So you conquered the world in Empires of Steel against the Computer player, or your friends. But do you want to know who the best Empires of Steel player is, period?

Battlefront.com and Atomicboy Software are introducing the Empires of Steel-A-Thon, the first official Empires of Steel Multiplayer Tournament!

The winner will receive a $100 CASH PRIZE, and any Finalist will receive a $50 Gift Certificate from www.battlefront.com. Registrations are open now and end Feb 28, 2010!

Click here to register for the tournament now

But wait, there is more… if you don’t own Empires of Steel yet, but would like to participate in the Tourney, we are going to make it even easier for you to join the Frey… uh, Fun! Effective immediately, we’re reducing the price for Empires of Steel from $45 to $35. You can save $10 AND win a Cash Prize.

Click here to buy Empires of Steel now

If you are unfamiliar with Empires of Steel, we have also just released a new Feature video with voice-overs from the game designer, Brit Clousing, on our Battlefront.com YouTube Channel.

Click here to jump directly to the YouTube Channel

And of course you can download the FREE DEMO at any time to find out what the buzz is all about. Don’t miss one of the most innovative feature-rich global domination and exploration strategy games available today!

Click here to download the free demo now

EMPIRES OF STEEL-A-THON OFFICIAL RULES (read thoroughly before signing up!)

Disclaimer - by entering this tournament you agree to the rules set forth herein. No claims and warranties are made as to any specific purpose, quality or performance of this tournament.

Referee - the Tournament Referee designated by the Sponsor is the final source of interpretation of these rules. Any rulings made by the Referee are final. The Referee reserves the right to interpret, edit, modify, and revoke any of the Rules at his own discretion at any time before, during and after the Tournament, and also reserves the right to disqualify any of the Participants at his sole discretion.

Eligible - in order to play in the Tournament, you need to legally own a full version of the game Empires of Steel, register using the Registration form and be accepted and not subsequently disqualified. No payment is needed to enter the Tournament, nor would it increase your chances of winning.

Sign-up - you sign up for the Tournament by filling out the registration form, including the following information: your real name, your full physical address, and your email address. Incorrect registration entries will be ignored. You will receive a registration confirmation email when your registration has been accepted. Your personal data will be only stored for the purposes of managing the Tournament and will not be disclosed to any third party – except your name and email address as necessary for the conduction of the tournament - nor used for any other purposes than the Tournament.

Matches - after the registration period is closed (and for each subsequent round until there is a winner), all registered players will be randomly set in pairs for 2-3 player matches. The matchups will be displayed in the Tournament section of the Empires of Steel webpage, and will include the date (”reporting date”) by which the match is to be played at the latest (usually there will be one round per week), as well as the mandatory settings for the Random Map Generator for each Match! The settings may include additional Computer Players, and will usually be limited to 100, 150 or 200 turns. Each player will receive an email with this information as well, including the email address of his opponent. All players have to arrange for a specific time to meet and conduct the match themselves, but no later than the date specified. The players have to agree between themselves who is the hosting player and who is the client (it is recommended to have the player with the faster computer and Internet connection be the host).

Results – the Winner of a Match is the player declared as Winner by the Game’s Result Screen. Often, this will be the player who has the most population under his control after the allotted number of turns has been played. Should a match end with an inconclusive result then it has to be repeated. For the losing player, the tournament is over. The Winner MUST take a screenshot of the results screen, and email it together with the last auto save file to press@battlefront.com. If the results screenshot was not taken for whatever reason, the match has to be repeated. If the referee does not receive a results screenshot until the report date, both players will be excluded from the Tournament.

Winner - as many rounds and matches are played as needed until only one player remains. This is the Winner of the tournament. The Winner receives a $100 Cash Prize, sponsored by Battlefront.com. Each Participant in the Quarter Finals, Half Finals and Final receives a $50 Gift Certificate from www.battlefront.com.

Missed games - if a player misses a game at the agreed time, that player is excluded from further participation of the tournament, and the other player advances to the next round automatically. If both players miss a game and are not able to agree on a time before the report date specified, BOTH players are disqualified. If you and your opponent have problems scheduling a game for any reason (time zone difference etc.) please email press@battlefront.com as quickly as possible to see if we can arrange for different matchups and/or grant an extension to the reporting date.

