GAME: WARLORDS FORMAT: FLOPPY DISK PUBISHER: SSG TEL: N/A Warlords is an eight player game of the struggle for supreme power in the fabled Kingdom of Illuria. Warlords requires 640K, VGA or EGA card and can be mouse controlled. This is a special limited play demo version of the game. This demo works with 640K, VGA graphics and mouse only. The demo version is limited to 40 turns play as a specific player against computer opponents of varying ability. The real game can run to hundreds of turns, and the computer opponents can be much more powerful. The title screen and a number of other graphics files have been ommitted to keep the demo to a reasonable size for transmission over BBS systems. For more information about the game, contact Strategic Studies Group at the adresses below. Strategic Studies Group Inc 1747 Orleans Ct Walnut Creek, CA 94598 USA (415) 932-3019 Compuserve [71620,1617] Strategic Studies Group P/L P.O. Box 261 Drummoyne 2047 Australia (02) 819-7199 Compuserve [72040,34] Your objectives in Warlords are brutally simple: to eliminate all organized opposition to your rule. To do this, you will have to control all eighty cities in the lands of Illuria, and thereby eliminate all seven opponents.There are many ways to achieve this, and brute force is just one of them. STARTING THE DEMO/TUTORIAL The demo can be run from floppy or hard disk, though hard disk is preferred. Change to the disk or directory containing the demo and type WARDEMO (RETURN). The demo will start. After loading, you will see the computer players making their first moves, then it will be your turn. A message about the demo game will appear, click the mouse to acknowledge. As this is the first turn of the game, a Hero is automatically supplied. Click once to bring up the dialog box. Click on the Name button or text field, type a name in the dialog box and hit the Enter key. Click on the Done button when you are finished. The Hero will appear in your Capital, and you will be placed automatically into the PRODUCTION display. You have three choices, heavy infantry at two turns/four gold pieces, elven archers at one turn/four gold pieces and Pegasi at six turns/sixteen gold pieces. Click on the elven archer icon and then click on the PROD button. You have just told the castle to produce one elven archer per turn. There is a very weak, neutral castle just up the road, and your Hero could almost certainly take the place just by turning up. However, we will be a little more cautious. Choose the End Turn action from the Turn Menu. The computer players make their second move, then it will be your turn. Click to start the turn. A message will announce the arrival of the "Elvallie 1st Elven Archers", and asking if you wish to keep producing them. Click the YES button to keep producing your troops.The army will be added to your Hero, making a stack of two. An army icon, either the Hero or the archer, will appear on the city wall. The other icon is underneath it. Click on the top icon. A small cursor will appear over the icon. This tells you that the top icon is selected. To select the whole stack (i.e. the Hero and the archer), double-click on the top icon. A larger cursor has appeared, enclosing the flag- pole adjacent to the army. The larger cursor tells you that the whole stack is selected. The smaller cursor tells you that only a single army is selected. The size of the flag tells you how many armies are in each stack. Move the cursor randomly over the map. It changes to an arrow shape, telling you that movement orders are possible. Scroll the map with the right arrow key until the grey castle comes into view in the top right corner. Click with the mouse just next to the left hand side of the castle. Your stack will move to that point. Once adjacent, you should have two movement points left, just enough to attack. (If you don't, just wait until next turn). Move the cursor over the castle until it has changed into a sword, and click. Battle is joined immediately, and the results are displayed. You will almost certainly win. On the off chance that you don't, just restart the tutorial again! If you have been victorious, Production details will appear. Click on the Light Infantry icon and then the Prod button. Choose the End Turn command. That's two castles down, seventy eight to go! The object early on is to grab as many neutral castles (the grey ones) as possible, before your opponents can. There is a cluster of three to the Northeast of the one you have just captured. Head for those straight away, and produce as many armies as quickly as you can to get the other castles around the place. Your Heroes should also explore as many ruins and other areas as possible, in order to find treasure, battle artefacts or allies. A Reminder About Stacks and Armies It is important to realize the difference between single and double clicking on unit icons. Single clicking selects a single army from a stack, double clicking selects the whole stack. Mostly you will want to double click. Armies (and stacks) will be automatically deselected when their movement allowance runs out. If you do not wish a unit or stack to use all of their movement allowance, you must deselect the army (or stack) by clicking on the deselect button on the Command Bar. GAME COMMANDS This is a short explanation of the most necessary game commands. Most functions will be self evident. SELECT ARMY When the cursor is positioned over an army or group of armies, it will change shape to indicate that you can select the top army. Just click the mouse button once to select the army. A small cursor will appear around the selected army. SELECT GROUP This is similar to SELECT ARMY, except that you double click over a stack of armies. Every army in the stack is now selected as a single group. You will hear