Mission:Empire! is strategy/simulation game where the player's mission is to expand their empire beyond the single homeworld that they start the game with, and attempt to take over all 19 systems in their area of the galaxy. As the player conquers more systems, they gain more resources to build up their strength to tackle the next one, etc. Unlike a lot of these types of games, this one actually has a score for the player at the end, based on number of systems you conquer and in how fast you manage to do it. It features game save/restore features as well. The manual warns that if the player loses all of their Naval Squadrons, the game ends immediately.
The game features little musical interludes from some commands, but you can shut this off if you find it slows the game too much. The music is themed to what command you have selected (sleeping plays Rock-a-bye Baby, for example). While the game can take several hours to play, and gets pretty intricate when you have scouts going out to planets, trying to line up fleets from several planets to attack a single target at the same time, etc., the game is actually not overly complicated, and the manual is only 4 pages long (and one of those is mostly about loading/saving a game in progress.
Title: Mission:Empire!
Author: David W. Cochrane
Publisher: Strictly Color Software, later Ark Royal Games
Released: September 1982
Requires: Color Computer 1,2 or 3, 32K RAM, Extended BASIC, cassette or disk