To run Castles: Siege and Conquest, you need a color Macintosh running System 6.0.7 or later. Your monitor should be set to 256 colors. If you are running a version of System 6, you should have the fonts "Helvetica 9" and "Helvetica 18" installed in your System. (If you are running a version of System 7 or later, these fonts are probably already present.) The sample movie included will run if you have QuickTime 1.5 or later.
Most important shortcut in the game:
Holding down the Option key will accelerate time so you don't have to wait so long for all your tasks to complete.
Introduction
Welcome to the world of CASTLES: SIEGE AND CONQUEST. This game is intended to test your skills as an administrator, a military leader, and a politician. During the course of play, you must maintain the delicate balance between the administrative, military and political functions of your dominion. The names of the Lords and the territories in Castles are based on 14th century France, a tumultuous period in European history, which featured the prolonged conflict of The Hundred Years War. This century was marked by chaos, as the struggle for land in France had a high cost in human life. The blood of English and French soldiers saturated the soil and the peasants of these lands were forcefully removed from their homes, raped or killed. The Lords of territories battled each other in an attempt to expand their realms. When a Lord conquered new lands, he would build castles there to substantiate his power over the newly acquired territory.
Your mission is to unite the territories of the mythical land of Bretagne in the midst of this bloody turmoil and eventually become King. It is a formidable task, one that requires intestinal fortitude, cunning and risk taking. If you possess these qualities then you are ready to accept the challenge of Castles: Siege and Conquest!
Object
The ultimate goal of Castles is to be crowned King. This is accomplished by petitioning the Pope to back your claim to the throne once you have expanded your empire to a point of considerable wealth and power. All the while, you must keep your people happy and maintain good relations with the Pope. If you are named King, the game is over and you have won. If, at some point during the game, one of the other players petitions the Pope and is named King, then you have lost the game. You may choose to play as one of five feuding lords from the families of Albion, Burgundy, Anjou, Aragon, and Valois. You select one of these, and the computer plays the other four as well as the Pope.
A game of Castles will commence on January 1, 1312 and will usually last between three and ten years. The date is displayed at the top of the strategic view.
Once you have begun to capture territories and establish your empire, you must build castles. There are many obstacles and challenges that arise throughout the game which often hinder your quest to become King. If you manage your land with efficiency, the effects of these diversions can be minimized and the throne will be within your grasp.
This Demo Program
This demonstration version of Castles: Siege and Conquest will last for about a year and a half before the game stops. You won't be able to save or load your progress, as you can in the real game. This demonstration version includes only one plot to test your kingly worthiness, and only one QuickTime™ movie to enhance the game playing ambiance.
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Strategic View
The first view that will appear in this demo program is the strategic view, where most of the game play will occur. The centerpiece of the view is a map of the entire kingdom, divided into 36 territories. Each territory has its own commodity, designated by a small icon inside the territory. A second icon displays the territory's most recent owner, if any, based upon what your scouts and spies have discovered.
At the top of the screen, just above the map, you will see your name, your score, and the current date. To the left of the map are three wood planks. These are your Task Bars. They represent the three tasks that you can perform at this point in the game. The gray indicators to the right of the Task Bars display your Administrative, Military, and Political Ability Points: the number in use, and the total available to you. You will gain Ability Points as you progress through the game.
Below the Task Bars are two rows of icons. The first represents your stocks of Food, Timber, Iron, and Gold. The second represents the size of your army: Infantry, Archers, Knights, and engines of war.
Virtually every element of game play can be controlled through pop-up menus. If you click and hold down the mouse button on most items on screen, a pop-up menu will provide you with a list of available commands. Try this by selecting an item on the strategic view -- a territory, a Task Bar, or an Ability Point indicator.
Tutorial
Often times the best way to learn is by doing. For those who want to start playing the game immediately, this section will get your realm established with a couple of territories. You can play and experiment from that point. We can't go into all the details and nuances of the game in this demo Read Me file -- but this will be enough to get you started.
