Updated as of March, 1997 Hundred Years War Main Documentation Copyright, 1997, GSE Erudite Software Recent Changes Crusades: Changes in how the crusaders form up. Transfer of Magnate Titles by Conquest (search for "Conquest of Titles") Entering the Clergy. Changes in procedures, Multiple Accounts: Official Policy. Quell Megafief rebellions with bribes (search for "bribe.") You can use this document electronically (load it into a word processor or document viewer and use the key words, which are shown above and at the top of each section, to find the section you are looking for), rather than printing it out. By accident, design or desperation, this document is most effective if you use it electronically. While not all computer gamers have multi-tasking machines, those that do can use this document very effectively via key word search. If you print out this document (with page numbers), you can go back and fill in the "Page" column above. This document is in ASCII format (or DOS text, as some call it) and most word processors can import ASCII. Index Key Word Section Page WHATX Description of the Game MAPX Maps, Heralds and Other Docs SYSOPX Role of the game sysop and Heralds VARX Variant games QUICKX Quick Start (and Introduction to the game) PREX Preliminaries FIEFX How to Run a Fief FAMX Managing Your Family and Household CHARX Characteristics and Skills MOVEX Movement KINGX Kings, Kingdoms, Magnates (and the Pope) STATX Active, Inactive, Disputed Fiefs and The Purge SEXX Sex and Romance COMX Combat and Campaigning SEGX Besieging, Raiding, Pillaging and Extortion CAPX Capture, Ransom and Execution DIPX Diplomacy WINX How to Win DIVX Diversions MONX Money and Ducats LAWX Law and Order PARX Parliament PLAGX The Plague CHIVX Chivalry MULTX MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS SAVX Playing Small (low cost/time play) BBX BB (Bulletin Board) Tips Frequently Used Acronyms and Game terms BBS- Bulletin Board System, the separate area where players post messages to each other and carry on diplomacy. BP- Black Prince, nickname for the English crown prince. The term actually came into use several centuries later, referred to the blackened, burnished armor Edward, the crown prince of Edward III, wore. Church Tax. A special tax that the French king (usually) and the English king (sometimes later in the game) can appeal to the pope to authorize. Brings in as much as 24 million ducats. CP- Crown prince (heir) of England and France. Ducat- Currency used in the game. Equal to about one modern dollar. An English pound of the period was worth 600 ducats, for example. There were over a dozen major currencies used in Europe in this period. Disco- Disconnected from AOL. Disputed. A fief that comes into play when it's owner, a character that is not normally in play, dies. These "disputed" fiefs are announced in the Herald and may be taken and kept by anyone that conquers them. EC- Entry Court, other name for the Help Desk chat area. Excom- Excommunicated, by the pope. Fief. An area in the game that you move into and through. Players can own fiefs, and conquer them from other players. GFE- Graphics Front End. A free Windows front end program you download and install on a Windows computer system. It provides a graphic "front end" for the game itself that is running on the AOL computer. HRE- Holy Roman Empire. A loose confederation comprising most of Europe. Those areas with a strong government, especially England and France, were completely free of the empire. But most other areas owed technical fealty to the Holy Roman Emperor (an elected office by the 14th century, and possessing only as much imperial power as an individual emperor could enforce.) IC- Interactive Court. Area in the game where players can talk together in real time. IC- Means comments made in messages to other players "In Character" (representing the 14th century person you are playing.) The opposite of this if OOC (Out of Character.) KD- A thousand ducats. Keep Value. A numerical representation of the fortifications in a fief. Actually represents many fortified towns, castles and other defenses. Some fiefs actually had but one major castle or walled town. NPC- Non-Player Character. The same as a player character (PC) but not played by a player. NPCs are hired and used by players. OOC- Comments made in the BBS that are "Out Of Character." That is, you are speaking not for your historical character but "off the record" as yourself (the 20th century personality you have to deal with most of the time.) OLM- On Line Messaging system. This is the bulletin board type system within which game, which also includes email capability. This is used to address messages to individuals or public and private groups. PC- Player character. The character the player represents. Prince Hertier- Crown Prince in French. Royals- The kings of England and France, and their crown princes. Text Interface- Or text menus. The menu system you play the game with if you don't use the GFE. WHATX What is the Hundred Years War (HYW) Online Game? The Hundred Years War is a historical wargame in which the players each take the part of one of 107 aristocrats who were involved in the Hundred Years War between France and England (1337-1453). The game "map" shows over 800 "fiefs" that are owned by the players. Each turn equals 90 days of game time and many actions you take are not put into effect until the system does its daily update (at 1 PM eastern time) The game is shut down for about half an hour while this update takes place. Many games of HYW are going on at any time. Normally, there are some differences between each game. One of the differences is the frequency of update. One type of game is the "Slow Game." This one has only TWO updates a week (on Thursday and Sunday). There are also "Fast Games" that do a seasonal update each day. Most actions you take, however, are immediate and in many respects HYW resembles a role playing game (RPG). There is one major difference between HYW and most RPGs. HYW is based solely on historical fact (well, at least as much as possible in a game.) The characters at the beginning of the game are real, and most of their circumstances are real. While the medieval records that have survived are not complete, we have been able to put together a pretty complete picture of 14th century Europe, it's economy and it's major nobles. While the game has been thoroughly tested, we are still adding new features all the time. We will first test new items in the beta game (which, by popular demand, we have kept going) and then installed in the other games. Announcements, and descriptions, of the new features will be made in the Bulletin Board and every few months or so we will issue updated versions of the documentation. When you first enter either of the game areas you will see an explanation of what the game is all about and what options you have to join up (i.e. ask to be English, French, Other. After reading this material and making your choices, you are returned to the main games menu while the game carries out your instructions. You will now have a player character. You will have control of him or her and of your ancestral lands. That is when your playing really begins. Plenty of files on the game in the file library. Plenty of good advice and companionship in the messaging system. Plenty of mayhem and adventure in the game. How Long Does the Game Take To Play A survey of our current players asked how long it took to play. The largest number of responses to the question "how much time do you spend in the game, BBS, and Chat Area" was in the 15-30 minutes per day range. On the other hand, many people responded that they read the BBS twice a day or more. It takes a fair bit of time in the beginning of a game to search around, looking for good quality Non- Player Characters to hire. These NPCs are very valuable in managing your fiefs (lands) and as generals, spy's, etc. After you have a stable full of NPCs, your time in the game will drop quite a bit; most activities in the game can be done very quickly after that. The game is all menu driven at the moment. There is a GFE (Graphic Front End program) available, which still uses the menus most of the time. Many players only log on a few times a week, and schedule some of their appearances to coincide with joint actions with other players. You can easily play the game using less than two hours of online time a week. This would include time spent on the BBS reading and posting messages. MAPX Maps, Heralds and Other Docs We have hard copy of the HYW maps for those of you who do not use the Graphic Front End (GFE). These are similar to the GIF maps in the library. They are nicely done. The maps come on 14 separate sheets of paper. Cost is FREE, all you have to do is pay postage. To Order send a stamped (75 cents) self addressed envelope (Number 10 if you want them folded, 9x12 inch if you want them unfolded) to: Erudite Software & Consulting HYW Maps PO Box 1794 Orem, Utah 84059 A good way to use this document is with a file reader or word processor. That way you can search for terms quickly and get a better grasp of items you are learning. Printing out the game documentation is also a good idea (about 77 pages worth), although if you have a multitasking computer, you can put this document in one partition and the GIF maps in another, while you are playing the game in another. In any event, the game is largely intuitive. Most operations are pretty obvious. When in doubt, ask one of the Heralds, either on the message board or via email. SYSOPX Role of the Game sysop and Heralds Each game has a sysop, who runs the game, and some games have Heralds, staff members that play, but are obliged to help all players learn the ropes. The sysops have considerable power in the games they run. They can change some of the game rules and set up (at game start.) Sysops also make ruling on how the game should be played whenever a questionable situation arises. Sysops also have access to the Sysops Menu, which allows them to edit over a hundred items in the game (see below.) HYW Editors for Sysops 1. Fief Editor 2. Player Editor 3. Constant Editor 4. Summary Report for Fiefs 5. Summary Report for Players 6. Financial Report 7. Player Dump 8. Brigand List 9. Player List 10. Switch Utility 11. Population and Cash Total 12. Total Times Since Last Clear 13. Turn Military Functions Off 14. Turn Military Functions On 15. Check Military Status 16. Turn Hiring Off 17. Turn Hiring On 18. Check Hiring Status 19. Move NPC Between ORGs 20. Transfer A Fief (Changes Ancestral Owner) 21. Create Or Add To An Army 22. Transfer A Title 23. List Of Titles 24. Gambling Report 25. Keep Level Report 26. Change English King 27. Change French King 28. List Current Kings 29. Modify Score 30. Excommunicate 31. Outlaw English 32. Outlaw French 33. Move NPC to Dead PC 34. Mass Transfer Fiefs 35. Kill A PC or NPC 36. Edit Heralds 37. Plague A Fief 38. Run Inflation 39. Manage A Family 40. Manage Fiefs 41. Kick a player out 42. Message reports 43. Churn report 44. Game Parameters 45. Register a screen name 46. Play another screen name 47. Initialize open positions 48. Clear siege 49. View update log 50. Dump mail 51. Succession transfer 52. Exit The sysop has the final word in all decisions affecting their game, there is no appeal. The sysop will often consult with other members of the College of Heralds (all the sysops, Heralds and developers of HYW), but the final decision on a game question is always for the game sysop to make. Being a sysop is a lot of work, and most sysops are in charge of several games. Thus the sysop does not have the time to do a lot of modifications via the sysop editor. Don't ask for a lot of changes, the sysop can only do so much. HYW Staff The "Developers" are; Jim Dunnigan (game design), Dan Masterson (system development) and Al Nofi (research). All three of us can be reached via the feedback option on the main menu. As the authors of the game, we do not play, although we all have small player positions in the game so we can keep an eye on new features and old bugs. We don't get involved in the play of the game because we have access to everything everyone is doing (except email messages, which no one can see except the senders and receivers). Some games have one Herald for the English, one for the French. Sysops handle the "others." Camelot games just have a sysop. The names of characters being played by Heralds have an asterisk (*). Other members of the HYW staff have an explanation point (!) character in front of their game characters name. You can always ask any Herald or HYW staff questions, so we identify their characters in this way to make it easier for you to find them. Player assistance is provided in some game by the two Heralds (the folks who help run the games and who also play.) The Herald of England and France are responsible for English and French nobles respectively. As they are also players for those kingdoms, they can be trusted with sensitive information on upcoming campaigns. These "national" Heralds also start the game as royal officials (serving as long as the king wants them.) These "National" Heralds are some of the most experienced players in the game and their principal job is to share that experience with other players. The sysops supervise the Heralds is the chief Herald and should be contacted if you have any (heaven forbid) problem with any if the Heralds. All the Heralds observe confidentiality in what is discussed with them personally for the purpose of getting advice on the game. It doesn't matter what nationality you are; if you can't find your respective National Herald (they are often busy with official French or English business), please feel free to ask any Heralds. These are now the restrictions on action by Heralds. 1. Absolutely no assassinations. 2. No kidnapping for offensive, revenge, or hostage purposes. This means nothing that actually qualifies as 'kidnapping'. There are other possibilities in which the Kidnap menu item must be used, which are legal and honorable purposes, such as taking spies in one's own homeland into custody, or rescue attempts. Those actions are permissible. I think we all know the difference. 3. All prisoners taken will be treated well and not executed, with two exceptions. a. Heralds may execute common criminals (NPCs) who have found themselves in their dungeon by a direct criminal attack on them, specifically, kidnappers and assassins who have failed an attempt and got captured. b. Heralds may execute officially Outlawed individuals of their own land, by their King's public order of death sentence. They will under no circumstances execute Nobles of other nations, or captives taken in honorable siege or battle. 4. National Heralds will, upon taking any Fiefs in combat, immediately transfer captured lands to their King. They are fighting for their Country, not for their personal gain. Such lands will then be at the King's disposal. National Heralds may hold and keep lands given to them _voluntarily, by their King or anyone else, but they will not keep personal gains of land made in Combat. Note, this last rule precludes any possibility of Heralds land-grabbing or fighting for personal gain. They are team players. If the King wishes to give them land, he may - there are various reasons this may be done - but they will not take and keep land in Combat. It will be turned over to the players on their team, via the King. The National Heralds are Knights in their King's service, and may fight honorably for their King in battle, subject to the above restrictions on unchivalrous deeds. If you have a question about the game that you wish to ask through Email, you can just send the appropriate Herald (look for the players with asterisks in front of their names) The Heralds are all here to answer your questions - that's their job. And it saves them the time of forwarding basic questions to us, and lets them concentrate on improving the game. Remember that the only kinds of questions that will require confidentiality are some you don't want seen by members of the other kingdom. For this reason, you have the ability to create private mail groups with the ingame email that are restricted to English or French players. It's best to ask questions there, because not only Heralds but also other players on your side will be able to help you. The complete ASCII documentation for the game consists of the following files HYW.DOC- This file. HYWDOC.ZIP is the compressed version. All of this is also found in the HLP format file (HYWHELP.HLP) that functions like "Help" in any Microsoft Windows program. There is also a Windows HLP format version of HYW.DOC (two versions, one for Windows 3 and another for Windows 95.) These are not kept as up to date as HYW.DOC (which should be considered the definitive doc for game rules and procedures. SKILLS.DOC- Describes all the character skills and the effects they have on the game. SKILLS.ZIP is the compressed version. GLOSSARY.DOC- A glossary of terms used in the game and the medieval period. GLOSSARY.ZIP is the compressed version. HYWHIST.DOC- A collection of historical information on the period as it applies to the game. HYWHIST.ZIP is the compressed version. Same information also found in HLP file HYWHIST.HLP. Separate documents of interest to players (and Medieval history buffs in general) are (available in the HYW files library): Playanal.txt- Analysis of the 107 available player positions (as well as the 200 disputed positions). The most powerful player starts off in the game with much more wealth than the poorest player. Hey, everyone can't be king. Peers.asc- List of the ranks (or titles, there are 17 different ones) held by players (most players have more than one as each fief comes with a feudal rank). Fiefs.asc- Characteristics of the 800 separate fiefs and Megafiefs in the game. More in a period flavor, here is a slightly modified bit from Shakespeare's Henry V (with thanks to player Ted Rosenbladt for suggesting it); "Pardon, gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object: A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Can this cockpit hold the vastly fields of France? Or may we cram within this virtual O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt? Let us, ciphers to this great accompt, on your imaginary forces work Suppose within the girdle of these walls of code are now confined two mighty monarchies, whose high upreared and abutting fronts the perilous narrow ocean parts asunder. For now sits expectation in the air! And hides a sword from hilt unto the point with crowns imperial, ducats and coronets. Pierce out our imperfections with your thoughts. For tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, carrying them here and there; jumping o'er times, turning the accomplishment of many years into an hourglass. For that which we supply, we request thee Chorus to our history; Thus, prologue like, we, your humble patience pray gently to play, kindly to judge...our GAME!" For getting into the play of the game real quick, like in 10 minutes or so, see the Quick Start section below. And, oh yes, welcome to the 14th century. May the Lord have mercy on your soul, not to mention sundry body parts... VARX Variant Games Bohorts A Bohort was an impromptu free-for-all joust favored by medieval knights. It was considered a form of entertainment and was usually found wherever a large number of knights were at loose ends. Sieges were a common scene of Bohorts, often with knights from inside the besieged castle (under a truce flag) participating. In this respect, medieval warriors were quite civilized. But their favorite entertainment's were decidedly on the rough and tumble side. Some of these Bohorts were so spectacular that they were remembered more than the siege they took place during. Our Bohort is played out on a larger canvas. The historical background for this game is one huge civil war. We assume that the royal and magnate (largest land owners) families of Europe had all fallen into disorder. This allowed any noble with sufficient drive and determination to wade in and pick up as many pieces as they could. Granted, this was unlikely. But large and mighty empires have fallen into disorder in the past, giving rise to a situation such as this. It happened when the Roman empire fell apart, and similar scenes of large scale chaos have occurred in China and India. So it is not totally out of the question. Bohorts are not Camelots nor are they Team games. We do not enforce cross-national accounts or Multi player accounts in Bohorts. We don't even enforce multis in Camelots or Team games. Players can play as many positions as they want in Camelots or Team games just as long as they don't play Cross-national accounts. This rule does NOT apply to Bohorts. Major differences between the regular game of Hundred Years War and the Bohort. -The Bohort only lasts ten years (40 seasons.) The normal Bohort is played at the rate of one season a day, so the game lasts for 40 days. - Scoring is using the older GDP (Gross Domestic Product, or total income of all your fiefs) system. That is, your score is expressed in terms of how much you have increased your GDP from what it was when the game began. The ten players with the highest GDP increase are thus the winners. The number one finisher will have their score posted in the Hall of Fame. -There is no purge after (approximately) year five of the game. The sysop will turn the purge off at an unknown season during the mid-game, adding another element of uncertainty to the action. Thus after the year the purge is turned off, when a player takes a position in the game, but does not play, the no-show player dons not get dropped ("purged") from the game after 21 days (or less, depending on how active the player had been.) This means that the second half of the game is basically a "last man standing" fight. -The sysop running the game will decide when, he will kill off the disputed (non- playing) characters and thus make all their fiefs disputed (and conquerable by any player.) In this way, each Bohort game will be quite different. -Since the kings of France and France are not active, none of the royal routines (church taxes, loans from the Italian banks, parliament, royal knights Etc.) are not in play. -The pope's special powers are not in play. The game sysop plays the game, so you can always get a divorce if you need one. Just post a message to player 22 (me, the pope.) -The cost of troops is reduced 90% (from 2,000 ducats per soldier to 200, for example.) This includes cost for Ancestral fief troops (500 ducats to 50), but not for maintenance costs (stays at 500 ducats per soldier.) In effect, you don't have to worry as much about money. Your major expense is troops, and now they are a lot cheaper. -Tactics are different. Your chances of winning depend on the percentage increase of your final GDP over your starting GDP. Not all player positions start the game with the same GDP. The range, for most, is from 3 million to 30 million ducats. Thus a player with a smaller GDP has a better shot at getting a spectacular end game score. But the players with higher starting GDP have more money to begin with. Even with the lower cost of troops, more money is an advantage. You can use it to subsidize other players, who are in need of ready cash, to help you. Money can buy you exceptional NPCs that one player does not need, but that you can use. Not all players have the same stats. Thus a player with poor stats will be quite eager to buy NPCs with good army leadership and siegecraft stats. Three of the player positions have very high GDP. Chances of winning are low for these large GDP positions. But since you can use more than one screen name in the game, having one of these "cash cow" positions will assist your other screen name positions to win. There is also a difference in nationality. The English players have a combat advantage with their yeomen and higher stats when using other nationality troops. But the English players have to get their yeomen across the channel, and have a hard time recruiting in non-English fiefs. "Other" players also have a hard time recruiting in fiefs of a different language. Thus the French positions are actually quite good compared to the regular game. Time of Troubles Game Medieval times were troublesome times, even when things were good. Incessant wars, plague, Mongols and general disorder. But things could get worse. And in the new Game Knight4 we play a historical game with all the "troubles" that actually happened, plus many that could have. Here would be the regular historical game, featuring the conflict between England and France. But even here we will have a few historical twists. The ruler of England is Isabella (age 41). Queen Isabella had overthrown her hapless husband (Edward II) and had him murdered. She sits on a shaky throne. Historically, her eldest son, the future Edward III, put momma away and took the throne in 1327. But here we have Isabella holding off her ambitious son, for the moment, anyway. Isabellas other three children are not by Edward II. Two were fathered by Mortimer (her live-in lover) and another by de Grosmont.) Isabella's older brother, Charles IV Capet, is the French king. Historically, the three sons of Philippe IV (Isabellas and Charles father) died (Philippe IV died in 1314, his eldest son Louis X died in 1316, next son of Philippe IV, Philippe V died in 1322 and, historically, Charles IV passed away in 1328) in rapid succession before any could have a son who lived long enough to keep the Capetian line going. Thus the French crown passed to a grandson of Philippe IV's father (Philippe III). In our game, Charles IV takes care of himself, is still alive in 1337 (age 43) and has a son (Charles V, age 12), two daughters (Marie, age 13 and Margot, age 8). Wife is Jeanne, age 33. Interesting, no? The game offers a long list of troubles. Something old, something new, something borrowed and all of it blue. To wit: The Troubles The Mongols, who come in more than once. When they do arrive, two Mongol characters enters Venice with 80-120,000 men (combined) and purse of 100 million ducats (combined). They have high stats. Can marry, but only male heirs may continue the line and then only if the Mongols hold at least one megafief or hold 5 other Italian fiefs. Vikings- One player lands in North Sea port fief with 7-11,000 men and 15 million ducats. Low health, cannot marry. Excellent combat stats. Eric, Olaf and so on. All fiefs within 2 spaces will go into rebellion due the chaos caused by the invasion. Berbers (Mohammed the Maranid from North Africa), who attempt to reconquer Christian Spain, and whatever else they can grab. One player enters Aragon with 60,000 troops and 100 million ducats. Can marry and continue line only if the Berber controls one of the following, any Spanish Mega fief or 5 fiefs in any of the following provinces, Navarre, Bearn, Bigorre, Foix or Mallorca. The Turks move west into Italy. One player enters Venice with 50,000 men and 200 million ducats. Can marry and continue line only if Turk controls 1 megafief or controls 5 or more fiefs in Italy or Arles Orkhan the Turk (to 1359), Hussites heretics march in from Germany with their highly effective army. One leader (good stats, can't marry) and 20,000 troops. Leader set up as high stats English so the troops will be yeoman class. Anytime after 1400. Massive outbreaks of Heresy (with members of the Bad Company taking ownership of all the fiefs in provinces so afflicted and tasked with trying to "convert" everyone else.) These events are more likely to come in the wake of the Plague. There will be Lollards, Bogomils, Waldensians and, by special request, a return appearance of the Cathars. Each holy man will, in addition to control of the province, be given a few million ducats. Each outbreak of heresy will result in one to three provinces going heretical and falling under the control of a local holy man (who will obtain ancestral owner status). The local holy man cannot pass on his position (i.e., marry and have heirs). So once you nail the holy roller, you're home free (except that ancestral ownership status goes south with the chief heretic.) Moorish Pirate Armies land in Italy, France and Spain. Land in Mediterranean port fief with 4-5,000 men and 10 million ducats. Cannot marry, low health. Hussan, Abdul, etc. The Port and all fiefs adjacent will go into chaos with the landing of the pirate. The Mighty Bruce, a much improved king of Scotland, tries to do what William Wallace could not. The Bruce is a mighty general and periodically is able to raise the clans (as a levy) into an army he doesn't have to pay for. The Irish Pretender. Paderick de Burgh, erstwhile Earl of Connaught and pretender to the throne of Ireland. He has good stats and is 25 years old. Has ancestral rebellion rights for Irish fiefs (is considered the ancestral owner). Has small army (large enough to quell an ancestral rebellion in one of the Irish fiefs.) After that, has to raise more money, and troops, to use the ancestral rebellion and quell the other parts of Ireland. Also has to worry about the English. Is periodically able to raise the a levy into an army that he doesn't have to pay for. The Empire Strikes Back (the Holy Roman Empire decides to assert control over Imperial lands). The Emperor gets an army of about 20,000 Germans from the east (every few years) and goes to work on Italy and France. At the same time, he gets 50 million ducats of tax revenue from his eastern subjects. The Empire Revived. The REAL Roman empire revives led by united Italian princes. The Duke of Lombardy manages to unite Lombardy, Venice, Florence, Genoa and the Papal States as the new Imperium Romanum. The player positions that normally hold each of these megafiefs still exist, and when they come into play they can trigger an ancestral rebellion and, given a subsidy from another player, can retake their ancestral megafief. Meanwhile, Visconti is the "Imperator Romanum" and can try reassembling the rest of the old Imperium Romanum, when he isn't fighting off Mongols, Turks, Moorish pirates and heresy. The new imperial title is not official. But as long as de Visconti holds two or more of the Italian megafiefs, he is recognized as the de facto Roman Emperor. It usually takes a century or so before these new titles become official. The pope is in Rome, as a guest of the Imperator Romanum. The papal fiefs in France have reverted to the French king. The anti-pope routines are still in effect. The Magnates Game First played starting on June 17th, 1994 on another service. It is a variant on the basic HYW game, exploring some likely historical What Ifs? of the period. The Magnates Game: Historical Background Historically, by 1337, France and England had developed as the two largest and most cohesive kingdoms in Europe. England was far more united and centrally administered than France, but France was far larger (13 million to 3.7 million souls) and had prospects of becoming still larger. By the end of the HYW, France was the most powerful nation in Europe and stayed that way until the early 19th century. It didn't have to turn out this way. Take, for example, Germany in the early 14th century. There was no central administration and the free cities (most towns of any size had some degree of autonomy from feudal rule) were organizing to oppose any feudal rule on a permanent basis. The German nobles were not helpless in the face of this, but they were too busy fighting each other and resisting the Holy Roman Emperor to do much about it. The Holy Roman Empire might have developed into a unified Germany, but it never got the string of strong emperors and lucky breaks that this required. Therefore, the Magnates Game assumes that France did not get enough strong kings, while the magnates (counts and dukes) expanded their land and rule at the expense of the nominal king. We assume that the Capetian kings of the 11th and 12th century managed to do away with the election of the king, but little else. To maintain their position they had to trade land and authority. By 1337, there was still a king of France, but his lands and authority was restricted to those held by himself and his son in the vicinity of Paris. Throughout the rest of France, other nobles held sway, including English lords who ruled large tracts of land in France. The English king had lost his other French lands in the preceding two centuries. It is assumed that England also lacked strong kings at the right times. A Plantagenant king still ruled London, but little else. In the wake of the Magna Carta, the English nobility expanded their rights and privileges, rather than seeing them restrained by strong kings. The names are still the same in this game, but the lands held are often different. The many small wars of the preceding three centuries had arranged the political landscape differently. In addition, we have added a strong Moorish ruler in Spain, on the assumption that the Spanish had been less successful in their Reconquista and the Moors more capable. In addition, we have assumed that the second wave of Mongol armies did not get distracted by Persians, India and the Middle East, but instead shot right through the Turks (as they did historically) and went into the Balkans, entering Europe via Italy before the end of the 14th century. The Mongol leader (the historical Timur) was born in 1336 and by the 1360s had consolidated his power and put his armies into motion. Among other things, the Magnates Game is a test of the HYW system, to see how well the internal editing features work and to see how much work will be needed to expand the game scope into Germany, the Middle East and North Africa. If the Magnates Game goes well, and we expect it will, by 1995 you'll be able to lead the Teutonic Knights into the Slavic lands, revive the Byzantine Empire, or perhaps conquer all of Europe as a Moslem, Mongol or Christian general. Distinctive Features of the Magnates Game (unless noted below, all existing features of HYW apply in the Magnates Game.) -140 magnates (including kings) are active in the game (half French, one quarter English, the rest Other.) The three Mongols who come in for a while will be played by HYW staff, but not any of the non-playing Heralds in the Magnates Game.) -Each magnate (including kings) is assigned 1-12 fiefs (with the idea to giving them about the same total population and GDP) -Sign up will be random, with the system selecting character. -NPC Hiring and combat will be turned on quickly. Exact time will be announced in an Online Message to ALL. -Object of the game is to see who can cobble together the largest kingdom after a century, and who acts the most nobly. The final scorecard will have two top ten finishers, one will be the "Conquerors" and the other the "Nobles." The Conquerors list will be based on your percentage increase from your beginning population and GDP. The Nobles list will be based on the scoring system already built into the game. The average of these two numbers will give you your final score. You cannot finish in the top ten here unless you also are a king at games end. -No outlawing (kings legal powers not firmly established yet) -Leon-Castile is the Moslem state of Cordoba (historically, it was absorbed by Leon-Castile during the 10-13th centuries.) If conquered, an army of 10,000- 20,000 appears from the south (North Africa) the next season. This will happen three times, after that Cordoba stays unmolested by Moorish armies from the south. If the Moorish player is killed off, he also gets "cousins" to take his place three times. The player of this position is otherwise normal, and can recruit outside Cordoba (money talks, and how do you think they converted so many Christians to Islam in the first place?). Note that the "Moors" were led by Berbers, who founded and presided over the ruling dynasties in this period. So you have blue eyed warriors on both sides. -In addition to the plague, we'll have a Mongol horde (that will only last a few years before attrition and politics back home in Mongolia recall it.) Two or three Heralds (or players) can assume Mongol magnate characters and handle this. These Mongol generals each enter the map leading a 20,000 man army of cavalry (men at arms) and have excellent top line stats. Each Mongol general has 100 million ducats. When that is gone, they have to live off whatever they have conquered. Mongol generals have no heirs. If they die, their army disbands and their fiefs become disputed. Mongols can recruit anywhere as Others (via their Italian speaking flunkies, thus they will use Italian as their language.) -Pope is in Rome (the Papal States, his only property) and cannot lead armies. The pope approves title transfers and who gets knighted (as well as the usual stuff, plus calling crusades against the heathen Moslems and Mongols.) The pope can make quite a bit of money soliciting donations from nobles desiring to be kings (or getting divorces, etc.) -No church tax or BCCI. -No Call to Arms, you have to recruit, this will limit the number of Yeomen in the game. -No playing Heralds in the game (because there are no national teams) except for the brief fling as Mongols. - Parliament and kingly functions turned off. -The Pope cannot excommunicate the Mongols or the Moslems, Heralds will police this. -Pope can anoint new kings. This is a one way process, it cannot be taken away. Potential king must have a 9 stature, hold all the fiefs in at least three contiguous provinces (megafiefs don't count) for at least two seasons in a row. The title will be shown by one of the new kings province titles being changed to KING. -The pope can authorize the transfer of a magnate or royal title if the current holder is landless for at least a year and agrees to the transfer. -Initial holdings conform as closely as possible to province boundaries. This has the added benefit of encouraging players to use their senior title instead of family name. -No Purge, but; -Ancestral rebellions still in use -Cannot transfer Ancestral fiefs (as per normal game rules, Heralds still have to handle all fief transfers, except through conquest). -A landless noble can take service under another noble, managing lands, scouting, quelling, recruiting, etc. -The families of the formerly unplayed players are still there and now represent the families of the minor nobility and provide marriage partners for the active players. -Every year ending in 0 or 5, the Heralds will post Player Standings for the Conquerors list (who has grabbed the most territory). The Kings Game Another variant, but not as variant as the Magnates Game. There are still strong kings in England and France and still the potential for a Hundred Years War between those two nations. However, all the other kingdoms are stronger and thus there will be other kings involved in whatever comes about. The game begins in 1338, without the historical tension between France and England. However, there is much to be tense about. Just check out the differences with the standard HYW game, as detailed below. Changes from standard HYW -French royals are not deranged (they have much better stats). This is because we assume that the more capable Capetian kings (in power since 987 AD) did not allow their line to get polluted with defective genes. We assume that, while Louis X the Headstrong screws things up from 1314 to 1334, he was then replaced by his son (via a talented mother), Philippe V (not to be confused with the historical one of 1316-22, called "the Tall"). Philippe V has stats that match those of Edward III. -Flanders and Brittany are "Others" (both swearing fealty to the Holy Roman Emperor and both magnates owning more of the fiefs in their province.) This represents French kings less successful in the 13th century, when they unified France and recovered some of the English kings French possessions. -Normandy still belongs to the English king (see above). -The Papacy in Rome, and able to provide Church taxes to both kings (the formula for English church taxes is in the docs). -France and England have access to BCCI credit. But BCCI is partly owned by the Holy Roman Emperor, who must authorize the loans and acts as a collection agency. He has grounds to capture fiefs of either king (if they default) at the rate of one ducat of GDP for each ducat of principal not repaid. The kings can escape this sanction by repaying the principal and still defaulting on the interest. BCCI has 500 million ducats total to loan to kings. Each king may, once authorized, draw upon this as per the existing rules (ie, 18 million each per year). When the 500 million is fully lent out, the collection process may start. To remain current in repayment, the kings must pay back the same way they borrowed (twice their stature in millions of ducats.) Otherwise, the emperors collection agents come calling. -Selling the Crown of Italy. If all the active Italian magnates agree, the Holy Roman Emperor may sell the title (king of Italy) to one of the Italian magnates. Naturally, this magnate will have to make arrangements with the other Italian magnates to pull this off and it's likely that a lot of money will change hands in the process. This can only be done if von Bayern or be Bohemie are emperor. -The Holy Roman Emperor is active in the HYW map area, but there are only two characters in the game that are likely to be elected Emperor; 181 (von Bayern, the Emperor at game start) and 131 (de Bohemie, who became emperor in 1347 when von Bayern died and a new election was held). After de Bohemie passed away in 1378, the emperors crown went east, and stayed there. The emperor didn't have much time for affairs in France and Italy. Through the 14th century there were a series of wars as leagues of free cities tried to gain independence from feudal magnates. Then, early in the 15th century, there was a major religious rebellion led by the militant and powerful Hussites. For game purposes, we assumme that de Bohemie gets the imperial title after von Bayern dies. After de Bohemie dies, and the Imperial title moves east (and off the map), the emperor no longer controls BCCI loan authorizations or collections. -Several areas are now "Other," including Flanders, Brittany, Languedoc and Ireland. Normandy is English. -New kingdoms can still be founded, as per the rules in the Magnates Game. -No purge (but ancestral rebellion is still there.) -No CTA (Call to Arms). You have to recruit your armies. -Players may request French or English positions, but not "Others" (which are given out randomly via the game sign up routine.) -Mongols show up about halfway through the game. The Kings in Play (something old, something new) -The King of Arles- de la Tour du Pin seized the crown from d'Anjou in the previous century, with the aid of some strategic marriages and a large loan that was subsequently forgiven. The d'Anjous decided they preferred the climate in Italy to that of Arles. -The King of Naples- d'Anjou, who still has vast properties in Arles. -King of Savoy- de Savoy is the self-styled pretender to the crown of Italy. -The King of Italy- The Emperor (but he is willing to deal). -The King of Navarre- a few more fiefs. Lots of tough Basques here, who would like to expand their territory. -The Caliph of Cordoba- (formerly Leon-Castile). Led by an able Caliph who has been known to mutter Jihad from time to time. -The King of Mallorca- a few more fiefs, and ambitions in Arles. -The King of Catalonia -King of Ireland. An Englishman, de Warenne [281], who went native and defies the English kings to take it back. Fat chance... -King of Scotland- The same mess, but because of Edward II's misadventures, the Scots also hold Cumberland and Northumberland (probably not for long, though...) QUICKX QUICK START If you are new to online computer games and need help using the system, all you have to do is ask one of the Heralds here and we'll get you up to speed, and keep you there. In the game you have three major objectives. 