Return-Path: Atlantis-Owner Received: from cgl.ucsf.edu by celeste.mmwb.ucsf.EDU (920330.SGI/GSC4.22) id AA07173; Tue, 3 Aug 93 11:11:04 -0700 Received: from heffalump.mmwb.ucsf.EDU by cgl.ucsf.EDU (5.65/GSC4.22) id AA14149 for troyer@celeste.mmwb.ucsf.EDU; Tue, 3 Aug 93 11:11:02 -0700 Received: by heffalump.mmwb.ucsf.edu (5.65/DEC-Ultrix/4.3) id AA16065; Tue, 3 Aug 1993 11:07:00 -0700 Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1993 19:03 GMT From: RWALLACE@vax1.tcd.ie Subject: Atlantis Rules, Version 2, First Draft To: atlantis Message-Id: <01H1BIBN2IS4000RYL@vax1.tcd.ie> X-Envelope-To: atlantis@heffalump.mmwb.ucsf.edu X-Vms-To: IN%"atlantis@heffalump.mmwb.ucsf.edu" Sender: Atlantis-Owner Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: Atlantis Players Reply-To: RWALLACE@vax1.tcd.ie Rules for Atlantis v2.0 3 August 1993 Copyright 1993 by Russell Wallace Introduction ------------ Atlantis is an open-ended computer moderated fantasy game for any number of players. Players may attempt to carve out huge empires, become master magicians, intrepid explorers, rich traders or any other career that comes to mind. There is no declared winner of the game; players set their own objectives, and one can join at any time. A player's position is called a "faction". Each faction has a name and a number (the number is assigned by the computer, and used for entering orders). Each faction is composed of a number of "units", each unit being a group of one or more people loyal to the faction. You start the game with a single unit consisting of one character, plus a sum of money. More people can be hired during the course of the game, and formed into more units. (In these rules, the word "character" generally refers either to a unit consisting of only one person, or to a person within a larger unit.) Each faction also has a type; this is decided by the player before the faction is created, and may not be changed during the game. A faction can be of type War, Trade or Magic. Only War factions can obtain income by taxing controlled territory, only Trade factions can produce goods, and only Magic factions may have magicians. (See the sections on the economy and magic for further details.) An example faction is shown below, consisting of a starting character, Merlin the Magician, who has formed two more units, Merlin's Guards and Merlin's Workers. Each unit is assigned a unit number by the computer (completely independent of the faction number), this is used for entering orders. Here, the player has chosen to give his faction the same name ("Merlin the Magician") as his starting character. Alternatively, you can call your faction something like "The Great Northern Mining Company" or whatever. - Merlin the Magician (17), individual, faction Merlin the Magician (27). - Merlin's Guards (33), number: 20, faction Merlin the Magician (27), has: 20 swords. - Merlin's Workers (34), number: 50, faction Merlin the Magician (27). A faction is considered destroyed, and the player knocked out of the game, if ever all its people are killed or disbanded (i.e. the faction has no units left). The program does not consider your starting character to be special; if your starting character gets killed, you will probably have been thinking of that character as the leader of your faction, so some other character can be regarded as having taken the dead leader's place (assuming of course that you have at least one surviving unit!). As far as the computer is concerned, as long as any unit of the faction survives, the faction is not wiped out. (If your faction is wiped out, you can rejoin the game with a new starting character.) The reason for having units of many people, rather than keeping track of individuals, is to simplify the game play. The computer does not keep track of individual names, possessions or skills for people in the same unit, and all the people in a particular unit must be in the same place at all times. If you want to send people in the same unit to different places, you must split up the unit. Apart from this, there is no difference between having one unit of 50 people, or 50 units of one person each, except that the former is very much easier to handle. The World --------- The Atlantis world is divided for game purposes into hexagonal regions. Each region has a name, and one of the following terrain types: Ocean, City, Town, Plain, Forest, Mountain, Swamp, Jungle, Desert or Tundra. Regions can contain units belonging to players; they can also contain objects such as buildings and ships. Two units in the same region can normally interact, unless one of them is concealed in some way. Two units in different regions cannot normally interact. Combat is an exception to this. Units can be inside objects such as buildings and ships, in a region. They are still considered to be in the region, and other units can interact with them; however, they may gain benefits, such as defensive bonuses in combat from being inside a building. The first unit to enter an object is considered to be the owner; only this unit can do things such as renaming the object, or permitting other units to enter. The owner of an object can be identified on the turn report, as it is the first unit listed under the object. A turn is equal to one game month. A unit can do many actions at the start of the month, that only take a matter of hours, such as buying and selling commodities, or fighting an opposing faction. Each unit can also do exactly one action that takes up the entire month, such as harvesting timber or moving from one region to another. The orders which take an entire month are ADVANCE, BUILD, CAST, ENTERTAIN, MOVE, PRODUCE, RESEARCH, SAIL, STUDY, TEACH and WORK. Any unit which is not given an order for a particular month will repeat whatever it did last month. Movement orders are the exception to this, so if a unit gets the order WORK in January, then MOVE NORTH in February, and no order in March, it will settle down to WORK again, rather than continue to MOVE NORTH. All newly created units start off with WORK as the default order. Movement -------- In one month, a unit can issue a single MOVE order, using one or more of its movement points. There are three modes of travel, walking, riding and flying. Walking units have two movement points, riding units have four, and flying units have eight. A unit will automatically use the fastest mode of travel it has available. (The ADVANCE order is the same as MOVE, except that it implies attacks on units which try to forbid access; see the section on combat for details.) Flying units are not initially available to starting players. A unit can ride provided that the carrying capacity of its horses is at least as great as