Master of the Empire (MOTE) for OS/2

================================================================== Master of the Empire OS/2 Warp Version Copyright (c) 1996-2004 Michael Ramsey. Contact information: www.masterempire.com miker@masterempire.com ================================================================== This is the FREE release of Master of the Empire (MOTE) for OS/2. But if you enjoy it you can send me a few bucks via paypal. Its a free service for transferring money (www.paypal.com and my paypal address is miker165@juno.com. OR you can just send me postcard from your part of the world, since I know alot of OS/2 users live all around the globe. Send your postcard to Michael Ramsey, 3716 W. Iola St. , Broken Arrow OK 74012. Thanks again for staying with OS/2 and enjoy my little addition to the world of OS/2 gaming. -Mike ================================================================== ================================================================== Master of the Empire Players Manual OS/2 Warp Version The software, manual, "Master of the Empire" is Copyright (c) 1996, Trilliun Software Products. All Rights Reserved. Table of Contents 1. Introduction (a). The Story (b). What is Master of the Empire (c). The Map (d). Playing Pieces 2. Starting a Game Quickly (a). Starting a Random New Game Quickly 3. Playing the Game (a). Moving Units (b). Ending a Day. (c). Obtaining game info. 4. Units and Game Pieces (a). The Master of the Empire Game Pieces (b). Unit Advancement (c). Unit Orders (d). Units Suffering Attrition 5. Combat (a). Basic Flow of Combat 6. Empire Economics (a). Urban Site Breakdown (b). Taxing your Urban Sites (c). Production Actions (d). Diversification (e). Increasing a Cities Efficiency (f). The Global Market 7. Treaties 8. Game Options (a). Observe Computer Opponents (b). Play AVI's Appendix A: Unit Statistics Appendix B: Terrain Statistics INTRODUCTION (a). Introduction The commander walks into the darkened bunker, the walls glowing from the computer monitors, he glances at a soldier and then impatiently looks at the map of the frontlines. He barks at the soldier, " Whats the situation at Bautzen? " "Four enemy mechanized divisions are within 4 days of a wholesale slaughter sir!", the soldier glances quickly back at his array of monitors and continues, "There is also 2 air divisions of transports heading for Bautzen. We have only 2 tank divisions in the vicinity sir and they are severely damaged." The commander is obviously agitated at the frankness of the soldiers reports but more importantly realizes the peril of immediate situation. If Bautzen falls, then the enemy will have a clear path to the capital and if Flearus falls, the war is lost and the firing squads and death squads are then but a heartbeats away. "What are the closest units to Bautzen?", the commander barks. "Sir we a have viable interdiction force near Isonzo. We can have a resistance in place within 3 days! It'll be close, but the lives of thousands will hopefully be spared!" "What! hopefully, you better do better than that! If you don't want your family to grow up under a regime of hate! Get me those tanks to Beutzen NOW! What about air strikes? If those bastards are counting on an easy victory, I want to make sure none of them leave the battlefields of Bautzen alive." The soldier responds," Sir we can purchase 2 fighters from Texel and rain an arsenal from hell on their transports!" The commander barely conceals a smirk, "Soldier, get me those fighters and make them all burn!" You are that commander, making life and death decisions with thousands of lives, buying units, ordering units to the frontline, protecting cities from murderous assaults, and ordering the conquering of enemy nations. May you become the true Master of the Empire! (b). What is Master of the Empire? Master of the Empire is a multiplayer game of conquest, economic struggles, and resource control. The random world generator provides an infinite number of worlds to conquer. Your objective is to brutally exterminate all opposition to your regime and unite the world under your banner! To accomplish this you must destroy or control all of the cities on the planet. There are many ways to achieve this, through deceptive military tactics or even economic strangleholds on your enemies are possible! Master of the Empire also provides the ability to load in custom built worlds as well as full blown campaigns. Campaigns are a series of linked battles, that could take place on the same world or on foreign planets! (c). The Map Master of the Empire is played on a map that is different each time you play. Each part of the game map can be one of the four basic terrain types: ocean, plain, mountain and trees. There are also artificial constructs such as airports, cities, villages, towns and capitals. The last map piece is the most important. This is the resource tile. Resources come in the form of oil, gold, uranium, minerals, food and coal. Everything in the game is basically controlled by resources. Units cost certain amounts of resources to build, and constructs can only stockpile certain amounts before attrition starts in. (d). Playing Pieces The basic playing pieces to Master of the Empire are infantrymen, tanks, engineers, paratroopers, spies, bombers, fighters, air transports, cruisers, destroyers, battleships, subs and transports. Your basic job is to use these units to conquer and control the world. Your