Gotchas for Elder Lands/Atlantis v1
Atlantis 1 does some things very differently, so this page is here to clarify what
those differences are. If you find anything which I've missed, let me know and I'll add it here.
Missing things:
Added to Atlantis since v4/5
- Taxation. In order to tax, you'll need a weapon, and the skill to use it.
The three combat skills are: sword, longbow and crossbow. There is no generic 'combat' skill.
- Unclaimed silver. There is no unclaimed in v1 - your starting guy has
a big pile of cash, and there is no 'claim' command.
- Order checking and templates. I've added a simple order template, which
should keep you out of trouble, but no - they did it tough back in 1993. No comments (although they'll just raise an error), no repeating '@' orders, although the game will repeat your last non-movement order.
- No markets. You can't issue 'buy' or 'sell' orders, since they don't exist.
To recruit men, you'll need to use the 'recruit' command, ie. 'recruit 10' will
recruit 10 men (at $50 each)
- No monsters
- No underworld
- No faction points. Everyone gets 3 mages, and can tax and trade as much as they like.
Different things:
Things which are done differently, and have been improved upon since v4/5
- Starvation is harsher - if you don't have your $10 upkeep you die, with no 1/3 'saving throw'.
- Silver is handled separately to other items, which means that you use the 'pay'
command, instead of 'give X Y silv'
- Regions and directions - everything is N/S/E/W, ie square not hexagonal
- Studying doesn't cost anything
- Magic is fairly different. Study the base skill of magic to level 2, then use the 'research' order to gain spells. A magic skill of level 3 and up will get you hoopier spells when you research.
Introduced bugs (?)
Things which seem broken, and are bugs in either v1 or my conversion
into Python
- Case sensitivity. Orders in upper case seem to have some issues. 'STUDY SWORD',
for example, is known not to work. Please use lower case for the moment ('study sword'),
and I'll let you know when this is fixed.
- Everyone's on the one tiny leetle 8x8 island. Well, not really a bug, but it'll do
for the moment. I could have rewritten map generation, but I thought that getting
a playable game going was more important. If you sail a ship off the end of the world,
the game should create another land mass for you.