You start out with a single city on a map that's mostly covered in a fog of war. Use the city to produce units. Use the units to explore the map, seize more cities as you grow your army and eventually conquer the map by beating the AI. Sounds familiar? Before Sid Meier's Civilization there was... Empire, a very early example of a turn-based strategy war game, that turned out to be quite influential on the genre.

Originally developed by Walter Bright in the 1970s for the PDP-10, later incarnations of the game were released for various systems, including MS-DOS with 1987's Empire: Wargame of the Century and 1993's Empire Deluxe. What's it like to play this now? Let's find out!

Joining Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") is DGC veteran Hannes ("Mr Creosote"), who has been a long-time fan of the game and has written about it on his website The Good Old Days.

Thanks to Wesley for sending in a voice message, and to DGC member console for editing this episode. It's much appreciated, we couldn't make this show without all the help and support we receive.

Enjoy!

[ download mp3 ] (106 mins, 122 MB)

* The Good Old Days has reviews of both Empire: Wargame of the Century and Empire Deluxe

* Classic Empire is Walter Bright's own website on Empire, which has been online since 1997, and contains a wealth of great information as well as downloads of various versions

* Killer Bee Software is the current owner of the Empire license, and is responsible for Empire Deluxe on Steam and itch.io