Communication Between Players

Mail Messages

Discussions and negotiations play a crucial role in the development of national diplomacy. Often, it is communication between players that forms or dismantles treaties and alliances. Double dealing and straight forward honesty must be carefully balanced when dealing with other players, or they will be able to determine exactly what you are up to.

To enable communication between players, there is the electronic mail system. Using this system, nations will receive mail messages reporting concerning economic statuses, combat reports, and communications from other countries. There are two commands providing direct access to the mail system. The "read-mail" function is used to read and respond to any mail which you have received, and the "mail-nation" function is available to send mail to other nations.

To help your nation determine when any new mail has arrived, a small message saying "You have Conquer Mail" will be displayed if Conquer detects that there is any mail which has not yet been read. A similar message will be displayed if the newspaper has not yet been read or, on some machines, if there is some real electronic mail waiting to be read. It is possible to control the behavior of the last operation using the "mail-check" setting in the "conquer-options" function.

Reading Mail

The mail reader provided with Conquer is similar to that found in normal Unix mail systems. There is a summary listing, as well as a full screen display of the current mail message. It is possible to select which of these two modes are used upon startup by setting the "header-mode" option within the "conquer-options" function.

Sending Mail

Getting into the mail editor is done through using either the "mail-nation" function, or through the reply, mail or forward options within the mail reader. Once the mail editor has been entered, there are a number of commands and options available to help compose a mail message.

The editor screen will look something like:

To:
Subject:



 Conquer Version 5.0: Mail Editor                     Hit "ESC-?" for Bindings
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enter a nation, "god" (to mail deity), or "news" (to send a personal)

The first line will contain the list of nations to which the mail message is being sent. Typing in a nation name on that line will add it to the list of nations who will receive the message. It is not possible for two messages to be sent to the same nation at the same time, so you might receive an error message indicating that some other nation is already sending mail to that nation. If you should, waiting a few minutes for the other player to finish will take care of the problem.

The second line is called the subject line, and is used to indicate a summary or topic for the mail message. A subject may only be one line long, so a short phrase is best. If no subject is provided, the string "[none]" will be inserted when the message is sent.

The area below the subject line should be used to enter in the text of the message. The text can consist of anything, but sending useless mail to other nations might not be looked on favorably. For those familiar with "emacs" keybindings, the Conquer mail editor shouldn't pose much of a problem. In the future, support for a "vi" mode will also be available. Regardless of how you feel about the mail editor, it is possible to use your own editor of choice to compose the message, using the "mail-spawn-editor" function.

Once the mail message is complete, you may deliver it using the "mail-exit" or "mail-send" functions. If you should decide to abort the mail editor and discard everything, simply use the "mail-quit" function. The next section describes the full list of mail editor commands, along with their default key bindings.

List of mail mode functions

The full list of functions and default keybindings available within the mail editor is:

conquer-options (`^O'): Adjust the Conquer environment by changing various options, including keybindings for the mail editor.
ignore-key (`^C'): Just pretend this key press didn't really happen.
mail-backward (`^B',LEFT-ARROW): Move the cursor one character to the left.
mail-beginning-of-line (`^A'): Move the cursor to the beginning of the current line.
mail-delete-backward (`^H',DEL): Remove the character directly to the left of the cursor.
mail-delete-forward (`^D'): Delete the character under the cursor.
mail-downline (`^N',DOWN-ARROW): Move cursor down one line.
mail-end-of-line (`^E'): Move the cursor to the end of the current line.
mail-exit (`^X'): Deliver the mail message and then exit the mail editor.
mail-forward (`^F',RIGHT-ARROW): Move the cursor one character to the right.
mail-help ("ESC-?"): List the current functions and keybindings for the mail editor.
mail-kill-to-beginning (`^U'): Delete all characters from the left of the cursor to the beginning of the current line.
mail-kill-line (`^K'): Delete all characters from the cursor until the end of the current line.
mail-newline (`^J',`^M'): Break the current line at the cursor and create a new line of text.
mail-quit (`^G'): Leave the mail editor after discarding the mail message.
mail-send (`^W'): Send the mail message to all of the recipients, and remain in the mail editor.
mail-spawn-editor ("ESC-$"): Use whatever editor, as determined by the EDITOR environment variable, to edit the current message.
mail-toggle (`^T'): Toggle between overwrite and insert mode in the editor.
mail-upline (`^P',UP-ARROW): Move the cursor up one line.
redraw-screen (`^L',`^R'): Redraw the screen display.

News Postings

The newspaper is available to all users and contains a summary of events taking place during recent months. A limited number of newspapers will be kept in storage, so reading them frequently is recommended. If the latest newspaper has not been read or if something has been added to it, a message stating that "There is Conquer News" will be displayed at the bottom of the main map screen. Using the "read-paper" command will display the list of currently available newspapers, by date, with the most recent editions being listed first.

Newspaper are divided into five sections: headlines, economics, real estate, warfare and personals. The headlines section will contain any important information such as declarations of war and peace, leader and monster recruitment and notifications when two nations meet. The economics report lists any famines or desertions which have taken place in the world, giving an idea of how well nations are being managed. The real estate listings show who took what land, and from whom. The warfare section gives a run down of who was involved in the battles around the world. Finally, the personals section is where any mail messages sent to "news" will appear, so that they may be read by all of the players.

Economic Reports

During each update, mail will be sent from the updating program describing events taking place within the nation. Some of the mail messages will describe the economic conditions within the nation and others will contain reports about battles.