Emporer of the Fadeing suns team game?

[dacole]

Had a curious idea yesterday that I thought I would present here. First if you have never heard of Emporer of the Fadeing suns I'll give a breif description of it here if you have then you should probably skip down to the second part of the message. Emperor of the fadeing suns is a turn based strategy sci-fi game. Imagine a game that mixes the land based combat and management with the space based combat of MOO and you will have the general idea. The story is that the emperor of the known universe has died without an heir and five houses must now vie for the throne. At the start of the game you start out with one unconquered planet and a few spaceships. The first thing you must do is take over your home planet, expand on it building cites ect as well as a space fleet to take over other planets. The beauty of the game is in the fact that besides the other four houses there are two other "factions" that are always computer controled the Church and the merchant guild. Like all these games EOFS has a tech tree but here the most interesting techs are illegal to research by order of the church, so if you decide to research them you better be prepared for an all out war with mother church which though winable can be quite costly. The merchant guild sells and buys equipment and is thus a good way to make money by selling excess equipment and a good place to buy equipment that you can't produce. However there agenda is to get rid of the monarchy and set up a republic. To this end they have a war chest that they place money they make (and being the merchants guild they are quite good at makeing money) when this chest gets to a certain point they declare for a republic start a revolution and the game ends. Also the point of the game is not direct millitary conquest but rather to be elected the Emperor of the Fadeing Suns. Every few years an election is held on the capitol planet an election in which each house has five votes. If a house wins the election twice in a row they are decleared emperor. Now each houses votes are represented by staves and if you happen to have another houses staves when an election roles around...or suppose the designated voteing unit for a house gets assinated (this of course requires research doppelgangers and assisns which are proscribed by the church) well then the election results change accordingly. Thus direct military conquest though a way to win the game is not the only or often the best way to win. Now the problems with the game are in that the AI is terrible light years Worse than the AI in alpha centauri and since you end up with usually ten to 15 planets late in the game, and a huge space fleet well turns can take quite a long time to plan and play. I was serious when I said it had the base managment of alpha centauri spread out over several planets along with the fleet management of MOO.

My experience with the Alpha Centauri Team Game made me think that this might be an interesting game to give this treatment. The terrible AI would be taken care off since you are playing real people, and the incredible level of complication would be taken care of since the work could be spread out (perhaps one person takes care of the planet management while another takes care of the fleet ect). As such I thought I would check if there was anyone who might be interested in joining in such an endevor? I would certainly be willing to help set up (as well as hopefully play) in such a game. For those who don't own the game I could also give primers on how things work in it (as a first step I could pretty easily make the instruction manuel available as a file somewhere).

Just an idea let me know what you think!

[General Ludd]

I heard about this game along time ago, and forgot all about it. I'll see if I can get it, and if I like it, I'll consider it.

[General Ludd]

For anyone else that's interested, you'll probably be able to find it under the strategy section at that dog of a site which can't be mentioned here.

[Skanky Burns]

Yes, you probably can find it there. It is a well organised site, that one we can't mention.

[General Ludd]

Nice game. I'm up for trying it, although i don't really know what a 'team game' implies.

[Jamski]

I haven't played this for years. Its a good one though. Pretty hard to keep track of all the planets sometimes... but a good one Still on my hard drive after all this time.

-Jam

[dacole]

Cool yes is quite hard to keep track of all the planets (imagine playing it with universal wharehouse off jam heh) why I thought it might be good as a team game. In your opinon jam what would be the proper way to advertise this in the alpaha centauri team game and civ team game forums. Don't want to spam to much...

Osweld to check out what is implied by a team game read through the introductory material for the alpah centauri team games and civ team games. Basicly in a team game you have several people playing the turn rather than just one before it is emailed to the next group. Exactly how the responsibility is divided up and how decisions are made is up to each individual team. Forums and usually a instant message service such as msn becomes greatly important.

[Main_Brain]

i remember that some Things were still bugged up like Monopols?

[General Ludd]

This seems like the perfect PBEM game to me. The complexity of it wouldn't be so bad when you're going at the pace of PBEM and can take your time with a turn. I'm surprised this game isn't more popular.

[General Ludd]

The Nova patch looks like it fixes the game up alot, too. If we do this, perhaps we should use it. Or are there any other patches/mods availalbe?

[Jon Miller]

I might be interested

for January

Jon Miler

[dacole]

Yea don't think we will get this started until January. The reason it wasn't more popular was its extreme complication along with the problems that you mentioned. I would reccomend the use of one of the patches since they do fix some glareing errors. Nova is one of the most popular though others do exist. A simple google search should find them (that is unless the comunity has completly died which is possible)

Anyone who has contacts on the other forum sections (IE civ three civ two) and especially the team game sections of these please feel free to advertize as you see fit!

Sending people to this thread would probably be a good way to go about it

[Sore Loser]

I recall a LOT of imbalance, but that was without the patch. Is the concept two factions against two factions, or what did you have in mind?

[dacole]

haven't thought that far ahead, we could do that route though a good free for all might be more fun. Without the patch the game is very imbalanced you are correct why it didn't do all that well along with the incredible micromanagment that it takes to play the game well. Patch takes care of the imbalance hopefully team game will take care of the other.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Sore Loser
Is the concept two factions against two factions, or what did you have in mind?

By team he meant each house controled by a team of players. It wouldn't make much sense to make predertimed alliances like that... particularily since there are 5 houses. it should be free for all, with diplomacy.