Frequently Asked Questions¶

How is Immortal Barons different from Barren Realms Elite?¶

All features are enabled and free to all sysops and players. There is no "registered" or "unregistered" version.
Several BBS nodes can play the same game at the same time, which BRE could not do. See Can several people play as a door at the same time?.
It has a web browser version, which BRE does not. It also plays in a local terminal. The web server has not had a security review — see the note at the top of that guide.
It does not run under DOS. It is a modern native program that runs as a door under BBS software on any platform Go supports.
A new player can end their own new-realm protection early, from the System menu, to start fighting sooner. BRE does not offer this.
Immortal Barons hides realms under new-realm protection from the attack list.
When a sysop starts a fresh game, they can keep their old settings. Those settings are stored in a config.json file. Running immortal-barons -reset-from-config clears the world but reuses that file, so you do not have to choose the settings again each time you reset.
Some game values — such as attack rewards, unit prices, and economy rates — may not match BRE exactly. The game aims to get as close as it can, using BRE's own numbers where they are known. A few mechanics are still being built.

Yes, on Windows. The game attaches to the caller's socket handle that the BBS passes on line 2 of DOOR32.SYS.
A sysop has run the Windows socket path with a live caller and reports that it works. More reports are still welcome.
See How the game talks to the caller in the Door Setup guide for the socket and stdio details.

Set the number of AI barons before you start a game. A fresh game has none by default.
Open the Configuration Editor (run immortal-barons -reset, or the Coordinator menu in game) and set the AI empires field.
The AI barons are created when you reset the game. To add more to a game that is already running — without resetting — run immortal-barons -add-ai N (it adds N new AI barons and exits). Lowering the count still needs a reset.
Once in the game, the AI barons take their turns on their own during daily maintenance. See Daily maintenance for when that runs.

If your realm is wiped out — its people or land reach zero, from an attack or a weapon — your empire is gone, and you cannot keep playing it.
You build a new realm the next day: log in again on a later day and you are prompted to name a new realm (it need not match your old one), starting fresh under the same handle.

Yes. Several BBS nodes can play the same game at once. Each node's changes — new scores, mail, attacks — become visible to the others between actions.
Each action reads and writes the shared game file under a brief lock, so nodes wait for each other only for the instant of a change, not for a whole session.
The web version also serves several players at once (as its own separate game, not as a BBS door).