the weight of its people and all other items. A unit can walk provided that the carrying capacity of its people, horses and wagons is at least as great as the weight of all its other items, and provided that it has at least as many horses as wagons (otherwise the excess wagons count as weight, not capacity). Otherwise the unit cannot issue a MOVE order. People weigh 10 units and have a capacity of 5 units; data for items is as follows: Weight Capacity ------ -------- Silver 0 Iron 10 Wood 10 Stone 50 Gemstone 0 Fur 1 Fish 1 Herbs 0 Horse 50 20 Sword 1 Crossbow 1 Longbow 1 Chain Mail 1 Plate Armor 1 Wagon 50 50 Since regions are hexagonal, each region has six neighbouring regions to the north, northeast, southeast, south, southwest and northwest. Moving from one region to another normally takes one movement point, except that the following terrain types take two movement points for riding or walking units to enter: Forest, Mountain, Swamp, Jungle and Tundra. Also, during the months of November, December, January and February, all units (including flying ones) only have half their normal movement points, as freezing weather makes travel difficult (except in the tropics, where seasonal hurricane winds and torrential rains have a similar effect). Example: one man with a horse, sword and chain mail wants to move north, then northeast. The capacity of the horse is 20 and the weight of the man and other items is 12, so he can ride. The month is April so he has four movement points. He issues the order MOVE NORTH NORTHEAST. First he moves north, into a plain region. This uses one movement point. Then he moves northeast, into a forest region. This uses two movement points, so the movement is completed with one to spare. Movement by sea is in some ways similar. It does not use the MOVE order however. Instead, the owner of a ship must issue the SAIL order. The ship will then, if possible, make the indicated movement, carrying all units on the ship with it. No other unit on the ship may execute any full month order while the ship is moving (though units may do things like PRODUCE FISH while the ship is stopped at sea). A unit which does not wish to travel with the ship should leave the ship in a coastal region, before the SAIL order is processed. (A coastal region is defined as a non-ocean region with at least one adjacent ocean region.) Ships get six movement points per turn. A ship can move from an ocean region to another ocean region, or from a coastal region to an ocean region, or from an ocean region to a coastal region. Ships can only be constructed in coastal regions. For a ship to enter any region only costs one movement point; the cost of two movement points for entering, say, a forest coastal region, does not apply. Ships do however only get half movement points during the winter months. A ship can only move if the total weight of everything aboard does not exceed the ship's capacity. (The rules do not prevent an overloaded ship from staying afloat, only from moving.) The capacities (and costs in labor units) of the various ship types are as follows: Capacity Cost -------- ---- Longboat 200 100 Clipper 800 200 Galleon 1800 300 Walking, riding or flying units can normally only move from one land region to another. (Even flying units cannot stay in the air indefinitely, and therefore cannot enter ocean regions.) Flying units, however, can move from a ship in an ocean region, to an adjacent land region, since they are able to cross the few tens of miles of water separating them from land. Skills ------ The most important thing distinguishing one character from another in Atlantis is skills. The following skills are available: Mining, Lumberjack, Quarrying, Hunting, Fishing, Herb Lore, Horse Training, Weaponsmith, Armorer, Carpenter, Building, Shipbuilding, Entertainment, Tactics, Combat, Riding, Crossbow, Longbow, Stealth, Observation, Healing and Magic. Each unit can have one or more skills. These are gained by training, using the STUDY order. It takes 1 month of study for a unit to attain level 1 in a skill, another 2 months to attain level 2, another 3 months to attain level 3 and so on. (These don't have to be consecutive; to go from level 1 to level 2, you can study for a month, do something else for a month, and then go back and complete your second month of study.) Most skills cost $10 per person per month to study (in addition to normal maintenance costs). The exceptions are Stealth and Observation (both of which cost $50), Magic (which costs $100), and Tactics (which costs $200). If units are merged together, their skills are averaged out. No rounding off is done; rather, the computer keeps track for each unit of how many total months of training that unit has in each skill. When units are split up, these months are divided as evenly as possible among the people in the unit; but no months are ever lost. A unit with a teacher can learn twice as fast as normal. The TEACH order is used to spend the month teaching one or more other units (your own or another faction's). The unit doing the teaching must have a skill level greater than the units doing the studying. (Note: for all skill uses, it is skill level, not number of months of training, that counts. Thus, a unit with 1 month of training is the same as a unit with 2 months of training, since both have skill 1.) The units being taught simply issue the STUDY order as normal. Each person can only teach up to 10 students in a month, so a unit of 20 trying to learn from a single teacher would gain a total of 30 man-months of training. Note that it is quite possible for a single unit to teach two or more other units different skills in the same month, provided that the teacher has a higher skill level than each student in the skill that that student is studying, and that there are no more than 10 students per teacher. The Economy ----------- The unit of currency in Atlantis is the silver piece, shown using the dollar sign ($) for convenience. The dollar sign is shown on reports only to make them easier to read; the sign is never entered in orders, instead money should always be referred to as "silver". IMPORTANT: Each and every character in Atlantis requires $10 every month for maintenance. Anyone who ends the month without this maintenance cost available will starve to death. It is up to you to make sure that your people have enough available. Money will be shared automatically between your units in the same region, if one is starving and another has more than enough; but this will not happen between units in different regions. All items except silver can be produced with the PRODUCE order. Example: PRODUCE SWORDS will produce as many swords as possible during the month, provided