a tone, and a large cursor will appear around the stack. MOVE ARMIES Once a single army or a stack has been selected, moving the cursor around the Playing Map and click the mouse button once at their destination. The armies will move to this point using the most efficient route possible. You can use the arrow keys to scroll the map. A maximum of eight armies may stack in a single square. Under no circumstances can additional armies enter a square with eight armies, nor can they move through. If an army, or stack of armies, uses all of its movement allowance in a turn, then the next army or stack will be selected automatically. If you wish to end an army's (or stack) move before all of the movement allowance is used, you must deselect the army as explained below. DESELECT ARMY Whenever an army or a group of armies is selected, you must deselect it before selecting a new army. Do this by clicking on the top button (a flag with a cross through it) in the Command Bar in the centre of the screen. Armies are also automatically deselected if they run out of movement points, or cannot move. Armies remain selected even if they are scrolled off the map, so be careful to deselect them before proceeding to another army. PRODUCTION The PRODUCTION command is used to create armies. To issue the PRODUCTION command, click on the picture of the sword and the shield in the Command Bar. You must then position your cursor over a friendly city (notice that it becomes a small castle as you do so) and click once; production information for this city will be displayed in the Info Screen. You have four options: PRODuce an army, send a produced army to another LOCation, STOP production, or EXIT without making any changes. To produce an army, click on its picture on the left hand side, and then on the PROD button (on the right hand side). To obtain information about an army, double click on its picture. To direct a city's production to another location, select the army from the available types on the on the left, but instead click on the LOC button. You can now click on any other friendly city, and the army will appear there instead. A maximum of four cities may direct their production to any one city. Armies appearing in another city take an additional two turns to arrive. To stop an army being produced, just click on the STOP button. To exit the production display without doing anything, click on the EXIT button. INFORMATION When no army is selected, and the cursor is over an empty location, it will change to a question mark. Click the button to give you information about that location. If you want information about a location underneath an army, hold down the shift key while you click. VIEW When the cursor is moved over the Strategic Map, it becomes a magnifying glass. Clicking in this window will change the view shown by the Playing Map. ATTACK You can only ATTACK when you are next to an enemy army, an enemy city, or a neutral city. Select the unit (or stack) with which you wish to attack, and then move the cursor over the enemy. The cursor will change into a sword. Click once, and the battle will start. You will not be allowed to launch an attack unless your army has at least two unused movement points. MOVE MAP You can use the arrow keys to scroll the Playing Map, and the space bar to centre the Playing Map on the currently selected unit. NEXT Click on the NEXT button to select the next army or stack. QUIT Click on the QUIT button to remove an army from the cycle for this turn and then select the next available army. DEFEND Click on the DEF button to permanently remove an army from the cycle until it is subsequently selected again by the player. These last three commands may not seem very useful at the start of the game, but as the time goes on and the number of your armies increases dramatically, they will become more and more useful. RAZE The RAZE action is used to destroy cities and towers, turning them into ruins. Once they are destroyed, they can never be rebuilt - even by a BUILD action. To raze something, a selected army must be in the city when you issue the RAZE command. TAKE The TAKE action is used by Heroes when they wish to pick up an item. Make sure that the Hero (or his stack) is selected, and then issue the TAKE action. Use the dialog to choose the item to TAKE. Note that when your Hero finds something, he does not automatically pick it up. You must use the TAKE action to do this. SEARCH Use the SEARCH action to make heroes search special locations (such as temples and ruins). This is usually how magic items are found, and magical allies discovered. It can also be used to receive a blessing, and gather information from libraries and sages. Move the hero into the location to be searched, and issue the SEARCH command. ARMIES Stacking. Up to eight armies may be in the same location at the same time. This will be indicated by the length and location of the army flags. The first four armies in a stack are indicated by the increasing length of the top flag. A fifth army is indicated by a short bottom flag, and a short top flag. Thereafter, the sixth, seventh and eighth armies of the stack are indicated by the increasing length again of the top flag. Armies at a location need not be of the same type. However, a stack will move at the speed of the slowest army for each particular terrain type encountered. If a terrain type is prohibited for any unit in a stack, then the whole stack will be prevented from entering. There are three different ways of getting these armies: production, alliance and hiring. Production is used to get ordinary armies. Ordinary armies are Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Elven Archers, Giant Warriors, Dwarven Legions, Cavalry, Wolf-riders, Navies, Pegasi and Griffins. Alliances are made