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Lore of Conquest ---------------- COPYRIGHT NOTICE: (required legalese) Conquest is Copyright © 1988-1991 by W. Michael Bryant All rights reserved. This software is distributed as Shareware. This means that if you find this program enjoyable, you should register a copy of the program. Users who register will receive an update to the current version of the program. Registration fees will encourage me to continue to add new features also :) If you wish to distribute this program "Commercially", (AX Magazine's best of PD, Amazing Tech are some examples that come to mind), please have the courtesy to contact me before including my program on your disk. BBSs, Computer Clubs, and "Distribute for cost of disk" organizations such as Fred Fish may freely distribute this program provided that all files (Conquest, Conquest.info, Conquest.doc) are included and unmodified. This software is provided AS IS. No warranties or guarantees are expressed or implied. Michael Bryant cannot be held responsible for ANY problems arising from the use of this software; use at your own risk. Ah, now that is over... QUICK START: For those of you who don't want to wade through this text file, here's the basics of the game. To start, just type CONQUEST. The object of the game is to conquer planets. The more planets you own, the income you receive. With this income you can build a variety of ships with which you can conquer more planets. The catch? You opponent is doing exactly the same thing on the other end of the galaxy. ======================================================================= *** Please see the end of this file for the latest update notes *** ======================================================================= BACKGROUND: This program has been in the works for quite some time now. It was originally inspired by a program on the Radio Shack CoCo. My first version of this program was called Conquest and was written in BASIC in the Spring of 1983. The next version ran on a DEC PDP 11/45 a year later. After much procrastinating, I finally created this version on the Amiga. The program has grown quite a bit since its first conception. Unfortunately, it has taken so long to get this program done for the Amiga that other games called CONQUEST have sprung up. For a while, this game was renamed to "Dominion", but that still didn't feel quite right. For now the game is called "Lore of Conquest", if there are any suggestions for names, let me know. It seems that all other "Conquest" games have died out. Oh well, even though the name is "Lore of Conquest", it will always be known as Conquest for me. :D ********************************************************************* Special thanks to John Nowak who created the original version of the combat system for Conquest. ********************************************************************* INTRODUCTION: Conquest is a war game similar in concept to the board game Risk. You are the lord of an entire world, destined to rule the galaxy. Some worlds are virgin fruits, ready for you to colonize. Some worlds have natives who do not wish to accept your rule, these you must conquer for they will yield more valuable resources. As you claim the galaxy you will find that you are not the only one extending your dominion. This is a two-player game. Be prepared to defend yourself and take what is yours! ---------------- The following instructions give only a brief description of game play. Experiment with the program and find out how the program runs and what strategies will lead you to victory! PLAYING THE GAME: Lore of Conquest is a two player game where each player secretly enters their moves for each turn. When it is started, you are asked for each player's name and the number of turns you wish to play. A few additional items are also available, but they will be described later in this file. Next, the galaxy map will be displayed and each player will be asked to select their home world. Available worlds will be outlined. Select your home world by clicking on the letter of the world. The game has now started. At the beginning of each turn you will be displayed your income for the turn. You earn income for each world that you control. Each world has a class value assigned to it. The higher the class, the more income the world generates. A home world is a minimum of class 7. After closing the income window you will see the galaxy map and command window. On the galaxy map you will see the first letter of each planet's name, and a number or a question mark next to it. The number indicates the class of the world. A question mark indicates that the world has yet to be explored. You need ships in order to explore and conquer other worlds. Select "Buy Ships" from the command window. The following are the types of ships available: Scout - Fastest ship. Non-combative. Flies past one or more worlds, to gather information on each. Cruiser - Fast ship. Average fighter, but cheap. MissileShip - Average speed. Excellent fighter but must wait to reload so can only attack every other turn. Dreadnought - Big, slow, awesome battleship. Best fighter, best defender. Railship - Slowest. A High-Tech piece of hardware. A huge flying cannon that will automatically destroy one other ship in reverse order. ** More on this later. This ship can only be build by a home world of class 8 or higher. Ships will be built on your current home world. Higher tech level planets will allow you to build ships more inexpensively. Class 8 home worlds get a 15% discount on cost and allows you to build Railships. Class 9 home worlds get an additional 15% discount on ships and allows you to build Stargates. Scouts (spies sneaking about...) Scouts can scan multiple planets before finally landing on one. They can be invaluable for keeping track of enemy fleets. Note that scouts attempt to scan a planet without being detected. The more ships present on a planet, the more difficult it is to pass undetected. If your scout is detected, it will be destroyed. If an enemy scout is detected attempting to scan one of your