Introduction

Age of Empires was an eagerly-awaited game over a year ago, and when it shipped, it exceeded nearly everyone's expectations thanks to the brilliant design work of Bruce Shelley and a superb team at Ensemble Studios. The Ancient Period has always held a fascination for me. No student of military history (or anyone who is familiar with the Judeo-Christian religions) can hear the names Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Darius, Nebuchadnezzar, Ramses, or Zenobia and not feel a twinge of interest and curiosity. The names of many battles from antiquity beckon us in a similar manner. This isn't science fiction or fantasy - this stuff really happened! History comes to life in Age of Empires, but now the player is in command, facing challenges similar to those of legendary leaders two millennia ago.

Age of Empires is a real-time strategy game that combines intense tactical combat with the logistical challenge of good resource management. Poor logistics equal a lack of combat power, simple as that. Age of Empires does not pose a "guns or butter" strategic national leadership dilemma like Civilization II and similar titles where the morale, productivity, sophistication, and comfort of one's population must be balanced against security and national defense. Age of Empires focuses more directly on warfare. As one of sixteen ancient races, players compete in the various scenarios and campaigns to either defend against an overwhelming enemy onslaught or, in the role of aggressor, to conquer and eliminate neighboring civilizations. (It must be noted that, although this is the primary theme of most of the included scenarios, a wide range of other, interesting possibilities also exists within many of the pre-made scenarios.)

Babylon in turmoil.

Where the Great Battles series by Interactive Magic is a good example of a traditional wargame that depicts actual set-piece tactical battles from antiquity, Age of Empires is more of a strategy game. It adds the operational logistics context and force support strategic focus, so the player interacts in a very fluid, dynamic environment. Age of Empires has an excellent campaign editor that lets players conceive and design just about any situation (or battle) they desire. The game also has an excellent multi-player mode for taking on human opponents, permitting a wide variety of eras, maps, forces, and other game settings over any Internet server, local area network, modem, or via direct cable connection.

Age of Empires more closely parallels StarCraft, the 1998 award-winning, real-time strategy simulation with a futuristic science fiction setting. There are many conceptual and functional game parallels between Age of Empires and StarCraft, but these two excellent games occur in vastly different eras and deal with different contextual settings. Because of the similarities in the design and gameplay between StarCraft and Age of Empires, I will make several comparisons between the two games throughout this review.

Battle of the ages.

Emphasis in Age of Empires is on ancient period tactical combat, and what it took to field and support a combat force in the era of roughly 500 BC to 500 AD. This was an era of incredible technology research and subsequent operational impact. Just a little technology (to include religion) made big differences in what units could do on the battlefield. Eras can go back to essentially the Stone Age and progress through Tool, Bronze, and finally Iron ages as each level of metallurgy development yields new panoramas of capability, units, and facilities. Age of Empires models this research and technology development very effectively, particularly in what the different civilizations do better or worse than others. There are many different types of units, enhancements, and facilities, some unique to particular civilizations. Finally, the player is also confronted with the land and sea combat domains, each with its own characteristics and limitations. StarCraft offers ground (no sea) units and an air/space overlay, with units that can overfly ground obstacles and enemy units (sometimes with impunity) in the third vertical dimension of altitude. Age of Empires takes place in the two horizontal surface domains of land and sea, each of which excludes units designed for the other domain. Peloponesian Wars, here we come!

Fight across the river.

While Age of Empires already includes some great campaigns and scenarios, Microsoft just released an add-on companion to the original title, named Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome Expansion. Priced at roughly half the cost of the original, The Rise of Rome Expansion adds four new campaigns and many new scenarios. The original twelve civilizations are now complemented by the addition of four more: Carthaginian, Macedonian, Palmyrian, and Roman. The Rise of Rome Expansion adds several new units (that I will address in the New Units section, below), bigger maps and different map types, and generally cleans up some loose ends from the original. It also adds some great new capabilities (such as the capability to queue production of units) to generally enhance gameplay.

