War of Nations Instruction Manual

Note: this manual is a bit out of date, but it should give you the basics.

Index

The Basics of the game

Territories

Ranks

The Army

Movement

The Capitol & Sieges

Spying

Battles

Dragons

Merchants

Basics

War of Nations: Land of the Dragons is an online multiplayer game of conquest. The goal of the game is for you to help your Nation to dominate all of the other Nations. The Land of the Dragons is a land where nations gathered their kinsmen, sharpened their swords, and set sail from their native shores bound for glory, booty, and bloodshed wherever they could find it.

The game board is composed of a map of the Drakamir world. The map is divided into sub-sections called territories. Each territory is owned by whoever can dominate it through military conquest, and then defend it against the onslaught of enemies. A player gains income in the form of tribute from the territories that he owns, and can then spend this income to recruit soldiers for his army.

When one Nation controls 40% of the territories on the map, or when one Nation controls 40% of the marketplaces, or when one Nation controls 2 of each type of dragon egg, the game will end. These victory conditions are changed from time to time, and what you read here may no longer be accurate - ask your teammates what the victory conditions are if you want to make sure.

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Territories

At the outset of the game the natives of the region own all of the territories. These natives have something of an organized defense force that will fight any invaders that attempt to conquer them. Once a native force has been beaten, the territory will thereafter remain in the hands of the player until the game ends or another player captures it.

Territory Value

When a player owns a territory, he will receive money in the form of tribute from the native people. The amount of money that he receives is dependent on the number of improvements that have been made to the territory. The value of a territory is displayed by the icon that represents the territory on the map. The map legend gives a breakdown of the value of each map icon.

Territories vary in value from 100 gold pieces up to 450 gold pieces. A territory without any improvements is worth 100 gold pieces. For each improvement that has been made, the value of a territory goes up by 50 gold pieces. Additionally, with each improvement that is made, the number of men available to be recruited into your army goes up. Additional recruitable men are placed in each territory once per day, and income is received from each territory every 15 minutes (the overall value of a territory is how much income you receive in a 24 hour period). Only a player that owns a territory may make improvements to it. Clicking on the link for any territory will lead to a page that details the improvements that have been made to that territory. To make improvements to a territory, click on any link that leads to any territory that you own. Improvements take 48 hours to complete and only one improvement may be worked on at a time. Once an improvement is complete, you will begin receiving the extra income from the improvement. Territories can also lose improvements. Anytime that a territory is attacked and conquered, one improvement will be destroyed in the battle. The number of improvements to a territory has no impact on whether or not the territory contains a marketplace. Territories containing marketplaces do not cease to contain marketplaces even if they lose all of their improvements.

Defending Territories

The value of a territory also impacts the effort that defending warriors will put into the defense of the territory when they are attacked. Essentially, the more valuable a territory, the harder soldiers will fight to defend it. It is also assumed that soldiers that are permanently stationed in a Territory will erect some sort of crude defensive position. Therefore, garrisoned troops receive a defensive bonus (randomly ranging from 20-80%) when attacked. If your army is located in a territory when it is attacked, the army and the garrison will join together to defend your holdings. Also, if your army is in a territory that belongs to another member of your nation when it is attacked, your army will fight to defend it.

To defend a territory, you must recruit soldiers and station them in the territory as a defensive garrison. This garrison will defend the territory anytime that it is attacked. In addition to protecting the territory from outside aggressors, a garrison is needed to suppress the local population. If a territory is left completely undefended for more than a few hours, the natives will rise up in rebellion and recapture their territory.

In addition to recruiting soldiers directly for the territory (which you can do from the 'Territories' page), you can also move soldiers from your army into the defensive garrison of a territory. To do this, your army must be located in a territory that you own. You will then see a link in the 'Current Location' section of your 'Army Headquarters' page.

