1. About

LGeneral is a turn-based strategy engine heavily inspired by Panzer General. The engine itself does not provide playable data. However, the program lgc-pg (included to this package in subdirectory lgc-pg) allows to convert the original PG data. If you do not own a copy of the game, there is a package at http://lgames.sf.net which contains this data. It is copyrighted by SSI, now part of UBI Soft, but made available in the sense of abandonware. Please see the README in the data package for more information. If you have gotten the PG data, one way or the other, see README.lgc-pg to learn how to convert the data, after you have installed LGeneral itself as described below.

From section 4 on, the interface is explained as well as the main differences between LGeneral and Panzer General: You cannot purchase units and you cannot keep core units. I know that this hurts our very human longing of collecting things but see section 7 for an explanation.

However, concerning tactics and strategies LGeneral is equal to Panzer General. (Well, apart from this unrealistic purchasing and core unit stuff, of course.) Therefore Werner Archan's Panzer General FAQ 'PanzerGeneral-Guru.txt' has been included. It provides many helpful hints to master the game.

2. Installation

LGeneral runs in X and uses SDL (>= 1.1.4) and SDL_mixer (optional, any version). Both libraries can be found at http://libsdl.org. Now enter your favorite shell and type in the following stuff (in the directory you extracted the LGeneral source) > ./configure [--disable-sound] [--disable-install] [--disable-dl]

      --disable-sound:       no sound
      --disable-install:     no installation; play from source directory
      --disable-dl:          disable use of AI modules and stick to the
                             built-in AI

> make
> su (become root)
> make install (if install wasn't disabled) The LGeneral engine and the converter lgc-pg are now installed. Please download the data package or use your copy of PG (DOS version) and feed the engine according to the instructions in README.lgc-pg.

3. Troubleshooting

If SDL is not found remember that you'll additionally need the development package for compiling though not for running. (a popular Mandrake user mistake) CY reported a hint for Mandrake: It seems that their SDL package scheme is somewhat broken. When you try to install the latest devel package, it might fail because some files have to be replaced. Easier than re-installing SDL is to use the rpm option --replacefiles for installing the devel package.
The same applies to SDL_mixer!
If your sound is out of sync change the last argument for Mix_OpenAudio() in audio_open() in audio.c from 256 to 2048. This might help.

4. The Main Menu

When the LGeneral title screen is displayed click any mouse button to move on and you'll see the themes background without anything on it. Now click the right mouse button to popup the menu. Each menu item has a tooltip displayed at the top of the screen and I consider them quite self-explaining for most of the time. ;-)

Resolution: Modifications to the resolution settings are not applied immediately but must be confirmed with the apply button.
Start Scenario: Clicking on 'Load Scenario' will bring up the selection dialogue. If you did not installed any scenarios this is a dead end (get lgc-pg!) else there should be the directory 'pg'. Open it and select a scenario. If the selected scenario is valid some information is shown and you may now run it or modify it's settings (control and ai module for each player).
Start Campaign: Works analogue to 'Load Scenario'. The only campaign so far is 'PG' which is a full WW2 campaign starting in Poland and ending up in Washington if you are good enough. There are some modifications compared to the original PG campaign. Please check src/campaigns/PG for more information.

5. The Interface

If you start a scenario or load a game you'll be at the tactical map. Moving the cursor above a unit displays a quick info about the unit(s) and the hex tile.

Select A Unit: A unit is selected by left-click on it where a hex tile is split into two regions. The upper one contains the air unit and the lower one the ground unit. For example if there is no air unit and you click into the air region the ground unit will be selected if there is one.
Unselect Unit: A simple right-click anywhere will unselect the unit.
Move Unit: When selecting a unit the fog mask will change to show where the unit may move or em/debark. Left-click on any of the highlighted hex tiles to execute the movement. For aircrafts there is a danger mask. If a hex tile is potentially out of range, it is covered with red color. This means the aircraft is unlikely (well this is almost sure) to reach an allied airfield to supply in time. (If there is not at least one fuel remaining, by the end of the turn, the aircraft will crash unevitably!) Also, even if a tile is not marked, it may happen that (due to enemy aircrafts in the way) the fuel does not suffice. So this is really more of a warning. E.g., if you are close to an airfield and sure that you will conquer it the next turn, you can ignore any warnings of being out of reach for your aircrafts, because as soon as you have the airfield they can supply.
Attack An Enemy: If the unit within the hextile and region the pointer is on is a valid target it will change into a crosshair. A left-click initiates the attack. To decide wether an attack is useful or not have a look at the expected losses displayed at the top of the screen. (very useful!)
Unit Menu: If you left-click on a selected unit the unit menu will popup. (is explained below)
Full Unit Info: If you have no unit selected and you right-click on one a full unit info will be displayed. Note: It is still possible (though a bit slow) to move the pointer above other units to compare properties. A right-click will close the unit info.
Main Menu: If you have no unit selected and you right-click into an empty hextile the main menu (as described in the section above) will popup.
Scrolling: To scroll the tactical map either use the cursor keys or move the pointer to the border of the screen.
Shortcuts: You may use the keys 'n' and 'p' to cycle through all your units that may still either fire or move. 'f' and 'F' allow to cycle through only those units that may still fire. 'm'/'M' will give you the moving units list. With '-' you can toggle whether a unit is included to any of these cycles. If it is not, a purple bar is shown above the strength label. This is useful if you have a number of units in, e.g. towns, that are supposed to simply stay there. As soon as you move a unit or attack with it, the 'guard' label is removed. Same applies if the unit is attacked. Besides, there are many short cuts for the most important menu options. Check the menu, the key is shown in brackets behind the description, e.g., 'u' for undo a unit's move. 'TAB' allows you to flip the layout of asymmetrically positioned windows (like the unit quick infos or the deploy window) to see clearly what lies behind.