Installation, Documentation, and Interface

Age of Empires' installation has always impressed me as one of the most polished and sophisticated in the industry - the benchmark for what an installation should be. It is intuitive, comprehensive, and visually stunning. The Rise of Rome Expansion' installation follows along the same lines. Installing this game is very enjoyable. The install program features neat graphics and 3-D animated units walking across the screen. There are several install options, each taking successively more hard disk space. The opening cinematic battle scene is cool, but you will probably not watch it repeatedly, so leave that on the CD (which has to be in the drive to play, anyway). The Rise of Rome Expansion installs on top of the original Age of Empires (it checks to ensure the original game is there and uses that directory, updating the original to the latest version in the process). The Rise of Rome Expansion then ensures that DirectX 6.0a or newer is installed (or makes the necessary upgrade). There's no Apple QuickTime for Windows here; this is Microsoft, remember? DirectEverything.

The original Age of Empires shipped with an extremely professional and well-written, sepia-toned (brown text on white paper) manual, and a breathtaking full-color cover (which mirrored the box cover and would make an excellent poster). Accompanying the manual is a foldout, glossy, full-color technology tree chart and a civilization / unit database attribute chart. These two pieces of documentation explain nearly everything about the game, and together they form one of the most impressive simulation documentation packages in the industry. The Rise of Rome Expansion adds another manual appendix, perfectly complementing the original - again in sepia-tone. All the new features, additions, and enhancements offered by The Rise of Rome Expansion are explained in detail in the supplementary manual.

Both game boxes are extremely professional and attractive, depicting the splendor of the period and giving some insight into what this game portrays. I consider game demos to be documentation, since they showcase the two games and also provide extensive detail into what each game offers. This is particularly true when the player attempts to go to some areas not included in the demo (but explained in screens) or when the player attempts to exit the game (which brings up several more screens that summarize the game's features). The Age of Empires website also offers a wealth of great information and explanation. The whole support system for this game is absolutely first class and a role model that shows the industry how it's done correctly and with class.

The game interface is extremely good. There are only a couple of minor items that deserve change or mention. The player can very quickly learn how to use the intuitive interface to accomplish whatever commands need to be issued or to access necessary information. The interface is similar to the StarCraft interface to a great degree. There are four resource categories, and these are always presented and updated on the toolbar at the top of the screen: wood, food, gold, and stone. These must be gathered, and various quantities of one or more are necessary:

• to upgrade a civilization to the next technological era,
• to research various technologies,
• to build facilities or units, or to effect repairs of either.

One frustrating thing about Age of Empires is the way in which the active number of units is limited directly by the number of houses built. There appears to be no default indicator of how close one is to reaching the production limit (as there is in StarCraft), so the player rarely knows exactly how many more units his current housing can support. That is, until he or she is alerted to the fact that more houses are required and all production halts until the imbalance is corrected (by building more houses). This can be particularly painful in the heat of battle, when units are often produced very rapidly while the enemy is busy trying to raze every building in sight, to include the houses necessary to sustain a sizable army. Thanks to a recent addition in The Rise of Rome Expansion, players can now see the ratio of existing units to the maximum number supported by existing housing by hitting the F11 key. I would also really like to see a Patrol (double arrow) button on each unit menu that would send selected units on an oscillating patrol track, from present position to the next position indicated by a mouse click. This is a powerful feature in StarCraft, and would be valuable in Age of Empires, where sentries remain stationary until the enemy closes sufficiently, triggering an attack or pursuit response. I would also appreciate a slightly clearer indication of what facilities actually belong to each technological era - this is currently done by guess and by golly.

Campaigns and Scenarios

Age of Empires is a versatile game that can be played in many modes. The single player campaign or scenario mode puts the player into one of many well-designed scenarios or sequences of related (although not truly linked) scenarios. The campaigns and scenarios both in the original and in The Rise of Rome Expansion are extremely well done and challenging. One of my personal favorites is the lead-off scenario in the fourth campaign of the latter title, "Enemies of Rome." This scenario depicts Hannibal and his elephant-heavy (literally) force making their passage through the Alps, to subsequently attack Rome. The player appears to have no logistical forces, only combat forces. However, there are a few Carthaginian villagers who are imprisoned. If set free, these villagers can establish a powerful logistical capability to augment Hannibal's purely offensive elephant force. Resources abound in this scenario, so the player must do lots of exploration and reconnaissance, and find a way to free the villagers and get them safely moved to the resource-heavy areas on the north end of the map. Then, once a powerful combat force is built from the logistical base, it can crash the elephant column through the gauntlet of Roman delaying forces. I loved this scenario!