job is hampered even more so by the fact that at the start of the game, the game map is unexplored and you must explore it! 2. STARTING A GAME QUICKLY (a). Starting a Random New Game Quickly Now you can select various game options. Game Setup Cities. Alters the number of starting cities for you and the computer. Zubles. Allows you change the starting bankroll of your empire, for each of the cities. Neutral Level This sets the difficulty of neutral cities. Level 1 is the default level, while level three basically toughens up the neutral cities. Computer Level Levels. You can alter the basic difficulty of the computer opponent, from an easy level 1 opponent up to an advanced level 4 setting. Empire Information Now you can input your empires name. The name you enter as the rulers name will be used throughout the game as well as in the hall of fame! Initial Capital Information This window contains an abundance of information about your capital, you can raise taxes, alter production, rename the capital, and even take the capital offline in a crisis to conserve zubles. 3. Playing the Game (a). Moving Units Moving units about, is a simple and easy affair. You can just click anywhere on the map and your unit will move in that general direction or you can use the numeric keypad (keys 1-9) to move. Each move requires a certain amount of movement points. The amount is determined by what type of terrain you want the piece to move into. For example, a tank moving into a forested region requires 3 movement points to enter that square. (b). Ending a Day. This cycles the control of the game to computer which allows it to move, do resource management etc. this can be accomplished by either clicking on the end day menu item, or the end day bitmap on the command bar. (c). Obtaining game info. You can right click on any object in the game window and obtain info on it. Be it terrain info, enemy unit info or crucial city info, its all available by just RMB clicking on it. 4. UNITS AND GAME PIECES (a). The Master of the Empire Game Pieces Armies These are the most basic units of Master of the Empire. Armies are not the most powerful units in the game but they're abilities are far more reaching than just as cannon fodder. Armies can build airports and harden cities for your empire. Along with engineers, armies can become a pivotal role on any frontline. While the engineers tend to the repairs, armies can construct airports and more. Tank Metal machines of bone crushing horror. Nothing induces more fear into a man then to see these metal monsters pour over a hill ontop of them. These units are ideal to taking out cities. Spies Economic saboteur, theft and the ultimate betrayal, bribery! Spies are considered by some as the most expensive unit that you can never leave without. Spies when positioned next to an enemy city, can provide detailed city info as well as embezzling a certain amount of Zubles from the city! Another key action for spies is that they are allowed to bribe cities. Bribing cities is desirable because the constant fighting over a city can effectively turn it into a pile of rubble, capable of producing everything on a nonexistent time schedule. So if you find a economic powerhouse of a city, bribe it, instead of plowing a dozen tanks over it! Fighters Fighters are pivotal for rapid expansion. They move fast and can explore large amounts of territory before having to refueled. Use fighters for fast expansion. Bombers Hell from the skies. These monstrosities of the sky deal crippling blows to an enemies cities. Bombers cannot capture cities, but they can pulverize them into ruin. Just send a few armies in to mop up and occupy the city. Air Transports Used to transport paratroopers. Air transports with a full hold, can usually take the most fortified of cities. Cruisers A medium tonnage warship, with a relatively long range and with less armor then a battleship. Being a smaller class vessel it also has less firepower, but it makes up for it with speed and a general cheaper building cost. Excellent to escorting transports across canals. Destroyer A small fast warship, noted for its maneuverability. Submarine An underwater vessel used mainly as a first strike weapon against ships on the open sea. Troop Transport A large ship used to transport across the sea, armies, tanks, and engineers. Used primarily to initiate amphibious invasions. Aircraft Carrier A naval vessel designed as a mobile air base at sea. Aircraft can land and be refueled. An awesome power for striking against airborne opponents. Battleship The largest class of sea vessel, carrying the largest number of guns and armories and clad with the heaviest armor. Battleships if used properly can rule the sea in Master of the Empire without equal. Paratrooper This infantry is trained mainly for the purpose of seizing cities, that are not able to be reached by any other means. Usually mountain locked cities are taken in this manner. Engineer An all purpose unit that is used to repair units in the field. Engineers are the most effective when they accompany a strike force into hostile territories. When units are damaged, they can usually repair them in a few turns. (b). Unit Advancement Master of the Empire allows you to grow progressively throughout the game. The model that is used is that a unit who survives many battles will inherently receive some kind experience and thus make them harder to kill. Master of the