<=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | Seven Cities of Gold | | The Manual | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | Written by | | | | The Camel Jockey | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | Prelude | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> %%% %% %% %% %% %%% NCE, in a tavern on the waterfront, an old salt whispered to you the tale of the Seven Bishops Christian men who had been blown far off course into an unknown realm and who established seven Kingdoms whose splendor ranked with the reign of Solomon. Since that time you have dreamed of little else. Now at long last you have been granted the resources necessary to mount an expedition. To be sure, the Court's ministers are interested only in surpassing Portugal's maritime strength and controlling commerce to and from the Orient. They do not know of your real motives. But no matter. The expedition is yours to command, and you feel certain that adventure beyond all imagining, and riches beyond all dreams of avarice, are in your grasp. <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | In Europe | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> The Court Not every visit to the palace will fill your heart with the same exultation as the first. Nevertheless, here you must return - for recognition of your accomplishments, for the glory and power of titles, perhaps for more gold desperately needed to continue your search. Alas, need alone will not guarantee another audience to any save novices. Home Here, in private, may contemplate your successes (or lick your wounds) and study the maps you've created on your journeys. Here you may also judge the progress you're making towards your goals - how much and how many rivers you've explored, how many natives you've encountered, and how many special landmarks (great lakes, lust jungles, etc.) you've found. Finally, you may learn how many missions you've established and how much more gold you've found than you've spent. The Court considers all the categories listed, except missions and lives, in granting titles. The highest rank, Viceroy, is reserved for those who can achieve an overall rating of at least 50% by 1540. (Losing an expedition completely - dying - costs you the maps and discoveries made since the last time you stopped by the pub. It also costs you the opportunity to get future credit for all those discoveries save the discovery of land, and you lose a year and a half of your valuable time.) The Outfitters It is here that you will spend your gold to equip and provision your expeditions. As your experience grows, learn to choose effectively among the ways you can invest your wealth. Do you plan to trade? How many goods will you need? Do you aim to conquer? What size army must you assemble? Can you find food? How much should you take? Find the answers that fit your style of exploration. Or prepare yourself for an unhappy relationship with the Court and for expeditions barely able to survive - hardly the marks of explorers destined to become Viceroys. Player Tip Food is bought and bartered for in relation to the number of men in your expedition. Decide on the number of men you want first, then on how many weeks' worth of food you want for them. To get a feel for this relationship, play around with the two quantities the first few times you're give the opportunity. The Pub Wise conquistadors will stop by here after every trip to record their maps and discoveries. Losing also all the maps and discoveries you made on your last three trips is heartrending. <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | The Expedition | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> The Voyage When you leave port, mark well the indications of your voyage and how they continually change. On the screen window, north is always at the top, west to the left. At the top of the screen you see the month and year and the number of vessels still in your expedition. To the left is the size of your army and the number of weeks you can feed that many mouths with the food on hand. To the right is the ledger of your cargo of goods and gold. At the bottom is your speed and the depth of the water. Your ship's cartographer can help you but little on this part of your search. Choose the "view map" option to learn your latitude and pay attention to the passage of time. By such dead reckoning you will learn to cross the ocean with the least expense of food and life. There are many perils in the uncharted waters beyond Spain. Men die of scurvey or of storms in which no one can hear their last cries for help. Those same storms can blow you far off course and cost you vital time. Your supply of food dwindles as you ply your way across the vast ocean. Wander too long in search of landfall, and you will surely perish. From the Historical Record Columbus' critics were right. If there had been no American continent, no Spanish fleet of that era could have completed the ten thousand mile expedition across the Atlantic to Japan. They couldn't carry enough food. The food they could carry was no treat - a grim mixture of tough salt mat, hardtack, and dried vegetables. Meals were cooked in a wooden firebox embedded in a heap of sand on deck. Sour wine and stale water completed the repast. Discovery and Exploration Bring your ships into safe mooring carefully and learn from your costly mistakes. Resolve not to lose more ships by inattentively running around or to the same shoals or shallows. Remember also that if you leave your ships unattended while you set off on long journeys, the sailors who man the ships (who are not included in your roster count) just might sail away before your return. As you move over the land think of all who will bless your name for your discoveries. The Court and merchants want gold and trade; sailors, other explorers and scholars will be eager to see your maps. Others in the Universities will be anxious to hear of the surface of the land and of the people who live in it. And the Holy Church is ever solicitous to save unenlightened souls. The Church has a powerful ally in your need for food and someone to help carry it. Unless you find and learn to deal with some local inhabitants, you're not going to get very far in your quest for the fabulously wealthy cities you hope to find. Playing Tips 1. Imagine a world without roads and you'll begin to grasp the improtance of rivers to the to the explorers in the 16th Century. Your own progress also depends on your use of rivers - a moderate pace on a river moves you as fast as a reckless pace on land. 2. Your computer will build maps for your as you go. Consult them frequently. (Your positions is always approximately in the center.) You want to build pictures in your head and perhaps even keep journal notes of what happened where. Your goal is to be able to find your way back to useful places and avoid dangerous ones. (one screen measures 120 miles on a side on the exploration surface and 960 miles on a side on your maps.) <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | The Natives | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> Making Contact with the Natives In any new region, where the natives live will not be visible (save to the novice) unless you take the time to stop and look for signs. When you have spotted a signal and move to enter a village, think also of what signal you mean to send as you go in. Reckless aggression? Cautious friendliness? Open-handed generosity? The decision is yours alone. And its implications and consequences are yours alone to bear. There will be considerable variety in the natives you encounter. Some will be more populous, some more credulous, some more hostile, and some more complex combinations of those