5.1 Overview

The House members section displays the amount of house members you have inserted on solar systems and the number of house members you have still left on your warplanet, ready to conquer new neutral solar systems. When you start the game, you have 900 house members on your warplanet. Every neutral solar system, that you conquer, requires some of your house members, to gain control over the corresponding base planet. A small base planet requires 33 house members, a medium base planet requires 66 house members and a large base planet requires 100 house members to take control. If you reach a neutral solar system and have enough house members left, they are automatically transferred to the planet, and you seize control over the solar system. This process cannot be undone. If you have once conquered a neutral solar system, you cannot leave it and gain back your house members. If you lose it in combat, your house members will defect to the conqueror. If you sell it via "star trade", your house members will be transferred to the purchasing party.
You can conquer solar systems only by navigating to them with your warplanet. Sometimes previously enemy solar systems will defect to your empire, if you defeat enemy imperators, but that's another story...

If you don't have any house members left, you cannot conquer any new neutral solar systems. In this case, you have to attack enemy imperators, in order to expand your empire. (Of course, you can only attack solar systems, which do not belong to your house - their map color must differ from blue or orange!).

By modifying the combat strategy, you can alter your warplanet's behaviour in a conflict case. Here, you can choose whether to attack the weakest or the strongest enemy first.

Changing the orbit settings, allows you to determine whether friendly ships (from other imperators of your house) may dock with your warplanet or will be undocked in the next turn. Allowing friendly ships to travel with your warplanet will tremendously increase your combat strength! You might want to find allies (who might send some ships) by posting on your house board.

Attacking enemy solar systems

If you attack an enemy solar system (by setting a course on the navigation map), a military conflict will emerge. Once your warplanet reaches its destination, a conflict report will be sent to your intergalactic mail account (see the appendix, where you will find a demo report with explanations).
If you succeed in breaking the enemy resistance and conquer the solar system, you will NOT need any own house members to seize control of the solar system. The "old" house members will be very impressed by your sheer presence in the solar system, so they will defect to your side and serve you well in the future!

By doing this, you have succeeded in increasing the number of your house members! The new amount of house members is listed below as house members altogether:. The more house members you control, the mightier you get. Your empire will physically expand!

Note: Remember - your warplanet is more like a mobile command center, than a powerful war machine. It approximately represents the combat power of a technology level 2 spaceship with full armaments. So - if you plan to attack enemy imperators, remember to bring war ships with you, or the conflict might end in one of these real bad days :-)

Loss of own solar systems

• Of course, an enemy imperator can also only attack your solar systems with his warplanet. As warplanets are relatively slow, it should be easy to discover an inbound enemy attack early and gather your defense fleet in time. Additionally, the immense interstellar drives of war planets emit strong gravitronic disturbances. They are shown on your (map) scanner as grey lines. This helps to visualize the last turn's movement of an opponent.
• You should secure your solar systems with your own or with allied war ships. A sole solar system has only the combat power of a technology level 3 spaceship with full armaments.
• You could always convince friendly, allied imperators to deploy their forces on your solar systems: you can give them defense missions! See "Hierarchy -> Missions" for further information.

However, if you should lose a solar system, do not panic! You will lose the control of a few house members, but the total number of your house members will grow over time, until you have reached the (initial) value of 1000! So, if you control less than 1000 house members in total, your house members grow at a rate of 5 per turn, if you are in open space, or 25 per turn, if your warplanet is orbiting your home world (HP).

Loss of your warplanet/your home planet (HP)

If your warplanet is conquered by an enemy imperator, this will not lead to the destruction of your warplanet or your career! In fact, the owner of the beaten warplanet (in this case, that's yourself :-), recognizes, that it would be a dominant stragey to join the dominant house of the victor!

A similar scenario emerges, if your home planet (HP), your most important support point, is conquered by an opponent: You will join the house of your new imperator, maybe fight for him, and pay taxes for his house.

