[quick Start Guide]

Quick Start Guide

Overview

In Army System, you are in command of an army of humans, elves, dwarves or orcs. To be successful, you must manage your army and defeat your enemies. You must keep your troops in top condition and recover from losses. A powerful army will be strong in all four aspects of the game: attacking, defending, spying, and counter-intelligence. This makes it important to keep your forces and efforts relatively balanced in all these areas. There are a number of ways to build your army and thus generate more gold and become more powerful: you can get people to click on your Unique Link, giving you an additional soldier each time it is clicked. You can also recruit other people as your officers - for every two soldiers your officers gain from their links, you will gain an extra soldier. You may also buy mercenaries - soldiers that will fight for you but will not generate extra gold.

Getting Started (Creating/Activating your account)

To create an account and establish your presence in the Land of Chaos you must register and activate your username. To do this click the "Register" link in the Menu Bar on the left, fill out the requested information including an email address you have access to. You will then be sent an email with instructions on how to activate your Army System account. Once you've done this, you are ready to log in and command your army. Congratulations! You are now a warlord in Army System.

Menu Bar

The Menu Bar contains most of the important features and tools of Army System. Located on the left of the page, it allows you to navigate through different aspects of your army and manage your forces.

Command Center

The Command Center is where you can see a broad outline of your forces.
User Info shows your general contact information.
Military Overview shows you general military stats, such as what your siege level is at and what fortifications you have. It also shows you how much gold you have and how much you are generating.
Officers that you may have show up under this heading. Officers help build your army, and you may also choose to work with them as close allies.
Military Effectiveness shows you your Attack, Defense, Spy, and Sentry ratings, as well as how you are ranked against other Army System players in these categories. This section shows you how well you are doing and how you stack up to other players in each aspect of the game.
Personnel shows you how your forces are distributed.
Previous Logins gives you the IP addresses and times of the last five logins to your account.
Preferences is where you go to modify the setting on your account. Be very careful in this section - many of the changes here cannot be undone.
Your Recruiting Link is found at the bottom of the Command Center. This is the primary method many players use to build their armies. Give this link to your friends and once per day a person can click it. Each time your link is clicked you will get an additional soldier and the person who clicked it will be invited to become your officer. For every two clicks any of your officers get, you will receive another additional soldier - this means getting officers can be a big way to boost your army size.

Attack

When you wish to venture out beyond the safety of your fortifications, click the Attack button. Here, you will view the Battlefield, a listing of other players ranked near you. The amount of gold in a player's treasury will be displayed if your Spy Rating is much larger than the opponent's Sentry Rating. You can page through the battlefield and search for other armies to attack or spy on. Once you click on a player's name you will see their User Stats, where you can see basic info about the player, any officers the player has, and you can recognize the player as friend, neutral, enemy, alliance member, or ignored if you wish to ignore all messages from them. From the User Stats panel you can choose to send a personal message, or conduct an attack, recon, or sabotage mission.
Attack Mission - If you attack successfully, you will steal a portion of the enemy's available gold based on how many attack turns you used, the damage you inflicted, and the relative sizes of your armies. There is also a chance that you or your opponent will suffer casualties, based on army size and damage inflicted.
Reconnaissance Mission - You can conduct Recon missions to view info about an opponent's fortifications and forces. The chance that the mission is a success is dependant on the overall strength of the spies you send, as well as the enemy's Sentry Rating. If the mission is not a success you will sometimes lose a portion of the spies you sent.
Sabotage Mission - If your opponent has overwhelming defensives or has been relentlessly assaulting you, perhaps you may choose to engage in sabotage. In these missions, when you send a number of spies you specify what type and quantity weapons you want to try to sabotage. If your spies make it past enemy sentries they will attempt to sabotage part of the enemy's armory. If you attempt to sabotage too much of the enemy's armory the sabotage will likely fail, and no sabotage mission is guaranteed to be successful.
Personnel and Military Effectiveness - When you are preparing to attack, you are also shown your army stats again so you can make sure you want to go through with the mission, and in the case of covert missions, how many spies you have to dedicate to the task.

Attack Log

Here you can see details of ingoing and outgoing attacks. This can be a very useful way to see how much offensive and defensive damage you do on average, who you need to try to get protection from, or what armies you have had success with in the past. In your attack log you will see Attacks on You and Attacks on Others, and you will be able to page through the attacks if there are too many to fit on one screen.

Armory

Your Armory is where you keep track of your weapons, and keep them in fighting condition.
Current Weapon Inventory is where you see the weapons you currently own, as well as their strengths. If your weapons are damaged, it is cheaper to repair them than to buy new ones. You can also sell weapons at a reduced rate for gold.
Current Tool Inventory is where you see the tools for sentries and spies that you currently own. You can also sell spy and sentry tools at a reduced rate.
Buy Weapons allows you to purchase new weapons for your forces. In general, the more expensive a weapon is, the stronger it is. Some weapons are unique to your race, while others can be bought by anyone.
Buy Tools allows you to purchase new tools for your spies and sentries, making them much more effective.
Upgrade Fortifications is where you can strengthen your permanent defenses. This makes it much more difficult to be attacked successfully. Fortifications strengthen your defensive units as a whole.
Upgrade Siege Technology allows you to purchase new technologies to attack your opponents. This strengthens your army as a whole.

Training

Personnel shows you how many soldiers, mercenaries, spies, sentries, etc you have.
Train Your Troops allows you train your untrained soldiers to be attack or defense specialists, or to be skilled in the subterfuge of spies and sentries. Here you can also revert any attack or defense soldiers to regular units.
Upgrade Covert Skill makes all of your spies more powerful - it is a very effective way to increase the power of your spies.
Upgrade Unit Production allows you to conscript soldiers from the local populace - each day this number of soldiers will join your forces.

Intelligence

Your intelligence files are similar to your attack log, but they give you details of covert missions from and against you. Here you see details of Intercepted Intelligence Operations as well as Intelligence Files from missions you have conducted.

Mercenaries

On this page you can see the details of your current troops, and you can hire mercenaries. Mercenaries can be hired as attack specialists, defence specialists, or all-purpose troops. Once hired, they cannot be retrained. Mercenaries cannot be spies, and do not contribute to the amount of gold you receive each turn, but they do boost your attack and/or defence strength (depending on what type of training they have). Mercenaries become available for hire at the start of each turn, but their numbers are limited and so there are often none available shortly after that. You can only have 25% of your army consisting of mercenaries.

Buddy List

The buddy list can be used to keep track of people who you recognize as either neutral, friend, enemy, ignored or alliance members. You can recognize players via the drop down on their stats page.

Logout

The Logout option on the menu will log you out from Army System. This is useful if your computer is used by more than one person, to prevent others from accessing your Army System account. If you stop using the site for a length of time, you will be automatically logged out anyway - this is to help reduce the load on the extremely busy Army System webserver.

Messages

The Send Message page is accessed from a user's stats page, by clicking on the Send Message button. You are then presented with a page which has areas for you to enter a subject and a message to be sent to that user.

When someone has sent you a message in this fashion, you will notice the message indicator beneath the main menu will change to show how many new messages you have waiting for you. To read them, simply click on the red number and you will be taken to the Read Messages page. The most recent message will appear at the top of the page, with older messages beneath it in reverse order of receipt. You can use the buttons on the right to Reply to or Delete each message.

Edited for better readability - others can distinguish the different options of the game.

This post has been edited by snlildude87: Mar 21 2005, 03:06 AM