FreeGameDev

Birth of the Empires is an open-source 4X turn-based strategy game much in the tradition of Microprose classics like Master of Orion (2) and ST:TNG Birth of the Federation where the name is partly derived from. The game plays on a 2D galactic map with 30x20 sectors and features 6 main races, 4 of them playable in single- or multiplayer (TCP/IP) mode, the rest managed by an AI scalable in difficulty.

Goal is to lead your empire from the beginning stages of space travel to a galactic power able to survive in a complex environment amongst various alien races. You can set up diplomatic and trade relationships, intel activities like espionage and sabotage, whole fleets to defend yourself or attack the enemy in order to gain access to rich planets and resources to supply your ever-growing industries and ship yards at your core worlds. Planetary invasions and ship combat are auto-resolved by a complex combat simulator calculating a "true" 3D battle without graphical display (yet).

The whole project and the game of course are non-commercial, currently it runs under all Windows versions from XP on to Windows 7 (Windows 2000 seems to work too) and Linux using latest WINE builds.

You can download the code and participate in development (game programmed with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, C++ and MFC 8 for the GUI) at http://bote.codeplex.com . Our german development forums are located at http://www.forum.birth-of-the-empires.de while an "english outpost" is located at http://www.botf2.star-trek-games.com for getting in touch if you're interested to help with it.

Things still to be implemented are a BotF-style 3D tactical combat engine, random events like Supernovae or all kinds of spatial anomalies, an AI for planetary invasions and troop management, different map characteristics like different galaxy shapes or map sizes, a technology databank or encyclopedia to look up tech requirements for certain buildings and ships and an in-game tutorial mode.


Last but not least two screenshots of the latest Alpha 5.1 (v0.71) build and a link to download it:

Coalition player: View of an early large Xibren fleet:


Rotharian player: View of an early large Vulmar fleet:


Combat in internal dev version currently looks like this (un-skinned):



Game download page can be found here.


Hope you enjoy playing it (it has quite some depth to offer gameplay-wise) and can acquire a taste for it so to speak . If you wonder where the graphics and sounds all came from, there are complete credits lists of all artists having contributed to our game. Some are even known ones in the business like Tim Appleby for example. They allowed us to use their private work for our game which we are very thankful for.

Looks interesting. Do you got a in-game tutorial?

Not yet. I forgot to add that btw. to the list of things people can contribute to above .

Since bandwidth and internet connectivity isn't that much of a problem anymore nowadays, one could think of making a screen capture video like I did a while ago, but that one is featuring the german version, so it won't help english players much I think. Along with the (also still german-only) manual that should cover the sure-existing need to get game mechanics explained a little since it's a rather complex game.

A good idea for a temporary quick fix I'd say, it seems that in-game tutorials are on of the hardest parts in making games.

On the topic of asking questions; you only use the German forum as website right, no regular kind of website?

yeah, a tutorial may code-wise not necessarily be harder than for example an AI but I guess it's not that "sexy" for a programmer to do since it's more about teaching than mechanics, nevertheless equally important in the end.

yes, we've got a website: http://www.birth-of-the-empires.de . There's a google auto-translation tool integrated into it but it's of course not really replacing a dedicated english website.

a new update: Version 0.8 / Alpha6 Download (142mb; BotE download mirror at star-trek-games.com fan site): http://star-trek-games.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=92&func=fileinfo&id=434

Some screenshots showing the new (pre-)combat tactical menu implementation (preview jpg's have <100 kb size each, hope that is okay, if not, I can remove some of them; clicking on them leads to full resolution png's):








Tutorials on gameplay mechanics and game controls are planned for Alpha7, so in short, what you need to get started once you are in the game is:

• Options menu bar is by default hidden. You need to move your mouse to the upper left edge of the screen to make it show up. There you can save and/or quit a game.
• Fleets can be selected by clicking on the race icon on galaxy map in the respective sector. Then on the lower panel on screen the available fleets and ships are shown.

Was about to ask if there's a Linux port but then I saw that the project is hosted on Codeplex and lost all hope

well, it being not natively linux-portable was due to a - some would say stupid - design decision to use MFC classes for the general game UI. But you should take into account that when the project started 7 years ago, it was the most easy and wide-spread UI class set. Right now we wished we had used Qt or the newer ceGUI. Anyway it is possible to set up WINE for it, however there are some graphical issues (a png file being too much transparent and the GDI+ driven galaxy map plus some button text and the lower system panel view not being shown). We would be glad if someone with unix/linux experience could help us solve this problem, since before we updated galaxy map from GDI to GDI+, the game was perfectly playable under WINE. The png thing can be solved by searching for the .bop file (= renamed png file) in question and giving it a black background.

