Ancient Art of War is a real-time strategy game that is based on the very basic elements of war: Unit types, formation and strength. The game is set in ancient battle-style times before the use of gun powder. Thus consisting of the 3 basic unit types of that period: The light armored but fast "Barbarians", the heavily armored but slow "Knights" and the ranged "Archers". A fourth non-combatant unit type is also available: "Spies", which is only available under certain campaign rule settings.
The game consists of different campaigns to choose from, each with a different geographical setting, difficulty setting, visibility setting and victory condition setting. Some settings may be subject to change by the player.
GAMEPLAYGameplay is represented in 2 major areas:
- The first is the tactical/political map, which visualizes geographical and terrain elements from a top-down perspective. Here you can coordinate, position and reinforce your troops and also command them to attack, defend or ambush enemy troops in real-time setting. Time may be set to pause, faster or slower to make battle plans easier.
- The second is the combat screen where one group of your soldiers fight another group of the enemy. A squad consisting of maximum 14 soldiers will fight according to their set battle formation and will act only on your real-time battle commands (eg. Attack, Forward, Retreat, etc.)
The difficulty setting is based on real-historical characters, (with the exception of possibly) Crazy Ivan as the easiest, and Sun Tzu as the hardest opponent. Each opponent has a different fighting style of combat and strategy.
CONSTRUCTION SETThe game also comes with a construction set which allows you to create your own campaigns: From the story, rules to the map editor. In this game editor, you can also tweak your troops to your liking, such as default troop formations.
EGA/VGA VERSIONBrøderbund released an EGA/VGA version of the game in 1989, using the same game engine and scenarios of the original CGA game. Campaigns made with the construction set of the CGA version were also playable with the EGA/VGA version.
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