The Rise of Rome Expansion demo also has three challenging and intriguing scenarios which really showcase the game in general and the new unit types in particular. There are two new priest technology / discovery enhancements (martyrdom and medicine), and just as in the original game, priests rule! A force of many (expensive in gold) priests can really turn the tide when they begin converting combat units of an attacking force (similar to the spy unit in Civilization). The second scenario of the demo exquisitely illustrates this danger. The third scenario of the demo starts the player out with a large Carthaginian city, replete with just about every facility imaginable for producing a full spectrum of units. The player is harried by trireme attacks from the northern yellow force and he must immediately establish some sea superiority against this threat. Some technology era evolutions will also help but the player must eventually reach the culminating point where he goes from defense to offense and heads north to deal once and for all with this aggravating threat. Once forces overwhelm the enemy triremes and shipyards of the north, if the player lands his troops and begins exploring the resource-rich northern island, he discovers a very large and powerful Carthaginian force which was trapped and can then be used as an expeditionary force to conquer the yellow city. Those discovered forces will prove vital later on as the Carthaginian heads west to cross the shoals and conquer the red civilization to destroy its Wonder of the World (while building its own at the same time). Great fun! The scenarios in the full game are just as intriguing (more so, in many cases, since there are more technology options available).

New Units

The Rise of Rome Expansion adds five new units to the game: slinger, camel rider, scythe chariot, armored elephant, and fire galley. None of these units substantially change the complexion and demeanor of the game. Instead they add more fibers to the complex tapestry of individual unit types and unique capabilities. Some units require significant playing before the player realizes their power and unique capabilities, while others are immediately significant and apparent. The slinger is a new unit whose significance may not be as readily apparent as the fire galley, but put a few slingers up against some archers or a tower and you will see them shine. The camel rider has a similar effect against enemy cavalry: it sports an extra eight attack points against cavalry and horse archers and an extra four points against chariots. The scythe chariot has two more attack points and two more armor points than the standard chariot, but can also damage adjacent units with its wheel-mounted blades. The armored elephant isn't significantly different than the war elephant except when assaulting walls and towers, where it has a range of two (vice zero for the war elephant), three additional attack points, and increased armor from enemy siege and missile weapons. One of the most obvious powerhouses new to the game is the fire galley with an attack strength of 24. This powerhouse ship can very effectively go up alone against an enemy trireme and destroy it without suffering extensive damage, making it an effective free safety for defending against lone enemy port raiders. To balance this strength, the fire galley is very vulnerable to enemy siege engine attacks due to its flammable ammunition, so think twice before using it as offensive naval gunfire platform against ground units (unless they are on the beach). Combat between similar type units typically requires a force superiority of about five or six units to one in order to achieve destruction without suffering significant damage to the attacking force.

Armored Elephant	Fire Galley	Camel	Scythe Chariot	Slinger

There are very few downsides to playing this game. It is fun, challenging, and visually gorgeous. The game emphasizes teamwork as players compose combined arms forces for combat and attempt to synergize on the strengths of each unit type, and to overcome each unit's individual vulnerabilities to certain types of enemy units. I find it useful and compelling to either rope and team-assign various types of units, or now to double-click on a unit type to select all of that type. Simply ganging up a big force of different units and attacking en masse is not elegant and it results in lots of friendly losses - the sure sign of a novice playing this game. One major area where Age of Empires is very weak in simulating ancient combat is the lack of formation capability for multiple units of a type. Units in ancient times fought in very structured formations, where flanking and frontages were vitally important, particularly to morale. You can't align a formation of units and expect it to last during movement or combat. I did note, however, that the preview and advance release material for Age of Empires II places very heavy emphasis on the capability to form units into fixed formations. Perhaps people noticed this in Age of Empires and complained.

Cavalry units tend to be just as impetuous as they were in real life, or as the high-speed air units (wraiths, mutalisks, or scouts) are in StarCraft. You must constantly maintain control over them and hold them back at times. Then, when the time is right, judiciously attack with them and retreat when at a disadvantage. Don't discount the advantage of speed with cavalry and chariots, to attack a fragile long-range siege engine (before it can pummel you), or to charge and cut down a priest about to throw a conversion spell on your troops. One of the worst experiences comes when you are using stone throwers and catapults and you see your own men get fragged when they get too close to enemy targets. Fratricide! You must be extremely judicious about using this primitive artillery, so you must deconflict infantry or melee attacks with siege engine barrages. Very highly-trained and well-equipped, expensive infantry like hoplites, legions, or centurions really earn their pay in combat, particularly against less-sophisticated rabble - like groups of axemen. The same goes for heavy cavalry, cataphracts, or horse archers. Elephant archers aren't much more lethal on the attack than a composite bowman, but just try to take out one of these very tough 600 point units (or even worse: several of them!). You can hit it with everything but the kitchen sink and it keeps firing at you! Command and control in this game is extremely challenging but is rewarding to the diligent and ambidextrous commander.

