Welcome to Anacreon!

This program is a demo of Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021, a
game system set in a dark future governed by the shades of
Clausewitz and Machiavelli. As the absolute ruler of a
powerful world, you must forge an empire that will challenge
the wave of barbarism that has swept the galaxy. Though you
will have only a single world at first, you must conquer the
surrounding planets to set up bases that will build more
ships, mine metals to build up industry, and develop the
technology for more powerful weapons, all while defending
your home worlds from the inevitable attacks of your
enemies.

I must admit that this game is not for everyone. If you like
war games or detailed role-playing games, you will almost
certainly like a Anacreon. Because it is played on a
computer, Anacreon can have layers of detail unattainable on
simple board games. But because it demands intelligence over
hand-eye coordination, it can challenge you more than a
simple video game. My goal in writing this game was to
create a universe detailed enough to seem real, yet
interesting and challenging enough to be enjoyable.

SET UP

The .ARC file should include the following files:

README This file
ANACREON.EXE The main program
ANACREON.CNF Configuration file
ANACREON.HLP Help file
ANACREON.TXT Instructions manual
INTRO.SCN Basic scenario
JAKARTA.SCN Introductory scenario
PRINCES.SCN Advanced scenario

To play, all you have to do is read the instructions and run
ANACREON from the DOS prompt. All support files should be
kept in the same directory as the main program, but you can
designate the directories for the scenario (.SCN) files and
any save files.

PLAYING

Anacreon is admittedly difficult to learn, but the best way
to learn is simply to try out different commands. The on-
line help should give you some hints, and the instruction
manual is useful as a reference, but nothing will beat
experimentation. Here are some basic hints that should help
you a bit:

FUNCTION KEYS: Each of the function keys is tied to a
different information window. You cannot ruin anything by












pressing these keys, so you can always try them if you want
to know something. If you want to close the windows and

return to the menu bar, press or .

ESC: The Esc key always gets you out of a command. Pressing
if you panic is generally helpful and never
disastrous.

ABBREVIATIONS: Abbreviations and symbols can usually be
found in the reference section of the instructions manual.
The on-line help also has several lists of frequent
abbreviations.

NOTES ABOUT THE GAME

Anacreon evolved out of an acute dissatisfaction with games
like Empire (The War Game of the Century!) and Strategic
Conquest (A recent Macintosh game). It was a love-hate
relationships from the start. Games in which you could
conquer the world or the galaxy fell into two categories:
simple and poorly implemented. Games like Risk or Galactic
Empire (an ancient TRS-80 and Apple II game) were too
simple. One was left with a burning desire to increase the
detail in the game. Why not have many different kinds of
ships? Maybe each planet could produce something different?
Games like Empire, on the other hand were of pretty high
complexity but very poorly implemented. Why can't the map
scroll? Why is moving your pieces so difficult? And why
can't somebody write a decent galactic conquest game? I hope
that I have been able to write just such a game, and that
Anacreon will prove to be more successful than its
predecessors, but above all I hope that you will enjoy this
game in the spirit in which it was written.