that the unit has adequate supplies of iron and has the Weaponsmith skill. The skills and raw materials required for the production of the various items are as follows: Skill Material ----- -------- Iron Mining Wood Lumberjack Stone Quarrying Gemstone Mining Fur Hunting Fish Fishing Herbs Herb Lore Horse Horse Training Sword Weaponsmith Iron Crossbow Weaponsmith Wood Longbow Weaponsmith Wood Chain Mail Armorer Iron Plate Armor Armorer Iron Wagon Carpenter Wood If an item requires raw material, then one unit of material is consumed for each item produced. Thus, to produce 5 longbows (a supply of arrows is assumed to be included with the bow), 5 units of wood are required. The higher one's skill, the more productive each man-month of work; thus, 5 longbows could be produced by a 5-man unit of skill 1, or a 1-man unit of skill 5. (Plate armor is an exception; the unit's effective skill for producing this is divided by 3, so a unit must have skill 3 to be able to produce it at all.) Only Trade factions can issue PRODUCE orders however, regardless of skill levels. Construction of buildings and ships is somewhat similar; each unit of work on a building requires a unit of stone and a man-month of work by a character with Building skill at least 1; higher skill levels allow work to proceed faster (still using one unit of stone per unit of work done); ships similarly require wood and Shipbuilding skill. Again, only Trade factions can issue BUILD orders. The first 8 items on the list do not require raw material, they are produced directly from the land. Each region, other than city and town regions, generally has at least one item that can be produced there. Shown on the description of a region is a list of the items that can be produced, and the amount of each that can be produced per month. This depends on the region type; thus, mountains are the best places to quarry stone, and herbs are most commonly found in forests and jungles. It also varies from region to region of the same type however, and it changes slowly over time as old seams are mined out, new ones are discovered or whatever. If many units in a region attempt to produce more of a commodity than can be done that month, then the available amount is distributed among the workers. Oceans are something of an exception, they are the only regions that produce fish, and they produce no other commodity. The amount available from an ocean region is not shown, but is typically around 100 per turn. City and town regions do not produce raw materials, instead they buy and sell things. Shown for each city and town region is a list of items which can be bought and sold there, and for each item, the prices at which one can buy and sell this item. Also shown is the demand for an item per month, i.e. the total amount of that item that can be sold in that place in a given month. If many units in a city try to sell more of an item in a month than there is demand for, each will generally sell about the same percentage of the amount it attempted to sell. There is a limit also to the amount of any item that can be bought per month, but this is ten times the amount that can be sold. (This restriction only applies to transactions between characters and the market, of course; characters can make any number of deals between themselves.) Demand and market prices change slowly over time. Units are bought and sold in the market using the BUY and SELL orders. (Transactions between characters use the GIVE and PAY orders.) Units can earn money with the WORK order. This means that the unit spends the month performing manual work for wages. The amount to be earned from this is usually not very high, so it is generally a last resort to be used if one is running out of money. The number of WORK jobs available per month in a region, and the current wages, are shown in the region description. All units may WORK, regardless of skills or faction type. Units with the Entertainment skill can use it to earn money. The demand for entertainment, and the amount of money that can be earned this way, are shown in region descriptions. Higher levels of Entertainment skill can earn more, so a character with Entertainment skill 2 can earn twice as much money as one with skill 1 (and uses twice as much of the demand for entertainment in the region). Only Trade factions may ENTERTAIN. War factions may collect taxes in a region. This is done using the TAX order (which is not a full month order). The amount of tax money that can be collected each month in a region is shown in the region description. Only characters with Combat skill at least 1 may TAX; each one can collect $200. People may be recruited in a region. The total amount of recruits available per month in a region, and the amount that must be paid per person recruited, are shown in the region description. The RECRUIT order is used for this. New recruits will not have any skills or items. Note that the process of recruiting a new unit is somewhat counterintuitive; it is necessary to FORM an empty unit, PAY the empty unit some money, and have it RECRUIT people; see the description of the FORM order for further details. War factions may also pillage a region. To do this requires the faction to have at least 200 combat trained men in the region. The total amount of money that can be pillaged will then be shared out between every combat trained unit that issues the PILLAGE order. The amount of money collected is equal to twice the available tax money. However, this quantity immediately drops to zero for that region, and only slowly recovers over successive months. Furthermore, the supply of recruits, demand for manual workers and entertainment, and demand for all goods if the region is a city or town, will immediately be halved, and again will only slowly recover, due to the economic damage caused by the pillaging. Note that PILLAGE comes before TAX, so TAX will collect no money in that region that month. It is possible to safeguard one's tax income in regions one controls. Units which have the Guard flag set (using the GUARD order) will block TAX orders issued by other factions in the same region, unless you have declared the faction in question Friendly. Units on guard will also block PILLAGE orders issued by other factions in the same region, regardless of your attitude towards the faction in question, and they will attempt to prevent Unfriendly units from entering the region. Only units with Combat skill at least 1 can be on guard, and for any of your units to guard a region effectively, you must have at least 20 combat trained men on guard in it. (So, if you only have a unit of 10 men on guard, it will not be able to guard the region; but if you have two units