Ancient Art of War
 

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review & Download

Holy crap you are kidding me! I remember watching my brother play this for HOURS on end when I was younger! Merci Abandonia. Nice review ultranewbie. I like...I like a lot. :woot:

Yeah - it's quite a cool game when you get into it.

To be honest, I never really got that good at it. Although I did learn some strategies, I never really worked out the best way to fight. Which meant, in levels where you are outnumbered it took me a little bit longer.

Yeah, my brothers were always really good at it, but I didn't really understand how to play, so I would just like, rush in killing everying and hoping to win :D

hmmmm...when I try to play the game, it is like, in super ultra turbo speed mode...any suggestions?

Just something to think about... this, not Dune 2, was the first real time strategy game. This game invented an entire genre.

-Angel

This game brings back a lot of good memories. Thanks, Abandonia! :OK:

I played this game like -mad- on the AppleIIGS.. good to see it come back to life, I'm going to have to download right away :)

Um... just slow down your pc. Open DOSbox 4 times.

This was one of the first PC games I owned. It was on an old 5 1/4 floppy disk. I used to play it on an old Tandy 1000 (no hard drive, you had to load Dos from a floppy evey time you booted up). I fould it a couple of years ogo in a box of university stuff and transferred to a 3.5 floppy but had the same issue with everything occuring at superfast speed. Looking forward to using DOSBOX to enable me to play it again!
I don't recall seeing some of those screen shots before. That must be a newer issue of the game, the one I had was for monochrome monitors only!

I played this for hours and hours, afternoons and afternoons, months on end! I became a sort of expert on it, even developed a few scenarios to be tougher to beat.



There's actually a few strategies you can use to beat the game.

If you want to take a fort, use at least 1 squadron more than the number that's currently occupying the fort. For instance, if 2 squads are occupying it, attack the fort with 3. Then only 2 will engage the ones outside the fort, and the remaining one will enter with no problem. - This takes away the only major difficulty the game could have!

If attacking a fort from outside, use squads with only archers, in a formation where they are in the back and in the front.

If you only have archers, attacking a squad that has barbarians and knights, get your archers as far back as possible. That will give them time to hit the enemy.

If attacking a squad of mostly archers, use knights and barbarians, in a formation where they are at the front, so they don't have to walk much to reach the enemy archers - otherwise they'll be murdered by the arrows.

If attacking a fort that doesn't resupply troops, invade all neighbouring villages - the tropps in the fort will starve, and you'll attack with no problem.

Archers and Barbarians are the fastest moving, knights are the slowest - if you need to reach somewhere fast - make a squad only of archers or barbarians.

If you refuse a surrender, all the enemies troops will just throw themselves at you, dying... Not much fun, unless you're feeling sadistic. Sometimes it's fun to just exterminate them all!!!




This game was my favorite for a very long time! It even influenced the kind of game I would find entertaining much later - the only ones I actually enjoyed as much as TAAW have been Age of Empires II and Age of Mythology!

I used to play it in the early 90s, in my Olivetty PC-1, on a 3.5" floppy. One day my floppy got corrupted and I lost the loading screen and the campaigns, but it would still play, so I created a number of more difficult levels. If I find them I'll send them to your GREAT site!

Since most stuff had to be loaded from disk (scene transitions to battles and menu screens), I also created a 'fast' disk, that used RAM as a RAMdisk and copied all the stuff there, before starting the game. Then the entire game moved much quicker from scene to scene! Great fun!!!

Finally, if anyone has this in Apple II or Mac format, I'd like to know, as I collect old computers, and the AII and Mac LC are among my favorites - I'd like to play this on those machines!

Keep up the great work, guys!

Miguel Lopes
http://miklops.redirectme.net
http://pwp.netcabo.pt

i hate this game! tsssss. nobody have to love every old game. but hey, when ya love it, then you love it! :bye:

just use dosbox

DosBox

wow...this was the second game I ever owned for my PC (after Wizardry 1), and I spent an entire summer trying to figure out how to beat it...i think i could only beat up to the third level commander, whoever that was, but after him, i got my behind soundly kicked every time.

and press ctrl-f11 a few times to slow dosbox down.