Before you begin, you should set your monitor to 256 colors for optimum speed.
Begin by launching the game. Click on the title page, and a dialog box will appear that lets you set up your game. Using the pop-up menus, select Play as Albion, Easy Difficulty Level, and Geographic Commodities. If you want to follow along below, turn Plots and Battles off — but once you have gone through this mini-tutorial once, be sure to turn them on for your next game. Adjust the sound and movie options to your liking. Finally, click OK and you will be given one territory to control. This starting territory will be indicated by a gray shield. A commodity icon will also be visible.
At this point you have the capability to perform three tasks (one administrative, one military, and one political). Begin by building your economy. As mentioned above, your territory has a particular commodity that can be processed. Pull down the Admin menu. One of the four tasks at the top will be enabled (those commodities that are dimmed in the pull-down menu are not present in this particular territory). Select the enabled task, then click OK on the task window when it appears. You are now performing one administrative task by gathering a commodity.
Next, you should build your army, which is a military task. Select whichever aspect of your military that can be recruited at this time from the Military menu. When the task window appears, click OK.
Now click on one of the territories adjacent to your starting territory and select the Scout function from the Political menu. At this point (since scouting is a political function) you are now performing one administrative, one military, and one political function — you are running at maximum efficiency. Always keep your task bars occupied if at all possible!
Once these three tasks are completed, you are most likely in a position to attack the territory that you have just scouted. However, if this particular territory is occupied by the Pope, you DO NOT want to attack it. When you have finished Scouting the territory that you chose (signified by the Task Bar flipping over with the message "Scout Complete"), Scout another territory. Do the same with the Gathering task you chose earlier.
A shorthand way to redo some tasks is by double-clicking on the Task Bar that has just completed. This will re-launch the same task. This is especially useful for Gather tasks. Another shortcut is to click and hold down the mouse button in a territory on the map. This will cause a pop-up menu to appear, listing all possible administrative, military, and political tasks for that territory. We'll try that shortcut next.
When the Recruiting task that you had running completes, you may want to Attack the territory you previously scouted (assuming it isn’t owned by the Pope). To Attack, click and hold down the mouse button on the territory you wish to capture, and select Attack from the pop-up menu that appears. Click OK on the task window and this will launch an Attack task. If you successfully attack and capture a territory, you will add it to your domain and the commodity in the territory will now be available for you to gather. You can also scout territories adjacent to it and launch further attacks on those territories.
Once you have captured three territories, you must consider building a castle. Every territory that you hold must be adjacent to a territory in which you have built a large castle (worth at least 100 points) or you risk the possibility of revolt from the people in this conquered land. This applies throughout your domain -- even to your starting territory.
To build a castle, click on the territory in which you wish to build it and select Visit from the pop-up menu. Choose a grassy area upon which to build your castle (you can scroll the map by clicking and dragging the map using the "hand" cursor).
Next, select Design to begin designing your castle. Every castle needs a flag or "keep", walls, a door, and some towers. First, place a Keep by clicking on the Keep icon (the tower with the flag on top) and then clicking a second time on the map where the Keep should go. This is how you lay out your castle, clicking on the piece you want to place, and then clicking the spot on the map where you want the piece placed.
Now you need to enclose the Keep with walls, doors, and towers. Click on the round tower icon from the palette of castle pieces at the top of the screen and place it on the map a few spaces away from the Keep. Now click on the tall wall icon from the palette and attach it to the tower you previously placed. Note that the game will only let you place a wall next to an established piece such as another tower or wall. The wall will only appear under the cursor if you can place it at that location. Continue placing walls and towers (don’t forget a door) until you’re happy with the castle. If you want to erase a piece already placed, just click on the piece you want to remove and then press the Delete key.
