QUICK START MANUAL

Circa 7000 is heavily strategic, turn-based war game.  Each side has a squad
to small army-sized force of individual troops, mechs and vehicles doing 
battle on a large, detailed field filled with rivers, swamps, forests, 
buildings and the more sinister trip wires and land mines.  Play occurs 
in 3 powerful, yet intuitive, Phases.  In the first Phase, all the forces 
move with different rules for vehicles and non-vehicles.  In the second, 
forces aim up to three weapons each from their primary or secondary stash.  
All the weapons fire in Phase III.

And that's only the beginning!  Circa 7000 is delivered with all the tools 
used to make the game's forces, terrains and battles!  This include the Game 
Maker for making your own scenarios: pick and place the armies, design the 
battlefield, write up the story and specify how the game will end 
(Destroying/Conquering areas or Casualties alone).   And when that isn't 
enough, use the Customizer to modify the existing forces or design your own 
from scratch!  Design and draw your own forces, weapons and terrain, 
including all the stats and sound, to implement in your own scenarios, time 
periods and themes!  Play is literally unlimited when you start swapping 
these files...

Lastly, you'll never be in want of an opponent.  In addition to in-house play
against others, Circa 7000 also supports computer opponents and Play By Email!
So your opponent can be in your room or around the world!  

All this together means that Circa 7000 may very well be the last strategic 
war game you may ever need...

Requirements:
486SX33 (About the minimum tolerable speed)
4M of Extended Memory (3.2M must be free!)
600K of free Conventional Memory
6M of Disk Space
SVGA 
Mouse

Optional:
Sound Blaster card or 100% compatible.

Getting Started
To start Circa7000, type "C7" on the DOS command line and press enter.  The 
opening screens will appear followed by a screen that gives several choices 
on how to play the game.  If this is your first time, click the left mouse 
button on the FINISHED button at the bottom of the screen.   The next screen 
deals mainly with army setup.  The default is to play the scenario as 
designed, meaning that you will use the setup defined in the scenario.  For 
the first time, play the scenario as designed by clicking the left mouse 
button on the "X" in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.  The other 
choices you could have made would be to add mist, which randomly "grows" on 
the field.  The bottom two choices "Army A (B) familiar with battlefield" 
determines if the battlefield is hidden from the army to begin with.  If you 
are playing the shareware version, you can set up your armies anywhere, but
you must choose the default scenario in order to actually play it.

PHASE ONE
The game starts in Phase I.  The left hand side of the screen is the green 
information bar.  It'll provide most of the information you need throughout 
the game, including who the active force is.  Across the top of the screen 
are four menu bars.  The REPORTS and INFO menus provide valuable information 
that you'll reference at least once each scenario.  

The largest portion of the screen is the battlefield.  To scroll the field, 
you can use the slidebars to the right and bottom of the screen.  
Alternately, and more easily, you can click the right mouse button on the 
field at any point.  That point will then be centered on the screen.  The 
right button can also be used to activate troops.  Simply click on them with 
the right button.  If the force is finished for the phase, then the screen 
will scroll as normal.

To move troops, click the arrow grid to indicate which direction you want 
the force to go.  The options are forward, backward, turn left and turn 
right (as opposed to slide sideways).  This means that in order to move 
right, you must face right by clicking the right arrow and then click on the 
up arrow to move forward.  Alternately, you can use the keypad, where '8' 
is forward, '2' backward, etc.

Each time a force moves, it uses up Movement Points (MPs).  The total number 
of MPs varies from force to force.  Usually, it's one MP to move to each 
adjacent square and 1.25 MPs to move along the diagonal.  The exception is 
moving through more difficult terrain.  To find out about terrain (or 
anything on the board), click it with the left mouse button.  Under movement 
penalty, you'll see a x1, x2, x4 or Impassable.  The first means normal MPs 
of 1 and 1.25 apply.  The x2 (x4) means to move into the square cost double 
(quadruple) the normal number of MPs.  Impassable means no force can move 
into that square.

Vehicles movement is handled a little differently.  Unlike troops and mechs 
which can pivot in place, vehicles have to be moving in order to turn.  
Each turn, you have to specify how far a vehicle is going to move in MPs.  
Each turn, a vehicle can increase its speed by its Acceleration Rate (AR) 
to its top speed and decrease its speed by twice its acceleration rate.  
For example, if a vehicle is moving 20 and has an AR of 6, its speed for 
this turn could be from 8 to 26.  If a vehicle is standing still, then you 
can enter negative numbers to get it to go in reverse.

PHASE TWO
All the weapons are aimed in Phase II.  Determining all the targets first 
allows for better battlefield simulation, where everyone fires 
simultaneously at their own targets instead of taking turns shooting at 
one force until it's gone and then moving onto the next.

Forces can carry Primary weapons (on green buttons) and Secondary weapons 
(gray buttons).  A force can shoot primary OR secondary weapons each turn 
but not both in the same turn.  To aim a weapon, simply choose which one 
you want to fire by clicking on it with the left mouse button and then click 
on the battlefield where you want it to shoot.  A red bead will appear where 
you aimed, then fade.  

