News Archive - Oct 2002

We have a new article in the Game Info Section from today, Heroes. This gives details of the Heroes, their blessings and benefits.

Many of the blessings and benefits have now been quantified, for example :

• what extra goods you get from the different "increases production" blessings
  
• how much extra tax money you get with Confucius in the city
  
• what Mencius does when he blesses Trading Stations
  
• what Sun Tzu does, or doesn't do, to forts

Researching and writing it has certainly given me some new ideas on how I might use the different Heroes in the future, I hope others find it useful too.

VitruviusAIA and Nero Would have got together and come up with an Excel spreadsheet program that calculates Population, Workers, Taxes, Wages, Profit & Consumption of Food and Goods for Housing Blocks or for an entire city. This easy to use program is sure to be a must have for many city builders who like to plan in advance.

The PWTWP&C Spreadsheet is available for download in our Miscellaneous Files download section, and details on using the program can be found in this thread in our forums.

We have a new addition to our Multiplayer download section from BobT, new versions of the very popular original 8 Kingdoms mission. These missions are based on the original, with the same cities, but add an extra dimension to it. In 8 Prosperous Kingdoms you will now need to accumulate a healthy treasury and in 8 Elite Kingdoms you require Elite housing and a hero.

Think you can build a beautiful city?

Then check out the first Emperor Contest at I-ChallengeU. The mission, Forbidden City - Perfect Retreat, requires you to build a Large Palace and Clock Tower in a city with Perfect Harmony fengshui with a winning criteria of "Overall beauty both in the aesthetics and overall city design." Sounds like a lot of fun.

Another new article by a guest writer, this time thanks go to Vovan for his article on connecting to Multiplayer with a firewall or router.
"A rather annoying problem has been bugging many players ever since Emperor came out. Some people have noticed that they cannot host games, or sometimes even join them. The main problem usually turns out to be some kind of protection from outside connections on the player’s machine. The reasons are diverse, but the result is the same - inability to fully enjoy Emperor Multiplayer. To try to solve that problem, I have compiled a list of most common security devices, and software, which cause the game to function badly"
You can find the rest of "Getting Connected" in our FAQ section.

We added a new article to our Strategy section today, Taxes and Wages by Nero Would, renowned citybuilder number cruncher. This article covers tax rates and income, wages and worker percentages and helps you to work out how much to pay your people and how much to tax them. Thanks Nero.

As posted on the forums by Angel Jayhawk

I just want to take a moment to explain a few things about the new downloads section.
Accounts

• The Downloads database is run off another user database.
  
• This means you can't use your Caesar3/Pharaoh/Zeus/Emperor forum login.
  
• You can use your Stronghold, AoM, DS, HG Main, etc. login.
  
• If you do not have a logon on the other database, you'll have to make a new one by registering at the downloads page.
  
• To make life easy on you try for a login (username) identical to the one you have here.

We're sorry for the inconvenience this causes, but it should be fixed by the time the user databases merge.

Categories
When you upload you have to choose a category. You have the following options.

• Campaigns
  
• City/Open Play Maps
  
• Completed Cities
  
• Multiplayer
  
• Miscellaneous

Please note this means the following:

• Campaigns - A PAK file, optionally with any new MAP files used in this Single Player campaign.
  
• City/Open Play Maps - Maps for Open play, not completed cities. These are maps without population, remember?
  
• Completed Cities - Any city that is completed, whether from Open Play, the Campaign, a contest or whatever.
  
• Multiplayer - A PAK file, optionally with any new MAP files used in this Multi Player campaign.
  
• Miscellaneous - Anything other than the above, sounds, patches, anything

Thanks for helping us out.

It took us a little longer than we hoped to get all this material online, and ready for your perusal, however, what we have here are riches comparable to those found in the vaults of the Chinese Emperors.

We could not have done this without the help of Angel Zen who's given us the latest in download sections, galleries and other goodies, and turned my initial design into a work of art.

If you are really quiet you might just be able to hear him tweaking the final bits and bytes for the site.

Secondly, I'd like to thank my staff, GillB, Gustavia, Merepatra, BobT, homegrown, and VitruviusAIA for doing an excellent job on the content.

There's two more people I'd like to thank personally, Reckless Rodent for allowing us to make the site and Norahs2000 for the fabulous work she did on all the game images shown on our site.

And last, but definitely not least, I'd like to thank the people at BreakAway for giving us what's probably the best City Builder game yet, so we could make the best City Building site yet.

Speaking of which, as a special treat we have managed to catch that most rare of creatures, Gobi Bear (aka Ed Beach) for an exclusive interview.

I'm fairly sure there's a thread in The City Center, our Community forum, to tell them how much you like the site.

So, all that rests, is to wish you a good time at Emperor Heaven.