Welcome to the preview of Lords of the Realm II! While there is some on-line help provided in the game
itself, you may find it helpful to print out this text file and read it as you learn how to play. This is far from
a complete manual, but is instead a brief guide to the very basics you will need to get up and running. The
full game will feature far more online help and tooltips when it ships, as well as a full, printed manual.
There are lots of things that you can click on in the game that we do not discuss here if in doubt, click
and see! There are tooltips that will show you what can be clicked on on the side panels in the game just
leave the mouse cursor for a brief moment over whatever you want information about, and a brief description will appear. You can also click on any part of the scrolling map, and a panel will appear telling you
what that area is.
In Lords II, your goal is to become King of the country by defeating all the other lords who also want to
win the crown. In this demo version, there is only one country, with six counties, and one opponent the
Knight. Both you and the Knight begin with one county. The county consists of an area of land, some
fields and industries, some gold, weapons and some peasants, or serfs.
In order to defeat The Knight, you will need to grow your population so that you have enough people so
that you can create and equip an army. Your population and happiness level is shown on the side panel in
the game. The best way to grow your population is to keep them happy! Do this by keeping them well fed
and taxes low. The game will tell you the effect on happiness of your current rationing and tax levels.
In order to feed your people, you will need to grow your food supply which can either be dairy produce,
generated from your herd of cattle or beef, which you obtain by killing some of your herd of cattle. Later
on, you may wish to buy some grain from a merchant, which you can either eat or plant (in the Spring )
but we suggest you NOT do this until you are already comfortable with how to use cattle.
Your cattle herd will soon grow, and may become crowded this will be shown by the number of cows in
the fields on the scrolling map (one shows no crowding, 2 cows per field represent a little crowding, while
3 cows represents over-crowding). Crowding levels affect the birth rates for your cattle the more crowded
they are, the fewer new cattle will be produced. To get over this, you can change the usage of your empty
fields ("fallow fields") into cattle fields. Do this by clicking on the fields on the scrolling map, then
clicking on the new proposed usage.
The main decision you have to make for your county is how to use the people you have: you can have them
farm, or work on industry. Move the slider bar on the sidepanel to move people between farming and
industry. You add tasks for your people to do by clicking on the location on the scrolling map where that
activity takes place:
Blacksmith- Close to your town center
Timber Industry Near forests within your county, if any
Iron Industry Look for the "water-wheel" in your county, if any
Note that changing a field's usage to wheat will "activate" wheat, and the computer will assign people to it;
do not do this unless you intend to plant some wheat! If the labor is available, and you have some grain in
your county, the computer will automatically plant it for you in the Spring IF you have allocated one or
more fields to wheat farming.
The computer will automatically allocate people between different industries for you: it will take all the
serfs you have allocated to farming, and divide them between wheat farming (if any) and cattle farming (if
any). Similarly, if you turn on other industries (which you do by clicking on them on the scrolling map),
the computer will divide your serfs allocated to industry by the number of industries you have activated.
To start with you have just cattle and timber active-- this means that moving the slider bar is simply
reallocating people from cattle-farming to forestry. You can see the expected results of your current labor
allocation on the side-panel: the numbers to the side of the wood icon and the cow icon represent the
number of wood that you will gain next season or the number of cattle you will gain or lose next season.
The game is played in turns, each turn lasting one season. When you click on next turn, the season will
change. When the season is winter, you will be making decisions for the Spring, and when it's Spring,
decisions you make will affect Summer, and so on.
If you are playing a network game against another human, you will both take your turns at the same time.
Building weapons
In order to build weapons, you must activate the Blacksmith. You can choose what weapon to build by
visiting the Blacksmith's shop, which you do by clicking on the weapon icon on the right hand side-panel
(this icon will only appear once you have turned the Blacksmith ON, which you do by clicking on it on the
scrolling map; the Blacksmith is situated close to your county's town center).
All industries are animated on the scrolling map when they are active, and still when they are not. The
faster the animation, the more output the industry is producing. This gives you a good quick visual
indicator of how successful a county is.
