~One of the help files for WARBOARD` (04)671-913, 24Hr, 300/1275/1200/2400, (04)675-697, 24Hr, 300/1200/2400/9600 ~W A R L O R D S ] [` (C) Mark Stuart 1988 What is Warlords? WarLords is a complete multi-player game, based not on a players luck or trading ability, but straight out survival. The game is played on a map 200 x 200 points in size, or 40000 sectors in size. Located on the map are natural landscape features, ranging from sea to mountains, cities, and the player armies. The environment is played as a closed economy, ie, money don't grow on trees! The only time funds are injected into the system is when a new player enters. Taxes are collected from each cities own coffers, and each cities earns its revenue by selling of food, training facilities, and recruits. This will allow the game to produce three possible gameplay strategies. 1. A player may sell his services to other players, and train elite armies for specialist operations. And 'loan' cities to refresh his troops, injected funds into that city that the normal occupier can later pick up in taxes, he can even pay cash through the city banking system. 2. A player may decide to make his home and set up a defence around an area to build and maintain his forces, putting his claim on any cities. This sort of play may choose to hire 'merc' type armies for attacking other players, or sell his cities services to other players. 3. The last option is a player who deals in both, possibly setting up a base from which to operate mercenery armies from, taking cash from other players to take care of any anomalies in their strategies. What this means is a very interactive game, forcing players to wheel and deal between each other. To make things more exciting armies are classed, each class his different costs, performance in movement, defence, and attacking. A sysop can set up scenario's by using the class system ranging from medieval warfare to sci-fi systems.... ~ Cities ` Cities are the focal points of the game. From within a city a player can recruit, collect taxes, feed his armies, and retrain his armies. Cities also provide banking facilities for inter-player transactions as well as extensive information on class types available. Each city has its own bank, and as such, when a player buys food, or recruits the money that they pay does not disappear into a wandering black hole, but props up the cities coffers. Likewise, when they collect taxes, this is based on and subtracted from the cities coffers. Maintaining the morale and population is important. At the end of each day a city is regenerated a certain amount in population and morale, the population increase is relative to the morale. Collecting taxes, as you might think, isn't the most attractive option to the civilians, so each time you do it the morale is lowered a little bit more. However, retraining, buying food, and recruiting gets the locals dancing in the streets. Its important to maintain a balance, the city morale (which is based on a percentage) can only hit 100% maximum, so to keep partying with the locals isn't really going to be of much advantage. A city under 500 in population will be abandoned, and removed from the game. ~ Armies ` The armies are what everyones worried about, generally, the operate and are measured in five ways : Cost : Each unit has two costs associated with it, the initial training cost (per man!), and the cost per recruit after that (ie when its wandering out picking up the odd soldier from cities). Movement : Each unit has two measurements, both derived from its class , the first is the amount of movement points available per day, one move takes one point. at the end of each day these are rolled OVER (NOT added!), and the seconde is the movement ratio, the movement ratio indicates how fast the unit will wear out moving over terrain. So a unit may have 5 movement points per day, but they may also tire quickly, which can be disasterous in battle. Attack : Like in movement there are two measurements, attack points per day, and an attack ratio, the attack points work exactly the same as the movement points. However the attack ratio is fixed relative to the class... this is to differentiate between the more elite units and the more lowly units in battle. ~ Terrain & The Map ` Well, terrain is pretty important to, it'll affect generally who can go where and how fast! Here are the basic terrain types (and for those who get italic or lower case o's on real computers they turn out as upside down U's!)... _ - Plain, the easiest of all terrain. f - Forest, the next difficult. # - Swamp, or marijuana plantations. o - Hill Country. M - Mountains (Uncrossable). ^ - Water (Uncrossable). . - The Edge Of the World! Not only will terrain affect a players morale vs movement, but in battle, its more of an advantage to be sitting in a forest than out in the open. Here are all other symbols used on the map : C - City (unoccupied). X - City (occupied by your forces). 