Spoils of Empire - a computer-moderated strategic fantasy game From: ram@eskimo.com (Rick Morneau) Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000 Spoils of Empire (SOE) is a strategic fantasy wargame designed for play-by-email. It is open-ended and completely computer-moderated. It is somewhat similar to games like Atlantis and Olympia, but differs significantly in some very important ways: 1. The command language is a powerful subset of standard, grammatical English, and your orders will look like easy-to- understand, English sentences. People and items have names, not numbers, and you can even use pronouns. Here's an example: Teleport Joe Flint to Ocean City and have him buy 51 horses and recruit 50 soldiers, and then come to Stanley and join me. 2. SOE is asynchronous. Orders for your characters may be queued in advance as far into the future as you like, and you have complete control over the timing of their actions. You can even have your characters repeat complete sequences of orders: Have Trader Bill Caruso repeatedly go to Mount Loris and buy gems for 5 days and then go to Emporia Rex and sell them. 3. In SOE, you can even have "IF statements": Fly to Amberton, and if Louisiata has at least 1000 soldiers then take them from her and go to Paloma and cautiously attack Genghis Khan; otherwise recruit soldiers. It costs 5 cents US per turn to play Spoils of Empire, but you are not required to pay anything if you play for less than 20 turns. (The reason for the very low cost is that I am retired and this is one of my hobbies. The turn fees pay for the additional Internet time that I need to run the game.) If you think you might be interested in playing, please check out the Spoils of Empire web page at: http://www.srv.net/~ram/soe.html It contains all the information that you'll need to enter the game. I am currently running three turns per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Keep in mind, though, that the game is asynchronous, and you can prepare and submit orders in advance that can keep your characters busy for many days. Happy Gaming! Rick Morneau, Gamemaster and designer of Spoils of Empire Up