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Text File | 1989-07-10 | 19KB | 388 lines

T H E G A M E O F J EEEEE OOO PPPPP AAA RRRRR DDDD J E O O P P A A R R D D J EEE O O PPPPP AAAAA RRRRR D D J E O O P A A R R D D JJJJJ EEEEE OOO P A A R R DDDD Version 1.2 Robert A. Casper So THRILLING that 915 Sacandaga Road the screen VIBRATES Scotia, NY 12302 with EXCITEMENT!! Jeopard is a classic strategy game for 2 to 8 players. The object is to conquer the world by occupying every territory on the screen. REQUIREMENTS: Amiga computer (keyboard, mouse, one drive) One megabyte memory (at least) a few hours THE SCREEN: The text window appears at the top of the screen. This window will contain information, instructions, and menus. You can drag this window down to access the front/back gadgets of the Jeopard screen. The map window contains the playing board. The world is divided up into 42 territories and 6 continents. Each territory contains a colored box and a number. The box (called the "hotspot") is the place where you click the mouse when you wish to select that territory. The hotspot box will be the color of the player who owns it. The number tells you how many armies are on that territory. When more than 99 armies are on a single territory, two asterisks (**) will appear instead of a number. There must be at least one army on each territory during the game. There are three command boxes on the righthand side of the window. The first one, labelled "END TURN AND PASS THE DICE", should be clicked when you are finished with your turn. The second, "CANCEL ATTACK", is used if you change your mind about which territory to attack from. This only works if you have NOT selected a target territory. The third box, called "REPEAT LAST ATTACK", saves you the trouble of selecting a source and target if they are the same as last time. The "last attack" is reset at the beginning of each turn. This command box is especially useful when you are using manual dice rolling. A requester window will occasionally appear between the text and map windows. When this happens, you MUST type something in to continue with the game. If you accidentally click the mouse in another part of the screen when a requester is present, you will have to click in the requester before you can type into it. The requester will contain a question and a default answer in brackets. If you want to choose the default answer, just hit RETURN without entering anything. A small window also appears on the workbench screen with my name and address. This is not used during gameplay. CARDS There is a card for every territory on the screen, plus two wild cards. Each card (except the wilds) has a symbol attached to it. The symbols are CANNON, SOLDIER, and HORSE. A wild card represents all three symbols. You receive one card after every turn during which you attack and occupy attack a territory. At the start of your turn, you may "turn in" a set of three cards to gain bonus armies. The number of armies that you get starts at 4 and goes up to 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 25, etc. The number increases every time someone turns in cards. A set of cards is 3 soldiers, 3 cannons, 3 horses, one of each, or any two and a wild. You MUST turn in a set of cards when you have five cards at the start of your turn. There is always a set in any five cards. If you eliminate one of your opponents during the game, you will get all the cards he was holding. If you have more than 4 cards when this happens, you will be able to turn in a set, place the bonus armies wherever you want, and continue attacking. HINT! -- When you have a weak position on the board, you should turn in cards as soon as possible so that people won't wipe you out to get your cards. RUNNING THE PROGRAM You may either double click the icon or type the following: 1> stack 5300 1> jeopard SETTING UP THE BOARD The first requester asks if you want to play a saved game. The program doesn't tell you which games have been saved, so you should know which game you want to load before you start Jeopard. If you wish to start a NEW game, just push RETURN. Next you choose the number of players and their colors. The first player is randomly chosen, but the order in which you select colors is the order that you will take turns playing. This is analogous to choosing where you will sit around the table. For example: if you select RED, BROWN, and GREEN in that order, RED isn't automatically the first player. If BROWN is chosen to go first, the turns will progress like this: BROWN, GREEN, RED, BROWN, GREEN, RED, etc. You are now given the choice of Random or Strategic placement of armies. Random placement (the default) lets Jeopard divide the world between all the players. Strategic placement lets you pick which territories you want. Each player in turn will select the hotspot of an unclaimed territory until none are left. Note that there is no need to click in the last territory because Jeopard will automatically give it to the next player in line. Now you place your remaining armies on your territories. If you want to change your mind later, before the game begins, you may. PLAYING THE GAME A player's turn consists of four steps: 1. Adding new armies 2. Attacking 3. Fortifying your position 4. Viewing your cards 1. Adding new armies The number of armies you receive is determined using three factors: number of territories owned, continents occupied, and cards turned in. If you only own one territory, your armies are automatically put there. A. The number of territories owned is divided by three, fractions dropped. This gives you the basic number of new armies (minimum 3) B. If you occupy every territory of a continent at the beginning