Author: Ulf Lorenz
Version: 0.3.4

updated by Ulf Lorenz 12-14-2003
updated by Ulf Lorenz 05-02-2004
updated by Andrea Paternesi 07-03-2004
updated by Ulf Lorenz 10-14-2004
updated by Ulf Lorenz 10-29-2004


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 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 the developer list freelords-devel@lists.sf.net



Contents:
1. The Splash Screen
2. The Main Screen
    2.1. Menu items
    2.2. Keyboard Shortcuts
3. Using the interface
4. Items
    4.1. Basics
    4.2. Getting and equipping items
5. Misc information
6. Army abilities
    6.1. Experience and levels
    6.2. Medals of Honour
    6.3. Fighting



1. The splash screen

There are currently six buttons here: "New Campaign", "New Game", 
"Load Game", "Tutorial", "New Network Game" and "Quit".

The "New Campaign" and "New Network Game" buttons still don't work.

"Load Game" opens a file dialog where you have to select a game to be loaded;

"Tutorial" loads a kind of tutorial level. This level is meant to show some
features of FreeLords not yet implemented in the randomly-created game (such as
events or items). When it is started, just follow the orders in the dialog boxes.

"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 (random.map is the map that was generated the last
time) 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. The available player types are "None" (disable this player), "Human",
"Easy" (a very stupid Ai that may have units standing around doing nothing) and
"Smart" (an improved, though defensive, AI). The armyset determines which armies
you can produce.
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 simultanously 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). You can change the viewed part of the map by either using the cursor
keys, clicking somewhere on the minimap in the top right corner or clicking on
the scroll buttons around the bigmap. On the right you have information about
your gold, the current round and several control buttons. The meaning of the
buttons is:

arrow forward/bw- select next/previous unit which is not defending
arrow + leg     - select next unit which can move and is not defending
leg             - continue movement of the selected stack
legs            - continue movement of all stacks
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 the map on the currently active unit

If the buttons are grey, their function is currently unavailable (e.g. because
there isn't anything to be searched). If you don't remember the meaning of some
of the buttons, have the mouse stay over them for a while; a tooltip will
appear.

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 four menus, "File", "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 open an option dialog. There you can switch smooth
scrolling on or off and decide if the next player should be announced or not.
If smooth scrolling is 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).

2.2. Keyboard Shortcuts

In the latest release, you can use the keyboard to access various functions.
The keys are

a - opens the army report
c - opens the city report
q - opens the quest report
g - opens the gold report
s - opens dialog for saving the game
l - opens the dialog for loading a game
Esc - deselects the current stack

The cursor keys move the viewable portion of the map around. In various dialogs you
can press "Return" to exit the dialog. When selecting a file, Return confirms the
selection, Escape aborts it.


3. Using the interface

Click on a unit to select it. To deselect it, click on the defend
button, select another unit (with the buttons on the right side) or press
Escape or the right mouse button. Click on a destination to show the path
leading there. You can move a unit by double-clicking on the destination. If you
move onto an enemy unit or city, you start an attack. Moving on another of your
own units will join the stacks.

Right-clicking on a city opens a dialog. 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 when the city is attacked.

Buy production  -   another dialog appears which shows you which
                    production you can buy. A city can hold a maximum of 4
                    different productions.


Right-clicking on a ruin gives you some information about the id and the
location of the ruin (this is useful since quests are assigned to ruin ids, as
names have not been properly introduced yet).

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 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 a random amount of gold).

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. Items

Since the 0.3.4 release, FreeLords features items. Items can be worn by heroes
to increase or decrease some of their statistics.

4.1. Basics

There are four different types of items, namely weapons, shields, (body) armour
and accessoires. A hero can equip one item of each type. Furthermore, each hero
can carry an unlimited amount of items in his backpack (imagine that the hero
has a servant which carries all the stuff for him). Items can increase or
decrease each stat by an arbitrary value, or can even give the hero special
movement or army abilities (such as the Scroll of Waterwalking).

4.2. Getting and equipping items

It is not yet possible to get an item as a quest award or by searching a ruin.
They are only found in the tutorial. Items laying around can be identified by a
special symbol on the map. To get them, move your hero to the location of the
item and right-click on the image of the hero at the bottom of the screen. By
pressing "i" or clicking on the "Item" button below the image of the hero, you
enter the item dialog. There you can now see the items lying on the ground, in
the backpack etc. To equip an item, drop it or move it to the backpack, first
select the item by clicking on it, then click on the destination. The item will
be moved to the destination slot, if neccessary by swapping positions with the
item in the destination slot.
If e.g. the backpack contains more than three items and you want to put an
additional item in the backpack, scroll the backpack list a bit down. This will
work until a free slot after the last item appears, where you can put the item.
When you select an item, a description of its characteristics will be given.
Click on the item again to deselect it.


5. Misc Information

This is some unsorted information about freelords.

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

- Sometimes, heroes will offer to work for you. Hiring them will cost you money
  , however, 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 nor will armies be produced.

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

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

- You can earn money by searching ruins, having many cities, finishing quests or
  pillaging cities.

- Cavalry looses its attacking bonus on mountains and swamp

- If an attacking army is much stronger than the defending one, it has a chance
  to score two hits therefore doing double damage.

6. Army abilities

Besides the obvious abilities of armies (hitpoints, strength etc.), each army
has two special boni, the move bonus and the army bonus.

The move bonus reduces the number of movement points required to cross a certain
terrain to two. Therefore, while a mountain usually needs 6 movement points for
crossing, the mountain move bonus reduces this cost to two points. If a unit has
the water move bonus, it may also cross water, which is usually prohibited.

Furthermore, an army can have one of several army boni. They give this army some
additional special abilities, which are 

Ship        -   the unit may only move on water or within cities
Hero        -   gives all other units  +1 strength bonus in combat; may search
                temples and ruins
Cavalry     -   If the unit is on the attacker side and the defender is located
                on open terrain (grass, not within cities), the unit gets +1
                strength.
Anticavalry -   The unit doubles its strength against cavalry
Healfast    -   not implemented yet
Evade       -   not implemented yet
Assassin    -   The unit has a chance of 1% of scoring an instant kill on a
                succesful hit during combat


6.1. 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 distributed
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 enough
experience, a dialog will pop up and ask which stat to raise permanently.

6.2. Medals of Honour

There are three medals of honour which will ocassionally be given to units.
They are displayed at the upper left edge if a unit has these medals. Each medal
can only be awarded once and sticks to the unit until it dies.

The Medal of Damage (round and blueish) is earned if most of a unit's
attacks have resulted in a hit during a fight. It increases the strength by one.

The Medal of Defense (red cross) is assigned if a unit has hardly been hit
during a battle. It increases the defense by one.

The Medal of Honour (yellow star) is awarded if a unit has taken part in 10
battles. It increases the number of hitpoints by 4.

6.3 Fighting

If two stacks of different players meet, a fight starts. A fight always ends
after 30 rounds. If none of the stacks has been destroyed up to then, it is
interrupted. A round consists of each participating army having one chance to
score a hit. First, all armies of the attacker have a chance, then the surviving
defenders. Each army selects a random adversary. Then the difference between the
attacking army's strength and the attacked army's defense is calculated.
Depending on this value, it is checked whether the attacker has landed a hit or
not. In the first case, the attacked army loses a hitpoint, else the attack has
missed.
