The Ashes of Empire

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The Ashes of Empire is a turn-based strategy game that has been published in various adaptations since 1982, including as a post game and online game .

Basic features of the game

The game takes place on a star map, on which the players start from different starting positions with home planets and conquer a star empire. For this you need, similar to the game Master of Orion , different military units to attack and defend planets, which can be built with the appropriate industry and population. The other players can enter into alliances or fight each other. The game ends after an agreed sequence of game rounds or through planetary victory, a clear superiority of a player on planets that are controlled by him (see also global strategy game , risk ).

Each planet has characteristic production factors with its number of workers, a production rate and its built industrial plants ( fuel, ore, rare plants ). In corresponding shipyards spaceships are produced in sufficient existing resources - fighter for space battles and transporter for cargo transports or battles against ground stations. In each game round there is production, the fleets are moved and battles take place. Every player has a "political relationship" with his fellow players. For a friendly relationship, the players are rewarded with points, which they can in turn invest in research, and allies receive more precise information about each other, mainly about larger fleet movements. Allies can help each other out with units to attack or defend, or they can trade with one another. In order to attack a fellow player, the political relationship must be changed from “neutral” to “hostile”.

In the original two-player variant, the prehistory was based on a defection of the earth colonies from their mother planet and a counter-government formed on the other side of the planet map, while all other planets fell behind in their development stage and acted as "neutral" planets. The multiplayer variants were also explained as a historical development: former and newly founded colonies achieved their independence and interfered equally in the conflict between the original two parties.

History of game development and adaptations

Planet map

The game was realized from 1982 for different computer systems, like the VC20, different Commodore models, including the C64 and the C128, later also for Amiga and Atari ST and for the PC as DOS and Windows versions. The number of players was increased from a two-player mode based on the East-West conflict to up to eight players. The number of planets has increased to 40 planets. The planets have fixed positions with standardized starting values ​​and have fixed names at the start of the game.

The game's creators are Mike Costello (1947–2004) and Harald Topf (* 1960). Harald Topf programmed other tactical games in the 1980s, including Roman Empire , Desert Armor and August 1914 .

The following versions have appeared in total:

  • The Ashes of Empire, (2 players / 22 planets): TRS-80 / Video Genie (Mike Costello), Sinclair ZX81 (Mike Costello), BBC Micro (Mike Costello), Commodore 20xy, 30xy, 40xy (Harald Topf), 48k Spectrum (Mike Costello), Commodore C-64 / C-128 (Harald Topf), Commodore VC-20 (Markus Woitzik)
  • The Ashes of Empire, (8 players / 36 planets): Commodore C-64/128 (Harald Topf)
  • The Ashes of Empire, (8 players / 40 planets): Commodore C-64/128 (Harald Topf), Schneider CPC (Marian Kassovic), Atari 68000 (Ralf Düpont), Amiga 68000 (Thomas Thönnes), MS-DOS from 3.30 (Gerd Volberg), MS-Windows from Win95 (Gerd Volberg), PHP browser game (Henning Harperath)

The game has been presented at the international game days in Essen since 1987 . From 1990 to 1994 the game received several awards, in the Megazine Rating of the Postspiele it reached the 1st place several times in the early 1990s. In 1992 the Bomico company lost a legal dispute, they intended to bring a computer game of the same product name onto the market and had already placed their first advertisements.

In addition to the post game version, the game has also been available as a board game since 1992 and as a card game since 1998. When it was implemented as a board game, Thomas Dellenbusch was involved in adapting the rules and Christoph Schmoll in creating the graphics, and graphics for the card game were designed by Klaus Großpietsch.

Since 2015, the Postspiel variant has been part of the exhibition at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin as evidence of technical development .

literature

  • Karl-Heinz Koch (Ed.): Games by post. The adventure out of the mailbox. DuMont-Buchverlag, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7701-2239-9 , pp. 22-23, 66-67, 92, 153, 202-211, 227, 271, 278.
  • Megazine 3/1989: Publication of the 6th full standard edition
  • MegaSpet special issue 2/1991: Publication of the 7th full standard edition
  • Article by Martina Strack in Current Software Market 1/1989, p. 46f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spieleautorenzunft.de
  2. ^ AG Hamburg, October 28, 1992, AZ 416 0 237/92