Author: Ulf Lorenz
Version: 0.3.1
Date: 07-19-2002

updated by Ulf Lorenz 14-12-2003


This document wants to give a brief overview about how to play freelords. As
the current version is still a bit unstable and in more or less heavy
development, the information here and the overall style of the game is very
unconvenient yet. The information here can be partly wrong or obsolete, but
should be a good start if you just want to have a short look. If you find 
something which isn't written in this document, but would be helpful to know,
send a mail to Michael, he is happy about such things. 8-)
I am happy, too.


Contents:
1. The Splash Screen
2. The Main Screen
    2.1. Menu items
3. Using the interface
4. Misc information
5. Army abilities
    5.1. Experience and levels


1. The splash screen

There are currently three buttons working here: "New Game", "Load Game" and
"Quit".
"Load Game" opens a file dialog where you have to select a game to be loaded;
"Quit" quits the game.
If you click on "New Game", another dialog pops up with a lot of buttons and
combo boxes etc. There, you can set the parameters for the game. If you want to
load a map, click on "Load Map" and then on the now visible "Browse" button.
You may select a map file and start the game. If you want to create a new
random map, You can specify players and map parameters.
The map parameters you can choose are the size, the distribution of the terrain
and the tileset. The currently available sizes are "Normal" (100x100 tiles),
"Small"(70x70) and "Tiny"(50x50). The distribution is done with the sliders at
the right side of the dialog. The numbers are merely the relative percentages,
so the sum may exceed 100%, in which case the single percentages will be
adjusted correspondingly.
For each player you can choose the player type, the player name and the
armyset. As player type you can currently select only human or a stupid AI.
Furthermore, you can select if new armies are produced and the existing armies
healed at the beginning of the corresponding player's turn, or if all armies
of all players are produced/healed together at the beginning of a new round.
When you are ready, push the large OK button at the bottom.


2. The Main Screen

Most part of the screen is self-explaining. The menu is explained in section
2.1. To the top left you can click on the minimap to change the display.
On the right you have information about your gold, the current turn and
several control buttons. The meaning of the buttons is:

legs            - continue movement from last turn
arrow           - select next unit which is not defending
shield          - mark the unit as defending; the unit will be ignored when
                  searching for the next unit
arrow + shield  - set the unit to defending and go to the next unit
question mark   - search a ruin or visit a temple (there has to be a hero in
                  the stack to do this)
sand glass      - finish your turn
arrows          - center on the currently active unit

If the buttons are grey, their function is currently unavailable.

If you have selected a stack, the single armies in the stack appear on the
bottom of the screen. Right-clicking on one of the pictures will display a
dialog with more information about the army.


2.1. The menu
There are for menus, "Game", "Reports", "Options" and "Help". The submenus in
the "Help" menu are currently unimplemented.

In the "Game" menu you can load a game, save a game and quit the current game.
The difference between "Save As" and "Save" is that "Save" will overwrite the
save game which your game is either loaded from or has been saved to last time.

The reports menu contains reports about the gold of all players, the armies,
the cities and the pending quests your heroes have so far.

Under "Options" you can switch smooth scrolling on or off. If switched on, the
map will not move in one step whenever the view changes, but go through
several transitions (try it out to see the effect). With nextplayerpopup you
can turn the image announcing the next player on or off.


3. Using the interface

Click on a unit to select it. To deselect it, either click on the defend
button or select another unit (this is propably something to get used to, but I
have been said and found out this is original Warlords behaviour). Click on a
destination to move there, a city to attack it, an enemy unit to attack it etc.

Right-clicking on a city opens a dialogue. It shows you the current units you
can produce, the tax income of the city, the defense level and some buttons,
whose use is the following:

Upgrade -   upgrades the city walls by one level (up to level 3). Costs
            (current level)*1000 gold. Each level gives a defense bonus of
            20% to all defending units in battle.

Buy production  -   another dialogue appears which shows you which
                    production you can buy. A city can hold a maximum of 4
                    different productions. You can't select a type which the
                    city can already produce or which is too expensive.


For the following informations, it would be good to distinguish the terms stack
and army. An army is a single unit, like a dragon, a fighter etc. Up to 8 armies
can be combined, joined etc. in a stack.

