FAQ v.1.0
Fortunes of War: Beta 3.23Social Geometries: v. 204FAQ v.1.0 |
|
Fortunes of War: Beta 3.23Social Geometries: v. 204 |
The Fortunes of War FAQ is meant to address questions about the game that may not be adequately covered by the manual; as well, although it's no substitute for the game documentation, it can be a useful tool for people who would rather eat their knees than read directions.
If you encounter difficulties with Fortunes of War, or have any questions or confusion, please consult this FAQ before requesting assistance from our technical support. We will do our utmost to help you with any problems you encounter, but the FAQ can often help solve problems far more quickly and easily. (Besides, if you ask us a question that we know is answered in the FAQ, we'll just tell you to read the thing anyway.)
And now, on with the show...
Fortunes of War is a turn-based strategic wargame, set in the period of approximately 1000 B.C. to 400 A.D., played over the internet. Players take command of one of several different nation types, and attempt to bring their people to greatness through diplomacy, subterfuge, alliances, threats, and of course, open warfare.
Fortunes of War requires Windows 95/98, Internet Explorer 4.0, and a connection to the internet. That's it; if you can run Windows, you can run Fortunes. Internet Explorer 4 is required regardless of whether or not you use it as your web browser, because Fortunes uses IE4 components for it's own interface. You may be a dyed-in-the-wool Netscape lover, but if you wanna play, you gotta have.
The current rage in the computer-gaming world is real-time strategy games; however, calling these games strategic is more than a bit inaccurate, because virtually all of them eventually degenerate into little more than frenzied mouse-clicking sessions as the player tries desperately to fight off wave after wave of computer-controlled hordes. Fortunes of War is turn-based, meaning that each player makes one move per day and may take as long as he likes to enter that move. This gives a player the freedom to more deeply consider various moves and counter-moves before committing to a course of action; in other words, it maximizes the strategic element of the game.
The Webwars Continuum is proud to announce that they have not only addressed, but also solved, the long-running problem of weak (some would say obscenely stupid) computer AI, in a remarkably simple fashion: They eliminated it. The opponents you face in Fortunes of War will not be dumb, predictable, boring, and ultimately unsatisfying computer-controlled players; they will be living, breathing, scheming, back-stabbing human beings, every bit as capable of deceit, underhandedness, and sleazery as you are. Every opponent you face will have the same goal as you, and will pursue that goal with the unique brand of ruthlessness that only humans are capable of. You had best be prepared to do the same, lest your skull end up as a decoration piked in front of someone's castle gate.
Fortunes of War currently supports five unique nation types: Rome, Carthage, Macedon, Parthia, and German Tribes. They're referred to as nation types, rather than nations, due to the fact that each type can be used to represent any given nation; in test games, for example, the German Tribes have been used as several different nations, such as Visigoths, Vandals, and so on. Each nation type has it's own unique advantages and disadvantages, and must be utilized properly in order to achieve victory. Attempting to employ the tactical finesse of Carthage with the Germans, for example, is just asking for trouble.
No, in theory. At least, we try to make sure they're roughly equal in power. Each nation type is unique, with various strengths and weaknesses, but the bottom line is that any race can defeat any other race, as long as it is skillfully commanded. Most players have their favourite, but it will ultimately be the actions of the player himself that determines the outcome of the game, not the selection of nations.
As an aside, I should take a moment to remind everyone that while open warfare is an important part of the game, it is not the only part. Diplomacy and espionage will be vital to your conquest, and the number and quality of your units in the field have no bearing on that. True, you can't win a war without an army, but I've seen more than one great and powerful military force brought low by the back room plottings of dark-cloaked scumbags.
Air support is fully implemented. Roman and Macedonian players will have access to the Panavia Tornado GR1, Parthian and German players will get the Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot, and Carthaginian players will use the General Dynamics F-15E Strike Eagle. Each unit will be equipped with the appropriate air-to-ground and air-to-air ordnance. Players may call up to three air strikes per turn, but performance will vary based on weather, terrain, and range to Forward Area Operator stations.
