ANCIENT REALMS RULES SUPPLEMENT - V1.1.9 - 1st Feb 2006 Ancient Realms for the vast majority of orders, plays the same as our other variants so the main rulebook can be used for most of the orders. However, Ancient Realms does have some differences, these are listed below. ** ORDER CHANGES ** FIND: Only citizens can become leaders. BUILD and DEMOLISH: Do not apply to Ancient Realms, all cities exist already on the map and cannot be demolished. DESTROY and DISBAND: Will reduce items/units to their base make costs, not including gold. DELIVER: Though the range of delivery is similar to our other variants, weather and impassable realms may limit the total amount of destinations from each city. Merchants can deliver to friendly cities as long as a route exists to them. In ideal weather conditions a merchant can travel 5 squares over any terrain. Merchants travelling from citadels have faster transport and can travel much further. All the cities that a merchant can reach that particular week for deliveries are listed under each city in the market box. In Ancient Realms games, Leaders cannot be DELIVERed to - only Cities listed in the Merchants section of your City report can receive deliveries. MAKE: All items that can be made are listed with each city report. A summary of the make cost of each item and the extension required is also included with each turn. MAKE ALL works slightly differently to other games in that it will try and make everything, regardless of whether food is used in the manufacturing/recruiting process. Cities can MAKE a maximum of 100 troops per turn, +100 troops per Barracks. E.g., A City with no Barracks could make a maximum of 100 troops. A City with 9 Barracks could make a maximum of 1000 troops. Stables can MAKE a maximum of 200 mounts each. Farms increase food production from surrounding terrain squares and also allow you to MAKE a maximum of 1000 food per farm from Livestock. Forges can MAKE a maximum of 200 items each. E.g. 200 Weapons or 100 Armour, 50 Weapons, 50 Bows. There are no reductions in cost for multiple forges. TRAIN: Fighters training outside cities, automatically or otherwise, will train the citizens of the city if their armies do not require further training. Training works exactly as in other games, although only Citizens will benefit from it in the usual way (see CITIZENS below). Other 'Special' troops will take training out of the general pool when recruited with the MAKE order, so their Training levels are 'built in'. STUDY: The Study order is useful for using up any spare orders you may have after issuing orders to all your Leaders and Castles. Issuing a STUDY order to a Leader will instruct them to spend some time improving their qualifications (i.e. experience). It'll now take 10 hrs instead of 5hrs, will give out slightly less XP per order and will not be usable by Advanced Classes (Paladins, Sheriffs & Demigods). STUDY occurs at 740 in the all-important Order Of Events. This change will soon affect all current games as well - We'll be making a separate announcement about that soon. The syntax for the STUDY order is: {LEADER-NAME} STUDY PURCHASE: Trade Goods (spices, gems, furs and jewellery) can be bought and sold at all Cities. Each City will receive 8 deals from wandering merchants each turn. Goods can be bought or sold using this order. The number of Trading Posts you have will affect the amount and cost of the offered goods. 'Normal' stockpiles and troops etc will not be available from Trading Posts. Buying and selling costs will vary depending on geographical location - The further away the selling City from the buying City, the greater your profits are likely to be. ** GENERAL CHANGES ** THE SPELL SYSTEM Spell system will on the whole be 'normal' with no 'Personal Spell Lists' (i.e. spells are shareable between players). Slight difference: Wizards and Priests will NOT be able to summon gold or trade items. Most other creatures/stockpiles within the game (including Citizens) can be summoned/dispelled as normal. Priestly spell lists have been manually crafted to provide a well-balanced range of spells for all religions. There will also be no voidstone/mistletoe equivalent, so Priests will be unable to stockpile massive amounts of SP. MAGIC RESISTANCE Magic Resistance to Dispel spells will not exist in Ancient Realms games. MOUNTS & MOUNTED BONUSES Because of the unique way in which the different unit types are made in Ancient Realms, what we normally refer to as 'mounts' won't exist as a separate troop type. Rather than having separate counts of 'troops' and 'mounts', everything in your army will count towards your troop total. The various horses and citizens etc can be combined into different harder troop types via the MAKE order. Any Special troop type that includes a mount in its make cost (such as a horse or elephant) will be counted as 'Mounted' when calculating 'Mounted Bonus'. SLAVES AND REBELS After you've ATTACKed and taken a City in combat, any remaining Civilians will become Slaves. Rebels will also appear in a city belonging to a hostile civilization. If enough rebels are in a city and the garrison is weak enough, you may lose the city. Rebel and Slave populations fluctuate depending on many factors; ideally you want them integrated back totally into the citizen population. Integration happens gradually each week, automatically. Rebels cannot be transferred, delivered or smuggled. DOUBLE EXTENSION BONUSES Cities (including your initial three) will gain a 'double effect' bonus to a random extension type. However, once you CHANGE a City to a Citadel it will lose its bonus. STOCKPILES/PRODUCTION Stockpile production (including Food) at Cities has been toned down slightly, however on the plus side, each City will produce a more even spread of all stockpile types. Be warned that seasons have a much bigger impact on production than in other games of Serim Ral. Winters can be particularly harsh and sometimes there will be no production at all. On the plus side a good summer can boost food stocks considerably. Learn to stockpile food for the winter rather than letting your wizards loose on any surplus. ARTIFACT REPORTS A new system for gathering Artefact Rumours has been put in place for SR26. Empires will gain fewer rumours than in normal (Pre SR23) games, but the rumours you do receive will be more useful/relevant to your own Empire. TAKEOVERS SR26 will be a 'sub-ins' game, i.e. new players will be able to enter the game