worlds, it will be destroyed before making a report. GALAXY MAP (The window to the universe) The Galaxy map is used to display the location and state or each of the 26 planets in the universe. The first letter of the planet along with the class of the planet is displayed for each planet. If a planet has not been explored, the class will be displayed as a question mark. Map Modes Conquest offers several different viewing modes for the galaxy map. You can view planets based on the strength of the fleets occupying the world, or based on when ships already in flight arrive at a world. Strengths and times of arrival are coded to particular colors. From strongest to weakest or from soonest to latest the colors range: Red, Orange, Yellow, Brown Note that strength of unowned planets is only based on Intelligence reports which may not be entirely accurate (Up to date). There is an option to switch the viewing mode of the Galaxy map from planet strength to ship arrival. The 'F' key will display the map in the same colors as the planet strength option, but the colors refer to ship arriving Next turn (Red), 2 turns (Orange), 3 turns (Yellow), or some time in the distant future (Brown). To restore the Planet Strength viewing mode press the 'N' (normal) key. If there is a stargate on a planet that you own, the letters will be displayed in White. The map will also indicate the type of Battle Report if there is one for a planet on the current turn, a colored square will appear around the planet. The colors mean the following: White = Victory / Re-enforcements / Colonization Blue = Rebellion Green = Scouting Report Cyan = Battle Loss Yellow = Battle in progress Each of the planets is actually a gadget. When you wish to select a planet for input, such as selection source and destination for fleets, click on the planet. PLANETS (your neighborhood.) In Conquest there are a total of nine different classes of planets: Class 1, 2, and 3 supply raw materials and generate a modest income. Class 4, 5, and 6 supply ample materials and labor. These planets are often inhabited by native who really aren't thrilled to work for you. From time to time they may try to rebel and destroy the ships that guard the planet. Persevere! These planets generate a generous amount of income that will speed your way towards victory. CLass 7, 8, and 9 are home worlds. In addition to generating large incomes, they allow you to build ships. It is advantageous to own more than one home world should you suddenly find one occupied by an opponent. Class 8 planets give a 15% discount on building ships. Class 9 planets give an additional 15% discount. NOT HAPPY WITH YOUR PLANET? CHANGE IT! You can change the class level of planets two ways: The Upgrade command allows you to spend income to increase the class of a planet. The cost of upgrading a planet is as follows: New Class Credits --------- ------- Class 2 : 20 Class 3 : 25 Class 4 : 55 Class 5 : 90 Class 6 : 110 Class 7 : 200 Class 8 : 300 Class 9 : 400 The increase of income of the new class will pay for the upgrade in ten turns for a class 2, 12 for a class 3, 14 for a class 4, etc. Classes 7, 8, and 9 are the exceptions, but there are other significant advantages such as the ability to collect income and build ships from these planets. The Scrap command will reduce the class level of planet by one. Doing this will strip the planet immediately and you will receive income worth approximately half required to upgrade it. It takes time a few turns to scrap a planet. Even though you receive the income immediately, you will not be allowed to scrap the planet again for a few turns. Higher class planets require longer periods to scrap. You can only scrap planets that you own. (Of course!) If the planet that you wish to scrap has a stargate on it, you will be asked if you with to scrap the stargate. Doing so will gain you 75 credits. The scraping of a stargate will not affect ships already in flight to the stargate. NOTE: Capturing enemy planets deep in enemy territory and scrapping them is known as Raping. Guaranteed to annoy! TRAVEL (getting around the neighborhood...) Send ships to other planets using the "Launch Fleet" command. Fleets of ships will only move as fast as the slowest ship. The distance between two planets is displayed at the bottom of this requester. There is also a Distance command under the Planet menu. (This is activated by the 'D' key.) Ships, from fastest to slowest are Scouts, Cruisers, MissileShips, Dreadnoughts, and RailShips. Scouts are not considered part of a fleet and may be launched by using the menu "Launch Scout" command under the Ships menu. STARGATES (I was going HOW fast???) A stargate is a device that allows fleets to travel at great speeds to specific locations. A ship that enters one end of a stargate will emerge from the other end three turns later. This is true regardless of the distance or type of ship. Note that in order to use a stargate, both source AND destination planets must have a stargate, and you must own both. Stargates may only be built when you own a Class 9 home world and cost 100 credits each. COMBAT (how to take what SHOULD be yours...) When more than one enemy fleet is present on a planet, combat occurs. The offensive capabilities for the entire enemy fleet are compared to the defensive capabilities of your fleet. This determines how many casualities you will sustain. Casualties will consist of a number of ships that you will lose. Note that the with this system, in order to simplify matters, ships are considered either completely intact or destroyed. Casualties will be first removed from ships in the following order: Cruisers, MissileShips, Dreadnoughts, Railships This means that all casualties will be taken from cruisers until none are left, then from missileships, and so forth. Railships are a special case. These ships can attack from long range and destroy a ship with a single shot from their massive cannon. These ships can only fire once a turn but destroy ships in the reverse order of normal casualties: Railships, Dreadnoughts, MissileShips, Cruisers This means that after