1- You must keep your family line alive. When your current character gets killed or, less likely, dies of old age, you must have an heir (usually a son, but a daughter or widow will do). Without an heir, your line dies out and you are out of the game. Also note that if you do not enter the game at least once every 21 days, your player position is inactivated (you lose it). This "purge" can occur in less than a week at the beginning of a game, when a lot of new people just enter briefly to look around, then leave to never return. 2-You must make money. You earn money by managing your fiefs, taking a job with the king, or through warfare (extortion, pillage and mercenary service). If you can't earn it, you must beg, borrow or steal it from other players. You need money to hire troops, and there are times when you simply must have troops. 3-You want to become more powerful, and win the game. This is done by purchasing or conquering additional fiefs and getting higher ranking titles from the king. If you are really ambitious, you might even become the king of England or France. Or you might become king of France AND England, for that was what the war was all about. But in practical terms, you must learn to use diplomacy to get the most benefit from your allies and the least harm from your enemies. Diplomacy is the most useful tool in HYW. The game is designed for both players who want to jump right in and those that want immerse themselves in a complex gaming experience. Alpha and Beta players have gone both ways and enjoyed themselves. We initially described the game as, "SimCity Meets Road Warrior." That's still an apt description. You can just jump right in and wander around looking for adventure. Many historical nobles did just this, pretty much ignoring the management of their fiefs or other obligations. But the more successful (if not always fun loving) nobles took care of business, in war and peace. Rules To Live By (Especially If You Enter the Game at the Beginning) There are several things you should do to increase your enjoyment of the Hundred Years War (HYW). 1. Get involved in the online messaging, especially in the area that only players of your nationality are allowed in. Ask for something to do and ask questions if you don't understand what to do. This will get you off to a quick start. Reading the Player Docs found in the software library, this will give you a deeper understanding of the game. 2. If you come in a game at the very beginning, you get a chance to determine who the royals (kings, crown princes), and pope will be. You can volunteer for these positions and the HYW staff will choose who they feel is the best qualified. When the King is chosen, swear fealty with an ingame message.. 3. Check the Common areas in the BBS for the game you are in. This is were we will post announcements of dueling tourneys, special Chat Areas, King's Court, new game features, etc. 4. Use the BBS to help you seek out spouses, plan strategy, gain advice on managing your fiefs, analyze the potentials of NPCs, vent your spleen at overweening neighbors, petition the Pope, announce marriages and births and deaths, etc. 5. Get to know the menu options for the game Your Parliament is located in the Official Acts section and you will be periodically asked to vote on issues. 6. Ask as many questions as you like. The Heralds are here to help you. There are many activities we can suggest to increase your enjoyment of the HYW, including ways to play HYW on a low cost basis. 7. Start managing your fiefs right away. This is so important that we will put all sorts of vital information right here so you can get right to it. Managing fiefs means finding NPCs to act as Bailiffs, adjusting your expenditures and taxes to maximize Loyalty to 9 and Tax to 20%. Your object is to incise your income while building up your keep levels. This takes some skill and there is information in the BB as well as HYW file library to help you do this. Getting your fiefs well managed and stabilized is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO at the beginning of the game (other than, say, getting married if you have no heirs) If you don't have bailiffs in your fiefs, get them in right away. Even a so-so NPC (those guys with stats in the range of 3-6, and maybe some decent skills) is better then auto-bailiff. If you can't find one of the big expense-savers, find a guy with 'nice guy' skills who will at least help keep the loyalty up while you raise taxes. In a fief with low loyalty and a chance of rebellion, that could be even more important. There are situations where you should pass over a hard-nosed miser type to put a more generous nice guy as bailiff to get the loyalty into a safe range (then switch to the big expense saver bailiff). Don't worry if you can't find 50%-saving bailiffs. There aren't very many of them out there. Many of the ones who now save 20-30% will someday grow up to be 50%ers when their stats grow up (as they get older). If you can get bailiffs who save 25% right now, you've got good ones. Don't just look at the stats when choosing them. Skills are VERY important. In one case there was a bailiff with top line stats in the range of 6, but he had miser, merchant, command, and accountancy, and was a top-line (50% saving) bailiff. Skills such as impetuous, epicure, tournament junky, generous, etc. will cut into your savings, so balance them off against the 'good' (miserly) skills. There's a file in the library (SKILLS.DOC or SKILLS.ZIP) that lists all the skills and actions in the game and tells you what effect skills have, which is very important to be familiar with in choosing employees and spouses. Check it out if you haven't. Remember that fief loyalty goes down as taxes go up, in proportion to the amount you raise them. If loyalty is so-so (say 5-6 range) raise taxes in small increments. Not TOO small, but no more than about 20% of the present tax rate (i.e., present tax rate 8.0, you could most likely get away with kicking it up to about 9.5 or so( Just be sure you raise expense payments as you raise taxes, if they're not already at max. This will help offset the loyalty drop for the tax hike. A nice bailiff can help this even more. You do NOT want to go into rebellion! It's expensive, and a hassle besides. If a fief's loyalty is in the range of 3 or lower, it is in danger of rebellion. LOWER TAXES. As much as possible, and put high priority on getting a decent bailiff in there. You can worry about making profit on those fiefs after the peasants are happier. Your goal is to get your fiefs stabilized at 9.0 loyalty and 20% tax (for agricultural fiefs). Try to get Officials and Infrastructure payments maxed as soon as possible, then work on the others. Raising keep and garrison payments will help loyalty. Later on, when the fief is stable at high loyalty, you can lower garrison payments a bit (slowly) to squeeze a little more cash out. Now, fiefs with Industry, there are a lot of fiefs in England with Industry and a low GDP (many under 3000). What you want to do here is get that industry built up. You probably can't afford to keep tax at 4% right now, so try to get it to 12% and keep it there (4% and 12% are the cutoff points for increased industrial growth.) If you're really broke right now, raise it higher, but as soon as you don't need that little extra cash, try to leave your industrial fief tax rates at 11.9%. The GDP will go up faster and you will have more income later when you really need it (like after King Edward has reached his credit limit with BCCI). Well-developed industrial fiefs are a major asset later on in the war, and it takes a while to get them to that point. Twenty or thirty years from now, if you need cash, we can raise all those now-developed industrials to 20% tax and have a big influx of funds when we need them. 8. Get to know your way around medieval Europe. Download and print one of the HYW Maps available in the HYW BBS library or order a free set (instructions for this in given earlier in this document). You can also use the Graphic Front End (GFE) that shows the entire map area. 9. Get to know your King and Crown Prince. Volunteer for a Court Position. There are many Court Positions available in all fields including Military Strategy, Diplomacy, Courier, Scouts, Marriage Broker, etc. Organization is essential for victory and it depends upon us all working together. Also get to know who your Overlord is and who your neighbors are. In times of need they will be your first line of defense. Think about who your Player Character is, imagine him in the midst of the rich tapestry and colors of the 14th Century. Make your persona come alive with all the strengths and vanities of this chivalrous era. We know this may all seem a bit overwhelming at first but it is quickly learned and you will soon find yourself cutting a swath through Medieval Europe. 10-Keep in mind that the game is menu driven. The first menu you see when you log on, the Main Menu for the game, is the most used menu for getting things done. From the Main Menu, the first menu item you will use is Personal Affairs (option 2). Once in the Personal Affairs menu, you will check your personal characteristics. Some of these items are obvious (name, age, etc.). Others require the use of the documentation to understand. If you have played Role Playing Games before, you will note some similarities in terminology. There is a similarity and it is deliberate. Now select the Financial Affairs menu and examine your fiefs. This is where your money comes from. You can raise and lower taxes. There's a catch, however, when you raise taxes, your subjects are more likely to become less loyal and, eventually, rebel. If they do, you will have to raise troops and pacify the fief. This will cost you a lot of money and will cause damage to the fief. Moreover, in order to keep things pacified, you will have to raise taxes very slowly, if at all. Be careful, no one likes the tax man, even in the 14th century. The best technique for getting fief growth is to get a good bailiff installed and max out infrastructure growth right away and keep it there. The fief management screen is superb in deciding what levels to set, as trends can more easily be seen. And trends are what managing fiefs are all about. Watch the trends and tweak the expenditures accordingly. Tax level will eventually reach a ceiling whereby if set any higher, loyalty will decrease - and it's NOT always exactly 20% (it may be higher or lower). Try to walk the tightrope between high taxes and declining loyalty, while keeping infrastructure growing at the max allowed. And don't forget to keep the level of fortification growing; after 20 years, the incremental growth adds up. Finally, Garrison and Officials (Government) spending are usually secondary and can be set to lower levels than infrastructure. But, remember, they're still important. When dealing with fief expenditures, think in terms of multiples of "per capita" GDP. That's how the system looks at them and therefore you should too. Your goal in fief management is to get GDP to the point where one can max out all expenditures and raise taxes up to the point where loyalty remains constant. Sometimes this is only possible with the rich, underpopulated, fiefs. But, once this state is reached you will be getting everything the fief can give. Unfortunately, the slum-fiefs will never reach this point. Go back to the main menu and choose option 3, the Travel Menu. This is how you get around Europe. You just move from fief to fief using the keyboard number indicated. The number is to the left of the direction. Below is the fief ID code (first letter indicates kingdom, next two indicate province). To the left of the fief name is the number of days it will cost to move there. The principal thing you will do when traveling is look for exceptional NPCs (Non Player Characters). 11- On-line messages. Note that the on-line messages feature will allow you to "Broadcast" a call for help to all players on-line. If a Herald is on-line, you got instant, interactive help. Use it if you need. And remember, there's no such thing as a dumb question. The online message system that allows you to call for help (or coordinate actions with other players while online.) There is also the Interactive Court within the game that enables you to discuss things with other players online. You can also hold Conferences (in the Chat Areas) in one of the "rooms" set aside for that purpose. There are weekly get togethers in the Chat Area . The subjects of these Chat Areas are posted in the opening banner when you enter the game. Occasionally, while online, you may be involved in an involved maneuver, or find a particular player bothersome with their online messages. For these reasons, we have implemented a "squelch" feature which allows you to not receive a particular player's messages. Of course, you may at some point want to "unsquelch" them, thus there is an unsquelch feature. Besides the Squelch feature you can now turn the notification of waiting messages off. This is done from the main HYW menu (the first menu you see when you enter the game). This will make it possible for you to do things without being disturbed. Messages will still be queued in the database but you can read them when you want. Persons sending you the message will see a "message sent" followed by a "notify off" message to let them no you are not reading messages. Send Message (SM) is a quick way to send a message without going through the Online interface. The option is available from the travel menu. By typing SM###, you can send a message directly to another user. If you just type SM the system will query you for the player id. This can only be used from the travel menu. It does not appear on the menu as it is considered an advanced feature and we have run out of room there. The SM (advanced send message feature) is also available from the pillage menu, the dirty deeds menu, the army management menu, and the main menu. 12- In Game Mail Groups. You can create private mailing groups. There are some permanent mailing groups: STAFF, ALL, ENGLISH, FRENCH, and OTHER. You can send a group message from either quick send or from the online message menu. Also, you can do group management from the online menu. At the present you can create a group and you can add people to your group. For a private group only the owner/creator can add people to the list. There are also public groups. Anyone is able to create a public group and anyone can join a public group. Remember if you use ALL etc. it will take some time to build the list to which it will send it. Group names can be up to 24 characters and are all in upper case. You can create private mailing groups. You can send a group message from either quick send or from the online message menu. Also, you can do group management from the online menu. At the present you can create a group and you can add people to your group. For a private group only the owner/creator can add people to the list. Anyone is able to create a public group and anyone will be able to join a public group. Remember if you use ALL etc. it will take some time to build the list to which it will send it. Group names can be up to 24 characters and are all in upper case. When a group message is sent to you, you will be asked if you want to respond to the group. If you response is positive you will then enter your response and the entire group will receive your response. If your response is negative, you will then be asked if you want to respond to the person sending the message to the group. If your response is positive, only this person will receive your message. 13-Start to play and don't worry about screwing anything up real bad, because you can't. The game is very forgiving, at least in the short run. In the long run, you can get into trouble, but at least you have the luxury of plenty of time to see it coming. Try out the menu options. Some things you can't do, and the computer will tell you so (and usually why). The computer won't let you spend more money than you have to for most operations and you will be constantly informed about how much time you have left. 14-The game is played in "seasons," (Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall) with each season representing 90 games of game time. There is one season per day of real time in a regular game (the Slow Game has only two seasons per week). Thus a week of playing in the regular game covers 1.75 years of game time (seven 90 day seasons). As the original HYW lasted nearly 116 years, this game could go on for over sixty weeks. This is unlikely to happen, as the French position gets stronger as time goes on. So either the English will win after a month or two, or the French will grind the English down after 6-12 months of play. 15-The Daily (or "Seasonal") Update. Each day at 3 AM eastern time the computer updates the HYW games for many decisions you have made in the previous day. If you have not used the game the previous day, the daily update will not hurt you. Your character and family will be a season older and your fiefs will continue to be managed as you last instructed. At worst, you fiefs will revert to "Auto-Bailiff" where they won't get any better, but they won't get any worse either. Most games have four updates a week, but the number of updates per game varies from two to seven a week. At each seasonal update the system calculates total GDP and total cash (except for Sysops) in the game. If cash exceeds 14% of GDP, all cash holdings are cut back proportionately and a message in the Herald announces the "deflator" value. For example, if cash was 16% of GDP, 2/16s (or 12.5%) would be deducted from all purses and fief treasuries. 16-The game makes provision for life, and death. Just as in the 14th century, this game puts heavy emphasis on family and family relationships. Your best form of insurance is a large family (especially a lot of sons). When your current character dies, you choose a member of your family becomes your new character, and so on. Another important asset is friends in high places. If someone comes roaring into your fiefs, and takes some (or all of them), your king and other strong friends are the ones most likely to make you whole again. So one of the first things you should do is contact your king in the BBS (or the other king, if you feel like trying to be a successful traitor) and pledge allegiance. The king, if he trusts you, will then let you into the private category for that kingdom, where you can talk freely without the other kingdom's nobles knowing what you are up to. As for your family, the prudent thing is to spread them out. This is what 14th century nobles did, sending their young sons off to the fiefs of strong nobles to serve as "pages and squires" in the households of their mighty friends. In the game, you do this by arranging to place your sons in the households of stronger friends. 17-If a player has to go on vacation, or otherwise be away from the game for a few days, arrangements can be made for another player to watch over the vacationing players fiefs. One can put the fiefs under another players management, too. This will compensate the caretaking player (with half the managed fiefs surplus) and provides the managing player with a little more incentive to keep the vacationing players fiefs in good shape. Even players who are active in the game often prefer to have some of their fiefs managed by other players. This is especially true of players who have a lot of fiefs. 18- Lastly, the game was designed to be simple to get into, yet with a lot of depth and a forgiving nature as you explore all the nooks and crannies. If you act like a proper 14th century aristocrat (look after your family, make a lot of friends) you should have no trouble. But then, if you're looking for trouble, there's a lot of that here too. Note that during development of new features, you will encounter items that are in the process of being implemented. When you select one of these un- implemented features, you will get a message telling you that it is not yet implemented. New features are implemented regularly. These are announced in the HYW messaging area. Bon chance, mes amis! Note that most French and English nobles used French as their principal language, at least in the early years of the war. Traditionally, some Frenchman spoke Celtic, which is also spoken in Wales, Ireland and pasts of Scotland, however, we have thru experience decided to eliminate this in the game because it leads to unhistorical gamesmanship. PREX Preliminaries If you join a HYW game during the first few days, you get to participate in the selection of the kings and crown princes of France and England, as well as the Holy Roman Emperor and the pope. These players are called "the royals." The Heralds select the royals. Players who want to be a royal should not be shy in campaigning for the job. In some games, the system simply randomly selects from those players who have volunteered for the job, or assigns the positions if there are no volunteers. The two crown princes are; English Crown Prince, Edward (ID 38, will be Edward IV is he becomes king) age 7, French Crown Prince, Jean (ID 172, will be Jean II if he becomes king) age 18. While Edward IV has to play as a minor (no combat) until he is 14 years old (about three weeks), his stats make him the most formidable army commander in the game. His father, Edward III, is no slouch in the stats department either, but the "Black Prince" is even more impressive. The French crown prince is older and can immediately start playing. Unfortunately, Jean II has been described (with some accuracy) by many historians as brain damaged. For the sake of the Valois line, it is imperative to find Jean II a wife with really excellent stats. When the king player dies, the crown prince takes over as king and the deceased king player becomes the new crown prince. These two players continue switching positions like this for the rest of the game. The crown princes have little property of their own. But since the king and crown prince have to work together, the king should give the crown prince some of the royal property to look after. This was what the historical kings did and players should follow that example. Ransom of a crown prince is always ten million ducats, plus whatever his usual ransom is. The ten million comes out of daddy's purse and BCCI will go get it (plus a two million ducat "late fee") if daddy won't hand it over. Executing a CP reduces the stature of the king of the noble who did it to zero. If the king in question does not capture and execute the killer, that kings stature gets knocked down to zero again a year after the CPs death The king spot is not tied to any specific ID as in the past. When, say the English King (47) dies, the Crown Prince will assume the role of King, but will retain his ID (38). POSITION SWITCHING RULES When HYW first started, if you were around then you will remember that nobody was allowed to switch positions anywhere. The 'luck of the draw' in what position you get in any game was (and still is) designed to be part of the game. After years of varying experiences with trying out different position switching options, we've settled on a clear set of Switching Rules, which keep the random factor in play (thus not allowing for position switching or choosing to be used as an OOC game tactic) yet allow for getting people set up in a position they are going to enjoy playing, such as the considerable number of Anglophiles we get who would rather die than play French. These are the Rules: If you don't like the character that the game set you up with, you have two choices for switching within a week of the time you enter the game. You may do one of two things: 1. You may request a switch to a specific unplayed position within your nationality (French, English, Other). This maintains the balance between the 'sides', and helps assure that the more interesting and important positions remain in play. Or... 2. You may request a switch to another 'side' (such as if you got French, but really really wanted to be English). If you do this you will be randomly assigned to a position of that nationality, no specific choices. This keeps the element of random assignment in play while allowing people to play the nationality they want if they have an insistence on one side or the other. This is 're-rolling', in effect, but being able to choose your nationality. Either of these options may be exercised within seven days of the time you were first assigned your character. We have easy reference to the list of people who have been in the game less than 7 days. Players have also been allowed to select a disputed (small, usually one fief and normally not put into play) spot on the other side. After seven days in the game, enough time to see what you've got and if you'd like to play it, you cannot switch. You can always 'quit' a position mid-game by not playing it for 21 days and letting it go inactive, in which case you just re-register as usual and take the luck of the draw again. The only exception to this is players who wish to quit (OOC) a Royal spot, but continue to play the game. We will accommodate this as players sometimes quit Royal spots for OOC reasons (it's a heck of a lot of work, for one thing) and it is important that we have the Royals being actively played (so we can't make them wait 3 weeks to go inactive). Players who drop out of playing a Royal spot OOC will be assigned randomly to another position within their country. (Once again this prohibits 'Ill quit and become French tactics.) The former Royal player can also switch positions with another player of their side who is taking over the Royal spot (as that player is likely to have a well developed position.) Remember that the only reason we allow position switching at all (except in Bedlam) is to make sure people get set up in something they are going to have fun playing. We think these rules will achieve that purpose while keeping the intended random nature of assignments in play. FIEFX Hundred Years War Strategy and Tactics Your fiefs are the source of your wealth and power. Take care of them, and they will take care of you. On the Travel Menu there is a Fief Management option that takes you to a list of your fiefs. Fiefs can be bought, sold and traded. But there are some restrictions. You can never transfer ownership of any of your ancestral fiefs (the ones you start the game with) or any of your fiefs that are currently under siege. How to Run A Fief All fiefs are basically the same. However, there are some subtle variations. For one thing, not all fiefs are ports from which you can travel by sea. Fiefs with ports are marked with "&" on the travel display. The larger Spanish, Italian, Irish and Scottish fiefs are actually many normal sized fiefs combined into large one fief. These are called "megafiefs" and they otherwise differ in that they sometimes spontaneously go into unrest or rebellion, and don't generate as much revenue as their size would suggest. While there is a lot going on with fiefs, there are basically two things you are concerned about with your fiefs; 1-How much money you can get out of it without the oppressed inhabitants rebelling against you. Basically, you raise the tax rate slowly, and try to spend as much as possible on improving the fief. Details below. 2-Make the fief more difficult for someone to take from you. This is largely a matter of increasing the KEEP level as quickly as possible. Rules of Thumb for Managing Fiefs First and foremost, find a good bailiff (an NPC with good characteristics for running a fief). If he is good, you will consistently have negative fief expense. He is great if his negative fief expense consistently exceeds graft. There are several different types of fief and different guidelines for running fiefs depending on whether it is wartime or peacetime. During peace time. I. Agricultural Fiefs (No industry) A. Target Tax setting between 25%-30%. 1. When increasing taxes, increase until loyalty drops between 4 and 5. 2. Hold taxes constant until loyalty goes above 7. 3. Repeat cycle until you reach between 25%-30% tax rate. 4. If fief rebels, drop taxes to 20% (15% after the Plague. When loyalty reaches 7, increment tax until you are 1 point below what fief rebelled at. (Example: Fief rebels at 28% - Gradually increase tax to 27% from 20). B. Set official expense at 4KD (thousand ducats) per thousand population C. Garrison expense 1. When increasing taxes, hold garrison constant. 2. When loyalty low, increase garrison 20 kd until loyalty increase rate is .5 3. When loyalty is at 8.5-9.0, and don't need to increase taxes decrease garrison 20kd until loyalty drops. Then increase 20kd until loyalty is constant. D. Infrastructure expense - Always spend maximum amount. E. Keep expense - Begin with maximum amount. Back off in 20KD increments until keep value increase drops to .19-.21 range. Keep levels expenditures have been adjusted somewhat. Per capita payments of up to 13Kd will be calculated as in other games. If the payment is over 13kd per capita the new formula will be: addition to keep level = .25 + per capita spending * .00056. This means that if you spend 15000 per capita that your keep could increase by 8.65 in one season. Max. spending on keeps will be 15000 per capita. II. Industrial Fiefs A. Hold tax in 10%-12% range. All other settings are same as agricultural fiefs. Put money in the treasury if you have too. Take it out as the economy grows and you don't need it in treasury. During War I. Agricultural Fiefs. A. All settings will remain the same except for Keep. Drop keep expense in half. Adjust in 20kd increments until keep value increases at .10-.13 range. II. Industrial Fiefs. A. If the loyalty is above 7, double your tax rate to increase revenue. Follow same procedure thereafter as for increasing agricultural fief taxes. When war is over, drop tax rate back to 10-12 percent. B. All other expenses are the same except for keeps. Follow same procedure as for agricultural fiefs during war time. C. PULL ALL YOUR MONEY OUT OF TREASURY. The king should give you plenty of warning to react to war and to plan for peace. What the Fief Management Screens Mean Example of a Fief Management Screen Fief ID Fief Name Trsry Kp Lvl Surp Llty Bail Mngr Status 1. FAC02 Condom 8592 17.16 95 7.3 0 N Calm 2. FAC03 Auch 29096 18.21 40 9.0 0 N Calm 3. FAC04 Nogaro 47498 5.34 49 4.0 0 N Calm 4. FAC05 Mirande 2995 8.31 44 9.0 0 N Calm Choose Fief 1 to 4, Advanced Commands Followed By #,

revious Page, op Page, To Redisplay, or TO Quit: From here you choose a fief to work on. Description of Each column of data; Fief ID- Unique ID code of the fief. Fief Name- Name of the fief. Trsry- Money in the fiefs treasury, in thousands of ducats. Kp Lvl- (Keep Level). The strength of the fiefs fortifications. Anything over 20 is pretty solid and anything over 50 is very difficult to take. Surp- Current Surplus income from fief, in thousands of ducats. Llty- Current loyalty of fief (ranges from 0-9, higher is better) Bail- ID of current bailiff (0=Auto-Bailiff). A bailiff can be any adult NPC or player character. Mngr- ID of current fief manager (a player other than the owner who has control over the fief). Status- Calm, Unrest (lower income for the owner) or Rebellion (no income for the owner). From the Fief Management screen, you can go to a screen that will allow you to manage an individual fief. This screen looks like this (the letters to the left do not appear on the actual screen, but only serve to identify the descriptions of each line of data): Fall Of 1341 23.0 Days Left A Current Fief FAC02 Nogaro B Loyalty 4.67 Surplus -494.00 Treasury Balance 47003.83 Status Calm C Bailiff ID Auto Mode E Personal Purse 9864.00 F 1. xamine Fief G 2. t Self As Bailiff I 4. hoose NPC As Bailiff J 5. emove NPC As Bailiff K 6. easury To Purse Transfer L 7.

urse To Treasury Transfer M 8. ive Fief To Another Player N 9. point Manager O 10. ire A Manager P 11. uell Rebellion 12. To Quit Enter # Descriptions of each line of data: A- Shows the ID and name of fief you are currently working on. B-Loyalty is a 0-9 (highest) indicator of fief loyalty. Surplus- Current surplus or deficit (in 1,000's of ducats) generated by fief government. Treasury Balance is what is in the fiefs treasury. Status is Calm, Unrest (less revenue) or Rebellion (no revenue). Loyalty goes down when the place is raided or pillaged. Raising taxes also upsets the peasants. C- Bailiff ID is either the ID of you or a NPC or "Auto Mode" to indicate Auto-Bailiff is on the job. Find and install GOOD bailiffs ASAP. They can have a huge impact on how fast you can increase taxes, how well your moneys are spent or invested, how fast those walls go up around the new keeps, etc. And when choosing bailiffs, remember that language differences work on fief loyalty, nothing else (yet, new features will change this). E- Your personal purse, in thousands of ducats. This is the money that always travels with you. F- Takes you to the screen shown below, which allows you to manage the fief in more detail. G- Allows you to set yourself as the fief manager (however, you have to be in the fief at least 30 days a season for this to work.) I- Make one of your NPCs the bailiff of the fief. J- Remove the current NPC bailiff from that position. K- Transfer a specific amount of money from the fief treasury to your purse. L-Transfer a specific amount of money your purse to the fief treasury. M- Transfer ownership of fief to another player. The fief each player begins the game with are their "Ancestral Fiefs." These will also be called "Original Fiefs." These are the lands that have often been in the family for centuries and that player has extraordinary legal and emotional claims on them. The original fiefs may never be transferred by the original owner. This includes the kings and their fiefs. Anyone who conquers them may trade them freely. The player you are transferring a fief to must accept that transfer for it to take effect. The ban on voluntary transfer also applies to Ancestral Titles. N- Appoint another player to manage the fief (take your place as owner until such time as you remove the other player as manager). You and the manager automatically share the tax revenue from the fief on a 50:50 basis. O-Fire the manager of one of your fiefs. Also allows a player who is a manager of a fief to quit that position. P- If the fief is in rebellion and you are in the fief with troops, you use this option to attempt to quell the rebellion. In effect, a "Quell" is the same as a "Pillage" and this is how you do it. You need an army to do this, at least 100 troops. The minimum ratio is one soldier for every eighty people in the fief. The more troops you have the easier it is. If you don't have enough troops, the locals will throw you out to an adjacent fief and you'll have to march back in and keep trying until you succeed. A success is equivalent to a pillage. That is, you make some money, but do some damage to the fief in the process. Note that what you call pillage today, was extortion then. What we call pillage then you would probably call atrocities today. We don't rate stature as historians but as contemporaries would view it. This is why the pillager losses stature when pillaging. (There is no stature hit if the fief you pillage is of a different language than your PC's.) The English funded the war for many decades through extortion and conquest (siege). Pillage is counter productive as it destroys the wealth you seek to exploit. The fought over parts of France were not destroyed as the Rhineland was during the Thirty Years War. Most of the brigands stole and extorted. The noted English mercenary Hawkwood, for example, was a businessman, who was out to get rich, not kill the geese that provided the golden eggs. For megafief owners, there is another way to quell rebellions. Instead of raising the troops needed for a rebellion, you can use bribery. This works as follows; for every stature point the megafief owner has above five (stature rounded to the nearest whole number) you need twenty percent less money than if you had raised troops (at 1,200 ducats a soldier) to quell the rebellion. Normally, this would work out to 15 ducats per person in the megafief. If your megafief had 500,000 people when it rebelled, this would normally cost you 7.5 million ducats. If you stature was 8.6 (which rounds up to 9) you would need 80 percent less, or 1.5 million ducats. If your stature were only 5.7 (rounded up to six), you would need six million ducats. Stature Ducats Per Person in Fief 8.6-9 3 7.6-8.5 6 6.6-7.5 9 5.6-6.5 12 5.5 or less 15 If you are short on stature and cash, you can take the chance that your "quell by bribery" will fail, with each stature point you are short equaling a 20 percent chance of failure. Thus if your stature were six and you needed six million ducats, but only had 4.5 million, you could go ahead anyway and have an 75 percent chance of success. One advantage of quell by bribery is that no damage is done to the fief. Note that this approach is only possible with megafiefs because these megafiefs are actually large collections of regular size fiefs with many contending nobles who, through the application of bribes and cajolery, can be calmed down without force of arms. If you select Option 1 on the menu above, you see the display of the fief (shown below). Below is our sample fief, with a column of letters added on the left to make it easier to explain what each line of information means. Individual Fief Summary A-Nogaro (FAC04 ) Armagnac France Population 15.3 B-Language F3 Freedom 2 Status Calm C-Your Overlord is Jean d'Armagnac (113) Bailiff ID Auto Mode D-Fields 8.80 Industry 0.33 Weather 0.98 Trsy Bal 45171.83 E-Knights 21 MAA 7 Lt Cav 0 Yeomen 0 Foot 305 Rabble 6723 F- Last Season Crnt Season Next Season G-Loyalty 7.11 6.98 H-GDP 5137 5155 5204 I-1-Tax Rate 1.0% 1.0% 1.0% J-Income 41 51 52 K-2-Officials 62 62 61 L-3-Garrison 124 124 122 M-4-Infrastructure 109 109 109 N-5-Keep (Level) 235 (9.59) 235 (9.82) 235 O-Extra Expenses -25 -24 P-Total Expenses 505 506 Q-Graft 0 0 R-Overlord Taxes 0 0 S-Surplus/Deficit -464 -455 T-Enter 1-5 to change, To Redisplay, or to Quit: Description and Usage of Each Line A-Gives name of fief and, in parenthesis, the ID code of fief as well as country and province. The "province" is actually either county (in France) or shire (in England). Population is given in thousands. This normally increases each season (for the usual reasons) and is reduced by pillage and famine and devastated by the plague. Population, quite naturally, is the foundation of a fiefs ability to create wealth (for you to tax). B-Language is indicated by a two letter code. The first is the language itself, the second is the dialect. If you speak a different language (or dialect) than a fief you own, this makes that fief less likely to be loyal. Language Codes B-Basque C-Celtic (Irish) D-Dutch E-English F-French G-German H-Hispanic I-Italian L-Latin (clerical use only) Freedom is the degree of legal autonomy the inhabitants of the fief have. In HYW it mainly influences the ease with which the overlord can squeeze the fief with high taxes. The numbers mean: 1=don't try it; 2=you're probably safe; 3=squeeze away. This feature has not been implemented yet. Status indicates the mood of the people. "Calm" means everything is OK. "Unrest" means loyalty is low and rebellion is possible. This status also reduces your income from this fief. "Rebellion" means you have lost all control (and income) in this fief. You have to raise and army and go quell the rebellion before you can resume control. Loyalty will still be low after the rebellion is quelled and you will have to build it up. When fief loyalty gets to five or lower, you have to start worrying about unrest and rebellion. These two conditions are not automatic, but they are more likely to occur the lower the loyalty rating of a fief. C- The Overlord is the player who rules the province. While the overlord does not own the entire province, he has feudal rights. He can tax all the fiefs in the province. Bailiff ID: Who is running this fief. The owner may run it himself (but must spend at least 30 days in the fief), or may assign an NPC to do it full time. In either case, the player or NPC ID number appears here. Otherwise, fief management is in "Auto Mode." This means the local officials run it. This is known as "auto-bailiff" mode and maintains equilibrium (assuming no external disasters, like pillage or plague). Tax levels are raised only to a level that will provide sufficient income to keep key fief indicators (loyalty, keep, infrastructure, etc.) level. There is some surplus, but there is also a fair amount of graft, so you won't have much surplus from a fief run by the diligent, but larcenous, auto-bailiff. Auto-bailiff is a form of democratic self-government, which may explain why the nobility was hostile to democracy. D-Fields- The amount of productive agricultural land. Some areas had more than they needed, others had to import (usually via ship, their being no efficient land transport). Industry- This is an indication of the industrialization and manufacturing in the fief. The most common items were metal working, mining, cloth weaving, ship building, weapons manufacturing and manufacturing in general. Although most fiefs were self sufficient for most essential manufactured goods (blacksmith, harness maker, etc.) there was a growing amount of centralized and specialized industrial activity. After all, this was the beginning of the Renaissance, which laid the ground work for the industrial revolution four centuries hence. Weather- Weather changes, if this value is less than one, GDP and population will suffer, if greater than 1, these will benefit. Trsy Bal (Treasury Balance)- How many ducats (in thousands) currently sitting in the fiefs treasury. E-Resident Troops and Ships. Gives the number of different kinds of troops living in the fief. Not all are available at all times. Some are traveling, some are too old to campaign anymore and some just don't want to get involved. So when recruiting or calling the local levy (self defense force automatically called out to resist invasion via pillage, raid, siege, etc.) you will only get a portion of these troops. Knights- Knighted men at arms. Generally the most effective troops. Found in every fief. MAA- Men at arms. Almost as good as knights. Mounted, trained and armored troops, usually professionals and/or mercenaries. Found in every fief. Lt Cav- Lightly armed men at arms who operate primarily on horseback. Found only in areas that raise a lot of horses. Yeomen- A uniquely English form of infantry. Armed with longbow and swords and usually mounted (if horses can be found). Fight on foot. Only found in certain parts of England and Wales. Foot- Lower grade men at arms whose primary weapon sometimes includes the short bow. Some training and experience and a cut above the rabble. Many of these became mercenaries in the course of the Hundred Years War and many became Men at Arms and a few even achieved knighthood. Rabble- Basically every able bodied man in the fief armed with whatever weapons they can scrounge. Often just agricultural implements, but many knives, axes, short bows, homemade spears and even some professional arms and armor (usually what was scrounged from dead bodies of a previous battle in the area and kept rather than sold). Only used for self-defense of the fief. F-Last, Current and Next season refer to the key expense and income variables that you can change. The next season is an estimate as external events (weather, pillage, plague) can intervene. All money is in thousands of ducats. G-Loyalty is the degree to which the inhabitants of a fief are content with their ruler. 