PROJECT: New Game Manual

[Locutus]

I had a few moments to spare today while at uni, had nothing better to do (no access to the game there) so I started browsing old threads and came across a thread of almost a year ago in which we discussed writing a new manual. The discussion soon lead to an argument over what file format to use for the final result and died. That's a pity because writing a new manual is a darn good idea: the current manual and strategy guide are very crap to begin with, and also rapidly getting obsolete.

So I gave some thought about what such a new manual would look like and, having nothing better to do anyway, came up with a rough draft of the overall structure. I'm posting it below, please feel free comment on it: is it good, is it bad, what to add (I'm sure I forgot a few things), what to move, what to leave out. Maybe a few people can actually start writing this thing? We can worry about details like file formats later, it's usually not too hard to convert one format into another.

I'm not sure how much time I would be able to invest in this myself, but I think this is a excellent project to work on for those people who are currently not doing much for the project but who want to help more. At the time of the previous thread people like CoT, centrifuge, IW, Gilgamensch, Aias, Tamerlin, The Big Mc and Solver seemed interested, those would be good people to work on this now if they have time and feel like it. Other can also help out if they want of course.


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Call to Power II: Apolyton Edition -- User Manual


Legal Notes
Legal information on the game, source code and manual.

Credits
Who helped make CtP2, AE and the manual?

Table of Contents
As the title says.


H1 Introduction
General info on what kind of game CtP2 is: turn based, strategy, manage resources, fight wars, blah blah.

1.1 Goals
Explore, grow, build, research, fight, trade, negotiate, win.

1.2 Apolyton Edition
Explain what the AE is and its history.

1.3 Differences with CtP1???
Explain main differences between games maybe???

1.4 Differences with Civ3???
Explain main differences between games maybe???


H2 Getting Started
A quick run-through of all facets of the game, to help complete newbie get started. All ot this may or may not be intertwined with an in-game (SLICed) tutorial and the Great Library. Topics to cover:

2.1 Pre-game setup
Various start-up options explained.

2.2 Turns
What is a turn, what happens between turns, when a new turn starts?

2.3 Fog of War
What’s all that black stuff, why are some parts of the visible map ‘greyed out’?

2.4 Settling
What to do with that donkey guy, what to pay attention to when finding sites to settle?

2.5 How To Get Stuff Done: the User Interface
Basic UI screens and functions explained: Control panel, Minimap, Right-Click menu, Menus.

2.6 Units
How to build units, how to move them around, how to attack? Basic info on different types of units.

2.7 Cities
What’s their purpose, how to build things, what are specialists and mayors?

2.8 Terrain & PW
What impact do they have on resource collection, movement, defense?

2.9 Empire
What are empire settings and governments?

2.10 Science
What the purpose of research?

2.12 Goods & Trade
What are good and how to trade them?

2.13 Opponents, War & Diplomacy
What are those other guys doing there, how to I fight them, how do I stop fighting them?

2.14 Winning the Game
What to do to win, what victory types are there?


H3 Unit Concepts
All there is to tell about units and combat.

3.1 Purpose
Run through roles of units: recon, attack, defense, bombard, transport, naval warfare, unconventional warfare, etc.

3.2 Properties
Discuss conventional unit properties: attack, defense, ranged attack, armor, movement, build cost, support cost (explain special forces, readiness state), transport capacity, fuel, stealth, etc. Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

3.3 Movement & Combat
Explain movement restrictions (land, water, mountians, deep water, air), armies, combat model and veteran units.

3.4 Unconventional Warfare
Explain every unconventional action in the game, organised by types: slavery, diplomacy, espionage, happiness, wealth, disease.

3.5 Managing Units
User Interface controls and screens related to units, including common orders (move, attack, expel, disband, etc).


H4 City Concepts
All there is to tell about cities.

4.1 Purpose
Purposes of cities: resource collection, construction of units/buildings/wonders, borders, defense, etc. Explain city styles.

4.2 Settling
Explain in detail how, where, when to settle. Also cover Urban Planners, undersea cities, disbanding cities.

4.3 Capturing
Explain how to capture cities: combat in cities, attacking cities from sea, which units can capture (empty) cities, capturing undersea cities, free advance on capture, etc.

4.4 Growth & Population
Explain how the population model, city growth and starvation work, explain (dis)advantages of large cities.

4.5 Resource collection
Explain resource collection model, specialists.

4.6 Contruction
Explain how to build stuff, what the types of buildable items are (units, improvements, wonders), how build queues work.

4.7 City Improvements
Explain role of buildings and what types there are (growth, production, science, corruption, defence, etc). Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

4.8 Wonders
Explain role of wonders in the game, discuss wonder races. Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

4.9 Happiness & Crime
Explain happiness and how to manage it. Explain revolts and revolutions.

4.10 Managing Cities
User Interface controls and screens related to cities, including majors and advanced build queue features (saving, loading, multiple city management, etc).


H5 World Concepts
Explain the map and the world around cities and units.

