About
Empire is a 1977 turn-based wargame conceived by Walter Bright starting in 1971, inspired by war films and board games such as Risk and Battle of Britain; it was later ported to many platforms and spawned commercial versions like Empire: Wargame of the Century. Xconq is a general strategy game system rather than a single game: a portable engine with graphical interfaces for Unix/Linux/X11, multiple AI opponents, peer-to-peer multiplayer networking, and an extensive library of games spanning ancient civilizations, the Peloponnesian and Roman Civil Wars, Napoleonic and WWII conflicts, and space or fantasy settings. Its default game resembles the classic Empire/Empire Deluxe games. Version 7.5 (prerelease) is free software under GPLv2, with an SDL-based interface invoked as 'sdlconq'.
How it differs from the original
Rather than a single Empire clone, Xconq ships an entire library of dozens of games built with its own game design language (GDL), letting designers define new unit types, terrain, materials, and rules instead of being limited to the original Empire ruleset; worlds can scale up to over a billion hex cells with up to 31 participating sides.
Getting started
Run 'sdlconq' from a shell or click the program's icon, then choose the 'Introductory' game for a simple preset scenario using the standard rules; the game supports any mix of human and AI players across up to 31 sides in a single match.
History
Xconq was originally created by Stan Shebs, with its first release to comp.sources.games dating back to 1987; development has continued since, including updates from Eric McDonald.