Cheat Codes

When a scenario seems nearly impossible to beat, or you are simply curious, or you just want to have some fun, Age of Empires has some cheat codes programmed into its game engine. These are typically "ejection seats" for those players who seem to be in serious trouble but want to get through an intimidating and seemingly impossible-to-win scenario, or they simply want to proceed to the next scenario in a campaign (without earning it the hard way). Cheat codes tend to place a very rare, unique, and powerful (and anachronistic) unit on the map, or they may reset one or more resource inventories. In my experience, cheat codes tend to be more favored and readily used by the pre-teen set, who are accustomed to instant gratification and love using them. Cheat codes seem to be disdained by their baby boomer parents (who instead prefer to achieve through merit, and risk delayed gratification). My purpose here is not to recommend cheat codes as standard components of play, but each customer buys a game for his or her own enjoyment. Some are really worth your experimentation, at least to see the sense of humor and imagination of some of the development team by what bizarre units they included in this game. In order to use a cheat code, simply hit Enter and type in the cheat code, then hit Enter again and it should be activated (typically only in single-player mode).

One of my favorite fictional cheat units is Big Bertha, which turns all friendly stone throwers or catapults into Big Bertha: a multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), or at least highly-powerful long-range artillery (with some impressive blast, fragmentation, and tree blow-down capability) that appears in the visual form of an ancient catapult! You can wipe out large formations of troops and cause some serious collateral damage with these babies - it's probably best to run them autonomously, way distant from your own troops. Big Daddy creates a black gangster car that launches rockets. Photon Man is also very cool - he is essentially a Starship Trooper on the ancient battlefield, with a powerful long-range weapon. E=mc2 Trooper creates a trooper with a 300 attack nuclear weapon which fires at a range of 88. There are also codes to jack up whatever resources seem to be insufficient up to 1,000. (The words for these are sometimes priceless!) Some other codes make destroyed units come back as new life forms or types that continue to morph into something else every time they are destroyed. So, if you have an imagination and sense of humor, or are tired of getting hammered in a really tough scenario, you may want to give one or more of the cheat codes a try.

Multi-player

Age of Empires is also a great multi-player game and there is a nearly unlimited number of options to pursue depending on your tastes and objectives. Like StarCraft, Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome Expansion can be played using a serial cable or null modem, standard telephonic modem connection, on a local area network (LAN) using IPX/SPX protocol, or on the Internet. This game surpasses StarCraft in offering the prospect of playing on any host accessible on any Internet TCP/IP server - simply type in the server name or IP address and you can host or join a game. You aren't simply confined to playing on battle.net (StarCraft developer Blizzard's proprietary multi-player network). Also, the multi-player module is smart enough to offer you the LAN option only when it detects the appropriate network connections.

Up to eight players can participate in a game, in up to four teams, and in some cases two or more players can share one of the eight player slots and play cooperatively with the same assets. Setting up a multi-player game is very easy, and offers nearly unlimited flexibility for the creator. Many of the fourteen decisions which one makes when crafting a multi-player game mirror the same decisions a designer must make when building a scenario in the editor. Players can select a pre-made scenario and map, or can select map size and map type for the computer to auto-generate one on the fly (fairer for everyone, since no one knows the map). Then, players can decide whether to reveal the map or keep it shrouded in a fog of war until units reconnoiter the area. The multi-player game creator nails down the victory conditions and style of game, starting age (Bronze, Stone, Iron), amount of ambient resources, difficulty level (used for generating computer forces), and start positions of all players. Finally, he or she specifies whether to enable cheat codes (usually not done in multi-player games - this is a weakness usually reserved for single-player scenarios), sets the maximum population limit (this can be very confining, particularly The Rise of Rome Expansion scenarios which limit populations to 50), decides whether all civilizations use the full technology tree (with no unique qualities and units for various civilizations), and finally sets the pathfinding finesse (how efficiently units navigate to destinations without getting stuck or lost). Quite an intimidating number of decisions!

