The Cover of the Warhammer Ancient Battles rulebook.
It’s time to take another behind-the-scenes look at the development of A Total War Saga: TROY! This time, we spoke with Creative Assembly Sofia game director Maya Georgieva as well as senior game designer Milcho Vasilev about the ins and outs of the time period, multi-resource economies, and how Bronze Age battles really went down. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Art of War, by Sun Tzu This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Art.
Warhammer Ancient Battles (often referred to as 'WAB' and sometimes Warhammer Historical) is a ruleset for miniatures wargames produced by Games Workshop's Warhammer Historical Wargames imprint. It is a rulebook for historical wargames developed from the popular Warhammer Fantasy Battle by Jervis Johnson, Rick Priestley and the Perry brothers.[1] On 24 May 2012, Warhammer Historical closed their website and are now defunct.[2]
- 3Rules
Playing the game[edit]
Games of Warhammer Ancient Battles model hypothetical battles between historical armies.[3] Battles are fought between armies of miniatures.[4] The game is played on a table laid out with model scenery to look like a battlefield, on which the units of miniatures are maneuvered. Large numbers of dice are needed to resolve combat and shooting.[5]
Development[edit]
Several of Games Workshop's staff had begun experimenting with using Warhammer rules to play historical games[6] before Warhammer Ancient Battles was written, and Wargames Illustrated magazine included some articles that had been written on the subject. This led to the development of Warhammer Ancient Battles as a spare-time project.[7] It was published under the name 'Warhammer Historical Wargames.'Based as it was on Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer Ancient Battles served as a bridge for fantasy wargamers to discover historical wargaming but also attracted wargamers who had never played the fantasy version.[8] Games Workshop eventually brought the project back in-house, with Rob Broom running the Warhammer Historical Wargames department that promoted an increasing number of books.
To accusations that the rules were only a throwback to an earlier era of wargaming, Jervis Johnson pleaded guilty. The rules, he said, were intended to be fun and informal, rather than dominated by requirements of super-detailed historical accuracy. And, the designers had rejected the approach of contemporary rule sets as being too abstract.[9]
The game rules were heavily based on the fifth edition of Warhammer, with magic dropped and more detail added for ancient weapons and formations. The two games have developed in different directions since. Modifications to the core rules have been included in some of the more recent supplements. The WAB 2nd edition consciously took the rules even further from its fantasy origins.[10]
Following the success of Warhammer Ancient Battles Warhammer Historical branched out into other areas:
- Warmaster Ancients - the application of the epic scale rules for Warhammer Fantasy to non-fantasy armies
Rules[edit]
The rules are written for individually based figures and this approach was in marked contrast to the element based rulesets current amongst ancient historical wargames when the rules were first published.[11] Standard bearers, musicians and officer figures are given specific advantages - seen by some as giving the rules more character.[12]
Second edition[edit]
A second edition ruleset was released in April 2010, written by Martin Gibbins[13]. The revision aimed to encourage linear battle formations and to make flank attacks easier.[14] Changes include allowing cavalry to make march rules despite infantry and capping bonus troops in melee for the number of ranks of the formation to 2.[15] The first edition had had some elements that derived from its origin as a fantasy set and the revision aimed to remove them. Hence, the influence of characters has been reduced.[16]
Supplements[edit]
The core rulebook includes army lists for 'Early Imperial Roman' and 'Barbarian' armies. A range of supplementary books has been released to provide more army lists, each focusing on a particular period and place.
- Armies of Antiquity. Released soon after the rulebook, this was intended to help players get started, by providing a large number of basic summary army lists. Many of the lists have been superseded by later supplements.
- Chariot Wars. Covers armies of the ancient civilisations in the Near East, and Trojan War.
- Fall of the West. Covers Roman and Barbarian armies of the 4th-5th centuries.
- Shieldwall. Covers the British Isles, France and Scandinavia in the Dark Ages.
- El Cid. Covers the Spanish Reconquista in the 10th-13th centuries.
- Alexander the Great. The armies of Alexander the Great and his enemies.
- Armies of Chivalry. Designed to extend Warhammer Ancient Battles to a slightly later medieval period, this includes new rules as well as a set of summary army lists covering Europe in the 14th-16th centuries.
- Spartacus. Based around a campaign following Spartacus' slave revolt.
- Byzantium : Beyond the Golden Gate. Covers the Byzantine Empire from 6th-12th centuries.
- Hannibal and the Punic Wars. Covers the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC.
- Vlad the Impaler. Covers the general time and region of the Ottoman Turks.
- The Art of War. Details the armies of Chinese history and prehistory, as well as those of its neighbours at the time (such as the Hsiung-nu), up until the Three Kingdoms era.
- Age of Arthur. Features armies from Sub-Roman Britain.
