Last updated: August 6, 1999

Recommended House Rules

Unfortunately, EFS contains many flaws that can be exploited by players in ways which are detrimental to a multiplayer game. To prevent this happening, I recommend that players agree to abide by the following house rules. In some cases, it will be impossible to detect whether another player is breaking the rules, so you need to play against people you trust. You may also like to use these house rules in solo games.

Note that these house rules may change from time to time, so if you agree to use them, make sure that all players are using the same version.

A number of previously exisiting rules have now been deleted, as the EFS version 1.4 patch makes them unnecessary. As a result, the rule numbers are not consecutive.

1. All players must abstain in the first election, so that no one will gain any Ministry. Gaining a Ministry so early in the game (especially the Imperial Fleet) is too big an advantage.

2. No attacks on the Imperial Eye, until 2 turns after a player has been given command of the Imperial Eye. This will give the Eye transports enough time to move away. Without this rule, the Eye will be seriously crippled, since almost all of their landers will be taken out by players.

4. You may not reload the saved game file, and begin your turn again, just because you don't like the way your turn is going. Nor may you play a turn repeatedly in order to explore more territory.

7. No changing unit pay. If players can increase their units' loyalty to 100%, it makes officers irrelevant.

8. No selling ministry resources. Otherwise, a minister can sell resources belonging to his ministry, adding the money to his house coffers. It is OK for your house units/cities to consume ministry resources.

9. You may not deliberately leave your ministry cities, resources or spaceships undefended and open to capture by an ally, or by your own forces once your term of office is over. This is a devious way of transferring ministry property to the control of your house.

11. You may not use ranged space bombardment against an unspotted hex, to find out whether there are enemy units there. If you attempt to bombard an empty hex, the game gives you an error message, but it doesn't cost you a movement point. So in theory you could bombard every hex of a planet, to see which ones are occupied. It is OK to bombard unknown cities. Similarly, you may not attempt to land a spaceship in a hex and then cancel the landing, just to see if there's anything there.

12. You must leave an open route to each of your labs. Surrounding a lab with cities or units, or putting it on a single-hex island, means that the Church's Inquisitors will not attack it if you research a proscribed technology. Taking advantage of this fact would make the Church's proscriptions irrelevant

13. If you ever find yourself with land units in an ocean hex, floating on their own, you must load them onto a naval transport immediately. (One way this can happen is that if you buy resources from an agora and you have a naval transport in an adjacent ocean hex, the resources will appear in the hex with the transport, but not loaded on it.) If you have combat units in this situation, they may not attack. This does not apply to hover units or air units, which are allowed to move across ocean hexes.

14. You may not select any house traits. We've made this rule because so many of the traits have problems associated with them, or are unbalanced, and they add little to the play of the game. Alternative: use Dag Stålhandske's system for balancing traits.

15. You may not deliberately starve your cities in order to start a plague, aiming to infect other players' cities and units too. This is a sneaky trick which undermines the value of plague bombs. Alternative: switch the Plague option off, when you begin a game. However, if you do this, Plague Bombs will be ineffective.

16. You may not start building a unit with the specific intention of cancelling the build. This is a sneaky way to transfer resources from one location to another, since the resources used to build the unit reappear in the building city, and are not returned to their original location.

17. You may not attack an orbit square which contains no spotted units. This is a sneaky way of checking to see whether another player has unspotted ships (especially stealth ships) there.

18. No selling maps to the Vau. Selling maps to the Vau is money for nothing. It has no cost associated with it. Therefore it's just pointless mouse clicking. (Also, in my "It's War!" scenario, it gives a big advantage to Li-Halan, who gets first chance to sell maps of all the known worlds.)

20. You may not land combat units on Leagueheim until the turn after you go to war with the League. For example, you could bombard Leagueheim one turn and land the next turn. It's OK to land transports without combat units any time. This is to give the League a fair chance to defend themselves. Otherwise, it's too easy to steal their ships and other goodies

21. Similarly, you may not land combat units on Holy Terra until the turn after you go to war with the Church.

22. If playing against a computer-controlled House, you may not land combat units on any planet it controls (ie a planet shown in its colour on the star map) until the turn after you go to war with it.

23. You are not allowed to offer a peace treaty to a computer-controlled House. The computer-controlled Houses are much too passive, and will even accept a peace offer from a player who attacked them the turn before. If a computer-controlled House offers you a peace treaty, you can accept it.

24. The program seems to treat resource deposit markers as cities for some purposes, so air units can refuel in these hexes, and naval transports can unload their cargo in an ocean hex containing a resource marker. You may not make use of this bug.

26. If a player offers you a contract, asking you for more money than you currently possess, you must reject it. Otherwise, due to a bug, he would receive the full amount asked for - the extra money appears out of nowhere!

27. Always unload your transport spaceships (Freighters, Bulk Haulers and Space Carriers) when they end their turn on the ground. A land hex containing a Freighter, Bulk Hauler or Space Carrier with a unit on board cannot be attacked (except by Ranged Space Bombardment), and this bug could be exploited to make a hex immune to attack.

29. A noble may not vote unless he has been on the surface of Byzantium continuously since the previous election. He is banned from voting even if he took off and landed again in the same turn. If a noble is allowed to stay in orbit or jump around the surface of Byzantium, it's too easy for him to avoid assassins. You can consider this rule to be a statute of the Imperial constitution.

30. You may not build labs on Holy Terra. The Inquisition seems to ignore any labs there!

31.You may not ask the Patriarch for a peace treaty until 5 turns after you stop sinning. Sinning is any of the following:
- Researching or possessing a proscribed tech.
- Starting a war with the Church.
- Possessing a Scepter which originally belonged to the Church.
It appears that the Patriarch will always accept a peace offer, even when you still possess proscribed techs!

32. You may not change the sect of any Church. This feature is badly bugged. We just have to accept that sects play no useful role in the game. 

33. If any units in a stack are involved in combat, then all units in the stack have a chance of promotion (Green to Experienced, or Experienced to Elite). You may not exploit this fact to deliberately get units promoted without risking them in combat. However, you don't have to go out of your way to avoid it.

35. You may not disband Nobles, Blademasters, Scepters and Relics. The game does not normally allow you to do this, but there is a bug which makes it possible, and there are circumstances in which it could be beneficial, such as to prevent them from being captured.

37. You may not ask the League for a peace treaty. The League accepts peace offers much too easily.

38. If a player offers you a contract, asking you for a planet map that you do not possess, you must reject it. A bug allows you to give away maps you do not possess.

39. During a single Regency (the time between two elections), you may not promise more than one Ministry to the same House, or the same Ministry to more than one House. Nor may you promise your votes to more than one House. There are bugs which allow these situations to be exploited.

40. The Regent may not declare himself Emperor in an election year. If he does so, the usual 10 turn delay before he becomes Emperor is not enforced.

If you discover any other bugs/flaws in the game which can be exploited to gain an unfair advantage, you must refrain from using them. If you're not sure whether a tactic is fair or not, discuss it with the other players.

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