Here's a shortcut for the design mode: If you have towers and walls placed on the map and you want to change from placing walls to towers (or vice versa), just hold down the Command key and the cursor will change into an eyedropper. Click on a piece that is already on the map and the cursor will default to that piece. This saves you from having to move the mouse up to the icon list every time you want to place a different piece on the map.
When you’re done designing your castle, select Leave from the Territory menu to return to the strategic view. You will now see a partial tower inside the territory. This indicates that you have designed a castle there. When you are ready to build the castle, click on that territory, and select Build Castle from the pop-up menu (for the specifics on castle building, see the section entitled The Castle). If Build Castle does not appear, you either do not have sufficient resources to build the castle or you are busy with another administrative task (the Reference Card and this manual both explain the amounts of resources necessary to perform each task).
This should provide you with the basics to get started. Just remember to keep performing tasks in all three areas (administrative, military and political) simultaneously.
Performing Tasks
Castles is a task based game. Anything that you want to do is done by way of accomplishing a task. There are three different types of tasks: administrative, military and political. These tasks are color coded in the ability point indicators and on the task bars: Green for Administrative, Red for Military and Blue for Political.
For each type of task, you have a certain number of ability points. There are three ability point indicators located just to the right of the task bars. Each contains a set of two numbers. The number on the left represents the total amount of points being applied to all tasks of the given type, and the number on the right indicates the total number of points that you possess. Think of this as the fraction of your total points currently in use. A graphical indicator also shows this information.
Your rating will increase as you successfully complete tasks. For example, as you successfully complete administrative tasks, your administrative rating will improve and you will have more points to distribute among your tasks in the future. The higher your rating, the more tasks you need to complete to raise it to the next level. The maximum rating in each category is nine points.
You can use any of the three types of points in any task, with a few restrictions. For example, you need not restrict yourself to using administrative points for administrative tasks. Military and political points can also be used. They still contribute to increasing your ability points in their respective skill areas, but not as much as if they were used for military or political tasks. If you add two military and two political points to the three administrative points used to build a castle, for example, you would gain partial credit towards advancing your military and political ratings.
At the beginning of the game, three task bars are available on the left side of the strategic view. These can be used to accomplish the three types of tasks (Administrative, Military, and Political). The top bar is for administrative tasks, the middle bar is for military tasks, and the bottom bar is for political tasks. Each bar can only perform one task at any given time.
While a task is being performed, three numbers will appear on the right side of the task bar. These numbers indicate how many ability points were applied toward that particular task. The far left number is the amount of administrative points, the middle one is the amount of military points, and the number on the right represents the amount of political points. When a task is being performed, the task bar will fill up from left to right. The task is complete when the bar is completely full. If you wish to repeat the exact same task, assuming it is available to you, double-click on the task bar itself; this is quicker than proceeding through the menu bar to set up the task. If you click on the task bar while a task is being performed, a pop-up menu will give you the option of canceling the task.
When performing a task in any given area, you must use more points from that particular area of the point pool than either of the other two. For example, suppose you have 4 administrative points, 7 military points, 3 political points, and you want to perform an administrative task. If you choose to use all 4 of your administrative points, you may use up to 3 of your military points and up to 3 of your political points. In this scenario, the addition of the military and political points is intended to give you more total points to apply toward the administrative task and thus speed it up. The more ability points applied to any given task, the faster it is accomplished.
Once you achieve a rating of 5 in any of the task categories, a second task bar in that category will be added to the strategic view. As long as your rating is at least 5, you will be able to use the additional task bar. If your rating drops below 5, you will lose the second task bar. Ideally, you will reach the maximum number of six task bars (two administrative tasks, two military tasks, and two political tasks).
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That's about all you'll need to get started in the game. The full game of Castles: Siege and Conquest contains many nuances of strategy and tactics that can't fully be represented in this demo program, but you can expect longer and much more intricate and involving games. You'll also see many more plot lines, more movies, and many more features that are too numerous to mention! We mean it!