Lost connections - if a player loses connection during a game, he has to immediately reconnect and the game has to be continued from the last automatic save. If the player is not able to reconnect for any reason, the remaining player is considered the winner of the Match.

Disputes - any disputes are to be emailed to press@battlefront.com immediately and will be settled by the designated Tournament Referee, whose rulings are final and not subject to appeal.

Legal Disclaimers - the Empires of Steel-A-Thon is not a sweepstake or lottery. Winning depends solely on skill; all Participants have the same starting conditions and no chance is involved. Payments or Purchases are not allowed and would not increase the chance to win. The Sponsor of this Tournament is Battlefront.com, Inc, PO Box 307, Dover-Foxcroft, Maine 04426, USA.

[Update, Feb 22: Apparently the videos were taken down. The BBC won't let their programs stay on YouTube. The BBC does have a video-player on their website where you can watch the videos, but *only if you're in the UK*. I don't know what they've gained by stopping everyone outside the UK from seeing the videos, but I can relate to everyone who complains about not being able to get certain software/videos/etc because they won't sell them in their country.]

I have to admit - when I watch videos like this, I get the itch to create a “civilization”-style mod for Empires of Steel. One that covers the entire span of recorded history. I didn’t know, for example, that people had to discover charcoal before smelting could occur. And, I didn’t know that charcoal was created by burning wood in a low oxygen environment. The whole “Fire” episode covers the discovery of fire, burning of wood, then coal, then oil. It’s interesting how the locations of coal helped drive the industrial revolution - and how China didn’t have decent access to their coal reserves, which helped cut them off from the possibility of their own industrial revolution.

BBC: How Earth Made Us, Fire, Part 2 (of 6):

BBC: How Earth Made Us, Fire, Part 3 (of 6):

BBC: How Earth Made Us, Fire, Part 4 (of 6):

This entertaining article about WWII made me laugh: The 5 Most Widely Believed WWII Facts (That Are Bullshit).

They say history is written by the winners, but the truth is even stranger than that. In reality history is often written by popular opinion, or wishful thinking, or crass politics.

That’s why so much of what we hear about an event like World War II–whether from textbooks, movies or something you overheard a smart-sounding guy say–is just plain bullshit….
(read the rest of the article)

It’s been a little over two months since the game’s release. I’ve been pretty happy with the number of things I’ve accomplished since the release, including doing updates at least once a week. Here’s a list of 129 Items (Suggestions or Bug-Fixes) that have been added to the game since its launch:

Version 1.01.3737, January 26, 2009
- Fixed a bug that caused turn-processing to run very slowly (in one case, the time dropped from 67 seconds to 2.7 seconds)
- Added additional information to the city-build window
- Added the Pangea map-type to the New Game window
- Fixed a display bug with radar lines
- Fixed a crash
- Fixed a bug with city-population growth
- Removed the city ‘anchor’ icon and replaced it with a blue number indicating the number of city improvements.
- Fixed a display bug with the technology tree
- Fixed an issue with aircraft combat

Version 1.01.3118, January 18, 2009
- Fixed a crash
- Fixed the washout bug
- Faster draw system (about 20% faster)
- Added “Pangea” to the Map Editor, but not the New Game window because the AI seems to run slowly on Pangea maps (will be fixed in the next update)

