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Manual Training Grounds
Original 1996 manual, converted verbatim from the game's manual.doc.
Now that you understand the basic elements of the interface, you are ready for action. By now, you should have landed your space ship, and noticed several vehicles roll out of it.
Note: In the scenarios available, buildings and vehicles are limited not only by research but also by the scenario. Until the scenario where you are required to build something, it generally is not allowed. This restriction obviously does not hold for regular games.
Look for a location in your landing grid that is near trees, coal, & iron. You also want oil to be relatively close. It’s not critical to have a lot of any given resource, just enough for 1 good mine.
Try to avoid putting the rocket ship in trees. Enemy units can attack through trees and you won’t see them until they are next to you. Try to stay at least 3 - 5 hexes away from forests.
When you’ve found your spot, LMB the mouse. Remember you can press CTRL-RMB before you press LMB to rotate the ship. You want the door pointing toward your initial buildings.
Select your Crane, and then click the Build button in the Local Tool Bar (or, you can double-LMB-click on the Crane). The Build Window will appear.
The Build Window
In the Build Window, you must first select a building category by clicking the LMB on an icon from the left column. At this stage, most of the categories are empty, since you are just getting started with your new colony. Select NATURAL RESOURCES.
Once the category is selected, its icon will highlight, and a second column of icons will appear. This column depicts all of the buildings in that category which are available to you. Again, at this stage, very few buildings will be available to you. Select LUMBER MILL.
The building icon will highlight, and on the right side of the Build Window you can read about the purpose of the Lumber Mill, as well as the cost associated with creating it. (Luckily, your space ship has landed with sufficient materials to get you off the ground. You should have enough to build the Lumber Mill and a Farm.)
Finally, click on the BUILD button at the bottom of the window. You will return to the Area Map, and a white rectangle (which is relative to the size of the building you are about to create) will have replaced the mouse cursor. Move the rectangle about until you have decided on a placement location, then click the LMB.
Placing Buildings
You can place a building over most terrain (not mountains or water). You cannot place a building over an existing unit, neither yours nor your enemy’s. The placement rectangle will turn red if you attempt to place the building in an unsuitable location.
Certain buildings, such as mines, must be placed over mineral deposits in order to function properly. Again, the placement rectangle will turn red or white, depending on whether or not the appropriate mineral can be found at that location. Use the SHOW MATERIALS button on the Local Tool Bar to find out which minerals are where.
The Lumber Mill
Find a patch of trees and place the Lumber Mill. Your Crane will travel to the selected location, and a construction foundation will appear. It is up to your Trucks to route the necessary materials to the construction site. Also, your Crane will be unavailable to you until the completion of the building.
Once the Lumber Mill is complete, it will automatically generate lumber (use the pop-up box to track the progress of lumber creation; the number should be increasing).
The Farm
Follow the exact same instructions as the Lumber Mill for creation of a Farm. But the farm should generally be placed out in the plains.
ROADS
As it was in Roman times, roads are the backbone of your colony. Trucks will travel slowly over plains, even more slowly over other types of terrain. But over roads, all vehicles move much more quickly.
Select a Crane, and then click the ROADS button in the Local Tool Bar. Your cursor will change into a white square, indicating that you should place the road. You can either places roads in single segments (by clicking the LMB), or place roads in lengths (by clicking and holding the LMB, dragging the mouse across the intended road path, and then releasing the LMB).
Try to lay down a road leading from your space ship to your Lumber Mill. Trucks will now automatically follow your road when transporting lumber to the various buildings you will be creating. Notice how much more quickly vehicles travel when using a road. This increase in efficiency will be the difference between winning and losing, as you race to establish your dominance.
STORED MATERIALS
Once your mines are busy harvesting minerals from the ground, you will find that you have more materials than you need to complete construction sites. Excess materials can be stored in the space ship (route a Truck from the mine to the space ship), or in Warehouses, which you can build. Materials can also be stored in buildings which require the materials to create; for instance, new vehicles.
SUCCESS
When your Lumber Mill has harvested 1000 units of lumber, you will be told that your mission is a success. Now you are ready to go on to the next challenge, and eventually dominate the planet.
A WORD ON PROGRESS
Unlike many strategy games, Enemy Nations™ is not constrained to fixed scenarios. Each time you play Enemy Nations™, a new planet is generated randomly, using sophisticated fractal calculations. Terrain is distributed differently, minerals are distributed differently -- every time you play. And as you make progress through missions, you will realize that you start each mission exactly where you left off at the last mission, taking with you all your buildings, vehicles, research, and resources. Critical errors early in the game will come back to haunt you later. Take care how you build your colony, because you will have to sustain it throughout your entire conquest!