Looks like this currently in Ubuntu 10.10 and Wine (when not running WINE in its own virtual desktop, otherwise the problem with the lower system panel views missing does no longer occur):

I just downloaded and had a go. Looks like a good game with depth and well implemented.

Everything was a bit stretched horizontally on my monitor due to it being 1366x768 widescreen and fullscreen being forced (no obviously available option to use a standard window frame).

It's also a bit of an intimidating UI with many things going on and no tutorial (yet).

If I had more time I'd probably have tried to get into it more but I'm a bit short on time lately.

I know, tutorials and a windowed-mode are planned for Alpha7. At the beginning the plentiness of menus, text, graphics and options is a bit overwhelming and makes one look at his clock so to speak . Most stuff however is to be ignored and only to be used in late-game anyway, i.e. turns > 100, when the game picks up and unfolds its full depth. Also, there are AI governors, i.e. auto-build algorithms that take away much of the planetary management. But as I said, ways to activate and configure these things and to play the game time-economically will be provided with our next Alpha release.

Graphics are 5:4, i.e. they were made for standard 17 and 19" TFTs (1280x1024). All other resolutions will be interpolated until window-mode is implemented.

How to use controls in-game and do things quicker/better is maybe not always well-explained or explained at all in-game, so here's a comprehensive list of all things you should when starting the game. Later-on in text, more advanced tips are given:

• Options menu bar is by default hidden. You need to move your mouse to the upper left edge of the screen to make it show up. There you can save and/or quit a game.
• Fleets can be selected by clicking on the race icon on galaxy map in the respective sector. Then on the lower panel on screen the available fleets and ships are shown. Three clicks are needed, first on galaxy map race symbol in the upper right corner of the sector in question, then one left-mouse-click on the ship/fleet in fleet panel below on screen, then on the sector you wish to fly into.
• Left-click and drag will let you quickly move and scroll around galaxy map. Also, using mouse-wheel, you can zoom in and out of map. Cursors and extra mouse buttons can be used to quickly switch between systems in build menu view.
• Outposts can be build by transport class ships, just go over the order buttons on bottom right after selecting such a ship, you'll find the correspondingly-named button there. After finishing an outpost, (an)other transporter(s) can even upgrade this outpost to a full starbase by essentially clicking on the same button again for this ship
• Use resource routes right from the start after you colonized your first world. Most likely it will need titanium for its structures to build and your homeworld has more than enough at the beginning. Resource routes are laid similar to trade routes but work resource-wise, so just one resource per route is possible. Also I would not recommend laying more than one route per system since only one route is for free, more than one go at the cost of trade routes, i.e. for each further resource route you can lay one less trade route from that system.

• After meeting another alien race (mostly a so-called minor, major homeworlds are not supposed to be close to each other at game start, but it can happen), you can set up diplomatic relationships with this minor. If he is in favor of you, i.e. neutral and above, try to convince him to sign a trade treaty with you. Once accepted, lay a trade route to his homeworld.
  In order to do that, go to system->trade menu and click on trade routes (use your homeworld as starting point first, could be you need to wait a few turns into the game before a trade route is allowed population-wise, you'll get a note however in-game about that), then lay it to the sector in question. After that you'll have the benefit of evergrowing relationship values with this minor. It is slow, but overtime you will see that he becomes more and more friendly towards you (depending on his race traits of course, not all minors act the same way) and eventually offers you better treaties and at last membership.
  Trade routes can be laid to other majors as well when you have a trade treaty or higher with this major (non-aggressive pact does not count here). Since majors mostly got more than one star system under their control, you can lay a full set of trade routes towards their systems (1:1 relationship there, so 1 sector to 1 other sector). Income from that route is calculated by both systems' population so it helps when you have some intel about their system pop. Cancelling a trade route works the same way as laying a trade route, you'll notice it becomes pink on galaxy map and ends in 5 turns.Then you can for example retry to lay a more profitable route if you choose a wrong one the last time (so to sum it up, try to lay evenly routes, i.e. a 30bn. star system should do trade with a 30bn. star system of another alien race and so on, having a 50bn. system doing trade with a 10bn. system is a bit of a waste of credits).
• Diplomacy menu works as follows: Once you get to know / meet another race, it is added to your diplomatic menu in the list at left hand side. You can click on it and see how this race is seeing you (hostile, friendly, optimistic, etc.). By giving gifts you can try to improve your relationships with them. Once they are neutral or higher towards you, you may want to consider offering them a trade treaty. Once accepted, you can lay a trade route towards that race's home system. This gains you money/credits and continuously but slowly improves relationship with them. You can also bribe them if they already belong to another major or have higher treaties with another major.
  This holds for the "minors" in-game. A "major" is a race that can be played by humans or AI. These majors expand their territory just like you and they have slightly different diplomatic options, but in the end it should be self-explanatory what a "non-aggressiveness"-pact means and what effects an affiliation or a defence pact with another major race has.