6. The Unit Menu

These are the options in the unit menu:

Supply: Ships and aircrafts must be close to there supply point (harbor, airfield) and receive a supply level of 100 (full supply) there. Ground units receive 100 if close to an allied town and airfield and loose 10 for each hex tile being away from the nearest supply point. As soon as an enemy is close the ground units supply at 75% of the actual supply level and aircrafts at 50%. If more than one enemy is close, the rate drops to 50% for ground units and 0% for aircrafts. So be aware that long sieges with no town near in the back may cause trouble if you take to long or move to fast! As a help, the unit strength is displayed in red color, if the unit is either low in fuel (aircrafts <= 20, other units <= 10) or low in ammo (<=2).
Air Embark/Debark: If your unit is on an allied airfield and can use an air transport it may embark. If your unit is using an air transport and uses parachutes it may debark anywhere on the map (if the embarked unit is able to enter this tile, of course) else it is only allowed to debark at an allied airfield. It may not have moved yet, when trying to embark/debark (so it must come to a halt on or above the airfield before actually em-/debarking) but can move directly on the ground after debark.
Merge Units: LGeneral's way of reinforcements differs from PG's. Instead of buying units by prestige new ones are available at a specific turn (depending on their delay) and damaged units may merge with units of the same unit class as long as the strength is <=13. The unit, marked by the red up arrow, is merged into the selected unit. The new entrenchment is then the weighted sum, assuming entrenchment 0 for the marked unit (since it will move to the other one). So to keep entrenchment you must select the unit with the high entrenchment first and merge the other one into it.
Split Units: This allows to split up some strength and either direct it to another close unit (which makes it an inverse merge) or put it as a new standalone unit. The unit doing the split must keep at least 4 strength. When transfering to another unit, any strength from 1 to maximum (this unit needs 4 remaining, target may not go above 13) may be selected. But if the unit is supposed to be standalone it must again have at least 4 strength. So you can only split to a new unit if the splitting unit itself has more than 7 strength.
Undo Turn: A unit may undo it's movement if no enemy was spotted.
Rename Unit: Change the name of the unit.
Disband Unit: If the unit did not yet act in the current turn, it may be disbanded. The unit is than permantently (after confirmation) removed from the game.
Differences between LGeneral and Panzer General
As said in the first section LGeneral is heavily inspired by PG but it's not exactly the same. I modified some aspects I didn't like at PG.
Reinforcements: Buying reinforcements by prestige isn't that good I think. IMHO sending units in a specific turn (thus at a specific date) is better and allows a historically more accurate scenario. These units may be deployed around any allied town that was not lost during playing. This also means that conquered towns may not serve as deploy centers.
Core Units: There will be none. It is nice to have a fully experienced killer troop you brought all the way from Poland to Washington but how did you manage that? You loaded and saved to get good combat results with this unit at a low damage rate. Anyone must admit that this is a very untactical way of using a unit. Much better going with the auxiliaries: If there was a town to be taken they had to go for it at any cost thus they were used to there full tactical extend. And that is what should be done with all units on the battle field. With core units that are treated like being on holidays this can't be done, so there simply will be no way to re-use units in the next scenario of a campaign.

8. Bugs

We tested as much as we could and already removed a lot of funny and mysterious bugs but this game is still under development so report any suscpicious behaviour to http://lgames.sf.net/contact.php. Known bugs:

Loading the dynamic AI now works but it seems to screw some pointers which results in no unit movement. However on some machines it does work. I wasn't able to spot the reason so if you do please tell me!

9. Feedback

Any comments and bugreports are welcome. Please use the contact form at http://lgames.sf.net/contact.php.
And don't forget to look at http://lgames.sf.net for updates sometimes!

     Enjoy the game!
       Michael Speck, 2005 Oct 27th