of 10 men each on guard, they will be able to.) Units on guard are always visible regardless of Stealth skill, and will be listed as "on guard" in the region description. If you have units with the Guard flag set, but they can not guard effectively because there are too few of them, then they will show up as "on guard" in your turn report, but not in anyone else's. Combat ------ Combat occurs when one unit attacks another. The computer then gathers together all the units on the attacking side, and all the units on the defending side, and the two sides fight until an outcome is reached. Which side a faction's units will fight on depends on declared attitudes. A faction can have one of the following attitudes towards another faction: Ally, Friendly, Neutral, Unfriendly or Hostile. Each faction has a general attitude that it normally takes towards other factions; this is initially Neutral, but can be changed. It is also possible to declare attitudes to specific factions, e.g. DECLARE 27 ALLY will declare the Ally attitude to faction 27. (Note that this does not necessarily mean that faction 27 is allied to you.) Ally means that you will fight to defend units of that faction whenever they come under attack. It also has the implications of the Friendly attitude. Friendly means that you will accept gifts from units of that faction. This includes the giving of items, transfers of men or whole units, copies of spells, and teaching of skills. You will also admit units of that faction into buildings or ships owned by one of your units, and you will permit units of that faction to collect taxes (but not pillage) in regions where you have units on guard. Unfriendly means that you will not admit units of that faction into any region where you have units on guard. You will not, however, automatically attack unfriendly units which are already present. Hostile means that any of your units which do not have the Avoid Combat flag set (using the AVOID order) will attack any units of that faction wherever they find them. If a unit can see another unit, but does not have high enough Observation skill to determine its faction, it will not forbid it access or attack it if it belongs to an Unfriendly or Hostile faction, because it does not know the unit's identity. However, unidentified units belonging to Friendly or Allied factions will gain the benefits thereof; it is assumed that the units will produce proof of identity when relevant. If a faction declares Unfriendly or Hostile as default attitude (the latter is a good way to die fast), it will block or attack unidentified units, unless they belong to factions for which a more friendly attitude has been specifically declared. Units which cannot be seen at all cannot be directly blocked or attacked of course. A unit can attack another by issuing an ATTACK order. A unit that does not have Avoid Combat set will automatically attack any Hostile units it identifies as such. A unit using ADVANCE instead of MOVE to enter a region, will attack any units that identify it as Unfriendly and attempt to deny it access. Once the attack has been made, the sides are gathered. Although the ATTACK order takes a unit rather than a faction as its parameter (mainly so that unidentified units can be attacked), an attack is basically considered to be by an entire faction, against an entire faction and its allies. On the attacking side are all units of the attacking faction in the region where the fight is taking place, except those with Avoid Combat set. A unit which has explicitly issued an ATTACK order will join the fight anyway, regardless of Avoid Combat. On the attacking side also are all units of other factions, which attacked the target faction in the region where the fight is taking place. In other words, if several factions attack one, then all their armies join together to attack at the same time (even if they are enemies and will later fight each other). On the defending side are all units belonging to the defending faction, except those which have Avoid Combat set. A unit which was explicitly attacked will be involved anyway, regardless of Avoid Combat. If the attack came about as a result of units being identified as Hostile, then all identifiable units of the target faction will be automatically attacked and therefore involved regardless of Avoid Combat. (This means that Avoid Combat is mostly useful for high stealth scouts.) Units in nearby regions can also become involved. This is the exception to the general rule that you cannot interact with units in a different region. If a faction has at least one unit involved in the initial region, then any units in nearby regions will join the fight, if they could reach the region and do not have Avoid Combat set. Example: A fight starts in region A, in the initial combat phase (before any movement has occurred). The defender has a unit of soldiers in adjacent region B. They have 2 movement points at this stage. They will buy horses later in the turn, so that when they execute their MOVE order they will have 4 movement points, but right now they have 2. Region A is forest but fortunately it is summer so the soldiers can join the fight. It is important to note that the units in nearby regions do not actually move to the region where the fighting happens, the computer only checks that they could move there. (In game world terms of course, presumably they did move there to join the fight, and then moved back where they started.) The computer checks for weight allowances and terrain types when determining whether a unit could reach the scene of the battle, but does not check whether the unit would be blocked by Unfriendly units in between; nor does it allow the use of ships in this virtual movement. Example: Later in that turn, the unit of soldiers, having won the fight and bought their horses, start moving. They move to region C (a plain region) in the opposite direction from region A, and then to region D (also a plain region). At that point another fight starts in region A. They only have 2 movement points left (remember, their virtual journey to region A earlier didn't use any movement points, so they started their MOVE order with 4), so they can't get back there to join the fight. If you order an attack on an ally (either with the ATTACK order, or if your ally has declared you Unfriendly, by attempting to ADVANCE into a region which he is guarding), then your commander will decide that a mistake has occurred somewhere, and withdraw your troops from the fighting altogether. Thus, your units will not attack that faction in that region, nor will they defend that faction in that region from attack by others. The troops having lined up, the fight begins. The computer