empire

n. Any of a family of military simulations derived from a game written by
Peter Langston many years ago. A number of multi-player variants of varying
degrees of sophistication exist, and one single-player version implemented
for both Unix and VMS; the latter is even available as MS-DOS/Windows
freeware. All are notoriously addictive. Of various commercial derivatives
the best known is probably Empire Deluxe on PCs and Amigas. Modern empire is
a real-time wargame played over the internet by up to 120 players. Typical
games last from 24 hours (blitz) to a couple of months (long term). The
amount of sleep you can get while playing is a function of the rate at which
updates occur and the number of co-rulers of your country. Empire server
software is available for Unix-like machines, and clients for Unix and other
platforms. A comprehensive history of the game is available at
http://www.empire.cx/infopages/History.html. The Empire resource site is at
http://www.empire.cx/.