9 is the highest loyalty, 0 is lowest and as loyalty moves to between 5 and 3 there is a greater chance of unrest (which reduces taxes raised) and loyalty under 3 causes rebellion (makes it impossible to raise taxes and you have to pillage the fief to suppress the rebellion). If a fief is raided or pillaged, its loyalty declines. This is a favorite enemy tactic to drive a fief into rebellion, thus denying the owner any income from it. H- GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, is the value of all the fief produces translated into ducats. This period did not have much of a cash economy, most buying and selling was by barter, but everything did have a price that could be expressed in ducats. This gives you an idea of how much you will bring in if you tax at a certain level. I- 1-Tax Rate. Entering number 1 allows you to set a new tax rate for the next season. This rate will remain at that level unless changed. The percentage you raise or lower taxes is the inverse percentage you raise or lower loyalty (raise taxes 10%, from 9% to 9.9% will lower current loyalty 10%). Raise your taxes Slowly. As you raise Taxes the fiefs Loyalty will go down. If you jump the tax level too much it's possible the fief will go into rebellion. Taxing the fief over 20% is not wise as it will cause loyalty to drop no matter what you do. J-Income- Income from taxes from fief. K-2-Officials. This is the payroll for the people who run the fief, which includes clerks, servants at your manor/chateau, town officials (plus what the towns and cities collect via the "town tax" for their own officials), game wardens and the like. These are the folks that collect the taxes. If you spend less than 4 ducats per capita per season on officials, it will have an adverse effect on loyalty and taxes collected. Too little spent on officials will also increase graft (which comes out of YOUR tax revenues). Officials would average about 6,000 ducats a year (or 1,500 per season). This gives you several hundred officials on the payroll for this fief. The maximum you can spend per capita is 4 ducats per capita per season. L-3-Garrison (soldiers). These troops guard the fortifications in the fief and maintain order. They enforce the laws and, basically, your will. Since most of these guys are the knights and men at arms that live in the fief, they don't get paid as much as mercenaries (8,000 ducats a year, on average). These payments also include payments for their weapons, equipment and, for some of them, horses. This still gives you about one full time soldier for every thousand ducats spent each season in the fief. But these troops cannot be moved outside the fief for, in addition to being the source of law and order, they, and their families, live in the fief and the money you pay them is essentially a bribe to insure the loyalty of the best soldiers (many of whom are landowners and your vassals) in the fief. It's the loyalty of this group that is most crucial to your hold on the fief. The maximum you can spend per capita is 14 ducats per season. Figures for troops types in fiefs (number per thousand population). Knights .511 MAA 1.223 Foot 30 Yeomen 15 Only English fiefs LCav 2.4 Only some Spanish and Italian fiefs M-4-Infrastructure. This is payment for labor and materials to maintain the roads, agricultural improvements, water ways, bridges and other items which increase the economic productivity of your fief. Also has some impact on the keep level. The maximum you can spend per capita is 6 ducats per season. N-5-Keep. Fortifications in the fief. Building and maintaining walls, towers and other defensive structures. Makes it easier to maintain loyalty and to defend the fief against external enemies. If you don't spend money on fortifications, your keep level will decline. The maximum you can spend per capita is 13 ducats per capita per season. If you spend the maximum, the keep level slowly increases. Over a decade or so, this can increase quite a bit and make your fief more difficult to conquer. Current Keep Level is in parenthesis. The higher the better. In summary (items K through N), the max. per- capita payments per season are; Officials 4 Garrison 14 Infrastructure 6 Keep 15000 O-Extra Expenses is family expenses. Thus is basically the entire cost of living for your character, your characters family, servants and all the expense associated with running a 14th century aristocratic household. The nobles lived a lavish lifestyle, and it was obligatory. The nobles were the major (and enthusiastic) consumers of luxury goods and services. Your NPCs are your principal aids and servants, but there were hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of other servants you had to support. See HYWHIST.DOC for some details on the "Lifestyles of the (14th century) Rich and Famous." What's left over after family expenses can be used to make war, or engage in whatever else strikes your fancy. Family expense depends on how high the average of your Guile, Management, Leadership and (for males only) Stature values are (modified by applicable skills). The spouse with the higher Leadership stat is used in figuring the expenses, as they are assumed to be the one in charge of handling the family purse. This means that if you have lousy stats, you can often save a bundle by finding a wife with good stats and higher leadership than yours. The amount of expenses doesn't say much, it's the percentage that counts. If nothing else changed, your family expense amount probably went up because you made more money. Look at the percentage of your income that goes to family expense. Average family expense is in the 85% or so range. For regular fiefs the range is 60-95, for megafiefs, it's 85-98% (because these megafiefs were actually collections of several, or dozens, of normal sized fiefs and had extra expenses related to the governance of these areas.) If less than 80% of your income is going to family expenses, you're doing fine. If you own a megafief (e.g. Venice), the range is now 92% to 99.8% (except for Scotland and Ireland, which were slums back then and thus use regular family expense percentages) Megafiefs owned by ANY player have ALL that players Family Expense pegged at Megafief rates (yeah, gonna be rough on d'Anjou, but it wasn't easy to run a Megafief.) These guys did not have a lot of discretionary money to devote to the English/French war. This will cut it by about 60%, but still leave vast amounts of cash sloshing around beyond the borders of France and England. The number of employees you have only matters if your employee cost more than 50% of total family expense. The system assumes 5,000 ducats expense per season per employee or family member. Say you have 50 total NPCs, the cost is 250kd. If this figure is more than half your family expense, you will be paying extra for any NPCs that put it over that 50% mark. What this amounts to, is that people with a very small income can't afford to hire too many employees, though you should have no problem keeping as many as you need, plus spares. If your family expense is 100kd/season (a VERY small Noble), you could afford to keep 10 NPCs without extra charge. If it's 1,000kd/season, you can afford up to 100. This is probably far more than you need. Wealthier nobles can basically have as many NPCs as they want without worrying about cost. So firing a few employees will only help if you've got so many that you're past the 50% expense mark for NPCs. If you've got less than that, firing them won't make a difference at all. These can be negative, meaning you make money, if you have an outstanding bailiff, either yourself or an NPC. Remember, that if your spouse has better skills, AND a higher leadership rating, she has the effect on family expenses. Fourteenth century nobles were outrageous spendthrifts and the wives were often the worst offenders. P- Total Expenses on items K thru N. Q-Graft, money stolen by local officials. Graft is calculated in the following manner: 1. Graft is randomly 0 to 30% of your surplus. 2. If you are paying your a officials less than 4 Kducats per thousand of population you can have 2% to 20% more graft. The less you pay the more graft. 3. If you bailiff skills are bad you have the chance of having more graft also. Let's take an example. If you had a surplus of a 100 Kd and then system generates a number between 0 and 300. Let's say it generated 15. Your base graft would then be 15. Now we see you are paying the officials 3.5 Kd per thousand that increase graft by 2% so now graft is 15.3 Kd. Let's now assume that your bailiff is a real dork and the chance of him having more graft is 70%. He fails his roll and now graft jumps by another 80% so now graft is 27.5. So lets look at a worse case and a best case. Best case is 0 graft. Worst case for a surplus of 100 Kd would be 64.8. So you could see big swings. R-Overlord Taxes are moneys paid to the fief overlord (usually a count, duke or earl). Your overlord has the power to tax you via a menu option only overlords have access to. The amount they get is determined by their current stature which, when doubled, represents the percentage of your income they can take. S- Surplus/Deficit is the amount left over once expenses have been deducted from taxes. You can only have a defect if you currently have funds in the fief treasury to cover it. T-Enter 1-5 to change,- These are instructions on how to change the numbered (1,2,3,4,5) items in order to manage your fief. Items Not Shown (but may be in the release, or later, versions); Ships- If a port, the number of ships that usually be found there. Used for the naval warfare routines. Percent Serfs: Percentage of fief inhabitants who are serfs (a step above slavery, but not a big step). Serfs are a notoriously surly and disloyal lot. The more serfs you have in a fief, the more difficult it will be to maintain that fiefs loyalty. Elements That Influence Fief Effectiveness Note that when player or NPCs are involved, their skills (or "gifts") can have enormous positive or negative effect on intrinsic characteristics referred to (leadership, management, stature, etc.). The Bailiff (player or NPC) will, via various personal characteristics (especially Stature, Management and Leadership) influence the working of the fief. The higher the average value of these characteristics, the more likely fief loyalty will increase. Some helpful hints on managing fiefs... 1) Money is what you are after and the fief is where it comes from. 2) Loyalty is the second most important thing in the fief. So when working a fief look for the money you can get and the loyalty. First of all we will look at the money side of the fief. As we all know from experience, there is never enough money. As a result one needs to better manage their fiefs. The maximum amount one can tax a fief without drops in loyalty is 20% (15% after the Plague. Thus this is the goal of every noble who wants money. One can raise the tax above 20% but as the tax raises above 20% so does the chance of sudden rebellion. Now that we have the fief pumping out all the money that it can safely, let's see if we can get some more out of it. To do this, one needs a good bailiff. And elsewhere in this document you can find the skills and the stats that help make a good bailiff. Ideally the best bailiff will bring in a negative Extra Expense. For example we have a fief on auto bailiff that uses 1000 Kds for expenses. A great bailiff will make the Extra Expenses to be -500 while the Fief Expenses drop to 500 Kds. Thus we just added another 500 Kds to our surplus. Next one must consider Graft. This is dependent on the Bailiff and some randomness. the best graft is 0. the worst is when all your surplus goes to graft. To keep graft down, one needs to pay the officials of the fief. Anything less than max. payment to the officials will increase the chance and amount of graft. Best advise - Max. spending on officials - this keeps money in your hands. That is about all one can do to increase the output of the fief. However, over time, the output can increase as in regards to ever increasing GDP. But in order for GDP to increase one must again take care in where one's money goes. To increase GDP one must spend money on the infrastructure of the fief. Also a variable in the increase of GDP is what the weather is like which is random thus the differences in GDP increase over time. But lets look into the infrastructure expense. If you don't spend anything on Infrastructure, your roads, ditches and all fall into disrepair. If you spend max. on infrastructure, then you have people out working on making better roads, ditches and all. And somewhere in the middle one maintains the current state of everything. Best advice - Max. out infrastructure - Keep your fief growing. Now comes Soldiers and Keeps. Now these are a little different in regards to money. One can think of them as an all or nothing expense. These expenses are for the defense of you fief. Thus if you have your fief you get all the surplus, if you don't have the fief you don't get the money. These expenses are tough to say what is best and what should be spent on them. I have at times had them at max. expenditures, other times at 50%. Best advice - When not in war situations keep at 50% spending. When in war situations keep them at 100% spending. This is a normal condition unless other circumstances warrant other changes, which I shall discuss under Loyalty. Loyalty Loyalty is based on several factors, the most common are Bailiffs and Fief Expenditures. Bailiffs were discussed earlier and don't need much more to be said about them. However, expenditures are another story. One must juggle the loyalty gain against the surplus gain. Loyalty will increase most dramatically if all expenses are maxed out. Thus if you have a fief that has a low loyalty (3-5) then one should consider maxing out all expenses to give the maximum increase of loyalty. Once the loyalty is up then one can adjust the expenses as needed for the financial side. Another time one needs to adjust loyalty is when tax rates are low. (Note a low tax rate causes industry to grow more. Though if you have no industry, the growth is virtually nonexistent.) One should want to increase the tax rate to bring in more money. However to jump from 5% to 20% would result in a dramatic drop in loyalty and possible rebellion. So gradual steps are needed. Along with max. spending, the small increase in taxes (and decrease in loyalty) will be offset by the max. spending increase of loyalty. Best advise - slowly increase your taxes - at low levels of taxes (1-5) small increases of .5 to 1 percent is best. When in the 15 to 20 range a larger increase can be done. I have done 5% in this area and been okay though the loyalty does take a hit. It's a good idea to wait until you have about 6 loyalty before increasing the taxes. And if it goes below 5, allow the loyalty to increase. Another way one can increase taxes is wait for the loyalty to reach 9 and then increase the taxes - but this tends to take more time. One reason is (and this is especially true for French fiefs,) the population is so high that most can only maintain the average expense and loyalty is slow in coming. Thus if you wait for the loyalty to raise with fief expense at 50% one will wait a long time. Whereas, the higher you get your taxes the more you can spend and more increase in loyalty you can get per season. Final piece of advise, money comes and should only be sought after when your fief is at 20% tax and 9 loyalty. Until that time one should work to get the fief in the best condition possible, that being loyalty 9 and 20% tax rate. French - should maintain high expenditures in soldiers and keeps until keeps are 20+ (though they are still vulnerable at this time) and then after that make sure they are always in the maintain mode. Though peace times one can decrease them, this is the time to build them strong for the next invasion. As we have seen, keeps can have a maximum 25% loss of keep level if an army storms it. Thus a 20 level keep can be dropped to 15 level in one storm. As you can see high keeps are in need. English - We recommend 50% level of defensive expenses - the channel is a good barrier, but if the French manage to get to England, low keeps will fall quickly. And high keeps are over kill due to having a good channel barrier. Thus keeps should grow but don't need to grow at maximum speed. But then again - this depends on the owner and how much money they wish and how secure they want to be. Fiefs in northern England also have to be concerned about an invasion by the Scots. Peacetime is a good time to sharpen those fief management skills, very little combat takes place and France, in particular, always needs a lot of work. Money in the treasury, putting money in the treasury, is used mainly for increasing Keep levels, infrastructure and Loyalty. Once you get the fief running the money really is not needed any more. Also for those fiefs with high population and low GDP, you can set the tax rate up above 20%. the risk of rebellion increases when there is a high surplus. But if it takes 24% to maintain max. spending and you get little surplus, the chance of rebellion is not as high. If you get more than 10% surplus of the amount received from your taxes, 20% of 4000 is 800 Kds you would receive and if your surplus is greater than 80 Kds, then your fief has a greater chance of rebellion. Note on Leaving Cash in the Treasury: In peace time, the above advice holds. In war time you are just inviting someone to take your money. In one campaign, the English made ON AVERAGE about 500-1000 Kd/season for EACH active army in this way, and sometimes would hit the jackpot with a couple of 1000 Kd treasuries. Remember these are swings of that much money (1000 less for you and more for him) so really harmful. In a "war zone" you can't afford to do this. One other thing the Money in the treasury is good for; If you have a bailiff who is showing negative extra expenses in your fief, I.E. cutting the cost of the fief, you can really push the growth of the GDP if you cut the tax level. No one likes to work harder only to have the Tax Man take it all away, then or now. However, the game will not let you drop taxes lower than the total of your expenses even if you have a bailiff that can knock hundreds of Kducats off those expenses. What you can do is stick some money in the Treasury. If your bailiff reduces expenses by -200 Kducats, put 200 Kducats in your treasury and reduce taxes until they barely bring in enough to cover the remainder. The game will look at the total of Officials, Garrison, Infrastructure and Keep, compare them to the total coming in Taxes plus the money in the treasury and see that they match and allow the tax rate. Because the Bailiff reduces the expenses the money in the Treasury is never spent. There have been fiefs with this extremely lowered Tax rate showing growth in GDP of 50 Kducats/season each season for years. It's a nice way to quickly increase the GDP of a fief. When war comes and you increase the Tax rate to 20% again that extra income is worth the initial sacrifice. Dealing With Graft To select a bailiff who is especially good at suppressing graft, you should take into account the following factors. High values in leadership and management. High skill values in the following skills (in order of their good effect on graft suppression from highest to lowest): Evil Eye (with this, the buggers don't dare) Brilliance Linguist (skilled at some language other than his own) Discipline Pious Bargainer Loyalty Instilled (if they love you, they won't cheat you) Keepmaster Intimidation Merchant Insightful of people Speaks same language as fief Piety Extraordinary Situational Awareness Sorcery Miser Organizer Legal Skills Command Supreme (surprising, eh?) Fraud & Embezzlement (it takes one to know one) Accountancy Bailiff Sup (even more surprising) The absence of the following skills or failing that, the lowest possible values (in order of their destructive effect from highest to lowest): Stupidity (to dumb to crack down) Generosity (too big hearted to crack down) Debauched (too busy to crack down) Sloth (too damned lazy to crack down) Deception (too busy doing it himself) Deceit (likewise) Impetuous (can't decide what graft is) Simpatico (doesn't like it, but understands) Drunkenness (can't see it through the haze) While it is always desirable for a bailiff to be good at suppressing graft, even the best at it will still preside over a fief which swings wildly from low to high values. Graft is determined by other factors as well as the bailiff's abilities. The most important of the bailiff's three basic abilities (fief expenses, fief loyalty, and graft) is somewhat dependent on the situation the fief is in and what problems it faces. In a "mature" fief, one at peace with fully developed loyalty (9), a bailiff with high marks in fief expenses is paramount, with graft in second place and loyalty coming up in the rear. But if the fief is subject to attack, loyalty becomes paramount. Loyalty is also most important when a fief is recovering from a rebellion or other event which has drastically lowered its loyalty. So at different times, different bailiffs would perhaps be needed for optimum management. Want to know more? Download SKILLS.DOC from the library and make it your bible. Expenses Expense payments, in terms of ducats per capita per season, also influence fief efficiency. The tax rate does also, as taxes and loyalty increase or decrease in lockstep. For example, if taxes in a fief were 8% and loyalty 7.5, and you increased taxes to 9% (a 12.5% increase over 8%), then loyalty would fall 12.5%, (from 7.5 to 6.6.) Item Per Capita Influenced Spending on Loyalty Officials Taxes collected Loyalty Troops Fields Infrastructure Keep There are three ways that your fief can go into rebellion. First is to let loyalty drop below 5. Second is to tax over 20%. Third is an ancestral rebellion caused by the ancestral owner of a fief. Here is how the second method works If the tax rate is greater than 20% (15% after the Plague) and the fief surplus is greater than fief income * .1 then the chance of rebellion is n in 100 where n is the number of percentage points greater than 20%. The first method works like this if loyalty is > 3 and <=4 then 10% chance for unrest and 2% chance for rebellion > 2 and <=3 30% chance unrest and 14% rebellion > 1 and <=2 50% chance unrest and 26% rebellion > 0 and <=1 70% chance unrest and 38% rebellion 0 90% chance unrest and 50% rebellion Fiefs have three states of ownership; 1-Owned by an active player. You can try to attack and seize a fief like this. 2-Not owned by an active player. You cannot attack a fief like this, at least not until someone joins the game, gets this fief and then it is "in play." 3-A disputed fief. These are fiefs owned by characters that will never become active. However, when the current (un-played) character owning (and living in) this fief dies, the fief becomes "disputed" and anyone who can conquer it can own it. Sometimes, several of these disputed fiefs are put into "play" at once and an announcement is made via an ingame mail message to that effect. These fiefs revert to disputed status if the player that took them goes inactive. FAMX Managing Your Family and Household You must manage your family, including the NPCs you hire as your principal servants (or "fellowship" as they put it in the 14th century). You play a character who is one of the 107 senior aristocrats in 14th century Europe (or at least the portions included in the game). When your character dies, you usually take on the character of your next eldest male member of your family, although players often examine stats off all family members and choose the most suitable one as their heir. There are some exception; principally the Pope, the Prince-Bishops and some of the Italian leaders (Florence, Genoa and Venice, who were elected). Thus continued success in the game depends on the NPCs in your family and in your employ. When you examine a NPC it will say if they are married and who they are married to. New children can be named ("christened" from this menus.) Also, the feature that allows you to name new babies now also allows you to rename any of your NPCs (first name only.) You can ask one of the Sysops to rename your PC. You can use this to use your highest title (like "Earl of Lancaster") instead of your first name. Life Peerages (Enfiefment) Any NPC under your control, who is already a knight, may be made a noble, with the king's (or emperors, for others, or popes for the Spanish) consent. The King or Emperor, or Pope, has an option [RA] to do this for you. He must enter the ID of the NPC, and the ID of the fief. The system checks that the fief is ancestral to, and held by, the employer of the NPC, then changes the NPCs name and boosts his stature according to the rank of the fief and the following table: Stature Rank Field 1-3 6 4-7 5 8-9 4 10-12 3 13-15 2 16-17 1 The Rank List is found in the file PEERS.ASC. Most NPCs will get a 1, 2 or 3. These are Life Peerages, they cannot be inherited (which is fine, since we don't model NPC families.) Yes, you can give them to family members. You can only ennoble male NPCs. You cannot give them your highest title. You always keep that for yourself. You never lose control of the fief. An NPC is "your man." In terms of game mechanics, nothing changes except your NPC gets a title and a stature boost. The fief is always yours, as long as you can hold on to it. He doesn't even have to be the bailiff of the fief. It's actually a pretty good simulation of how things worked with the minor nobility. For simplicities sake, you cannot take the title back from your NPC. When he dies, you can give it out again if you wish. Given the stature boost, it's to your advantage to ennoble as many of your NPCs as possible. If you lose the fief you "granted," your man becomes "the pretender." You can role play the hell out of that (i.e., your guy wants to get his property back.) Entering the Clergy As a bonus, you can ask the pope to make any one of your un-knighted NPCs a priest. This boosts Stature by 1 (useful for bailiffs.) As a bonus to the bonus, you can also the petition the pope to make one of your priests an abbot, this bumps the Stature up another 2 (abbots often presided over huge estates.) You can, with the popes permission, make an unmarried female NPC an nun (stature boost of 1) and then, when she is over age 40, an Abbess and boost her stature by 2 (it's about the only break we can justify historically for the women.) An abbot can also be promoted to bishop, which bumps Stature another 2. Keep in mind that, while these clergy are part of a nobles household, the pope may hire them away at any time, without penalty. All clergy are answerable to the pope, even though they might, at the pope's sufferance, spend their entire lives in service to a lay lord. Clergy should not be used in warfare, although it did happen. Depends on how well you get on with the pope. Clergy may not marry. For an NPC to enter the clergy the NPC must have Piety Extraordinary or Pious skills. These NPCs may not be used to lead armies or do dirty deeds. If they are, their current owner is excommunicated (if the pope does it, well, the lords of Christendom have to do something about it). A nobles son may be admitted to Holy Orders without the needed skills at the popes discretion (you know what that means, so dig deep.) All clergy thus represented in the game should belong to the popes organization. These NPCs must be sent to the pope to be "hired." Daughters may also become sisters and, once they are over age 40, may be promoted to Abbess. Her name is then changed to ABBESS FIRSTNAME and her Family Name to that of a Province in which she will reside (and preside over a rich Abbey). Seducing a nun is an excommunicatable offense, as is any assault on the clergy. Your Knights and Royal Knights Note that you can "knight" any of your NPCs yourself, but without a stature boost. Only when the king does the knighting does the NPC get a stature boost. Skills Analysis From the Family Menu you can now do skill analysis. This means that when you have a list of your family members up you can just chose advanced option K or go to the menu and you can then do an analysis of their skills with out going to the menu that you presently do. This will soon be available in the tavern and the court too. Hiring NPCs At the beginning of the game the 6,000+ NPCs are evenly distributed around the game fiefs. About one percent are "Mighty Men," because they have an exceptional array of skills and characteristics (many of these are based on actual people of the period, so if you encounter a fellow named Chaucer or Hawkwood, it's no accident). Another ten percent are "wannabes," sort of diluted Mighty Men. Fewer skills, but still excellent people to hire. You hire them by offering them money. The better they are, the more you will have to offer. Several attempts may be needed before you succeed. All Mighty Men and wannabes have Ids under 1000 (the lower the better they are.) You will also find family members with IDs under 1000, and these are easily identified because they have a SIRE ID number (Mighty Men and Wannabes don't). Unhired NPCs move randomly during the update. When an NPC moves during the update, and his random move direction would take him into an Off-Map, Sea, or Mountain fief, he just does not move, and stays where he is. The principal use of NPCs is as bailiffs to run your fiefs. On the Skill information menu you can do an analysis of your PC and NPC skills, with some restrictions. You can only analyze your PC and your NPCs. No analysis of pregnancy skills and birth skills are allowed as this deals with gynecological matters that were not know back then. The hire skill rating will look a bit funny than the other skill ratings anything above a nine in must skills is good. Because of the way hiring is done anything above a 1.5 is good with a 2 being excellent. When an NPC dies they have a new first name generated and then placement is randomly determined. Where ever they show up that becomes their new language. Marriage and Family Your current character will grow old and die in this game no matter how careful you are. Death in combat is a constant threat. When your character does die, you use the next character in line in your family (usually the eldest son). You want as many children as possible. Be aware, though, that women often died in childbirth in this period. So your wife is a risk during every pregnancy. All these are very historical problems. On average 27 percent of noble families became extinct in the direct male line in each 25 year period during the 14th and 15th centuries. That would mean about 81 percent of families having no direct male descendants at some point over the period of 100 years. Of course, a family (player) continue even through female descendants, so it's unlikely that over 80% of families will die out in the course of the game. Most players can avoid the fate of their historical alter egos, but only if they are ruthless and clever in their family planning. Choosing your wife carefully can pay big dividends later on. While you cannot marry other players, you can marry any other NPC that is the child of a player character (other than your own mother or siblings). Your children will have their characteristics and skills randomly selected from you and your wife (half from each). If both you and your wife give the child the same skill, that skill will have a higher value. Thus a wife with good "stats" will improve the performance of your next character. Note that the children you find yourself with when the game starts do not share the parents characteristics, as these children were randomly generated by the system. Your children become adults at age 14. That's when they can be married off and when they can perform military functions (important if you had to assume the character of a child). Under age 14, children can lead armies using an NPC as an army commander. There is also an option in the game to switch character (from wife to husband or vice versa, not permitted if wife is pregnant). Because women cannot lead armies (unless they have a leadership value of 9), and you may find yourself playing a female character, once you get that female character married, you can do the switch and play a male character again. Most often, you would end up playing a female because your male character died and your only available heir was your childless wife. In this case, you would immediately find a husband for the widow you are playing and then switch characters. You would likely not be finished there, as the most common cause of childless couples is infertility. Should that be the case, if in the above situation you were still unable to make babies, you would want to divorce the above wife (just recently widowed and remarried) and try to find a fertile spouse. Only the groom (or his parents, controlled by an active layer) may propose marriage. Thus you can't marry your daughters off to the daughters of inactive players. However, if you are playing a female character, you can propose a marriage to an inactive character. While this shows some of the restrictions on women in the 14th century, within limited circumstances Women in fourteenth century Europe were probably freer than anywhere else at the time. In most countries women could rule (France was an oddity). Also, women were not unknown as estate managers, chatelaines in their own right, university professors (a small, but very real group), and so forth. There were women authors (one of the best manuals on estate management was by a woman), artists, and more. Even in the Church women had a much greater role than realized. An abbess was usually the manager of a very large agricultural and industrial enterprise, as well as a social worker. In some circumstances abbesses could vote in ecclesiastical or civil elections, such as for prince bishop, and even for the Holy Roman Emperor. On the various displays that show game characters, the relationships are shown. In the Court look at the far right. PLYR, FMLY and NPC are the relationship descriptions. In the household affairs, look at the left. You see NPC next to NPCs, and a code showing the relation for your family. Like "Son", "Dght", "Rlt" (Rlt = Related, e.g. daughter in law..) If one of your household is an acting bailiff the designation in the menu will show NPC* or RLT*. The "*" indicates that the NPC is acting as a bailiff. From now on when your daughters, granddaughters, etc. marry up you will receive .4 stature increase for every point they marry up. So lets say you have a rank of 12 and you marry your daughter into a family that has a rank of 8 you would get a 1.6 stature increase. You cannot marry your daughter to an inactive player. The reason for this is that your daughter will be removed from your family if you do such a thing and there is no way to tell if the new family even wants your daughter. There is a good gamesmanship reason to have it this way. But what if some sly devil married off his ugly good for nothin' daughters to inactive characters to screw up the gene pool. Keep in mind that the MALE has to do the proposing, UNLESS the female is a PC. That in itself keeps you from marrying your daughters off to inactive player positions. Heir Management If you are down to one member in your family, you must take immediate action to remedy this dangerous situation. First remember what happens if all the members of your family die. Your player position will go inactive and you will be out of the game. However, you can ask the Heralds, and you will be able to re- enter immediately without waiting (and get a new character, just as you did when entering the game for the first time.) But alas, we are not going to consider the above as an option. What we want for you is a spouse. First off, depending on how old you are, marry a virile young spouse. (Men/women from large families tend to be good predictors of high fertility). So first chore - and everything else can wait- find a spouse. Leave messages in the BBS topics on Matchmaking seeking a spouse. Then start walking - you will need to visit other fiefs to find a spouse in the meantime. And when you find an appropriate mate you can marry them and thus have a second person in your family. Then spend the rest of the time doing pregnancy attempts until the wife is pregnant. At this time you can switch from the female to the male or vice versa. It's up to you. Pregnancy attempts will now take one day no matter if you are managing the fief or not. Another option is to (if you are female) seduce males in order to get your female pregnant, or have a male character come seduce you and get you pregnant. While this may seem wanton, it was not uncommon at the time. In fact, one of the better French kings during the period (Charles VII) was not his fathers (the kings, Charles VI) son but the child of one of his mothers (the queens) boyfriends. She even admitted it publicly. So, do what you have to do... That is the way to get your family started. Another possibility one needs to consider is that you may (if female) be out of birth range (too old or sterile.) If this is the case and it is hard to tell if one is or the spouse, if you chose a potential fertile male and then the wife dies, the male can the go and find a fertile woman and then things start to happen from there. For example, one Herald had three members in his family when he started. The player character was sterile, his wife was out of birth range (over 40) and his son was single. The player then married his son to a woman that was not very fertile and managed only one son from that couple. But after less than a decade the player had five family members. Then his wife died and the player married a potentially fertile woman who was very young. Then when the players character died, he chose her as heir and married a fertile male and proceeded to build the family up to some thirty members (not including the 10 or so that died in the meantime). So it is possible to build a large family, it just takes careful planning, a little luck and a lot of hard work (well, not exactly "work") at finding the right spouses. Kings are slightly different when it comes to heirs. The king player must send a message to the Herald when the king has died and the Herald will use a special menu to take care of all the details. Wills All wills must be posted publicly in a public OLM topic of your game. In this message, you name which heir (by ID) gets what fief or amount of money (not percentage of money). This must be done before the character in question dies. No posthumous wills, please. The Herald in charge of that games transfer will save a copy of the "will" and, upon request of the heirs (i.e., the player who made the will in the character of his heir) execute the will. No request for execution, no execution. We don't want to put too much burden on the Heralds. Magnate titles have to be transferred via the existing ("choose a heir") routine. These could not be given away in a will as they, technically, belonged to ones sovereign (so, technically, did your land and authority, but kings were less able to crack down on this.) Your fiefs and money could be left to anyone else in the game (i.e., other players, married daughters, or the king. You CAN leave the king your magnate title, if you have one,) IF you die heiress, but have married daughters, you can leave it all to her. The Herald must then move you into the new character manually. This may be messy as the system purges such positions. We cannot guarantee that everything will survive this process. But that is historically accurate, as married daughters taking over the family estates was often accompanied by a lot of legal, and often some military, activity. We don't expect many people will use this. But at least it's there. Playing Your Character For those who wish to create a three-dimensional persona in the HYW, choosing personality traits for your player-character is a big first step. It may be best to choose only one or two at first as you will have to keep them in mind in all your IC (In Character) messages as well as your actual game activities. (you may wish to emphasize some of the skills your player has been "gifted" with in your Personal Attributes.) As an example, the St-Vollier women (or their spouses) in one game all had Miser- 7 or better. This has been role-played to such an extent that some English were referring to Annette, the Comtesse de Valence, as "the Treasurer of France." All involved had great fun with this. Heresy, Devout, Clerical Dislike, and such are also loads of fun if handled properly. Stupid is probably best left alone. Your opponents will accuse you of Stupidity-9 no matter what you do. DIVORCE...14TH Century Style Technically all you need to do is select the Divorce option from the Family Affairs menu. Then post a message in the Vatican topic of the OLM asking the Pope to grant you a divorce. Then comes the catch...getting the Pope to grant the divorce. Now, it's not enough to say, "She has rotten stats and she's too old to have kids." Or, "she has a big butt and her breath smells of onions." Or, "he is an ancient doddering fool who can't give me kids". Yes, we know that's all true but.... The Pope is the representative of the Church. The Church considers marriage a lifelong arrangement and a sacrament not to be taken lightly. Besides which, marriage was considered a Bond of Blood between powerful families in this period and a serious business matter. SO...you need to be creative in your excuses. Some valid reasons for requesting a divorce in this period were: 1. Consanguinity (that means your blood ties are too close), something you just discovered (much to your horror, of course.) Invent some dead cousins to prove your point (and making it difficult to disprove.) 