Such a loss does lead to a loss of credits, raw materials and eventually some revolting planets, but that doesn't imply a severe change in your game strategy: you have only changed your imperator, defected from a weak one (he was unable to protect you properly) to a more mighty one. This can be only an advantage for you, as this new house will be able to protect you better, than your old house did!
If you have lost planets (house members) to your new imperator, these might either be traded back to you via star trade, or the house members will grow to the amount of 1000 to compensate your losses (see above).

Conclusion: Don't worry too much, if your warplanet or your home planet are conquered. Life goes on... - You will never be killed or seriously wounded - so this environment appears to be a good lot healthier and pacifistic than the conflicts on "good old terra" - and - if you don't like your new house all that much: you might be able to declare yourself independent or join a revolution at a later time!

Tip: It is a dominant strategy, to voluntarily join the house of an approaching superior opponent, if you see, that you have no chance defeating him. You could always set a course with your "empty" warplanet to a close solar system of this opponent (and therefore quickly lose the battle against this superior aggressor), or you could let enemy ships intercept your warplanet without resistance. You will automatically be in the protective area of a superior house. Strategic agreements can be made after that "friendly merger".

Independence!

An imperator can declare himself independent from his superior, if he has gathered 1100 house members (to accomplish that, he needs to conquer at least one enemy system). You should only consider that option, if you can withstand the anger of your former superior imperator, and have gathered enough comat power to defend yourself...

To separate your house from your former house, you should click on the Declare Independency button. (This option is only available, if you manage to expand your empire to 1100 house members).
If you give that command, your house is separated from its former superior, but your subordinates will continue to be your allies on your long way to galactic supremacy!

Strategic hint: It is a priority goal for a big emperor, to minimize declarations of independence or revolutions in his big house. Many ways can lead to loyalty...

Revolution!

If you don't feel strong enough to declare yourself independent, you should negotiate with other disconent imperators within your house. If there are several (at least 2) people, who are ready to instigate a revolution, they should just select the number of allied defectors necessary for them to join that revolution. All revolting imperators will be centralized within one revolting house. This way, it will be easier to coordinate the revoltuing forces and to protect each other within the revolution house. The emperor with the highest combat power will be the leader of the newly formed revolution house.

Movement of your home system

Under certain circumstances, it might be necessary to move your home base into another solar system. This option gets avaiable after 90 days, during which you must not have moved your home base.
If your warplanet is orbiting a starsystem, which is away far enough from other imperators' planets (no other extrinsic solar systems must be present in the current navigation map), the "Move home system" command will be shown.
If you order the relocation of your homeworld, this process will take 14 days. A message will be sent to you, after your homeworld has been moved.
Please note, that you will lose all your factories and buildings (except the house guild) present on your old home world, when moving to a new home system!

Attention: The relocation command can't be undone, you will even leave your former homeworld forever: it will become neutral! Additionally, all goods in the stockyard of the old homeplanet are lost.

Note: As some imperators don't possess house members any more and desparateley need to move their homeworld to a new location, it is not necessary to install house members from your warplanet on the selected new home system. The house members will be resettled from the former home system.

Experimental technology: Jumpdrive

5.2 Temporary Replacement

Using temporary replacement, you can assign a representative, which can take over control of your houses' affairs, when you are absent for some days (e.g. in holidays).

It is not possible to permanently transfer control to another imperator. You may assign 30 days of temporary replacement within 120 days.

On the right hand, you see open requests for temporary replacement, which have been created by other imperators asking you for temporary replacement. It is not possible to accept more than one request for temporary replacement per day. Also, be aware, that you can only perform one active temporary replacement at a time!

If you are actively performing temporary replacement for another imperator, you can switch to his account or cancel temporary replacement. Some features are restricted in temporary replacement mode, you may not delete the account or delete incoming mails, for example.

5.3 Map Sharing

By employing map sharing, strategic map information can be given to other imperators. Imperators can better integrate subordinates by sharing relavant map information with them.

When creating a new map forwarding, both recipient and shared map region have to be defined. If the recipient accepts your map sharing offer, he will receive the map information in the following game turn. Only objects which are directly monitored by your radar systems or your subordinates' radar systems will be transferred by map sharing (i.e. you cannot share already forwarded map data).