# # # # # #### ##### # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # # ## ## #### # # ###### ##### ##### # # #### # # #### # # ###### #### ##### # # # ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### #### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ## # # # # # # # # ##### #### # # ### # #### ###### #### # World Conquest Copyright 1989, 1990 Bruce Adelsman All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION World Conquest is a shareware game inspired by the popular Parker Brothers, Inc. board game RISK. A person or a set of people can play against each other and/or a set of computer controlled opponents in a challenge to control the world. Each computer opponent has its own distinct personality: some players are conservative and some are positively agressive! Every game is different. Sometimes you win easily and other times the computer opponents crush you! BASIC FORMAT OF THE GAME The goal of the game is to conquer the world by capturing every country. The game board layout is a set of 88 countries which form eight "continents". Armies are used to capture and hold countries. You receive a set of armies at the start of your turn. The set is computed by: set = total countries / 4 (minumum 3 armies) set = set + army bonus for each continent held set = set + army bonus for a set of cards turned in The set of armies are then deployed in the countries of your choosing. After deploying all your armies, you may then attack any enemy country. Battles can be waged between any two countries that are next to each other (including diagonally) and a few special cases: ALA - CHU NBR - MAL After the first successful battle per turn, you will receive a "card". Cards are used to gain army bonuses. Each card has a country name and a type on it (types are: Gold, Food, Wine). To gain the army bonus, you must turn the set in at the start of your turn. A legal set is three cards with all same type or all different types. Once your number of cards reaches five you must turn in a set. Cards may also be gained by wiping out another player and then receiving that player's cards (if the number of cards at that time is greater than four then you must immediately turn in sets until the number is less than five). The number of bonus armies for a set of cards starts at four and is incremented by two for every set turned in. Warning: the value of the army bonus for a set turned in rolls over after 30 and resets to four. At the end of a turn you have the possiblity of making one reinforcement move. This means you can move a set of armies from one country to a bordering country. One of the main strategies of the game is to "hold" continents. This is done by capturing all the countries in a continent and then holding them until your next turn. If you can achieve this you will be rewarded with an additional set of bonus armies for each continent you hold at the start of your next turn. Sets are: Soviet Union 21 armies China 8 armies Europe 8 armies Africa 8 armies Middle East 7 armies North America 7 armies Southest Aisa/Austrailia 4 armies South America 4 armies At the end of the game it prints out a statistics report on the winner including a score. Score is roughly a value for how successful the winner was in battles and army losses. Ballpark figures for scores: Score Rating ----- ------ under 1000 poor success 1000-1200 average success 1200-1400 very good success over 1400 incredible game Note: Adj. (adjusted) scores are actually a better scoring system but I haven't made a table for them yet (the higher the score the better though) MODES There are 4 modes of computer play for World Conquest. Normal mode is your logic versus the computer logic. This is the default mode unless you specify another mode. The other modes all give the computer players percentage increase in the number of armies they receive for each turn. This basically compensates for whatever short comings the computer logic may have. The percentages for modes are: Mode Army percentage increase ---- ------------------------ Advanced 20 percent Expert 60 percent Champion 140 percent EXECUTING THE GAME The game has a number of possible parameters on it when executing it: risk [-m#] [-p#] [-r] -m# means set play mode where # is Advanced(1), Expert(2), and Champion(3) -p# means the number of people playing (allows faster start up) -r means restore a previously saved game Example: risk -mAdvanced (or risk -m1) (executes risk in Advanced mode) ADDITIONAL PLAYING NOTES AND SHORT-CUTS Control-C can be pushed at any time to toggle all pauses in the program (Fast mode). However, if Control-C is pushed during one of your own attacks it will terminate the attack. If you find yourself always using your largest group of armies when attacking a country then try pressing ENTER when it asks "Which country to attack from?" By pressing ENTER the computer will select the largest group of armies surrounding the country under attack. When moving troops into a defeated country or reinforcing a country you can specify a negative value to move. What this does is move all but the amount specified into the other country (i.e. -1 would move all but 1 into the other country). If all human opponents get wiped out of the game then the computer opponent will continue to play only until one of them controls 70 percent of the world. At that time, the player with the 70 percent will be declared World Conquerer and the others will simply give up. Finally, at present, when you quit or lose the game the computer opponents will continue to play until one player has at least a 70 percent domination of the world. There is no easy way to end this short of rebooting. The best thing to do is wait. It is rather interesting to see the computers battle themselves and in FAST MODE it should take only a few minutes to complete the game. So why play until a winner? Because the computer keeps track of a number of statistics and thus tries to play a complete game for complete set of stats. (For more information on the statistics kept see the SHAREWARE notes) MOUSE SUPPORT The mouse can be used to select countries and commands and to answer a number of prompts that come up. The following should outline how the mouse buttons are used during the game: In general the left button will select a country or command. It also stands for -1 (see above) when asked about army movement and Yes for yes/no questions. The right button will answer No for yes/no questions and stand for 1 when asked about army movement. In addition, when asked which country you would like to attack FROM it will select the largest country you have surrounding the country being attacked. Note: you can still use the keyboard at any time. HOW TO SETUP THE GAME 1) The program can be played from floppy or hard disk. It will maintain the file computer.dat. It will also generate a small file called risk.sav if you save a game. (The file map.dat is read-only for map data) All the files need to be in the same directory as risk.exe. 2) ANSI.SYS (or similar driver) must be installed. Check your config.sys for a line such as the following: device=ansi.sys Place that line into your config.sys if it is not already there (and make sure you have the proper path for where your ansi.sys is located, usually with