Global ratings of players have no effect on the game itself; they do, however, give you an idea as to the quality of the opponent you'll be facing. There is a very specific algorithm involved in calculating ratings, which I won't bother getting into here; suffice it to say that the higher a player's rating, the more skilled he is. Games can either be "rated," in which every player must fall within a certain rating range in order to play (to keep the level of challenge more constant among the players involved), or "open" games, which have no rating limits, and which can also be a rather jarring experience for new players. You have been warned.
Games will wait for all players to submit their first move before starting; after that, updates will occur once every 24 hours regardless of how many moves have been received. You aren't required to make a move at all, but if you don't, you will either annoy the other players by delaying the game, or doom yourself to quick extinction by failing to keep pace with everyone else.
"Frogfoot" is the official NATO designation for the Russian (Soviet) Sukhoi Su-25 ground-attack aircraft. It is the most potent close-support aircraft in the Russian arsenal, and like most Russian/Soviet designs, it foregoes advanced avionics and fly-by-wire systems in favour of straightforward simplicity. While it may not have the raw combat survivability of it's American counterpart, the A-10 Warthog, it is faster and more maneuverable, capable of quickly accelerating to speeds in excess of Mach 1 upon payload delivery. Further, it's Tumansky R-95 engines will operate equally effectively on diesel fuel, motor gasoline, or kerosene, making it extremely versatile in a wide variety of combat situations.
"Toward the end of the Ch'in dynasty, Mo Tun of the Hsiung Nu first established his power. The Eastern Hu were strong and sent ambassadors to parley. They said: 'We wish to obtain T'ou Ma's thousand-li horse.' Mo Tun consulted his advisors, who all exclaimed: 'The thousand-li horse! The most precious thing in the country! Do not give them that!' Mo Tun replied: 'Why begrudge a horse to a neighbour?' So he sent the horse.
"Shortly after, the Eastern Hu sent envoys who said: 'We wish one of the Khan's princesses.' Mo Tun asked advice of his ministers who all angrily said: 'The Eastern Hu are unrighteous! Now they even ask for a princess! We implore you to attack them!' Mo Tun said: 'How can one begrudge his neighbour a young woman?' So he gave the woman.
"A short time later, the Eastern Hu returned and said: 'You have a thousand li of unused land which we want.' Mo Tun consulted his advisors. Some said it would be reasonable to cede the land, others that it would not. Mo Tun was enraged and said: 'Land is the foundation of the state. How could one give it away?' All those who had advised doing so were beheaded.
"Mo Tun then sprang on his horse, ordered that all who remained behind were to be beheaded, and made a surprise attack on the Eastern Hu. The Eastern Hu were contemptuous of him and had made no preparation. When he attacked he annihilated them. Mo Tun then turned westward and attacked the Yueh Ti. To the south he annexed Lou Fan and invaded Yen. He completely recovered the ancestral lands of the Hsiung Nu previously conquered by the Ch'in general Meng T'ien."
At the top of the Webwars screen you'll see the Social Geometries control. Click the text that says "Persona record". From there you may fill in the blanks as you wish. All fields are optional, including the images, but we encourage everyone to send in their information. Any changes you make will be forwarded to us the next time you select "Send & Receive", which is also on the SG control.
No. Fortunes of War uses IE4-specific controls in order to carry out many functions, which Netscape doesn't support. You may play the game with Netscape installed, you may even use Netscape as your primary browser if you're so inclined, but you must have IE4 installed in order to play. Also, Von Rex wishes to point out that Netscape blows.
That's because it doesn't do anything fancy and is designed for the lowest common denominator, that is, Netscape. But the game itself will run about as well as the Albanian economy if you don't have IE4. Hey, if you don't want to listen to me, try it for yourself. It won't work, but at least the time you'll have wasted will be your own.