Version 1.01.2818, January 11, 2009
- Border Violation bug: The AI should not detect units inside transports
- The AI won’t complain about submarine border violations unless he actually saw the submarine
- “Sightings” list now shows the unit-name, rather than just “Sighted”
- Fixed some problems with the AI that caused it to consume lots of memory on large maps
- Adjusted ship/submarine combat balances
- - Some of the changes
- - - Reduced Battleship->Submarine power, Increased Battleship->Ship power
- - - Slightly reduced Cruisers->submarines power, Increased Cruiser->Aircraft power, reduced the cost of cruisers by 7%
- - - Increased Destroyers->Submarines power, reduced the cost of destroyers by 10%
- - The end result is that ships have more defined roles
- - - Destroyers->Submarines (good), Destroyers->Ships (fair), Destroyers->TacticalAircraft (fair)
- - - Cruisers->Submarines (fair), Cruisers->Ships (fair-good), Cruisers->TacticalAircraft (good)
- - - Battleships->Submarines (poor), Battleships->Ships (good), Battleships->TacticalAircraft (fair/poor)
- Satellites move faster now
- Fixed problem with Battleship bombardment (can’t target) and artillery bombardment (can’t target some enemies)
- Added a ‘random’ option to Game Setup > Land Density
- Added a ‘random’ option to Game Setup > City/Resource density
- Cities could see submarines out to a range of 60. Changed this - cities cannot see submarines by default anymore
- Fixed a bug in the Map Editor that was switching to the wrong player
- Added some debug settings to the Preferences Window to help track-down the washout-bug
- Fixed a crash that occurs when you change the “View As” setting
- Added a flag to the map-tooltip (important when hovering over a yellow-diamond and you can’t see the unit)
- Fixed a bug that caused aircraft unit-groups to ignore field orders

Version 1.01.2609, January 4, 2009
- When the AI sends a “violating my borders” message, it will tell you exactly which units are violating its borders
- Reduced the amount of memory used by borders
- Fixed a bug that would cause the AI to falsely complain about border violations
- Fixed a bug with the rules-editor that could cause the game to crash
- Players can see other players borders if they are near their own borders
- Fixed a crash during Turn-Processing. It’s related to expired TradeAgreeements

Version 1.01.2459, December 31, 2009
- Fixed bug: Sometimes the city-build window wouldn’t appear, causing player to think the game locked up
- Added Borders
- - Borders are created automatically, based on cities and resources
- - The AI gets irritated if you violate his borders
- Fixed a crash during turn-processing
- Fixed a lockup during turn-processing
- Adjusted some things on the MapEditor interface to make map< ->scenario more obvious
- Aircraft can be given more complex (move to, land, move to, land) orders
- Added ’sentry for five turns’
- Units which are set to ’sentry until repaired’ will not attack enemies based on field-orders
- UnitGroups can be given orders to ’sentry until repaired’ (until all units inside the group are repaired)
- Repairs cost iron. The iron cost is equivalent to the original iron cost (e.g. a ship at 50% damage will require 50% of the iron that it cost to build it originally).
- Fixed bug: AI was not accepting trade agreements

Version 1.01.2038, December 23, 2009
- Fixed bug: sometimes the ‘trade window’ doesn’t allow players to enter numbers
- The game-setup window now let’s players individually adjust land-density, cities, gold, iron, food, and oil abundance.
- - This applies to random maps and custom maps/scenarios.
- - Added the same feature to the map-editor’s random map generator tool.
- Changes to the AI:
- - Now, the AI can experience resource shortages
- - Fixed a bug that was causing the AI to be too passive
- - Added more behaviors to the AI to make it smarter
- Nukes automatically trigger war
- Added ability to turn-off the ‘low oil’ warning on the cursor (in the preferences window)
- Made adjustments to the pathfinding system to (hopefully) avoid the ship-beached-on-land problem
- Fixed problems with satellites:
- - it sometimes showed the wrong time until crash
- - they were jumping to their target location after launch
- Fixed bug: Sometimes if aircraft land at the very end of a turn, they are not refueled
- Fixed a bug with food-shortage starvation
- Added warning popups that appear if you try to submit your turn and you’re about to have a resource shortage.

Version 1.01.1609, December 17, 2009
- Reduced memory use
- - Reduced memory-use by 20% or more when playing the game
- - Save-game files are about 35% smaller (which also means faster loads/saves)
- Faster AI
- - In one test case involving a 4000×3200 map and 5 AI on turn 110, the AI processing time was halved
- Fixed bug: Nuclear Bombers running out of fuel/not destroying target
- Altered the AI to reduce wolfpack attacks (where players jump in and attack players already at war)
- Fixed bug: Game sometimes crashes after forming a team
- Added “oil shortage/low oil” icons to the cursor, and a warning message when submitting turn

