How to Play

For peo­ple who want to play the game, either by print­ing stuff out, or using vir­tu­al com­po­nents for play-by-email ( PBEM ).

One lim­i­ta­tion is that we don’t (yet) have any print­able or vir­tu­al pieces. These are under devel­op­ment: prob­a­bly some­thing use­ful and rea­son­ably com­plete will be post­ed in late 2011.

Other than that, what you should do depends a bit on which cat­e­go­ry you fall into:

Classic Game

For peo­ple who played Empire in the 1960s or 1970s, and want to recre­ate that expe­ri­ence, you can print out some things to help your­self do that.

• Rules: Try the 1976-era rule­book PDF from the Rules page.
  • Empire Rules 3rd ed (4 MB )

  New Players

  For peo­ple who are play­ing for the first time, and/​or don’t have access to Empire rules experts, and want to play a game with phys­i­cal pieces:

  • Rules: Perhaps the lat­est rules from the Logistics branch (4th Edition), as being more acces­si­ble to folks who haven’t played before. See the Rules page.
  • Mapboard: See above. You can use a clas­sic map­board with the now-option­al sub-square rules. Once they are avail­able, you may opt for either a clas­sic board or a Logistics-style board so as to avoid the sub-square rules. The lat­ter option means a less beau­ti­ful board because the maps are a lit­tle less free-form, but it sim­pli­fies the board han­dling and record-keep­ing.
  • Pieces: You face the same issues as above. Sorry!

  Virtual Play

  For peo­ple who want a vir­tu­al game (play-by-email), you should prob­a­bly use the sec­ond set of options above, includ­ing going with a new Logistics-type map­board so as to avoid the sub-square rules (and hav­ing to han­dle them on screen). You also will need vir­tu­al pieces etcetera.

  Although port­ing Empire to Cyberboard or Vassal seems like a fine idea, nobody has yet vol­un­teered to do it. Plus it might help if some pieces were designed, first.

  4 Responses to How to Play

  Eric Sprague says:

  I came across this site while look­ing for some­thing else. (I don’t remem­ber now what it was!) I have read through a lot of the info (but far from all of it) and found it a won­der­ful site. I am a gamer but with­out a group. I fre­quent Boardgamegeek, an inter­net data­base for board games, card games, video games, minia­ture games, role-play­ing games, — every­thing! I would love to add the Empire game to the data­base. It would gar­ner some atten­tion and maybe even a lit­tle inter­est. I also have dab­bled in board game design and could put togeth­er a Cyberboard game­box for PBEM play. I’m inter­est­ed in the sym­bol font you have been work­ing on and won­dered if I could be of any help. I’m even con­sid­er­ing writ­ing a vari­ent that’s more of a late-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry feel to it.
  Let me know what you think.

  esprague says:

  I have some expe­ri­ence build­ing Cyberboard game­box­es. I would be inter­est­ed in help­ing cre­ate one for Empire. I would also like to cre­ate a page for Empire on Boardgamegeek. It would increase expo­sure and gen­er­ate some inter­est in the game.

  Oops! The noti­fi­ca­tions of your com­ments were stuck in my spam fil­ter. Luckily I peri­od­i­cal­ly search through my spam fil­ter with some key­words, so I found what you wrote. I actu­al­ly use boardgamegeek myself, so I’ve start­ed work­ing on an entry for the game. 🙂