2. Your partner was betrothed to someone else before your marriage and thus the validity of your marriage is questionable. More invention. Be creative, the pope enjoys a good performance. 3. Your spouse wishes to retire to the contemplative life (this means she wants to enter a convent, usually). Since your wife is an NPC and can't contradict you, this one is always pretty good. However, if you are married to the daughter of another player, your in-laws may raise some objections. 4. Your spouse shows evidence of unnatural tastes that prevent you from having a true marriage. If we have to explain this you are in the wrong game. Again, watch out for any nasty in-laws. What your priest won't tell you. While the Church considers matrimony a solemn bond, it will occasionally find that a particular marriage is suitable for dissolution. It is a good idea to submit a 'valid' reason for dissolving the marriage. That's fine... in theory. Warning! The following paragraphs are False! No true son or daughter of the Church believes that things actually work this way! Publicly stating that the following lies are true may cause you to be brought before a canon court to answer charges of Sacrilege and/or Blasphemy! In practice, whether you request for a divorce is approved may depend on more worldly matters. Have you made generous donations to the papacy currently? Have you granted lands to the Church recently? Done the Pope any favors lately? If so, you may find the Pontiff favorably disposed toward you petition. Been neglecting those donations to the papacy? Questioned the Pope's actions recently? Skipped that Crusade that His Holiness was so eager about? Commissioned any kidnappings or assassinations that anyone knows of? Your spouse may bury you before your petition is granted. It helps when the collection plate is next to a Knight with a Lance. And an evil grin. And who constantly remarks--"Give 'till it hurts, or it will hurt more." It was no accident that the church owned about one third of all property in the 14th century. Divorces have always been expensive. Below is an example of one pope's errrr...avarice: One of the more imaginative scams by a pope player was an offer to sell Holy Relics. CHURCH SELLS HOLY RELICS BE it known that that the Church has taken control of the marketing and selling of Holy Relics. There are many items to be purchased, both common and unique, ranging in price from a modest 10 KD on up to 10,000 KD for really rare items. Don't be the only one in your village not to own one of these sacred relics. Price (KD) Martyr relics: Stones used to kill martyr 10 Vials of oil used to boil martyrs 10 Finger, knuckle or toe bones 20 Crucifixion nails 30 Crosses stained with Martyr Blood 50 Saints relics: Vials of Saint's tears 50 (minor) Vials of Saint's blood 60 Finger, knuckle or toe bones 80 Crosses stained with Saint's Blood 100 Saints relics: Vials of Saint's tears 100 (major) Vials of Saint's blood 120 Finger, knuckle or toe bones 200 Crosses stained with Saint's Blood 300 Rose cuttings from Benedict's gardens 500 Apostle relics: Vials of Apostle's tears 250 Vials of Apostle's blood 350 Finger, knuckle or toe bones 400 Crosses stained with Apostle's Blood 600 Splinters from St. Peter's Cross 500 Nails used in St. Peter's Crucifixion 1000 Ax used to behead St. Paul 2000 Letters written by St. Paul 1500 Virgin relics: Vials of the Virgin's tears 1000 Vials of the Virgin's milk 2500 Veils worn by the Virgin 1500 Christ relics: Nails used in the Crucifixion 5000 Vials of Christ's blood 7500 Vials of Christ's sweat 2500 Vials of Christ's tears 3500 Splinters of the Holy Rood 1000 Cloth used to wipe Christ's face 1500 Shroud of Christ 10000 Crown of Thorns 10000 Other relics: King David's sling stones 50 Stones from the walls of Jerusalem 75 Dice used by soldiers at Crucifixion 500 Rudder of the Ark 1000 Bread Plate from Last Supper 1500 King David's Harp 2500 Made by Christ: Shepherd staffs 100 Bread Board 125 Boxes 150 Chests 200 Tables 250 More items will be announced as they become available. CHARX Characteristics and Skills Each character in the game has the same set of characteristics (management, leadership, etc.), and a variable number of skills. Each of these characteristics and skills vary in strength from 1 (lowest) to 9 (highest). The skills are created a birth and there's not much you can do about them after that. The most important characteristic for many tasks is Stature, which is also the one characteristic that goes up and down the most in the game. You can do something about stature because it is, in effect, your reputation as a noble. The file SKILLS.DOC contains extensive information on character skills. Currently, the principal use of NPCs is as bailiffs, army commanders, kidnappers and assassins. As more features are implemented, NPCs will become useful in other areas. A few tips (rule of thumb) on hiring NPCs as bailiffs, with regard to characteristics and skills; 1. Remember that if they don't speak the language of the fief, there is a -3 taken off of the total of Leadership+Stature/2 +- 2. Get into the Docs and CAREFULLY look at the lists of skills that add and subtract from fief loyalty each season. Remember that you need to be in the + side for loyalty to go up. I have found that a bailiff with a stature of at least 7 allows you to have a fairly high tax rate (20%) with no or few loyalty drops. 3. A good bailiff can keep the loyalty very high and make the fief surplus look real good, resulting in lots of spare change for you to play with. 4. Be sure to check the skills that add and subtract from fief expense as well. You'll find there will be a trade-off with fief loyalty skills, so you have to gauge them carefully. In general, it's better to have a bailiff that can keep the loyalty high. For army commanders, kidnappers and assassins, there are specific skills for each of these tasks. If an NPC has them, and a high (closer to 9 than 1 rating), then these NPCs are worth hiring. Another set of guidelines that works are; 1: The 4 main abilities, Management, Guile, Leadership, and Stature must total at least 24. 2: Management should be at least 5 3: Loyalty should be at least 3 (Loyalty had an effect on an NPC doing its duty effectively. Moreover, if an NPC is hired away by another player, you will not be told who the player is unless the stolen NPC had a loyalty of 7 or higher). 4: There should not be more than 1 bad skill (Lust, Envy, Epicure, Drunkenness, Gluttony, Generosity, Treason, Sloth, etc.) higher than 3. 5: Good skill such as Bailiff Supreme, Accountancy, Miser, Merchant, Bargainer, Charm etc. count for a lot. Remember that the skills add or subtract a certain percentage (from 10%-90% depending on the level of the skill) from the main abilities (especially management and leadership.) Training Once you are 14 years old, you can train in the physical skills, such as Attack and Protection, as well as in the bottom line skills like Siegecraft, Command, etc., as long as you can find a trainer who possesses the same skill as you and is better at it than you are. Unfortunately, Management, Guile and Leadership will only increase as your PC gets older, and becomes more experienced. You cannot add a skill by training, only improve existing ones. You can also train in second line skills (endurance, attack and defense). Only NPCs can train (not family members), they must be in the same fief. Choose the trainer from the household menu. he can either do combat training (2nd line), or skill training. Both people must have the skill, the trainer has to have a higher skill than the trainee for it to do any good, and it will subtract 30 days from your day total if the victim is your PC. If someone else's NPC is training your victim, you have to have set their organization as the training organization from your household menu, then have the second fellow train your victim when he's on. (Ie the Trainer, not the trainee does the training.) Training organizations only need to be set once. An NPC may only train someone once a season. Rates of gain vary between 0 (for someone with the same level, for instance) as high as .5. The gain is a percentage raise: a family member with a 5 skill learns much faster than one with a 1 skill. You can only train male PCs and family members 14 or older. NPCs cannot be trained. To train yourself takes 30 days. To train a male family member 14 or older takes no days. The effect of training depends of the present skill level (you get a bigger skill increase if you are training a 7 level skill than a 1 level skill). To see what skill effect various items check out #19 from the main menu. Only train good skills. Max of any skill is 9. For example, if you wanted to train siege, you would need to have that skill and have a NPC with the siege skill with a higher rating than you have. Select the NPC, then menu item 11. You will get a listing of all skills you and the NPC have. Select the number shown on the trainer (NPC) listing for siege and the system will tell you what the old and new siege rating was. If you don't have a NPC with the skill you need, you can have another player train you or a family member. If someone needs a NPC with a skill they don't have, that they post here so another noble who has a retainer with the skill can provide training. It's a good practice to train all your sons as often as possible. Once they move into your PC slot, training costs a lot of a limited asset, i.e. game days. You will find that a few seconds spent each season dedicated to the training routine can make a marginal family member into a good heir when the time comes for him to come into his own. Curses If you have an NPC that has the evil eye skill or the sorcery skill they can curse someone. Hired NPCs can only curse other hired NPCs. Family members can curse anyone. To curse someone you must be in the same fief as them. The curse has a chance of taking effect dependent on the level of the skill (if you have both skills the higher of the two skills is used). So if you have a skill of 8 you have a 80% chance of success. If the curse is successful the amount of health damage done is between 0 and 5 again dependent on the skill level. The damage is calculated via the following formula: skill level/ 9 * 5 If the curse is successful it is reported to the personal PC who was cursed and by whom. It is only reported to the public herald if the NPC fails a check based on guile and skill level. The reason for this is that someone can accuse someone of cursing and it can cause confusion etc. for the Pope to sort out. Well have fun with this one! It is accessible from the dirty deeds menu. Those that have the Evil Eye, Sorcery, Stupidity, or superstition skills are more likely to be effected bye a curse. Those that have healer, healer Extraordinary, Piety Extraordinary, and Piety will be less effected or not effected at all. If you have none of these skills the highest hit you can take is a 4, reflecting the superstitious nature of the time. Remember a Four hit would only come if you had none of the above skills and the cursor had a skill level of 9 in Sorcery or Evil Eye. Both the cursor and cursee must be in the keep. MOVEX Movement Movement From Fief to Fief Movement is simple. If NOT using the GFE, pick a direction and press the number indicated. The numbers are selected to match the layout on the numeric keypad found on many PC keyboards. With the help of a current map of Europe, and watching when you run into the coast (noted by "sea" areas you cannot enter). Movement takes longer in Winter (cold and snow) and Spring (storms and mud). There is a quick move option, where you enter the letter q (or and another letter as shown below) and a series of one to seventy numbers (each number indicating a direction of movement as in normal movement.) Quick Move allows you to enter many movement instructions at once. Instead of entering a number for the direction you want to go to, you enter something like; q111447 The "111447" takes you in each of those directions, one after another. A set of movement numbers like "111447" is called a "movement string." The options available with Quick Move are shown below. q - move to a fief ignoring armies. qa - move to a fief but stop in any army is encountered. qb - move to a fief but stop if a brigand army is encountered. qe - move to a fief but stop if an English army is encountered. qf - move to a fief but stop if a French army is encountered. qo - move to a fief but stop if an Other army is encountered. qss - move to a fief but stop if PC number with army is encountered. There is also an expert mode. This mode decreases the amount of information that is sent back to your machine decreasing the time it takes make your next input. When you set expert mode in the travel menu it will remain that way even when you exit and re- enter the game. Moving With An Army For each thousand troops, there is that chance in percent that your next fief move will take three times as much time as it normally would. For example, a 6,000 man army would have a six percent chance each move that it would take 3.6 instead of 1.2 days to move. A 100,000 man or larger army would always take three times as long to move. Movement by Ship Some fiefs are ports from which you can take ship to other ports. On the Travel Display, fiefs marked with a "&" are ports and allow the use of the Port Movement option. Keep in mind that it was often easier to get to many places by marching. Sea travel was an uncertain enterprise in the 14th century. Moreover, it will cost you money to move by ship. It costs 2,000 ducats for yourself, and the same amount for every NPC in your party. Note that in most cases you should only use ship movement when you have too. Moving cross country is generally much quicker if it is an option. Moving Armies by Ship This is a more complicated matter. If you want to get an army from England to France (or vice versa) you have to go to the Army Management menu and hire ships. This is very expensive. It is also dependent on the weather. As a result of the weather, it is very difficult for the French to get a troop fleet to England. It's a lot easier for the English to get a fleet to France. If you think you are going to easily travel across the channel with an army think again. You must raise your fleet at the beginning of a season. More likely, especially if you are French, you will raise the fleet the season before you raise the army. Raising a fleet takes 90 days for the French and 30 for the English. Channel Crossing probabilities Spring Summer Fall Winter France to England 20% 40% 20% 5% England to France 80% 90% 70% 10% One of the English kings greatest assets is that he can send armies across the Channel better than anyone else in the game. In order, these are the steps for the English king to take to take advantage of this: - Assemble an army London of around 15,000 men. The king usually has cash to raise a much bigger army, but having more than 20-25,000 is a waste unless there are already nobles in France waiting for troops. Large armies cost big bucks to maintain, they cost a lot to get across the Channel, and you loose more men to attrition the larger your army is. - At the start of the season that you have all your troops in London, raise a Fleet. You'll now have 60 days left and are ready to sail. - Land anywhere in France, but your first turn you will likely not have enough days to do much, so its best to leave the French port (to avoid detection) and just hide in an out of the way fief (look for one with an inactive noble - you can spend YEARS undetected in France by hanging out in inactive fiefs!) OK, now for the condensed, easy to remember, version of the above: Recommended ports are Baiona, its down south where a lot of the bigger French nobles have lands (and where they almost never are!) and you can immediately head for Leon or any one of the small disputed fiefs down there to hang out. Honfleur and Dieppe are also good since they are only 6-7 fiefs away from Paris - which is fun for a good raid every once in a while. Some comments on how an English Lord should invade the continent. English have 3 main advantages. In general, their nobles have much better stats than the French do. The second main advantage is that we have the best troops in the world, thus making even foot when we are in charge much better than under French or Germans. The third is yeomen, which adds insult to injury, making our armies even more effective in combat and sieging. This has two effects. If the English are set to retreat, French need roughly 3 to 4 times our numbers to bring them to battle, and even then, they are not guaranteed a victory. The greater combat values also gives the English a huge advantage in sieging fiefs. Smaller forces with higher values are not as effected by attrition, so the English lose fewer men, and need fewer men to bring and keep a fief at -10 to keep level. High keeps are better for the English. An Englishman with 300 men in a 30 keep needs to have a de Coucy level seiger with 4000 men to get a decent keep reduction level. If you are a small noble, and they capture you, they still spend more money on the army than you will on yours and your ransom. The plague is good for the English. After the plague, Flanders, Paris, Anjou (the province, not Arles) and Spain are the only sources of sufficient troops to scrape up a few thousand men on the spur of the moment. This makes small cheap English armies more effective; it might take three Frenchmen all season to recruit enough men to engage an English army out of a keep. Pillaging Paris is a good long term goal, so they can't get 1,000 troops out of it in one recruit. Another English trick with Paris is to have a Frenchman or two in your pocket. Each season have them go recruit out of Paris, Just to dry it up.... Even if they disband the armies it means the French have to spend 40+ days to recruit a good sized army. One other item you will see. It is a standard English tactic to hold their army over reset, whether in the open under retreat (risky) or in a nice warm keep under defend (better). You will not find the French holding their troops over reset. For the most part they will disband and look for an inactive fief. This all has to do with the English/ French combat values and commanders. So why isn't this game an easy English Victory? Many factors influence the outcome, but a large balancing factor is number of players. Assume everyone has the same level of game activity (a big assumption). Take a look at the number of French players versus the Number of English. This why the English came close to winning the historical war, but ultimately lost to a larger number of active French nobles. But here's some food for thought. In France, the French King controls only 17% of the active vote (and population.) In England, the English King controls nearly 70% of the active vote. The English King is in a very strong position, especially if he's been building up those keeps. The French are always vulnerable to dissension and treason. The English much less so. Movement Tricks with NPCs The summoning command can be used to speed up your play of the game. To minimize your on-line time (but not game time) you can summon most of the NPCs you want to move. Movement through travel is much slower if one is hauling a large entourage around. Thus if you ever need to move a lot of NPCs from one place to another, you can send any you don't need immediately ahead by summoning them there, keep only a handful with you and save yourself a lot of movement time. If your family are a worry, you can use the "summon NPC to fief" command to get family members out of harms way. Summoning an NPC puts them in transit for two seasons, during which time they cannot be seized, kidnapped, or assassinated. There is a 10% chance of something evil happening to NPCS in transit. Robbed and beaten Sickness Lost Outright death Pregnant females cannot be summoned to you. Use this technique if another player is particularly angry at you and is going after your family. One player, in just such a situation, had his entire family in transit continuously for four years. Think of it as if the family had gone into hiding, which is fairly historical. KINGX Kings, Kingdoms, Magnates (and the Pope) Kings are different from other players in that, 1-They have a lot more property and income. 2-They can tax other players in their kingdom. 3-They can bring to trial (by jury) other players in their kingdom and, if found guilty, execute them. 4-They can declare any of their subjects outlaw. 5-They have the resources to pay other players to help them run the kingdom. A king is, well, you know, a king. A magnate is a noble similar to a king but that is subordinate to a king and who has some control over fiefs he does not own. Examples of magnates are Counts (or Comte in French), Dukes (Duc in French), Earls (English equivalent of a Count), Princes and so on. Both kings and magnates may tax all the fiefs in areas they rule over (such as the Duchy of Normandy, which the Duke of Normandy does not own all the fiefs in.) While kings are basically very successful magnates, they are also considered "the anointed by God" to the common people. A king has enormous wealth and power and can only be removed from that position if most of the active players owning fiefs in the kingdom vote to do so. These players "vote" the current population of their fiefs (10,000 population is 10,000 votes). This is done by calling a parliament (even the French had one, although it was not used as much as the English one). Any magnate can call a parliament to remove the king. Only the king can call the parliament for any other matter (like removing a title from a player.) Usually a parliament is called to raise more money for the king. EXECUTION OF ROYALTY Execution of the Kings and Crown Princes of France and England is strictly forbi dden. If such a King or Crown Prince is executed, the offending player will be summari ly ejected from the game. The Game Sysop will resurrect the dead royal. The reason for this rule is that executing (as opposed to assassinating or killi ng in combat) Kings and Crown Princes simply wasn't done during this period. So any one doing it in HYW is simply trying to employ a little ahistorical gamesmanship. Th is is something we discourage as much as possible. This rule is not in effect in Bedlam or Bohort games. Kings and Crown Princes The king in England and France is actually two players. One plays the king, the other plays his heir, the crown prince. When the current king dies, the king and crown prince switch roles. That is, the player who was king, now becomes the new crown prince (his former crown princes heir). The crown prince moves up to become king. This element insures that each time the king dies, a new player takes over as king and proceeds to do things a little differently. Any experienced player with a flair for diplomacy and organization can be king in a game. While being a king can take a lot of time, the king can also delegate nearly all the work. Player should always consider volunteering to be king or crown prince at least once. New games start frequently, so there are always opportunities. You may not want to be king twice, but you miss a lot by not trying it once. A nation is much more successful if the king takes an active role in running things. Some things a king can do in this direction are; 1-Find which players are most energetic, reliable and loyal and assign them specific tasks. The two principal tasks are leading armies and coordinating military operations, the other is keeping all the nobles in the kingdom organized and moving in the same direction (this is not easy.) Another important job is that of ambassador. You need ambassadors for the other major kingdom as well as some of the powerful "Other" players (especially those in Spain and Italy.) Diplomacy is extremely important for both kingdoms. In particular, the French king must form an alliance with the d'Anjou family. The d'Anjous begins the game as king of Arles and Naples. Eventually Arles became part of France, and after the HYW war the French fought a series of wars with Spain and sundry Italians to try and keep Naples a French property. One reason d'Anjou was so tight with the Valois was because saw themselves as French and threatened by England. D'Anjou was also a vassal of the French king because of French fiefs held by the d'Anjous. The Spanish and Italians are another matter. You've got to work hard here because England can offer these folks parts of France in return for assistance. Arles Absorption. Arles becomes part of France after Robert of Anjou (who begins the game as King of Arles) dies without a male heir. The Anjou position is still in play, however. See HYWHIST.DOC for more details. 2-Use the Private groups in the OLM. This is a good way to keep all the nobles of the kingdom informed. Only the king can determine who gets access to the private category. 3-For warfare use a two phase "scouts and hammers" technique. First a number of players with very small armies, or no armies at all, scout out the enemy territory. They then report to the players with the large armies, who then coordinate their attacks to the best effect. This can be done with everyone on-line at once, or with the scouts going out at a specific time, and the larger armies following later. 4-Establish military districts, particularly in France (even England has to worry about the rare invasion or the Scots.) More districts is better, assuming good men can be found to accept responsibility for them. As always, there will be need for good field commanders within these, and logistics and scouting support. The more that logistics can be delegated, the less the burden will be on the crown, and hopefully, the quicker we can move on the crown's behalf should need arise. The chain of command should have as few links as possible, however, as too many will tend to promote delays. Perhaps the Connetable or a Marshall should be appointed for any activities needed outside the crown's demesne and given authority as needed to call upon resources within the military districts. This might work best as an as needed appointment. A typical organization for a kingdoms government would be; Crown |--------------> Other posts Crown Prince - Treasury, Ambassadors | |--------------------------|---- ----> Mil Dist Mil Dist... | | Scouts Logistics Commanders (etc.) Commanders: Responsible for combat. Best warriors. Scouts: Responsible to check the district for armies and report to the commander early in season. Might also be called upon to seek individuals reported in area. Logistics: Occasionally called on to scout, raise armies, transfer armies. The Scouts should be the most willing to spend time on a regular basis, with the commanders expected to work in bursts when needed, and the logistics called upon only occasionally as needed. On the civil side, At the provincial level there would probably be a number of Royal officials, depending on circumstances: Civil- A sheriff in England, seneschal in France, as the "governor" Judicial- A justiciar to serve as provincial chief justice Military- A Lord Lieutenant in each shire in England, or a Lieutenant General in France The kings could also appoint wardens, guys in charge of the military forces on a particular frontier, as in England, with the Warden of the Northern Marches and the Warden of the Cinque Ports. Individual columns of an army could also have separate commanders, for example a besieging force supported by a covering force. And there were officials with "roving commissions," poking their noses into various things, like tax collection, the administration of justice, the condition of local castles, etc. Being king is a big job. It has moderate on-line commitments but really no more than an active noble who is not king. It has LOTS of organizational/off-line thinking and planning responsibilities. The king will not have to do everything himself, not even all the planning (he can't, the job is too big). He WILL have to pick other players (a "cabinet") to do the work with and for him. The king does not have to come up with all the good ideas, but he needs to stimulate debate, and help his side find good ideas and good plans (The English start with a simple objective-attack France and take all French fiefs. The French have a more complicated problem in combining defense with a gaining of the initiative). The King also has to act as a cheerleader and the one to whom others, particularly new players who may not realize the king has established (hopefully) a cabinet to deal with issues and share the load will turn for advice. The Privy Council (or any number of terms for the French) These are nobles appointed to the king to provide a constant stream of advice on specific areas. Players who travel around and observe fill the council and post their advice, observations and suggestions to a specific group (which only the members of one kingdom can enter) of the OLM. It is from Privy Council members that the king selects nobles to fill the major government posts. New players in particular should be appointed to the Privy Council, to enable them to serve the crown while they are still too poor or unknowing in the ways of the game to make a major contribution somewhere else. Experienced players can also be on the Privy Council, but these players probably already have a job in the royal government and have constant access to the king. Royal Officials. The kings of England and France may appoint their nobles to the following positions (one per noble, appointment for life, or until that player goes inactive) and thus increase that nobles Stature by 2. Appointments are publicly posted by the National Herald, including a complete current list of Royal Officials in the Public Court of the OLM. Title and seasonal compensation in 1,000 ducats (kd). England Lord High Steward: Chief official of the government- 65kd. King's Main Man, It will be his job to see that everything in the government is run smoothly. To see that everyone else does his/her job. Lord High Chancellor: Runs civil administration- 50kd. Responsible for making sure every player is running his fief's at an efficient rate. Will be responsible for getting everything back to normal after the plague hits as well as preparing for the plague. Lord High Treasurer: Takes care of royal funds- 45kd. Will dole out the money. Each year will generate a report as to where it went. Lord Chief Justice: Runs the courts- 25kd. Will keep Court minutes one or two word topic headings, keep records of who is to do what. Lord Great Chamberlain (traditionally the Earl of Oxford): Runs royal household- 25kd. Looks after the Royal family and runs errands for the king. Lord High Constable of England: runs armed forces- 50kd Warden of the Cinque Ports: Guards the channel ports- 12kd France Chancellier, runs government- 125kd Grand Chamberlain: justice, finance, weights & measures- 100kd Bouteiller: ceremonies, judgments of nobility, royal table- 65kd Chambrier: runs Paris- 50kd Seneschal de la Maison du Roi: supervises royal household- 36kd Seneschal de Nord: Runs Royal fiefs in north France- 25kd Seneschal de Sud: Runs Royal fiefs in south France- 25kd Connetable: runs the armed forces, under whom are- 100kd Marcheaux de France de Nord (royal armies in north France)- 66kd Marcheaux de France de Sud (royal armies in south France)- 66kd The French Feudal Levy Once a year, the French king can, as his feudal privilege, summon the armed levy of his vassals. This is a special Call To Arms that is delivered by the sysop Herald at the rate of 2 troops per thousand population controlled by the king. The Levy is called by the King, to assemble in a fief in France, at a time at least two seasons in the future. It may be delivered no more than once a year. At the start of the indicated season, the system will, at the designated fief with 90 days, transfer the Levy to the King. The number of troops delivered will be twice the population of France (and Arles if that Crown has passed to France), in thousands. Example: A total population of 12,000,000 will yield a Levy of 24,000 troops. This transfer is normal in all ways, including the random number of days lost in transfer and all conditions necessary for pickup. No check is made of fief ownership, nor of the location of the King when the transfer is performed. The troops are free for one season (technically, the feudal levy can be called for 40 days, but the number called has been adjusted to give the king the proper number of troops for 90 days.) Note that this levy calls on all the chivalry of France, whether they have been conquered by the English, or someone else, or not. It is assumed that more will come from free areas, as well as some from conquered areas, to give the same amount as a proportion of population each time. The Levy is called by the King, to assemble in a fief in France, at a time at least two seasons in the future. It may be delivered no more than once a year. At the start of the indicated season, the system will transfer the Levy to the King in the designated fief. The number of troops delivered will be twice the population of France (and Arles if that Crown has passed to France), in thousands. Example: A total population of 12,000,000 will yield a Levy of 24,000 troops. This transfer is normal in all ways, including the random number of days lost in transfer and all conditions necessary for pickup. No check is made of fief ownership, nor of the location of the King when the transfer is performed. The French levy linked to Stature of French king (9=100%, 8=80%, 7=70% and so on) and costs two million ducats to pay for expenses of leaders and kings officials to administer the levy. The king also loses two stature points each time he calls the levy. Managing the Royal Finances The kingdoms finances are also the kings responsibility. A French king in one of the games issued a financial report each year so his nobles knew where the royal exchequer stood. These reports looked like this; Cash Flow 4/47 1/48 2/48 3/48 4/48 1/49 2/49 ----- ----- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Beg Bal 0 61.8 63.5 62.4 52.8 47.3 42.2 Income Fief income 8.2 8.8 9.3 9.2 9.0 9.1 9.1 Tax income 6.7 6.7 6.3 5.6 5.4 5.3 5.4 Church tax 0 0 0 0 0 10.0 0 Pay received 52.5 0 1.0 0 0 0 0 Expense Officials 0 1.0 0 0 0 2.5 0 Family exp 5.6 6.0 6.3 6.3 6.1 6.2 6.1 Grants 0 0 0 0 .6 0 0 Defense 0 6.0 10.5 17.2 13.2 19.0 13.2 Papal Bribes 0 .8 .9 .9 0 1.8 0 -------------------------------------------------------- Closing Bal 61.8 63.5 62.4 52.8 47.3 42.2 37.4 Legend. Income= from all sources, Fief income= from the royal fiefs, Tax income= from the royal provinces (magnate tax), Church tax=via BCCI, with the pope permission, Pay recieved=grants or loans from other nobles (foreign or domestic), Expense= All expenses, Officials=payments to royal officials, Family exp=the kings household, Grants=to help out needy vassals, Defense = raising troops (many of whom are then transferred to other nobles), Papal Bribes (what it says.) Note that the French king that developed this report (Jim Van Hoose) did very well against the English. Mentors One excellent idea developed by the players in one game was to provide all new players with a "mentor" (an experienced player). This is done by dividing up all of the new players by the season that they joined and have four "mentors" who answer any questions and who generally act as Heralds to get the new players integrated as easily and painlessly as possible. Although Heralds can do this, this usually fails to build the "team-spirit" that is needed to keep people in the game. The Mentor System, combined with the Privy Council (players assigned the task of constantly advising the king on each Council members area of specialization), will substantially improve the effectiveness of the royal government. Knighthood Once a year, the kings of France, England and the Holy Roman Emperors son (for players in the Empire) and the pope (for players in Spain and Italy) may knight three NPCs. (they have "Sir", "Chevalier", "Ritter" or whatever added to their first name and get a one time stature boost of "1"). A menu option handles the technical details. Only NPCs of