====== How to play River Oath ====== New to the game? After this page, read the [[riveroath:strategy|strategy guide]]. ===== Starting ===== Choose **New campaign** on the title screen, then a beginning: * **Low Water** (Year 1): six small bands, each with a leader, two or three companions and one place. * **The Third Warning** (Year 6): larger bands with two places each, stronger garrisons and weaker dikes. Then say how many people play (none to four), let each player choose a different leader, and choose **Easy**, **Normal** or **Hard**. The computer leads every band nobody chose. ===== The month ===== Each turn is a month. Each month your band gives **one task to each place it holds, and one more where its leader is**. Choose a place on the map with the arrow keys or a click, press **Enter**, pick a task and who does it, check the preview (what it costs, the chance, what happens) and confirm. Each person does one task a month. **Tab** finds the places still waiting; **E** ends the turn. ^ Task ^ What it does ^ | Travel | Go to a linked place, alone or with everyone free there | | Gather rice | Might x 4 rice (more at fishing places in spring and summer, half in winter) | | Trade | Buy or sell rice in tens, or buy boats, at a town, ferry, lock or the river mouth | | Build a boat | Craft 4 or more and 10 silver | | Recruit | Ask a free wanderer (or your own prisoner) to join; 5 silver whether or not | | Raise men | Where you hold the place or have goodwill 40; 1 silver a man | | Train | Raise the band's drill | | Help the town | Give rice or silver for goodwill and a tale of kindness | | Repair the dike | Spend rice to mend a dike | | Steal evidence | At an official's seat; Craft 5 or more; risky | | Sway an official | Turn an official with silver, and evidence | | Expose an official | Read out your evidence where goodwill is 60 or more | | Petition the court | The leader, at Jade Lock, with the proof and the people behind you | | Spread a tale | Gossips only: a tale of kindness, slander against another band, or silence a tale | | Scout | See who and what is at the places next door | | Raid | Attack a garrison or another band here or next door | | Treat with a band | A pact, a gift of silver, or ask a smaller band to join yours | | Rest | Heal a wound | Every 10 men and every person eat 1 rice a month. Without rice, men leave and loyalty falls. Places you hold pay rice in the ninth month and silver in the twelfth, more where people think well of you. ===== The river ===== Boats go **two links downstream** in a month but only one upstream, and each traveller needs a boat. The seasons change the routes: * **Spring:** the flood channels through the marshes open; the fords are under water. * **Summer:** storms may close the river at a place for a month. * **Autumn:** the fords are open; the upper streams are too low for boats going up. * **Winter:** the upper river freezes and can be walked. Press **Enter** (or **P**) on a place outside your turn to see its links this month, and why any is closed. ===== Tales and goodwill ===== What you do becomes a **tale**. Tales travel one link a month downstream, and upstream or by road every second month, and they fade with distance and time. Tales of kindness and daring raise a town's goodwill toward your band; cruelty and slander lower it. Press **V** for the Tales view of the map, and **T** for the tales told at a place. The Intendant's criers spread slander about the band people like best, and the Tolls Supervisor silences good tales near her toll gate. ===== The dikes and the Great Flood ===== Every dike decays a little each month, more in summer, and the Intendancy never mends them. Repair them with rice. A summer storm may break a dike below 20; the **Great Flood** breaks every dike below 50, flooding its place and the next one downstream. **V** twice shows the Dikes view. ===== The officials ===== ^ Official ^ Seat ^ What they do ^ | Pan Shoulu, River Intendant | Jade Lock | Slander, and men for weak garrisons | | Mo Gao, Salt Commissioner | Salt Weir | Salt taxes (which make people near him like the outlaws better) | | Sun Ke, Granary Inspector | Grain Hill | Holds back grain: towns nearby go hungry in spring | | Luo Tie, Garrison Commander | Iron Ford | Marches on bands near Iron Ford that he can beat | | Ji Fen, Tolls Supervisor | Wen Toll Gate | Tolls on boats, and silences good tales | An official falls when **exposed**, **turned** or **captured** in battle. **O** lists them, with the evidence your band holds. ===== Winning ===== * **Petition:** hold 3 items of evidence, have goodwill of 50 or more in 8 places, and petition the court at Jade Lock with your leader. * **Uprising:** hold Jade Lock and the Tide Gate for 12 months running. * **Amnesty:** when 4 of the 5 officials have fallen, the band that brought down the most (2 at least) is pardoned. If nobody has won by the end of the twentieth year, everyone has failed. A band whose leader is captured or killed is out of the game. ===== Battles ===== A raid on a garrison or another band, or Luo Tie's march, starts a battle on a 12 by 8 hex field with a river across it. When your band is attacked you can fight, let the computer fight, or withdraw and give up the place. * The attackers place their units in the two left columns (**A** places them all). * Days have a morning, afternoon and night; in each, every attacking unit acts, then every defending one. * Click a unit to choose it, a lit hex to move, an enemy to attack. **1** ordinary, **2** arrows (archers, two or three hexes, not at night), **3** charge (after moving), **4** ambush (from hiding in the reeds). * **H** halt (in reeds the unit hides), **W** board or land a boat, **X** burn a bridge, reeds or an enemy boat, **B** bribe an enemy crew, **R** bring up a reserve, **F** flee, **A** let the computer finish. * Boats drift downstream at night unless a Boatman leads them. * Take the enemy commander, or hold the fort for two phases running. The defender wins when the days run out. Afterwards you decide what becomes of your prisoners: recruit, hold, ransom, release (a kind tale) or execute (a cruel one). ===== Hot seat ===== With two or more players, a hand-over screen comes before each player's turn, and before any question put to a player who is not at the keyboard (an attack on their band, their prisoners, an offer from another band). Bands meeting at a place can offer each other pacts and gifts. ===== Keys ===== Arrows move, **Enter** chooses, **Esc** goes back or opens the menu, number keys pick menu entries. On the main screen: **C** people, **B** bands, **O** officials, **T** tales, **L** the month's ledger, **R** the record of the campaign, **V** map view, **H** help. **Alt+Enter** switches full screen.