Programmed Opponent (AI)

There is also a main menu setting for Blood Feud, which is a quick action setting to get play started immediately and has very few setup decisions. This mode is more of a practice mode so players can get some command exercise, outside the constraints of a multi-player game or a canned, single player scenario or campaign battle. This option also helps show the capability of the AI, in a randomly generated situation.

The computer AI is generally satisfactory in this game. The computer is trying to accomplish whatever has been programmed in the scenario editor and, as such, will perform those actions that seem to lead toward completion of the programmed objectives. Sometimes these actions may seem to be the actions of a mindless drone. On average, however, if a scenario is properly conceived and designed, the computer opponent can appear to be extremely brilliant, intuitive, and challenging. There are many settings that the scenario designer can select for the computer player to pursue and I will talk about them further in the Scenario Editor section below. The computer is extremely adept at noticing unsupported enemy units which are off by themselves and will send a small force to dispatch them - just like a sharp chess player taking the piece you unwittingly left unguarded. Occasionally units get stuck while moving through terrain, requiring human intervention to get them unstuck and routed properly to their destination. Interestingly enough, from what my army friends tell me, this is a very real aspect to command of ground forces, as frustrating as it may be in the game at times. I know that pathfinding capability has been enhanced in subsequent versions of the game. There is also no morale factored into this game (although that was a key element in warfare during this period, as anyone who plays the Great Battles series can attest), so units may at times do what appears to be suicidal. This may be in response to your command or to their individual initiative - they typically don't have your overall perspective. Units also always obey your commands, unlike the more realistic command response system programmed into games like Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far, where units may refuse to act or may flee based on morale and the battle situation.

One of the greatest successes in this game, and why it is already such a classic, is its scoring and victory condition determination. This is a key center of gravity in AI design and effective game development. When a scenario is over (or while in play, if you hit the F11 key), the player is presented with an in-depth and comprehensive summary of how he or she performed, particularly in respect to the opponents (computer or human). This game keeps track of many data items, and presents great post-game debriefs when the game is over. This depth and detail of information really offers a wide panorama of options to scenario designers, and helps dispel the limitation of simple massacre as the only winning outcome, and of melee as the only strategy. The AI can pursue one of many strategies and can achieve success in a variety of courses of action. This makes the AI appear to be more robust and effective than is found in games with more limited scoring and victory concepts and levels. For specificity, let me detail some of the things that are tracked and scored: there are military, economic, religious, technology, survival, wonder (of the world), and total score categories for scoring, and each of these may have several subcategories. In the military category (the one most of us are most accustomed to), the subcategories are: kills (units destroyed), razings (facilities destroyed), losses (friendly units or facilities destroyed), kill-loss ratio, largest army, and total score. Just about any minimally-competent scenario designer can make the computer opponent appear challenging using these objectives for scoring!

Scenario Editor

I'm not sure why we haven't been flooded with great scenarios for this game, but I suspect it is a lack of individual designer familiarity with the period of history that Age of Empires depicts. Although the game abstractly models battles (and presently doesn't facilitate unit formations for combat), Age of Empires is great at setting up strategic and operational environments that require a finesse between operational combat power and logistical resource management. Although exact historical tactical battles may not be portrayed with utmost fidelity, the Age of Empires editor does make it very possible to use the events, nations, and leaders from historical civilizations and situations, modeling actual events on a strategic scale. The Rise of Rome Expansion's four new campaigns are full of great scenarios. These are stimulating and challenging, and make great models for fledgling scenario designers to study and emulate. The Age of Empires scenario and campaign editor is a great tool to work in and sets a high standard for its competitors.

The scenario editor in action.

My only reservation about the campaign editor is that it simply sequences individual pre-built scenarios, to be played in a linear progression by winning each prerequisite scenario. There is no interconnectivity or correlation between the outcome of one scenario of a campaign and what comes next (what units carry over and where they are deployed). Perhaps I have been spoiled by Steel Panthers and some other games where a player's base force is generated, and the player runs that base force through successive non-linear scenarios, upgrading it between battles as it becomes more combat experienced and technology continues to advance. All that said, it is still great to create campaigns of individual scenarios, and the four campaigns included in The Rise of Rome Expansion are really enjoyable to play. Let's take a quick look at the scenario editor and see what it offers for those of us who may wish to try their hand at creating individual scenarios, or even a campaign consisting of several scenarios.

