Barren Realms Elite

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Barren Realms Elite or BRE is a multi-player bulletin board system strategy game.

Barren Realms Elite is a 25-player strategic war game originally by Mehul Patel. The setting is in the future -- nuclear destruction has spread throughout the planet, and now only a vast barren void exists. As a baron under a great king, you must expand your barony throughout the planet and become the ultimate baron.

One feature of the game was the ability for a bulletin board system to compete against other BBSs. Each BBS would function as its own distinct planet in a universe of planets, where the universe comprised all of the BBSs that agreed to host the game together. Messages and attacks would travel from planet to planet on a regular basis as the BBS systems called each other to transmit and receive data. The game was based on Solar Realms Elite (SRE), and is considered by many to be SRE's successor. The focus on inter-BBS play completely changed the game dynamics, and both BRE and SRE continued to be developed for several years. In modern times, Barren Realms Elite has managed to maintain a fair number of players, most of whom connect to BBSes via Telnet in order to play.

1 Gameplay
2 References
3 External links
4 See also

[edit] Gameplay

In the Local mode (A non-InterBBS game), each player rules over his or her own barren on a post-apocalyptic planet, competing to have the strongest barren. Each day, the player makes various leadership decisions, each of which can cause their population to rise or lower.. The players must be careful to sustain their own empires, preventing low popular support and military morale, as well as starvation, while they strive to expand their might militarily. Tactics and methods vary, but all players will typically eventually wage war on other players, as well as form alliances, truces, and treaties.. By capturing (or buying) new regions, their barren can grow more food, make more gold, or produce more military units.. Players are also able to select from a list of espionage missions which can demoralize the enemy's forces, attack the population directly, weaken their defenses or many more. Finally, there is also a list of diplomatic treaties which players can use to create alliances or trade routes.

The InterBBS mode is far more popular, as so many more tactics become available to players. In this mode, each BBS works together as a team, making alliances with other boards to try to gain supremacy over the entire league. Each team designates a Planetary Coordinator, who is basically the planet's official spokesperson, and usually is also the planet's leader. By working together with different common strategies and layouts, boards can gain various bonuses that are unavailable in the local mode.

[edit] Common InterBBS Team Strategies

Smaller, unorganized teams typically stick with Industrial regions and Mountainous ones, buting Technology depending on their playing style, and only enough Agricultural regions to feed their people. In these setups, all players tend to set their tax rates to 39% to keep their population low and easy to maintain. All players will usually send Technology agreements to each other, boosting everyone's military production with virtually no risk to each player..

Larger, more organized teams will usually go with an Urban setup.. By investing heavily in Urban, Agriculture, and Technology regions only, and by lowing their tax rates to 3%, they gain massive populations. Each player will then send a Free Trade Agreement to everyone else, which allows all members of the team to gain massive amounts of money in taxes every turn. Among the Telnet players in modern times, this is considered to be the ultimate strategy, although it is very weak to enemies attacking the planet's food stores, causing the population to starve and revolt...

Back in 1999, a group of players spread out across most of the InterBBS leagues, calling themselves the Knights. Led by a player who went by Chaos, they adopted a rather radical strategy that is worthy of note.. By starting off with an Urban setup, they would gain a massive population and set up Free Trade Agreements with the other players. They would then drop their taxes to 0%, which would allow them to drop their Urban regions and replace them with other regions, usually Industrial, without losing any money gained from the Free Trade Agreement.. A rather interesting strategy, but it was known to unbalance the game when used by these Knights, who either faded away with time or went on to start their own Telnet boards.

One last, popular strategy is to focus on a 0% tax rate from the start, but to go purely Industrial from the beginning, gaining massive amounts of military. When used defensively, these boards end up being able to fight several other boards at the same time - the most notable perhaps being X-bit's League 000 team in early 2006. Led by a player known as Spooksville, they fought and defeated 5 boards at the same time, then moving on to take the round's victory.

[edit] Region Selection

Coastal Regions - Coastal regions produce fairly massive amounts of money, but their production depends almost entirely on a barren's Popular Support, so they tend to produce less in wartime.

River Regions - River regions produce money through hydro-power. Workers in this area will become fishermen once in a while, producing extra food at more or less random (About once every 10 turns)

Agricultural Regions - Agricultural regions have only one purpose: to produce food.

Desert Regions - Desert regions money-producing regions that cannot be affected by war.

Urban Regions - Urban regions increase immigration to your barony. The more urban regions you have, the more people will immigrate.

Technology Regions - Tech regions slowly raise your barren's technology levels. The end result of this primarily is reduced food decay rates, reduces maintenance costs, increased food production, and increased military efficiency..

Industrial Regions - Industrial regions create military units.

Mountain Regions - Mountain regions produce money from ore mines, but they also boost the production of Industrial Regions.. A common ratio for Industrial/Mountain is 2/1, but some people also believe that 3/1 or 4/1 works better.

[edit] Military Units Selection

Troopers - Thse units have offensive and defensive values of 1. They're a bit expensive to maintain, consume food, and can be killed with Chemical Bombing..

Jets - These have an offensive value of 2, but are unable to be used for defense. They have a heavy maintenance cost and require carriers to be used in wars.

Turrets - These have a defensive value of 2, but are unable to be used to attack. They have a fair sized maintenance cost, but cannot be damaged by Ops, except Demoralize.

Tanks - These have Offensive and Defensive values of 4 each. They're expensive to buy or build, but their maintenance closts are very low. They can be severely crippled by HQ bombs, as their efficiency decreases when your Headquarters are below 100%.

Carriers - Units needed to bring jets to the battlefield, or in trading.

Bombers - These units are used mainly for bombing runs (S-Ops), but they can also be sent in an attack to destroy any Jets or Bombers that are 'on the ground' when the attack hits.

Special Agents - They can perform many actions that will disrupt or destroy units or can have a wide range of effects. The more you have, the more effective all of your Ops will be, and the less effective your enemies' will be.