Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 15:37:16 -0500
From: "Robert F. Heeter"
Subject: W2WT: Round B Rules & Info (B)
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Round B PRELIMINARY Rules and Information
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Contents:
- Special Rules for Round B (subject to change)
- Prizes for Round B
- Ruin Contents for Round B (subject to change)
- Important WarBOT and Scenario Advice (on flight items and navies!)
- Essential Principles for Resolving WarBOT/Warlords Disputes
*** Special Rules for Round B ***
(Subject to Change until the Round starts)
1. Razing is allowed anywhere, anytime!
2. Quests are ON! Here's how they work:
* When you receive your quest at the temple, you must:
1. Revert until you get a "Sack and Pillage" quest
with value between 900 and 1100 gold.
(On average this takes 10 reverts; not too bad.)
2. Announce the new quest as a hero activity.
( example: "Ramen receives quest to pillage 1024 gold" )
* When you complete your quest, you must:
1. Revert until you receive DRAGONS or ARCHONS for the quest.
( On average it takes about 6 reverts to get your choice. )
2. Disband all but one ally.
3. Report the completion of the quest and the ally received.
In other words, sack-and-pillage quests are allowed, with a
mighty ally as the reward!
3. The two-hero rules from Round A will be re-used here, with one change:
You can get a hero with ANY ally on Turn 2, for 1000 or more gold.
*** If you want a second hero, it MUST come ONLY on Turn 2. ***
As before, you only get a replacement if both your original heroes die.
However, REPLACEMENT heroes can only come with a GHOST or ELEMENTAL.
(This discourages players from disbanding heroes to get many allies.)
4. If there are only 2 players left alive in a game, then the turnaround
time limit will be increased to 3 days (1-day weekend still)
5. Gold Info:
Starting gold is just over 10,000 per side.
There are 4 gold ruins; the limit is 1250 gold per ruin.
6. Special Rules for Builds in the Center:
The 4 "Paradise" cities in the center build spiders.
They are to be considered *enemy* cities, so the spiders defend at 7.
(This helps prevent White's elemental from razing all of them.)
The spider production *must* be pillaged when the city is taken.
(We have not edited the gamefiles to ensure all spiders are normal.)
7. Holidays:
There are no official holidays scheduled this round.
All players receive 2 weeks of vacation for Round B, plus 4 timeouts.
Round C will start shortly after all Round A games are completed
and the first Round B game reaches Turn 21 (similar to the start
of this Round after the Practice Round ended and the first Round A
game reached Turn 21).
All Round B players get 8 more vacation days when Round C starts.
*** Prizes for Round B ***
The four Warlords who write the most entertaining game history will
each receive a prize from SSG.
The one Warlord who writes the best individual roleplay will also
receive a prize from SSG.
The awarding of both prizes will be determined after the round ends
by a team of moderators (who cannot receive prizes).
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Round B PRELIMINARY Ruin Information
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(the contents are also given in the ruin descriptions within the game)
NORTHWEST QUADRANT:
Miraculous Item - Levitating Tent (fly)
Angel's Eyrie Item - Wings of the Angels (fly)
The Lost Ark Item - Ten Commandments (+2 Command)
Purgatory Ally - 1 Ghost
Seminary Ally - 1 Elemental
West Fort Ally - 1 Devil
The Holy Grail Ally - 1 Worm
Pharisees' Ally - 1 Demon
NORTHEAST QUADRANT:
Hermeshome Item - Shoes of Mercury (fly)
Apollonia Item - Chariot of Apollo (fly)
Vulcan's Forge Item - Lightning of Zeus (+2 Command)
Pantheon Ally - 1 Ghost
Medusa's Lair Ally - 1 Elemental
East Fort Ally - 1 Devil
Kraken's Cove Ally - 1 Worm
Mother Lode Ally - 1 Demon
SOUTHEAST QUADRANT:
Alexandria Item - Wind of Ra (fly)
Aerosmithy Item - Flying Carpet (fly)
Ra's Pyramid Item - Staff of Ra (+2 Command)
Death Valley Ally - 1 Ghost
Cleopatra's Tomb Ally - 1 Elemental
Tut's Tomb Ally - 1 Devil
Ra's Slavepit Ally - 1 Worm
Demon Lama Ally - 1 Demon
SOUTHWEST QUADRANT:
Smithsonian Item - Ancient Helicopter (fly)
Physics Labs Item - Anti-Gravity Boots (fly)
Pentagone Item - Horn of Freedom (+2 Command)
Parapsych Lab Ally - 1 Ghost
Twisters Ally - 1 Elemental
Jurassic Park Ally - 1 Devil
Bar Association Ally - 1 Worm
Hollywood Ally - 1 Demon
BORDER REGIONS:
Satan's Den Ruin - Gold - Limit 1250
Hades' Gate Ruin - Gold - Limit 1250
Fort Knox Ruin - Gold - Limit 1250
Moses' Tomb Ruin - Gold - Limit 1250
North Temple
East Temple
South Temple
West Temple
*** Important Advice for Round B ***
This scenario has been extensively playtested, in the
"Duel" series of 5 games (all accessible in the Remailer game archives).