Like the plethora of options and controls offered to the creator of a multi-player game, the scenario editor offers nearly unlimited creative potential. The scenario editor interface is visually gorgeous, intuitively well laid out, and very functional. Expect many of the same decisions in creating a scenario as the creator of a multi-player game would select, with a toolbar of ten buttons across the top of the screen.

• First comes the map. Pick a size, decide whether you want it to create a random map based on some basic determinants, and pick the predominant (default) terrain type from four basic elements (grass, desert, water, deep water).
• Next, make some more terrain decisions - this menu is for handcrafting the individual tiles in a map you create. You have many palettes of terrains and individual features to select from and you can also identify elevations, cliffs, and other components of the map.
• Decide the number of players and whether they will be human or computer, pick a starting age, resource levels and configuration, identify involved civilizations, and assign them basic strategies and personalities. This is where the AI gets its guidance on what units to produce and how aggressive a posture they will assume in your scenario.
• Next, pick the units that will be featured in your scenario. Every civilization and every unit is available, plus some cool surprise and special units like Cleopatra's Barge, Zenobia's Tower, individual heroes like Alexander and Hannibal.
• Identify diplomacy - which players are allies, which are enemies, and which are neutral. This can be configured for each player (up to the maximum of eight).
• Specify individual victory conditions. Here you set very specific objectives and victory criteria for each player in your scenario. There are many possibilities here and the editor's interface facilitates whatever complex combination of criteria you elect to assign to each player and force.
• Set global victory criteria for terminating the game and setting the overall tone of the scenario. Here is also where the scoring system and debriefing feedback presentation is set. You can pick from Standard, Conquest, Score, Timeline, or Custom. Custom allows you to specify a finite number in a combination of any or all of the following: exploration, ruins, artifacts, or discoveries.
• Decide options for technology and civilization discrimination and characterization. Here is where technology trees can be standardized or individualized, and technological research discoveries and capabilities included or excluded.
• The final choice involves Message (text fields which explain the scenario, including objectives and historical context, and relate how the player's performance at the conclusion of the scenario affected subsequent historical situations) and Cinematics settings (animations and maps can be assigned for pre-game orientation and victory or loss outcomes).

Hopefully in this review, the reader was able to gain a comprehensive examination of what this very fine and well-developed simulation offers. I identified just about all of the features the set offers, and gave the reader a good view of their potential in any of the various modes of play. I also identified some of the minor areas where Age of Empires could use a little improvement, and I suggested some ways to make this excellent game even better. I am extremely excited to know that many of those suggestions are already being incorporated into Age of Empires II, and I very much look forward to the release of that game, which will cover the times of the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages.

Age of Empires, with or without The Rise of Rome Expansion, is well worth the money and also very educational. Kids can learn a lot about history from playing this game, and so can their parents. Age of Empires also depicts some of the other instruments of power (IOP): political, economic, and information, as well as the military IOP in the formulation and execution of a civilization's strategy. Although conquest is the typical scenario strategy, there are others which require innovation, resourcefulness, restraint, patience, and ingenuity. Age of Empires may also very well be the only historical strategic empire and conquest game that features a priest as one of its most powerful units.

In my opinion this game (and expansion disk) is a solid five-star game and is one of the all-time top-quality real-time strategy games on the market. Some great research and some very elegant and brilliant game design are in obvious evidence within the original Age of Empires package, and The Rise of Rome Expansion is a superb follow-on product which exquisitely enhances its very impressive progenitor.

System Requirements		Reviewer's System
Age of Empires version 1.0 installed Pentium 90 MHz (120 MHz for gigantic maps) Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0 w/ SP3 DirectX 6.0 16 MB RAM 2x CD-ROM (4x for cinematics) 1MB Local Bus Super VGA video adapter DirectSound 5.0 compatible sound card 30 MB of available hard disk space Microsoft compatible mouse 28.8 kbps modem for head-to-head play		AMD K-6 266MHz Windows 98 DirectX 6.0a 96 MB RAM 24x CD-ROM Diamond Viper V330 3D Video Card 4Mb Creative Labs AWE-32 Sound Card Silver Bullet 56K Flex modem

Suggested Further Reading

Hannibal by Dodge Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon by Liddell-Hart Alexander by Dodge Warfare in Classical World by Warry The Origins of War: From the Stone Age to Alexander the Great by Ferrill Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army by Engels

All screenshots captured exclusively with HyperSnap-DX by Hyperionics.

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