NAME
BalanceOfPower::Manual - Instructions to play
SCENARIO
Balance Of Power throws you in an alternative universe. The year is the 1970 and the nations are the same from Balance of Power videogame, but superpowers don't exist so global politics is very different.
As in our universe, every nation just wants to prevail on the others, be rich, help his friends and kill his enemies. Every turn, all of them do many action to reach these objectives, making the world a dynamic and dangerous place.
The role of the player IS NOT to be involved by nations to aid them with politics, because in XXI century we all now that the real power lays in the shadows and uses money to manipulate the world. BoP player is a plutocrat, he buys and sells stocks coming from the nations and gain from the fluctations of their wealth. To obtain better results he can influence poltical decisions.
OBJECTIVE OF THE GAME
Your objective is to gain from the stock market as much money as you can.
THE STOCK MARKET
Every nation has a number of stocks, based on its dimensions. The value of a stock is the w/d (wealth for dimension) value that the nation had the previous turn.
Italy
===
Area: Europe
Export quote: 50
Government strength: 60
Internal situation: Peace
Italy is free
Size Prod. Wealth W/D Growth Disor. Army Prog. Pstg.
2 150 155 38.75 1.03 9.44 8 0 2
In this example Italy stock's value is 38.75The player can buy and sell stocks of any nation. Considering that w/d change from turn to turn because of the actions of the nation, a good timing with these two actions can give a great gain.
STOCK COMMANDS
Here are the commands you can use to manage your stock
buy X NATION
Allow you to buy X stocks from nation.
sell X NATION
Allow you to sell X stocks of nation.
Buy and sell commands, when typed, are just registered. They will be executed when the turn will be elaborated. In that moment they can fail for many reasons.
show stock orders
List all the orders registered for the next turn
empty stock orders
Erase all the stock orders registered
remove stock orders NATION
Erase all the orders issued about NATION
market
Give back statistics about the market for every nation
show stocks
Give back informations about the stocks owned by the player
stockevents TURN
Display all the events about the player for the given TURN. If no TURN is given events are about the previous.
WAR AND WAR BONDS
When a nation is at war it creates war bonds every turn. If you own stocks of the nation you have to buy on of them if you have the money to afford it. At the end of the war, if the nation won it, you'll have back your money doubled. If the nation lose, you'll lost them all.
CIVIL WAR
You can't execute operations about stocks of a nation during its civil war. YOu can't buy them and you can't sell them. When the civil war is finished, if rebels win, all the stocks owned vanish.
INFLUENCE AND CONTROL
Every time you buy stocks from a nation you obtain influence on it. You can spend influence to order a nation to do something. When you control a nation you can access all the commands a nation can use during the turn.
CONTROL COMMANDS
control NATION
If you have influence on NATION this command make you control it. The prompt changes a little.
[Player One, Money: 767.5, Influence: 3. Turn is 1976/2]
Controlling Italy (Int:87.5 Exp:87.5 Prtg:1 Army:8)
(Italy [3]) ? All the resources available for the nation are displayed. In control mode you can select nations to display their statistics and give orders.
Here are all the orders available:
DIPLOMATIC PRESSURE ON
REBEL MILITARY SUPPORT
ADD ROUTE
DELETE TRADEROUTE
MILITARY SUPPORT
RECALL MILITARY SUPPORT
AID INSURGENTS IN
DECLARE WAR TO
MILITARY AID FOR
ECONOMIC AID FOR
TREATY NAG WITH
BUILD TROOPS
PROGRESS
BOOST PRODUCTION
RECALL REBEL MILITARY SUPPORT
LOWER DISORDER
TREATY COM WITHclearorders
In Contro mode this command erase a command issued for controlled nation
uncontrol
Stop control
show control orders
List all the control orders issued for controlled nations
TRAVEL
The player has a position in the world. To change the position you have to travel to another country.
go NATION
The go command move you to NATION. Moving to a nation cost movement points. See the cost of travels in the section about travels command.
travels
This report gives you available travels and their cost. Rules are:
All the countries that have border with the one you are in can be reached by ground with a cost of 2 TU.
All the countries that have a trade route with the one you are in can be reached by air.
Cost of air travel is a number of TU as the distance from the country (country on border: 1TU)
You can't travel by air if one of the countries on the path is involved in a war
THE SHOP
Every country has a shop with five types of objects. The price of every type is based on a characteristic of the country. Higher is the characteristics, lower the price.
goods depends on production
luxury depends on wealth
arms depends on army
tech depends on progress
culture depends on prestige
You can buy them in the country as long as you have money and hold to do that. You can try to earn money buying where the price is low and selling where it's high
sbuy X TYPE
Buy at the shop of the country X units of TYPE
ssel X TYPE
Sell at the shop of the country X units of TYPE
prices NATION
Show the prices of the NATION
cargo
Show your cargo
REPORTS
You can display many reports to decide how to manage your stocks.
GENERAL REPORTS
Here is a list of the reports you can see about general situation.
crises
wars
alliances
influences
hotspots
war history
treaties
situation [ORDERBY]
supports
rebel supports
distance [NATION1]-[NATION2]Writing a turn or an year you can obtain events happened then.
NATION REPORTS
You can select a nation naming it. Then you can retrieve many reports about it. If you want a nation report without selecting the nation just write the name of the nation before the report.
borders
near
relations
events [TURN or YEAR]
status
history
plot [VARIABLE]If you want to cancel nation selection type clear.
TURN
When you have finished with stock orders and control orders just type turn. This way a new turn will be elaborated, your orders executed (if possible) and all the values of the stocks will change, with profit or loss for your wallet.
SAVE
Typing save FILENAME you can dump the present situation to a file. Launching the game with
bop-perl load FILENAMEyou can load it and start playing from the point you leaved.