VMS-Empire is a simulation of a full-scale war between two emperors,
the computer and you. Naturally, there is only room for one, so the
object of the game is to destroy the other. The computer plays by
the same rules that you do.  This game is the ancestor of all the
multiplayer 4X simulations out there, including Civilization and
Master of Orion.

Apparently, this game was originally written outside of Digital,
probably at a university. The game was ported to DEC's VAX/VMS from
the TOPS-10/20 FORTRAN sources available around fall 1979. Ed James
got hold of the sources at Berkeley and converted portions of the
code to C, mostly to use curses for the screen handling. He published
his modified sources on the net in December 1986.  Because this
game ran on VMS machines for so long, a previous version is known
as VMS Empire.

WWW: http://www.catb.org/~esr/vms-empire/