Readme for Underdark
by Mr. Temba
email mrtemba@yahoo.com
webpage http://members.xoom.com/Mr_Temba/

If you want to be totally surprised by everything you might want to skip most of this....

SPECIAL THANKS TO --

My playtesters, Cam "Cam" Hills, Carl "Gothmog" Fritz, Tatu "Stefu" Aphonnen, Jerry "Wizard" Newhouse...

THE UNDERDARK
This is my most abitious project to date. It is also my best. A lot of the artwork you will see is mine, some of it made from scratch. The tribes all have thier own unique units and abilites. A huge events file makes the scenario enjoyable for many hundreds of years...even after the real game is over.

FOR THE PLAYER
You are meant to play as the surface people. All the events and stuff are goaled for you as the surface people, there is nothing wrong with playing as any other tribe (the monsters might get dull, but it is possible) but the events and advice will seem strnge Also the humans tend not to really invade like the player is supposed to.

That brings me to your goal : Invade every square foot of the underdark. Totally destroy all the other races. Leave no trace of thier civilizations. They are evil, they must go, you are the holy fire.

see the other documents....

techtree.txt	
	has the entire text tree stored in it, I used this file when I was making the scenario to keep track of everything. It doesn't have what units and stuff you get with each advance, but thats all in the pedia anyway. 


credits.txt
	credits for all the sound, artwork, ideas and everything else in the scenario.

STARTING OUT...

(this is sort of a strategy section)

When you begin out you can make 6 units, farmers, warriors, rogues, mages, priests, galleons. The mages are the attacking air units, the warriors are the ground attack, priests are defend, rogues are explorers (diplomatic unit), and galleons are transport. Farmers are pretty bad settling units. You also have one special unit, a Mage Voyer. In the course of the game you will be able to build these too. They are carrier type units and might be useful if you want to coordinate air and land assaults.

Your first path of conquest should be the small kua-toa outpost to the immeadiete north. Four cities that won't put up much resistance await you. After that go east to the continent of the goblins. This is a bit trickier. The goblins raided you while you were on the surface, but now they are on the defensive. They have no boats, so your home cities are safe from them. But when they say goblin horde, they aint kiddin. Goblins have four special units, archers that defend the cities (attacking with mages is not reccomended), warriors that attack invading forces, farmers that settle the land and move quickly and quiety. And also they have the goblin savages, they are very cheap missile type units that can even wear heros down after about 10 of em. You have to really dig in to hold ground against the goblins.

Also when you start you will notice that a lot of the terrain is rubble. This is because you just fell through the ceiling. You can quickly change it into a dirt floor, or you can wait until engineers and transform it into a surface town. Its your choice. Rubble is a strategically AWFUL terrain.

After that it really gets fun....I'll let you find out....

Some tips...

-Dirt Floors suck, use the deep gnomes to turn them into Tiled Floors.

-Many cities with wonders are strategic points...take it out and laugh at its owners!

-Trade can be INCREDIBLY profitable! Use the traders, carry it halfway up the map!

NON CIV PEOPLE...

The "tribes" that really arent represented by any one civ include...

The Gibberling Horde
Gibberlings are black furry humanoids that attack in huge swarms. On the surface they weren't much of a problem, they only came rarely and when they did you scared them off with fire. Now its a bit trickier.... When you (or any civ) researches Gibberlings you can switch to the horde, ie make yourself a part of it. This is a fundamentalist type government. Beware though, there are rogues in every nation and the gibberlings are no exception....

Kobolds,
weaker cousins of goblins, kobolds are good burrowers but not very strong. That is why everyone except the surface people and the goblins have enslaved them to act as settlers. Kobolds are better than surface Farmers but not much, they are not as good as urds, goblin farmers, or deep gnomes. Urds are flying kobolds, they can cross oceans and even raise terrain out of it, of course the AI don't do this.

Svirfneblin
The gnomes of the underdark. They are the only other good race down here! We must get thier help because they are the best builders in the underdark. They are the only race that put more into arts and crafts than war. Sadly they are now in a pitiful state. They turn to us as thier allies. When we contact them (through research) we can build Deep Gnomes instead of farmers. No other race can do this. THere is a bad thing about deep gnomes, if the illithids catch them....well I'll let you find out.


ADVANCING...
(The tech tree)

Certain units that are "advanced" units are only available to the Surface People, these include Mage Voyers and Deep Gnomes. I did this with some tech tree tricks. Check it out! Also some units are only available to the "native" races of the underdark. All of the improvements can be built by everyone except the Inferno of the ghouls. There are no wonders of the world to be gained by tech tree.


SPECIAL UNITS...

Heroes/Priestesses/Liches, etc.. - Unique units that pop up in the Surface People, Drow, and Ghoul cities respectively. They are powerful but not unbeatable.

Drizzt, Brain Golem, Rex Mundi, Skum- the only four truly unique units in the game. Each comes to the owner from a special events trigger. All three are very powerful and can cause repercussions to its native race when it dies.