Fortifications

It is also possible for you to build fortifications to increase the defensive abilities of your garrison. There are 3 levels of fortification and each of them require that the territory have certain technologies already in place before they can be built (these are specificed below). The fortification itself has no inherent defensive score. In essence, a wall is only as good as the men standing on it. A wall without any defenders will not kill any attackers. The more men that are stationed in the garrison of the territory, the more benefit you will receive from the wall. The fortification simply multiplies the defensive abilities of your soldiers. Each fortification type exists entirely independently of the others. You do not have to build a lighter one before you can build a stronger one, and there is no 'upgrade' type of system wherein you would get a discount on the next level of fortification if you already have the previous one. A territory may only have one type of fortification in place. However, it is possible to have one type of fortification in place while a different one is being constructed. In this scenario, at the exact moment that the new fortification is completed it will completely replace the old fortification (meaning that the old one will essentially just evaporate and be gone forever). If you are the owner of a territory, you have the option of destroying any fortification that exists. Doing so will allow you to recover a portion of the value of that fortification. The fortification types and details:

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Ranks

As a player of the game, you are on your own to do as you please. Go where you want, attack who you want, and spend your money as you see fit. This is how it works for everyone. However, you are a member of a team - your Nation. As such, you are assigned a rank within your Nation that is dependent on your overall score. Once each day your score is modified based upon what you have done in the game. After everyone's score has been modified, ranks are reassigned. The players with the top scores receive the highest ranks. Your score can go up or down depending on what you do, and so can your rank. Many different aspects of your game play are considered in computing your score. The main emphasis is on being a successful military leader and merchant.

These are the ranks, in order from lowest to highest:

• Peasant
• Squire
• Seargeant
• Knight
• Champion
• General

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The Army

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Movement

Army Movement

You roam the countryside with a body of armed warriors. When you move to a new space on the map, your army moves with you. You may move two spaces for each turn in which you are moving over land. You are allowed to move two spaces each turn if you are moving over water. Water is considered something of a free zone, where Merchants can travel without worrying about enemies that may be in the space before them. Armies, on the other hand, cannot move into a water (or land) space that contains an enemy army.

Merchant Movement

Your Merchants move around the map at a faster rate than your Army. They are allowed to move three land spaces per turn, and four water spaces. Like your Army, your merchants may only move into land Territory that is owned by another member of your Nation.

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Spying

Three times each turn you may send spies into any territory that is within your Regional Map on your 'Army Headquarters' page. This Regional Map depicts the area within which your army can deploy its agents. The primary purpose of spying is to determine the strength of enemy armies. Generally, the number of soldiers stationed in a nearby garrison would be known to the local peoples and you can find out this information simply by clicking on the `See More Info About It` button on your 'Army Headquarters' or 'Merchant Headquarters' page. However, armies on the march could sometimes travel through a countryside almost completely undetected. Therefore, you must send spies out in order to find out the exact size of an army. Spies can also tell you if a territory contains any Merchants of a foreign nation.

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Battles

Battles are fought whenever you attack the defenders of a territory (from your 'Army Headquarters' page). If you attack a territory that contains an army, that army will join with the defensive garrison of the territory to repel your assault. If the territory that you attack contains more than one army, you will fight each of those armies separately. If you defeat them all, you will assume control of the territory.

Victory Determination

Battles are waged through a mathematical calculation. Each Attack Point that your army has (determined by the number and type of soldiers that you have) is multiplied by a random number and these are then added up to form an Attack Score. The defender's Defense Score is calculated the same way, except using the number of Defense Points that they defending force has. Whoever has the highest score wins the attack.

Casualties

The number of casualties that an army suffers is directly related to the value of the territory that is being attacked. The soldiers of the defending force will fight only as hard as they feel that they must in order to retain their dignity. Therefore, an army that is defending a very important trading center or large city may fight to the death, until every last man has exhaled his last breath. On the other hand, a force that is defending some ice-covered chunk of rock deep in the mountains of Finland will make a valiant stand, but will surrender after suffering only 50% casualties.