Empire ranks a units as Regular, Veteran, Elite, Seasoned Elite or as a Hero. (c). Unit Orders Sentry Sentry is the command that allows your unit to set there and wait. The sentry order is available for all land and sea units. Fighters, Bombers and Air Transports cannot perform a sentry command. Hardening a City Hardening a city increases a cities ability to defend itself against invasion. Hardening a city can be performed by only infantry and tanks. Disband a Unit This relieves the unit of their command and they disappear forever. Build and Airport Allows only an infantrymen to build an airport. This costs zubles and also there is an associated maintenance cost. But they are ideal for long range bombing missions. Auto Exploration Your unit will seek out any unexplored territory without your guidance. Launch a Plane When you move a plane onto an aircraft carrier, this option allows you to launch these planes in an offensive against any hostile force. Drop a Paratrooper This allows the dropping of paratroopers onto a city. Since bombers cannot take over cities but just pound them into submission, air transports are a good substitute, because they cannot only weaken them but also conquer the cities! Go Home This sends any unit to his place of manufacturing. Sentry Till Repaired This will, if your unit is outside a city and damaged cause it to remain there until it is fully repaired. After a unit is fully repaired it will revert back to your immediate control. Nothing This basically clears out all orders that the unit had, and reverts them back to direct player control. (d) Units Suffering Attrition There are numerous ways to suffer attrition throughout the game. Attrition is directly related to your units in the game. Attrition is basically the concept that your unit suffers performance penalties because its home city has been taken, your empire can no longer support it, your overtaxing its home city, or over stockpiling of a resource in a location that cannot support that quantity. A unit will suffer attrition in the initial form of a lowered hit point amount. The hit point total is decremented until either the unit is disbanded or the situation that is causing attrition is remedied. 5. Combat Conducting combat in MOTE is a simple action, but the number crunching going on underneath, is a bit more complicated than just running into enemy tanks or cities. (a). Basic Flow of Combat 1. Attacker gains initiative 2. Get attack strength of the attacker 3. Get defense strength of the defender 4. Determine attack strength to defense strength ratio 5. Total= attack strength + defense strength 6. Attackers hit probability= attack divided by the total 7. We then roll a random number on a 100 sided dice 8. If then random number we rolled was less then the attackers hit probability then he gets a hit on the unit and damage is done. 9 Apply units shot dmg, to defenders damage rating We then do the same for the defender, except now his unit is the attacker. There are few other details that just glossed over here, they are the fact that a veteran unit can do more damage then a green unit and as such a veteran unit (usually a unit that has survived more than 5 battles) can take a little bit more damage, and in general hit a little bit harder. It only goes to say, that a veteran tank unit who has allot of combat experience can deal with combat a bit more effectively then a unit just freshly inducted into the war. 6. Empire Economics In Master of the Empire, there are a range of factors that can effect the way your empire produces units. Everything from the current global market conditions, amounts of resources being bought and sold or even the hate of a computer opponent can effect the economic controls in MOTE. (a).Urban Site Breakdown There are four basic urban sites in the game that provide a varying degree of productivity to the game. Urban sites are also referred to as constructs. Villages are small little sites that provide a minimal amount of efficiency to the empire. Towns are a little better, but still lack the basic stockpiling needed to effectively supply a frontline with troops. Cities are simply the best thing you can get away from your capital. They allow the almost best stockpiling of natural resources without any type of disaster and also have an excellent production efficiency. Your capital is your home, this is the basis for your empire. Some of your economic decisions will be made in the city production window. This window is accessed by right clicking on a city you occupy. From this window you can adjust the cities economic factors such as tax rate, production actions, diversification of your treasury and also increasing of that cities efficiency. (b). Taxing your Urban Sites You can tax your cities in varying degrees in MOTE. The breakdown is as follows; Villages - 3 Zubles/day Towns - 7 Zubles/day Cities - 14 Zubles/day Capitals - 20 Zubles/day These are the max values before problems start happening. You can get away with a little overtaxation, but never too long. If you tax your urbanites into the ground, cities will suffer everything from a little unit attrition to defection of the city! The basic range for taxation problems is 1-10. One being no problem to ten, being your suffering serious problems. The breakdown in English is as; Streets of Gold, Very Helpful, Helpful, Slightly Helpful, Small, Little Damage , Damaging, Very Damaging, Bankruptcy, No