Ancient Conquest README.TXT ANCIENT CONQUEST Frequently Asked Questions - What kind of game is Ancient Conquest? A : Ancient Conquest is a real time strategy game that is based around the mythical times of ancient Greece, where heroes like Hercules and Jason roamed the seas. - How does it differ from the rest of the real time strategy games around? A : Ancient Conquest leaves the decision of the armament of each individual unit in the player's hands. As the game is played out with sea units, the player can put 3 different soldier units and 6 different catapult units onboard of different ship types, giving nearly infinite ways of assembling an army. - How does this affect the strategy side of the game? A : No longer is it just enough to select a large group of units and tell them to attack the enemy. Each ship can attack in 3 different ways, shooting, ramming and boarding. If all the ships are equipped only with catapults, a clever strategist can use the boarding attack and decimate a much superior force. Lighter and faster ships are also better at ramming than big slow ones. - What is the story behind the campaign? A : The story is of Jason, a Greek hero who needs to sail to a distant island to find and retrieve the Golden Fleece to lift a curse that has been laid upon his land. Along the way he must recruit other heroes and defeat barbarians and the enemies of the Greeks and the Persians. Various monsters also block their path, like the horrible Medusa and the beautiful but deadly Sirens among others. - What do the various heroes do for your campaign? A : All of them enhance the abilities of the units that are put onboard. Some give additional defensive abilities and some attacking. Other repair your ships on the fly or even make them invincible. - Is multi-player play available? A : Yes, the game is multi-player ready, over the Internet, local area network, ipx connection and modem to modem. Up to 2 players can play in the demo version and up to 8 in the full version. - I have built a fort but it has no weapons in it. How do I build a fully equipped fort? A : Forts can be built by any ship. We recommend you use merchant ships. - When I send a merchant ship to build forts, they have no weapons. How can I load the weapons? Ships (their crews, to say exactly) that build forts can erect buildings only, they do not produce weapons. First you have to produce weapons at a workshop, (click on the type of weapons to produce them) then upload them on a ship and unload them from the ship to the forts. - How do I build big fortresses? You cannot build big fortresses until you upgrade arming at the sage school. - What does upgrading medium and powerful weapons mean? Upgrade of weapons means increasing their effective characteristics, like rate, power and the range of fire. - How do I catch a leviathan? To catch a leviathan, select a boat or a merchant ship and then click on a leviathan, or in the Main Control Panel go to Ship Behavior, click on the Prepare Leviathan button and then drag a rectangle on the playing field where the leviathans are. The ship will then hunt leviathans. - How do I kill the cyclops? You can kill all cyclops only when you destroy their hut which breeds them. - What is the difference between boats and merchant ships? Boats and merchant ships perform the same functions, like gathering amber, fish, and catching leviathans. The merchant ship has bigger capacity than a boat. It means that the merchant ship can gather more resources at one time. A boat has faster speed than a merchant ship. - How do I automate my ships to do various tasks? To automate ship behavior, select a ship or a group of ships (to select a group of ships, click and drag your mouse on the group of ships you want selected), in the Main Control Panel go to Ship Behavior and select behavor of your ships, like Page 2 Ancient Conquest README.TXT Guard, Ram Attack, Board Attack, Convoy, Patrol, etc. For merchant ships you can specify zones of extracting amber, fish or hunting Leviathans. - How do I exit from the demo? To exit the demo to the Main Menu press ALT-X or the Esc button on the keyboard. - I cant seem to pause the game? How do I do it? To pause the game, press ALT-P. - How do I play over the Internet? If you want to play the game with your friends or enemies, in the Main Menu press the Multiplayer Game button. In the Multiplayer Game screen you should enter your name, select communication channel and a map in which you will play the game. - In the scenario I can't do certain upgrades and I cant build many ships compared to the custom mission. Why can't I do that? In the scenario you get new technologies (new terrain objects, weapons, ships and spells) from mission to mission. It is done on purpose and that makes scenario missions different from custom ones. - How do I build bomber ships in the custom mission? You cannot build bomber ships until you upgrade arming and armor at the sage school. - What is the best way to kill the cyclops? The best way to kill the cyclops is to use the bomber ships. The more upgraded your armor and weapons are the faster you destroy their hut. This minimizes damage to your bomber ships as well. - Why is it that the game is so slow for me? To regulate the speed of the game, select the Configuration of the game tab at the bottom of the Main Control Panel and regulate the speed with the help of the Game Speed trackbar. We recommend you run the