Strategy Mechanics #

This section describes the rules of the strategy game.

Planets #

Planets are the backbone of your empire. All your economic, industrial, and scientific activity happens on planets you control. Planets inherently have a Resources rating, which acts as a multiplier to any industrial output on that planet. Once they are controlled by an empire, planets also have ratings for economic, industrial, and scientific infrastructure, which you can increase by spending credits from your treasury. The three kinds of infrastructure that exist on a planet affect your empire in different ways.

Infrastructure #

Infrastructure levels on a planet can be purchased with credits from your empire’s treasury. A given infrastructure level can only be increased once per turn, and the new level takes effect on the following turn (with calculations that happen during the turn transition using the new level). The cost to increase an infrastructure level is five times the new level, or 5, whichever is higher.

Each of a planet’s infrastructure types is capped at 10.

Economic Infrastructure

Economic Infrastructure contributes credits to your treasury each turn. Planets start with a negative economic infrastructure rating and must be subsidized by your empire until you’ve invested enough into their economy to make them profitable.

Scientific Infrastructure

Scientific Infrastructure contributes to advancing your empire-wide technology levels. Each point of Scientific Infrastructure on a planet contributes one point of research per turn to your empire’s scientific goals. Planets start with 0 Scientific Infrastructure.

Industrial Infrastructure

Industrial Infrastructure affects how quickly you can build ships on that planet. Planets start with 0 Industrial Infrastructure.

Production #

For a given turn, you can command a planet to build ships for your fleets or ground units for your armies. If you don’t command them to do either, they will instead focus their industry towards economic production, and will instead generate bonus income for your empire.

Each turn, your planets can build one ship or ground unit for every level of Industrial Infrastructure on the planet. This number is increased by 10% for every level of Industrial Technology your empire possesses (rounded down).

Idle industry doing economic production contributes 1/4 as many credits as the number of ships or ground units it would be able to produce (rounded down).

Gaining Planets #

Your empire begins the game controlling with two planets in your home system; your homeworld, which is already quite developed, and your first colony. Control of additional planets can be gained by colonizing uninhabited worlds, invading already populated ones, or rarely, having them ceded to you by another empire.

Uninhabited worlds can be colonized by “spending” one ground unit in the same system. The unit becomes the expeditionary force that begins the colony, and is “lost” as a unit.

Invasion of inhabited worlds is discussed in the Fleets & Combat section.

Blockaded Planets #

If a planet’s star system contains hostile ships (and thus contains no friendly ships), then that planet is considered to be blockaded. Blockaded planets have their production capacity halved, and do not contribute scientifically or economically to your empire.

Contested Planets #

If a planet has hostile troops on the ground that have not yet been defeated or conquered the planet, then that planet is considered to be contested.

Science & Technology #

There are 7 categories of technology your empire can research and advance in: Industry, Economics, Sensors, Engines, and Weapons. Your empire gains research points towards your selected technology every turn based on the scientific infrastructure of each of your planets. If your accumulated research points reach the threshold for the next technology level, your technology level will advance.

The cost to advance to the next level is 5 * 2^n where n is your current level. Or, put another way, level 1 in a given technology costs 5 points, and each subsequent level costs twice the previous. Points are cumulative, so to go from 0 to 1 you need to accumulate 5 points, and to go from 1 to 2 you need to accumulate another 5 points, for a total of 10.

Thus, the cumulate point costs for the first 10 levels are:

Levels 10 and beyond are possible, but quickly become prohibitively expensive. The effects of the various technologies are as follows:

• Industrial Technology

  Research Industry to raise your Industrial Technology level. Your level of Industrial Technology acts as a multiplier when building ships or ground units on any planet.

• Economic Technology

  Research Economics to raise your Economic Technology level. Your level of Economic Technology acts as a multiplier to the number of credits that you receive every turn.

• Sensor Technology

  Research Sensors to raise your Sensor Technology level. Your level of Sensor Technology determines the range from your planets and fleets that you are able to detect other systems or fleets.

• Engine Technology

  Research Engines to raise your Engine Technology level. Your level of Engine Technology determines how quickly your fleets move between star systems.

• Weapon Technology

  Research Weapons to raise your Weapon Technology level. In combat, your fleets and ground units do more damage to their opponents relative to your level of Weapon Technology.

Fleets & Combat #

There are two types of military units in Emperor - Ships and Ground Units. Each has their own mechanics and type of combat.

Ships & Fleets #

Ships represent individual combat starships, and are grouped into Fleets when they are in the same location. When built, ships are added to the fleet currently located in the star system where they were created. If there is no fleet currently located at that star system, a new fleet is created containing the newly created ships.

To move ships to another star system, some or all of the ships of a fleet can be ordered to travel to any star system within your sensor range. They will form a separate fleet and enter hyperspace, emerging from hyperspace at their destination a number of turns later based on your Engine Technology level. Once in hyperspace, fleets are unable to alter course or change their orders until they arrive at their destination.

Fleet Combat #

When fleets of two or more different empires are in the same star system, and those empires have not declared each other as friendly, a fleet combat begins. Space makes for an incredibly empty and open battlefield, and thus fleet combats always fully resolve before the next turn starts.