that is in your alliance. It will show them your players name, total planets and score. This is handy if you forget who is in your alliance. WITHDRAW: If you wish not to be part of alliance you already are joined in, this option will let you get out of the alliance and give you back all your soldiers, cruisers and defense stations you have in the alliance at that time. If you are a leader of a alliance you will not see this, you will have to use option DISSOLVE to get out of an alliance. When you are attacked, your alliance forces come to your aide. Unfortunately, since it is such a large galaxy that all the players are in, the alliance forces cannot arrive right away. It so happenes that about the same time that the players forces get defeated, the alliance's arrive. Next stop is the empire status. Almost everything which is displayed for you empire is easy to know what they mean. But here is a couple of things which might help PROTECTION. When a new players begins, they are afforded 20 turns of protection. This is to help keep the larger, more vicious Empires from hungrily swallowing up the smaller Empires before they have a real chance to build up a reasonable level of protection. This feature means that, for 20 turns, you can not be attacked or molested with Covert Operations by ANY player. Once you gain over the set number of planets and you have any protection turns left you will loss the remaining protection turns you had left. You will lose your protection by attacking other players if you so choose. Otherwise your protection will expire at 20 turns no matter how many planets you have. You will then be treated as a player who has exceeded the set number of planets. While under protection, you are allowed to make treaties and spy on other players. If you are still under the number of planets set, there is a slight chance the galatic coordinator will offer you 5 turns of extra protection, for a price. After collecting your money from your ORE planets, you are allowed to budget your money as you see fit. Certain amounts will be requested which you are advised to stay close to. Next in the line of questions is Agriculture which you go to the Market to buy or sell Agriculture. The Common Market works very simply: you can buy or sell Agriculture, or just bypass it if you desire. Note, however, that the Agriculture Market comes JUST BEFORE you have to feed your military and your population. MAKE SURE you either have enough Agriculture on hand, or that you purchase enough to feed everyone. Prices in the Common Market will fluctuate with supply and demand, and at times Agriculture may even run out entirely. In that case, you will have to rely on your own Agriculture stores to feed your Empire. Your people will also require Agriculture -- make sure you either buy enough Agriculture each round or have enough agricultural worlds to support your people! You must keep your populace happy! Abusing them by not giving them enough Agriculture and not allocating enough money to your planets will stir up unrest. There are many factors which modify how happy your people are. Make sure you learn these and keep them that way. Internal unrest is worse then the most powerful of enemy armies! Also, giving your people extra money and food will increase your population's harmony. Next stop is the Market: Government spending Item P r i c e Can You In # Name Purchase Selling Buy Own Alliance -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Soldier Troop....... 250 100 1285 100 5 2) Fighter craft....... 1800 900 178 0 NA 3) Defense station..... 2000 900 160 0 100 4) Heavy cruiser....... 4000 1800 80 0 0 5) Intelligence Agent.. 5000 0 64 0 NA 6) Carrier............. 8000 3000 40 0 NA 7) Command Ship........ 6935 0 1 0 NA 8) Generic planet...... 56893 10000 5 4 NA 9) Governing planet.... 85339 15000 3 1 NA M) Missiles............ 10003 0 52 3 NA -------------------------------------------------------------------- V) Visit Banker You have 321321 Credits. Which would you like to buy? (?=Reshow,Q=Quit) At this time you will be allowed to buy what ever you wish to buy. Most of what is up there is easy to understand. III. Battle Battle is an integral part of the game -- this is how you weaken your enemies and seize planets from them. The victor in battle depends on many factors. Each unit of battle force works a little differently. Soldiers are the base unit of your military -- they are the cheapest to buy, but because they need to be feed each turn, and you can only draft a limited amount based on your population, it is good to have other forces. Fighter craft are offense only weapons, and are about four times as effective as soldiers when attacking. The cost a little more, and for every 100 fighters you have, you need a carrier to transport them. Defense stations cost about the same as fighters, and are defense only. Cruisers are both offensive and defensive, have more firepower than either fighters or soldiers, but cost about twice as much. The morale of your military is a very important factor. If you continuously lose battles, their morale will go down. It will go up if you win battles and/or allocate them extra money. It is also changed by various other factors. For instance, domestic unrest tends to demoralize your army. There is always an element of chance. A lesser enemy always has a slight chance of winning a battle if the two battle forces are close enough in size. In addition to the normal method of combat, there is another way to attack someone. This method is through missiles. You will be asked whether or not you wish to fire missiles if you say you want to attack. There are four different types of missiles that you can use, each with their own cost and effectiveness: CONVENTIONAL: A large nuclear missile whose design has been modified and updated from the old 20th century model, improved to be use for interplanetary combat. This missile affects the enemy's population directly, by causing severe radiation poisoning. CHEMICAL: Similar in design to the thermonuclear missiles, but instead of carrying a nuclear warhead, the warhead to this missile contains highly toxic and fatal chemicals. These chemicals not only cause death to all those it comes in contact with, but it also destroys the food supply of the opponent. The toxic chemicals can also induce a strange