Streets . (c). Production Actions From within the city production window, you can also buy units at the rate of one per day. To buy a unit flat out, you must have enough of the required resources to do so. If you do not have the required amount then you'll have to purchase the required resources to produce that particular unit. Mind you, that the global market is not always the cheapest way to obtain resources, so maintain maintaining proper resource levels is a must. (d). Diversification This option allows you to evenly distribute your treasury to all of your owned urban sites. Be careful using this action, because if a village is taken immediately after you diversify your treasury you'll lose a vast percentage of your empires wealth! (e). Increasing a Cities Efficiency What do you do when only a village is near a frontline and you need tanks faster than once a year? Spend some of your hard earned Zubles and increase that sites efficiency! To increase a sites efficiency, just click on the Efficiency button and then just enter the amount you want to increase that sites efficiency by. It always starts off with the maximum increase, increasing the efficiency to 100% It will cost you 20 zubles per point of increased efficiency. (f).The Global Market The global market allows you to buy or sell resources on a simulated market. If you buy tons of resources the price will shoot up, dump allot of resources on the market and you'll glut the market thus sending the price plummeting. The global market allows you to purchase resources when you need them, but as in real life its best to well prepared and buy low and sell high. This allows you to finance your wartime efforts. Your diplomatic relation with other empires also affects the amount of resources that are available on the global market. If you are at war with a empire then all of his resources that are normally for sale on the global market are not there, thus there is an incentive not just declare war on every empire you stumble into to. You'll eventually have to buy something off of the global market and if your at war with everybody the only resources available to you will be what you've sold or had allocated to your empire at the start of the game! So keep peace with the computer opponents until you can afford to break a treaty or two! 7. Treaties Treaties can be formed between you and the computer opponents during the course of a game. Treaties are basically the stipulation that you will not attack your opponent during a certain period. If you attack them, then the hate index of that particular opponent will go up and in general it will be allot tougher to attempt any type of peaceful relations with them in the future. A "grey" heart signifies a neutral status, which means your opponent is indifferent to your cause. A "dove" means your at peace with that particular empire. Finally, the flames with "war" emblazoned it, means exactly that. 8. GAME OPTIONS From inside Master of the Empire, you can change several options that improve the performance of the game. These suggestions are intended for users running older systems. All these options can be accessed under the FILE option and then by clicking on the SYSTEM OPTIONS. (a). Observe Computer Opponents This allows you to once your day is up, to watch the computer opponents move about and attack other units and cities. It is extremely entertaining, but on older machines the wait could be awhile. It is great method to watch how the computer opponents expand. (b). Play AVI's There are a number of 3D rendered animations that are played throughout the game, to forgo these just turn them off here. (c). Auto Turn Cycling Enables or disables the auto turn cycling. (d). Sound Effects You can either turn the sound effects on or off in the game. Appendix A: Unit Statistics A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q Army 6 35 45 8 18 8 8 0 14 4 1 1 2 0 2 1 Fighter 12 45 30 11 25 18 9 0 28 6 3 2 1 1 2 5 Cruiser 35 55 50 20 45 8 8 0 39 8 6 1 0 3 3 10 Destroyer 19 70 60 20 55 6 6 0 29 8 10 2 0 5 5 12 Submarine 25 75 45 30 15 8 8 0 29 8 4 1 1 2 2 4 Troop Transport 20 30 15 10 20 6 6 6 34 8 3 0 2 1 2 2 Aircraft Carrier40 25 20 40 35 6 6 8 49 12 6 1 1 2 4 6 Battleship 45 75 65 55 90 4 4 0 59 10 15 3 0 6 6 15 Bomber 15 65 30 20 25 24 6 0 40 6 5 1 3 1 3 6 Tank 12 55 65 10 40 12 12 0 30 6 3 1 2 0 1 3 Spy 25 5 10 10 10 6 6 0 50 9 1 5 2 0 6 1 Air transport 12 35 25 10 20 24 8 0 30 6 3 2 3 1 2 3 Paratrooper 8 40 35 15 18 6 6 0 10 3 1 1 3 0 5 1 Engineer 12 10 15 5 10 6 6 0 10 3 1 2 1 2 5 1 A Unit Name B Required time to build a unit at a capital, remember effeciency affects how long something takes to produce C Attack Strength D Defense Strength E Units Shot Damage F Max Hit Points G Total Range H Turn Range I Capacity J Cost to Produce K Cost to Support L Units of oil required to produce this unit M Units of gold required to produce this unit N Units of minerals required to produce this unit O Units of uranium required to produce this unit P Units of food required to produce this unit Q Units of coal required to produce this unit Appendix B: Terrain Statistics Water : 1 movement point Roads : 1 movement point Plains : 2 movement points Trees : 3 movement points Mountains : Impassable to all but aircraft CREDITS Game Design Michael P. Ramsey Programmers Michael P. Ramsey, Jonathan Ramsey Computer Art Brent Denny, Mike Duffy (terrain artwork) Music Brent Denny, Jonathan Ramsey