No. This is an ancient-era wargame. Grab a clue. (Clues will be made available in appendix V.)
Think about it for a minute. There you are, living your pleasant civilian life, going to work every day, watching television, banging the wife 2.4 times a week, and suddenly a marauding army shows up and takes over. Then, a few days later, another army shows up and boots the first army out, and they take over. Next day, the first army shows up, and they then spend the next month wailing the hell out of each other. What are you going to do?
If you're like most folks, you'll eventually decide that it's time to get the fuck out of Dodge. The citizens in Fortunes are no different; they'll put up with a certain amount of sword-waving nonsense, but if it gets out of hand they're going pack up and do the Refugee Rhumba, leaving you with a grossly-underpopulated little town that's going to be largely worthless for a very long time.
Fortunes of War, unlike many games these days, only includes one cheat code, but it's a big one. We ask that users don't take advantage of it in regular play, as it will reveal the location of all enemy cities and units. In order to engage the cheat code, press the left shift key, and while holding it down, type Y A S A L, in that order. Then, quickly press ctrl-alt-delete three times in rapid succession.
Fortunes of War supports anywhere from 2 to 32 players in a single scenario. Biggest game I've played had 9 players, but 32 sounds interesting. It also sounds like it'd be a bloodbath, but that's what we're all here for.
Afraid not. While the medical community has established for years that playing with yourself is a healthy activity if not over-indulged, we of the Webwars Continuum don't wish to encourage that sort of behaviour in this game, as there may be children present.
Shaded (cross-hatched) hexes represent areas under the influence of one of your leaders. Areas of influence always center on the leader; they can be as little as one hex for inexperienced leaders, such as the captains created at your capital, or have a radius of four or five hexes for especially powerful legends. The more experienced a leader becomes, the greater his area of influence is. Experienced leaders are an invaluable tool for any aspiring tyrant. (For a more detailed explanation of leaders and their effects, consult the Fortunes of War manual.)
Yes, it's true. I've made something of a habit of having my head handed to me, game after game. Considering that the Fortunes development team is perhaps the most ruthless, cut-throat bunch of double-crossing riff-raff I've ever come across, this may not be an entirely shameful situation, but the bottom line is that I'm pretty much the Bob Uecker of Fortunes.
Short answer: it means that a game will no longer wait for your move before it recalcs.
Long answer: A game will recalc before it's scheduled recalc time if all moves are in. This allows keen groups of players to play more than one turn a day. However, once your score percentage reaches 33% divided by the number of players in the game, you will be marked as a drop-out for that game. The reason we do this is because once you reach a score that low, you are no longer a factor in the game's outcome and it is pointless to hold up the game just to wait for your move. You may still play, but you'll have to make sure you get your moves in before the last non-dropped out person, otherwise the game will recalc without you.
You will not be removed from the game regardless of how shitty your score gets. (Unless, of course, you suffer an unfortunate onset of death, in which case all bets are off no matter how good your score is. Be careful out there.)
"When night time came, I was told that I'd better go back and try to find a medic, where the medics were. And I was told to follow this communications trench and it would take me back to the medical unit. It was very dark, very dark at night, and shells were exploding overhead. The Germans had a direct bead on our lines. I was going through something that I couldn't understand, I was standing in something, every step that I took I went down to my hips, and the suction, and it turned out to be, it was a communications trench full of Australian dead bodies. And they had been there for a month or so, and the smell was something, if you've ever smelled a human dead body... You've never smelled any odour in your life until you have. You've never smelled a badder one."
The free demo version lets you join demo games, which are smaller and simpler than the member games. You may only play one demo game at a time and they automatically end after 10 days.
With the demo version you may also browse the member site but you won't be able to post any thing there or join the chat room.
For coughing up a few of your hard-earned bucks, you'll receive a unique persona name, the ability to play in member-only games (definitely of a higher-caliber than demo games), and tech support of unprecedented brilliance and quality.
