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## An Introductory Game with X11 Xconq

To begin an introductory game, give the command ``xconq -g intro'`. You will get some chatter on the console as the game starts up, then a large window with lots of panes.

The middle of the window is the most interesting part; it is a map of the game world. It's also almost entirely black, representing the unknown. In the middle you should see a small picture of skyscrapers, representing your first city "Jinod", and right below a small picture representing the soldiers of your 1st infantry. Your infantry is framed by a blinking square, which indicates that it is your "current unit"; the unit to which commands will apply. Your units are in a green hexagon, which is their "cell", and the cell is surrounded on five sides by green cells. All of these represent plains. To the east there is a brown patterned cell, which means mountains.

When the mouse pointer is over the map, you see that it looks like a gunsight with cross hairs. This means that you're in "move mode", and that if you click on a location, the unit will try to move there.

Click on the cell east (right) of the city and infantry. Hey, something happened! Your infantry is now out in the open, and it's discovered the sea to the east and northeast. At the same time, there is another infantry inside the city, but it looks fuzzy; that's because it is "incomplete". Your city Jinod will continue to work on the new infantry while you move around. Also note that the turn is now 5, when it was 4 before. An infantry gets to move once/turn, so when it moved, it was done for the turn, and since there was nothing else to do, Xconq automatically went to the next turn. Your 1st infantry is the only unit not doing something already, so it gets to be the current unit again.

Your infantry can't go into the water (try it, you'll get beeped), so instead click on the land cell to the northwest, then northeast, just following the water's edge. Click to move east; you then discover another city! While your own units have a little "1" in the upper right corner, this city (which is named Mebnels) has no such emblem, which means that it is independent. Since you know the city is about to be taken over by the evil robots, try to capture it -- click on the city. The city may resist successfully, in which case you'll have to keep trying, once each turn.

At some point during this, you'll find that the current unit is no longer your 1st infantry! Jinod has been quietly working on your 2nd infantry all along, and the new unit is now ready for orders. Xconq automatically jumps you to it when the 1st infantry is done for the turn. Click on the cell immediately west of Mebnels; you'll see your 2nd infantry appear to jump two cells, then highlight the 1st infantry. What actually happened was that you gave a "move to" task to the 2nd; it moved once, the turn ended and a new turn started, the 2nd moved again because it wasn't at the destination yet, and then since 1st wasn't doing anything, it became the current unit.

Continue trying to capture Mebnels. When the 2nd infantry arrives west of Mebnels, you can click on Mebels to have it attack there as well. This is crucial, because the robots are coming...

In the turn after you've captured Mebnels, you'll see that Mebnels itself becomes the current unit. Now, cities can't move around, but they can produce new units; type ``P'`. You will get a prompt asking to choose from a list of letters. To see what they mean, type ``?'` to get an explanation. You can choose by either clicking on the unit icons on the right side of the window, or by typing one of the letters. Armor will come in handy shortly, so type ``a'`. You will see a small gray tank picture appear underneath Mebnels' picture.

Continue moving your 1st and 2nd infantry east. You'll find that they can't both be in the same cell; most Xconq games allow "stacking", but it makes the display more complicated, so this game allows only one unit per cell. You can have several units inside a city however. For this game, just move northeast when east is blocked.

When you get your 3rd infantry, click anywhere near the location of your 1st or 2nd infantry. The 3rd will work its way up to the others eventually.

Some time about now you'll start seeing units with the emblem "2". Those are the enemy; attack! As with Mebnels, you just have to click on the enemy unit when your current unit is adjacent to it. Keep an eye on the notices at the top of the window, they will tell you about how the fighting is going.

Since the game is so simple, there is not a lot of strategy to winning it. You need to capture as many cities as possible (search around your first city to find others), and you need to wear down the enemy by capturing its cities. Eventually either the AI will dominate and eventually wipe you out, or you will defeat all its armies and capture all its cities. The AI does not cheat, and doesn't get any special advantage, so if you lose to a mere machine, well...

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