0 - City (occupied by enemy forces). A - One of your divisions. E - An enemy division. And thats basically it. If you spot anything else on the map its probably line noise. The scaling along the side of the map does not indicate absolute positions, but relative. If detailed data on locations are required use the REPORT command. ~ Battle ` This is where it gets real juicy, the blood and guts bit of warlords. Battles take into account many factors, first, as mentioned above morale, if a division attempts battle (either defending or attacking) with a morale less than 5% they will be wiped out, the other force will survive unscathed unless they too have a morale less than 5%. Various ratio's mixed in to find an armies losses in battle are morale, their defence/attack ratio, terrain, and size. Obviously enough a division hiding in a forest will have a better chance at survival if it is being attacked by a division on a plain. Cities also act like this, they have roughly the same defensive value as a swamp. ~ Strategies ` Here are some general suggestions and considerations for warlords... Speed: The ability to move fast and occupy areas quickly is essential, especially towards the beginning of the game. The idea being to grab as much tax as possible. Area: Do not try to cover to much to little, spreading your forces thin allows other players to make easy pickings of you. Having high-speed high-cost divisions is all very well, but with the cost of these divisions it is a sad sight to see them getting picked off by low cost divisions which happen to be in the area. Consolidate : Consolidate a safe area, a harbour, as soon as possible. Somewhere to fall back into is a must. It is often a good idea to post sentry divisions small in size on the parameters to obverse any approaching threats. Use the terrain in this situation as much as possible and you'll survive. Terrain : Use it like your life depended on it, because it does, wandering around the open plains or basing yourself on a city in the wide open makes you a sitting duck for everyone to watch and pop off at will. Plan any attack movements well, moving a division straight through a swamp into an attack situation is not good as they will find their morale quite low, making them easy pickings for those in the area. If you are after someone or someone is after you, remember, the more they move the better! Alliances : Always a good idea, if you can set up a basic boundary type alliance with a neighbour this will give you extra clout against any would be intruders. Or, you could choose to go the other way, and allow an attacking force to pass through onto its target, even possibly charging for it. ~ MENUS ` Main Menu Functions M Move division one space on map. The direction relates to the number as shown ie, like on a numeric keypad- 789 4 6 123 A players army will not be moved if it has insufficient movement points, or a morale of less than -30%, or another army or city is in the way, or if the player is attemting to move onto uncrossable terrain, such as sea or mountains. If they move successfully one movement point will be subtracted from the players division, and the divisions morale will decrease slightly. V View Map. The will display a 21x21 area around the players division, showing the various map symbols. This can be aborted by pressing the space bar. A Attack another player, this works much the same as movement, it requires the division to have at least one attack point, a morale of over 0%, and an enemy division nearby. The players is presented once again with the keypad-type movement directions and asked which direction he wants to attack in (ie where's the other guy!). If the attack is successful (not necessarily victorious) then one attack point and a small amount of morale are subtracted from that divisions stats. INFO Displays relevant information on the selected division. CITY This will take the player into the city submenu, but only if they are in occupation of a city. LIST This will list the players divisions currently in service. NAME ReName a division, quite simple, it allows you to rename the selected division, this will not succeed however, if there is another division already using that name. All names are converted to lower case. REP Reports on an area 11x11 around the selected division, giving more detailed information on nearby cities, and divisions (yours or enemy). SEL Select Division , use to change control between different divisions. SPLIT Split selected division into two, not necessarily of the same size. The original division needs to be at least 200 strong, and haved a morale higher than 0%, and also have at least one movement point. A new division name and size will be requested. The size must be (minimum) 100 men. If this succeeds a new division is created on the SAME map point, with the characteristics of the original division (ie movement points, morale etc). A movement point is subtracted from each division. STATS Displays your statistics, ie, divisions in service, available funds, time remaining. USERS Display other users and their current divisions in service. Q Quits back to the bulletin board. ~ City Submenu ` BANK Used for inter-player pay offs, or Electronic Funds Transfer... CLASS Lists available army classes and their specifications. FOOD Collect food from within the city, this is directly proportional to a cities morale and size, food will increase and armies morale (one tonne equivilates to about .1 points of morale). Food costs approximate 20 credits per tonne. The cost is then paid by the user into the cities coffers. INFO Like in the main menu, gives the stats on the current division selected. REC Recruits soldiers into the selected division, note that it will take the lesser figure of recruits available and recruits affordable. The cost of recruits is also governed by the class of the division, the cost is subtracted from the users funds. The cost is then placed into the cities coffers. STATS Displays users stats (like in main menu). TAX Collect taxes from occupied city, this will ask the user for a rate between 0-20% of the available funds. Note that a city can only be taxed ONCE a day. TRAIN Retrain division to another class, this will ask you the name of the class you want to retrain and reequip your division too. The cost is based on the unit cost multiplied by the size of the division and paid to the city. USERS As in the main menu displays other users in game. Q Quit back to the main menu.