You will also be ranked on the Fortunes scoreboard and you'll be part of a large, dynamic group of players that spans the world. Cool, eh?
We will also give you access to various server functions such as message bases and the Fortunes chat room, but it must be stressed that these functions are given as a gift and are not part of your paid membership. Buying a membership does not give you the "right" to use our message boards or chat rooms. In other words, we'll ban you if we think you're being an asshole and there will be no appeal. But even if you're banned from a chat room, you can still play games.
Because those who can't do, teach, and by that qualification I'm the ultimate professor. Ignore these words at your peril.
Each unit in the game has a total of 100 movement points (for lack of a better term) per turn. If you examine the properties of various units, you'll see values given for the movement points required to move into or across particular terrain types. In all cases it takes a hell of a lot more movement points to move from a grass hex to a mountain hex than it does to move the other way around. So, in this case, the amount of time it took the horse archers to get onto the mountain hex gave the phalanx plenty of time to move elsewhere, assuming it was moving onto more passable terrain. The thing to keep in mind here is that the movement points shown in the unit properties represent the number of points required to move into a particular terrain hex, and has absolutely nothing to do with the type of terrain the unit is on at the beginning of the turn. Thus, slow units can often evade faster ones, simply by making effective use of the surrounding terrain.
What you "should" do is up to you, but here's something to consider while you make your decision. Units from allied nations can move across one another without engaging in combat; units from nations with a neutral relationship will engage in combat if they enter the same hex. If you want to withdraw your units under those circumstances without any chance of accidental combat, you'll have to make a formal alliance with your counterpart. The downside, of course, is that this will allow your "ally" to pour troops into your lands unimpeded, at least until you clue in enough to figure out what he's doing.
The happiness of your citizenry is a funny thing. The absolute maximum it can increase in a single turn is 5 percent; however, in the same amount of time, it can drop by any rate at all. Peasants are such a fickle lot, aren't they? In any event, you'll want to keep this in mind before you put the gears to them too badly; one turn of serious unhappiness can take several turns to recover.
Little towns grow to big cities when their population reaches 8000. Happiness affects population growth, and cities can produce far more powerful units than lowly towns, so... (I'll leave you to put two and two together.)
There are three ways you can win: First and most obviously, you can kill everyone in the game. This is possible, but not necessarily practical, especially in larger games. (Be kinda cool, though.)
Second, when any player's score exceeds 66% of the total, he is declared the winner. This is a far more common endgame situation, and it eliminates the need to completely wipe out any players who remain in the game but are no longer a factor in the outcome.
Third, the game is over whenever all surviving players are allied.
The sad but simple truth here is, not much. Heroes and legends respect gold, not you, and they're notoriously self-serving. About the only thing you can do to maintain their loyalty is pay them gargantuan sums of money, and even then there's no guarantees. Your enemies may bribe your leaders, which can lead to all sorts of unpleasantness, and they also have a nasty tendency to get ideas of their own after awhile.
Keep an eye on their suggested pay rates; the longer a leader works for you, the more experienced he gets, and the more expensive he becomes. The suggested pay for a leader grows as his experience does, so you may not be paying him as much as you think. As well, executing captured heroes will decrease your own leaders' loyalty; sure, some of those guys are just asking for it, but keep this in mind before you turn your thumb down. In the end, the only certainty is that most of your leaders will, sooner or later, gear you around in one way or another. About all you can do is pay them as much as you can afford, and hope they don't do anything too awful when they finally decide they're sick of your crap.
"When the Romans advanced, with most of their strength in the center, Hannibal gave way before them. The Roman front closed around the Carthaginian infantry and it indeed looked as though Rome would win."
"But on the flanks were the cavalry for both contestants, and the Punic cavalry defeated the Roman. Once they won the field, they were able to attack the rear of the advancing Roman infantry. Thus, even though the Roman infantry nearly surrounded the Carthaginian, the Romans were in turn surrounded by horsemen."