The Archaics -- Suprise, I'll let you find out!

Lizard Riders -- Humans only, you must trigger the arrival of these units by exploring the underdark and expanding (butchering) your way through the caves and lakes.

WONDERS....

There are only a few wonders of the world to start out with. To begin with you have two happy wonders, the Purity of Essensce (Oracle) and Royal Heirlooms (Shakespeares). The other wonders are scatterd around the underdark and most become obsolete when you capture them! All in all there aren't many wonders, I decided that wonders are for the most part unbalancing attributes in a scenario. Giving one civ the hanging gardens but not another could destroy thier ability to produce units and result in them being ovverrun (it happened while I was playtesting!). 

POLLUTION...(REBELLION)

I decided to handle pollution in a totally new way. The factory is now slaves...ok...and the manufacturing plant is the slavemaster...with me still? The two no pollution improvements are the pit..to toss garbage in...and the slaves rec.... makes slaves happy. see? But when there is too much unhappiness amongst the slaves than they start having rebel meetings. You have to put them down with your gnomes/farmers/urds. If this gets out of hand then there will be a giant revolution! The underdark will be covered with tiled floors(thier new hideouts) and poision gas (thier weapons). 

PARTISANS....(CARRION WORMS)

Partisans are sort of unique in this scenario. You cannot build them, but once you get Garbage Pits they pop up when your cities are invaded. The idea is that the carrion worms that live in the pits come out to eat the dead bodies after combat. Loyalists hiding in the fields catch them and train them to take the city back. 


THE OTHER CIVS


THE ILLITHIDS (mind flayers)

The illithids are brain sucking monsters that are psychicallty powerful. They have four unique units. The Illithid is the attack unit and is very strong, the Ullitharid or Illithid noble is the defense unit. The Kezreth is the naval unit, it is the strongest naval unit in the game. And the Abductor is the air unit, the strongest air unit in the game. Abductors are a real bitch to fight because they beat almost anything on attack and very few units can attack them. Recently there was a bit of cease fire between them and the ghouls. The elder brain (thier god) wants them to respark this....

THE DROW  (dark elves)

The dark elves area society based around worship of the Spider Queen, Lloth. The priests and priestesses are the most powerful figures in drow society. The wizards have a special curse, when they fail they are transformed into Driders. Centaur is to horse as Drider is to spider. Nasty things. This effectively also gives the drow wizards 2 lives. The drow have a special Priestess unit that pops up every once in a while. 

THE GHOULS  (undead)

Whenever a drow warrior or a human anything dies the ghouls take the body and make a ghoul unit. The ghouls have strength in numbers with thier Ghouls and Ghasts and can attack and defend well with thier Shadow Ghouls and Hanged Men. The ghouls have the special undead wizard, Lich, that pops up every once in a while. It is rarer than the Priestess or the Hero. 

THE GOBLINS

The goblins are the only race that the surface people recognize. The surfacers and the goblins are old enemies. Now they both have a chance to destroy each other. The goblins have no boats but they do have the goblin savage. It is a destroyed on attack unit that can wear down invaders until the warriors cut em up. If the goblins are seriously invaded they may have to rely on the mercenary tribe, the Headhunters.

THE KUA-TOA  (fishmen)

Long ago the Kua-Toa lived on the surface world. But they were enslaved by the surface people and the survivors fled below. Now they are a confused and partly insane race. They worship the Sea Mother and one of thier big cities is built on a giant sea monster! If this city is taken they will lose the sea mothers support. The Kua-Toa are amphibious, and ride around on the locathah.

THE SURFACE PEOPLE (humans)

They don't want to be down here but the earthquake has also given them a chance to kill all this evil. For they are the holy fire, the evil of the underdark must be conquered! Every once in a while a Hero unit comes from the capital. After some conquests they will be able to make the Amazon units that are better than the normal Warriors.

THE MONSTERS

The typical mystery civ. The slave drivers, rogue gibberlings, and dissident humans are all controlled by this civ. Don't play as them for a serious game, and don't try to invade Hell.



Problems I ran into.....

1) Getting units to show up on the civilopedia. 
	I would like for every unit to show up on the civilopedia. But that just ain't gonna happen. I tried setting every unique tech to "nil, no" but then I discovered that means it can be traded and stolen. I tried making every unit unique to a civ with obsolescencse, but that just made all thier units obsolete at the wrong times, and double obsolescensce is not possible. Eventually I had to give up, you can still see any unit in the science advisor unit section.

2) Certain Units....
	Specifcially the Human Rogue, Drow Warriors and Goblin Warriors can only exist when they have a movement rate of 1. If that is changed, the unit becomes unmmakable. Why this is I don't know but it is a problem because I would like all of those units to have 2 for movement. 

3) FW Skip Down Editor Bug
	This sometimes changes the obsolescensce of Heart of the Revenant. I don't think it has any real effect, but Revenant should never become obsolete.

If anyone can fix those problems, let me know.