Empire is a turn-based eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal (and very occa­sion­al­ly mil­i­tary) strat­e­gy board game, with roots going back to 1938, most­ly devel­oped in the 1960s and 70s by Reed College stu­dents in Portland, Oregon. It is com­plex and addic­tive, reward­ing care­ful long-range plan­ning, but at the same time it allows for free-form cre­ativ­i­ty (with the con­sen­sus of oth­er play­ers).

Since February 2011, this web site has been ded­i­cat­ed to com­pil­ing and pre­serv­ing:

• History of Empire, both in sum­ma­ry and detail, includ­ing his­tor­i­cal game mate­ri­als, ephemera, pho­tos, oral his­to­ries, inter­views and rem­i­nis­cences of those involved
• Game resources, whether for his­tor­i­cal val­ue, nos­tal­gia for peo­ple who played long ago, or so that peo­ple can print/​assemble and play their own copy of Empire, either with phys­i­cal pieces or vir­tu­al­ly by email, etc. Maps and rules are ready, pieces are in the works.
• Community of peo­ple who have played Empire over the years, and those who are play­ing it today

For site news and update info, see the blog.

Except where spec­i­fied oth­er­wise, down­load­able files from this site are under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.