You will need resources with which to build the weapons wood or iron. You get the wood from your
forestry industry, and the iron from an iron mine. Your first county does not have an iron mine, but we start
you out with some weapons and some iron. You should try to conquer a second county which does have
some iron as soon as you feel your population is ready.
Raising An Army
You create an army by removing people from your population. You do this by clicking on the armoury
button on the right hand side panel, and then adjusting the slider bar which you will then see, to move serfs
from "peasanting" to soldiering. You may then select any of the weapons you see in your armory and
allocate them to the peasants you have just assigned to the army. When you are happy with your mix of
troop types, click on "Create" and you will be taken back to the scrolling map, where you should find your
new army waiting right by the town center.
You can click on him (you will need to click on the lower half of his body) and then drag some metal balls
out to set his route. You can move him quite a long way in each turn as soon as the numbers run out on
the balls, you will know that he can go no farther that turn. To attack something (like an opponent's army,
town center or industry) move the balls onto the target, and left-click when the ball turns gold. If appropriate, a battle will then result.
Instructions for how to fight the battles are included within the game.
Occasionally you will see a soldier with a red outline in your county's town center. This indicates that a
group of mercenaries are offering you their services. If you want to hire them, click on the armory screen
and you will be shown what they are and how much they will charge. They can be expensive, so be careful
(if you hire them but cannot later pay their wages, they will leave your army!).
The Merchant
You may buy goods from a merchant whenever one visits your county. You will see the merchant wagons
move around the country. Simply click on one when he's in one of your counties to do business with him.
In the final game the merchants will also sell you ale, to keep your serfs happy, but they do not do that in
this demo version. You may also sell goods to the merchant, which can be useful if you need to buy
weapons in a hurry!
Please note that the interface for the merchant screen will change in the final game.
Detailed Options:
You can click on your town center, and will see your serfs allocated in areas which represent their current
tasks. By clicking and dragging a box, you can select these serfs and move them to a different area which
assigns them to a new task. You will see the effect of this on the slider bar and output numbers on the side-panel. This enables you to make more fine adjustments to labor allocation than is possible from just the
slider bar. Once you have used this detailed labor panel, the computer will NOT automatically allocate
labor for you again until you move the slider bar again (this prevents the computer from changing your
decisions when you don't want it to!) The area in the middle is for idle peasants. You will also see idle
peasants sometimes within a task's own area; these serfs are simply not needed by that activity, and can be
put to better use.
We suggest that you do not use this mechanism until you feel comfortable with the slider bar, and even
then you should not need to use it very often (though there will be times!)
Winning
You will win the game when you have defeated the Knight or lose when he has defeated you! A player is
"defeated" when he no longer owns any counties or has an army.
Good luck
Our Suggested First Steps
(You should play the Easy level to begin with)
1. Move the slider bar around to get a feel for how labor allocation affects output in your county.
2. Just stick with timber and cattle until your population reaches about 500 serfs
3. Raise an army of about 150 people when your population reaches about 700 people; arm them with
swords, pikes and bows
4. Then move to conquer the county to your immediate North.
5. Start mining iron, and then activate the blacksmith and start to build some weapons.
6. Consolidate your conquests for a few years, building up a good collection of weapons.
7. When you're ready expand further!
We hope you enjoy the demo!
The Full version of the Game:
The final version of the game will include a choice of many different countries, each with different layouts
and quantities of counties. Some of these countries will be much larger than the one included with this
demo they are best for single players who want a long game. Others are smaller, designed especially for
people who want to play their friends by modem or network. You will be able to play games lasting from
around an hour up to many hours. The setup options will enable you to select how you start the game with a castle or not, with a large population or small, with lots of weapons, resources, gold, an army,
or not.
It will include many more computer opponents, and the ability to fight your friends by modem, or up to 3
other human players by LAN. You will also be able to make treaties with the other players, and they will
make pacts also among themselves.
It will include the ability to build and lay siege to several different types of castle, which will allow you to
build up defences for your best counties.
The full game will play faster (important for those of you who don't have pentiums, we know).
There will be many other smaller features included with the full game when it ships.