There are, of course, a few more factors of which to be mindful.  The first 
is the fire arc of the weapon.  In the info bar, your force will be drawn 
with a number of arcs surrounding it.  These arcs are the fire arcs and can 
be matched to the appropriate weapon by color - the color of the arc will 
match the color behind the weapon picture on the face of the buttons.

The other thing you need to be mindful of is the range of the weapon.  To 
obtain weapon info, click the weapon button with the right mouse button.

PHASE THREE
Phase III is rather simple.  On the bottom of the info bar, a FIRE button 
will appear.  For each weapon that you aimed, you have to press the fire 
button in order to make it fire.  ALL weapons that have been aimed must 
fire.  As in Phases II, you can switch the order of the weapons by 
activating other forces with a right mouse click and by picking other 
weapons with a left mouse click.  

STATS
There's an appreciable number of stats in Circa 7000 associated with 
terrain, weapons and forces.  Here's a highlight of them:

Forces
Movement - Number of squares a force can move per turn.
Vehicle  - Means that a force has special rules for movement.  
     Acceleration Rate - the amount a vehicle can increase its speed each 
     turn.  A vehicle can decelerate at twice this rate.
     Turn Ratio - The maximum number of times a vehicle can change direction 
     movement phase.  The turns are evenly spaced with the minimum space 
     needed to travel before turning increasing as the speed of the vehicle 
     does.
Rammer   - A vehicle defined as a Rammer does double damage when colliding 
     with anything.
Hoverer  - All movement penalties are halved.
Boat     - Must stay completely in terrain defined as water.
Hits     - Once Hits reaches zero, the force is out of commission for the 
     remainder of the battle.
Stealth  - The maximum distance an enemy force can see you from.  If a force 
     has a stealth factor of 10, then an enemy force must be within 10 
     squares to see it.  This can be reduced further if Visibility is 
     reduced (See Visibility Diminished By below).
Shooting Skill - Percent chance a force will hit what it has targeted.
Armor Level/Toughness - The higher this is, the harder it is to be damaged.
Save     - Percent chance that you won't be able to shrug off a hit.  
     If you have a Save factor of 3, then only 30% of the hits will cause 
     damage to that force.

Weapons
Range    - Distance a weapon can shoot.
Strength - Measure this against the Armor Level of a force.  If they are 
     equal, there a 50/50 chance it'll cause damage.  The higher the 
     strength factor, the better chance of causing damage.
Damage   - The maximum amount of damage the weapon can do per square 
     (Explosions can cover more than one square.)
Save     -  Add this number to the Force's Save factor as a modifier.  
     The higher the number, the better the armor piercing ability.

Terrain
Hits - Once this reaches zero, the terrain is considered destroyed.  If it 
     says Inf(inite), then the terrain does not take damage (such as water.)
Movement Penalty - The number of Movement Points it takes to enter this 
     terrain.  If it says Impassable, nothing can enter this square.  The 
     only exception is boats on impassable water.  In this case, the 
     Impassable refers to ground troops.
Dangerous        - Means that the terrain has a chance of inflicting damage 
     to a force that walks across it.  The terrain is actually defined as a 
     weapon, including such stats as Strength, Damage and Save.  Terrain can 
     have variable chances of blowing depending on the size of the force 
     entering it.  This is indicated by the red bar graphs on the terrain 
     description.
Visibility Diminished By - 0% means nothing blocks vision, 100% means you 
     can't see past it.  When looking at an object, add up this stat for 
     all the intervening terrain.  If it totals 100% or more, then 
     visibility is blocked and you won't see what's on that square.  This 
     may also be listed as simply Visibility, in which case the numbers 
     are switched (0% can't see past it, 100% nothing blocks vision).
Firepower Diminished By  - Same as for Visibility, but refers to how far 
     weapons can shoot through intervening terrain.

That's everything you need to know to get started with Circa 7000!!  For 
lots more details, check out CIR7000.MAN.


Questions we're often asked:

How come I've never heard of Boku Strategy Games?
Boku is a new start-up company dedicated to provided high quality, strategic 
computer games.  Boku sets out to challenge its users intellectually and 
creatively by providing tools to allow its games to be totally overhauled 
by the users.

What does Circa 7000 provide that let's me change the game?
The registered version of Circa 7000 provides the two utilities we used in 
creating all the artwork and stats for the game.  The first is called The 
Game Maker.  This allows you to change and create all the scenarios, 
including drawing the battlefield, picking and placing armies, writing the 
story and defining how the battle ends (Occupy/Destroy an Area or by 
Casualties).   The second major utility is called The Customizer.  It allows 
you to work with the building blocks of Circa 7000 (C7).  This includes 
drawing the forces/terrain/weapons and assigning all the stats.  You can 
change the ones that come with the game or build your own from scratch!  
This program also lets you change the sounds and even the colors.  C7 is 
made to be changed - whether you want to sail the high seas fighting pirates 
or grub around the tunnels of a post-apocalyptic world!