5.1 Terrain
Explain terrain types and their properties: food, production, commerce (difference between gold & science), defence, movement cost. Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

5.2 Main Map
Explain how to interpret map information: fog of war, selected unit/city (squares around settlers), city name/size/symbols, unit size/symbols, borders, right-clicking to get info, what do units/cities/trade routes look like?

5.3 Minimap
How to use the minimap, what are the various modes?

5.4 Tile Improvements
Explain what types of tile improvements exist and how and where to build them. Explain pillaging. Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

5.5 Trade Goods
Explain trade goods and their advantages (resource bonuses, trade). Refer to appendices to detailed stats.


H6 Empire Concepts
Everything under a players control except units and cities.

6.1 Definition
Explain what an empire is and what its subcomponents are (units, cities, government & empire settings, science, etc).

6.2 Borders
Explain borders and their role in the game, how to expand them.

6.2 Empire Settings & Concepts
Explain the empire settings and their impact on the game. Explain empire-wide concepts like PW, gold, happiness, pollution.

6.3 Governments
Explain the role of governments and their impact, how to choose a government to choose. Government units. Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

6.4 Science
Explain role of science, how to choose and change research, how to set goals, other means to acquire advances (espionage, conquest, diplomacy, etc). Explain Great Library and how to navigate it. Explain advances: branches and ages. Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

6.5 Pollution
Explain pollution, how to check and reduce it. Explain global disasters.

6.6 Feats
Explain what Feats of Wonders are, list them all.

6.7 Trade
Explain trade: what it is, advantages, how to do it, what determines the prices, international trade. Also explain caravans, embargo and piracy.

6.8 Managing the Empire
User Interface controls and screens related to empire management.


H7 Opponents
Everything related to the other players in the game.

7.1 Civilizations
Explain what types of civs there are and their personalities. Refer to appendices to detailed stats.

7.2 Diplomacy
Explain how to conduct diplomacy, role of embassies, what proposals there are, how to use tone of proposals, threats. Explain regard and trust and what affects them (pillaging, piracy, unconventional warfare, atrocities, nuking?).

7.3 Espionage
Explain espionage, how to gather intelligence, how to spy.

7.4 Mutually Assured Destruction
Explain MAD.


H8 Victory
Explain the various modes to win the game and how to achieve them (especially Gaia Controller)


H9 Multiplayer
Explain how to find, participate in and set up MP games, how to run them smoothly, explain resynchs etc.


H10 How to Play: Strategy Advice
A basic strategy guide for newbies.

10.1 Resource Collection
For each resource (food, production, commerce, gold, science), explain all factors that affect it, how to maximize/optimize it.

10.2 Research
How to optimize research, what are the most important advances?

10.3 Combat
How to form and manage stacks, when to attack, city defense, etc.

10.4 Naval Strategy
Give hints on naval strategy, how important is it, what ships to build, naval invasions.

10.5 City Management
When and where to build cities, what to build in them, what wonders to build, etc.

10.6 Empire Management
Advice on empire settings, governments, trade, diplomacy, pollution, etc.

10.7 Game Start
Some hints on that all-important phase of the game: the start

10.7 Multiplayer
Some multi-player specific hints


H11 Game Settings
Explain all settings of the game: graphics, gameplay, advanced settings, etc.

H11.1 Keyboard Mapping
List existing keyboard mapping, explain how to modify it.


H12 User Interface
Systematically run through all UI screens in the game (again), for reference purposes.

12.1 Pre-Game Options
Run through all pregame options and settings

12.2 Map Controls
Radar map, control panel, right-click menus, army manager.

12.3 Menus
Each of the menus above the map map.


H13 Troubleshooting
Explain and solve common problems, basically an expanded FAQ.


Appendices
Detailed information and statistics on a wide variety of topics.

Units

City Improvements

Wonders

Advances

Terrain Types

Tile Improvements

Trade Goods

Governments

Civilizations

Index
Index of all important concepts discussed in the manual

[Ekmek]

I think a manual should also include reference to SLIC, mods, and other tools like tileedit etc. Most people come for the game but then want to make changes and really that is where ctp2 cant be beat is the customization ability.

[HuangShang]

well, for 1.4, i recommend just a general difference b/w the CtPs and the Civs in general

just personal opinion i guess, but 2.5 for the interface seems a little late, as settlers seem early at 2.4

4.3 free advance on capture? when did that happened, or is AE?

ive noticed somethings i might have to read up on...

[Locutus]

Originally posted by E
I think a manual should also include reference to SLIC, mods, and other tools like tileedit etc. Most people come for the game but then want to make changes and really that is where ctp2 cant be beat is the customization ability.

I agree it would be good to have a decent, complete, unified, well-structured and up-to-date manual for modding. One that discusses the ins and outs of every text file, explains for every concept in the game (units, special effects, orders, goody huts, AI strategies, etc, etc) how to add/edit it and also discusses the various modding tools that are currently out there and how to use them (TileEdit, CtPEd, in-game scenario editor, BMP2CTP2, etc). A bit like hex's mod guide but more complete and up-to-date (a lot of stuff from hex's guide and other documentation out there could probably be reused).

