Idea Info Name: Empire Online Index: Primary Category: Online Submitted: 3/20/2003 12:12:52 AM Written By: DarkPaladin

            There are lost of things to be applied to a Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy to make it work and be fun. First, most people say you could not do it because, what would happen to your civilization when your not there? You would play the King or Queen but before you get online you would have to create an “heir”. You could make it your wife, husband, son, daughter, or just some guy. Your “heir” would be an Simple AI that you program to be like you, you would teach them to love peace or rule with a iron fist, to sit back and let the people figure it out or stand up and fight. etc. Your heir would take over when your not around, your heir would also become more like you as you play online. Once you have trained your heir you would be sent into the online world. There would be about 50 servers that hold at the max 100 empires. You would not choose where your placed, explained later.

            At the beginning you would start with nothing more then a few savages that roam the plains. The begin would be much like black and white but with a vast world to clam and not giant creature. Each villager you would have would be born with different stats. As you progress you could pick out intelligent villagers and elect them as scholars  and inventors, they would wonder around town studying things and doing comical little things like flying kites is rain storms. After a while they would discover thing, from as primitive as the wheel to as complicated as an internal combustion engine. But these discovery would not come until after a long time. You could also elect people of higher dexterity as explorers who would wonder off into the wilderness (with teams and such) and comeback with maps of the surrounding areas(that’s why you didn’t choose your location), discoveries of other colonies, land marks and other things. They might not come back at all and you would end up wondering what happened to them, they might have bin attack by a giant monster (there would be random monsters covering the landscape) they might have gotten lost, depended upon the explorers perception, they might have been killed or captured by another violent colony. You could elect people with really high wisdom and energy to study magic, they could be told to find spells to make life better or powerful spells to use on your enemy. You could elect people with higher strength, wisdom, and courage as hero’s or generals to lead your army. All the people you elect to be something special would become nobles, nobles would be able to gain stats depended upon what they do, and for how long they do it.

            As you run into the other tribes, or colonies you would choose to become allies with them, fight them for their land, or just ignore them. War would be a really big deal, especially for small tribes, because you would actually use your people, they would not just pump out of a military building. You could choose to just hand them all pitchforks and fight or you could train you army to be an out standing fighting force. Since population would be a problem during war you could instruct your inventors to find better way to protect your people with armor and such. They could also look for ways to defeat the enemy easier with better bows and swords, and for the very technological civilization, guns. You could also tell your magicians to do the same. The way you would see thing is from your king or queen’s model, anything within about a monitors 2 inch you can see and from thing you own within that area you can see 2 more inches and so on. Thing that are more elevated, like watch towers, can see farther. When your explorers leave once they exit the 2 inches you loose communication with them until they return, when they return you momentarily see the areas they have been to, same with scouts, outer laying farms and town, to fix this you could have constant scouts going back and forth or a scouts wall running between the colonies, or have a mail system going back and forth.. For town with really advanced technology you could have phone lines and electricity. Towns with really powerful magic could use communication spells to fix this.

            You could choose the little aspect of your colony, like what your building are built out of, what your people wear or believe, stuff like that. If your people do not like you as a leader they could rebel and kill you, thus ending your empire. If your people are not educated enough to know that what you are doing is bad they probably won’t. If you brain wash your people they with probably do anything for you, like suicide for the better of the group.

            As I said before, you will be the king or queen of your colony. You could have an actual model for your king or queen. They would sit inside your house or castle and when ever you felt like it you could take control of them. You would control them from a third person view ( kind of like Diablo accept 3D). You can arm your self and attack other people, to lead your army into battle, or kill a rebelling villager. This could also be useful so you could follow your arms into battle and observe the carnage. Your character would have states also, so you could build them up and us him or her in battle. These stats would not be as advanced as RPG’s, but it would be more like the SIMS stats.    

            There are so much potential this game could have. There are so many option that could make it a great game.