Before Dave Murry and Barry Murry designed the seminal The Ancient Art of War in 1984, best-selling wargames like SSI's Kampfgruppe bear no resemblance to best-selling strategy games like M.U.L.E. As a result, strategy gamers and wargamers are two secluded camps who don't speak the same language.
The Ancient Art of War united the two camps in one masterful stroke. Here, at last, is a wargame that wargamers would enjoy for the excellent engine based on the classic war treatise by Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu. Implementing tactics based on Sun Tzu's words becomes the key to victory. Strategy gamers were drawn to the game for its colorful graphics, the chance to match wits with 8 of the most famous military leaders in history in their most important battles, and intuitive command interface.
Here is your chance to challenge the goddess Athena, Alexander the Great, Geronimo, Crazy Ivan, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Sun Tzu himself. As in the first game, battle locales are varied and historically important. You will wage wars in the Sherwood forest, ancient Rome, Asgaard, Custer's Last Command, Napoleon's France, ancient China, the Appalachians, and Mongolia.
The game, like chess, is simple to learn, yet hard to master. The lack of campaign mode is just about the only criticism I can think of. Suffice it to say that anyone who's never played this game is missing out an important chapter in the history of war and strategy gaming. Two thumbs up!
Review By HOTUD
English 
French 
Comments and reviews
So many happy hours in computer lab in college avoiding school work by playing this
I think the EGA version is bugged. So I heard. So is the apple version. Get the CGA version.
I don't know about the Amiga version... Its in French
This is a true clasic that still retains full playability. Why no one has ever done a remake is lost to me.
About the campaigns included in the game, five are races to the enemy flag:
- Race for the Flags and Contest of the Gods are about learning to maximize your unit's speed.
- Pharsalus and Custer's Last Stand are about defending your flag while your side detatchment runs fast to take the enemy's. The lessons learnt in Race and Contest will help you to achieve the latter.
- The Spy is about maneouvering among the enemy troops to reach the enemy flag. Avoiding the enemy is an useful skill to learn for later battles. When you have an objective in mind, do not let enemy troops lure you away of it.
Sherwood Forest is a siege. You must take the villages to cut the fort from getting supplies and starve the enemy. The position of your flag is randomized in each battle, which adds a dynamic element every time you play this campaign.
The other five scenarios are wars of attrition where you must defend your forts to build up your forces and take over the enemy ones.
- The Rivalry, being just one fort per side, is the easiest to learn. Defend your initial turf and let the enemy burn trying to assault you, then advance and move down.
- Wu vs Ch'u is pretty straightforward as you begin in control of your forts and the enemy begins in control of hims, so you can move on inmediately on to seizing villages and starving the enemy.
- Tale of Three Islands and Islands of Doom require you to maneuver quickly at the beggining of the scenario to seize as many forts as possible, then you can slowly starve down the enemy.
- War in the Mountains is the toughest one, as the enemy can move faster than you do, will get a lot more forts than you to spawn troops, and forts produce food so you need to take the enemy ones by assault instead of besieging them. Beating this scenario takes hours of gameplay.
The Eleven campaigns included in the game are fun to play, though the real thing comes with the Campaign Editor. Once you master the game, including understanding how the different AI Enemies react to situations, and all the exploits available to the player, you can engineer a lot of diverse challenges beyond the ones proposed in the basic campaigns.
awesome! cuando todo era tan simple este juego estuvo adelantado a su epoca,, Warcraft???
F.Y.I.
If the installation doesn't work, you can go to
http://ancient-art-of-war.0fees.net/the-ancient-art-of-war.htm
(2017)
It gives downloads for the Ancient Art of War for multiple platforms, and also gives the manuals and some custom campaigns. It's a really cool website, give it a shot!
I just discovered it and it should work.
To create a new campaign, in the location where Ancient Art of War is stored, create a new directory (folder for you non-tech people) named floppy (I actually don't know if it's name matters or not). Then, on DOSBOX:
mount a c:/dos/artofwar/floppy
mount c c:/dos
C:
CD artofwar
Then run it. Go to the campaign selection and then create a new campaign. It should work.
Thanks for this amazing game it brings back a lot of memories.
Unfortunately this download doesn't include Disk 2 ("Campaign Disk") that was included with the original, which allows editing and creating new game campaigns. If anyone knows where this can be downloaded please post a link. thank you.
I'm back in 1988
it's great to have this game again!
Wow. This is blast from the past. used to love BroderBund games. I really wanted to try this and its sea version again. Thanks for providing the link. Can you advise how to play it on windows 8? Is there an emulator or a simple way to load the game and play without bugs?
Thanks a bunch.
Review of The Ancient Art of War for DOS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdgwPOf2BCA
I spent most of my time on this game back in the 80s. Brilliant !!!
One of the best games ever. The origin of the RTS gaming.
This game is one of the Classics! 8 /10
This is the best RTS game ever made and no one has the hindsight to remake it?
Oh man I used to love this game back in the day. Could be the original RTS game.
I absolutely love this game.
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.