"At this point, the Carthaginians counter-attacked. Trapped, with nowhere to retreat, the Roman lines dissolved into chaos. Thousands of Romans died. Both the consuls perished in the battle. Fleeing Romans were hamstrung (that is, the pursuer rather than trying to kill the fleeing enemy simply slashed at the man's hamstring muscle, returning later to kill the crippled man). Out of the 70,000 Romans to take the field, fewer than 2,000 survived."
"It was a terrible slaughter. When the first survivors staggered back to Rome, they were met with disbelief. As more arrived, disbelief changed to horror. Hannibal now had defeated the equivalent of eight consular armies in the space of two years. No one before or after him ever had such brilliant success against Roman arms."
Ah, this is where the fun begins. You can't attack an ally without first declaring war, you see; at least, you can't do so in any honourable fashion. But let's be realistic -- Honour is a swell concept, but we're interested in conquest here. Thus, we have "Treachery."
To attack an ally without warning, change your diplomatic status with that nation to Treachery. That's it. Now go forth and kick ass. Be aware that this sort of scumbag behaviour will cost you some honour, and may not cast you in the most favourable light with the rest of the world, but what's a wee bit of honour when it comes to global domination?
If you're the sort of throwback pansy who wants nice words carved into his tombstone, you can honourably terminate an alliance by declaring war in the normal fashion. You won't be able to attack in the same turn, but you can begin hostilities the next. Your erstwhile ally will, of course, be aware of your intent, and will have the opportunity to make hasty preparations against you, but such are the risks of being a nice guy.
Use the Task Manager, available in the Webwars server functions menu. This is a permanent, ongoing record of bugs, and it's also a constant thorn in the side of the developers, so they pay attention to it. If it requires immediate attention, check the Fortunes chat forum (also available through the server functions menu), and if that's a bust, email vonrex@webwars.com. Be polite.
Win a game with it; particularly, win a game that one of the designers is playing. The only thing they hate worse than losing is losing because of something they screwed up.
How the hell should I know? It's your game, and your empire, and that means foreign policy is your problem.
Yes, it also gets bonuses to morale and missile. As higher levels than green are attained (regular, veteran, elite) they get +1 at each stage to attack, morale, and missile. Units that do not have missile attacks do not get a bonus to missile.
When a player captures a city of a different nation type, he is able to build units of that city's nation as well as his own, within the limits of the unit caste system. For instance, if a Parthian player captured a Macedonian city, he would be able to build both Parthian and Macedonian city units there. The exception to this rule is capitals, which are treated like normal cities for this purpose.
See above. The rationale here is that capital caste units represent the very best your nation has to offer, and can therefore only be produced at your native capital. Captured capitals have just gone through a rather nasty collective experience, and simply don't have the personnel, expertise, or interest in creating such powerful units for you.
This is a potential problem, and one you'll want to protect yourself against. Fortunes itself is easily re-installed, but you absolutely, positively, without question, must, MUST (dammit, I'm not kidding here) backup your TANGLER.MDB file. It's located in the "Continuums/Databases" folder, and it contains the encryption keys which keep your Fortunes files secure. If you lose that file, you'll not only lose your persona plus any games you're currently playing, but you'll also annoy the hell out of Tiberius. (Trust me, I know.)
The current version of SG has provisions to force you to backup your tangler.mdb to floppy every time you exchange keys. It's a good idea to store an additional copy of your tanger.mdb file somewhere else, as well.
This is particularly true for registered players. Social Geometries is designed so that the Webwars Continuum never sees your private keys. This means that any fascist entities that might consider stealing our computers will never see your keys, either. The price you pay for this level of security is a heightened responsibility to look after your own keys. If you lose them, you're out of luck. Think of it this way: the chunk of change you laid down for a membership bought you a tangler.mdb file. Lose it, and you've lost your money.