However, a number of modifications have been made as the scenario
evolved, so the games in this round will not be really like *any*
previous Duel games! (We didn't want the moderators who playtested
the scenario to have a special advantage.)
There are three major ways in which the Duel map differs from the
Olympics map used in Round A:
* First, there is more of everything.
More cities, but not too many (50).
More gold (10,000 per side to start, with 2500 more available per side
from sacking, pillaging, and ruins.
More allies: 1 with your second hero, 5 more available in ruins
(1 demon, 1 devil, 1 worm, 1 elemental, and 1 ghost), and
allies available from questing.
This is a land of abundance. Manage thy wealth well!
(The Round C scenario will test your ability to cope with scarcity!)
** Second, there are more flight items. Heroes with flight items will
now be *very* common. However, Warlords has a number of quirks when
these flying heroes get into battles! Do NOT take anything for
granted! (WarBOT will get the results right - provided you get
the terrain right and remember to indicate that the hero has a
flight item.) The most important situation is this:
1. Suppose you have a hero stack over water/shore, or in the mountains,
so that it must be flying somehow. (Note: mountain roads are *hills*
terrain - you can see the hill stack and terrain bonuses applied.)
2. Suppose there are units in the hero stack that normally fly
(pegasi, griffins, bats, etc.)
Then:
Even if the hero has a flight item, ONE of the flying units
will fight *after* the hero. It will be the flying unit which comes
highest in the *default* fight order. As a result, it is possible to
assassinate a hero with a flight item without killing the entire
stack. Three ways to deal with this are to leave your flying hero
stack over land, to keep naturally-flying units out of your flying
hero stack, or to keep that stack *extremely* well-defended!
*** Third, there are now bridges, coastal cities, and port-anchor squares.
That means NAVIES!!! If you thought Warlords was quirky with flying
stacks, you won't believe all the strange things that can happen with
navies. Here are some important facts to remember:
* You MUST MUST MUST indicate which units are navies in WarBOT!
(It is possible to have ground units which are *not* navies
in water/shore, so WarBOT needs to know this info. )
* The various different flavors of Warlords do *NOT* treat navies
the same. You must remember to set the correct flavor of
Warlords in your WarBOT calculations.
* Navies fighting in bridge or city terrain fight as *ground* units.
(not as navies). So Navies which attack into a city remain
naval units for movement that turn, but defend as ground units
if attacked. WarBOT handles this correctly.
* Ground units may "board" navies at any BRIDGE square, move with
the navy, exit at any *other* bridge square (or join a flying hero)
and *continue* to move as *ground* units.
* Ground units taken out over water/shore sometimes become navies
(or even drown) during the turn or at the start of your next
turn, depending on which Warlords version you have.
In other cases, they may stay over water/shore,
defend as *ground* units (with *open* terrain bonuses), and then
remain ground units on subsequent turns! (This is very bizarre;
read the ongoing saga of the "h1-duel" prototype Head-to-Head game
to see what some effects of this can be...) WarBOT can handle mixed
ground/naval stacks, provided you tell it which units are navies
and which aren't.
* Navies may attack from bridge squares onto adjacent land squares,
fight as ground units, and then remain navies (and move as navies
afterwards). Similarly, navies which attack into cities may then
attack onto land near the city, fight as ground units, and then
move as navies afterwards. (These last two tricks have been
dubbed "commando raids.")
* If you attack a naval group with a flying hero stack that includes
a navy in it, any non-hero ground units in your stack will fight
as navies.
* This is *not* a complete list of all Warlords naval quirks!
(See the WarBOT documentation for some more quirks.)
[ You can see why we kept navies out of the Practice Round and
Round A. But now we will play Warlords in its true glory! ]
*********** ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL INFORMATION ****************
In case of confusion, we will play by these 3 principles:
1. "Warlords is as Warlords does." No matter how strange the outcome,
we play the game however it happens to work.
2. "Check the battle screen." The units that fight as navies have
little blue water-splashes under them to make them look like boats.
Everything else is not a navy.
3. "Trust WarBOT." If you enter the navy and flying item information
correctly, it will match what Warlords does. If it doesn't,
which will be very rare, then we'll (a) fix WarBOT, and (b) back
the game up if necessary, so the defender can adjust his/her
planning. We WON'T back games up to fix your own mistakes -
only mistakes that are strictly due to WarBOT bugs.
Finally, if you have a question about a particular situation, especially
if you think there's a problem with Warlords and/or the WarBOT,
you can send private email to your Moderator and they'll check with
the WarBOT gurus (Mike Leung, Gary Best, and Bob Heeter). Any of your
playing time that is lost while we do this will be returned to you.
Good luck, and enjoy!!!
-- Bob