Try these two links below for a copy of the manual (I created this) and some extra scenarios to play. There is also a history of the game and many screen shots. I suggest you create a boot disk and play AAOW from diskette using the Moslo utility (also available on this site). A boot disk is downloadable from Abandonia. I've done this already. Works great.

http://j.lahmy.tripod.com/aaow/

http://j.lahmy.tripod.com/aaow/subp01.htm

Hi all,

TAAW was not my first game, but it was the first strategy game that I loved! The game ruled! And the fact that it was simple (as in options) was for me one of it's strong points! I personally think that a lot of todays games go overboard with possible options... less is more!

Some tricks/rules that will help you complete all the levels quite easily:
1. As Miguel Lopes pointed out, place your archers at the back and place your barbarians and knights at the front.

2. When you grow your army (in the forts), keep barbarians and knights together and seperate all archers out into thier own groups.

3. Never watch your barbarians or knights fight, they have a much better winning chance when you don't watch.

4. ALWAYS watch your archers fight! The best, dirty, trick is to watch your archers fight and then just before the enemy barbarians & knights reach your archers, press R to retreat, and then attack them again. When you attack again, the enemy barbarians and knights need to walk the entire distance again to reach you! And again, when they get to close, retreat and repeat! Yes a dirty dirty trick, but hey .... it works :evil:

ps. DOSBox rules! And old game that I created now runs again under Windows XP :Brain: http://www.planetquake.com/munyul if anyone is interested :whistle:

This was my first real PC strategy game. I learned strategy and have been addicted to strategy games ever since. I would definitley rate it higher than 3. It was excellent (for it's day) I understand if no one likes the graphics today.

Ancient Art of War in the Skys was ok. My next addiction was Colonial Conquest

I loved this game. I downloaded the file and it didnt work!?!?! Anyone have any ideas? I have pentium4 windows XP.

I can't figure out how to use dos box. Running it the way it is makes it go really fast and I have but can't really use dos box... 1/5

:cry:

what is so sad is that my wife(that's the nice name i give her) and i were cleaning out my "junk" and came across my original B&W copy of the game(3.5 hard disk, original instruction, box with good corners, near mint condition everything) and we(she made me) throw away my copy due to the fast moving screen, didnt of think of checking online to fix this, i'll download the game soon

what's next? my baseball cards and guns...

i don't think so

It was awesome. I still remember the best strategy for this: split your armys into archer and non-archer. Then you atack with your archers enemy groups of knights and barbarian and leave before they reach, and so on and so for. Eventually, move your melee armies to smash the weakened enemy :bleh:

ahhhh... old times live for ever!

I LOVED this game when it was first out, had at sea also... and decided to go surfing for it.

I'm only so-so with computers, so when I found it on an old 5.25 inch disk last week I couldn't figure out how to get a win 98 machine (the only one I could lay my hands on with a 5.25 DRIVE) to read the disk!

I'm gonna go surfing some more and see if I can find at sea... I do recall that archers were a key to winning battles with forts, if you don't have archers when going up against a fort get your guys up REALLY CLOSE really fast, as the archers weren't good at shotting straight down... then you had to figure out up and over... but it kept people alive! :)

Archers rocked from in the forts! :)

Damn I can't wait to play this again! :)

I have a little question.......... How to move a unit?! i click "move" but nothing happens :wall:

Tried clicking the destination afterwards?

Hello fellow gamers !

Please note new address for the AAOW fans http://purl.oclc.org/net/aaow

A forum is also included.

Cheers.

what are the keys or conrols to this game?

Hi folks. This was my first game on a shiny, new IBM PC XT. I still have the original game, manuals and the XT. I guess now I have to have a garage sale.

Game Controls:
Cursor Movement: 1, 3, 7 and 9 move at an angle. 8, 4, 2 and 6 move along x/y axis

When cursor is not over a squad:
View shows areas of strengths and weakness & total number of troops on each side.
Time sets the speed of the game.
Surrender quits the game.

When cursor is over a squad:
Size shows types and troop numbers in a squad.
Info shows condition and food supply & lets you change marching speed.
Move traces the exact path the squad will take.
Formation lets you change your squad's formation.
Join lets you move troops between two squads, if they are close together.
Detach lets you split a squad (useful if forts are set to train troops).

When cursor is over a squad at time of Encounter:
Zoom lets you take command of the squad in battle.