exceptional merit should be so honored (not just your favorite bailiff...) Players should ask for their NPCs to be knighted in a public OLM topic. Remember that any player can knight his own NPCs, but without the stature boost. Only a king knighting your man can do that. In summary, being King is a large job, a job requiring thought and administrative skills. It is not a job requiring huge on-line commitment (by which I mean no more than the amount of an active army commander) and it is lots of fun. There is no other wargame where the command position has so much to deal with-so many subordinates and such a difficult meshing of economic, political, social, religious and military policies to achieve a certain goal. The Kingdoms As you travel around, you will note that there are several kingdoms in the game besides England and France. The first letter of the fief code indicates which kingdom you are in. Below are the one letter codes for kingdoms; A = Arles C = Catalonia E = England F = France G = Naples H = Holy Roman Empire (or parts of it) I = Italy L = Leon-Castille M = Mallorca N = Navarre R = Ireland S = Scotland All of these kingdoms are much less significant than England and France, which were the two most powerful kingdoms of the time. Some kingdoms will be referred to as part of the Holy Roman Empire, this was also an insignificant political entity. Holy Roman Emperor is in play. The imperial crown will rotate between de Bohemie (131) and von Bayern (181). One player will play both positions, being switched by a Herald when the current emperor dies. When the emperors other position is un-played, it is considered like any other non-active position. The emperor may only keep fiefs in the un-played position that he has personally conquered. Things the Emperor can do are; -Imperial Tournament to Hold Court and Reaffirm a Vassal. This means any player with HRE fiefs (including the kings of France and England) can host the Emperor with a Grand Tournament (this costs 6 million ducats for purses, payable to the Prince of Orange, who will give them out.) The Grand Tournament must be announced a year in advance, with the top three finishers get 3, 2 and 1 million ducats respectively, and the Emperor must show up. A Herald must attend. The noble hosting this Grand Tournament in the Emperors honor receives 2 stature points. Only one of these Imperial Tournaments can be held a year and the emperor decides which one he will grace his presence with if more than one are proposed. -Allow, or disallow, transfer of Imperial magnate titles between nobles (a Herald handles the actual transfer.) The noble who wishes to take a title must hold more fiefs in the province in question than the current holder. -Approve the knighting of three men each year, from among those in the service of Imperial nobles (any noble with a fief not in England, Scotland or France). -Decide who gets Imperial fiefs that become disputed (it has to be someone besides the Emperor. Bribes are allowed.) -Declare Imperial nobles outlaw (doesn't have the same effect as the French or English king doing it, but it sounds impressive just the same.) Awards and Honors Kings reward their loyal and useful nobles in a number of ways. The most common method is to give money. A few hundred thousand ducats thrown in the right direction can do wonders for His Majesties popularity. The king can also give nobles the management (and half the income) of royal fiefs. Sometimes fiefs are given outright. The king also has dozens of magnate titles that can be granted. These are quite useful gifts for a noble, as many of these titles come with the authority to tax a province. Moreover, a higher title (than the noble already has) will boost the recipients stature. The king can also invent noble orders (see HYWHIST.DOC for historical examples.) The king can also award smaller honors for specific types of duties. In one game, a player devised a system of honors for French nobles. Each year, the King will propose honors for deserving nobles, which will be accepted by Parliament. The purpose of this system is to reward those nobles who help the Crown. The classes of award are: ! (The Lash) given for raids and pillages. @ (The Eye) given for scouting and spying. # (The Ladder) given for sieging. $ (The Strength) given for fief management. % (The Rooster) given for increasing the population. ^ (The Chevron) given for army combat. & (The Horn) given for special acts. * (The Star) given for especial gallantry. + (The Cross) given for service to the Church. \ (The Bar) given for discreditable actions. Multiple awards of the same classes are shown by numbers. The director will may proposal for awards to the King based on Herald reports and other information. Keeping a King in Play The key players in the game are the kings of England and France. If the players in either of these positions loses interest in the game, and simply doesn't log on regularly, we have developed a mechanism to deal with this (it has only happened once, but that's enough to indicate that it could happen again.) Normally, if the king is going to be away from the game for more than a few days, a Herald is informed and, if it's a short absence, a Herald can take over the king position until the king player returns. If the king player is going off on vacation or other long trip, arrangements can be made for a temporary switch between the Crown Prince and king. We only have problems if the king disappears without informing a Herald. If a king does not log on for three straight days, one of the National Heralds will immediately be switched to the kings character in order to take care of the kings (and the kingdoms) business. If the king cannot be contacted within the next two days, the Crown Prince will be switched to the kings character and a new Crown Prince will be selected. If the king IS contacted within the two days after the Herald takes over the kings position, and the king indicates that personal matters caused the absence, then the king, Crown Prince and Heralds can decide whether to keep the Herald in the king position, switch the Crown Prince to king or switch the king position back to the original king. We realize that players have a life outside the game (we don't like it, but what can you do...) and that family or business emergencies may come up that will interfere with the players on-line time. Thus anyone playing the king should rest assured that there will always be a Crown Prince player and Heralds who can hold the fort if you are momentarily distracted by 20th century affairs. Any player can enter a parliamentary proposition in any Winter season for the current king player (not character) to be removed. If this vote succeeds, a new election is held and a new player assumes the kings character. Removing Magnate Titles Parliamentary Proposals to remove Overlordships from Nobles must always state WHO THEY ARE BEING REMOVED FROM (Name and ID#) in order to be valid. It goes without saying that removed Overlordships return to the King. This information is not necessary. The information as to who is being stripped of the title, IS. The King is free to bestow overlordships in his control on any Noble, without a vote of Parliament, however, a maximum of two overlordships per year will be maintained. The purpose of the Parliament vote is to remove the overlordship from a Noble; and that Noble must be named. Each proposal must name only ONE title to be removed. Each separate title requires a separate proposal. The Aquitaine Rule Removal of the Gascony (FGA00) and Guyenne (FGU00) titles is subject to the conditions of the Aquitaine Rule. The Aquitaine rule reduces the English king's stature to 1. Pretty, bad, actually. Starting the Aquitaine Rule timer requires keeping the English from holding a Gascon or Guyenne (FGAxx / FGUxx) fief for two years (over nine seasonal resets). Starting the Aquitaine Rule timer requires keeping the English from holding a Gascon or Guyenne (FGAxx / FGUxx) fief for two seasons. Once the timer is started, the English have two years (nine resets) to hold a single fief over two consecutive resets. If they fail to do so, title to FGA00 and FGU00 may be stripped by a vote of the French Parliament. If this is done, the stature of the King of England is reduced to 1. Non-active overlordships will not be transferred, just as non-active fiefs cannot be transferred. Ancestral overlordships will be returned to new players entering the game, just as ancestral fiefs are returned; for as long as the Purge on non-active positions is in effect. Two titles, those of Brittany and Flanders, require special treatment. Both of these regions are considered "Others," and their titles FBR00 and FFL00 sometimes have to be taken by conquest (the sysop decides how to play this in each game). See below for how to do take by conquest. CONQUEST OF TITLES Here is the procedure for transferring titles by Conquest: 1) If a title is held by a non-King/Emperor, either the normal Parliamentary option for returning the title to the Crown or the alternate procedure below can be used to remove it. If a King/Emperor holds the title, the alternate procedure must be used. 2) Alternate procedure: a) If a King/Emperor personally holds 50%+1 of the active fiefs in a province, he may declare that he is disputing the ownership of the title. b) A King/Emperor may only have one title under dispute for each four points of stature he possesses. c) The above declaration starts a Year and a Day (five resets) counter. If the disputing King/Emperor maintains possession of 50%+1 of the active fiefs at each reset, he may then petition the Pope for transfer of the title. d) The Pope may approve or deny the petition as he wills for titles in France and England. For titles in the Empire, the emperor must also approve for the transfer to take place. e) If the petition is approved, the title will be transferred to the disputing King/Emperor. 3) The above does not apply to the Gascony and Guyenne (FGAxx/FGUxx) titles which are handled by the normal Aquitaine Rule. For the purposes of this rule, "King" means the King of France or the King of England, and "Emperor" means the Holy Roman Emperor. Any problems with the interpretation of this will be decided by the College of Heralds (whose judgment is final, don't go running to the developers if you don't like the decision, the College of Heralds have the last word in these matters.) If a transfer of an Imperial magnate title is otherwise allowed by the rules, the Emperor may allow or forbid the transfer. He may only allow the transfer if the player gaining the title holds more fiefs in the affected province than the current holder. There is one exception to the rule that non-active fiefs and titles will never be transferred or removed by Parliament. An overlordship title held by an inactive position which is not ancestral to that position may be returned to the Crown by a vote of Parliament. As before, under no circumstances will ancestral titles be removed from inactives by vote of Parliament. This applies only to overlordships, not fiefs; and is mentioned only because titles do not purge as fiefs do. For Those Who Would Be King While kings (particularly those of France and England) were "the anointed of God," there were always ambitious (frustrated or dismayed, take your pick) nobles who thought they could do a better job. For those of you who would be king and are keen on starting your own dynasty, there are two ways to do it. In both cases, the player who wins the election can choose to take over the existing king character or replace the king and his family as the ruling family of the land. This covers the two quite different quarrels players may have with the king; they want a new player for the king character or they want a new player AND character in the kings position. First, there is the Coup d'etat method. Dangerous, but quick. First, at least three players of the same kingdom must propose that king be removed. This can be done in the Bulletin Board, with Herald handling the actual proposal.. Of course, this means the Crown Prince (the kings son) is gone too, although the player in that position will assume the character of the new Crown Prince character (the new kings heir). So there must immediately be a parliamentary vote for a new king (with the kings fiefs not being voted, as they are out of play until parliament votes in a new king). If you win the vote, you are king. If you lose either the removal vote, or the election vote, you are likely to be in big trouble. The second method is a variation on the first, the civil war method. You still may have to enter the proposition to remove the king, but first you attack and take enough of the kings fiefs to guarantee that you will have the votes to remove the king (and have enough fiefs to assure that you will get the proposition passed.) You then have the vote to select a new king, and in this case you are assured of getting the job because you have conquered enough fiefs to assure election. In either case, you can also getting elected king via parliamentary vote is another matter, as each player participating will vote their population. If you have been diplomatic (you are already powerful) enough other players will get behind you to elect you. It's also possible to get the king to abdicate, as a civil war or coup is not a pleasant event. If the king does abdicate, then a new election (one player, one vote) is held. Whichever method is used to remove a king, this is the procedure followed to shuffle around the new cast of characters; 1. Once removal has been voted on. A new king will be elected via parliamentary vote. 2. The old king and his family will be moved to disputed position without any holdings and money. The same characters, the same names, but that's it. 3. The newly elected king and family will be moved into the kings place (the king being ID 47 if English or ID 200 if French. Money and NPCs will be left behind with the old position. 4. One family member of the new king will be left to run the old position (and assumed by a new player, or the new king can approve a character swap with his old position and another player before a new player gets assigned to it.) So lets say 47 (Edward) is removed. The heralds run an election and 66 (Robert) (this is just for example sake) wins. (47) Ed would be moved to, say, position 103 which is inactive. Robert (66) would take over all the lands, titles and offices of king by being moved to 47. So now we would have 47 (Robert) the new king and 101 (ED) the disposed king. Some family member would be moved into the 66 position and the next lucky person to join the game would get that position. Royal Succession Although the kings, like all players, can choose whichever heir they want from their family, in reality the kings were expected to follow a strict line of succession (based on law and custom.) The line of succession for France at game start was as follows (that for England will follow in a future edition of this document.) The succession of the King of France should be as follows: The House of Valois (Based on decendence from Charles I of Valois, 11 children only 2 male.) 1. Philip of Valois [200] (first son of Charles I of Valois, born in 1293) 2. John II of Valois [172] (only son of 200, born in 1319) 3. Charles V of Valois [not in play] (first son of 172, born in 1337) 4. Other surviving sons of 172. 5. Other surviving sons of 200. 6. Charles II of Valois [37] ( second son of Charles I, brother of 200) 7. Surviving sons of 37 Sallic Law prohibits descent thru women, so the daughters of Charles I are not an issue, even though 8 are alive by 1337 The House of Capet (Descendents of Louis IX) 8. Philip of Evreux [620] (son of Louis of Evreux who was the brother of Philip IV) 9. Surviving sons of Philip of Evreux (he is married to Juanna de Navarre [157]) The House of Bourbon (Decendents of Louis IX, thru of Robert of Clermont, 6th son of Louis IX) 10. Louis I de Bourbon [175] (son of Robert of Clermont, born in 1279) 11. Pierre I de Bourbon [494] (first son of 175, born 1311)(married Isabelle de Valois, game shows Marie) 12. Louis II de Bourbon [not in play] (first son of 494 and Isabelle de Valois, born 1337) 13. Surviving sons of Louis II de Bourbon. 14. Surviving sons of 494 15. Jacques I de LaMarche [176] (son of 175 listed as Louis in the game, born 1315)(married Jeanne de Chatillion, game shows Joan) 16. Jean de LaMarche [not in play](son of 176, born 1337) Anyone listed as not in play, will be eventually, if for no other reason than the succession possibilities. The Papacy The pope is the spiritual leader of all players and their populations. The pope is also a fief owner and possesses some wealth. The only other powers the pope has are to: 1- Excommunicate players (lowers stature). The pope can, of course, reverse this condition also. 2-Bless players (increases stature). 3-Grant divorces. 4-Approve the collection of Church taxes for the king. 5-Change any characters first name (to deal with those irreverent players who name their children "Moon Unit" or "Whereswaldo.") The pope can also do things like call a crusade or inquisition, but these require cooperation from players to work. Crusades Periodically, an opportunity will arise to participate in a crusade. The pope can preach a crusade once every five years. Players' Personal History will show a countdown to the season of the Crusade. Players who wish to participate must be in Avignon with 500 or more troops and a zero or more days at the end of the season before the announced season of the Crusade. At the update that starts the season of the Crusade, the system will eliminate the armies, zero the days of the Crusaders (so they have to stay in Avignon for the entire season, and calculate the results of the Crusade for each participant. There is a chance (depending on where the crusade is) that you will be injured (have your health reduced,) and/or captured during the Crusade. There is an equal chance you will arrive home from the crusade with a lot of money (up to several million ducats in loot.) The injuries might result in your getting killed. There is also a chance you will be captured, and you will have to ransom yourself. However, your Stature will increase by two after the Crusade. There are three places you can crusade; Prussia (to conquer and convert the heathen Balts and Slavs), Italy (to pacify the Papal States) or in the East (against the Turks.) Each vary in how dangerous they are. Most crusades are against the Prussians, with Italy coming next and against the Turks being rather rare. The system tells the Pope the target for the current five-year period when he access the option to preach a crusade. The pope also has the option of blessing all those who complete, and survive, a crusade. Pilgrimage Similar routine to that used in the Crusades. Every five years the pope can preach a major pilgrimage. Participants only get one stature point and must pay a million ducats to the Prince of Orange (who will distribute it to the needy). The pope also has two abilities that can affect a players abilities. The principal one is excommunication. The pope can also grant blessings, which raise the blessed players stature by 1. Players must have a stature of 5 before they can be blessed. The pope can only bless a player once per year and a large donation is usually expected before the blessing is given. This rule is not yet implemented in code. Popes are on their honor to abide by its restrictions. Any infractions of this rule will result in the removal of the stature produced by the excess blessings, plus one point. A player that leaves the game (by not logging on for up to 21 days or because he died heiress) while outlawed or excommunicated cannot rejoin the game for 30 days. Note that the popes in this periods were very much under the control of the French king. There were several reasons for this; 1-The current pope was French. 2-The papacy in Avignon was under the protection of the French king. 3-There were more French Catholics than English Catholics. 4-The English were showing Protestant tendencies (the Lollards and busting the popes chops over church taxation and the selection of bishops). 5-The French nobility were generally more into religion than the English (they went after the south France Cathar heretics in the previous century with great vigor). This last "crusade" gave rise to the Inquisition (which was controlled by the French before the Spanish "took it over.") The Papacy and BCCI (BANCO CATOLICO DE CREDITO INTERNAZIONALE) The pope is played by a player and can do whatever he wants. The papal players have tended to be quite papal. As with the historical popes, they were eager to encourage peaceful conduct and good works. Also like the medieval popes, they were always looking for ways to increase their wealth. The popes also have a connection with BCCI, an organization we have created to represent the Italian bankers. In some respects, the pope and BCCI must act together. Here are the interrelated Pope and BCCI functions. Both will be operated manually until the code is in place. Pope is considered to be French until a Papal Conclave is brought about by an anti-pope crises and the Conclave elects a non-French (Spanish or Italian) pope. Each time the pope dies there is a 10% chance of anti-popes appearing. This chance increases 5% each time the pope again dies without the anti-popes appearing again (15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, etc.). -When the anti-pope appears, the pope player cannot grant blessings, divorces or any binding action until the conclave elects a new pope. The conclave has a 12% chance of occurring each season after the period of anti-popes begin. -On the season after the Conclave occurs, the new pope character is no longer French (but Spanish or Italian, if it's Spanish, all those that follow are Italian. If it's Italian, all that follow are Italian.) Papal States start in rebellion (this is why the pope is living in France.) The Papal States go into rebellion in any season that a non-Italian pope enters the Papal States. Papal Authority Archbishops (there are some PCs who are designated Archbishops) begin game as belonging to popes ORG. When these die, pope can allow local king to appoint a priest to that position. For having the pope take your children into the clergy, see Family Affairs (FAMX). Tax benefits of controlling clergy In every year ending in 5 or 0, you may call upon your archbishops for a special church tax. Those archbishops that are the sons of the nobility of your kingdom will automatically agree. Non-noble archbishops require the pope to issue a bull in favor of the taxation (in effect, make an Bulletin Board announcement that he will not oppose his archbishops. Thus this tax is different from the regular church tax in that, and the other, respects.) For each archbishop that the king thus controls, he gets one thousandth of the national GDP. For example, the GDP of England at the beginning of the game is 943,550 kd. If the king controlled 2 archbishops, he would get 1,887 kd. The For an abbess, she can collect one thousandth of the GDP of the province her abbey is in. Only one abbey per province allowed. Must be in the kingdom of her king. Same rules regarding the pope as with archbishops. French Archbishops in 1337 Aix Armand de B(N)arces 1337 1348 Arles *Guasbert de Laval 1323 1341 Aux *Guilielm IV de Flavacourt 1324 1356 Avignon *Arnaud de la Vie 1317 1334 Besancon Hugo VI de Vienne 1334,9 1355 Bordeaux *Petrus de Luc 1332 1345 Bourges *Foucaud de Rochechouart 1331 1343 Embrun Bertrand de Deux 1323 1338 Lyon *Guilielm de Sure 1333 1340 Narbonne Bernard de Farges 1311 1341 Rheims *Joannes de Vienne 1334 1351 Rouen *Petrus Roger 1330 1338 Sens *Guilielm de Brosse 1330 1338 Tarantaise *Jacobus de Salino 1335 1341 Tarantaise same as Moutiers, in Savoy Vienne *Bertrand de la Chapelle 1327 1352 Toulouse Guilielm. de Laudun 1327 1345 Tours *Petrus Fretault 1335 1357 England, Scotland, Ireland Canterbury *Joann Stratford 1333 1348 York *Guilielm de Melton 1317 1340 Only the two above count for the special tax. Glasgow Joannes 1337 1338 St Andrews sedes vacat 1332 1341 Dublin *Alexand. de Biknor 1317 1349 Armagh *David O'Hiraghty 1334 1346 Cashel *Joann O'Grada 1332 1345 Tuam *Malachias Mac-Aeda 1312 1348 The English and French archbishops above are the ones that count for the special church tax. The archbishops below are for the Pope to use, so He know which positions He has to fill. Italy Acerenza Petrus VII (tr. Venosa) 1335 1343 Amalfi Landulf. Carracciolo Rossi (OSFr) 1331 1351 Aquilea *(Beat) Bertrand de S. Genes 1334 1350 Aquilea-2 St Bertrand of Angouleme, Patriarch not A.B. Bari Landulphus 1310 1337 Bari-2 Roger. Sanseverino 1338 1347 Benevento Arnald. de Brusacco (O. S. Fr.) 1333 1344 Brindisi Guilielmus Isnardi 1333 1344 Florence *Franc. Silvestri (tr. Rimini) 1323 1341 Genoa *Dinus de Radicofani 1336 1342 Milan *Aycardus Antimiani (OSFr) 1317 1339 Monreale Napoleon Fortibracchia Orsini 1325 1337 Napoli *Joannes Orsini 1328 1358 Pisa Simon Saltarelli 1323 1342 Ravenna Franc. Micheli 1333 1342 Salerno Benedictus (Neapolitanus) 1334 1347 Trani Bartholom. Brancaccio 1328 1341 Spain and Portugal Braga Gonzalo Pereira 1325 1348 Evora Durand II Alfons. Pirez 1336 1339 Lisbon Joann. Alfons. Brito 1326 1342 Burgos Garcia Torres Sotoscuera 1327 1348 Cordova Joann. Perez 1336 1346 Cordova may not be an Archbishopric Santiago dC *Joann. Fernandez de Limia 1331 1338 Saragossa Petr. Lopez de Luna (1st AB) 1314 1345 Seville Joannes (clericus) 1324 1349 Tarragona *Arnald. Cescomes (de Cumbis) 1335 1346 Toledo Ximenes de Luna 1328 1338 Valencia 1458 became archbishopric! Germany etc. Basel Joannes II v. Munsingen 1335 1365 Bremen-Hamburg Burcard Grelle 1327 1344 Geneva Petrus II de Faucigny 1311 1342 Koeln Henric von Virneburg 1304 1332 Magdeburg Otto v. Hessen 1327 1361 Mainz Henric von Virneburg 1328 1346 Prag became archbishopric in 1343 Salzburg Frideric III v. Leibnitz 1315 1338 Sion=Sitten Aymo IV v. Thurn u. Gestelenburg 1323 1338 Trier Balduin of Luxemburg 1307 1354 et Pax vobiscum Lectores Below are typical messages used by papal players, urging their flock to help find NPCs suitable for Holy Orders, as well as Notices of Instruction for the other players, on what the papacy can do for all. Nobles of Christendom, The Church needs to find candidates for the following episcopal sees. We will entertain applications of worthy NPCs (they must have pious or piety skills). His Holiness asks that all Christians answer the Church's call and find men to shepherd the flock in these times of darkness. FRENCH ARCHBISHOPRICS: Arles, Aux, Avignon, Bordeaux, Bourges, Lyon, Rheims, Rouen, Sens, Tarantaise, Vienne, Tours ENGLISH ARCHBISHOPRICS: Canterbury, York, Dublin, Armagh, Tuam, ITALIAN ARCHBISHOPRICS: Aquila, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples SPANISH ARCHBISHOPRICS: Santiago, Tarragona IN NOMINE NOSTRI DOMINI ET VICARIUS CHRISTI William Melton Archiepiscopus Sanctae Matri Ecclesiae Nobles of Christendom, His Holiness has asked me to list the names of the Sacred Places the Church holds as inviolate. To attack any of the following fiefs will bring condemnation upon the offending noble and place his soul in mortal danger. Notre Dame, at Chartres (FCR03): St. Andrew, at Andrew's (SMA00): St. David, at St. Davids (EPM01): St. Martin, at Tours (FTS06): St. Thomas a Becket, at Canterbury (EKE03): St. Joseph of Aramithes, at Glastonbury (ESM04): San Niccolo of Bari, in Naples (GOO00): St. Patrick at Lough Derg, in Ulster (RUL00): IN NOMINE NOSTRI DOMINI ET VICARIUS CHRISTI William Melton Archiepiscopus ----------------------------------------------------------------- Nobles of Christendom, His Holiness has asked that I explain the process by which retainers of the faithful may enter religious orders: The pope can appoint NPCs as archbishops. Some archbishops begin game as belonging to popes ORG. When these die, pope can allow the local king to appoint a priest to that position. The Pope can admit NPCs to Holy Orders. The NPC must have Piety Extraordinare or Pious skills. NPC gets a one time stature boost equal to PIOUS/10 and Piety Extreme/3. These NPCs may not be used to lead armies or do dirty deeds. If they are, their current owner is excommunicated. A nobles son may be admitted to Holy Orders without the needed skills at the popes discretion. All clergy thus represented in the game should belong to the popes organization. These NPCs must be sent to the pope to be "hired." Daughters may also become sisters and, once they are over age 40, may be promoted to Abbess. Her first name is then changed to reflect the Province in which she will reside (and preside over a rich Abbey). Seducing a nun is an excommunicatable offense, as is any assault on the clergy. If an abbess gets pregnant (not likely) she gets demoted back to sister. A nun who has been seduced and gives birth cannot become an abbess. Tax benefits of controlling clergy In every year ending in 5 or 0, you may call upon your archbishops for a special church tax. Those archbishops that are the sons of the nobility of your kingdom will automatically agree. Non-noble archbishops require the pope to issue a bull in favor of the taxation For each archbishop that the king thus controls, he gets one thousandth of the national GDP. For example, the GDP of England at the beginning of the game is 943,550 kd. If the king controlled two archbishops, he would get 1,887 kd. For an abbott/ abbess, the Church will collect one thousandth of the GDP of the province the abbey is in. Only one abbey per province allowed, and the abbey must be in the kingdom of its sponsor. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobles of Christendom, His Holiness has asked that I explain the process by which a faithful lord may establish a cathedral or religious house in one of his fiefs: Building a cathedral or a religious house is both a sizable and costly undertaking. To do so marks a noble as unusually devote and worthy of additional respect and consideration in the eyes of the Church. The process is a simple one. First, a noble must announce his intention to build a cathedral or monastic house, along with giving 1000 kds as a down payment to the Church (id # 22). Then the noble has five years to pay the Church 25,000 kds in the case of a cathedral or 10,000 kds in the case of a monastic house. At the end of the five years, the Pope will come to the new building, consecrating it and blessing the sponsoring noble in a beautiful and ornate Mass. The sponsor will also become a Knight of the Holy Church and have (KHC) added to his name and a white cross on a field of blue added to his coat of arms. In the case of a cathedral, the Church will allow the sponsoring noble to nominate an arch-bishop to the cathedral. Also, the fief will be free from all forms of attack, as are the Sacred Places mentioned earlier. In the case of a religious house, the Church will allow the sponsor to appoint an abbott/abbess. The Church also will not tolerate pillages or raids of the fief. NOTE: The establishment of "papal protected fiefs" is ahistorical. Rarely did the popes even attempt this and when they did, it did not work. Don't ask the sysops to edit fief names to include some indication of it being a "protected" fief. The sysops haven't got the time and, to repeat, this is an ahistorical item that many pope players have invented. IN NOMINE NOSTRI DOMINI ET VICARIUS CHRISTI William Melton Archiepiscopus Papal Interdiction Can only be done to the fiefs of an excommunicated player and can only be done once per excommunication. The sysop manually reduces all that players fiefs loyalty by 5 (no Fief loyalty shall go lower than 1.) The Pope may have a number of nobles under interdict at one time equal to his stature/2 (rounded down). The number of fiefs being placed under interdict is capped at half the pope's stature (losing fraction) per season. Some pope players have used their powers with a certain degree of flair. Here's how one player pope did an excommunication (as posted on the BBS.) Archbishop Orsini enters the chapel followed by three priests carrying lighted candles. Orsini kneels and crosses himself, and mutters a brief prayer, rising he turns to the alter. "Know Ye, The man, Navarra, has made war upon Holy Mother Church, the Body of Christ incarnate. The man, Navarra, has slain and made martyr priests and men of Holy Orders. The man, Navarra, has seized upon and made prisoner, His Holiness Celestine IV, Vicar of Christ on Earth, Successor to St. Peter, Bishop of Rome and Pontifex Maximus. "Know Ye, The man, Navarra, is damned in body and soul, by God and Holy Church. The man, Navarra, is cast from the Body of Christ unto the deepest pit with Satan and his minions. He is declared excommunicate, anathema, and un-clean." The first priest extinguishes his candle and turns it upside down. "Know Ye, Upon pain of his immortal soul no Christian shall give shelter to the man, Navarra, Upon pain of his immortal soul no Christian shall give sustenance nor drink to the man, Navarra, Upon pain of his immortal soul no Christian shall have any discourse whatsoever with the man, Navarra." The second priest extinguishes his candle and turns it upside down. "Know Ye, It is as if he is not and has never been, let his name be stricken from the records of God and man, let his name go unspoken until the Final Judgment. Thus is the judgment of God." The last priest extinguishes his candle and turns it upside down. Orsini crosses himself again, and leads the three priests from the Chapel. How BCCI Operates BCCI represents, in the game, the historical Italian bankers and the ability to tax church property. BANCO CATOLICO DE CREDITO INTERNAZIONALE ("the International Catholic Credit Bank", or BCCI) can issue loans to kings. The interest is 25% per annum and you don't have to pay the interest until your credit limit is reached. BCCI is backed by the Bardi, the Peruzzi and other large Italian banks and has access to over ten million Florins in lending capital. That's three billion in ducats, so we're not talking small time here. The English kings credit is good, the French kings credit is not. BCCI will loan money to England as long as the outstanding amount (principal, not interest) does not exceed 400 million ducats. Annual loans can be up to twice the kings stature in millions of ducats (max, 18 million ducats per annum). The English king defaults and is cut off from further loans if he does not begin making annual interest payments when the credit limit is reached. This is a non-negotiable condition. The French king may reapply for BCCI loans after 1360, with a 10% chance in each annual application of its credit being restored. Same terms as for the English king. Loans to England and France will be calculated at money taken against principal, not principal and compounded interest. Thus the kings can get 400 million ducats total before they have to start paying down the principal and interest (fat chance...) BCCI also represents the papacy in handling taxation of national Church assets. The amount that can be taken, with the popes permission, is based on the kings stature; Stature Clerical tax French Tax Ducats 1 None 2 None 3 Twentieth 6 million 4 Twentieth " 5 Twelfth 10 million 6 Twelfth " 7 Sixth 20 million 8 Sixth " 9 Fifth 24 million These are the fractions of the national tax base that may be delivered to the king as clerical tax. English tax would be 60% of French tax. A French pope cannot allow Clerical Taxation for England (but a non-French pope can), he can approve or deny taxation for France. BCCI is represented in the game by the sysop. STATX Active, Inactive, Disputed Fiefs and The Purge Not all the 107 player positions will be played in a game. Those fiefs owned by player positions that are not being played are considered "inactive." You cannot attack and take an inactive fief, nor can you tax, raid or pillage it. Otherwise, it functions like any active fief. These inactive fiefs are considered to be sitting out the war, as many nobles actually did. One thing to keep in mind about inactive fiefs is that if a player is forced out of the game by having his entire family killed (or not using the game for up to 21 days) that player position and all its original fiefs become inactive (and any fiefs taken from other players are returned). If you owned one of those now inactive fiefs, you lose it when a new player gets the now inactive position. That's a bit of a pain, but since new players must assume an inactive player position, it would be unfair to them if they were stuck with a player position that was stripped of all its fiefs. In practical terms, you can hold onto these fiefs for quite some time before the new player comes on line and reclaims his ancestral properties. This procedure is not as artificial as it sounds, as nobles in this period spent more time in court with their lawyers than they did on the battlefield. In both courtroom and battlefield, the object was the same; to expand ones land holdings. After being forced out of the game, you can immediately rejoin the game and get a new character. There are also 200 player positions that are never played. When the current head of these family dies, their fief (most of these are one fief player positions) becomes active and anyone can capture it. This represents the frequent disputes over property when a minor noble died. More powerful nobles would dispute who should own the deceased property. These disputed fiefs are fair game for anyone who can take and hold them. The Purge If a player drops out of the game, we can't let that player position just disappear. While other players would like to just grab the departed players fiefs, the players family is needed in the game for historical and play balance reasons. Thus if a player does not log on to the game for up to 21 days, the player is "purged." The number of days a player is inactive before being purged depends on how close it is to the day when the player first entered the game. If a player drops in once and never comes back, he gets dropped in five days. If he returns four days after he first enters, his purge time extends to (4*2)= eight days. Each time he enters, his grace time extends until it hits 21 days, where it stays. The routine is shown below Calculate Purge_Days as (Last_Date - First_Date) * 2. If Purge_Days < 5 then Purge_Days = 5 If Purge_Days >21 then Purge_Days = 21 If (Todays_Date - Last_Date >= Purge_Days) then purge him The purge means that the players character becomes inactive and available for a new player. However, so that the new player to use the purged character has the fiefs that go with that position, the purge routine restores the fiefs to the family that had them at the beginning of the game once a new player joins the game and is assigned the purged position. Thus if you took a fief by siege from a player that was not active, you would lose that fief (it would become inactive) when the player got purged and a new player was assigned the purged position. The purge is actually a two step process. When someone has not been active for 21 days they are deleted from the active players list. When they are deleted all their NPCs are fair game to be hired by other players and the fiefs they have in their possession that are not originally theirs are returned to the original owners. The second step of the purge happens when new players join the game, at that point all the NPCs still in the service of the character (from the previous player) are fired. When a new player joins the game the system checks to see if he has all of his historical fiefs. If he doesn't have all of his original fiefs then they are removed from whoever has them and given back to the historical owner. