The Ancient Art of War

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 led some players to force the computer into having fewer (though stronger) units and thus easier to evade by creating an army of weak units.

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.