strain of a plague if they hit in large enough amounts. THERMONUCLEAR: Don't let the name fool you, these missiles are nothing to be messed with. They can wipe out large military buildup in a matter of seconds. This missile's warhead contains highly explosive compounds, that destroy military hardware into pieces. GENESIS: A new type of missile that was developed for the purpose of bringing life to a dead planet. Unfortunately any life already on the planet will be destroyed in the process. The missile is not approved for use by the intergalatic council for this very reason and may only be found through black market dealers. Missiles can be purchased and fired in lue of conventional combat. If the enemy has defense stations they will attempt to intercept the missiles. The more you fire the greater your chance of hitting, but it does NOT increase the amount of damage inflicted. New players are protected from being attacked for a period of 20 turns, unless they attack someone else first. NOTE: All types of combat will forfeit any protection that you may have. Normally you will be warned when your actions will void the protection, but not always. TRADING If you are part of an alliance, you may trade with your fellow team mates. Just answer yes when asked, and you will be taken to the trading menu. In order to port something to a team mate, you must have carriers. Each carrier can hold any ONE of the following: 500 soldiers 100 fighters 75 defense stations 500 intelligence agents 5,000 megatons of food Due to the fact that alliance team mates establish intergalatic trading routes, items sent will arrive immediately, and NOT go into their used category. Anything not mentioned, can be ported directly without the aid of carriers. COVERT MISSIONS: There are many covert actions, and you may be able to do some sometimes and at other times you may not. You will have to learn about these yourself, but here are some general guidelines. 1. If a player is under protection, you will not be able to preform covert activities on them. 2. If the person you are trying to do things to has covert agents, they work against you. 3. You may only spy while under protection or else you will void it. There are so many, it would take a book to document them all. You must experiment with them to learn all the benefits and consequences of them. Here is some general information: Intelligence Missions: Accurately reports enemy's status if successful Terrorist Activities: Demoralize enemy Raiding Missions: Steal stuff Bombing Missions: Blow stuff up Sabotage: Reduce the enemy's production Miscellaneous: Setup - Setup Opponent with another Biological Warfare - Inflict the plague upon enemy Disrupt Communications -\ Alter enemy's messages Infiltrate -/ Intelligence Missions: You may use these and only these missions while still under protection. They allow you to do various spying missions on the enemy. These include spying on millitary, government, and both. In addition you may spy on the enemy's alliance and attempt to intercept their communications. Terrorist Activities: This collection of terrorist activities will allow you to assasinate government officials and generals causing the people to become upset and mad at the government. Repeated use causes higher amount of anger in the people. Raiding Missions: Does the enemy have something you want? Then why not steal it from them! these missions will allow you to steal just about anything they have. But unfortunately you can't take it all at once or else the enemy would be suspicious. Everything you steal goes into your used category until the next time maintence is run. Bombing Missions: What is the best way to reduce an enemy's stockpiles? Blow it up! These operations will destroy a larger amount of the enemy's stockpiles then actually stealing the stuff. If you choose detonate missiles, it could cause a chain reaction which would result in large losses. Since genesis missiles are illegal they are kept in highly secret locations and because of this they cannot be destroyed with a covert mission. Sabotage Missions: Want to really hurt the enemy? Sabotage their production! Here you can implant a spy in their empire and sabotage the production of ore, food, defense, or all of them! It will cause them to only produce 60% of the normal amount. BE WARNED even if successful, once the agent is found in the empire, the empire will KNOW who sent the agent. Only one agent may sabotage each of the types of planets. If multiple are sent, only the last one has an effect, so if you send on, then someone else does, the empire still will only have one spy in it, and it will be from the other person. Miscellaneous Missions: These missions do not fit in to any other category, and allow you to do several things. From tricking the empire into thinking it was attacked by another empire; to spreading a strain of the plague in their food supply; to disrupting and infiltrating the enemy's communications. IV. Extra Info In addition to the above there are a few more things you should know. One of these things is Medical Research. Medical Research is used to keep your population healthy. Not paying the required amount can result in a population that grows sick, and tends to make them unhappy. There also have been plagues reported through out the galaxy. Some of these plagues have been known to destroy an entire empire in a single turn. There is no present cure know, but maybe with some research you could find one. Also, there have been known to be strange people wandering around offering to sell extremely powerful and deadly weapons. These weapons are condemned by the Galactic Federation of planets, and should be avoided unless you want to be considered an "evil" empire, but then "evil" is all relative isnt it? If you find spies in your empire that are sabotaging the production, there are three ways to get rid of them. The are: 1. When prompted kill them all for a small cost. (100% effective) 2. When prompted search for "bad" spies. (65-75% effective) 3. Hire more covert agents and hope they catch the bad ones. (Variable) NOTE: Just selling covert agents will NOT rid your empire of sabotages. You must have them all executed and pay the small cost to cover their deaths up. (Now it wouldn't look too good to your people to just kill a bunch of loyal workers would it? )