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that while you hold that fief, you gain revenue from it. The bad news is that you lose the fief when the player gets purged. This does, however, give you incentive to try and keep that player in the game. It's always a good idea to think a bit before you take a fief. If the fief belongs to an active player, you have a little war on your hands. If the player owning the fief has dropped out of the game, you will lose the fief when the owner gets purged and a new player takes over that position. SEXX Sex and Romance My love in her attire doth show her wit, It doth so well become her; For every season she hath dressings fit, For Winter, Spring and Summer. No beauty she doth miss When all her robes are on; But Beauty's self she is When all her robes are gone. --Madrigal (anon) There's a lot of sex in this game. Most of it is legal (with your wife). But, in the spirit of the times, you can also seduce the wives and daughters of other players (if your stats are good enough) and get them pregnant. The other players may not appreciate this, but the option is there. If a child is born whose SIRE ID does not match that of his mothers husband, than someone has been playing the field. Chasing a ladies favor was marginally safer than jousting and, for some, provided a smoother high. The clerics kept most of the records (and thus cooked the books when this seemed prudent), so we don't have a complete picture of who did what to whom. Chaucer, however, let the cat out of the bag big time with many of his stories (written during this period). And there was the "Roman de la Rose," (a very racy, and popular, love story that was all the rage several generations before Chaucer showed up.) If you are tired of every Tom, Dick, and Jean having at your women, one solution is to seize the ladies in question and free them when they are ready to marry. Sort of locking them up in a tower until you are ready to let them out. Rather historical, that. Actually, "captive" is one of the safest places to be in the game, and not just for daughters. Having a reliable friend capture you and put you some place real hard to find/break into is just the ticket for those who don't take an active military role. Some players will find they cannot conceive. This is because there is a hidden "fertility" rating that will result in an historically accurate one third of the couples not being able to make babies. In this case you divorce your wife and get another one. If that doesn't work, the male is at fault and it's time to get the wife a virile boyfriend. COMX Combat and Campaigning If you find yourself in a fief with another army, you may initiate a battle. However, you are advised to examine the other army first. If it is larger and led by someone known to have good combat stats, fighting is not a good idea. Moreover, a player can set his army to "Stand and fight" or avoid combat ("retreat".) If a player is set to avoid combat, it will simply move away (up to six fiefs in any direction) if you attack it. You can then spend a lot of time trying to find it, but it will likely retreat again. If you have a large advantage over the other army (manpower and combat stats) you can force the other fellow to fight. Note that, all things being equal, the defender always has an advantage. When there is a battle, and you lose, many of your NPCs (and even yourself) can be wounded, captured or killed. Raising an Army There are two ways to raise an army (note that an "army" exists when you have 100 or more troops under your command. If you have fewer than 100 men under your command when the seasonal update your "army" is disbanded. An "army" during this period was generally quite small. A thousand or so troops was considered a good sized force.) 1-Recruiting can be done in any fief where you speak the language-the major language. This means that if your language is F2 you can recruit in fiefs where the language is F1, F3 etc. but not G1 (German) E1 (English) etc. There are some linguistic anomalies. Not all of France speaks French. Brittany speaks C3 (Breton) so you cannot recruit there. There are French speaking lands outside France, mainly along the border with the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) and there are Dutch speaking fiefs in France up north. What's more not all French speak French! There are French nobles who speak Italian in the South East of France (these linguistic anomalies exist to this day in some of these areas). If you speak the language (and have the local culture and manners) you can just go and round up a few men. There is one advantage to recruiting is that if you own a fief that speaks a different language than you, but has a Loyalty value of 7 or greater, you can recruit in that fief. You need 2,000 ducats for each man you recruit and this must be paid up front. If the fief you recruit is ancestral to your PC, the cost is only 500 ducats for troops recruited in the ancestral fiefs (when you recruit you recruit from the fief you are at and surrounding fiefs.) This does not apply to king's or megafiefs as they are not "close" to the people in their ancestrals). Just a note, to figure out where you should Recruit for an attack, look for fiefs that have to look at the fief icon. The larger ones have larger population and the largest ones are the best ones to recruit in. 2-Call to Arms (CTA). This is not normally used, but sometimes kings and select other players are allowed to use it in a variant game or as a special rule. CTA and recruiting both costs 2,000 ducats per man. CTA takes two seasons to work. For example: if you do a CTA in Spring you get the men in the Fall. CTA allows you to recruit ANY NUMBER of men, even tens of thousands. CTA can only be done in a fief you own and in your own country. Two other things to keep in mind: A CTA takes no days off your days remaining. You pay for the men right then, when you call them. If you lose the land during the time between when you pay the money and when you collect the men, you lose the cash and get nothing. So CTA in a safe place. King of England and emperor (but not French king, pope or megas) can use CTA (as per the original Call To Arms rules). But the initial cost of troops so raised is dependent on the kings stature (at the point in the daily update when the CTA routine is run.) No CTA is possible if kings stature is 5 or less. Additional initial cost for lower stature. That is; up to stature 6, 6kd per man, up to 7 stature, 4kd per man, up to stature 8, 3kd per man, up to 9, 2kd per man. Recruitment takes days (a variable amount, 1 to 5 usually). The number of men you get is a function of the population and your stats (Recruitment ability is a skill that simply modifies your basic recruitment skill). You can recruit more than once in a season (you can only do a single CTA per season) but after you do one CTA you must move off 2 days in some direction before trying again (recruit, use 4 days, get 300 men, move 2 days, recruit, get 250 men in another 6 days etc.). In general you want to recruit in a high population fief you own. Someone else, even you, if you move and come back, can recruit in a fief a second time in a season, but the second time someone recruits there the number of men obtained is lower and the time taken is longer, each time. Paris with 150,000 or so is a great place to recruit for example, as are the fiefs with 40-50,000 pop. (FIEFDOC.DOC in the library lists all the fiefs by population). An area that is heavily recruited in during a season will run out of troops. But next season there will be more troops available for hire. When you recruit your first troops, immediately go to "Army orders" and change your orders to Retreat. With a small army (anything under 1,000 men is small) you will be safer when off-line etc. with "Retreat" option set. You will TRY to avoid combat then (even when off-line) but may be forced to combat if the opponent attacking you has great stats or a much bigger army. Choose the "Household affairs" menu item. Pick your NPC with the best army stats (you can use the NPC analyzer feature for this, or simply pick someone with good Leadership, Guile, Management, Stature, Endurance, Health etc.) Skills like Command Supreme and Situational Awareness are a plus and Drunkenness, Stupidity and Sloth a minus. There are several things to consider, but you will often be sieging so maximize your Siege ability. Be sure to check your own stats, it is possible you are as good or better than any of your NPCs, in which case just leave yourself in charge (women can't lead armies though, unless they have Leadership of 9. Otherwise they MUST use an NPC commander.) Once you have decided on say #3467 Odo de Crapaux then in "Household Affairs" find #3467, choose the detailed menu for that character and select the option "Make NPC your army commander". You can remove him by selecting him again (its a toggle) and can select another NPC later as circumstances dictate. Transferring Troops You may give troops to another player, or receive troops the same way. You use the Transfer Troops option on the Army Management menu. One thing to remember, however, is that the player picking up the troops cannot have more days left than the player transferring the troops (otherwise, the troops themselves could end up using more than 90 days in the season.) From the travel menu you can now camp. This is a way to sit in place and burn days. The way it works is this. If you enter "c10" you will camp for 10 days. If you enter "c" the system will then ask you how many days you wish to camp for. You will suffer attrition while camping. If a defending army is in a fief you cannot camp in it until the defending army is defeated. Remember, the garrison always tries to resist a camp attempt (just as it always has). Just a note about this. Let us say that Fief F is owned by Player O and managed by Player M. Player O transfers an army to Player M in Fief F, and then Player O leaves the fief. When Player M goes to pick up the army, he discovers that he has too many days and thus decides to camp. However, when Player M tries to camp, he receives the message that he cannot camp as the owning player's army is present. Troops that are transferred and not picked up now have a chance of becoming brigands. Troop Transfers cost between 10 and 20 days (random). Pickup of transferred troops will cost you between 1 and 2 days. English to English troops transfers take half the normal number of days reflecting superior English organization and professionalism. Brigands When you disband an army, there is a less than 50 percent chance that up to 25 percent of the disbanded troops will form themselves into a band of brigands. This brigand army (or "company" as they were known) will be led by an NPC and will randomly move around and pillage fiefs until they disband from combat losses and attrition (just like any other army.) You can go after a brigand company just like you would an enemy army. You must use the "Brigand Combat" option on the "Dirty Deeds" menu for this. You will also find there an option to buy the brigands off (in effect, hire the NPC brigand leader as an NPC and the brigand troops just like any other troops recruited.) The probability of brigands being hired: (only 30% chance, with 50% chance those that refuse take the money and run.) The Art of Pillage Pillage was, alas, a common form of warfare in this period. An army would march into an area and, while the inhabitants fled for the forests or the local castle, the marauding troops would steal what they could and burn the rest. It doesn't take many troops to pillage, it depends on how large the fiefs population (and thus the number of warriors on hand) is. If your force isn't large enough to scare the locals, the garrison will assemble and toss you out. Remember to examine the fief before pillaging. You never know when it might have changed hands. No sense pillaging a fief now owned by your side (your king will not be amused...) The keep level of the fief is not always the best factor to consider. Check to see if there is a high negative expense value. If there is, it means that there is a good manager there. A pillage reduces the fief loyalty by up to 20%. The amount of loot depends on your stature (which will decline a bit each time you pillage a fief that speaks the same language as you do. The church, and society in general, frowned on pillaging.) You will get more money if the garrison comes out to fight. One long term benefit of pillaging is that the Loyalty of the fief will decline. Thus one player can move ahead of the main army, softening up enemy fiefs with pillages and raids (a quick form of pillage that takes less time, and garners less loot) so that the pillaged fiefs are easier to take. If you lose a fight with the local garrison, you are retreated up to six hexes away, generally in a straight line. Pillaging, successful or not, takes at 5-15 days. You can also pillage (after a fashion) a fief without any troops! You can even pillage an inactive fief! You won't get any money, but you can hurt the future owner. Visit court and hire away the good NPCs (managers etc.). Another trick is to look to see if an enemy player has just entered the game (via the Herald). If you are close, go pillage their fiefs, hire NPCs before they manage the fief properly. It doesn't take a lot of troops to pillage. There has been success with as few as 600 troops. Armies have a chance of conducting an automatic raid or pillage if an army camps, or stops at the end of a season (over a reset). This can be avoided The probability of a raid or pillage depends on the ownership of the fief and the number of days you are in it. This takes place in all circumstances (for sieges, whether armies are in or outside the keep, etc.), except when you have maintenance turned on. When an army uses the camp function, the raid/pillage check will have to be run right away. Otherwise, these checks are run over the reset. The raids and pillages are treated like any other, and reported in the Herald. Percentage probability (anything under 100% is the probability of a raid, anything over 100% indicates an automatic raid and the percentage less 100 the percentage probability of a pillage). Degree of damage depends on days in Fief and ownership (yourself, a king, anyone else.) Once you have pillaged a fief and you camp in it now you will no longer pillage it again. Raiding and pillaging and the auto pillaging that takes place after a siege reduces the amount of income collected. If it happens enough it can get zeroed. Things should be back to normal after an update. Staying Alive in the Field Here are some tips for staying alive while around and about during a war (whether or not you have an army with you.) If you are campaigning with an army the best thing, of course, is to run all your combat in one contiguous on-line session. You can't be surprised easily that way. If you are being relentlessly hounded by many or superior forces, you can disband your army and go outside the keep of an inactive fief until the heat is off. Of course, this is often not possible because it's time consuming and expensive (because you are online all the time.) Thus if you must log off while your character is with an army open to discovery and attack while you are not on line, consider the following measures. -If you have a largish army you can place it outside the "hot" area and set it to retreat and hope for the best. Good chance of losing men but a decent chance that you won't be defeated to the point of capture. -However, you don't always have a large army and the enemy often does, so another option, and the one that often works, is to disband your army and move to the nearest inactive fief. When you are alone outside the keep of an inactive fief, the enemy has real problems getting his hands on you. Generally, the two ways of capturing you are by seizure and kidnap. Seizure is your biggest problem. The local overlord can always seize you in any fief of his province, even inactive ones. A king can seize anywhere in his kingdom. The other option, kidnapping, is difficult, as it requires the use of an NPC who is both skilled in kidnap AND has a high loyalty, AND speaks the language of the fief you are in. The best kidnapper in the world is useless with a low loyalty or the "wrong" language. This combo of high loyalty and kidnap skill is hard to find, particularly from the comparatively small pool of NPCs who don't speak French or English. You can possibly take advantage of this fact by choosing an inactive fief that speaks a non-French/English language like (D)utch, (B)asque, (C)eltic, (G)erman, (H)ispanic or (I)talian. Plan ahead and know where these fiefs are and use this trick if possible/practical. It also helps if your intrinsics (Management, Leadership, Guile, Stature, Protection, Endurance and Attack) are high. The higher they are, the harder to kidnap you. Another thing that will increase your security is to have a minimum of NPCs with you. Each time you move, the game must update your new position and the positions of all with you. The more NPCs, the longer the move takes. The longer the move takes, the easier for the enemy to do nasty things to you. And DON'T take your wife with you into combat. She is the maker of heirs and heirs are your future in the game. She could be captured and killed (it has happened). She could be captured and ransomed (expensive). She could catch the plague (it will happen). Keep the dear lady safe at home. Army Combat Fight on my men, Sir Andrew says, A little I'm hurt, but yet not slain; I'll but lie down and bleed awhile, And then I'll rise and fight again. --Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton When you are leading an army, and encounter another, you may attempt to have combat with the other army. Because the armies of this period were unwieldy (no one marched in step, every one just sort of ambled along) and undisciplined (orders were often misinterpreted or ignored), it was nearly impossible to have a battle unless both sides agreed. Thus if you come across another army that is set for "retreat" (rather than "stand and fight"), the other army will, in most cases, simply retreat when you attempt to bring it to battle. You can force a battle under these circumstances, but only if the combat value of your force is several times that of your opponent (the larger your advantage the better your chances of forcing the other fellow to give battle.) The combat value of armies is calculated in two steps. First, the system calculates the relative value of the two leaders, then it calculates the combat value of the troops in both armies. Then it compares the overall combat value of the two armies and determines the outcome of the battle. The loser retreats, is captured or killed. If he retreats, you may chase him and seek another battle. The calculations are as follows; Leadership Value = Average of Leadership, Management, Stature of leader. Combat Values of Troops in a battle Average Attack, Protection, Endurance, Health for each NPC Same for player troops, but add 5 to each (armor) and another 5 if English Values for other troops (each) All English Others Knights/MAA 9 7 Yeomen 7 - Foot 5 2 Lt Cav - 3 Rabble 1 1 For example, let's say you have a battle between 110 English and 620 French. The English had 10 knights, 20 MAA and 80 yeomen. That gives the English 830 ((30x9)+(7x80)). The French have 20 knights, 100 archers and 500 rabble, for 940 ((20x7)+(100x3)+(500x1)). The English leader average value is 5.4, the French is 3.2. This gives the English player a 1.6875 (5.4/3.2) advantage which boosts his combat value from 830 to 1401 (1.6875x830). This gives the English a ratio of 1.5 (1401/940). This gives the English a 63% chance of winning. And so on. Cheap Scouts This bit of "gamesmanship" actually represents the historical use of spies and informants in distant places. Your man would have sufficient funds to send off a fast rider to deliver information he uncovers. The routine in the game works like this. Have an NPC with you who speaks the language of the fiefs you expect to encounter. He needs no other skill. He should have as low an ID number as you can manage (you don't want to waste time paging through several pages of NPC lists). You use him to "peek" into fiefs to see who is there. You invoke the kidnap option and name him as the kidnapper. Then you will get a list of all inside and outside the fief. Handy. You can also hire such men on the spot and then drop them in fiefs you want to keep tabs on. Then, wherever you are, you can do the same thing as above and get a report on who is in a fief even though you are miles away, or even in another country. Eventually, someone will notice him and take action, but in the meantime you have "eyes" in important fiefs. Hiring is cheap so there is no great loss there. Always offer a series of 2 kd bids when hiring until you succeed. Much cheaper in the long run. Always keep tabs on who is online, who owns the fief you are in, and who is fielding armies. A enemy player can't hurt you if they is not online. A compatriot who is on line can help you and coordinate actions with you, transfer troops, etc. Maintaining an Army You need money to raise an army, and money to maintain it from season to season. There is also attrition from exposure and lack of food when moving an army. Larger armies have more trouble with this, especially when moving into fiefs that have low populations. The troops lived off the land and if the land was not well populated they went hungry and hungry troops got sick or just quit. There is a ten percent chance, each time you move from one fief to another, that attrition will occur. It is worst in Winter and Spring and for armies with more than 20,000 troops, you can lose the entire force if you enter a very low population fief in the Winter (the troops simply head for home rather than follow you to frostbite and starvation). Remember, when logging off you should always be outside of a keep. If you are inside without an army, you are subject to easy capture if the fief is besieged. If you are inside with an army, you are still subject to the dangers of siege, with the added problem that the army advertises your presence. The safest place to spend your off-line time is always outside the keep. If you have an army, set the standing order to RETREAT. If you have no army, you should hide in a nearby non-active fief. If you stand outside the keep in one of your own fiefs, and the fief is taken, you are subject to seizure. You can recruit in fiefs you speak the same language as or that you own. Thus you have to come home or get some one to transfer you some troops for battle. When recruiting, no one knows you are doing it. but you can't assemble a large army. Maybe 20 - 200 men per fief. Moving an army across the English Channel, you have to assemble a fleet and you have to be at the port when you do this. Also there will be a HIGH cost to ship them expect about 600 Kducats for a 1,000 man army. Each season you will be charged two KDucat for each man you have. If you have 1,000 men, it will cost you 2,000 KDucats for that season. Remember that there is a chance that a cross channel move will fail. It is VERY difficult for the French to move across the Channel (a combination of weather and a superior English fleet). Affording An Army One should have an army the size of your income. That is, if you bring in one million Ducats can have an army of 500 men. If your income goes down, then so does your army. Players tend to accumulate money so they can raise a larger army for a season or two. Historically, nobles tended to raise an army in the Spring or Summer, use it for a season or two and then disband it before Winter. It was very difficult to maintain an army in Winter and few players will do it. Warfare on the Cheap (Wolfpack Tactics) There was never enough money during the war. If you can't squeeze enough out of your own fiefs, and can't get the king or rich magnate to subsidize you, then there is another way. Find two or more other players in the same situation and pool your resources. This means taking all the money your group can raise to form one army, or raising several smaller armies. You would then operate together as a "wolfpack." This includes trying to find the most effective NPC to command the army, or entrusting the troops to the player with the best combat stats. All this involves closely coordinating your actions. If you use one army, the other members of the pack would operate as scouts. If you use several smaller armies, you could combine your actions to make repeated attacks on weakly defended fiefs (many French fiefs, at the beginning of the game, have very low keep levels). You could all operate together at the same time while online, or just leave messages to each other via the BBS, online messages or via email. The key to using a wolfpack is to have a plan and follow it carefully. A wolfpack can do a lot of damage if it plans carefully and coordinates its operations well. When you have grabbed some fiefs or ransom money, you divide it among the members of the "pack." Maintaining a Profitable Fief During Combat Most likely your fief will be pillaged before the war is over. If you are lucky, it won't rebel. If it does, find a noble with an army in the area, and make arrangements for him to quell it. You can have him manage it or transfer it to him. Invading England There are several ways for the French to get an Army to England, and not all of them are obvious: 1. Cross by sea from France with an Army raised in France. The obvious way. Advantages: requires no special PCs or timing. Disadvantages: unreliable and expensive (at best a 40% chance and a considerable expense for each attempt, successful or not). Historically, the French tried this several times, and always failed. It cost them hundreds of millions of ducats and, in effect, helped the English by draining the French treasury. 2. An English Traitor recruits in England and transfers to a French General. This requires a traitor. And the Yeomen you get perform like French troops. More limitation on the size that can be raised this way (although by recruiting at London or another large population center quite a few men can be raised. With a sufficiently large bribe you might be able to do this once or twice. In one game the French have had mixed success getting English traitors. In several cases, the English "traitor" double crossed the French, kept the money and was in turn rewarded by the English king. (In the above two cases the "transfer to French General" is to hide the origin of the troops from the English who come upon the army in action.) 3. The Bruce (king of Scotland) does a recruit in Scotland and transfers to a French General. This is very similar to 2 above except you do not need an English traitor (hard to get someone to betray their own side, where the Bruce sees England generally as an enemy). The historical French tried this one two, with minor success. The Scots, unfortunately, are not eager to take on England as a major English military effort could conquer Scotland (which the English eventually did anyway.) General Rules for Combat Find out what Fiefs to Take Get to Main Menu. Choose erald. From Herald Menu, choose ctive players. Get enemy nobles through ind option. Get player number. Look through fief list that follows. If you are French, you want to go after English held fiefs in France. If fiefs begin with "F" they are in France (likely Gascony & Guyenne, here) and are fair targets. An English player has an easier time of it. Usually, the English strategy is to go after the French kings fiefs. Otherwise, the English will target a particularly active French nobles fiefs (who may be distracted if all of his fiefs get taken.) Get Troops Enter Travel Menu. Go to high population fief. Don't know which are high? Then use View Fief <2> to find out. High-population fiefs give better recruiting results. Then, choose Army anagement, and then ecruit in current fief. Enter # troops you want to recruit. WATCH YOUR CASH. You must have 2kd/recruit. You must have an army of about 1,000 men (more and attrition will hurt; fewer and you'll have a tough time seizing fiefs). You CAN recruit two times per turn per fief, usually, so don't get mad if you don't get what you want the first time around. Prepare Your Army for the Campaign English players must now get their army across the Channel, this is covered elsewhere in this document. The French player must not attack/engage English armies unless the French outnumber them by 6-1 or better (even then you take a risk). So stay out of their way. Easiest way to do this: set tanding Orders to RETREAT. NEVER change this! The English player, of course, usually welcomes a fight and can set standing orders to "Stand and Fight" if the English army is at least a thousand strong and you are fairly certain that there are no 5,000 strong French armies wandering about. Take The Fiefs Move to a target fief that you identified. View it again once you get there, to be sure no friendly nobles beat you to it. Confirm that the enemy still owns it, in other words. From the Travel Menu, select iege. Use the negotiation option until the Negotiate chance is at least 25%, then (if negotiation hasn't already worked) torm the fief. Remember, torming doubles the chances to take the fief but results in damage to the fief. Aftermath Once a fief is taken, it is YOUR responsibility to go into Fief Management and adjust fief economy to prevent its rebellion against you. If you don't know how to do this, ask the Heralds or another player on your side. As soon as you do this--if not earlier--get your behind out of the captured fief's keep. The enemy plays the same game in targeting and YOU do not want to be caught inside a keep EVER. General Tips Get a good NPC army leader unless your noble has killer stats (rare among the French). You aren't sure which are killer stats? Ask a Herald or a more experienced (and friendly) player to help you analyze your NPCs. Do not ever get caught in a siege over reset. Remember sieging costs time. DON'T RUN OUT OF DAYS IN THE MIDDLE OF A SIEGE!!! You'll be captured almost for sure: disaster for you. Chanson (song) for Warriors My heart is filled with gladness when I see Strong castles besieged, stockades broken and overwhelmed, Many vassals struck down, Horses of the dead and wounded roving at random. And when the battle is joined, let all men of good lineage Think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms, For it is better to die than be vanquished and live... I tell you I have no such joy as when I hear the shout "On! On!" from both sides and the neighing of riderless steeds, And groans of "Help me! Help me!" And when I see both great and small Fall in the ditches and on the grass And see the dead transfixed by spear shafts! Lords, mortgage your domains, castles, cities, but never give up war! Attributed to Bertrand de Born, a Troubador of noble birth (Dante pictured Bertrand in hell, carrying his severed head before him as a lantern.) SEGX Besieging, Raiding, Pillaging and Extortion Besiege: you will spend 10 days for each period of the siege. You can negotiate, storm, reduce the fortifications, or just let ten days pass without doing anything. Depending on your skills, it is often safest to storm. The advantages to this are if there is a nobleman in the fief you can possibly capture him. If you wait to take the fief through negotiation, it will often leave your army sitting there into the next season. This will give the enemy time to raise the siege, and perhaps even capture you and disperse your army. Remember that taking a keep by negotiation gains you stature. The longer the siege lasts, the better your chances are to succeed as the odds in your favor go up. How to take a fief in 3 easy steps: All who have never used army/siege menus should take any opportunity to practice a little. Understand that this is for your benefit as practice field maneuvers before your lives are on the line. What follows is a step by step description of how to take fiefs by siege (the most common form of warfare in the period.) Step 1 - Raise Troops You run around and recruit them. After troops are recruited, all troops cost 2,000 ducats per man per season to keep them in the field. Recruitment costs days (1-5 randomly). The number you get is a function of your stats, population and how many other people have been recruiting over the same area. You may get several thousand at London or Paris, few in Wales. After recruiting one place to exhaustion, you move off one or two fiefs away and recruit again if you need more. To recruit you need to speak the local language. Therefore if you speak E2 (English) you can't recruit in Wales (C2, Celtic) even though its part of England. You don't need to own the fief yourself, however. Note that NEITHER of these methods will work if the locals don't speak the same language you do. For English nobles to fight in France, they must either bring troops across the Channel (expensive and chancy) or have "friends" among the French who will supply troops in France. Such French who work for the English do so at considerable risk to themselves (and for considerable gain too). When war starts you will be told by the king or his constable who you can attack. DON'T ATTACK UNAUTHORIZED PLAYERS OR THEIR LANDS, you may turn a friend or a neutral into an enemy. For this exercise do a recruitment to get about 800-1000 men. 2) Besiege the fief. This is done from the travel menu once you reach the fief. The most efficient way is not to bull right in, but to Siege/Negotiate 1-3 turns first (lots more if the keep/population/garrison strong). These turns of siege (10 days each) weaken the fief so it falls more easily. Each unsuccessful storm (but not negotiate) costs you stature. Success gains you stature. Successful storm will also get you ducats (one free pillage basically) and lots of prisoners (they should all be released, immediately, unharmed. you'll find them listed in your "Captives" table.) Player captives you capture should, of course, be held for ransom. Family members of players can also be held for ransom. Storm also damages the fief a little and the fortifications (keep level) a lot. It is preferable to take your time and negotiate (remember the fief you damage will soon be your own), but storm is a little quicker. When you examine a PC their ransom will show. When you capture someone a minimum ransom will be calculated. This minimum ransom is 10% of current or beginning (of game) GDP (whichever is higher) plus current purse. 3) Get rid of your Army. Your army costs 2,000 ducats per man PER SEASON, cost deducted at game reset. It only costs 2,000 ducats a man to raise them again tomorrow so only keep an army over game reset for a good reason (being in a foreign country is a good reason, there you cannot just recruit again). You can 1) disband army 2) muster out 3) transfer to another player. Muster out cost 2,000 ducats per man. Disband is free. However you lose your entire army (the other two let you shed any fraction you wish) and there is a chance that a brigand band will form. Transfer to another player is always good. It does reveal your location at the time (only to the receiving player) so only transfer to a friend. When you transfer (a whole new subject) the receiving player gets notified in his personal history. It says how many troops and where, but not how many days you had at transfer. This is critical, however. You can only pick up the troops if your days at pickup are (approximately) equal to those the other player had when transferring. If you transfer, ALWAYS send the recipient an online message stating days you had left at transfer. If he had more, he can move back and forth to burn days down to match you. Also he has to be online at same time or AFTER you, obviously to pick them up. This is really tricky, so you may want to transfer to each other (or me or a herald if we're around) a little to practice. Picking up troops that have been transferred to you will take now 1 to 2 days. The transfer its self still takes between 10 and 20 days (Random). For either transferring or picking up. Must have at least 20 days left to do either. Mustering troops out also prevents the formation of brigands. Also get rid of any prisoners you take during a siege. Some of these may be worth ransom to the previous owner of the fief. Try and stash the prisoners somewhere. Warnings: Be sure the fief you are besieging is still held by the enemy (i.e. be sure somebody else on your side doesn't already have it). This happens a lot in the real war - Everybody goes to Rennes, Mowbry takes it from Gaston Le Frog at 7 PM but d'Audley doesn't notice and besieges it away from Mowbry at 10:30. Always check immediately before siege to make sure a friend has not already taken this one. I won't tell you who is going where, you have to learn to be careful yourselves. If you storm a keep, you damage the fortifications and cause losses to the garrison. These losses, and the damage, do not get repaired as long as you have the fief under siege. If you storm a keep and take it, you also automatically perform the equivalent of a pillage on the fief and gain a few ducats for your trouble. Like all pillages, this decreases the population of the fief a bit. Staying In Siege On the siege screen you can stay in siege and go back to the travel menu you just press return. If you want to siege again you respond with a 'y'. You had to press a return anyway because the # of days showed up and then the system said press to continue. "Press to continue" If you hate seeing that message, you can turn this message off. Option 21 on the main menu is now > Toggle use On/Off. If use is toggled off then you will not get the "press to continue." messages anymore. If you toggle it back on then you start getting them again. The travel map will say if a fief is being seiged and who is sieging it. LORD NEVILLE'S GUIDE TO BASIC SIEGE WARFARE I. Introduction. In order to win the HYW, you have to build a coalition of nobles equaling or exceeding the opposing force of nobles. You need marshal your finances so that you can keep your nobles fighting. You need to organize your nobility and finances into one cohesive force which, because of superior organization and skill/training, is more combat effective per average noble than the opposition. However, this cohesive force, in order to win the game, needs to be able to take fiefs. You take fiefs by sieging them. II. Basic Sieging. A. Equipment. You will need an army, a seiger, and a plan. 1. English-speaking players are provided with an advantage no other nationality in the game has: your soldiers. An English-led army with yeomen typically has a soldier which on the average two and half TIMES stronger than any other non-English led soldier in the game. Assuming equal leaders, an English army can stand toe-to-toe with a non- English force two and half times its size. Generally, for this reason, the English do have an easier time sieging fief, especially those which have high populations and large keep. 2. YOU NEED A GOOD SIEGER. While this is more important if you're French than if you're English, its still very helpful to have a good one, especially if sieging those high population, high keep fiefs described above. The seiger may give you (the attacker) a "leadership advantage" which is displayed each 10 days you siege a keep. This means your guy knows a lot more about siege warfare than the guy sitting inside the keep defending it. Of course, on rare occasions, you may encounter a "defender has the leadership advantage" in which case, the guy in the keep knows more about sieging than your guy does. Generally, this doesn't happen unless a PC's army is in the keep, and his siege general is defending it. This seiger should be set as your army leader when sieging fiefs. You can find siegers among the NPCs in the tavern or you can get them from a generous fellow noble who has extra siegers in his/her employ. What is a good seiger? Any seiger whose skills are rated 12 or above is probably good enough for most English, although once the game proceeds and NPCs on average start having high stature, a good seiger will be rated 15 or better. You can check a sieger's siege value by using the "k" option in the household menu. For example, you want to check the 13th person on the list of your household menu, you type k13, then return. You will receive an analysis for all of your NPC's skills, including siege warfare. If you want to analyze a seiger not yet in your organization, you can use one of the analyzer programs available in the HYW software library. Generally, you want to look for skills such as "Siegecraft, (almost essential)", keepmaster, command, command supreme, intimidation, abrasiveness", and the like, and look for traits such as high leadership and high stature. Note that there are a number of ways to increase stature once hired, such as knighting and ennoblement. 3. Generally, you go off-line in a "safe place". Without an army, this generally means an inactive fief outside of France. With an army, this generally means within a large keep (keep level 27+). Before you leave this safe place to siege, you should have a good idea what you want to do. This means the route you will take and a list of targets. I do not advise stopping at the place you siege for a long time while you decide what your next target will be. Eventually, the French levy/English reaction force (depending on what side you're on) will catch you there. You should know where you are going when you leave your safe place and make sure you know how many days it will take to get to a safe place when one...so you can make sure you finish your move in a safe place. If you are without an army, you have to plan for cost in days of recruiting/picking one up. B. Sieging. 1. Upon arriving at the target, you FIRST CHECK to make sure that the fief is not already owned by a friendly by "examining" using the examine option on the travel menu. A friendly noble may also have targeted it and taken it minutes before you started moving. Nothing is more amusing to the opposition than to see us tripping over each other. Also, when you examine the fief, take note of the keep level, as it will play a crucial role on exactly what tactics you will use and how long it will take to get the fief. When you ensure that the fief is a legitimate target, then erect those siege towers! Select the siege option and begin sieging away using the advice in III below. Make sure, unless you're sieging right before reset and plan to be on right after, that you leave enough days to return to your safe place. Never go off-line for long periods with an army in an unsafe place, even if you're English. 