Town Demolition

            Now towns can be destroyed and rebuilt again from their ashes.

To destroy a building in a town, it is necessary to right-click on the building you wish to destroy. You must have a visiting hero present at a town in order to destroy buildings there; a garrisoned hero cannot destroy anything.

Buildings cannot be destroyed in just any order, but must follow priorities and dependence (see Appendix Table 1). If all conditions for destruction of the given building in the given town are met, the building can be destroyed and a window will appear asking if you wish to destroy it. An example can be seen in the picture shown below:

If the given building cannot be destroyed at present, then when you right-click you will only see the standard information about that building.

If the player clicks the OK button to destroy a building, a check will be made to see if the hero has the minimum required level of experience. There is a minimum level at which heroes receive the ability to destroy buildings, and this is initially set to 1000 points for all buildings in all towns. However, this value can be changed with ERM code for any type of building for all types of towns (!!CD:E).

If the hero doesn't have enough experience, the appropriate message will appear stating that the building will not be destroyed. The next stage is a check of how strong the hero's army is. This is calculated as the sum of health (HP) of all monsters in the hero's army. The minimum level that is initially set for this calculation is 2000 HPs but this can also be changed with ERM (!!CD:A). If the hero's army is insufficient, an appropriate message will appear stating this.

If the destroyed building is a creature dwelling, it is checked to see if it has inhabitants. If the dwelling is not empty, a choice is offered to the player: pay the monsters to abandon the dwelling or fight them:

The cost of paying the monsters is calculated based on their level and number, as shown in the following table:

If you decline to pay, there is only one way to get rid of the monsters -- fight:

Here again you can refuse. Thus of any destructions. If in fight with monsters you will lose, that, being more peaceful, than you, monsters will release the hero on freedom. The truth of army he can lose completely.

If you pay the monsters or beat them in combat, it is possible to start the destruction. However, destroying buildings costs and each building has its own cost, but always in gold. Refer to Appendix 1 for the full list of buildings in all types of towns where you can look up the cost of destruction (Table1).

Each time you destroy a building, it displeases the local population of the town. In order to appease them, it is necessary to distribute gold with each following destruction. The amount of gold depends on the number of destructions done that day and can be seen in the following table:

From the table you can see that four destructions per day are possible. However, this value can be changed by means of ERM commands (!! CD:D). If this number is altered, you may find it necessary to establish or change the price of destruction (!! CD:N).

The sum which it is offered to pay, at once includes all expenditure:

If you attempt to destroy a Grail building, you're given an opportunity to dismantle it instead. Since it's a valuable structure, it costs 10000 gold to dismantle it -- this is much more expensive than simply destroying it. If you pay this amount, the Grail will be dismantled and will appear in the hero's backpack:

If you have no free space in a backpack, you will not be able to dismantle the Grail.

An every next destruction needs some movement points of Hero. By default one destruction takes 55MP but may be changed by ERM (!!CD:M).

After destruction of a building the hero will find a small amount of resources in the ruins. They can be any resource except for gold. The exact quantity and type of resources can be checked in the Appendix (Table 1).

To completely destroy a town, it isn't necessary to destroy all the structures. It's enough to destroy the ones of key importance until finally reaching and destroying the Town Hall. Once the Town Hall has been destroyed, the remaining inhabitants abandon the town.

After destruction of the Town Hall, ghosts will appear in an ex-blacksmith's. However, they are too happy to be alive (dead?) and will not pay any attention to you. Thus, the town becomes absolutely empty. When your hero leaves the town, he will receive an appropriate message. If you leave wish you can leave the town under the protection of monsters or a hero by leaving them in the garrison, but be cautious. As soon as your hero leaves the town, he cannot enter again; the gates are locked and any guards left are controlled by the ghosts.

For the next 6 days, the town is completely closed to entry by all heroes. It ceases to belong to you and becomes neutral. After 6 days have passed, you can return to the town. If you have left guards you will have to enter combat and win against them before you can take over the town again.

So what happened during those 6 days? The ghosts enjoyed their freedom in the town but now they are bored and ready to go anywhere rather than fly around in the dead "ghost" town any longer. Click on the ex-blacksmith building to hire the ghosts:

The ghosts do not like to remain in the town, therefore they can only be hired into a visiting hero's army (bottom slot) and not into the garrison. Until all ghosts will not be hired, the town will remain deserted and will again become neutral as soon as the hero in it leaves. Again, you can leave guards at this point if you wish but if you later return you will have to fight them to regain control.

After hiring all ghosts, the hero can try to restore the town. For this purpose it is required to right-click on the ex-smithy as the new city inhabitants do not want haunted ghost houses in their town. The standard check for a hero with high enough experience and a strong enough army is made at this time as well. If he passes this check and if he's a hero native to this town type, he can only restore the town to its original type. However, if the hero is from another town, he can choose between the town's old type (before destruction) or his own native town type:

If the Hero has the Builder specialty (by default Jeddite) he can choose among all types of towns: