Great Battles of Alexander is derived from the board wargame published by GMT Games. Consequently, the emphasis is on game play and strategy. The graphics and animation are impressive enough to a board wargamer, but possible not at the cutting edge of technology. The good news is that it runs quite happily on a 100MHz Pentium. (OK, I run it on a 200MHz K6) Each unit is represented as a group of animated figures, which moves and/or fights when issued orders by the commanders. Each commander is rated for the number of commands he can issue, from the divine Alexander down to a host of pretty ordinary bit players. You can also issue group orders to all the units under a leader's direct command. This only works well if the units have been kept lined up together and facing in the same direction, which is less likely as the battle progresses. It is possible for leaders to get up to three activations each turn, and units can be activated once per leader activation as often as you like, remembering that they will be rapidly burnt out if you do this too much. When units come together, there is nicely animated throwing of javelins and other missiles and some ferocious shouting and clanging of weapons, not to mention trumpeting and trampling by elephants. Pretty soon the landscape is littered with bloody corpses, discarded shields etc, while loose horses career over the battlefield. Where fighting occured at a river, the odd body can be seen to float downstream. Despite all this gore, the fighting actually results in loss of cohesion rather than casualties as such, graphically represented by removing figures from the units. By issuing a recovery command shaky units can pull themselves together a bit, but if a unit reaches its breaking point, it cuts and runs. It is possible to issue rally orders to a routed unit, but if that fails, or if it takes a further loss, it is gone for good. When the value of all eliminated units reaches a preset level, the battle is lost. The trick is to push the enemy over its rout level before you pass yours. It is also possible to balance scenarios by adjusting the rout point levels. The scenarios recreate the main battles of Alexander the Great's career, from Chaeronea in Greece, where he served under his father Philip, to the Battle of the Hydaspes in India. By default the player controls the Macedonians, while the computer controls the enemy forces. You can switch sides, or select multiplayer "hot seat" or internet play. Internet play works seamlessly by all accounts, although I haven't tried it. There are some complex interactions between different troop types, a sort of rock scissors stone with knobs on, which was lifted straight from the boardgame, and is all laid out in the rulebook. However, for most purposes this can be summed up as "heavy troops beat light troops", and a flank attack beats just about anything. Keep your troops in line, keep the cohesion hits down and watch your flanks. The rulebook also includes a concise explanation the thinking behind the game by the co-designer, Mark Herman, who shares credit for this and the original boardgame with fellow SPI allumnus Rich Berg. More recent additions to the series are Great Battles of Hannibal, and Great Battles of Caesar. The last of these hit the shops in March 1998.