However, I don't agree that that information should be part of this playing manual: there is far too much information to just add it all as a seperate chapter or a few seperate chapters. I think in fact that it would be best to have 3 manuals: one for the playing, one for modding, one for SLIC. The first one is what I started this thread for, the second one I frankly haven't given much thought to yet and the third one I've already got covered (just give me a few more weeks, possibly months).

Originally posted by HuangShang
well, for 1.4, i recommend just a general difference b/w the CtPs and the Civs in general

Well, I named it Civ3 because how many people are out there that have played Civ2 but not Civ3? But yeah, mentioning differences with older Civ games could be part of it.

just personal opinion i guess, but 2.5 for the interface seems a little late, as settlers seem early at 2.4

The idea is that sections 2.3-5 explain everything pretty much everything the player sees when he first starts a new game, to help him get through the first few turns of the game (combined also with 2.6, so that he can build units and start exploring). In what order these things are explained is fairly unimportant IMO, basically at the discression of whoever ends up writing that chapter.

4.3 free advance on capture? when did that happened, or is AE?

Yes, that was added in AE. You should play the game more

[The Big Mc]

well if you want a section on tile edit, sprite edit, making sprites, doing ask me or e .
(you could ask the martin but he has probably not got time.)(or just steel the manual)

[child of Thor]

Ok this is good timeing as next week i'll have my new pc up and running at home.

The layout looks ok Locutus, i'll have to compare everything once i've played the new build a bit.
Does this mean we're at that stage where the game is more or less done?
And where's the best place to go to get the ready to release build?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Does this mean we're at that stage where the game is more or less done?

No, but by the time the manual will be done it might

AFAI can tell the programmers mostly seem to be working on MP (kaan), AI (calvitix), bug fixing/stability (Fromafar) and 'under the hood' tile imps/terraforming handling (Martin) now, no real gameplay changes happening.

But even if that changes, it's generally easier to update than to write from scratch...

And where's the best place to go to get the ready to release build?

Playtest thread.

[Maquiladora]

now, no real gameplay changes happening.

There are the changes to terrain, which I hope we can introduce in the next playtest.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
There are the changes to terrain, which I hope we can introduce in the next playtest.

Ah yes, text file changes, there might indeed be a few of those over the next few months

But those will mostly just affect the appendices, which should wait until last anyway...

[The Big Mc]

we could integrate the altered underwater terrain set.

[J Bytheway]

Now that we have a svn server to do the work in, I feel like making a start on the documentation, so I'm interested to know what, if anything, has been done so far (CoT?).

I could lay down this outline in LaTeX, and perhaps work on something to autogenerate tables for the appendicies from the text files. Of course, I don't actually play the game very much, so I wouldn't be the best one to write the body of the text, but once the outline is there it would be relatively easy to add to without much knowledge of LaTeX (it's not very different from just text by that stage).

In fact, it has just occured to me that using texinfo is another option... but I won't complicate matters by promoting it .

I feel I should also point out that in fact we need at least four manuals, not just the three Locutus mentions, and the fourth (for those working on the source code) is the only one we have at present!

I'd be interested to hear the progress of the SLIC manual...

[child of Thor]

well my 'Complete CTP2 newbie guide on how to play' is basically finished. It comprises the following:

1. How to start a game(100% complete)
2. complete UI breakdown and explanation with all the subcatogaries.(95% complete)
3. step-by-step (monkey see monkey do) start-up game guide for the first 10 turns (appprox)(90% complete)

I need to do a complete layout re-check and edit, just to polish up any errors and the idea is to give it to my girlfriend so she can try to play the game using just this guide. Once i start this last bit it shouldn't take long before i can hand it over to you or Locutus.

Its all based on the playtest version i've been using but is also aplicable to the origonal game(which apart from the different start-up menu layout is the the same in-game).

[J Bytheway]

Any further progress on this, CoT? It would be nice to get some user documentation started .

[child of Thor]

Well i haven't been able to persuade my gf to have a look at it, she's more interested in Baten Kaitos on her gamecube( http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/rpg...os/review.html ).
So no accounting for taste i guess

Still i'm happy to post what i've got so far - i've been a little sidetracked for a while now i must admit, but i've the files somewhere so i'll put them here in a few days(warning! this might extend into next week depending on stuff ) for you to critic.

Don't expect rocket science - what i've done is aimed at a complete newbie to CTP2 but it might be good for those of you who have been keeping up with the source code tests to be able to put your input and any new info in too

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Still i'm happy to post what i've got so far - i've been a little sidetracked for a while now i must admit, but i've the files somewhere so i'll put them here in a few days(warning! this might extend into next week depending on stuff ) for you to critic.

Great . I look forward to seeing it .

Don't expect rocket science - what i've done is aimed at a complete newbie to CTP2 but it might be good for those of you who have been keeping up with the source code tests to be able to put your input and any new info in too

Don't worry; it would have to be truly terrible to be worse than nothing at all! .