Simple question... I foresee a not so simple answer.
What I request, is, an at best vague estimate of what it would take to make a worthy empires server. I leave the definition of worthy up to the beholder.
To forestall questions that may arise, I shall state, that bandwidth is not a question here. Hardware only. I would ask also for your opinions on particular processors abilities to game-serve, irrelevant of actual awesome-sauce or not-so-awesome-sauce clock speed. [Joke] Got a pentium 3, OC'd with vapor cooling to 3.1 ghz? tell me! explain how fucking awesome it is as a 400 man 200tick cs:s server.[/Joke]{A friend of mine has a 3.1ghz p3 with vapor, that's where I got the idea}.
Anyway, I may pawn off my (not currently but in a year or so) old desktop computer as a game server/webserver-of-panultimate-win.
[E-penis]
AMD 64x2 3800+ @ 2.0ghz/core
2 gigs crucial ram[ddr400]
160gig ide drive, 320 gig sata2 drive
[/E-penis]
Not that great in terms of gameing currently, but, it may make a fine server, I'll yet see.
[Side-Notes]
For those who're wondering, Nvidia 7300gt{The 128mb version, with gddr3 and 128bit interfaces} is my gfx card. I recommend it, if your looking for a very shitty card compared to current gaming cards, but one that does css and such just fine. empires barely runs over 23fps, but, I have alot of shit turned up I don't need 
[/Side-Notes]