Version 1.01.1203, December 11, 2009
- An upgrade order no longer turns-off ’sentry’.
- Added a “70% Population” Victory condition
- Improved the trade window interface
- - The interface splits immediate-trade and ongoing trade
- - Allow per-turn open-market trade
- - The AI gives more feedback on trades
- - You can improve foreign relations with the AI by giving generous trade agreements or gifts
- Fixed bug: Can’t cancel ongoing trade agreements
- Fixed a bug invoving the production money in cities without orders
- Small decreases in memory use and AI processing time
- Removed ‘Freighters’ from the Field Orders list
- Fixed bug: The Foreign Relations window showed the wrong information if you’re not Player 1
- Fixed bug: Saved Games don’t remember the ’sneak attack’ state
- Fixed bug: Infantry UnitGroup cannot capture a neutral airfield
- Added a “Full” icon to transports/carriers when they are full
- City list is sorted from highest-production city to lowest-production city

Version 1.01.777, December 5, 2009
- Fixed bug: The scenario editor forgets player restrictions if you edit the map-setup settings.
- Fixed bug: Players were allowed to do per-turn open-market trades
- Added a page to the game-manual for the “Unit Description” window.
- Bumped up the version from 1.0 to 1.01 because it was triggering a bug that users weren’t being automatically notified of updates
- Fixed lockup (turn processing never ends) that can happen when sending Units to join a UnitGroup
- Fixed bug: sometimes unit-groups cannot target enemies
- Improved some things with unit-groups and orders, to make it more intuitive
- Fixed bug: National Summary information was wrong if you weren’t Player 1.
- Added “Show All Paths”/”Show all Orders”, and a hotkey (K)
- Fixed bug: Nuclear Bomber was showing up on the idle-units list even though it had orders
- Thumbnails are automatically added to map/scenario uploads
- Fixed a bug in the download system - only the first paragraph of the “Description” section was showing up
- Fixed a lockup during Turn Processing

Version 1.0.613, December 2, 2009
- If a city has a “Produce Wealth” order, and you select a new build item, “Produce Wealth” is automatically removed from the queue
- Fixed bug: Problem moving ground unit that was next to water
- Fixed bug: Sometimes units don’t capture resources
- Fixed bug: Aircraft can’t land on moving aircraft carriers
- Fixed bug: Sometimes sea-units cannot move into/out-of certain coastal cities
- Fixed bug: Certain units (air-units that self-destruct) were not showing up on the “idle units” list (this was by design, but I decided to change it; players can just hit ’sentry’)
- Changed some code around to hopefully avoid crashes
- Fixed the crash that occurs if you try to pickup an air-unit from a city
- Fixed a problem with AI technology research
- Tweaks to the AI to make it more active

Version 1.0.461, November 29, 2009
- Fixed some memory leaks, reduced memory use
- Faster AI
- Players can now see how many people are in the chatroom from the main-menu
- Players can tag others as friends, and see if they are in the chatroom from the main menu
- Thumbnail images on the ‘Downloads’ tab (inside ‘Updates and Downloads’). This isn’t fully functional yet, but you can see the Europe and Mediterranean thumbnails.
- Fixed a variety of bugs related to unit-repair and “sentry until repaired” orders
- Fixed a crash that occurs when loading certain files. Error in a compression algorithm.
- Fixed bug: Aircraft in aircraft carriers sometimes show up in ‘idle units’ list even though they have orders
- Fixed bug: Sometimes aircraft won’t move if they are given orders to move to nearly their maximum range

The full version of EMPIRES OF STEEL has just been opened for download today!

The release version of the game comes with countless improvements, bug fixes, new features and a revised interface that are the result of YOUR excellent community feedback from the free beta demo! The full game version removes any restrictions on playing maps, using the editor and other reduced features that were present in the demo. You can play any map, including randomly generated maps or those created in the full-featured editor; you can create new rulesets and unitsets to simulate specific time periods; you can swap mods and files with the built-in community File Sharing; and you can play multiplayer with up to 10 people using the unique in-game chat and lobby.

Don’t miss one of the most innovative global domination strategy games available today!

Click here to purchase your copy
Click here to download free beta demo