Nostalgic for Empire and other early daily turn based games
Recently I've been really nostalgic for really simple, daily turn-based games. Not sure how many people here may have played Empire, but this is what I'm talking about. I very fondly remember dialing in (with a modem) to 4-5 different Unix based BBSes just to play Empire every day. Each day your turn may take 10 minutes. This is the key thing I am nostalgic about...really low time investment every single day, but in a game with lot's of other players.
Other games that I really enjoyed back then were the BBS "door games" like Tradewars. Tradewars can still be played via telnetting into various BBSes that people are keeping up and running.
So, now that I've set the scene, what are the really simple games out there that you may play that are daily turn-based?
Second question, what would people think about a web based version of Empire? I'm thinking of building it, if I don't find the existence of it somewhere already. I think it would be really cool to have someone drop by the web site, click play, and have them thrown into a map with other players (up to 30 per a map or so).
Have you tried the (sid meier's) civilization series? I heard it was inspired by Empire but I'm not sure how they differ. If they are close enough, freeciv is an open source project inspired by civ 2 that has a web version.
In the realm of web 4x games there is also Neptune's Pride which I have not played but I think it uses a (very slow) real time plus automation instead of turns.
For more tactics / no empire building, there is Advance Wars Web, which is a fan version of gba/nds era advance wars that can be played online.
I played a lot of Earth: 2025 back in the late 90s. It was basically a turn based strategy mmo where you would simulator building a country while competing with everyone else playing. They had a couple different servers, including one where you could join alliances with other players. People would spend time building up their countries, and then eventually different alliances would declare war on each other and run coordinated offensives while hanging out in IRC.
The original company and servers no longer exist, but there's a fan made remake that looks like it still has hundreds of active players at https://www.earthempires.com/.
It was a lot fun back when I was in high school. I haven't tried the remake, but from what I can see it looks basically like a direct copy.
People who are fans of old BBS strategy games should check out Utopia:
https://utopia-game.com/
It's a free to play, text-based, MMO, co-op fantasy-kingdom management + PvP kingdom vs kingdom, strategy web-game, which was created by Mehul Patel, who was the developer behind Barren Realms Elite (a popular BBS game back in the day).
The gameplay of Utopia is kinda hard to summarize in short, but I'll try. This is an oversimplification, but basically you join a kingdom, pick a race and personality (which defines your role in the kingdom), and you are then given a province to manage in said kingdom.
Each kingdom is made up of 20-25 provinces managed by other players, who must then work together to build up their provinces' economies and militaries, coordinate to defend the kingdom, and wage war against other kingdoms. Inter-kingdom communication is facilitated through the private forum created for each kingdom, but people often coordinate via IRC, discord, and such too.
It's technically a "real-time strategy game", and you can check in every hour (which equates to 1 in-game day) if you really want to, but realistically you only need to log in once or twice per day, and devote about a half hour per day to playing. And each "Age" (game round) lasts about 3 months in real time, and then the whole server resets and everything starts over from scratch. So it's quite low-commitment with a relaxed pace, and since everything resets regularly you can join at any time and will likely still be able to contribute to your kingdom.
I have played it off and on again over the last 20+ years, but haven't actually played it in quite a few years now. It looks like it's still reasonably active though, which is good to see, and isn't surprising since it's always had a very loyal and dedicated community.
So if you're feeling nostalgic about BBS games, miss playing them, and were a fan of any of the old competitive multiplayer management/strategy door games, I would highly recommend giving Utopia a try, since it's very reminiscent of many of those games.
p.s. Related links if you want more info:
https://mud.fandom.com/wiki/Utopia_(online_game)
http://wiki.utopia-game.com/
Thanks so much for the recommendation. The past few days I've been thinking about browser games like these. I played a few of them many years ago and wondered if there were any current ones, I'll definitely be joining :)
YVW! The established Utopia players are usually pretty friendly and excited whenever new blood comes into the game, so make sure to introduce yourself to your kingdom-mates once you join, and let them know you're new. They will likely be more than happy to help you learn the game. :)
I'd be keen to play Empire! It sounds awesome!
... I wonder how hard it would be to get it spun up on an Enigma BBS...
On a sort of related note have you seen Swords of Freeport? It's a text game in the vein of Legend of the Red Dragon designed to be played on a shared Unix system
I've never played but it sounds like something I might be interested in.
I like the low time commitment
I would love to participate in an oldschool slow-moving game like Tradewars. I've never heard of Empire but I'd give it a shot.
From the top of my head I know that Axis & Allies, and Wingspan both have asynchronous turns and they're both available on steam. Coincidentally, both are great boardgames.