attributes. If you would survive and prosper, learn to use your ears and eyes for clues to the natives' moods and the patterns in their responses to your actions and combinations of actions. Trade or Conquest Both approaches are available to you. Both, if successful, bring valuable bearers as well as goods. To trade, as the natives will be quick to tell (if your gait and perhaps your generosity seem suitable), you must deal directly with the chief. He always stands in the center of the village until and aggressive threat causes him to vanish or yield in despair. Conquest is quick, but it consumes lives and leaves bitter memories. Trading is safer, but it is also slower and requires many goods. Take whatever actions your heart and mind tell you to take - and attend to what you learn about yourself in the bargain. And harken. None but novices should always believe everything their bearers tell them - especially bearers far from home on an expedition whose food is going stale. And consider that the natives remember long and well what treatment they receive at your hands. Let your future dreams temper your present schemes. From the Historical Record On his final voyage, Columbus found himself stranded in Jamaca. At first the natives supplied food; but the voracious appetites of the explorers - they consumed 15 to 20 times as much food as the natives did themselves - soon put them out of favor. The Spanish were slowly starving. Columbus devised a stratagem. His almanac predicted a total eclipse of the moon on the last night of February 1504. Columbus summoned the native chieftain and announced that Almighty God was displeased with their treatment of His chosen emissary. If food was not brought to the Spanish, the Lord would darken the moon forever. The eclipse began at moonrise. Soon the entire village ran howling to Columbus' ship, imploring him to halt the destruction. Columbus waited in his cabin until the full eclipse phase had passed, then emerged and took credit for a successful intercession on their behalf. Columbus and his men enjoyed an ample food supply for the duration of their journey. Establishing Forts and Missions Both trade and conquest can bring you the opportunity to establish more than a thinly manned fort, and how few to avoid and over garrisoned armory, will depend on the size of the native population at the site. Let the pictures signifying fort and missions be your guide. And let experience tell you how eager the conquered are to throw off their yokes during your absence. From the Historical Record At times the natives were only too wiling for the Spanish to establish armed garrisons in their own land. Gudcanagari, chieftian of a Haitan tribe, implored Columbus to establish a colony so that Spanish guns could help him defeat his rivals on the island. Columbus had his own reasons for wanting to found such a colony. Thus was Villa de la Navidad (Christmas Town) the first settlement and first armed fort in the New World. Playing Tips 1. Pay attention to the time of year and to your latitude. Toward the far north and south, the effects of climate become visible in the fall, winter and spring. And, since how much food you'll find in a village depends on when the last harvest was, you'll find paying attention to the seasons materially rewarding as well as aesthetically pleasing. 2. Don't underestimate native communications. Some can spread word of your activities to cities you haven't visited yet. And bearers can show you the location of other settlements - and of treasures, if you pause long enough to listen to them. 3. A mission can supply nearby ships and cause the sailors to wait patiently for the return of the landing party, provided care has been taken to inform the mission inhabitants of the location of the ships. 1540 and Beyond Within 50 years of Columbus' first voyage, the Spanish had conquered the New World's most advanced civilizations and had begun to consolidate one half of the territory into a colonial empire. Center stage began to pass from the Spanish Conquistadors to the traders and settlers of many nations who followed. You may continue your explorations after 1540 if you wish, but you will receive no more titles from the Court or other recognition for your efforts. If you wish to see the complete map of the territory you've been exploring so you can begin anew with a New World, see the reference card section of this doc file. <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | Advanced Play | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> Notes on the World Maker Calling brand new New Worlds "random continents" conveys something of their challenge and variability, but it doesn't do justice to the sophistication of the program that produces them. New Worlds are not simply drawn willy-nilly. They conform to geological and cultural principles built into the program code. There is, for instance, a plate tectonics model consulted for each creation. Mountain ranges are generated where the plates bump into each other. And secondary ranges (like the Allegheny mountains on the historical map) may be created as well. The program also consults a cultural dissemination model for its work. The influences of major civilizations are presumed to spread outward. Consequently, pueblo dwellers generally will be found between city-states and primitive agriculturists. The model will allow for varying levels of this influence and can thus produce occasional continent arrangements which have no Incan level civilizations. Alternately, it can make a very rich and powerful arrangements, ones which, like 16th-Century Japan, are highly civilized from coast to coast. Competitive Play Though only one player may use and save a position on a particular map disk, competitive opportunities may be created by using 2 of the program disk to make multiple copies of a map disk. Several different players might then explore the same terrain, comparing progress periodically or simply declaring the winner to be the player with the highest totals and title by some agreed upon date. (Note: You can start a new game with a map disk without disturbing a game previously saved to that disk, but you cannot save more than one game on any given disk. <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | Basic Joystick Control Information | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> General - Moving the joystick moves the expedition. Pressing the button while moving changes speed. Pressing the button while at rest produces a options menu. The Exception - Pressing the button while moving at sea sets your course. You may release the joystick and you will continue on course until you move it again to change directions. Pressing the button while sailing on course produces the options menu. In the Options Menu - Moving the joystick up and down moves the highlighted from option to option. Pressing the button selects the highlighted option. In the Transfer Menus - Moving the joystick up and down moves the highlighted from item to item. Moving it right and left transfers quantities of the highlighted item from column to column. The price of items and the amount of gold or goods you have to spend appears at the bottom of the screen. If you are simply transferring resources and not buying or bartering, holding the button down will speed up the process. To leave a transfer menu, push the joystick up until the work "leave" appears, then press your button. <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> | Creating a Map | <=-=*=---------------------------=*=-=> Historical - Boot side 2 of your program disk and follow the instructions as they appear on the screen. Random Continents - Boot side 1 of your program disk and follow the instructions as they appear.