Author: Ulf Lorenz
Version: 0.3.7

updated by Ulf Lorenz 02-17-2006
updated by Ulf Lorenz 11-04-2005
updated by Ulf Lorenz 02-27-2005
updated by Ulf Lorenz 12-14-2004
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 seven buttons here: "New Campaign", "New Game", 
"Load Game", "Tutorial", "Language", "New Network Game" and "Quit".

The "New Campaign" and "New Network Game" buttons still don't work. There is
some basic network support, but it currently just is and does nothing.

"Load Game" opens a file dialog where you have to select a game to be loaded.
The game is always saved automatically at the beginning of each turn, this is
the autosave.sav entry. If you run into a bug, it would be nice if the
development team gets it. :)

"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). Just play it. :)

"Quit" quits the game.

Clicking on "Language" lets you select the language of the game. Currently, only
German and Italian localisations exist, a Hindi locale is (hopefully) coming soon.
The corresponding buttons should be visible if you can select the localisation.
Should you enter another one, please note that you may get problems when not
using utf8 (for simplicity: just click on the available buttons unless you know
what you are doing).

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 scroll the visible part of the map by either using the cursor
keys, clicking somewhere on the minimap in the top right corner or moving the
mouse over one of the arrows 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
arrows          - center the map on the currently active unit
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
shield + leg    - set unit to defending and go to next unit that can move
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

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".

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. In the army and city
report, just click on one item to move the map to the position of the stack or
city.

Under "Options" you can open an option dialog. In the audio options, you can
enable/disable music (currently only a demo track in the main screen) and set
the volume. Under video, you can select a resolution and switch from windowed
mode to fullscreen and vice versa. Under "misc", you can select if players are
announced at the beginning of their turn and toggle smooth scrolling (try it
out to see what it is). Clicking on "OK" applies the new options, while "Save"
also saves the options in a config file so they are automatically used during
then next startup.

In the "Help" menu, you can currently select only an about dialog that scrolls
all developers and contributors. 

2.2. Keyboard Shortcuts

You can use the keyboard to access various functions. The keys are:

f - toggles fullscreen mode
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 stack to select it. To deselect it, click on the defend
button, select another stack (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 stack 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 stacks will join both 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.
For the following it should be noted that there are two different kinds of
production which a city can have. Basic productions are armies from the default
armyset. They are rather weak standard units. Advanced productions are armies that
are better and usually more expensive. They can be chosen from the player's own
armyset.

Now the button's use is the following:

Upgrade -   upgrades the city 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. Furthermore,
            the income is increased by 50% and production capabilities are
            added. On the first level, a city has 2 basic productions, on the
            second 3 basic and 1 advanced, and on the third level 4 basic and
            two advanced production capabilities.

Vecotring - Clicking on this button lets you select vectors for your cities.
            Freshly produced units will automatically have their path set to
            the city vector. This way, you just click on the "move all" button
            to move new units at a destination away from their home city.

Buy basic  -    Adds a basic production to the city. You can select which
                production you want to add in another dialog.

Buy advanced -  Same as buy basic, but adds an advanced production to the city.


Right-clicking on a ruin gives you some information about the id, the
location and the name of the ruin. The same goes for temples.

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 some reward upon completion (currently only some amount of gold).
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 who 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.

- 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 heal 1/10th of their hitpoints per turn +1 for every point of vitality
  above 5 (-1 for every point below 5), but at least 1 HP.

- 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.

- You have (usually, not in the tutorial) won when you have defeated all other
  players.

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

- When a city is taken by another player, the advanced productions are removed
  while the basic ones are kept. If you pillage a city, the level of the city is
  decreased or all (basic) productions are removed. For this, you get some gold.
  Razing a city destroys it permanently.

- Cavalry looses its attacking bonus when not attacking on grass

- ships in cities have their attack strength halved


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
Regeneration-   Unit heals one hitpoint per combat round and is completely healed
                at the end of combat.
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

When two stacks of different players meet, a fight starts. First thing to note is
that all stacks surrounding the attacked stacks are drawn into the battle.
However, this affects only stacks that can move on water if the attacked unit is
located on water, or stacks that move on land if the attacked unit is on land.
If a city is attacked, all units are thrown into battle.

A fight always ends after 30 rounds. If neither the attacker nor the defending
stack has been destroyed, it ends with a draw. A round consists of each
army selecting a victim and attacking it. First, all armies of the attacker
attack, then the surviving defenders. Each army selects a random adversary.
Then the attacking army's strength and the attacked army's defense is calculated,
taking into account terrain bonuses or e.g. heroes.
After that, for each point of strength, the attacker strikes once. The higher
the defence, the lower the chance that the strike will hit (in detail, it is
1/defense). For each successful hit, the attacked army looses one hitpoint.

One further thing to note is that all armies are separated into close-combat and
ranged-combat units. Closed combat units of one side can only attack close-
combat units of the other side (unless there are none, then they will strike the
ranged combat units). Ranged combat units can hit everything, but prefer (2/3
chance) to strike enemy close combat units.