selects the best tactician from each side; that unit is regarded as the leader of its side. If two or more units on one side have the same Tactics skill, then the one with the lower unit number is regarded as the leader of that side. If one side's leader has a better Tactics skill than the other side's, then that side gets a free round of attacks. In each combat round, the combatants each get to attack once, in a random order. (In a free round of attacks, only one side's forces get to attack.) Each combatant will attempt to hit a randomly selected enemy. If he hits, and the target has no armor, then the target is automatically killed. Chain mail gives a 1/3 chance of surviving a hit, and plate armor gives a 2/3 chance. The basic skill used in battle is the Combat skill; this is used for hand to hand fighting. If one soldier tries to hit another using melee weapons, there is a 50% chance that the attacker will get an opportunity for a lethal blow. If the attacker does get that opportunity, then there is a contest between his skill and the defender's. If the skills are equal, then there is a 1:1 (i.e. 50%) chance that the attack will succeed. If the attacker's skill is 1 higher then there is a 2:1 (i.e. 67%) chance, if the attacker's skill is 2 higher then there is a 4:1 (i.e. 80%) chance, 3 higher means an 8:1 (i.e. 89%) chance, and so on. Similarly if the defender's skill is 1 higher, then there is only a 1:2 (i.e. 33%) chance, etc. Possession of a sword confers a +2 bonus to Combat skill. (Troops fighting hand-to-hand without swords are assumed to be irregularly equipped with knives, clubs etc.) Possession of a horse, and Riding skill of at least 2, also confers a +2 to effective Combat skill provided that the terrain is one of City, Town, Plain, Desert or Tundra. Missile weapons are slightly different. A soldier who has a longbow and is skilled in its use will use it; otherwise, he will use a crossbow if he has one, and skill in its use; otherwise, he will fight hand to hand. The skill check to hit with a longbow is made against an effective defense of 2; i.e. a longbowman with skill 1, having made the 50% chance of getting an effective attack, has a 1:2 chance of hitting a target. A crossbow is an easier weapon to use, so the chance to hit is calculated against a defense of 0; on the other hand, a crossbow can only fire every other round (the first, third, fifth etc. rounds, including the free round of attacks if one's side has one). Note that the target's skills are irrelevant. A soldier with a melee weapon attacking a bowman makes his attack just as if the bowman were another swordsman, except that the bowman is at a -2 to defend against attack with hand-to-hand weapons. A unit which has a combat spell set, will cast that spell rather than attacking with sword or bow. The result of this depends on the spell, and will be noted in the battle report. Being inside a building confers a +2 bonus to defense. This bonus is effective against bows as well as melee weapons. The number of men that a building can protect is equal to its size. The sizes and costs of the different types of buildings are as follows: Size Cost ---- ---- Tower 20 20 Fort 100 80 Castle 500 320 Citadel 2500 1280 If there are too many units in a building to all gain protection from it, then those units with the lowest unit numbers will gain protection. If a unit of 200 men is inside a Fort (capacity 100), then the first 100 men in the unit will gain the full +2 bonus, and the other 100 will gain no protection. Units which have the Behind flag set are at the rear and cannot be attacked by any means until all non-Behind units have been wiped out. On the other hand, neither can they attack with melee weapons, but only with bows or magic. Once all front-line units have been wiped out, then the Behind flag no longer has any effect. Combat rounds continue until one side is wiped out. (Realistically, it is reasonable to assume that some of the troops on the losing side have fled and dispersed into the countryside. Either way, they are no longer with their faction.) Units with the Healing skill have a chance of being able to heal casualties of the winning side, so that they recover rather than dying. Each character with this skill can attempt to heal 10 casualties. Each attempt however requires one unit of Herbs, which is thereby used up. Each attempt has a 50% chance of healing one casualty; if this fails, no further attempts can be made on that casualty. Any items owned by dead combatants on the losing side have a 50% chance of being found and collected by the winning side. Each item which is recovered is picked up by one of the survivors at random, so the winners generally collect loot in proportion to their number of surviving men. If you are expecting to fight an enemy who is carrying so much equipment that you would not be able to move after picking it up, and you want to move to another region later that month, it may be worth issuing some orders to drop items (with the GIVE 0 order) in case you win the battle! Stealth ------- The Stealth skill is used to hide units. A unit can only be seen if you have at least one unit in the same region, with an Observation skill at least as high as that unit's Stealth skill. However, units are always visible when participating in combat; and a unit set on guard, or in a building, or on board a ship, is also always visible. You can only see which faction a unit belongs to if you have a unit with higher Observation than that unit's Stealth. The STEAL order is a way to steal items from other factions without a battle. The order can only be issued by a one-man unit. The order specifies a target unit; the thief will then attempt to steal the specified item from the target unit, or from any unit in the target unit's faction that is in the same region (so you don't have to guess which unit has the item you want). If the thief has higher Stealth than any of the target faction's units have Observation (i.e. the thief cannot be seen by the target faction), the theft will succeed. The target faction will be told what was stolen, but not by whom. If the specified item is silver, then $200 or half the total available, whichever is less, will be stolen. If it is any other item, then only one will be stolen (if available). If the theft fails, then the target faction will be informed which unit attempted to carry it out. The ASSASSINATE order can only be issued by a one-man unit. The order specifies a target unit. If the target unit contains more than one person, then one will be singled out. Success for assassination is determined as for theft, i.e. the assassin will fail if any of the target faction's units can see him. In this