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1  INTRODUCTION


1.1  INTRODUCTION   "Empires" is intended to be a very straight-forward game. It's closely based on several previous games (mainly the "Dark Age" and "Spaceplan" series) with a view to developing a range of different variants reasonably quickly (so we can have several different games with a lot of the rules the same, and we can have games about different periods in history and with different maps without having to build them from scratch every time).

1.2  PLAYER INTERACTION   "Empires" is about diplomacy, making alliances and striking deals with the other players, and strategy. We've tried to cut out the rules that get in the way of the player interaction. This game should be suitable if it's your first play-by-mail game, or if you're branching out from another format, or if you know what you want is player interaction with a minimum of fuss.

1.3  HISTORICAL ACCURACY   The sort of rules that have been taken out (compared to previous games of the same type) are all the stuff designed to provide historical accuracy (or a reasonably historical "look" and "feel", at any rate). In the basic version of "Empires" there's no historical scenario: just the rules, the game, and an assortment of maps to play it on. As time goes by some variants are putting some of the history put back in, and others might get some of the complexity that was taken out, but only where it's appropriate and with the basic game staying basic as we can keep it.

1.4  BATTLE ROUTINE   The battle routine is actually more complicated than in previous designs, since players seem pretty clear this is an area where they want more uncertainty and variation, and it doesn't really add much to the complexity of the game. Once you've committed to a battle the thinking and planning stops, and the thinking before a battle is fairly simple (bring as much "stuff" as you can, and hit your opponent as hard as you can). The battle rules are slanted towards being very predictable most of the time (no waiting to see if the random numbers favoured you this week...) with scope for nasty surprises when opponents do something unexpected. And scope for thinking up nasty surprises for opponents when you guess what they're going to do.

1.5  ECONOMICS   There are many build-and-bash games where there's a simple dominating strategy, that you sit out of the action and build up your strength as long as you can. This shouldn't work in Empires, which is designed for a more dynamic game. The rate of return as you build up your income diminishes rapidly, and your maintenance  costs rise quickly as you build up your forces. If you just sit and wait then other people will expand their empires and you'll find you can't compete.

1.6  ORDERS & ACTIONS   Empires is an "action driven" game. You write your orders in the form of a series of "actions" and these are processed one at a time in strict order (the order you choose, not some arbitrary phase order). The first action is processed for each player in turn, and then the next action for each player, and so on. Almost the whole game takes place as your orders are processed - there's very little going on outside that sequence.
As the adjudication proceeds during the turn the state of the game (what's on the map, who owns what, how their forces are deployed and so on) moves along with each action and you can be less and less sure whether things will still look the same as they did when your wrote your orders.
If you've not played this style of game before then you're probably thinking it sounds very chaotic, but in actual fact it works very well. It adds a good measure of uncertainty without adding any random factors (nasty surprises will be due to something your opponent did rather than something the computer did). And things don't actually move around all that fast. Most of the time... .

1.7  RULES VARIATIONS  The full rules in this rulebook are used for WORLD EMPIRES. In other versions the AIR FORCE rules are not used, so ignore the references to air forces and air battles except in World Empires..
There are some additional rules for other games, and these are in separate guides. AUSTRALIAN EMPIRES includes a module for resources, and NAPOLEONIC EMPIRES has a module of extended supply rules.
We're currently using the supply rules in EUROPEAN EMPIRES as well, because some of the other rules wanted for Napoleonic Empires aren't ready yet.

Note: Where you’re playing a game that has an additional rules module you will find there are occasions when the main rulebook is superceded by the extra rules. They’ll say different things, and there isn’t any explanation or cross-reference in the main rulebook to warn you (other players in other versions don’t have your extra rules and don’t need to know about them). This means it’s really important that you get know the additional rules really well, because you need to recognise where they’re different from the main rulebook.