game on a Pentium 200 or better for best performance. The final version will be optimized for better performance on a Pentium 133 or higher. - The HELP file has lots of options which I cant use? Why is that? You have the Demo version of Ancient Conquest. The help file included is for the full version of the game. - How do I cast the magic? You need to build the Temple of Sea and Temple of War in order to use Page 3 Ancient Conquest README.TXT magic spells. Click on the Get Magic buttons to activate the spells. To cast a spell click on the appropriate magic and move the cursor over the playing field to the place where you want to cast the spell. - Why is it that I get a grey cursor and can't cast magic?? Some magics have limited range and they will only work within a certain distance from the corresponding temple. - When I play against the computer in the custom mission, the computer ships attack me so fast. What can I do to protect myself? There are several ways of protecting from enemy attacks. Here are just 2 effective ones: you can build big fortresses which will effectively protect your terrain objects, another way is to build boarder ships, set to board attack in their behavior and move them half way between your settlement and the enemy ships. - How does upgrade arming work in the workshop? When you select the Upgrade Arming sub menu you will be able to see 3 rows of buttons which upgrade rate, range and power of weapons. The upper row is for weak weapons, middle row - for medium weapons and lower is for strong ones. To get the ability to produce strong weapons you have to upgrade arming at the Sage School. - How does the upgrades work in the Smithy? At the Smithy you can upgrade 3 types of armor and 3 types of ram: regular, silver and golden. Armor upgrade reduces damage to a ship covered by the corrsponding type of armor. Ram upgrade increases damage that is inflicted by the corresponding type of ram. - I cant repair a ship, it is greyed out? What am I doing wrong? You have not upgraded your shipyard to a dock. Only the dock can repair damged ships, shipyard can only produce them. - In the beginning when I build a town, there is no option to build a merchant ship? Why cant I build a merchant ship? You have to upgrade your settlement to town. You will be able to do this if you have already built a moorage, shipyard, smithy, workshop and you have 500 units of money. - How do I unload or reload things into a port or moorage? To unload/reload a ship, first select the ship, then right click over a moorage or a shipyard till the cursor changes to the proper type (triangle formed by 3 arrows) and then left click the mouse. The Main Control panel will split into 2 parts: one will show the content of the ship the other the content of the settlement/town to which the moorage/shipyard/dock belong. By clicking the icons of the contents you can upload them to the moorage or shipyard.. - If I catch a leviathan do I get money and fish? Yes, each leviathan earns you 3200 units of money and 1500 units of fish. - I want to see the whole map, how can I do that? Use the TAB key to swap between the actual and the radar map. - How do I minimize the game? Use ALT-TAB key combination to switch between programs. - Are there any keyboard shortcuts I should know of? ALT+P - pauses the game CTRL+C - makes a screenshot TAB - replaces Map View with Radar Map CTRL+S - saves game into the last made save game file CTRL+L - loads the last saved game To edit hotkeys run the Ancient Conquest Configuration program and select the Hotkey Editor tab. - Where can I get some help if I am stuck? Send an email to megamed@wantree.com.au if you get stuck and we will be happy to help you. - Do the Barbarians cheat or do they actually have to get gold and fish? Just because they are Barbarians they do not have a big necessity in getting amber and fish. They can live well on robbery. ;) - What is the difference between the different difficulty levels? Different levels of difficulty mean different types of Artificial Intelligence. - Can I sell back items? How do I do that? All objects can be sold back except distant fortresses. To sell an object, select the settlement/town that built that object, if you are going to sell a ship, it should be docked to the shipyard/dock of that settlement/town. Click on the Sell Item button in the Main Control Panel and then click over the object you want to sell. - I can't build anything at the shipyard. All the ships are greyed out but I have all the necessary amber and fish. Most likely there is a ship in the front of the shipyard which is Page 5 Ancient Conquest README.TXT occupying the area in which ships are built. Move this ship out of the area. - What is the "default arming" box for? Marked Default Arming checkbox means that all objects are built with default arming. If you want to arm newly built objects on your own, mark the checkbox off. Be aware that in this mode all newly built objects will be built without arming and you will have to reload them with the weapons you like them to have. - Why can't I board the fortresses?? Because a fortress is a terrain object. You cannot also ram them. If you would like to play the Ancient Conquest Demo Multi player please visit www.ancientconquest.com. Check out our matchmaking service for Ancient Conquest multi player. Email us at megamed@wantree.com.au if you have any problems. c 1998 Megamedia Australia. Page 6