- Siege and Conquest. This features rules for raids, sieges and settlements. It does not include any army lists though it does include things that can be added to the armies derived from the lists in the other books. The reviewer in Wargames Illustrated considered a key feature of this supplement in that it facilitates battles that take more varied forms than a simple head to head battle.[17]
Community[edit]
The game was supported by a high-traffic discussion group on Yahoo! Groups, the WABlist, and Warhammer Historical Forums (the former a non-Yahoo message board). In addition another group WABMedievalBattles focused on the medieval period.
Notes[edit]
- ^Wargames Illustrated July 2010, p114
- ^http://www.warhammer-historical.com/
- ^Warhammer Ancient Battles p5
- ^Warhammer Ancient Battles, 1998, p7
- ^Warhammer Ancient Battles, 1998, p27
- ^Warhammer Ancient Battles p2
- ^Slingshot July 1998 p11
- ^Slingshot March 2010 p25
- ^Slingshot July 1998 p12
- ^Slingshot March 2010 p25
- ^Slingshot July 1998 p37
- ^Slingshot July 1998 p36
- ^Warhammer Ancient Battles, 2nd Edition, p2
- ^Slingshot March 2010 p25
- ^Wargames Illustrated July 2010, p114
- ^Slingshot March 2010 p25
- ^Wargames IllustratedNo 242
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Warhammer_Ancient_Battles&oldid=924729338'
(Redirected from Ancient Art of War)
Ancient Art of War | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Evryware |
Publisher(s) | Brøderbund |
Platform(s) | Apple II, Macintosh, MS-DOS, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga, PC-88, PC-98 |
Release | 1984: Apple II, MS-DOS 1987: Macintosh |
Genre(s) | Real-time strategy Real-time tactics |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
The Ancient Art of War is a computer game designed by Dave and Barry Murry, developed by Evryware, and originally published by Brøderbund in 1984. It is generally recognized as one of the first real-time strategy or real-time tactics games.
- 1Gameplay
Gameplay[edit]
A battlefield simulation, the game's title comes from the classic strategy text The Art of War written by Sun Tzu around 400 B.C.[1]
The objective of the game is to win a series of battles using four types of troops: Knights, Archers, Barbarians, and Spies.[1] All four types are unmounted.
It uses a rock-paper-scissors type of unit balance typical of the genre. Knights beat barbarians in melee; barbarians have the advantage over archers; and archers have the advantage over knights,[2] in addition to being effective at defending against attempts to storm a fort. Spies do not fight, but can see enemy units twice as far away as anyone else, and are the fastest-moving units in the game.
At the start of the game, the player is able to select from a list of eleven campaigns to play.[1] The campaigns include both skirmishes and capture the flags style missions, while the terrain layout and initial starting units provided a variety of strategic options for game play. Advanced rule sets such as Training New Units and Supply Line Lengths allow for more customization. The player can also select from among several Artificial Intelligence opponents represented by various historical figures such as Geronimo and Sun Tzu himself.[1] Sun Tzu represents the most difficult level. These settings affected both AI behavior, as well as certain properties such as the speed at which enemy units moved through difficult terrain.
There is no element of the economic management (mining, gathering or construction) which is a common feature of later real-time strategy games.
Tactics[edit]
Each mission takes place on a map containing forts, towns, terrain features (bridges, mountains, forests, etc.), and squads. Squads can consist of up to 14 units, made up of any combination of the four unit types. A squad moves at the speed of its slowest unit (Barbarians are faster than Archers, which are faster than Knights), so a squad of all Barbarians would move faster than a mixed squad.
Squads that lose units have to make do until another squad can be merged with them. In many campaigns, squads with less than 14 units can receive random reinforcements by waiting at a fort.
When two enemy squads meet on the battlefield, they are frozen in an encounter while time continues to pass. If they are left by themselves, then after a delay, the computer will automatically determine the outcome of the battle. Alternately, the player can choose to 'Zoom' into the battle to resolve it immediately, gaining limited command of the soldiers in battle. It may be advantageous to leave squads in an encounter while others squads run past the enemy squad so engaged. Formations can be chosen to take advantage of a squad's particular makeup. For example, all of a squad's Archers can be placed in the rear while the Barbarians form a line in the front. The game supported per-type orders during battle, so one could alternately place archers upfront with a gap; put knights within the gap; order the archers to fire while the knights hold; then order the archers to fall back while the knights attacked. One could not order individual soldiers, however.
Formations only affected the tactical battles; only whole squads were ever represented on the strategic map, not individual soldiers.
