----------------------- Imperialism v1.1 Readme ----------------------- ---------------------------- Installing the Patch (Win95) ---------------------------- ---------------------------- Installing the Patch (MacOS) ---------------------------- ------------ New Features ------------ == Unit Summaries == Due to demand, we've added books which list all of your armies, navies, and civilian workers. Clicking on any unit while the book is open will close the book and take you to that unit. Some ships in the navy book have a little flag next to their name. This indicated that the ship is a flagship (ie, an admiral is on board). The following keystrokes access the unit summaries: F5 - Civilian Workers F6 - Armies F7 - Navies Note to MacOS users without extended keyboards: You can still access the books by selecting a unit of the appropriate type, holding down the control key, and pressing the garrison (armies), roster (navies), or disband (civilian) buttons. == Continue After Elections == If you are elected ruler before 1915, you can now turn down the post and continue playing. (Solo game only.) == Sappers == Sappers now use half of their movement points to dig a tunnel. Thus, if you don't move your sapper at all, you will be able to dig two tunnel spaces per turn. In addition, you can now press the "S" key to have all of your units skip their turns until the next sapper comes up. This is useful for those long sieges where no one is moving except for sappers. If one of your units is fired upon, the skipping will automatically stop; however, units which have already passed will not get their moves back. -------------------------- Bug Fixes and Improvements -------------------------- * The message window in multiplayer will no longer cause the game to crash. However, the game will not be able to continue to the next phase while anyone is reading a message. * The game no longer crashes when a computer player has only land-locked provinces left on the map (crash occurred after trading) * A large memory leak has been plugged. (Win95) * The game can now be played on a computer without a sound card (Win95) * The application automatically minimizes when switching to another task. (Win95) * When armies are selected, the date in the upper left corner of the screen is replaced by an indicator of how large a force you have selected in terms of transport by rail or beachhead. This allows you to adjust the force size easily, using either the arrow-buttons in the toolbar or the individual unit selectors in the garrison book. * The computer players now select more appropriate strategies for their geographical situation. * Province names will no longer leave behind little letters on the map (Win95) * The computer players' strategic decision-making received general improvements. * The computer players' tactical decision-making was improved somewhat in the area of fort defense. * Province governors will be somewhat less likely to vote in early elections. * In multiplayer games, remote players' navies will no longer disappear and reappear in the wrong place. * Assorted graphical glitches have been ironed out. * Map scrolling has been linked to a timer so that extremely fast systems will not experience oversensitive controls. * The ratings on the diplomacy screen (Industry: Fair, etc) are now relative to other Great Powers, rather than an absolute scale. * The minimap rectangle accurately represents the actual location of the screen. * The appearance of the diplomacy map has improved (Win95) * New units will receive proper ordinal numbers in their names (eg. 11th Minutemen, 12th Sharpshooters, etc.) * During tactical battles, key presses are handled more reliably. * An engineer working on a town space no longer blocks selection of that province's garrison. * Army units can be given names up to 24 characters in length. * Tactical control buttons no longer work during the computer's turn. * A timing issue was fixed which allowed computer players to buy technology one turn before human players. * The order in which battles are resolved now works properly. * Forts now have three gates, so they are not such a disadvantage when the defender needs to counter-attack. * Units standing in a gate are not safe from direct fire weapons. Units standing behind a gate are. * The money displayed in "Promised Grants" in the diplomacy screen should now be accurate at all times. * Rapidly clicking the accept button multiple times on a trade offer sheet in multiplayer no longer makes extra trades. * For anyone who has read this far, a little bonus: In the diplomacy screen, you can have your foreign minister figure out what subsidy will make you the favorite trade partner of a Minor Nation. Simply select any subsidy, hold the control key down, and click on that Minor Nation. The proper subsidy will automatically be placed. If there is no hope of being the favorite, it will place a 100% subisdy. This process is referred to as Metterclicking. Of course, there is no guarantee you will end up the favorite trade partner, as other players may change their subsidies during the same turn. -------------- Clarifications -------------- Yes, we do try to read Usenet, and here are some points that were confusing or people wanted answers to: * All fighting in the game is the same. When you turn off tactical battles, or when two computer players fight, they use the tactical engine and rules, but without displaying anything. * To get rid of another nation's developments in one of your colonies, have the colony boycott that nation. * Once again, we advise using TCP/IP over IPX (Win95) or Appletalk (MacOS). TCP/IP provides a much more solid connection for multiplayer games. * The "transport size" of an army unit is equal to the number of arms it took to create that unit. When performing a landing, the allowed size of a landing force is equal to the total number of arms it took to build all the ships performing the beachhead operation. For example, a frigate costs two arms to build, so a landing force composed of four frigates allows a force of size eight. This could be eight regulars (one arms each), four artillery (two arms each), or some combination of the two. This number is also used when deploying troops farther to distant provinces; the force size that can be moved in one turn is equal to one fifth of your internal transport capacity (built in the railyard). * The computer players do have several different personalities, but the differences are difficult to directly perceive by a human player. However, they persue a variety of trade and military strategies which affect the game. * MacOS users will experience faster drawing if they switch to 256 colors before starting the game. Imperialism will not switch down for you. * Some MacOS users with Power Computing machines have experienced problems with sound effects and music. If you have a Power Computing machine and don't hear sound or music, or experience a dramatic slowdown in game speed as you play, go to the Preferences screen and set the sound and music options to 'mute'.