2. We address specific situations below. However, one general thing you have to remember (and it appears in the considerations below) is that casualties from a storm attempt increase proportionately to the keep level (after its adjusted for your strength advantage/disadvantage). You will sustain a higher percentage of casualties from a failed storm on a fortress complex than you will on a failed attempt against some hastily constructed earthworks. III. What to do when sieging. Here are some considerations you need to take into account in your sieging decisions. In any given siege, one or more may apply: A. If the keep is 11 or less, you probably want to begin storming right away, since you will likely have a 50% of taking the fief in 20 days. B. If the keep is 11 to 19, you probably want to negotiate for about 20-30 days before you begin storming. C. If the keep is 19 to 30, you probably want to reduce the keep until you have 20-30 days left to siege, then storm. Note if keep starts around 27-30, your casualties will be high, but you may still be able to take the fief in one season. D. 30 and over, do not try these until you can siege right before and after a reset. Then, reduce the keep to about 30 and then storm when you reach the 120 day mark, or reduce for about 150 days, then storm twice, leaving a few days to return to the safe place if it still doesn't fall. E. Generally, you do not want to siege where the opponent is getting a keep level bonus (because he has a stronger force) unless, even with the keep levels added, the keep is less than 12-13. If the opponent is getting a keep level bonus, either your force and/or seiger is too weak, or the opponent too strong. In fact, as often as possible, you want to have ten levels deducted from the keep level, because for higher level keeps, this makes the difference between whether you can take it in a reasonable amount of time or not. F. A consideration English have to remember when in France is when they are likely to get reinforcements. If your army is small and/or reinforcements will be awhile in coming (especially if winter is coming up) then you need negotiate more and storm less. If your army is oversized (happens) and/or reinforcements are due very soon, then storm more recklessly. G. Storming is the fastest way to take any keep, if you can absorb the casualties. With large keeps, you will generally take more losses than its worth if you begin storming too early. H. You get more points if you take a fief by negotiation. You generally get a better stature boost too. I. When sieging enemy PC-led armies inside keeps, be careful. If he's got many more men than you do, you should be aware that the defending PC's army can sally forth and have you for breakfast if its a lot stronger than yours. You can get wounded/killed/captured just as in a normal battle. Here is the siege probability table. Across is days--10,20,30,60,90,120,180. Down is keep level. The first column is the keep level. For example, the base probability for a level 40 keep after 80 days would be 2%. Keep level is in the first column; siege length is across the top. 10, 20, 30 , 60, 90, 120, 180 0, 95, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 1, 30, 33, 45, 100, 100, 100, 100 3, 25, 28, 38, 98, 100, 100, 100 5, 20, 22, 30, 78, 100, 100, 100 7, 18, 20, 27, 70, 100, 100, 100 9, 16, 18, 24, 62, 96, 100, 100 11, 14, 15, 21, 55, 84, 100, 100 13, 12, 13, 18, 47, 72, 100, 100 15, 10, 11, 15, 39, 60, 100, 100 17, 8, 9, 12, 31, 48, 96, 100 19, 6, 7, 9, 23, 36, 72, 100 21, 5, 6, 8, 20, 30, 60, 100 23, 4, 4, 6, 16, 24, 48, 100 25, 2, 2, 3, 8, 12, 24, 72 27, 1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 36 29, 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 10, 29 30, 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 8, 25 40, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 7, 21 50, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 18 80, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 14 100 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 14 IV. Experience will help give you the sense of judgment you need on which siege tactics you will need for which occasion. Being English, you have some more room for error than the French. Just remember, though, if you're in France, troops are harder to replace, since you can't recruit there except in fiefs you own/manage with loyalty over 7. V. Always ask a veteran player if you need help! They're generally glad to help. Siege Rules of Thumb A crude rule of the thumb for calculating the number of troops you need to successfully siege a fief. The following applies to French fiefs, so we present you the following procedure step by step. 1) Multiply the keep level by a 1,000. 2) Divide (1)'s result by 1.25 for keeps of more than 10, and 1.6 for keeps less than 10. 3) Divide (2)'s result by the leadership advantage you expect to get. The leadership advantage for unbailiffed fiefs is your sieger's rating divided by 4. For bailiffed fiefs, its your sieger's rating divided by the bailiff's siege rating. The result for (3) is the number of troops you will need to take fiefs with a high degree of certainty within 40 days. If the fief is high population, you may need to add about 10% to this number if its a Continental fief. If the fief is English, you need to add about 50% more because of the yeomen defenders. EXAMPLE 1: Suppose we are sieging Domfront FAJ01, which game 4 has a keep level about 20. Step 1: 1,000 * 20 = 20,000. Step 2: 20,000/1.25 = 16,000. Step 3: Suppose the defender has an auto-bailiff and your seiger is 16 rate. Divide 16,000 by 4,000. You get 4,000 men. You will need about 4,000 men to get enough strength advantage reduce the keep levels to zero. You can probably siege with fewer men (about 3,250) during non- attrition seasons like fall and summer and still take the place, but it may take up to 50 days and you'd have to negotiate to keep your storming losses down until you got really good odds. Fortunately, most keep levels in France are much lower than 20. EXAMPLE 2: Suppose we are sieging FSA04 Saint's, which in game 4 has a keep level of about 3. Step 1: 1,000 * 3 = 3,000 Step 2: 3,000/1.6 = 1,875. Step 3: Suppose we again have an auto-bailiff facing an attacking seiger of 16 rate. 16/4 = 4. 1,875/4 = 469. Given that FSA04 is a high population fief, we add about 10%...we need about 505 men to be certain of taking the place in 40 days. I should note that recruit 505 men is helluva a lot easier than recruiting 4,000. In conclusion, the bigger the fortress, the more men you will need to take the place. As the keep level rises at a linear rate, the number of men required to take the place rises at an increases at more than a linear rate, as one must allow for attrition in fiefs incapable of sustaining large forces (another way exists to take these fortresses in wastelands...taught in Advanced Sieging) and if one desires to take the fief as quickly as one takes smaller keeps and wooden palisades." Siege Advice for French forces in England SIEGING FIEFS: an appendix-French nobles sieging fiefs IN ENGLAND, which are English (not Celtic) speaking. Remember that previous posts apply to French armies attacking French fiefs. The 10% added in big pop fiefs is to reflect bigger garrisons. Garrisons don't make a big difference in most French fiefs. Now with English fiefs, garrisons can be a major portion of the fief's defensive strength, even the majority. If that English fief has a keep of one, don't get excited, as the yeomen swarming out of the village huts may put a damper on things. A good rule of the thumb with English fiefs is to add (1b) to step 1 in the previous section. Step (1b). Multiple number of yeomen by 7 and add to result for step 1a (the keep levels IF fief is not in rebellion. IF fief IS in rebellion, skip (1b). Then use (1b)'s number in step 2. As you can see, this drastically increases the number of troops needed to siege successfully. If you can find a fief in England in rebellion, grab it, as its garrison is off elsewhere and won't try to stop you. More Siege Advice and a Probability Lesson Here's an introduction into how probabilities work. Understanding how probabilities work give you a much better sense of what your chances of taking a given fief, and how many you can expect to take in a season. As keeps get large, you really have to either get a little lucky or find a safe way to siege over reset (only really safe way is to siege right before and right after a - weekday- reset). Don't worry, I'll keep it simple. Incidentally remember how to convert between fractions, decimals, and percentages? For example, 1/2 = .5 = 50% (Remember cent in percent refers to the number 100, so 50% is 50 parts of each 100). I. Probability of an event occurring in a single trial. Most of you know that if you have a 6-sided dice, the probability of getting one in a given toss of the dice is 1/6 or 16.66%. The probability of getting one or two in a given toss of the dice is 2/6 or 33.33%. II. Probability of an event occurring in several trials. What is less well known is how to calculate the probability of getting an event over several tosses of the dice. For example, what is the probability of getting a one on two consecutive tosses of the dice? Well we know the probability of getting a one on the first toss is 1/6 or 16.666%. We also know that the probability of getting a one on the second toss is also 1/6 or 16.666%. So what is the probability of getting a one twice in a row? Its 1/6 (the probability of a one on the first toss) x 1/6 (the probability of a one on the second toss). This gives us 1/36 or 2.777%. As you can see, the probability of getting a one on two consecutive tosses of the dice is very small. Suppose we were to hope for three straight ones over three tosses of the dice? The probability of that occurring is 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/216 or .416%, a very, very, small chance indeed. However, what if were interested in the chances that we DON'T get a one over one, two, or three tosses of the dice. In fact this, question will be more relevant to calculating the probability of taking a fief in a given season. III. So, what's the probability of an event NOT occurring over several trials? In a given toss of the dice, what's the chance that we WON'T roll a one? (1 - 1/6) = 5/6. Just as we had a 1/6 chance of rolling a one, we have a 5/6 chance of FAILING to roll a one. Now the question is...if we toss the dice TWICE, what is probability of FAILING to roll a one? Its the probability of failing to get a one twice: 5/6 x 5/6 = 25/36 or 69.4%. What is the probability of failing to roll a one in THREE tosses of the dice? 5/6 x 5/6 x 5/6 = 125/216 or 57.87%. Now, we can take these probabilities and estimate our chances of rolling A one (not several in a row, which we've already discussed) over several tosses of the dice. If we plan to roll the dice twice, the chances of getting a one in EITHER of those two tosses is merely the probability that we won't fail to roll a one in one of the two tosses. In other words, if we have a 69.4% probability of FAILING to roll a one after two tosses, then we have a 100%-69.4%= 30.6% (same as 1- (5/6 x 5/6)) chance of getting a one in one of those tosses. If we rolled the dice three times, our probability of getting a one in one or more of those rolls is 100% - 57.87% = 42.13%. (or 1-(5/6 x 5/6 x 5/6)). As you can see, we get the common sense result that the more you plan to toss the dice, the more likely you will roll a one! III. What does all of this mean in taking a fief. Suppose that the chance (for sake of simplicity in this first example) of taking a fief was 16.66% (1/6) no matter how many days you seiged. What is the probability of taking the fief in ten days? Twenty days? Thirty? Each ten days of the siege is like one toss of the dice (assuming you negotiate or storm). Obviously, you have a 16.66 (1/6) of taking the fief in ten days. To estimate the probability of taking a fief in twenty days, you simply calculate the probability that both storms will fail, then from that information calculate the probability one will succeed. We know that the chance of a storm failing is 83.33% or 5/6. The probability of failing twice is .83333 x .83333 = .6944 or 69.44%. Therefore the probability of succeeding once is 1-.6944 = .3066 = 30.66%. As you'd expect, you have a better chance in taking the fief in twenty days than in ten, but the chance is still not that great. What is the probability of taking the fief in thirty days? (1- (.83333 x .83333 x .83333) = .4213 = 42.13%. In forty days? (1-(.83333 x .83333 x .83333 x .83333) = .5177 or 51.77%. So you have an even chance of taking the fief in forty days if the probability was 1/6 per storm (or negotiate, whatever you're doing). If it takes longer than that, you're unlucky. If it takes 70 days, you've been extremely unlucky. Most sieges of this sort generally will take 30- 50 days, unless you been lucky or unlucky. Now lets try a more realistic example for the game. For keeps under ten that you get a more than ten level reduction on, the probabilities run along the lines (if storming) of 30% in ten days, followed by 33%, 45%, 45%. What is the probability of taking the fief in twenty days? Well, first of all, what's the possibility of failing both tries? (1-.3) (the chance the first storm will fail) x (1-.33) (the chance the second storm will fail) = .7 x .66 = .462. This means that one of those storms will succeed with a probability of 1- .462 or .538 = 53.8 %. So, you have a better than even chance of taking one of these fiefs in twenty days. What about thirty days? Well, all three storms will fail with probability (1-.3) x (1-.33) x (1-.45) = .2541. This means that the chance of ONE of them succeeding is 1-.2541 = .7439 = 74.39%. In other words, you have a 74.39% cumulative chance of taking the fief in a thirty day siege, assuming you storm each ten days. If the siege goes 40 days or over, it just has not been your season. For keeps of ten or less where you are getting a -10 reduction, you usually can have a large degree of confidence that it won't take more than 40 days to take the keep if you storm each try, unless you have really rotten luck (only a 14% chance of this siege lasting longer than 40 days). IV. Comments. You can adjust the probabilities if you with dealing with bigger keeps. Naturally, with big keeps, the expected duration of the siege will grow considerably longer, as well as the realistic range of siege length around this expected duration. While you can expect sieging small keeps to take anywhere from 10 to 30 days with a fairly high degree of confidence, sieging Venice (assuming you negotiate each time since storming is very costly on megas) will require 310 days of siege to get an even cumulative chance of taking the fief (I calculated this on Maple, don't try it yourself), but since the probability of taking the fief on any one try is so small, the range around this 310 figure is very considerable. In other words if Venice was seiged and taken repeatedly to see how long it would take, you would get a wide range of numbers around 310. The following formula yields roughly the -minimum- number of troops you will need for a French-led army to get -10 levels of reduction on the keep. pop = population in thousands. kl = keep level. la = your leadership advantage. men = men needed to get -10 keep reduction. (145 x pop) + (200 x kl) men = ------------------------ (2.3 x la) Note: if the fief is in rebellion, the garrison doesn't count in the defending fief's force value. Best way to account for this is simply write zero in for the "pop" variable if the fief you're trying to calculate troops needed for is in rebellion. See (5) below if defender has leadership advantage. See (6) below if defending army in keep. Brief technical comments, not to be read unless you have a head for numbers. 1) The 2.3 comes from the average force value of a soldier in a French army recruited from Paris in a test game. 2) The 145 is a slightly rounded figure which approximates twice the garrison force value per thousand people in the fief. 3) The 200 is twice he force value of a keep, per level. 4) The formula may be a bit off if the fief is doing a lot of fighting brigands and resisting sieges, since I kept the information you have to input to a minimum. If you have a lot of this sort of excitement going on in the fief, then the garrison may be weaker than the formula would indicate. 5) If the -defender- has the leadership advantage, then take the inverse of that number for la. For example, the defender has a 1.3333 leadership advantage (4/3). In this case, you take the inverse of this number: .75 or 3/4, and plug that in for la. This usually only happens in unusual cases though, such as a defending army inside the keep. 6) Defending army in the keep. Calculate the force value of the defending army, multiply it by two, and add it the other two terms in the numerator of the formula. Ancestral Fiefs (and Titles) Original owner always has the option of entering one of his fiefs and sending the fief into rebellion against its current owner. This would be done via a "Start Rebellion in Current Fief" option in the Fief Management menu. See also the Dirty Deeds menu. Probability of rebellion would depend on current stature (1=10% chance...9=90% chance), Attempt would take 30 days. This would be a rebellion that anyone (including yourself) could quell and regain the fief. A side effect of adding this new feature is that you don't have to go to the fief management menu to quell a rebellion. You can do it from the dirty deeds menu too. If you quell an Ancestral rebellion in a fief that you don't own that fief will be transferred to you. The examine fief screen from the travel menu now shows rebellion status. Ancestral rebellions can be triggered in fiefs already in rebellion The Sally from a Keep If an Army is in a keep and their standing order is fight and they are greater than or equal to the sieging force (in terms of force values) they will sally forth and fight the sieging army. If the sallying army loses it will retreat from the battle field. The user can change the force ratio at which the besieged will attack. On the army standing menu you can now set a sally value. Basically you can set it to any positive value. It defaults to one. But you could set it to 2 or to .5 or to 3.5. Meaning that you're army will sally forth when it is 2 times greater or .5 greater or 3.5 times greater. Dealing With Captives If you capture a lot of NPCs, get rid of them, you won't get anything from them. They only slow you down and cost money. Hold the nobles, family members and highly skilled NPCs for ransom though. For those of you that want to clean those dungeons out, there is a Free All Captives option of the dirty deeds menu. When to besiege? If you see a fief with 0 loyalty, no expenditures and no keep levels. Take it; it's a piece of cake. As the loyalties go up and the keep level increases and the garrison expenditures go up and the forces there increase, it becomes harder for you to take fiefs. Sieges also usually require large armies; 5,000 to 10,000 men to be consistently successful. But some can take them with smaller armies, it's just harder. Remember, in the beginning of the game, most French fiefs have low keep levels, and English fiefs (especially those in France) have high ones. As the game goes on, all players, and especially the French, build up their keep levels. Pillages and Raids The difference here is one is larger than the other. That is, pillages take longer than raids, net more than raids, drop more loyalty than raids. That is when it is compared to 1 on 1. You can only pillage once a season in the fief, you can raid 3 times. Best is to pillage and raid all you can there and then move on. This will decrease your stature a small bit and give you some cash to work with. The best type of force to use in this type of combat is 200 - 500 men. you won't take heavy losses, nor will you create heavy losses for them. but we aren't counting bodies here, we are counting loyalty points. Think of how hard it was for you to raise your loyalty and with someone beating up on the lands it is even tougher. One thing to remember is that the amount of money you get from pillage or raiding is dependent on your stature. "Jackpot" feature. Each pillage or raid has 30% chance of finding really valuable loot. If that occurs, normal take randomly increased 3-10 times. Extortion gets you money from a fief, does not cost you any stature and does no permanent harm to the fief (other than removing money that would otherwise go to the owner.) Costs 5-15 days. Army versus Army combat Don't consider it (especially if you are not English), as you most likely will lose if you don't have a 2:1 superiority and a good general (which means you) NPCs have little effect at this time, the most the do is add a few men to your army count. So no real need for all the extra NPCs unless you like to spend the cash for them. Also when in this battle, the winner usually captures most NPCs, and once they are captured, you won't know who has who. Keep a list of who you have so you can check to see you get everyone back. Another thing, always place your army in retreat mode. If attacked the will leave without you fighting and possibly losing. (this takes stature) and also may kill you or at least wound you or even capture you. Lifting Sieges is basically an army versus army combat. If your army leader dies of natural death the army stays around. The only effect it has is defensive as it can't be used offensively. The army's leadership value would be the average of the player (leading the army) and his army leader. This is a significant balancing item for all games as it gives the English an advantage in army leadership. Now, all you have to do is grab a Mighty Man with good army leadership stats and you turn a Valois king into a Plantagenant grade general Women (PCs) need leadership 9 in order to lead an army by themselves (with an NPC commander, of course) Captivity How many of you think you will be captured in combat? Eventually you will and most likely you will die. When attacking, everything gets mentioned in the herald. You all may think, so it is a season behind, but it gives the person that owns the fief or is that person the info of where and what you are doing. Thus be warned; ALWAYS MOVE AFTER YOU DO SOMETHING..... ALWAYS MOVE LEAVE TEN DAYS AT THE END OF THE SEASON TO MOVE ALWAYS DO IT. If you don't you will be caught. When you move away from a reportable event. ZIGZAG, don't go straight, ZIGZAG. Thus it is hard to find you and don't think you can circle around, they aren't following you, they will search and get you. With 3 or 4 people looking, if only 3 fiefs away you will be seen and they will tell the person with the big army to come and get you. This has been done. Remember for every English noble, there are two French ones. Thus the French will have the better odds. But if the French are unorganized (which is normal) and not ready to play (another common state) the English can take them on. The key to combat is to take the money supply away and the easiest way is the raid/pillage option, or extortion. Think in terms of a small blitzkrieg. And remember: ALWAYS MOVE AFTER A RECORDABLE EVENT AND HAVE A STRONG FIEF AT HOME. CAPX Capture, Ransom and Execution If you capture a noble as a result of combat or siege, don't expect to keep him long; they will ransom themselves as quickly as they can. A captured player can free themselves the next time they log on by paying an amount equal to ten percent of the captives current GDP, or the captives GDP at the beginning of the game, whichever is higher. Until the captive comes up with the money, they remain a captive. NPCs, and especially family members, are not subject to this "auto-ransom," but can only be liberated via a negotiated ransom. When you capture a character, you may execute them. However, executing women or children costs you a lot of stature points. Executing a player character will take all your stature points. But in some cases, that may be worth the hit. This seize mechanism was designed so that an overlord may seize in any fief under their control. Because It CAN be abused, you can only hold someone seized for four seasons (one year.) After that, the captive can pay ransom and go free. Remember, you can only seize in your own fiefs or fiefs you are the overlord of. Thus the king can seize anywhere in the kingdom including inactive fiefs. Overlords (those who can collect overlord tax) may seize in areas where they hold sway (even in fiefs that are not actively being played.) If you have been excommunicated and outlawed then you can be captured/seized and you will not be able to ransom yourself. When a PC ransoms he will have 0 days. You get an option to retreat up to 10 fiefs in any direction. You can sail from a port if you have 0 days. EXECUTION OF ROYALTY Execution of the Kings and Crown Princes of France and England is strictly forbidden. If such a King or Crown Prince is executed, the offending player will be summarily ejected from the game. The Game Sysop will resurrect the dead royal. The reason for this rule is that executing (as opposed to assassinating or killing in combat) Kings and Crown Princes simply wasn't done during this period. So any one doing it in HYW is simply trying to employ a little ahistorical gamesmanship. This is something we discourage as much as possible. This rule is not in effect in Bedlam or Bohort games. DIPX Diplomacy, Etc. Be warned that you are likely to get very wrapped up in your character. This was the case during the earlier testing of the game. All the player characters in the game are historical, as are some of the non-player characters. If you know anything about the history of this period, you will recognize them. You cannot get ahead in this game on your own. You need allies. Even the kings need the voluntary support of most their subjects. The principle ally is your king (or, if you are a king, your subjects). Find your king on the OLM group set up as his court and pledge loyalty to him. And then try to stay loyal. The next most likely allies are players with fiefs near your own. Find out who they are and try to work out some kind of alliance. Try to befriend everyone, even your enemies and in-laws. Friends when you need them is the key to winning the game. Each game often has one group of players in France and England who seem to dominate the play. This gives rise to complaints of 'the same group of players being in charge, getting the big positions and making decisions'. This perception is not accurate, although it's a common perception on the part of players in any game who find it frustrating that they're not part of "the group." In any game (or probably in anything else in life) you will find a group of dominant players who have a great influence on things. The way to join that 'elite group' is to know what you're doing and just do it. Play successfully (or even just energetically) and get the respect of the other players. One becomes influential through one's own efforts. Being one of the dominant players here has nothing to do with the size and rank of one's starting position. There have been as many or even more influential players playing from small positions as there have from large ones, and there have been just as many large, rich positions whose players just sat on the sidelines or went inactive. Look around once the game is underway and you will see several examples. Many of the players most active and successful in every war so far have had small positions. The dominant players in the game are those who play smart and make the most of their position. There is nothing to stop anyone from doing that. If someone doesn't like their position, they can, as was pointed out, either go inactive and try again (as many have done). Also you can get in touch with someone who has a coveted spot that seems to be going inactive or sitting unplayed, and ask them to switch. Don't forget that players can switch positions if both agree. Usually, someone who's not playing anymore doesn't mind doing this. Unfortunately the problem with some players often seems to come down to "I can't do whatever I want cause the other players don't like it." The smart and successful players here tend to see the importance of having a civilized society with rules of behavior, and will oppose attempts to reduce it to anarchy. That's quite realistic, and it's also up to the players. Nothing stops anyone from opposing the "will of the majority" here, but you have to expect to take the consequences. If people want to do whatever they want to without reaction from the other players, no one can help you. What players have to keep in mind is that the game doesn't prohibit any (In Character) actions, and enforcement is up to the players. But just as the game doesn't keep them from doing what they want, it also does not keep the other players from not liking it and doing what THEY want in return. There are no gamemasters in HYW. Some people want not just the freedom to do what they want, but a moral judgment handed down that it's OK and nobody should complain. That's not the way it is. Anything is OK by the rules of the game, but no one can control whether it is OK by the other players. Even the Heralds' influence has little effect on this. The Heralds do not demand chivalrous behavior of people. What Heralds will do is explain the situation and their options, and it's not always a pretty story. If players don't like the situation, that is something Heralds can't help with. WINX Victory Conditions [RA] The English win when they can get the French parliament to vote to remove the French king and then vote to make the English king the king of France. Conversely, the French can win by the reverse process. At least three nobles of a nation must publicly call for the vote to remove their King. This is done by a message to ALL in the game. When three nobles have called for a motion, a Herald will enter the motion before Parliament in the next Winter season. A noble may withdraw his call any time before the motion is entered. Once the motion is entered, it can- not be removed, and the vote on it will count. For definition sake, Arlesian nobles designated as Others may not call to depose the King of France. Arlesian nobles designated as French may. Some of those with Arlesian holdings are really French nobles and as such have all rights and privileges of the French court. Thus, any noble who can be outlawed by the French Crown may also enter a motion to depose. After a King takes the opposing Crown, he must hold it for a period before the game ends. The period depends on the speed of the game: 1) If the game is a Slow Game (two Seasons a week), the King must hold the both crowns for 2 years. 2) If the game is a normal Game (four Seasons a week), the King must hold the both crowns for 3 years. 3) If the game is a Fast Game (seven Seasons a week), the King must hold the both crowns for 4 years. Until the game ends, the French (or English) can call for votes in the parliament to remove the English (or French) king and simultaneously install the French (or English) Crown Prince. During those seasons after the one side has obtained the other kingdom's crown, the "Joan of Arc Rule" will be in effect. This means that as soon as the French or English king is removed, the Crown Prince is still in play as the "peoples heir" and, if French, gets double the Feudal Levy each year as well as all 9 top line stats for the French Crown Prince. The Crown Prince can put one entire province into rebellion each season, if he has conquered at least one fief in that province the previous season. The Crown Prince gets the equivalent of a Church Tax for the duration of the sudden death period (one a year). Joan of Arc (or "Blanche of Castle Riding" NPC is optional (designate your own and role play it.) The French can also win by holding on to the French crown for the full 100 years (400 seasons) period. Individual players win according to the scoreboard. The winning king and the first ten finishers in the game scoreboard will all be awarded prizes (we will decide exactly what they will be when a game is close to completion. Prizes will be worth something.) This is the procedure we will use for the END OF THE GAME At the point when either France or England has taken the other's crown and held it for 2-4 years, a winning Nation is declared. That is the end [RA] of the War and the end of the actual combat phase of the game. Then, at that point, the Game will continue on for a period of one year, during which time Combat will be turned OFF. This time is allotted, basically, for the winners to divide up the spoils, for promised lands and titles to be delivered to allies, for everyone to arrange the awards of their efforts. The Score at the end of this one year non-combat period will determine the final score for the 'Noble's Game' (individual winners.) This is being done so that rewards may be handed out and so the rewards earned will count in the final Score. Combat will be turned off to prevent last-minute unrealistic fief-grabbing frenzies that have nothing to do with the war. After the one year period of no combat and the tallying of the final Score, if the new game isn't ready to go yet, we may turn Combat back on and just let everyone play around for a while and kill each other. How to Win What drives this game, aside from a desire to experience 14th century life, is getting ahead. We measure getting ahead on two values: position and wealth. In effect, there are two winners in the game: the one who achieved the highest position in the game (king of both England and France or, failing that, king of either country), and the individual players who did the best in personal terms. Historically, England technically won, as after 100 years of fighting (in 1437) the English King Henry VI (sixteen years old) was technically king of both nations. But the previous French kings son had also been crowned king by the French nobles and France was in rebellion to the English king (of France) and supporting the French king (of France). But ultimate victory is when the crowns of France and England are united. This was technically true for the English king, so the war was technically won by the English. It was a marginal victory at best, and considering the expense and devastation of the war, a loss for everyone. Less than twenty years after the English "Victory," nearly all the English fiefs in France had been lost. In the end, the French won. The Score Board Personal victory is based on how well each player performs in their role of a medieval noble. Every year, and every decade, the Heralds award prizes to the top ten players on the annual and decade score boards (respectively). For the annual winners, first place gets 5 million ducats, second gets two million and third thru tenth place gets one million. For the decade winners, it's 15, six and three million ducats. Heralds and inactive players are not eligible for these awards (we just move down the list further.) While the two kings battle for each others thrones, all the other nobles have their own scoring system which is based on how well they do as a 14th century aristocrat. In this scoring system, you gain, or lose, points for the following actions. Points Act (20-RANK)Noble captured in battle -50 Kill a noble (non-outlaw) -10 Excommunicated -10 Outlawed -10 Captured in battle -5 Army disbanded in battle -5 Battle lost -5 Divorced -5 Wife seduced (in Herald) -2 Hire another's NPC [RA] -2 Your fief captured -2 Your fief in rebellion -2 Your fief pillaged -1 Daughter seduced (in Herald) -1 Your fief in unrest -1 Your fief raided 1 Birth of bastard child 1 Birth of grandchild 1 Break siege 1 Increase in GDP controlled (per percent) 1 Increase in population controlled (per percent) 1 Marry off son 1 Take fief by Storm (per keep point) 1 Win battle causing enemy to retreat(per 1,000 opponents) 2 Destroy brigand band 2 Marry off daughter 2 Sire a female child 2 Take fief by Negotiated siege (per keep point) 2 Win battle causing enemy to disband (per 1,000 opponents) 5 Sire a male child 10 Kill an outlaw Withdrawn temporarily (until we can get the software to handle it) 10 Donate amount equal to a ransom to the Church Your score is updated each season and can be seen in the Herald screen in the game. Scoreboard points have been adjusted to put less emphasis on GDP growth than previously. Lock Out Because it is possible for players to seduce your wife and daughters in order to lower your score, we have added the "Keep Lock Out" feature, This allows you to keep all players, or just those of a certain nationality, out of any or all of your keeps. This is largely to keep nobles of other kingdoms out of your keep. This means they will not be able to enter your court/keep and be able to seduce your wife and daughters or hire your NPCs away. There are two ways you can lock people out of your court/keep. First, you can lock an entire side out. Thus, all of the French, or all of the English, or all others can be locked out (its impossible to lock yourself out or your manager). The second way is that you can lock a specific individual out. These lock out features are accessed via the fief management menu (it is the advanced command). Lockout prevents seize and halves chances of successful kidnap or assassination. If one of your women is molested anyway, you can demand a duel to the death with the culprit (who must be named in the Herald). The other player has a year (four seasons) from the season the challenge is issued, to meet with you for the duel. The duel must be presided over by a Herald. The Herald also decides on the mutually agreeable time for the duel. If the other player refuses to present himself for the duel, the Heralds will reduce his Stature by five points. The duel to the death does not use champions and settles the issue once and for all. Another alternative is to appeal to the offending players king (if that player is French or English) or to the pope. The king can outlaw a subject and the pope can excommunicate anyone. Alternate Personal Victory Originally, personal victory was based on how well the players did in increasing their wealth by the highest percentage. Victory was calculated after the game has gone on for 100 years (400 days of playing time). For this reason, we established more personal victory conditions based on how far you take your families' fortunes over the course of the game. Victory was based on the average increase in wealth of your holdings over the years you are in the game. This wealth is calculated by valuing your fiefs at their annual GDP. The computer calculates your progress each year (4 days) and decade (40 days) and posts the rankings of all players as well as a "Game to date" figure at the end of each year and decade. Noble rank was another matter. In theory, everything was owned by the king (more so in England than in France). The crown, however, was encumbered with thousands of arrangements made in the past few centuries with their vassals (every noble who wasn't the king). There was a ranking among nobles (counts outranked barons and so on), but what really counted was money. A rich baron had more clout than a poor count. Higher rank usually came with certain privileges, particularly the ability to tax all the fiefs in a certain area (no matter who owned them). However, taxes could not be collected unless you could back up the request with something stronger than a late notice. Money could hire mercenaries to enforce tax bills. Thus, the only rank that counts for victory in the game is the kingship, and preferably one or both of the major crowns (England and France) simultaneously. The ultimate object of the game is to get rich enough to unite the crowns of England and France and, in effect, have it all. But the ten players ranking highest in growth of their net worth over the course of the game will surely all be winners. You don't have to start the game with a wealthy position in order to win. First, take a look at the final score for Game 1/92, and their rank (in terms of money generating ability of their fiefs) at game start. Rank at Game Start 1* 46 Bishop Robert Burys 903.00 94 2* 114 Odo d'Auvergne 1009.00 38 3 35 Eleanor d'Artois 491.00 153 4 93 Henry Plantagenet 459.00 87 5 256 Thomas de Beauchamp 447.00 92 6 246 Roger-Bernard de la Marche 376.00 57 7 111 James Touchet d'Audley 351.00 54 8 22 Felix V Pontifex Maximus 310.00 9 9 168 Laurence Talbot 267.00 123 0 74 Guillaume de Bavaria 259.00 85 Note the top twenty positions at game start. Where are they now? ID Family High Rank Nat.Val Own 200 de Valois 03 Roi -France Fra 156 87 47 Plantagenet 03 King -England Eng 153 84 17 de Visconti 07 Duca -Lombardia Oth 127 1 231 d'Anjou 03 Re -Naples Oth 101 27 55 Dandolo 07 Doge -Venice Oth 84 1 301 di Firenze 07 Gonfaloniere -Florence Oth 70 1 197 Berenguer 03 Rey -Catalonia Oth 61 5 8 de Castilla y Leon 03 Rey -Leon-Castille Oth 42 1 22 Pontifex Maximus 01 Pope -Papacy Oth 42 4 5 de Savoy 09 Prince -Piedmont Oth 34 19 113 d'Armagnac 11 Comte -Comminges Fra 28 16 157 de Navarra 03 Reina -Navarre Oth 24 14 58 de Carcassone 11 Comte -Foix Fra 22 13 156 de Bourgogne 11 Comte -Franche-Comte Fra 21 12 303 de la Scala 10 Marchese -Verona Oth 18 1 110 de Mallorca 03 Rey -Mallorca Oth 17 10 10 de St-Vollier 11 Comte Valence Fra 15 8 25 de Lyon 11 Comte -Forez Fra 15 9 130 de Lothier 07 Duc -Brabant Oth 15 7 130 de Lothier 07 Duc -Brabant Oth 15 7 These were the positions, at game start, of the final winners. ID Family High Rank Nat.Val Own 22 Pontifex Maximus 01 Pope -Papacy Oth 42 4 114 d'Auvergne 11 Comte -Montfort Fra 10 6 111 Touchet d'Audley 15 Baron Porlock Eng 7 4 246 de la Marche 11 Comte -Perigord Fra 7 4 74 de Bavaria 07 Duc -Zealand Oth 6 4 93 Plantagenet 11 Earl -Derby Eng 5 3 256 de Beauchamp 11 Earl -Warwickshire Eng 5 3 46 Burys 06 Prince BishopDurham Eng 5 3 168 Talbot 15 Baron Ludlow Eng 4 2 There's a lesson in all this... DIVX Diversions Gambling: There is a gambling menu containing contemporary games of chance. You can play against the computer (the odds are slightly in your favor) or another player in the Interactive Court (IC). Interactive Court: The IC allows you to chat, duel, drink and otherwise carry on with other players who are on line the same time you are. There are on line instructions for the IC activities. They are repeated here for your convenience, with added comments explaining them; The available general actions are (you only have to use the for "/XX" where "XX" is the first two letters of the command): /ATtending - see who is present in the great hall. Shows a "job number" (used to do things to other IC attendees or send them private messages,) as well as First Name, Organization, Nationality. /ACcept # - accept duel challenge. You then begin using the Duel commands. /BEt # amt - bet on duel. The winners split the total amount bet in proportion to how much they bet. /CHallenge # - challenge another to a duel. They must accept for their to be a duel. /CStatus # - show status of anyone in the IC. Use Job Number (#). /CUrrent - show current health and endurance of yourself /Deed - perform an action. Type in /DE MESSAGE. "MESSAGE" is anything, and then watch what happens. /ENter - enter Gluckshaus game /Fist # - throw at punch someone (brawling). Will cause a reduction in the victims Endurance depending on how high your brawling value is. /HElp - see this list /HElp Duel - see dueling actions /HElp Gluck - see Gluckshaus actions [RA - Deletion on this line] /HIde - hide from brawls. While hidden, you cannot hit anyone else, or be hit. /LEave - exit the great hall. Takes you back to the HYW main menu. /LIst - list those outside the great hall (players in the HYW game, but not in the IC). /LOan # amt - loan another player cash /Knee # - knee someone in the groin (ouch). Similar to /FIst. /Mug # - hit someone with a mug. Similar to /FIst. /PAge id msg - send a message to someone not in court /PUrse - check your purse /REject - reject a duel challenge /Quaff - quaff an ale. Too many of these and your messages get confused. Eventually you pass out and do an automatic /LE. That sobers you up so you can return. You can drink half of your endurance (the number of Quaffs equal to half the value of your endurance) with out having an effect. /SHOut - do it and see /Throw # - throw a chair at someone. Similar to /FIst. /Unhide - come out of hiding /WHisper # - whisper in a player's ear (uses job number). Only the person you are whispering to sees the message. Dueling, however, is more complex. So here are more detailed instructions for dueling; First each player chooses an action; dodge, parry, lunge, hack, or rest. This is cross reference on a table to get a hit modifier for each player. Your Opponents d p l h r d 0 1 1 3 0 p 1 1 2 1 1 l 1 1 2 2 2 h 0 1 2 3 3 r 0 1 2 3 0 So if you pick hack and your opponent picks lunge, your hit modifier is 2 and his is 2. if you pick hack and he picks dodge your hit modifier is 0 and his 3. Each action cause a reduction in endurance. dodge -.3 parry -.5 lunge -.2 hack -.6 rest +.3 if endurance is 0 the player is forced to rest After the hit modified is calculated, a chance to hit is calculated in the following method. chance = attval + hit mod -3 if chance is less than 1 it is modified to 1 so everyone has a chance to hit If a hit occurs the following reduction in health is calculated. health reduction =5 * ((10-protection)/10) * (result*(endurance/15.00)) The result of the about formula is that the higher the endurance level the more damage done. Finally if health falls below one a surrender occurs. In the interactive court you can now bet on duels. Once two people start a duel you can bet on them in the following manner. /bet job# amount When one of the duelist surrenders the pot is then split among the betters on the winning side. For example lets say the total pot is 2100 Kducats there was 900 bet on player 1 and 1200 bet on player 2. You bet 400 on player one and he wins you share of the pot is figured this way 2100 * 400/1200 so your share of the pot is .33% or 693 Kducats This function was added to enhance the dueling contests, it is also it is the same betting system that will be available for tournaments (jousting.) JOUSTING Jousting was the major sport of the nobility. More nobles were injured jousting than in combat. Jousting is available in the IC. The joust consists of three passes through the lists. Each pass through the list is broken into 4 segments. At the start of each segment you are allowed to enter a action. The actions are as follow and have the following general results. 