SENGOKU: ROAD TO UNIFICATION 1.7.0 - DESKTOP RELEASE NOTES 1.7.0 comes as a Debian package for Linux (sengoku_1.7.0_amd64.deb), a per-user Windows installer (Sengoku-1.7.0-x64.msi) and the complete source (sengoku-1.7.0-source.tar.gz). The version matches the browser edition, 1.7.0, at https://games.theiguru.au/sengoku/ New in 1.7.0 You defend your own provinces: when a computer clan marches on one of them, you are asked after the month whether to lead the defence on the battle field or leave it to your generals. Leading it, your units hold the castle and move after the enemy each phase; you may call in reserves, or give up the castle and leave with your men. Menus and boxes show their whole text: a menu uses two columns only when every item fits, and a box grows upwards when its title or text needs more room (the settings show whether each is on or off, and the save slots their whole description). Long battle messages wrap, and long order results are shown whole. The list of clans shows the whole name of each clan's head. After a conquest led by your lord, he governs the province himself, and you are no longer asked to choose another governor. In battle the arrow keys only move the cursor; Enter, a click or Tab chooses a unit. An amount typed out of range is refused with the range ("301 is out of range: choose 0 to 300.") instead of being changed quietly. New in 1.6.0 Envoys' offers are put to you when the month begins: accept, refuse, imprison the envoy, or decide later. The envoy is named, and a tribute may ask for six months of peace. Marriages tie the clans: the officer you choose weds the daughter of the other ruler, and the tie lasts, shown on the officer's page and in the list of clans, which also gives the last events between you. You are told before an alliance ends and when it ends, and a friendly ally may offer to renew it. The terms are shown before you agree. Delegated governors: each order they give is in the chronicle; they look to the castle when enemies threaten; power wears down an ambitious one's loyalty, and a disloyal, ambitious one may rebel and take his province to a neighbouring clan. The advisor says how reliable a governor would be. Officers whose loyalty falls low are reported, and a new head of the clan finds his officers less loyal. After a battle a summary of the men, rice and gold heads the page of fates, and after a conquest you choose the new governor. A unit with no men no longer takes the field. The chronicle is kept in the saves. The territory list shows how each province is ruled and warns of unrest and hunger. The end of a campaign lists your rulers and major battles, and shows the final map. Results of hiring and reassigning show the men's skill and arms. A long question grows over the map instead of being cut short. The rules table can be changed with an optional rules.ini (see the player guide and rules-example.ini). Saves are in format 7. Saves from earlier releases still load. 1.5.0 A new battle. Every officer of the army leads his own unit on a larger field (12 by 8 hexes) with roads, forests, hills, mountains, a river with a bridge and a ford, and the castle. You place your units first; each day has a morning, an afternoon and a night (a darker field, no rifle fire). Units have movement points (cavalry 6, infantry and rifles 4) that the ground uses up. Attacks are ordinary, rifle fire, charge or ambush, each with its own conditions. New commands: halt, flee (to a province you choose; the commander's flight withdraws the army), view, terrain, and spy: bribe an enemy unit with the gold the army carries, or call in a reserve from a bordering province. The army eats the rice it carries every day. After the battle a page tells every officer's fate: captured, killed, deserted, fled, or holding the new province. War: mark the officers who march, choose their commander, and the gold and rice they carry; each pays 40 BP. Train men and Move officers take several officers at once too. Body point costs follow the new table (recruiting 70, training an officer 90, tribute 80, rumours and assassins 100, hiring 50, reassigning and rewards 20, dismissing 20 for your lord). Rewards come from the governor: 10 gold gives 5 loyalty. Training gives 2 points. Personnel: search for ronin, then take the one found (with his men) or let him go; a lured samurai brings his men; a dismissed one takes his men with him. Your lord appoints governors in any province, and may delegate a province to its governor, who then gives its orders each month; it is marked in the territory list. Diplomacy, from your lord's seat by an envoy of your choice: marriage, alliance, threaten (a weaker clan may pay or even submit), tribute, break alliance, and answering the envoys of other clans (accept, refuse, or imprison the envoy). Clans have relations from 0 to 100, shown in the list of clans and under View. War rumours now set two rival clans against each other; a failed spy may be discovered. Trade at a market price that changes each month and that a good trader improves; the price and total are shown before you agree. Hiring takes population and support, and the new men are given to officers; Reassign men works through a pool. The roster sorts (S) and opens each officer's page (V). The advisor's word is shown apart from the order, and results show the values before and after. Settings has Restore defaults. The end of a campaign has a summary. Saves are in format 6. Saves from earlier releases still load. 1.4.0 Officers. Each province has a governor and up to seven samurai, each with his own politics, war, charisma, ambition, loyalty and body points, leading his own men (with their skill and arms) in a unit of cavalry, infantry or rifles. Every order is carried out by an officer you appoint from the province's roster (those without the BP in red), and the advisor says what he thinks before you authorize it. View > Officer roster and Province data show them; ronin wait in the provinces to be recruited. New orders: move officers (with their men, gold and rice); transfer gold and rice together; recruit ronin; recruit a rival's samurai; dismiss officers; train officers in politics, war or charisma; change the governor; reassign men between officers; spread war rumours; assassinate a governor. Sabotage, bribe governor, train politics and replace governor are gone. Each of your provinces gives its orders in turn, the seat first; 0 Rest ends that province's turn. Diplomacy is for your lord, from his seat. When he moves, his seat moves with him. Develop