A number of factors influence the outcome of a battle, and elevate the game beyond a simple Rock-Paper-Scissors strategy. Hunger, distance, terrain, and morale all affect the squads' effectiveness. Care has to be taken when marching troops full speed, or across a series of mountains, to prevent them from arriving at a battle too fatigued to fight. In addition, even the winning side in a battle suffered a slight reduction in the squad's readiness. Troops in very poor condition would fight poorly, might retreat without being ordered to do so, and would even potentially surrender outright if also significantly outnumbered. Hunger was modeled through an abstract 'supply' value per squad; villages and/or forts would slowly replenish the supplies of nearby friendly squads. A squad that was out of supply would lose condition and might be readily be destroyed by what would otherwise be an inferior force.
One of the limitations of the game engine was that it could only display a certain number of units total at any time. This lead some players to force the computer into having fewer (though stronger) units and thus easier to evade by creating an army of weak units.
Editing[edit]
The game allows players to create their own maps, formations, and missions.
The map editor provides a fixed palette of identically-sized tiles with a variety of terrain features, with which one can fill in the details on a fixed-size rectangular map. The severity of certain terrain features, such as whether moving through mountains is merely slow or potentially deadly, is controlled at game time with options, not via a property of the map.
The formation editor allows the player to configure templates for arranging squads according to the three combat troop types; there are a fixed number of slots for formations, which can then be chosen in-game.
The campaign editor controls the positioning and composition of squads on both sides, their initial condition and supply levels,[3] the location of flags, the default opponent, and the mission briefing, including settings such as how treacherous the terrain is.[3] Flags and squads must belong to one side or the other, as during the game. The flags positions can be randomized; if either side does not have at least one flag assigned to them in a specific location, they receive a single randomly located flag when the mission was played. This location changes every time the mission is restarted.
Development[edit]
The Ancient Art of War was designed by Dave and Barry Murry.[4] It was originally released for MS-DOS and Apple II in 1984, and was made available for Macintosh in 1987.[5]
Reception[edit]
In 1985 Computer Gaming World praised The Ancient Art of War as a great war game, especially the ability to create custom scenarios, stating that for pre-gunpowderwarfare it 'should allow you to recreate most engagements'.[6] In 1990 the magazine gave the game three out of five stars,[7] and in 1993 two stars.[8]Jerry Pournelle of BYTE named The Ancient Art of War his game of the month for February 1986, reporting that his sons 'say (and I confirm from my own experience) is about the best strategic computer war game they've encountered ... Highly recommended.'[9]PC Magazine in 1988 called the game 'educational and entertaining'.[1]
Legacy[edit]
The Ancient Art of War is generally recognized as one of the first real-time strategy or real-time tactics games,[10] a genre which become hugely popular a decade later with Dune II and Warcraft. Those later games added an element of economic management, with mining or gathering, as well as construction and base management, to the purely military.
The Ancient Art of War is cited as a classic example of a video game that uses a rock-paper-scissors design with its three combat units, archer, knight, and barbarian,[10] as a way to balance gameplay strategies.[11]
GameSpy ranked The Ancient Art of War No. 10 in its greatest PC games of the 1980s.[10]
It spawned two sequels, the naval-themed The Ancient Art of War at Sea (1987) and the World War I game The Ancient Art of War in the Skies (1993). A new version called The Ancient Art of War 2 is now available for PCs and mobile devices.
References[edit]
- ^ abcdeMiller, Catherine D. (January 12, 1988). 'Playing with Fire on Land and Sea: Broderbund's Ancient Art of War Series'. PC Magazine. 7 (1): 456.
- ^Adams, Ernest (October 16, 1998). 'Designer's Notebook: A Symmetry Lesson'. Gamasutra. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
- ^ ab'Ancient Art of War'. Personal Computing. 9 (6): 215. June 1985.
- ^'The Ancient Art of War Credits'. Allgame. Retrieved January 29, 2013.
- ^'The Ancient Art of War Overview'. Allgame. Retrieved January 29, 2013.
- ^Sipe, Russell (April–May 1985). 'IBM Goes to War'. Computer Gaming World. pp. 24–25.
- ^Brooks, M. Evan (October 1990). 'Computer Strategy and Wargames: Pre-20th Century'. Computer Gaming World. p. 11. Retrieved 16 November 2013.
- ^Brooks, M. Evan (June 1993). 'An Annotated Listing of Pre-20th Century Wargames'. Computer Gaming World. p. 136. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
- ^Pournelle, Jerry (February 1986). 'Communicating'. BYTE. p. 291. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
- ^ abcGamespy Staff (February 2, 2009). 'The Greatest PC Games of All Time: The '80s: 10. The Ancient Art of War (1984)'. GameSpy. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
- ^Rollings, Andrew; Morris, Dave (2004). Game Architecture and Design. New Riders. p. 65. ISBN978-0735713635.
External links[edit]
![Warhammer Ancient Battles Art Of War Pdf Warhammer Ancient Battles Art Of War Pdf](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125869152/990837961.png)
- The Ancient Art of War can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Ancient_Art_of_War&oldid=935489896'