's spurs your horse faster this will increase your speed, but lessen your aim. 'r rein in your horse decreases speed increases aim 'm moves shield reduces opponents aim 'a increase your aim 'n nothing does nothing each action reduces you endurance except nothing a lance hit is calculated using your attack value and your aim being unseated by an attack is calculated using your endurance, your protection and the speed of the opponent. A hit on you will sometimes knock you off your horse, and will always reduce your endurance. You will also lose points. Unseating also can reduce your health. You will need 50,000 ducats to enter the lists. If you lose the winner gets the 50kd. Other enhancements will be added later, like tournament rating etc. Betting (by all in the IC) on the outcome of the joust is allowed. Scoring (Points per run down lists) 3 Unhorsing opponent with a lance break 3 Causing opponent to drop lance because of lance blow 3 Breaking lance by hitting tip of opponents lance 2 Breaking a lance at the base 1 Breaking a lance between saddle and helm -1 Breaking a lance on hitting saddle -1 Failure to present self as target (horse swerves, etc.) -2 Hitting the tilt once with lance -3 Hitting the tilt twice with lance 0 Breaking a lance within one foot of tip These are the historical values. There was no sword play if a player was unhorsed, even in battle that was rare as hitting the ground like that generally took the fight out of you (including breaking things.) MONX Money and Ducats The unit of money we use in the game is the "ducat." In the game displays, the amounts are usually expressed in thousands of ducats (the KDucat). The relationship of the ducat to the various 14th century coinages is; English pound 600 ducats English schilling 50 ducats English penny 2.5 ducats English mark 125 ducats English groat 10 ducats livre tournois 133 ducats livre parisi 75 ducats livre bordelaise 50 ducats Venetian lira 100 ducats Florentine florin 300 ducats Castillian real 5.7 ducats Dollar (US-1990s) 1 ducat LAWX Law and Order You can do whatever you can get away with in the game. Anything, with the exception of exploiting bugs in the program. If you find a bug that gives you an advantage, it is better to report it than exploit it, as players who report bugs promptly will receive a reward of up a million ducats. Players who exploit bugs are eventually caught, whatever they gained is taken away and the other players generally have a low opinion of such people. It's better to collect up to a million or more ducats as a bug finding reward than it is to try and exploit the bug and get caught later on. Remember, the game has many auditing routines built in so that the developers can check if things are working properly. This helps in identifying bugs, and chasing down anyone who is exploiting said bugs. As far as your relations with other players go, you are responsible to God (the Pope) and your king. If you misbehave and can talk them out of going after you, then you get away with it. Remember that the king has the power to outlaw you, drag you into court, try you for treason and, if the jury agrees, condemn you. The king can then execute you and, if he so desires, confiscate all your possessions. Executing a noble who has been outlawed results in no loss of stature. If you get executed, you will still be in the game (if you have an heir), but dead broke. Other, more bloody minded, players may decide to do the king one better and slaughter your family (and take a loss of stature for killing women and children). If you execute a player character, your stature goes down to "1." If your player character and his entire family are killed or die, you are out of the game. If you consistently misbehave, in spite of the kings justice and excommunication from the pope, the only action the Sysops may take is to not let you in the game again. Troublesome players have gotten themselves wiped out in this fashion during testing, so it can happen. Make enough enemies and you'll be wiped out completely. It's not a very comfortable process, unless you are into that sort of thing. The Sysops prefer to allow the players themselves take care of bad actors in the game. Family Dying Out When a family line dies out the current real world player will be assigned a new position from available positions. The old position will have a cousin generated and then re-enter the pool of available positions. If your family line dies out you will not have a chance at all of getting your previous family. The game keeps track of who the last player was to have that player and will not reissue it to the same player. Protecting Your Family Now, it is our duty to protect our family members. There are several ways this can be done. First, you must spread them out. Never keep all your family members all in the same fief. Second, unless you have a very high keep (over 20) keep them in inactive fiefs. Check the court first to make sure it has not been seeded with spies from another noble. If you keep a family member inside one of your own fiefs, lock the keep to ALL nobles, including French. If anyone needs to get inside they can contact you for permission prior. (Locking the keep cuts assassination and kidnap chances by half). You can also SEIZE one of your family members and put them in "protective custody" in a dungeon. In this way they cannot be attacked by dirty deeds at all, but will be turned over to an attacker who sieges and wins the fiefs if he storms it. If he only negotiates the surrender then you still keep possession of the captive. You can also have a friend seize a family member and keep them safe in a high keep. Persons who need to exercise this admittedly drastic option should contact our King to arrange for a safe holding spot. Another strategy is to put family members in out of the way places that speak different languages. It is very difficult to find good kidnappers and assassins in all the different languages of Europe. Consider inactive fiefs that speak German, Hispanic, Basque, Celtic, or Dutch. (I do not recommend Italian fiefs) Finally, for personal safety ALWAYS log off in an inactive fief, outside the keep. I recommend that you move at least once a night so that even if you are located that the would-be assassins might have trouble getting to you by the time the information reaches them. It also messes up their search patterns. Also, if everyone locks their keeps to ALL nobles, we can make things a little more difficult for the henchmen. Outlaw Status and Excommunication The king (and only the king) has the power to outlaw any of his nobles. The Active Players list in the Herald menu shows the nationality of all players. Note that in France there are players who own French fiefs but are not French. This is common in the border areas with Italy and Germany. An outlawed noble has his stature reduced and his fiefs are more prone to rebel. An outlawed noble can be executed by another noble with out the executing noble losing stature for it. The pope can excommunicate a player. This is essentially the same effect as being outlawed. Excommunication and outlawing are actually done by Herald, at the Pope's or King's order. Outlaw with Extreme Prejudice (Anathema) When the king outlaws a noble, he may do so in two forms. One form is the original one, where the outlawed noble may either be hunted down and killed or stand trial, and may have the outlaw status removed. The second form of outlaw status is Anathema or "Outlawed with extreme prejudice" (OEP). This is for someone who is REALLY Bad. Online games sometimes have problems with players who are completely off the wall and disruptive to other players. This is usually dealt with by "locking the (offending) player out." This means that the player is no longer able to enter the game (play, leave messages, whatever.) To be locked out of HYW, a player must be declared anathema by the Pope and the French and English kings (with the concurrence of their National Heralds). This can be done to any player. This procedure is done by announcement in the Banner everyone sees when entering the game. Within 24 hours of the last of these five announcements (two kings, two Heralds, one pope) being posted, the outlaw player in question will have their character transferred to a NPC character, with the same name as the character, and their previous position be made inactive. When this is done, the Herald that carried out the anathema posts that this is done in the same topic where the anathema was proclaimed. This represents that character being reduced to commoner status and banished from the community of European aristocrats. Players may then hunt down and kill that commoner character if they wish. The kings and pope would declare the Anathema in a form like, "I (insert name of king or pope) hereby declare (name of anathemaee, and highest title plus player ID), anathema. He is outlawed, excommunicate and no longer considered a member of the nobility of Christendom. Let no man grant him succor or refuge. His lands and titles are forfeit and his soul in peril." The National Heralds would post something like, "I (name and title of Herald), Herald of (insert name of kingdom) do concur with my sovereign Lord that the anathema of (name of anathemaee, and highest title), is in accordance with the laws and customs of chivalry and just in every way. Kings, pope and Heralds may improvise their own wording, as they see fit, as long as they positively identify the subject by player ID. The player in question is then locked out of all HYW games, and may ask to be re-admitted after 30 days. After the 30-day break, the player normally gets another chance, unless the problem is serious enough to involve system management, as we have no control over what they do if you take it THAT far outside the game. The reason why the lock out applies to all games is because we can only do it all or nothing. Moreover, we have in the past found that malicious players thrown out of one game will simply wander off to another. The main change here is that players no longer have to hunt down and kill the entire family of the offending player. Players complained that, in addition to suffering from the random violence of the out of control player, they had to use their own resources to hunt down and kill the player, and the family. Players also felt it was a bit much to have to execute women and children. Therefore, we have made the game more historically accurate (reducing the offending character to commoner status) and easier on all players. In the past, only about one player in a hundred has managed to incur the wrath of the other 99 percent of players, and none of the 10,000 or so players who have passed through HYW from 1991 to 1995 have had to be declared anathema. Some have come close, and others have simply left on their own once they saw the heat building up. This procedure recognizes that the malicious depredations of the one will not be allowed to annoy and disrupt the play of the 99. Etiquette There has evolved traditions and etiquette of the virtual 14th Century in the HYW game. These are some of the key items that should be of use to all: 1. NPCs and Bailiffs: Hiring away NPCs & Bailiffs owned by other players has been considered serious provocation by HYW players since very early in the game. This is a great way to alienate friends and neighbors. If it was an honest mistake...send an on- line message (or email) apology ASAP and offer to return NPC and make reasonable reparations for any damage you may have caused by your actions. 2. Making war on your neighbors is not the way to win friends and influence people either. While seagoing the nearest keep may sound like a great way to make a few ducats and while away the time... think very carefully about this sort of action. By doing this (unless ordered to do so by your King) you are declaring yourself apart from the ordered process of feudal society. Your neighbor will probably go screaming to the King and Pope as well as call in all his friends and neighbors to teach you a lesson in manners. 3. Arranging Marriage: If you are arranging a marriage with an Inactive PC or family member of one then this is an uncomplicated transaction. However, if you wish to marry a member of an Active PC's family, PLEASE contact the PC first and make arrangements. If the player will not be on-line for several seasons you may find yourself in stasis waiting for the arrangements to go through (that is, for the other player to agree to the match). There are other complications we will go into at another time. 4. Killing/Murder: These are serious actions even when done to an NPC. In the main, we have traditionally released ALL family members immediately on capture. Kidnapping a PCs pregnant wife is asking for trouble. Killing a captured NPC is a serious move...consider carefully before you do this. Typically (like hiring away other PCs NPCs) you will find yourself decried and accused of atrocities and possibly your allies will abandon you as being in violation of chivalric tradition. Also keep in mind that when a kidnapping is successful, the Herald history of the season will announce who was the kidnapper's employer, thus: Arylaura Bruce (40) was kidnapped by men in the employ of Chancellor Henry Percy (92). Ransom is demanded. 5. Make a clear distinction between "in character" and "out of character" communications. In the former you can be rude and insulting (although it's nice to do so in period) practically to your heart's content. In the latter be polite. 6. Even when posting in character remember not to accuse people of heresy or witchcraft, murder, robbery, molesting goats, etc., are OK, but you don't want to mess with the church. The general rule in HYW seems to be: Think first before actions and consult your King or Heralds before undertaking questionable actions. Removing Players in Key Positions Players in key positions (English kings and crown princes, Holy Roman Emperor and pope) are held to a higher standard of performance than other players. For this reason there is a procedure to remove any of these key players if the other key players agree that the player in questions is not playing their position to everyone's satisfaction. Put simply, if all the key players, except for the one everyone is unhappy with, ask the game sysop to expel the one key player, and the sysop concurs, that player is removed from the key position. We've never had to do this as of early 1997, but we've come close several times over the years. And some players in this category have left their key position when they realized the other key players were unhappy with that players performance. PARX Parliament Parliament can be called by any player (from option in official acts menu) to remove the king. Only the king can call parliament for other items, and parliament can only be called in the winter season. Players have three seasons to vote, and only those that voted count when the "yeas" and "nays" are counted. The player calling parliament enters one line proposition to be voted on for England or France. There are three important propositions possible; 1- Vote the king a special tax of up to 90% of players (active and inactive) purses (enter the percentage), This is not implemented yet. 2- Remove the king from power, later voting in another player as the king and leaving the existing king with nothing but his character, family and purse. 3- Allow the king to take away a title from a player (a title, like duke, that is not attached to a fief). All other players with fiefs in that kingdom can vote up to three seasons after proposition has been made (if proposition entered in Winter 1349, vote can be made until Fall 1350 from Official Acts menu, which lists propositions waiting for vote. Players may vote yea or nay and may not change vote). At least 60% YEA is needed for either proposition to pass. When the system does the update from Fall 1350 to Winter 1350, it notes players who have voted on propositions due on that update, tallies the scores and takes the actions indicated. The king is always assumed to have voted against a proposition to remove him from power (especially if he doesn't vote), unless the king actually votes for it. PLAGX The Plague The Plague will eventually arrive, and when it does, fiefs that are "plagued" will promptly lose up to half their population. Owners should adjust their spending levels in these fiefs, as most spending is based on the population (which has now, regrettably, changed.) The plague will bring down fields and industry as well as population (in a ratio of 10:8:9, POP:FIELDS:INDUSTRY). Death rates average about fifty percent (with considerable random variation.) Plague Spread Plague initially starts in any one of the five Italian fiefs below. Each season thereafter, every un-plagued fief will get it from an adjacent fief that has had the plagued. The Plague spreads at the rate of three fiefs per season, not one. There is no chance of it skipping a fief. You know a fief has been plagued because the year of its last infection will be in the fief file PLAGUE field (otherwise, that field contains nothing). Note that the above spread routine is not completely realistic, but it is close enough for now. If you want to do it up historically, then make the chance of spread to adjacent fief 80% and give each port in the game a 40% chance of getting it (for the first time) each season. This would be a more complex piece of code and can wait for roll out later. Plague Start Fiefs Genoa Naples Papal States Florence Venice Initial plague should show up in the Herald, but not reoccurrence. Year of last plague occurrence should show up in fief report. Plague effect on PCs and NPCs Probability of Death of in a fief hit with plague Player Characters 10% NPCs 20% STATX Stature Stature is one of the more important personal characteristics in the game, particularly if you are a king or magnate (as taxes collected depend on stature). Most calculations in the game use stature. Stature is just that, what your peers (and many of the common folk) think of you. It is your reputation in 14th century terms. Some things increase stature, others lower it. Stature can be no higher than 9, and no lower than 0. Your "base stature" is determined by your noble rank and age. A list of the ranks is found in HYWHIST.DOC. The rank used is the highest of the several noble titles you can hold. Next comes age, as you get older, your base stature increases. Base Stature is calculated by rank (as described in PEERS.ASC) and age as follows; Stature Rank 1-3 (Popes and Kings) 6 4-7 (Prince-Bishops and Dukes) 5 8-9 (Princes) 4 10-12 (Marquis and Counts) 3 13-15 (Viscount and Barons) 2 16-17 (just about everyone else) 1 If female -6 Age Base 61+ 5.0 51-60 4.0 41-50 3.0 31-40 2.0 21-30 1.0 11-20 0.5 Under 10 0.0 Actions in the game modify your stature. Note that not all of the items listed below have been implemented. (* means not implemented yet.) Stature Modifiers Modification (stature change) *Admitted cuckold -0.2 *Army disbands because of 0 morale -0.3 Storm fief and win (per 10k population) 0.1 Storm fief and lose (per 10k population) -0.2 Negotiate takeover of fief (per 10k population) 0.2 *Official of the Kings Court Varies Captured in battle -0.2 Cast out daughter -0.1 Cast out son -0.3 *Crusade against Prussians 2.0 *Crusade against Saracens 2.0 *Crusade against Turks 2.0 *Crusade against Moors 2.0 Declared outlaw (-.2 loyalty per fief) -5.0 Discovered using Assassin -0.5 Discovered using kidnapper -0.3 Excommunicated (-.2 loyalty per fief) -5.0 Execute NPC under age 14 -3.0 Execute female NPC -2.0 *Execute player character without trial -3.0 Fief rebels -0.1 *Lose duel -0.2 *Make Pilgrimage 1.0 *Make Pilgrimage to Jerusalem 4.0 *Make Pilgrimage to Rome 2.0 Pillage fief -0.4 Raid fief -0.1 *Refuse battle against superior opponent -0.3 *Refuse duel -0.5 *Refuse feudal duty -0.3 *Refuse to pay homage -0.3 Torture player character -4.0 Unhorse opponent at tournament 0.1 Unhorsed at Tournament -0.1 *Use champion and lose duel -0.5 *Use champion to win duel -0.3 *Win Tournament 0.1 *Win duel 0.2 *Win duel against champion 0.5 Lose battle (per 10k opponents) -0.5 Win battle (per 10k opponents) 0.8 CHIVX Chivalry The "Rules of Chivalry" varied somewhat from country. France and England shared much the same code because at the time of the HYW the nobility of both nations were still French speaking. A modern incarnation of the Rules of Chivalry is the Boy Scout Oath (which I forget the exact wording of), but generally you were supposed to play fair and be nice to (and protect) the lesser forms of life (clerics and peasants, etc.). Often honored more in the breach than the observance. But stature is based on how well you do in the chivalry department. An example of national differences was the custom of German knights to throw noble captives into a dungeon while French and English captives were wined and dined by their captors. Chivalry also included attention to and respect for titles of nobility. Nobles were generally addressed by their highest rank. Thus Jean de Grailly, the Captal de Buch, would be addressed variously as, "My dear Captal," "Lord de Buch," "Buch," "My lord Captal." The family name was rarely used, except perhaps in legal proceedings. In other words, the title was more important than the family or given name. This practice continues to this day. The close friends of Charles, the current Prince of Wales, will generally call him "Wales," rarely Charles and never Chuck. MULTX MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS The official policy of Hundred Years War is for players to not use different screen names to play positions of more than one nationality (like one French and one English.) It is possible to have multiple accounts on the system. While it would be ideal to have only one account per person in a game, we have found over the years that there are always a substantial number of players in each game who will use the multiple accounts. This has not ruined the games, but it has made a lot of players unhappy with how the multiple account players sometimes carry on. The most unpopular multi-account tactic is to have characters with different nationalities. This leads to things like spying, split loyalty between France and England, switching sides and all sorts of treachery. They are possible in the game mechanics and were common in the real 14th century (the real de Coucy, a major French noble, married the real Edward III's daughter and had lands in both England and France for example.) There were traitors on both sides during the war, plus many French players serving the English king. This is fine, as long as players are playing only one side with their screen names. Most players prefer to play the game for one side or the other and generally dislike players who play both sides at once. We cannot enforce this policy because of the way AOLs screen names are managed. But sysops can kick screen names, or players (all their screen names) out of a game if they catch them playing more than one side with multiple screen names. While this only penalizes those sloppy enough to get caught, it does force those who persist in this multi-national play to be a bit more discrete. Remember, the sysop of a game has absolute power to police that game. There is no appeal. Well, you can appeal to the chief sysop, or anyone else, but to date, a sysop has never been overruled. The sysops job is to keep the game, as a whole, enjoyable for most of the players. It is for this reason that they have this authority. And they will use it when they have to. If you have a cross national account situation, report it to your sysop and your cross national character will be exchanged for one of the same nationality as your main character. The sysop has the power to let existing cross nationals remain, depending on the circumstances. Position Switching The following rules will apply to all positions except staff-assigned positions (Kings, Crown Princes, Pope, Emperor), and any other positions which may be designated as exceptions in any particular variant game. Positions are assigned automatically by the game during the reset after the player joins. Your choice when joining is a preference, not a guarantee. The game attempts to keep a 2:1 ratio between French and English positions, and will assign your preference if it does not unbalance that ratio. 'Other' positions are assigned by the game so long as the French-English ratio is maintained. At least half the assigned positions in the game will be French, even if they did not request French, so keep in mind that your preference is not guaranteed. Position switching may only be requested during the first 7 days after you join the game (a list of all positions that have joined in the last 7 days is available to the Sysops, so we can easily check on this). In regular non- variant games (including Slow Games) you may only request a switch to one of the following: Any presently unplayed position of the nationality you were assigned to, or a small 'disputed' position of your choice. A switch to a small disputed position is allowed to provide for those who wish to role-play a particular nationality or position, as the 'disputed' spots are not large and powerful enough to affect the balance of the game. (A list of player positions, including which positions are 'disputed', can be found in the PLAYANAL.ASC file.) Some variant games may be designated as open position choice games. In these games, you may request to be assigned to any presently unplayed position within 7 days of joining the game. We are a bit more lenient on keeping the exact nationality ratio in these games, though we may restrict choices if it becomes too unbalanced. Requests for switches made after 7 days in the game will not be allowed. You can not play one position for a while then switch to another, or switch around between different positions in the course of the game except by allowing your position to go inactive and rejoining. The switching allowances are simply to get people into a position they will enjoy playing whenever possible. No other position switches will be allowed except for switches to and from staff-assigned positions. Lands and NPCs: If you plan to switch position and have acquired any non- ancestral lands or NPCs during your first few days (some people don't waste time...) you must arrange on your own to transfer them to another player to keep them for you. We just move the player. Please do not make your request until you are ready to move, as legitimate switches will be done immediately on receipt of the request. The only exception to this is that we WILL move NPCs in the case of a player taking over a staff-assigned position (Royals, Pope, Emperor), mainly to speed up the process of getting people into these important positions. Land must still be transferred by normal means. Variant rules for any particular game may override these general rules, as always. We reserve the right to restrict any position choice for any reason (this is unlikely to happen except in possible cases of bugs in the assignment routines or OOC problems, but we have to remind you of that...) SAVX Playing Small (low cost play) HYW was designed to allow players to enjoy the game, and still be competitive, without spending a lot of money, and time. Most other online games require a player to spend several hundred dollars, and a hundred hours, a month to stay competitive. We have designed HYW so you can be an active and competitive player by spending as little as five hours of online time. This is called "Playing Small." There are several techniques you must use to make Playing Small work. 1-Read the docs before you start playing. Many players prefer to just wander around in the game, learning while doing so by trial and error. This may be entertaining, but it's expensive while the meter's running. 2-You don't have to tweak your fief settings every season. Once a year is usually sufficient. 3-Rather than wandering around looking for good bailiffs, arrange to "buy" one from another player. This will cost you ducats, but save you dollars. 4-Stay out of the Interactive Court (it's addictive) and similar activities (like gambling, hunting and the like). These activities are enjoyable and are of some help in improving your position (diplomatically, at least). 5-Use an off-line editor, if possible, to deal with messaging and email. This allows you to quickly (and cheaply) download only those messages you need to read and/or respond to. 6-Emphasize diplomacy and loyalty in your play. Let your king and Heralds know you are playing small. But also let the king know that you will turn out when the need arises (that's what Medieval feudalism was all about.) The fighting only gets hot and heavy once or twice a month and this is when your king will really need you. Show up when your king needs you and he will listen to your pleas when you need help from some other rapacious noble. If you're lucky (don't get dragged into some local feud) you can keep your monthly costs way down. If you're not so lucky, you may have to spend up to ten hours a month online. Remember, the game winners are those that improve their position over the course of the entire game. Players have won by playing small, so it can be done. As you exit the game the game will now tell you how much time you have spent in the game. It will also give you a total for the month. When you enter the IC or the Jousting area it will print a message or how long you were in the game, then when you exit the IC how long you were there and then a total for the month. This game timer is not linked to the systems billing timer, so there may be a slight difference between the two. BBX OLM (On Line Messaging) Tips The messages you leave in the OLM system are of two general types; IC (In Character) and OOC (Out Of Character). Most of your messages will be IC, in that they will relate to your playing out your historical role (or character, thus "In Character.") The Post Office type messages are (as designated in their descriptions) are for both IC and OOC postings, the place for announcements and/or discussions of any sort that do not quite fit anywhere else. In the Post Office messages, just about anything goes so long as it does not violate system policies. Though even there, it is advisable to keep your IC and OOC stuff separated simply to avoid confusion. Some of the other topics, such as the public Courts, are distinctly IC, and in these areas, OOC posts should be limited to either brief comments on pertinent game mechanics or informative posts by Staff members (HYW staff or Heralds) which should be clearly OOC if posted. For example, messages not signed with character name except for a brief mention of who you play if necessary, and not mixing IC stuff in with whatever was necessary to post OOC. That way they can be easily noted as information or advice, and then skipped over, leaving the main thread of the topics completely IC. Some online customs and etiquette for those new to this sort of thing. 1- Don't use all capital letters when writing messages in the OLM. All caps is considered shouting, and it's more difficult to read. 2- You should include your screen name in your messages to the sysop, as some sysop functions require the screen name, not the player ID number. 3- Many messages you read will include acronyms and emoticons (punctuation marks representing sideways facial expressions.) Sample Acronyms and emoticons ADN Any Day Now AFAIK As Far As I Know AWGTHTGTTA? Are We Going To Have To Go Through This Again? B4N Bye for Now BAMF Bad Assed Mother F- BBS Bulletin Board System BRB Be Right Back BTA But Then Again (in response to IOW) BTW By The Way CU See you CUL See you Later DIIK Damned If I Know DILLIGAF? Does It Look Like I Give A F-? DTRT Do The Right Thing EOT End Of Thread (i.e., don't reply to this message) ES&D Eat S- and Die FITB Fill In The Blank_________ FUD Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt FWIW For What It's Worth FYI For Your Information G Grin (as in ) gd&r grinning, ducking and running gd&rf grinning, ducking and running FAST! gd&rvvf grinning, ducking and running VERY VERY FAST! gd&w grinning, ducking and weaving GIWIST Gee, I Wish I'd Said That GLGH Good Luck and Good Hunting GMTA Great Minds Think Alike IAC In Any Case IAE In Any Event IC I See IDTT I'll Drink To That! ILY I Love You IMAO In My Arrogant Opinion IMCO In my considered opinion IMHO In My Humble Opinion IMNSHO In My Not So Humble Opinion IMO In My Opinion IMOBO In My Own Biased Opinion. IOW In Other Words JIC Just In Case JTYWTK Just Thought You Wanted To Know LAB&TYD Life's A Bitch & Then You Die. LLTA Lots and Lots of Thunderous Applause LMAO Laughing My Ass Off LOL Laughing Out Loud MOTAS Member of the Appropriate Sex NFW No F-ing Way NSS No S-, Shylock OIC Oh, I See OOTC Obligatory On Topic Comment OTF On the Floor OTOH On The Other Hand PITA Pain In The Ass PMBI Pardon my butting in PMFBI Pardon Me For Butting In POV Point Of View PTB Powers that be ROTFL Rolling On The Floor Laughing ROTFLAHMS Rolling On The Floor Laughing And Holding My Side RPG Role Playing Games RSN Real Soon Now BBS Bulletin Board System (forum) Chat Area Chat Area RTFM Read The F- Manual SNAFU Situation Normal: All F- Up SOB Do you really need me to explain this one? SWMBO She Who Must Be Obeyed SYSOP SYStem OPerator TAFN That's All For Now TANJ There Ain't No Justice TANSTAAFL There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch TDM Too Damn Many TIA Thanks In Advance TIATLG Truly, I Am The Living God TLG The Living God TPTB The Powers That Be TTBOMK To The Best Of My Knowledge TTFN Ta-Ta For Now TTUL Talk (or Type) To You Later WFM Works For Me WRT With Regard To WTF What the F- WTFDIK What the F- Do I Know WYGIWYPF What You Get Is What You Pay For WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get YMMV Your Mileage May Vary. EMOTICONS (selected) emoticon: n. a figure created with the symbols on a keyboard that is usually read with the head tilted to the left. Used to convey the spirit in which a line of text was typed. :) :-) :> Smiling, happy faces; don't take me too seriously ;) ;-) ;> Winking happy faces (something said tongue-in-cheek) B-) Smiling face from a person wearing glasses 8-) Smiling face with a wide-eyed look :D :-D Wider happy face (or Minstrel [RA] singers) :-o "Oh, nooooooo!" (a la Mr. Bill) :-( Sad or disappointed face :-P Tongue stuck out :-J Tongue in cheek :-# Message concerning something that shouldn't have been said... :-$ Message indicating person is ill... :-& Message indicating person is angry... <:-) Dumb questions |-( Late night messages :^) From a person with a large nose :*) Clowning around &:-) From a person with curly hair @:-) From a person with wavy hair #:-) From a person with matted hair O:-) Angel :-) )-: Masking theatrical comments :-|K- Formal message. <:>== A turkey ...---... S.O.S. @*&$!% You know what that means... 2B|^2B Message about Shakespeare @>--->---- A rose. (-_-) Secret smile Credits; Designed, researched and programmed by (in the same order), Jim Dunnigan, Al Nofi and Dan Masterson (all of them long time historical wargamers and byteheads). Many of the Heralds and players contributed to this document. Also thanks to George Diez for the ASCII graphics used in the non-GFE version of the game, and the style for the BBS Herald. To Richard A Edwards for the rules to Gluckshaus. Alpha Testers- These are the people who suffered through the months of alpha testing. Some of these folks did yeoman (and cavalier) service. Some did outstanding work on the game. Most of them were still with us in the beta, so the alpha testing wasn't that painful. Angel Neti Anthony V. Diruggier Barbara Byro Bruce H Sicherman Charles R. Townsley Daniel F. Martin Daniel H. Scheltema Daniel P. Sniderman Danny Han Diana Eichman Drew Davis George L. Diez Greg Gilmer J.David Zincavage James A. Murray James D. Riddle Jeff W. Long Jon E. Huettel Joe Wiedow Jonathan E. Roy Karen Hillyer Kent Fillmore Kenneth E. St. Andre Laurel A. Stine Martin D. Lamssies Mark Herman Mark O .Kinkead Mark S. Campbell Mark T. Collins Mel Chin Peter Abrams Randy L. Eichman Richard A. Edwards Rick Mulligan Robbie G. Robberson Robert B. Kasten Rodney E. Wenz Steven A. Ainsworth Terrence Yee Tim Hruby And to the many beta testers, most of whom paid for the privilege. Prepared by Jim Dunnigan with the help of the College of Heralds and many players. Special thanks to the all those Heralds and players whose sage and insightful comments on how to play I have drawn upon for presentation here. That accounts for the variations in writing style. IMPRIMATUR, NIHIL OBSTAT