case, the assassin will flee, and the target faction will be informed which unit made the attempt. If the assassin has higher Stealth than any of the target faction's units have Observation, then a one-on-one fight will take place between the assassin and the target character. The assassin automatically gets a free round of attacks, after that it is handled like a normal fight, with the exception that neither assassin nor victim can use chain mail or plate armor (the assassin because he cannot sneak around wearing metal armor, the victim because he was caught by surprise with his armor off). If the assassin wins, the target faction is told merely that the victim was assassinated, but not by whom. If the victim wins, then the target faction learns which unit made the attempt. (Of course, this does not necessarily mean that the assassin's faction is known.) The winner of the fight gets 50% of the loser's property as usual. STEAL and ASSASSINATE are not full month orders, and do not interfere with other activities, but a unit can only issue one STEAL order or one ASSASSINATE order in a month. Magic ----- One starts off a career as a magician in Atlantis by studying the Magic skill. This is studied like any other skill, except for the following restrictions: A Magic faction may never have more than five magicians at any one time (a magician being defined as any character with at least one month of training in magic), and a War or Trade faction may never have any magicians. These restrictions are necessary for game balance. Having acquired the appropriate skill, one can then learn spells. Each spell has a difficulty level. To learn a spell, one must have skill in magic at least as high as that spell's level. (It is reasonable to assume that magicians have other abilities in the game world, but the spells provided are what is relevant in terms of game rules.) The hard way to acquire spells is to research them. Researching takes a full month, and costs $200. It will result in the magician acquiring one previously unknown spell from the level being researched. (Only spells of one level lower than the magician's skill can be researched, so one must have a skill of at least 2 to do this at all.) The order RESEARCH COMBAT will attempt to discover a combat spell; RESEARCH RITUAL will attempt to discover a ritual spell. If the order does not specify a spell level, then the magician will attempt to discover a spell of the highest possible level (one level lower than his skill). If there are no unknown spells of the chosen type at that level, one of the other type will be discovered instead. If there are no unknown spells at that level at all, then the magician will find out that this is the case. (The money will still be spent though.) The easy way to acquire spells is to be given copies of them. A magician who knows a spell can give a copy of it to another magician with the appropriate skill. This only takes a short time, so an entire library of spells can be copied in a single month without interfering with research or other activities. The process costs the magician giving the copy of the spell $10. Once spells are learned, they can be cast. There are two basic types of spells in this regard. One type requires a time consuming ritual to cast; the CAST order is used for this. This is a full month order. (Realistically most spells probably would not take a whole month to cast, but for simplicity it is done this way.) The other type is the combat spell, which takes only seconds to cast. The way to order a magician to cast these is with the COMBAT order which sets the combat magic spells a magician will use. Once a magician has been ordered to have a particular combat spell prepared, he will from then on automatically use it whenever he is involved in fighting of any kind. Casting combat spells in battle does not interfere with the casting of ritual spells that month. Magic items can be created by means of certain ritual spells. These are handled in the same way as ordinary items as regards things like the GIVE order. Should you ever buy, steal or be given a magic item created by someone else, however, remember that possession of the item does not necessarily mean you know how to use it. Currently there is a further restriction that magicians can only be one-person units, you can't have a unit with two or more magicians; furthermore, people cannot be transferred to or from a magician unit (though a magician unit can be transferred as a whole using the TRANSFER ... UNIT order). This restriction is for reasons of coding difficulty, and should not be of any great importance. Administrative Details ---------------------- To join Atlantis, send mail to rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie, specifying your email address, the faction type you want (War, Trade or Magic), the name of your starting character, and optionally your faction name; if you do not specify this, then your starting character name will also be used for your faction name. Remember that your character and faction names can be changed during the game, but your faction type cannot. This information should preferably be on one line in the following format:
[faction name] To enter orders for Atlantis, you should send a mail message (no particular subject line required) to rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie, containing the following: #ATLANTIS UNIT ... UNIT ... #END For example, if your faction number (shown at the top of your report) is 27, and you have two units numbered 17 and 33: #ATLANTIS 27 UNIT 17 ... UNIT 33 ... #END Thus, orders for each unit are given separately, and indicated with the UNIT keyword. All orders must be given after a UNIT line, even those (such as DECLARE orders) for which it does not matter which particular unit issues them. The deadline for orders is Sunday 12 noon GMT (in practice, the turn is usually not run until around 2 pm, but don't count on this). Several sets of orders may be sent for the same turn, and the last set received before the deadline will be used. IMPORTANT: You MUST use the correct #ATLANTIS line or else your orders will be silently ignored. Each type of order is designated by giving a keyword as the first non-blank item on a line. Parameters are given after this, separated by spaces or tabs. Blank lines are permitted, as are comments; anything after a semicolon on a line is treated as a comment and ignored. The parser is not case sensitive, so all orders may be given in upper case, lower case or a mixture of the two. However, when supplying names containing spaces, the name must be surrounded by double quotes, or else underscore characters must be used in place of spaces in the name. (These things