of your turn, you will get bonus armies. The bonus depends on the continent: Australia 2 armies South America 2 armies Africa 3 armies North America 5 armies Europe 5 armies Asia 7 armies C. You will get more armies for turning in a set of cards. If you own a territory represented by a card that you turn in, there is an additional bonus of two armies that goes in that territory. Whenever a card is displayed on the screen, it is the color of the owner to make it easier to pick out the ones you own. 2. Attacking After you place the new armies, you may attack your opponents. Do this by clicking on the place you want to attack from, then the target territory. These two territories must be adjacent. Adjacent territories are either physically touching or connected by a line. Alaska is adjacent to Kamchatka. You must have at least two armies in the place you are attacking from, because you have to move armies into a captured territory. The number of dice the attacker may roll on a single attack depends on how many armies are on the territory he is attacking from. This table shows the exact number allowed: Number of Armies Minimum dice allowed Maximum dice allowed 2 1 1 3 1 2 4 (or more) 1 3 The defender may roll one die for every army on his territory, with a maximum of two. The defender always wins in the case of a tie. Generally, if you roll more dice, you have a greater chance of winning, but you risk losing more armies. The defaults for the number of dice are always the maximum available to you. When I play Jeopard, I always use the defaults. There are two ways of rolling dice: Manual and Autoroll. The default is Autoroll, because I use it all the time. If you prefer Manual, just choose it once and it will be the new default for that game. Manual rolling will display the attacker's dice "tumbling". Hit any key to freeze them. The numbers will be sorted and displayed in the text window. Now the defender's dice will "tumble". He should hit a key to freeze them. The armies lost will be removed from both attacking and defending territories. You can attack again if you wish. This is where the "REPEAT LAST ATTACK" command box comes in handy. The Autoroll technique is a real advantage over physically rolling dice. You can conduct a major battle between hundreds of armies in a matter of seconds! When you choose Autoroll, you decide at what point you will stop attacking, so you can prevent losing all your armies. The computer will fight both sides. For example, suppose you have 35 armies in Brazil and you want to take over North Africa, which has 20 armies in it, but you don't want to lose all your armies doing it. Just select Autoroll and attack until you have 15 armies left. The combat will continue until you have 15 armies OR you have won. Autoroll uses sequential numbers in the random number list, so the results can be kind of strange. It is not unusual to win the battle mentioned above with 20 armies left, or to lose 20 armies trying to defeat 8 defenders. However, the player with the most armies will usually win. I would recommend having 1.5 times your opponent's armies before engaging in an Autoroll battle. I like Autoroll because it makes the game go faster and the dice less predictable. Perhaps you could use Manual rolling for sundry attacks and Autoroll only for large battles. The players should agree on this before playing. When you defeat a group of armies, you must move some of your armies into the captured territory. You have to leave at least one behind. The default number to move is all of them, so be careful that you don't fight you way into a corner by hitting RETURN too many times during combat and accepting this default number by accident. You may attack any number of times as long as you have armies in territories adjacent to opponents. You can choose not to attack at all. Click in the "END TURN" command box when you are done. If you attack down to the last man and have no spare armies left, your turn automatically ends. 3. Fortifying your position Now you can move armies around in your territories. Jeopard does not restrict movement between territories, so you will have to decide on these rules. Here are some popular ways of doing this: A. Move as many of your armies as you like from ONE of your territories into ONE of your adjacent territories. B. Armies can be moved into adjacent territories only. No limit on the number of territories. C. Any amount of armies may be moved among your territories, so long as the source and destination are connected by a path of your territories. (I use this method) D. No restrictions. Move anything anywhere. 4. Viewing your cards If you captured a territory during your turn, you can view your cards. There is a "Hit RETURN to see cards" prompt so your opponents can avert their eyes if you wish to play that way. The cards will be displayed in the color of the player who owns the corresponding territory. THE MENUS There is only one pull-down menu selection, QUIT. This does NOT have a "are you sure" question, so don't use it. I used keyboard menus instead. The main options menu has these choices: Save Game, Restore Game, View Cards, Status, Edit, and Quit. This is what they do: 1. Save Game This lets you save the current game as a small disk file. You can store up to nine games on a disk. If you save your game as game#1 and there is a game#1 stored on the disk, the old game will be lost. 2. Restore Game This function will load a saved game. You would normally do this from the first Y or N prompt, but you can load an old game at any time if you wish. The current game will be lost if you restore an old game. 3. View Cards This will print out any player's cards. This should be done with the player's permission. An extra prompt was added so that the other players can avert their eyes. 4. Status of Player This will print some information on how well a player is doing. It is not very useful, but it's there if you want it. 5. Edit menu Goes to a menu that lets you edit the game board. See below for details of the Edit options. 