by taking up an inactive position. A list of Inactive positions will be posted in the 'Available Positions' section of the website as and when they become inactive. Inactive and Sub-in positions will be handled slightly differently than in other games. They'll be handed out 'as is' - we won't be creating new Empires by grouping together nearby Cities. RELIGIOUS/RACIAL ALLIANCES This will be totally up to players as in other games. Completely up to you if you want to ally or fight other members of your own Race or Religion. Although your initial God is selected by your choice of Race, you can still 'convert' to other religions as normal. LEADERS New Leaders can be found using the FIND order as normal. However, only Citizens can become Leaders. CITIZENS Citizens are essential to the smooth running of your Empire. They are the only people in the Realm that will generate Gold for your coffers (about 1/2 gold per citizen per week). They are also needed when trying to FIND new leaders and when trying to MAKE special units. Citizens can be used in battle and will utilise any spare Armour/Weapons/Bows/Training in army/city stockpiles (up to the usual maximum of ten units per citizen), however they will not gain full benefits like troops in other games. They are also very susceptible to dispelling and are affected badly by the special 'Fear' attack. Be very careful when using them in combat. ORDERS Order limits will be same as usual. Using the MAKE order to recruit new troops could potentially be order intensive, so you'll need to carefully select which Cities need to do the recruiting. You'll also need to be careful about using STUDY correctly. Always best to only use it only to fill up 'spare orders'. Totally up to you of course - all part of the tactics of the game. MAP Map will be 'flat' as in not wrap-around. ARTIFACTS & THE END GAME Artefacts have been massively toned down to avoid unbalancing the game. They'll still give some basic powers to owners and 7 of the same type will be needed to call 'End Game' so they'll still be worth getting hold of. LEGENDARY RECRUITMENT Due to the unique way in which new Troops are recruited, 'Legendary Recruitment' will not exist in Ancient Realms games. COMBAT Be warned - the NPC Cities that are dotted around the map will be quite tough to take at the start of the game. You will probably need at least two well trooped Fighters to be able to take a City without too many casualties. When troops are killed in battle, some of their component parts will be dropped on the battlefield as spoils for the victor. E.g., If a Cavalry Archer required 1 Citizen, 1 Horse, 5 Bows, 1 Armour and 1 Weapon to MAKE, and he was then 'killed' in combat, the horse might also have been killed, the armour, weapons and bows may be serviceable enough for re-use. Some troops may also have just been knocked out or injured in the battle rather than killed, so may still be able to perform as useful citizens again. Most citizens 'killed' in cities will actually have just temporarily fled the City and will return at the end of the week. CREATURE TYPES/PROFILES/STATS As always, a broad selection of creature types will be available. Most of these will be specialised human units, along with mounts such as Horses and Elephants. Ships and Catapults are in there, along with a handful of mythical beasts. Flying boots are in, voidstones are out. There are also a couple of creatures/objects that are so expensive SP wise that only Priests will be able to summon them. At time of writing, SP costs of the human specialised troop units are made up in a 'building block' style, depending on the individual costs of items needed to MAKE that troop in the first place. ** GENERAL STUFF ** WEATHER SR26 will have weather that will affect City Production and Army Move rates. SPECIAL LOCATIONS In Ancient Realms, there are various 'Special Locations' dotted around the map. If a leader lands on a square containing one of these, their report will show an icon that looks like a green blob with a Gold star in it. A message will appear saying something like 'A 500 foot windowless tower built from flawless white marble stands here.' Each type of Special Location has it's own effects, some good, some bad. Leaders can visit these Special Locations by issuing a '{Leader Name} VISIT SPECIAL 1' order. All Special Locations take 100 hrs to visit, except ones that teleport - they will take 150 hrs. Other FAQs: 1) How does Spell resistance work for 'special' troops? There is no spell resistance in Ancient Realms 2) As all troops apart from citizens cannot be trained and legendary recruitment has been stopped what is the point of fighters? They provide training still, and as this is vital to many troop types they are still very important. 3) Do cavalry, gothic knights etc that are mounted troops get 100% mounted bonus on a paladin or will they only get this for citizens and horses? In general, how will 'mounted bonuses' work for each character class? If they have a horse as a component they are mounted, citizens+horses is not regarded as a mounted unit for the purposes of the combat mounted bonus 4) How do MAKE lists work? E.g. War Elephants require Elephants. Which gets made first? MAKE ALL will make units in the order they appear on your City make list. You can make elephants, then make war elephants on the same turn. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have further questions please contact us at the usual email address: s e r i m r a l @ i n c u b u s d e s i g n s . c o m (no spaces) or call us on 01509 217957. Good luck, and have fun :) Incubus Designs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary of Version Updates V1.1.9 - 1st Feb 2006 Clarification of Stables MAKE mounts maximum. MAKE ALL makes all, including stuff that uses food as a component. Clarification of new DELIVER rules for AR. Citizens left in Cities after a battle don't return till end of week. Leaders cannot be DELIVERed to. List of Teleporting Special Locations added Warning about tough NPC Cities added Added warning re seasonal PRODUCTION Clarified no reduction in make costs for Armour & Weapons V1.1 - 24th Feb 2005 Clarification of how Barracks affect MAKE troops maximum. Clarification of how Farms affect MAKE food maximum. Clarification of how Forges MAKE Armour, Weapons & Bows. Clarification on what constitutes a Mounted Unit. Added SLAVES AND REBELS section. Added CITIZENS section. Added OOE for STUDY V1 - 10th Feb 2005