orders do nothing with a handful of gold, raise support, and rise on the screen; cultivating is limited by the land the province can cultivate, and weakens the flood banks. Flood control and the flood banks' loss are left to chance, and floods now come with the rains of months 5 to 7. The moneylenders add a tenth when they lend, with no interest after; settle debts pays all the province can. Buy arms arms every officer's men. The trade prices are as before. Each battle unit is led by the best officer of its kind. A won province is held by the samurai who led the most men; its officers flee. Other has Display time, Animation, Sound and Hex battles (off: the computer fights your wars). Quit goes back to the title screen. The attribute screen shows just the numbers. Saves are in format 5 (each province's officers and ronin, and the land that can be cultivated). Saves and exports from 1.3.0 and earlier still load: each province's governor then leads all its men. 1.3.0 The credits, then the title picture, at the start; each moves on by itself after a few seconds, or at a key or a click. A new campaign asks how many people play: 0 (watch the computer clans fight it out, month after month, with pause and speed), 1, or up to 9 taking turns at this computer (hot-seat; a hand-over screen comes between turns). Each player chooses a fief on a map, with the provinces and their daimyo listed beside it; confirms; may change their lord's name; and stops his politics, war, charisma and ambition one at a time as each number counts quickly through the range the computer's lords have (Space stops it). The computer clans' heads now have charisma and ambition rolled in those ranges too. Then: watch the other fiefs' wars? The computer leads every other clan. The main screen has ten orders: 1 Move, 2 Develop, 3 Trade, 4 View, 5 Personnel, 6 Diplomacy, 7 Spy, 8 Military, 9 Other, 0 Rest. New orders: move samurai, gold or rice between your provinces; buy rice; buy arms; borrow gold and settle debts (with interest); replace a governor; send a gift; arrange a marriage (a 24-month alliance); break an alliance; sabotage; bribe a governor (a disloyal one brings his province over). View adds the daimyo of every clan, and your alliances and debts. The computer clans now fight their wars on the hex battle field, the computer leading both sides, and you can watch them. Saves are in format 4 (format 3 with each clan's debt). Saves and exports from 1.2.0 and earlier still load. A game nobody plays is not saved. 1.2.0 Autosave and Continue, as in the browser edition. At the end of every month the campaign is saved to autosave.sav in the saves folder. When there is an autosave and no campaign is open, the title screen starts with "Continue: , month , prov.", which loads it. The autosave is removed when a campaign is won or lost. Quitting with unsaved changes still asks to save first: the autosave does not count as a save. Export to a file and Import from a file, in both editions. Export is the last item of the Save list (Campaign > Save): it writes the campaign to a .sav file of your choice, offered as, for example, sengoku-oda-1560-04.sav, with the same text as a slot save. Import is the last item of the Load list (Campaign > Load, or Load campaign on the title screen): it opens a .sav file, checks it with the same strict loader as the slots (formats 1, 2 and 3) and plays it. As with Load, unsaved changes are offered a save first. The browser edition downloads and opens the same files, so a campaign can move between the browser and the desktop. The title screen is laid out as in the browser edition (a wider list, so the Continue line fits), and the menus' "Esc back" is a button that can be clicked, as it is there. The title's mountain, the portraits, the map and the battle hexes round halves up, as the browser edition does, so the two editions draw the same pixels. 1.1.0 was the first packaged release of the desktop edition: a Debian package for Linux, a per-user Windows installer and the complete source. New in 1.1.0 Restyled in the manner of The Broken Seal: a 640 x 400 retro screen in a 16-colour palette, scaled to fit the window, with a woven border, a brocade frame and numbered orders. Officers have portraits drawn from their names. An original looping tune on the Japanese five-note "in" scale plays with Broken Seal's sound engine; Settings turns it off or sets the volume. The window can be resized; Alt+Enter is full screen. Saves are format 3. A save lists the human clans, each with its seat and successions, so the browser edition's online Multi-Player games use the same save format. Saves in the earlier formats 1 and 2 still load, as one human clan. Every line of a save is checked when it is loaded, so a damaged or cut-short file is refused; when a slot is overwritten, its old save is kept as .bak. The desktop edition stays single-player: one human clan, played as before. Multi-Player games are on the website only. Fixes and changes from the review The map could keep showing the previous player's clan in red after a new game or a load; it is now drawn fresh every time. A save that was cut short could load with missing values read as zeros. Orders could still be given after the dynasty had fallen. The gold outline was drawn on only two sides of the selected province. Train soldiers costs no gold for anyone (computer clans paid up to 20). Clans have 28 distinct colours and patterns. Inciting an uprising against an ally is refused, and costs nothing. The lord's seat is stored in the save. A captured province gets a governor of its own instead of a copy of the lord. If the seat falls, the lord escapes to another of the clan's provinces. A wrong order amount gets its own message. Orders go through the same checked order functions as the browser edition, and a battle is a list of moves: the same seeded battle comes out the same in both editions. Packaging Linux: installs /usr/games/sengoku with a Games menu entry and icon; the guide, release notes, licence and source go to /usr/share/doc/sengoku. sengoku --version prints the version. Windows: installs per user (no administrator rights) into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Sengoku with Start menu and desktop shortcuts; the installer is not code-signed. Saves are never touched by install, upgrade or uninstall. Still to come Geography is schematic, and each province has a single officer. Not yet in the game: tax settings, marriage and submission diplomacy, full sieges, night fighting and historical events.