If one of your stacks stands on a ruin or a temple and has a hero (!!!),
you can search it. If you search a temple, you may then choose to either get
a quest (if your hero currently has none) or bless your armies.Blessing gives
all participating armies a once and for all bonus of one strength (unless they
have already been blessed, of course). Quests can be given to a hero, who
receives (or will receive in the future :) ) some reward upon completion.
A quest may be "search this ruin" or "kill this hero". If you search a ruin,
you will certainly first have to defeat the monsters lurking there. If you do
this, you will get some reward (currently 600-1000 gold).

Although it is hard to see, you can also split stacks and join them, if the
joining stacks together have not more than 8 armies. To join two stacks, simply
move one at the top of the other. To split a stack, select one and click on the
army icons on the bottom of the screen which you want to deselect. You can now
move the selected armies and therefore split the stack.


4. Misc Information

This is some unsorted information about freelords. The army abilities and fights
have a separate chapter. Look there to find more.

- Each unit costs money every turn. This is the "upkeep" data on the city
screen. Heroes don't cost any upkeep.

- Sometimes, heroes will offer to work for you. In difference to the hero you
get at the beginning of the game, they will cost you money to hire. They are
quite powerful, allowing you to search temples/ruins and giving other units a +1
strength bonus in combat.

- Although ships can move and fight on water, embarking/disembarking does not
work yet.

- Units regain one fifth of their hitpoints every turn.

- The vitality value of an army has currently no purpose.

- Negative gold amounts won't make your units run away, but you can neither buy
additional productions nor upgrade cities. Armies will still be produced.

- When fighting a city, you have to face _all_ defenders at once. Currently, you
can only attack with one stack.

- In fights, there is always a minimum hit chance of 5% (maximum 95%)

- You have won when you have defeated all other (human) players. If you play on
your own, you can't currently win.

- Currently, the only possibility to earn money is searching ruins and having 
many cities. :)


5. Army abilities

This chapter deals with some internal information about units. As mentioned at
the beginning, gaining infomation about the units is currently quite
unconvenient. The unit informations are to be found under
$freelords/pic/army/<armysetname>, where armysetname is currently default or
third_age. In this directory, you find a file called default.xml. Open it with
a text editor. The content should be quite obvious. The unit values are:

Name, Picture	-	self-explaining
Production	-	the number of turns a city needs to produce this army
Production cost	-	the gold to be paid to buy this production
Upkeep		-	the amount of gold the unit needs each turn
Strength...Vitality	-	self-explaining

Leaves Move_Bonus and army bonus. To understand them, open the file
$freelords/src/common/defs.h. The move boni look like "MAPTILE_SWAMP" and are
each associated with a number. These are the values of "move_bonus" in the
army description files. An army can have more than one move bonus, in this case,
they simply add, i.e. MAPTILE_SWAMP+MAPTILE_HILL gives a value of 12. A move
bonus means that the stack can move over this specific terrain for 2 move points
only,if all armies have this bonus. MAPTILE_WATER is special. If an army doesn't
have this, it can't move over water
A bit above this you find the army boni. They add like move boni. The number
behind each bonus "1<<x" means "2 to the power of x" (for non-programmers).
Some additional infos to the boni:

ARMY_HERO           -   the bonus dosn't affect the hero himself or other heroes
ARMY_CAVALRY        -   the bonus doesn't work when attacking cities or ruins
ARMY_HEALFAST       -   not implemented yet
ARMY_EVADE          -   not implemented yet
ARMY_CRITICAL       -   the chance is 1% to kill an opponent with one blow
ARMY_IS_LOADED etc  -   not implemented yet


5.1. Experience and Levels

If two stacks battle each other and some armies are killed, their XP values
(= how much XP they are worth) are added to a pool and evenly ditributed
among all surviving enemy armies. When a unit has gained enough
experience, it can advance a level. You need ten experience points
multiplied with the current level to advance one level, i.e. a level 5
unit needs 50 experience to advance. Whenever a unit has collected enouh
experience, a dialog will pop up and ask which stat to raise
permanently.
