This is the text version of the web page:
  http://www.empire.net/~children/pea_pages/intro.html

        
        -=[ What is Empire? ]=-
        

Empire is a strategy wargame played by a number of people (usually between 4
and 100) on the internet connected to an Empire Server. If you've ever seen the
game "Civilization", Empire is a lot like it, except it is more detailed, and
of course multi-player. As the leader of a nation which consists of certain
sectors on a large hexogonal grid, you decide (based on resources) what each
sector's "designation" should be. This way, you obtain food, iron, gold, oil,
uranium. You distribute these raw materials to factories to convert them into
more useful things. You manage a civilian and slave populace for producing
goods, and a military populace for defence and conquest. You also have the
tricky job of balancing a budget. As the technology level of your country
increases, you are able to build more and more advanced units: for example, at
tech 0 you can build fishing boats and cavalry, at tech 100 you can build
planes, submarines, and artillery, and by tech 300 you can build missiles,
satellites, jet planes, and armored tanks.