Why are the game files so large?
All the game files are plain text.  It could have been encoded and made into 
small nice packets, but in keeping with the Open Architecture theme, 
everything is laid out to make it easy to change using any text editor.  
The files may be large, but compress upwards of 96% using any compress (such 
as PKZIP).  So transporting these files isn't an issue.

What about the explosions and other pictures in the game.  Do you provide 
tools to change those?
No, we don't.  That's because we wanted to leave some hacking up to the 
user.  All the pictures and explosions are labeled in 7000pics.dat.  Using 
that and the palette file, you should be able to figure out how to change 
these.

Where can I find more scenarios and game files?
The registered C7 includes another 10 ready-to-be-played scenarios.  In 
addition, everyone is encouraged to upload their new forces to their favorite 
BBS's and FTP sites.  The "Official" FTP site of C7 is ftp.indirect.com in 
the /pub/rpg/Circa7000 directory.  Please upload all your latest creations 
there and feel free to download what you can find!

What kind of variety does C7 offer?
Circa 7000 allows you to define up to 320 different terrain squares, 
50 different forces employing 32 different color schemes and 40 different 
weapons.  All of which can be replaced and changed as you like.

How come I can't get the sound to work?
Circa 7000 works with Sound Blasters and compatibles.  C7 first reads the 
BLASTER= setting in your CONFIG.SYS.  If that isn't set, it'll read the 
SOUND.CFG in your C7 directory.  EDIT this file and change the numbers to 
match your system (it's very self-explanatory).   

C7 loads in the CT-VOICE.DRV driver to play the sound.  If you still can't
get the sound to work, replace this file with the one that came with your
sound card (it may go by a different name.)

On some computers, I get "Video Card Not Recognized".  Which cards are?
There is no industry-wide standard on implementing SVGA yet.  Circa 7000
will work on the following twenty Super VGA cards:  Acumos, Ahead, 
ATI Technologies, Avance, Chips and Technologies, Cirrus Logic, Everex, 
Genoa, MXIC, NCR, Oak Technologies, Paradise/Western Digital, Primus, 
Realtek, Trident, Tseng Labs, Video 7 and the VESA standard.  If your video
card doesn't fit into one of these, please tell me what kind of card you 
have so I can look into supporting that as well.

Does it work under Windows 95?
Yep.

Why am I able to beat the computer?  After all it can process...
There's a reason all our Generals are human!  The shear amount of data that 
the computer has to enormous!  Especially when you consider all the 
different situations that have to be considered with the Customizer and 
Game Maker in people's hands.  If C7 came with a limited number of scenarios 
that nobody could change, then the AI could be set up to whip you every time.  Instead, we took the general approach to battlefield and designed the AI to fight on any battlefield that could be dreamed up, but not designed to fight on any one type of battlefield.  Ask me about Email games.

What about Email games?
Circa 7000 was designed to be play against other people!  Realizing that you 
don't always have someone in-house ready to play, we implemented Play By 
Email.  At the end of the turn, you're prompted for a file name.  The game 
then compresses and text-encodes this file before quitting.   Send this file 
to your opponent anyway you want - 3.5" disk, via modem or send it off 
through Email.  Since the file is already text-encoded, there's no need to 
modify the file.  The compression will save time (and money if you pay for 
E-mail by the K).  Bottom line is that Circa 7000 can be played with anyone 
around the world!

I can't seem to get the Email option to work.
That's because you have the shareware version.  When you register Circa 7000, 
you are able to Play By Email, save games and play scenarios other than 
those included.  In addition, you get the Customizer and Game Maker and 
small ripper program that disassembles scenarios, allowing you to reuse the 
various parts.

Lastly, how do I order a registered copy of Circa 7000?
Good question.  Without the past support of people who registered, Boku 
wouldn't be around today.  Circa 7000 can be registered for $35US.  This 
include all postage, handling and taxes.  Fill out the order form located 
in ORDER.TXT and send it to:

Boku Strategy Games
PO Box 2181
El Segundo, CA 90245-1281

For faster response, fax the order form to Boku Strategy Games at:

(310) 376-9368   or
(800) 535-7068

If you neither of these are good for you and you live in North America, call 
one of the above numbers and leave your name, number and a time you can be 
reached.  Your call will be returned to take your order by credit card.  
All orders are shipped within two days. Boku accepts checks, Money Orders, 
Mastercard and Visa.  For more details, see ORDER.TXT.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line!  I'm 
always happy to talk about Circa 7000!  You can write to me at the above
address or, more quickly, send me E-mail at cooney@ix.netcom.com.  I'm
looking forward to hearing from you!  In the meantime, enjoy Circa 7000
and please upload this shareware version to all your favorite BBS's and 
FTP sites!

Michael Cooney
Boku Strategy Games
