This update and all subsequent updates (unless noted) is presented by tru_m4n on behalf of the Central Committee of the Empires League. All queries will be answered by tru_m4n through the use of the gnushi ModDB account.
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A new post was made on November 5, 2020 on the Empires Mod website: Empiresmod.com
The main content of the post is the providing of pictures of models of Empires weapons being remade on UE4, as well as a request for an animator.
What follows is a brief commentary on the other aspects of the post.
#1: Talk of a Sequel
Ever since the years 2003-2005 in which the original developers of the mod set out their plans and wrote up backstories, Empires has displayed ample room for worldbuilding and consequently room for a sequel. Talk of a sequel has been commonplace for over a decade as a result. But historical experience has shown that such talk contains within it the danger of neglecting development of the mod itself. This was especially demonstrated in efforts to create not sequels, but "spiritual successors", especially those hatched by Trickster and his lackeys. In 2011 there was an attempt to get an "Empires II" off the ground in the hands of someone who had no interest whatsoever in the original Empires world and gameplay. All these attempts failed, but their impact was harmful in not only wasting labor but also in promoting the idea that Empires was "dead" and that its only "salvation" lie in the aforementioned intrigues by Trickster and the like to create such "spiritual successors".
This is why talk today of a sequel to Empires, while warranted, should be treated with the greatest caution. The Tricksterites present within the community want to derail efforts to remake Empires on a new engine and to, at the earliest opportunity, split the community and any genuine efforts at development of either the mod or its remake through their treacherous course. The Central Committee of the Empires League is of the view that the surest foundation for a genuine sequel to the Empires Mod is laid by firmly consolidating the existing Empires, by means of strengthening its community and ensuring that its remake on the UE4 engine is completed. If the remake is hasty, or incomplete, new users will not stay and the fullest potentialities for a genuine sequel to Empires will not form.
#2: Talk of a New Website
In the year 2015, amid a rising by the mass of the players of Empires against the Tricksterites, the badly dated forum software was replaced at the urging of the mass of the userbase and the Empires League with Mrdie at the head. In proper hands this change would have been entirely beneficial and would have been made in active consultation with the users of the forum. But due to the intrigues of the Tricksterites this was not done. Not only was the new forum software not the best that could be adopted, but it was soon subject to the same neglect as eventually characterized the old. In fact earlier this year the forum itself was arbitrarily shut down by the Tricksterites to quell the mass of the users and the Empires League with Mrdie at the head who protested the harmful anti-mod and anti-user machinations of Trickster and his lackeys.
The creation of a new website, especially if it will facilitate new updates as claimed, can be justified and the Empires League offers its services now as in the past to help realize this goal in a way that is user-friendly and secure. But it is also to be suspected that a "new website" is only the creation of a more clunky website, and that a "new website" is only a means of showing how much this or that Tricksterite or ally of theirs "works" for Empires, especially if that figure in question has done nothing for Empires in the past despite years of being entrusted with an ostensibly responsible position.
#3: Frequency of Updates
It is claimed that updates on the remake have not been made each month because of the "development team" being "all-volunteer" and because of certain figures being busy in real life, but this is not justifiable. In the first place it is entirely possible to have a dedicated person in charge of public relations for the mod and for this person to post updates whenever expected, as was the case with the outstanding veteran Mrdie during portions of the years 2005-2006. In the second place this assumes that there can be no initiative for the collecting of information other than a particular person known as or called a developer. The Central Committee of the Empires League points out that there are a great many ways for ordinary users to obtain information, and for individual developers to give out their own particular information and materials through Discord servers, Twitch, a forum that is not arbitrarily closed for new registrations, and so on. All this can be given to a PR person for the mod or through one or more persons given the ability to post updates on the website. This would mean there is no way for any "lead developer" or anyone else supposedly burdened with work to have the responsibility to post monthly or other kinds of updates.
The Central Committee of the Empires League considers that a great many untapped means exist for publicizing Empires both as a mod and in terms of its remake. An inefficient method of collecting data and posting updates to the site undermines one of the most basic means of utilizing these means. For a mod which is falsely assumed to be "dead" by a great many outsiders, such inefficiency can creditably be considered intentional as a means of divorcing the mass of the users from active participation in the process of remaking Empires and in safeguarding it from efforts by the Tricksterites to carry out sabotage and/or "remake" Empires in their own image.