apply to the #ATLANTIS and #END lines as well as to order lines.) Any player not sending in orders for four turns in a row is removed from the game, e.g. if your last set of orders was for turn 20, you will receive reports for turns 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24; your turn 24 report will contain a request to send orders; and you will not receive a turn 25 report. Note that an empty order set still counts as sending in orders. IMPORTANT: If you are dropped from the game for not sending orders, your faction is completely and permanently destroyed, and is NOT retrievable. Please contact the moderator if you have difficulty getting orders through. Submissions to the Atlantis Times are encouraged. A payment (usually around $50-100) will be made for each article published. Submissions should be sent to rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie, with the subject line containing the word Times and the unit number to which the payment is to be made. Mailing addresses are as follows: Messages to all players: atlantis@heffalump.ucsf.edu Messages to Russell Wallace: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie -or- atlantis-gamemaster@heffalump.ucsf.edu Submissions to the Times: rwallace@vax1.tcd.ie (Subject: Times) -or- atlantis-times@heffalump.ucsf.edu Problems with the list: troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu -or- atlantis-request@heffalump.ucsf.edu Back issues of Times, Digests available via ftp in heffalump.ucsf.edu:/pub/atlantis Back issues via mail: atlantis-server@heffalump.ucsf.edu (put 'help' or 'index' in subject or body) If you quit or are knocked out of the game, you may rejoin. However, no player may play more than one faction at one time. Temporary exceptions can be made in cases where a player will be unavailable for a few weeks and wants someone else to play his faction during that time; please inform the GM who will be the stand-in player. The game may not be played via anonymous mail server; orders from such a source will not be accepted. Orders ------ The following orders are available; means that a unit number is required as a parameter; means that a faction number is required; means that an object number (generally the number of a building or ship) is required. Other parameters are generally numbers or names. Remember that names containing spaces, e.g. "Plate Armor", must be surrounded by double quotes. ADDRESS Change the email address to which your reports are sent. ASSASSINATE Attempt to assassinate the specified unit, or one of the unit's people if the unit contains more than one person. The order may only be issued by a one-man unit. ATTACK Attack a target unit. AVOID AVOID 1 instructs the unit to avoid combat wherever possible. The unit will not enter combat under any circumstances unless it issues an ATTACK order or is directly attacked. AVOID 0 cancels this. The Guard and Avoid Combat flags are mutually exclusive; setting one automatically cancels the other. BEHIND BEHIND 1 sets the unit to be behind other units in combat. BEHIND 0 cancels this. CAST Spend the month casting the indicated spell (must be a ritual magic spell which the unit knows). COMBAT Set the unit's combat spell to the indicated value (must be a combat spell which the unit knows). If no spell is specified, the unit's combat spell will be set to nothing (i.e. the magician will henceforth fight with normal weapons). DESCRIBE DESCRIBE OBJECT Change the description of the unit, or of the object the unit is in (of which the unit must be the owner). Descriptions can be of any length, up to the line length your mailer can handle. DESTROY Destroy the object you are in (of which you must be the owner). The order cannot be used at sea. ENTER Attempt to enter the specified object. If issued from inside another object, the unit will first leave the object it is currently in. The order will only work if the target object is unoccupied, or is owned by a unit in your faction, or is owned by a unit which has declared you Friendly. ENTERTAIN Spend the month entertaining the populace to earn money. FIND Find the email address of the specified faction. FORM Form a new unit. The newly created unit will be in your faction, in the same region as the unit which formed it, with the same flags set, and in the same object if any. It will start off, however, with no people or items; you should, in the same month, issue orders to transfer people into the new unit, or have it recruit members. The FORM order is followed by a list of orders for the newly created unit. This list is terminated by the END keyword, after which orders for the original unit resume. The purpose of the "alias" parameter is so that you can refer to the new unit. You will not know the new unit's number until next month. To refer to the new unit that month, pick an alias number (the only restriction on this is that it must be at least 1, and you should not create two units in the same region in the same month, with the same alias numbers). The new unit can then be referred to as NEW in place of the regular unit number, e.g. UNIT 17 FORM 1 NAME UNIT "Merlin's Guards" RECRUIT 5 STUDY COMBAT END FORM 2 NAME UNIT "Merlin's Workers" DESCRIBE UNIT "wearing dirty overalls and carrying shovels" RECRUIT 15 END PAY NEW 1 1000 PAY NEW 2 2000 This set of orders for unit 17 would create two new units with alias numbers 1 and 2, name them Merlin's Guards and Merlin's Workers, set the description for Merlin's Workers, have both units recruit men, and have Merlin's Guards study combat. Merlin's Workers will have the default order WORK, as all newly created units do. The unit that created these two then pays them enough money (using the NEW keyword to refer to them by alias numbers) to cover the costs of recruitment and the month's maintenance. You can refer to newly created units belonging to other factions, if you know what alias number they are, e.g. FACTION 15 NEW 2 will refer to faction 15's newly created unit with alias 2. If the demand for recruits in that region that month is much higher than the supply, it may happen that the new unit does not gain any recruits. In that case, the empty unit will be dissolved; the money and any other items it was given will revert to the lowest numbered unit you have in that region. GIVE GIVE The first form of the GIVE order gives a quantity of an item to another unit. If the target unit is not a member of your faction, then its faction must have declared you Friendly. If 0 is specified as the unit number, then the items are discarded. The second form gives a copy of a spell to another magician. The target magician must have Magic skill at least as high as the spell's level and must have declared you