Summon your people The first task you must learn is that of commanding your people to leave a building. This is done in two main ways. The easiest method is using the Quick Orders panel. You can call up this panel by clicking in an empty space in the play area. The Quick Orders panel will show you how many spare people you have in your Store. Selecting one of these people will command that character to leave his home and walk to your chosen location.

Another way to command a person to leave a building is via the Occupants panel. You can call this panel up by selecting the same building twice. The Occupants panel will provide you with a simple list of the people in the current building and it is possible to select any one of these and command him to leave using the leave icon.

Create a new building

Creating buildings is quick an easy. You must first choose a suitable location on the play area. The first click will bring up the Quick Orders panel but a second click with bring up the Choose Building Panel. You must have enough of the necessary resources to be able to select a building and you must be in a valid location. The Mine for example must be on high ground where the rock landscape is found. The Pump House building must be built where the ground is soft. You can't build in areas that are not fully explored. In some cases it is possible to reserve your building even if there is insufficient resources.

One you have chosen a building to create you will be given a Foundation and a Wizard will soon arrive to Magic the building in place. If you do not have enough Magic in storage then this stage will be have to be delayed.

General housekeping Most building are put into one of two groups. There are the Storage buildings which are used to store people and resources. Examples of these buildings are the Headquarters, Warehouse and the Hospital. Each building of this type can be given a desired level of each element or person. For example we could presume that only the Coal, Ore, Water, Peasants and a small amount of food was given a desired level of 20 each. All of the other elements could be reset to Zero which would mean that all the Armour, Stone, Oil and Gold that was made in his area would be taken to the Headquarters while the elements that are useful to these buildings were stored in good quantities. It is also advised to keep the level of Soldiers to a good amount to protect the Warehouse as well as the nearby areas.

The other buildings work in a different way. They have a very much more restricted design with three types of contents. The small area on the left is the food group. There will be three types of food and one element of each can be stored here. The upper level of storage is the materials and workers group. These are the people who work/live in the building and also the place where materials are kept. The Refinery would have Coal and Ore as its materials along with a number of peasant workers and also a Guard. The lower section is the output group. This is where the resources are created ready to be taken out to a place of need.

The input group can be changed to fit your needs so if you are running short on peasants you can lower the number of Peasant workers in certain buildings. If you want to create a slow supply of Bread then you could give the Bakery just one Wheat at a time.

The output group is not always restricted to resources. The Barracks has an output group that contains Wizards, Soldiers and Archers. These Units are created by training the Peasants found in the input group. If you find you need to train 4 Scientists then you can set the level of scientists to 4 and that is how many you will get. You can set the level to "Full" and the Barracks will train your Scientists until you turn it off. This feature is also useful if you have 3 mines and you don't need much Oil. You can turn off the Oil on two mines which will give them more time to create other resources.

Food and health You will have to provide enough food for you people and you must also ensure that there is a good variety. It has already been mentioned that those Peasants working in the mine will require a different diet to the Scientists working in the laboratory. The Storage buildings usually contain the full range of food and it is usually in plenty supply but other buildings have a limited menu. If your people become unhealthy they will not reproduce and they will become easy targets for attackers. If they become too unhappy then they may start to disobey orders and generally become inefficient and worthless. This it is not essential to provide a full range of food it is recommended to attempt to supply as much as you can whenever possible.

Guards Every building will contain at least one space for a Guard. It is good to keep someone guarding your buildings because without a guard you are open for an easy takeover. Without a guard it is possible for an enemy team to enter the building at will. When there are enemy people in the building it usually turns into a fight and the strongest group will take control. While you building is guarded you are still subject to thieves.

More Magic The Magic is a useful element in the world of Foundation. It is not only the commonly used system of building but it is also used for landscaping. At any time you can command your Wizard to create some fresh trees and fresh rocks. The rocks are a good source of Coal and Ore but the most common rocks are made of pure Stone. Once the Stone Mason or the Forester have taken their supplied the Magic will soon wear off. The source of the Magic is the Crematorium. This special building will turn the last remains of your people into fresh Magic. This gives you an almost endless supply of Magic to last you for as long as you continue to have a population.

Control your people The control system for organizing your people and issuing commands is a very simple one but from a simple method you have a very complex array of commands ready for controlling your populous.

The first lesson to learn is the select. This is done by clicking the mouse in an empty area of the world with thew Left Mouse Button and dragging the pointer across the View area to form a box on the screen. Any people that were inside the box during hat time will become selected and they will form a group. Another trick to learn is the SHIFT select option which will allow you to add more people to the group.

Now you have a group selected you are able to issue commands. The most basic of these is the MOVE command. The MOVE command is issued using the Right Mouse Button to click in an area on the playfield. Now your whole group will start their journey to your selected location. When they arrive you will see they are waiting for your next command. The MOVE command is the most useful command of them all. It gives you the power to command any of your people to go to any valid destination including buildings. If you send a person into a building it will then become his home. This is where he will stay until you command him to another place. If this building is a production building (for example a Mine) then he will start to work there. This is where he will spend the rest of his days unless you command him to move somewhere else.

Fighting The fighting side of the game works in the same way as all other control features. You simply select a group or a single fighting unit and command them to attack. Selecting one Soldier with the left mouse button and selecting an enemy building with the right mouse button will send the Soldier into attack. Selecting a group of Soldiers with the drag technique and then selecting an enemy Soldier with the right button will command your group to attach the single Soldier. This simple point and click technique is used for all battle commands.