6. Quit Game This DOES have an "are you sure" prompt. You may leave Jeopard using this option. The Edit menu lets you substantially alter the game. This should only be used in the following situations: A. There is a dispute over something, and both parties agree to return the game to the way it was before the something happened. B. A key is accidentally pressed and everyone agrees that the result should be changed. C. You wish to set up a situation to see what would happen. D. You wish to enter a board game into Jeopard. E. Use this as part of the set up procedure to make the game more interesting. 1. Change Current Player This lets you alter whose turn it is. 2. Ownership of a Territory Gives a territory (and any armies on it) to another player. 3. # Armies on a Territory Lets you change the number of armies on a territory. This doesn't add armies, it sets a new value. 4. Re-Draw the Map Re-draws everything in the map window. This was useful during development, but there's no real reason to use it now. 5. # Card Sets Turned In Lets you change the next card value up or down. Initially setting this to 10 or 15 armies will make the cards much more valuable. 6. Return to Options Menu Go back to main options menu. This is the default for the Edit menu. These functions let you change any aspect of the game except the number of players, player colors, and cards owned by the players. QUIRKS IN THE GAME If you are at the "Automate rolling?" prompt and you have changed your mind about attacking, type Y and enter the number of armies on your source territory. No attacking will take place. If you are stuck in the Fortifying section and it keeps repeatedly asking you how many armies you want to move, and you only have one army in the source territory, enter a -1 to continue. ERROR CODES Once in a while, Jeopard may crash. I have tried to weed out all the bugs, but I may have missed one in a section that hardly ever gets used. If Jeopard does crash, it probably won't crash the system as well. If you find a bug, please write me a note describing what you were doing when it happened so I can fix it. If you are playing a hot game, you should save it once in a while just in case. Better safe than dead. ERROR #7 -- OUT OF MEMORY (Don't multitask if you have 1 Meg.) ERROR #9 -- SUBSCRIPT OUT OF RANGE (This means I messed up somewhere. These are usually easy to fix if I know where they are.) ERROR #61 -- DISK FULL (You tried to save a game on a full disk.) ERROR #70 -- PERMISSION DENIED (The save disk is write protected.) TREATIES There is a good reason why I didn't make "treaties" and "non- aggression pacts" part of the game. I am convinced that they absolutely ruin the fun. You win this game by employing a superior strategy, intelligently allocating resources, and attacking your opponents. If two players agree not to attack each other at a common border, they have an unfair advantage. The other players are forced to gang up to compete. You will eventually get to a point where the last five players sit in their continents, piling up armies at their borders until one bored player gives up and breaks a treaty. This player often depletes his armies and is the first one off the board. "Political Jeopard" and Jeopard are not the same game. "Political Jeopard" is usually won by the first person to fortify a continent and make a couple treaties. In such a game, it is to your advantage NOT to attack. I have nothing against peace in the real world, but it makes a war game very boring. I recommend that everyone play according to the rules and his own strategy. Do not look to your opponents for help, and please don't gang up on anyone. OFFICIAL ITEMS Jeopard is freely redistributable, so long as my files are not altered in any way. If you have a suggestion for improvement, please contact me. Jeopard is Copyright 1988 by Robert A. Casper Absoft would like you to know that the linked runtime module that is necessary for Jeopard to run slowly is Copyright (c) Absoft Corp 1987 Jeopard's status is Shareware. This means that if you use it regularly, you should reimburse the author for his effort. See the accompanying "ReadMe.doc" file for details. PLAYING VARIATIONS If you have 2 to 4 players, you can have two or three colors per player. All the colors commanded by one player act like allies. A player is out of the game when all his colors are defeated. You can make the game more competitive by increasing the initial value of turned in cards to 10 or 15 armies. The cards become MUCH more valuable early in the game. Using all your resources to eliminate a player with cards can be a wise move in this scenario. Anyone who doesn't take over a territory each turn is at a disadvantage. This game is usually shorter. Reset the card value back to 4 cards at the beginning of each turn so that cards are worth much less. Now the emphasis is on continental strategy. Instead of playing for the whole board, play for half of it. In this game, a player must occupy 21 territories (50% of board) to win. The player status option can be used to check percentage of board owned. You can only do this with four or more players. Start the game with one player in each continent, with the rest of the board (if any) divided equally. Give everyone the same total number of armies. The object is to occupy at least one territory in each continent at the end of your turn.