Once again, for the dummies in the back row: BACK UP YOUR TANGLER.MDB FILE.
"'We're going in, Wodarczyk,' Priller said. 'Good luck.' He pushed the throttle all the way, eased the Focke-Wulf forward, and hurtled down on Sword beach. Barely a hundred feet over the sand, and racing at more than 350 miles an hour, Priller and Wodarczyk opened up with their machine guns and cannon. Their unexpected and sudden attack sent men scurrying for cover, but despite the confusion and terror, some fire came back at them. The two planes whipped over the British beaches, the target of countless anti-aircraft guns from the ships, and came to the eastern edge of the Americans' Omaha beach, where at an altitude of less than fifty feet over the carnage, they dodged balloons. Their ammunition spent, Priller and Wodarczyk climbed for the clouds to the south and inland, away from the beaches of Normandy. They had made their pass and were miraculously unscathed. Priller and Wodarczyk, however, were the only representatives of the once-irrepressible Luftwaffe to appear over Normandy on D-Day. All the 'conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,' had 'shrunk to this little measure.'"
Beginning with Webwars version 3.07, the pull-down menu for armies occupying cities will include an option to switch to the city menu. This will, we hope, eliminate the confusion regarding this matter. If you wish, you may access the city menu in the original manner, which is to hold down the shift key while you right-click on the occupied city. This is a faster and more efficient route to the city menu, but apparently rather archaic based on the feedback we've received from our testers. (Or maybe our testers just ain't that bright.)
Two possible reasons, then. First, the city and all hexes surrounding it are full. You can't stack units, so if there isn't an open hex to create your new unit in, you're going to have to move someone out of the way. Second, if it's a town and it's under siege, unit creation will not be allowed.
This is normal. Ships have very good spotting ranges at sea, but realistically cannot see nearly as far inland. Thus, regardless of their spotting range, all sea-going vessels can only see one hex inland; that is, they can see coastal hexes, but no further.
It's all a matter of finite mathematics, as it relates to an individual ship. See, a quinquereme is .2 (when you consider a single ship, one, divided by quin, which is five), and a bireme, using the same formula, equates to .5. A trireme, however, is different; it works out to .3333 and so on, repeating into infinity. This proved to be a real problem in ancient naval warfare; Roman sailors could shout, "We're .5!" and be ready for action, and Carthaginians knew they were .2 and were therefore always prepared to kick ass at a moment's notice, but the Macedonian sailors aboard their triremes had to spend countless hours trying to work out their true value. With the majority of their crew devoted to this task, they were no match for the other, more easily caculated warships of the era. In fact, some historians claim that the concept of "rounding up" originated in ancient Macedon, but came too late to save it's navy from annihilation.
Or there may be a simpler explanation, such as...
Quinqueremes were the ultimate ship of the ancient era, while the Roman biremes were little more than slightly scaled-down rip-offs of the famous Carthaginian design. Compared to them, the trireme was an old and outdated vessel, a useful but not dominating warship. Also, keep in mind that it's not just the ship itself at issue here, but also the crew. The Carthaginians were masterful sailors, born with the sea in their blood. The Romans weren't, but they did have the power of their legions behind them, so they simply packed their ships with heavily-armed marines and relied on boarding enemy ships and slaughtering their relatively helpless crews. This was an unconventional tactic at the time, but one that ultimately proved effective. Sinking a ship is unnecessary if you can more easily just butcher it's crew.
Any rat-filled hexes represent "undefined" hexes, that is, hexes that Fortunes doesn't recognize and doesn't know what to do with. This usually happens if you enter an illegal path for rivers or hills. Fortunes maps cannot have any undefined hexes, so if you're making a new map and see a rat, it means you have some cleaning up to do.