the rest of your dos commands). MAKE SURE YOU DO THIS STEP PROPERLY OR YOU MAY HAVE PROBLEMS BOOTING YOUR COMPUTER. If you have trouble with this or want more information see your DOS manual under devices and/or ansi sequences. Note: you might look around for a better ansi.sys driver, there are a number of them out there that are much faster and quieter (the bell tone is shorter in some). Nansi.sys is one that I have found to work very well. 3) Make sure you are in the same directory as risk.exe and then type RISK and press ENTER MS-WINDOWS SUPPORT Since this release only uses ANSI graphics it can actually run in a window under MS-WINDOWS (yes, you can play World Conquest AND have those little fish swimming around at the same time!). A .pif file is needed for this program in order to run it under WINDOWS (see the WINDOWS manual on generating .pif files). The program takes up about 90 KB of memory (set desired to 128 KB). Make sure to turn OFF the box denoting whether the application directly modifies the screen. I've included a risk.pif file with archive but it may need to be adjusted for your individual system. Note: I hope this works on your system (worked fine on mine). Still, no guarantees! TROUBLE SHOOTING I get funny characters (with lots of ['s) all over the screen when I try to run it!? ANSI.SYS is not installed or it is not functioning properly (see above for more information on ansi.sys). I can't restore the last game I saved!! The program looks for the file risk.sav in your current directory so make sure you are in the directory that you saved the file in and that the file risk.sav is still there. The program locked up just when someone was/had crushed someone else!? Hmm...sounds like a bug! PROGRAM HISTORY This game was the by-product of countless dormitory Risk games back in college. It was originally created on a TRS-80 during the winter of 1984 in about two days of hardcore programming. It was refined many a time (mainly optimizing to keep me from hitting the 16K memory boundry) in the following weeks. The original game had less countries and was in black and white (of course!). It took about 3-4 minutes for the computer to make its moves (and using only one type of strategy). I still have the original game on cassette tape somewhere in my basement (I take it out once every few years and crank up the TRS-80 just for nostalgia). In 1985 the game was ported to the VAX at my college. Surprisingly, the TRS-80 BASIC and VAX BASIC were very compatible; few changes were made. That VAX version is still floating around on my almamater's VAX. In the late fall of 1986 after learning C I had the time to completely redesign and program the game. Multiple computer opponents (with seperately programmable behaviors) were introduced, statistics were recorded, and the speed vastly increased. The new version was created on a UNIX machine and used escape sequences for displays (thus leading to ANSI graphics). That version was gathered by a number of programmers and may someday show up again. When my employer in 1987 began developing PC clones I was able to download the game onto one. The port was extremely smooth since Microsoft C emulates so many of the UNIX functions. Since that time the game has been tinkered with from time to time: color ANSI sequences in 1988 (finally got a color monitor), and mouse support just recently. I hope you find the game challenging and fun. Thanks for playing! SHAREWARE WORLD CONQUEST is distributed under the "shareware" concept, also known as "user-supported software". You are encouraged to distribute this software to your friends, to BBS's and to user groups. The only rule that is asked when distributing the software is that all files must be intact and unmodified in any manner from the original. If you find that you enjoy the game then, please, keep in line with the shareware concept and send some monetary contribution to the author. You will be performing two services at once: 1) the author will receive a sense of appreciation and assistance in future developments and 2) for donations of $10 or more you will receive the latest version of the program (which most likely will mean an improvement over the version you are using). Companies that provide software duplication services may include WORLD CONQUEST in their catalog and thus provide copies for a reasonable duplication fee. All copies must include the files specified in the shipping list (presented elsewhere in this file). You are not allowed to modify the files in any manner, and this shareware notice must be kept intact. The author retains all other rights to the program. Feel free to send me any ideas for improvements as well as specific bug reports. I'd also like to hear about (and see) any Risk-type games that you may have played before. When registering, or writing for any reason, please include the following: -the World Conquest version number you are presently using -where you obtained your copy from -a complete description of your system -your full name and address ******************************************************** * Donations and correspondence should be addressed to: * ******************************************************** Bruce Adelsman PO Box 384 Rochester, Minnesota 55903 ******************************************************** Additional SHAREWARE notes: ** SAVE A BUCK! ** If you send a formatted diskette containing your computer.dat file (the computer.dat file that is in the directory you play in) along with a $9 registeration fee I will send you the latest version AND a file containing the playing statistics of the computer opponents! These statistics include information on each opponent: number of times World Conquerer, number of battles won and lost, number of armies won and lost, etc, basically a running summary of the display screen you see whenever a winner is declared at the end of the game. DISCLAIMERS RISK is registered and protected by law by Parker Brothers, Inc. No attempt has been made on the part of the author to replace or detract from the original board game. Microsoft Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. PACKING LIST The files in the zip package: readme.txt -short description risk.txt -this text file risk.exe -the game computer.dat -computer opponents map.dat -standard world map risk.pif -MS windows support file sysops.txt -note to system operators Preferred zip name: risk251.zip When uploading to other boards some good descriptions would be: Game of World Conquest: multiple computer controlled opponents, can run under windows too! * OR * World Conquest game, computer opponents Note: please do NOT re-zip the package, data files in it are initialized to keep accurate records VERSION INFORMATION You can usually find the most recent shareware release on the PC-PROFILE (tm) bulletin board (507) 753-2612. Version 2.40: January 1, 1990 Test version only -first "public" version; beta release Version 2.50: January 15, 1990 Test version only -support for alternate "world" maps -improved mouse support (software cursor now) -changed adjusted score computation -bug fix in computer deployment -improved speed -cosmetic bug fixes Version 2.51: January 23, 1990 First shareware version -computer messages -improved computer logic -minor bug fixes