Conversely, when your army attacks a territory, they will attack with the level of ferocity and commitment that they feel is warranted for the prize that they are seeking. In attacking that ice-covered chunk of rock, they would only fight until they had suffered 50% casualties, and then retreat. When launching a glorious assault on a major enemy city, on the other hand, they may not stop until every last man has met his death on the battlefield.

The number of casualties that the victorious army suffers in a battle is based on the fighting strength of your warriors compared to that of the men that they have fought. In general, the greater the Attack Strength of your average soldier, the fewer casualties you will have. To illustrate: A Heavy Infantryman, clad in chain mail and wielding a battle axe with a sharp longsword as backup will have a much more devastating effect on your enemy than a man armored by nothing more than cloth and fighting with a simple spear. The more of these stronger soldier types you have, the fewer casualties you will suffer.

End Results

If you attack a territory and drive out the enemy, your army moves into the territory and it becomes yours. Any soldiers belonging to the defensive garrison of the province that did not die in the battle surrender and swear fealty to you. They remain as the defensive garrison, but are now under your command. You may leave them as the garrison, or add them to your army (using the link in the 'Current Location' section of your 'Army Headquarters' page).

If, on the other hand, you attack and your soldiers retreat, they will return to the territory from which the attack was launched.

If your Army is in a territory when it is attacked, and they are overrun, your soldiers will retreat to the nearest friendly territory and regroup. If there are no friendly territories nearby, they will, by default, flee to the most strongly defended territory owned by your Nation (referred to as the Nation's Stronghold, which may belong to one of your teammates). If you wish, you may designate a different location that you wish your soldiers to retreat to by clicking on the Alter Account tab in the game. There is also the possiblity that your Army may be routed. If your Army is defeated and the attacker has an attack score that is more than 6 times greater than your defense score AND your Army is composed of fewer than 1,000 soldiers, your army will automatically flee to your Nation's Stronghold regardless of where they are on the map.

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Dragons

It was a time of peace and prosperity. The dragons cultivated and maintained peace in the land with the mortal nations through a delicate weave of magic. Suddenly, the magic began to fade and the weave began to unravel. Sensing this, the dragons began to falsly accuse each other of hoarding the magic in an effort to become more powerful. Thus began the Dragon Wars. Little did they know, but Drakamir was changing with it. It did not take long for most of the remaining magic to fade from the land causing chaos to erupt. As the Dragon Wars began, the many nations of Drakamir also took up arms against each other. It was a time of chaos and destruction. Homes were destroyed, fields burned, and buildings leveled. Drakamir was changing into a land of mercenaries, pirates, and villains. Many of the inhabitants agreed to offer sacrifices of enemy prisoners to the dragons in return for magical bonuses from what was left of the weave. The struggle continues on.

In the game, you will sometimes take a captive following a battle (if you do, you will receive a message on the 'Battle Summary' page). However, not every battle will result in the taking of a captive. Captives may then be offered as a sacrifice to the Dragon of your choice. You can give a sacrifice by clicking on the link to the 'Dragons' page and then clicking on the appropriate button below a Dragon.

You may offer sacrifices to any of the Dragons, and all of them will reward you for your deed. However, in order to maintain the blessings of a Dragon, you will have to continue to give them sacrifices. If you do not, they will slowly begin to forget about you, just as you have forgotten about them, and your blessings will decrease. Each Dragon can offer you different bonuses.

Raetchen the Red Dragon, Master of Battle

Worshippers of Raetchen receive bonuses to attacks.

Silreno the Silver Dragon, Provider of Protection

Worshippers of Silreno receive bonuses to defense.

Jiptbar the Gold Dragon, Guide to Prosperity

Worshippers of Jiptbar receive bonuses to their income.

Vaqir the Blue Dragon, Bringer of Wind

Worshippers of Vaqir receive bonuses to movement on water.

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Merchants and Trade Goods