Blowjobs for everybody! Well, that's probably not practical. Besides, what really affects happiness, just like in real life, is the tax rate. You can probably figure out the basics, but just in case, low taxes make people happy, and high taxes tend to piss them off. Of course, keeping your taxes nice and low when you're up to your eyeballs in marauding barbarians is a tricky proposition, but to be perfectly honest, that's your problem, not mine. Happiness can also be affected by enemy espionage activity, and by military results, particularly the capture and loss of cities, but if you're losing cities on a regular basis happiness will be the least of your concerns.
Sure! The average citizen likes nothing more than paying insanely high taxes just to keep your war machine running, so you can fulfill your dreams of conquest. Your people love you, and would do anything for you! Right?
Right?
Putting a city under siege affects two things: Unit production and gold production. When a capital is under siege, it will only be able to produce units of city caste or lower; when a city is under siege, it will only be able to produce units of town caste; and when a town is under siege, it cannot produce any units at all.
As for gold, the amount of production lost each turn will be either the sum of the total attack values of all units besieging the cities, or a percentage of the total gold production equal to two times the total attack value of all sieging units, whichever is higher. Confused? Me too. Suffice it to say that if your city is under siege, your gold production will be cut, and that's bad. Do something about it.
Those interested in the more mind-numbing details of the equations involved should refer to the Fortunes manual under "Other Algorithms".)
The city will go to whichever player has the greater forces within the city's hexes when it falls. "Greater forces" is to be determined by the total cost of upkeep of the units in the city; so, as an example, if one ally has a legion (upkeep of 4) in the city and the other ally has three peasant levies (upkeep of 1 each, total of 3) in the city, the player who owns the legion would take possession of the city.
If both allies have equal forces, city possession will be determined randomly.
"When your weapons are dulled and ardour damped, your strength exhausted and treasure spent, neighbouring rulers will take advantage of your distress to act. And even though you have wise counsellors, none will be able to lay good plans for the future. Thus, while we have heard of blundering swiftness in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged, for there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefitted."
No, pirate ships are distinct units. They just look happen to look like evil biremes because, well, the artist is a lazy bastard.
You're not doing the ritual chant. You must strip naked, stand in front of an open window, jump up and down and loudly scream, "Wokka Wokka Wokka Woo!" at the top of your voice. Perform the ritual for five minutes each day, for ten days, and success will be yours.
On the other hand, it could just be bad luck. The percentage of success is simply ten plus a random number of the agents you have assigned to the mission. And let us not forget that if nobody sent any messages that turn, there's simply nothing to intercept, and so failure is inevitable.
Let me think about it. Umm... No. (I enjoy easy questions like that.)
Ottawa. Actually, I'm not, but the principal developers are, and I'm trying to be accommodating here.
Well, I'll write the FAQ for it. Will that help?
Not at the moment. We realize that downloading the software can be a serious pain in the ass for people in other parts of the world (and sometimes, for folks right here), so we're looking into setting up mirror sites as the situation allows. Announcements regarding mirror sites will be made as they become available.
Sorry. Linus Torvalds is an admirable fellow, but nothing we write will run on anything he writes. Von Rex muttered something about "God damned true believers" but I didn't quite catch it.
Not at the moment, but this feature will be added. The downside to this is that if an allied leader decides to bugger off in the middle of the night with a bunch of units under his control, your units could go with him as well. This is somewhat riskier than employing your own leaders to influence troops, because you have no control over how well (or poorly) the leader is being treated. On the other hand, using someone else's leaders is definitely cheaper than employing your own.
Because that's the whole point of the game. If you don't like the idea of being offed by your fellow players, then perhaps Barbie Fashion Designer is more your speed.
A subscription costs $40 per year, with options to buy 3 months of play for $20 and six months for $30. We're talking US dollars here, folks; good old American greenbacks.
Sure, if you demonstrate that you're a) cool and b) talented, in that order. Other qualifications are likely required, but that's not really my department.
"And never forget that help may come from the most unlikely of quarters, and success rest upon the shoulders of those kept shadowed until the time of need."