In battle:
The following commands are preceded by Squad, Archer, Barbarian, or Knight:
Attack - Move forward and attack the enemy (archers will shoot from where they stand).
Forward - Move forward.
Backoff - Move backward.
Retreat - Flee.

Archers are strong against Knights. They will also defend fort walls.
Barbarians are strong against Archers. They have no weapons and move quickly.
Knights are strong against Barbarians. They are slow.
Spies can see twice as far as other troops. If the game is set so the enemy is seen always, they will come into the game as Barbarians.

Ok anyone know the answer to this question. I am trying to create new campaigns but the default is to a floppy drive and I haven't had one of those on a computer in some time. Anyway I can change that designation to a C Drive?

i tried to go to "ye olde options shoppe" (damn i love that name) but it seems that you can only use floppy drive for the new campagin.

so, for example, use dosbox to emulate one
example
mount a c:\games\aaow\floppy

Brilliant game!
 

Woohoo!

I remember playing this game on me new IBM XT more than 20 years ago! Now I have a Mac, I hope it works as well.

One of the best strategies I remember was splitting my archers into groups of threes in the forts, worked best against most groups. If the enemy had archers too, I'd put one or two barbarians in the group and kept moving them up and down to the wall to draw the archers' fire.

One other one I remember is to put a single archer outside to intercept a group of 14 knights. The idiots will run into a single file and the archer will just take them out one at a time. :thumbs:

If they came with 14 archers, I'd put 7 knights and 7 barbarians in a group, and changed formation till they were all upfront. Charge them archers as soon as the battle begins. All the knights will die, but the barbarians will get through and the archers will be pulp.

Help!
 

Every time I play this game, it goes super fast!
I tried using the DOSbox, but I dont know the commands to make it work!
Someone help me...

Hammer on CTRL+F11 to slow things down in dosbox.
CTRL+F12 to speed things up.



....... And read the dosbox readme, lots of tips in there.:)

Thanks
 

Thanks Very much!! :clap:

Time honored
 

While you did a great review by literary standards, I think maybe you were the wrong person to review this game. I only say that because you seemed to be comparing it heavily with games created long after its creation in terms of graphics and gameplay complexity. You have to review a program this old in the context of when it was created, and with what technology it was created. This game is only the second real time strategy game ever marketed, and in some ways it is still superior to many of the latest games. You didn't seem to appreciate the action element of the game. The fact that it is done in real time can make it an intense action game. I've been playing this game since probably 1986 and even if I go years without playing it I always return to playing it, and guess what I still can't get rid of that sense of doom and urgency that washes over me when the game starts, If you don't take the initiative you will be embarassed to lose to an Ms Dos based 1984 ai. I too wish I add certain elements to the game that you speak of especially the third party element, and guns (Editing the .exe files, I even once tried to build a hybrid version with WAR and its sequel War at Sea to get musketeers, fleets and cannons in the game.) All I succedded in doing of course at the time was swapping some of the graphics, though I'm sure it wouldn't be hard for a real programmer to do. Nor do you fully recognize the fact that this is probably the first strategy games or games period to create a customizable scenerio editor. The games you should be comparing it to are the likes of Centipede,Sentinel Worlds, and The Oregon Trail. The creators of this game did way "more with less" when compared to rts games of the currerent era. This game is begging for an update, but only one that captures the same "managable" RTS feel of AAW. Which I think would mean retaining the wait time of encounters feature.. yeh I think that was the difference between rts then and now. Leave it in there after all, IT is no less realistic than the idea of omniscent birds eye view control of historic battlefields.
But like I said your review was good over all, but I just wish you would have been more respectful of the age of this game when considering its graphics and game play. For a 1984 strategy game those little guys had character, and moved with better animation than they needed to.

Played this in 1982, taking breaks from a job, at the computer center of the university where I was a program director for the public radio station. Loved it then, but there really wasn't much competition. Brings back memories. :)

Machintosh version
 

I remember playing Ancient Art of War on both PC and Machintosh in the late eighties/early nineties.
The Machintosh version is MUCH superior to the PC-version when it comes to graphics and sound, so fans of the game should check it out.

Must have been that flux capacitor thing, that you could play the game before it came out.

simply the best...
 