Friendly. It costs $10 to give a copy of a spell. GUARD GUARD 1 sets the unit issuing the order to prevent non-Friendly units from collecting taxes in the region, and to prevent any units not your own from pillaging the region. Guarding units will also attempt to prevent Unfriendly units from entering the region. GUARD 0 cancels Guard status. In order for any of your units in a region to effectively guard, you must have at least 20 combat-trained men in the region, all of whom are on guard. The Guard and Avoid Combat flags are mutually exclusive; setting one automatically cancels the other. LEAVE Leave the object you are currently in. The order cannot be used at sea. NAME NAME FACTION NAME OBJECT Change the name of the unit, or of your faction, or of the object the unit is in (of which the unit must be the owner). Names can be of any length, up to the line length your mailer can handle. Names may not contain brackets (square brackets can be used instead if necessary), nor may a unit's name be set to "Faction" or "Object" as this would be mistaken for a NAME FACTION or NAME OBJECT order. Ship names should be something that will look good after "The" (the word "The" should not be included in the name). PAY Pay the specified unit an amount of money; this is the same as GIVE SILVER. PRODUCE Spend the month producing as much as possible of the specified item. PROMOTE Promote the specified unit to owner of the object of which you are currently the owner. The target unit must have declared you Friendly. QUIT Quit the game. On issuing this order, your faction will be completely and permanently destroyed. RECRUIT Attempt to recruit the specified number of people into the unit issuing the order. RESEARCH COMBAT [level] RESEARCH RITUAL [level] Spend the month researching a spell of the specified type, at the specified level. If no level is specified, the research will be at the highest possible level (one less than your Magic skill). RESHOW When a unit in your faction researches, or is given a copy of, a new spell for the first time, your report will contain a paragraph of information on the spell. The RESHOW order will show this information again, in case you lose the report that originally showed it. This only works if there is still at least one unit in your faction that knows the spell. STEAL Attempt to steal as much as possible of the specified item from the specified unit, or from any unit of that unit's faction. The order may only be issued by a one-man unit. STUDY Spend the month studying the specified skill. TAX Attempt to collect taxes from the region. Only War factions may collect taxes, and then only if there are no non-Friendly units on guard. TEACH ... Attempt to teach the speecified units whatever skill they are studying that month. A list of several units may be specified. All units to be taught must have declared you Friendly. TRANSFER TRANSFER UNIT The second form of the order will transfer the unit issuing the order to the specified faction (which must have at least one visible unit in the region to receive the transfer, and must have declared you Friendly). The first form will transfer the indicated number of people from the issuing unit to the target unit, which must have declared you Friendly; neither unit may contain a magician. WORK Spend the month performing manual work for wages. Sequence of Events ------------------ Each turn, the following sequence of events occurs: FORM orders are processed. ADDRESS, AVOID, BEHIND, COMBAT, DECLARE, DESCRIBE, GUARD 0, NAME and RESHOW orders are processed. FIND orders are processed. ENTER, LEAVE and PROMOTE orders are processed. Combat is processed. STEAL orders are processed. ASSASSINATE orders are processed. DESTROY, GIVE, PAY and TRANSFER orders are processed. STEAL and ASSASSINATE orders are processed. PILLAGE orders are processed. TAX orders are processed. GUARD 1 orders are processed. SELL orders are processed. BUY and RECRUIT orders are processed. QUIT orders are processed. Empty units are deleted. Unoccupied ships at sea are sunk. ADVANCE and MOVE orders are processed (including any combat resulting from these orders). SAIL orders are processed. BUILD, ENTERTAIN, PRODUCE, RESEARCH, STUDY, TEACH and WORK orders are processed. CAST orders are processed. Maintenance costs are assessed. Where there is no other basis for deciding in which order units will be processed within a phase, unit number is used. Thus, GIVE orders for example are processed for each unit in a region, in order of unit number (and for a particular unit, in the order in which they are written). This is only the case in situations where a faction cannot gain advantage by having its units go first. (So ATTACK orders for example are not processed by unit number.) Report Format ------------- The most important sections of the turn report are the "Events During Turn" section which lists what happened last month, and the "Current Status" section which gives the description of each region in which you have units. Your units in the Current Status section are flagged with a "*" character. Units belonging to other factions are flagged with a "-" character. You may be informed which faction they belong to, if you have high enough Observation skill. Objects are flagged with a "+" character. The units listed under an object (if any) are inside the object. The first unit listed under an object is its owner. If you can see a unit, you can see any large items it is carrying. This means all items other than silver, gemstones and herbs (which are of zero size units, and are small enough to be easily concealed). Items carried by your own units of course will always be listed. Hints for New Players --------------------- Make sure to use the correct #ATLANTIS and UNIT lines in your orders. Always have a month's supply of spare cash in every region in which you have units, so that even if they are deprived of income for a month (due to a mistake in your orders, for example), they will not starve to death. It is very frustrating to have half your faction wiped out because you neglected to provide enough money for them to live on. Don't leave it until the last minute to send orders. If there is a delay in the mailer, your orders will not arrive on time, and turns will NOT be rerun, nor will it be possible to change the data file for the benefit of players whose orders weren't there by the deadline. If you are going to send your orders at the last minute, send a preliminary set earlier in the week so that at worst your faction will not be left with no orders at all. Use an order checker to avoid errors. At the time of writing there are at least two available for version 1, which hopefully will soon be converted to version 2.