Here some more advanced hints start, you may want to find out about them yourself (you can get behind it yourself certainly, they are pretty logical when you think about it ):

• Helping minors terraform their planetary system helps increasing your popularity with them too. That way it can boost relationsships even from hostile towards neutral or above and then you can do as mentioned above to get that minor into your empire.
• I'd only terraform planets that do not take more than 10 turns at the beginning as a general hint. Also, multiple colonization in one star system boosts population number - though it costs of course a lot to build that second colony ship and works only if there are more than 1 planet in that system and that other planet(s) need(s) to be unterraformed, otherwise it gets colonized too by the first ship colonizing this world - is a thing worth thinking about. When you have >7bn. population in a system, you can build a so-called star-dock. This orbital structure increases range of your fleet and is one of the most useful things at early-game alongside researching engine tech towards level 3 at 100% RP allocation, ignoring the rest a bit because engine tech also increases maximum range of your ships making it possible to colonize and explore worlds that could not be reached before (or only when building expensive outposts to get there).
• I'd rather not invest too much credits into convincing minors at the beginning, buying colony and transport ships is IMO a bit more useful, but there are several ways to play the game (also depending on the race you choose to play with of course, each has its own special prowess), I just mention my way here.
• Short explanation on internet connectivity of BotE: The game does not connect to the internet unless someone connects you or you connect to someone outside your LAN for a multiplayer game. Sometimes people misunderstand it and think the game's underlying server-client structure would mean it would connect to some host server on the internet. This isn't the case, it uses just the client applications that you run.

• Auto-build (AI governor for colony management) can be activated system-wise by going to Empire->Systems menu, and there clicking on a system of your choice and pressing the 'a' key on your keyboard. It then tries to build meaningful things whenever build queue of that system is empty. It cannot be set to different goals however, so you can't tell the governor to focus on ship-building for example. It does what it seems best-fitting for this system.
  The governor is into effect as long as you press 'a' again in the Empire->Systems menu. you see the difference immediately, a system set to auto-build has a red-colored "auto-build" mark in that menu.
  Basically it is the AI that controls this particular system then. It looks up which structures can be built according to system resources storage and then decides for one of them to be built. Sometimes even buys buildings/ships when you have the credits. It also sets workers to places and puts structures that require energy up in energy menu.
  In Alpha7 it is planned to have a menu for the governor to allow/disallow him buying, scrapping, reallocating labor units, etc., also to tell him which direction the colony should be developed to.
  Right now, it's just a testing feature, that's why it's a bit hidden.You can always interrupt the governor by filling the build queue manually. Then all items in the queue will be built and after the last item was built and the queue is empty again, the auto-build automatically kicks in again. So you don't have to press 'a' in the menu to completely switch it off when you decide to take manual command again over that system for a short period of time.
  So basically, it kicks in only when the build queue is empty.
• In late-game, you can try to build resource allocators (if you have more than 5 colonies in total). These allocators let all your colonies including your homeworld access that specific system's storage for the given resource type. It'a "master-resource-route" so to speak. Very powerful. Yet you should build it in a safe system deep within your own territory and of course with enough mines producing enough of the resource for all your colonies (have a look at planetary bonusses for that resource for example).

Btw. it is "allowed" to take screencaptures from in-game, maybe even create a trailer if you know how to do such stuff. Having a gameplay video surely helps people see quickly what the game is like, more so than screenshots. Also it can help explain game control issues like the ones mentioned above.

We also put up our german manual as an html manual here: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsvn.star-trek-games.com%2Fbirth%2Fhandbuch%2FHandbuch.html

In order to understand battle outcomes better, we have a combat simulator that is used in-game in the background when you hit "Fight", where you can see a tactical view of the combat or statistical data for repeated combats: http://botf2.star-trek-games.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1731