when a hero searches a special location (a temple or a ruin) and are made with special armies. Special Armies are Wizards, Undead, Demons, Devils and Dragons. Heroes in Warlords are all hired swords. From time to time a hero will turn up in one of your cities and offer himself for employment. He will quote a sum in cash, paid in advance, (it's a risky business) and you may accept or reject his offer. Every Army has a number of strength points. This is an indication of how well that unit fights; for example a unit of Light Infantry will generally rate about three points, Cavalry will rate about six points, while Dragons will often rate nine points. The combat system favours quality of army more than it does quantity. Be warned, however, the lowliest light infantryman is capable of destroying the fiercest dragon! Just don't count on it. The defence points of cities are on a scale from one to nine, and the higher the city's defence, the harder it will be to capture it. Defence can be increased at any time with the BUILD command (and enough gold).When attacking enemy cities, it is necessary to defeat all enemy troops within that city. Attacking any portion of a city involves all troops that are located in that city. Thus, although you can only attack with a maximum of eight armies at any one time, the enemy can defend with up to thirty-two armies. Nevertheless, they will soon be worn down if enough groups of eight attack. Neutral cities fly a grey flag and have a poorly committed garrison inside (usually!). Whenever you attack a neutral city, there is a chance that it will fall, and a chance your army will be killed. You can increase the odds in your favour by improving the quality and the number of your troops. A Hero or other high class army on its own will usually prevail over a neutral city.In general, you should be aware that combat bonuses are available for stacks which include flying armies (pegasi, griffins or dragons), special armies (undead, wizards, etc.), and heroes. Further bonuses are awarded to heroes who possess Battle or Command Artifacts. Cities and towers aid defense while certain terrain types can help (or sometimes hinder) the different army types. HOW TO WIN These remarks on how to win assume that you are playing against computer Warlords. Lesser computer opponents (and most humans) are far more forgiving.The start of the game is a race to control as many neutral castles as you can. Send your Hero out to get as many as possible, get each captured castle to make the troop type that is quickest to manufacture, and get those troops out fighting as well. If you have selected high level computer opponents, you will notice them doing the same thing.After the conquest of the neutrals, it is time to take stock of the situation. As a single player you will face up to seven potential foes. It is therefore an absolute necessity to determine how your potential enemies feel about you. Use the Hatreds command frequently to check out the diplomatic climate. Enemies who hate or loathe you will be trying to do something about it. If they are close, you should consider trying to eliminate them completely. If they are far away, just keep a close eye on them.There is nothing that you can do to improve relations with other players. On the other hand, taking a city from a player will definitely cause relations to deteriorate. Therefore, you should not attack computer players unless you have a good reason to do so. Since an attack in any force is bound to leave an opponent hating you anyway, an attack should aim for total annihilation of your opponent. It also follows that if an opponent who is not your current target and who doesn't hate you takes one of your cities, it may be better to let him have it for the moment. He is probably just on his way to attack someone else. As well as diplomatic questions, many of your problems will be monetary. Each unit costs half its purchase price each turn in maintenance. The temptation will be to maintain strong forces in all parts of your empire. This will be very expensive, possibly ruinously so. As a rule of thumb, a garrison of four Light Infantry or their equivalent will be sufficient. It won't stop a determined attack, but will guard against cheap attacks.Obviously, castles in the front line will need more by way of defences. You will also have to look to the state of the walls. Each time a siege is successful, the castle defence factor is lowered by one. If the factor gets below 3, the castle will not provide much of a bonus, and consideration should be given to building it up, expensive though this will be.Serious sieges will require a lot of planning. Use the production vectoring capacity to quickly build up forces at a jumping-off point. If your target is heavily defended, you will probably need several waves of attackers to finish the job. All except the last attack wave in a successful siege will die, so make sure you have plenty of cannon fodder. Commit your crack troops only when you are certain of victory. Although it's generally a good idea to keep stacks homogeneous, the addition of certain units can provide advantages to lesser troops. Blessing is also very useful, especially if done more than once, and heroes with magic items can also make a big difference.Your Heroes should be sent out to gather as many magic items as possible. Some will die along the way, but Heroes can gather items, info, allies and money, so they they should always have something to do. If you see an enemy hero alone or lightly defended, consider an ambush. You never know what he will be carrying! Strategic Studies Group Inc 1747 Orleans Ct Walnut Creek CA 94598 USA (415) 932-3019 Compuserve [71620,1617] Strategic Studies Group P/L P.O. Box 261 Drummoyne 2047 (02) 819-7199 Compuserve [72040,34]