one turn of combat only one side will still have any railships in combat. These ships can be an extreme strategic advantage, but are also the slowest traveling ships. Planets of class 4, 5, or 6 will have natives. These natives when left alone will slowly build ships of their own. Class 4 and 5 can only build cruisers. Class 6 planets can build missile ships as well. A player discovering a class 6 planet late in the game might find a mighty native fleet to contend with! NOTE: Scouts are non-combative ships. This means that they have no means of attacking or defending themselves. If they ever enter a conflict with other combative ships, they will be destroyed. It is not possible to colonize a planet with a scout since this type of ship is essentially a scanner with HUGE engines, unmanned. INCOME (what you need to buy those neat toys...) All planets generate income each turn. If you own the planet, you get all the income stored for the planet. It is therefore a stategic advantage to conquer the natives before your opponent does. The income generate by a planet is directly related to the class of the planet. The higher the class, the more income generated. There is a larger increase in income between 3 to 4, and 6 to 7. Note that a class six planet sitting in the corner of the map may have over 100 credits stored up after several turns if no one owns it. If no one is there to collect income, natives may use some of these funds to build up their own fleets, especially when defending their planet! REBELLIONS (Natives don't play nice...) Natives are not especially thrilled to have your fleets occupy their worlds by force. Planets with a class of 4, 5, or 6 will rebel against your forces from time to time. When a rebellion occurs, you may lose some ships. Ships are lost in the same order as in normal combat. You can lessen the frequency of the rebellions by keeping a large force on the planet to intimidate the populous. Though rebellions will be less frequent, they will still eventually occur. To forever end rebellions, you must either scrap a planet down below class 4 or upgrade it above class 6. INTELLIGENCE (Is there such a thing? YES!) As the game progresses, you will receive Battle Reports informing you about the results of various planetary events. These reports will be saved in an Intelligence database. This database will keep the last three reports that you have for each planet. With this you can carefully plan your attacks, guaranteed for victory. TALLY (Checking your progess towards Meglomania.) The menu command Tally allows you to see how much of the universe you occupy. It will inform you the percentage of planets you control, as well as the percentage of planets based on Class level that you own. It also will display the total number of ships that you have purchased, are on planet, in flight, or destroyed. With this you are able to monitor your progress in the game and refine your playing strategies. The score associated with the Tally command is provided to decide a winner when the game is a draw. The score is a combination of the planets owned and ships currently owned. Planet class is heavily weighted in the calculation of the score. Score = (# Ships * Cost) / 10 + (Planet Class * Planet Class * 10) MAIL (Taunting service...) A mail system is available to send messages between players. Note that mail messages are always delivered the next turn. This means that when Player 1 enters a message to Player 2 on turn #3, Player 2 will not see that message when he plays turn #3, but when he plays on turn #4. SAVE GAME (You can't ALWAYS play conquest, can you?) You may save a game of conquest at almost any point in the game. The Save command will end your current turn and save the game to disk. If you have the REQ.LIBRARY library in you LIBS: directory, you will be presented with a file requester so you can name your save file. If this library is not present, Conquest will save the game to a file called "Conquest.Save" in the current directory. The save game feature can be used as a "Play by Mail" feature. After you make a move, save the game and send a copy of the file to your opponent. When he loads the game, it will be his turn. He does the same and returns the file to you. I have played several games of Conquest on BIX this way. Note that in order to make sure that your opponent doesn't peek at your screens in Play by Mail games, you may select to use Passwords in the startup screen. When passwords are in use, you type in the password that you wish to use at turn #1, and use that password for all subsequent turns. Game Replay (One more time!) Conquest offers a Replay mode when you end a game. The replay mode will display Next Turn, Previous Turn, and Exit gadgets. The galaxy map will be changed to indicate the state of the universe at the end of Turn #1. As you click on the Next gadget you will see the galaxy map updated to show the state of the universe at the end of turn #2. In order to display both players on the screen at the same time, the colors for Player #2 have been changed so that the background is black and the forground text and the border rectangle indicate the strength color of the planet. The strength of each planet is ranked versus the strongest planet in the universe (Not counting natives.) This makes it easy to see just who is stronger from turn to turn. Planets that have a defeat battle report for that turn will be displayed in Cyan. Planets that are in battle will be displayed in Yellow. Planets with stargates are displayed in White. This should go quite a ways towards analyzing what went wrong in your last game... If Passwords are being used for the game, (usually reserved for E-mail games), BOTH players will have to enter their passwords before final tally or game Replay can be used. This is to prevent unscrupulous players from peeking at how their opponents are doing and use this information to an unfair advantage. Special Conquest Startup Features: PASSWORDS (Psst. Joe sent me...) The option allows the you to select passwords that must be entered at the start of each turn. This is to insure that your