Like ID made the first 3D shooter, Broderbund made the first RTS.
I remember playing this game for hours, not winning much but having lots of fun.

Someone should recreate this game with nicer graphics and nice music. I know lots of people would say that these games already exist, warcraft, age of empires, and so on, but I believe that is not the case.

This game is about simplicity, yet is very hard to master. The simplicity is in that it is just about the tactics, not building cities, not managing money, not I dunno, but just the tactics, preparing your squads for battle and capturing flags.
I also said "hard to master". Although it is possible to create campains where even Sun Tzu himself starts commiting suicide, when you play the game properly, it is just hard. I don't really like the "race for the flags" kind of campaigns, but I like those with forts and villages to be used strategically.

In other words, if you take the game seriously, it will take you seriously too.

Try it, still now in 2010 it is a great game. I wished the source code would be available, mostly to rip the AI out of it, so that I could create a new AAOW clone myself. I would really do it.

Good news: it is available!
Bad news: because it was assembly.

I remember seeing this at a friend's place when I had no computer, and I thought it was the coolest thing on Earth. I was introduced to the very concept of strategy video game at that very moment. However I never got to play it. :(

window vista .. can not get it to work
 

can you help me get Ancient Art of War working on vista ...
ericyunis hotmail com

Sure: dosbox.
Read the tutorials. :)

laptops
 

lol me too, I found when using a laptop I had num lock on and the m key is also zero turn off num lock problem solved.

If I remember right, when you click move, you then move the new Icon/Cursor and it is creating the path. ie Were you move the icon, is where the unit will walk. Once you have finished drawing it's path, you hit enter or something.

Not for me
 

To old for me. I can't play this :sick:
Missed the boat.
Not advised.

Campaigns
 

Hi I've played AAW for years a long time ago.
I've found and downloaded it in recent years.

I've created new campaigns. If you wanna play it, contact me, and I'll send you a ZIP file. And of course, I expect from you fresh new campaigns!

If you need to play it just by clicking an Icon, let me know and I'll send you a ZIP with the game, including a conf file and the shortcut. But you have to do 2 steps: Instal DOSbox and learn how to change the cycles in DOSbox (ctrl-f11 to slow down and ctrl-f12 to speed up). The game will be sent in 500 cycles. Detail: I'm not a programmer, just read the DOSbox manual and figured out the rest.

e-mail : [BEEEP]@gmail.com

; ]

Just for those who are interested in this game. There is a new campaign uploaded called Tiberia for the Advanced Art of War player. :)
Good luck.

I just played the first two campaigns and was surprised that I was able to win both. When I played this as a kid it took ages to find a way to win some of the campaigns, but then I had to learn how to utilize the controls. I wouldn't say I used that much strategy this time, didn't change the formations much, but I did oversee most of the encounters/battles and did really well at most of them. Actually in "The Race for the Flags", right away I noticed that though the enemy is ahead of you, those on the left hand path are in poor health i.e. slower and weaker, so it seems obvious now to send your squads up that road, easily catching up the enemy and likely beating them. The default rule is that the forest is sparse so keep going straight up, through the forest, over the bridge, round the mountains etc. reaching the fort/flags first.

I noticed the manual rates the difficulty of each campaign, they generally get harder as you go down the list. It suddenly got a lot harder when I got down to The Rivalry, I failed it about six times before realizing that Caesar just sends all his men to your fort and doesn't bother leaving anyone at his own fort to "spawn" new soldiers, so there's no reason to leave your base with its fort and village. You'll have the advantage when the enemy squads arrive at your fort. I go with the default rules and general and the game's statement that Caesar's weakness is that he doesn't always protect his conquests proved true here. The campaigns did in fact get harder from there, I failed many times at Tale of Three Islands, Wu vs. Chu and War in the Mountains before winning each by forcing a surrender. But surprisingly I beat the final campaign Islands of Doom on the first try! I suppose if not for all the practice I got from failing the previous three, I'd have failed Islands of Doom a few times too, but I found that it was generally easier to capture the enemies' forts and actually many of the flags are not inside the forts so easier to capture. In the end I captured the last flag by storming the west-most enemy fort with four squads, sending the last one in to get the flag while the enemy squads were stuck in encounters.