opponent can't look at your screen if you are saving games and playing by sending files to each other. Note that if you forget your password you can still exit the program, but you are out of luck as far as finishing the game goes, so REMEMBER it! If you have password mode selected, both players will have to enter the password in order to use final Tally and Replay commands. If your opponent isn't around, save the file and then ask him for the password. Load up the saved game and view the results. (Its a pain I know, but there are certain lengths one must go for security.) SYMMETRICAL UNIVERSE (Mirror, mirror on the screen...) The default universe options is a random universe. This allows the players to explore the universe and adapt to the environment. It is sometimes the case where one player's position is not a strong as the others because of the random distribution of planets. If you wish for a truely "fair" game, select the Symmetrical Universe option at the startup screen. This generates a universe where all planets are generated as a mirror image along the Y-Axis. This will include Planet class generation also. Use this option when you want to be sure that there are no whining complaints about poor startup postions. TURN TIMER (Are you done yet?!) How many times have you heard that when you play a game of Conquest? I have a good friend Jim, and we often bust each other's chops about how long we each take to make a turn. This is where the turn timer will help you out. The turn timer doesn't keep track of time in Real-Time but rather keeps track of the time that has elapsed each time you perform a command. It will flash the screen and display messages in the title bar indicating how much time you have left. When time expires, you will be told to finish up the turn NOW. If you ignore that message, you will be allowed to make another move and then Conquest will end the turn for you, whether you like it or not. Turn time is measured in seconds. If you set the timer to zero seconds, it is off and will never remind you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- There are many stategies and finer points to this game. If you can't seem to figure out the game, or have questions about it, send me a letter at the address below or contact me on BIX as mikebryant. If you like this program and would like to show your appreciation, send me a letter. If you REALLY like the program, send me money! I can be reached at: Mike Bryant 37 Adna Road Bristol, CT USA 06010 (203-585-8181) I am in the process of building a new home. If you wish to reach me after September 1991, write to: 30 Foxtail Road Middletown, CT USA 06457 (My new phone will not be unlisted, so call information (203)-555-1212.) This program has been evolving for a number of years now. Please feel free to send any comments or wishes for enhancements for future versions. Most of the suggestions I have received HAVE been included in the program! ======================================================================== Thank you for your support! Registered Users: ----------------- Doug Walker Mark Burton Rich and Adam Forster Dan Sugalski Tony Belding Darryl Dyck Gene Osborne Le M. Barry Chris Hopkins Andreas Keirat (West Germany) Marc Davage (England) ======================================================================== 5-21-90 Release of version 1.0 of Lore of Conquest 9-30-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.1 11-5-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.1a 11-7-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.1b 12-22-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.2 2-10-91 Release of version 1.3 of Conquest 2-25-91 Release of version 1.4 of Conquest 5-6-91 Conquest 1.5 8-10-91 Conquest 1.6 Gosh, does anyone actually read these notes? I thought that the notes section was getting a bit long so I've added the various features into the main text for this file. Hope this explains some of the things that Conquest does that you wondered about! I've added MANY checks to make sure that windows and screens actually get created. This should eliminate some annoying GURUs that may have occured in low memory situations. I have also improved the Symmetrical universe option. Planets are now randomly symmetrical. A new map mode displays planet strength several different ways: Strength versus self (Self only) This was the old style Strength versus self (for all players) Strength versus all planets Note that the strength of planets you don't own is calculated from your intelligence reports. This information may not be up-to-date. Many more key equivelancies have been added to make commands easier. A new Replay option has been added to allow you to replay the state of the map at the end of each turn from the start to the very end of a game. Very useful for analysis of games! A turn timer has been added to insure that players don't take too much time to make their turn. If you don't want to use the timer, just set it to zero. It has become evident after several games with my best friend and and game tester Jim, that upgrade costs were too low. (We ended one game with 75% of the planets class 9!) Upgrade costs have been revised in an effort to correct this. The code to make natives build ships on their own planet has been tweaked a bit to make them more intelligent. As time progresses, they will build ships to defend their planet based on their Bank balance. Note also, that if attacked, they will withdraw some funds from their bank to build more ships to defend the planet. Don't worry too much, they aren't allowed to use all their funds. If you can, try to take a planet in 1 turn and you will be rewarded for the effort! Twelve! Yes, 12 registrations so far! And two of them EUROPEAN! Thank you very much for your support. Because of this, I'm encouraged to continue development on this project. Sometime in the future: Computer opponents! It looks like I will be buying a house around September of 1991. Look for a new version of Conquest to be posted that shows my new address as well as other features that are currently in the works... --Mike B.