Description
The Ancient Art of War at Sea is the sequel to
The Ancient Art of War where the battle campaigns now take you the vast oceans of naval combat.
Gameplay
The game is a top-down semi real-time strategy game (political map level). The game has different speed/time settings (Slower to Faster) so you can manage strategies while remaining in real-time mode.
Like its predecessor, the game comes with different difficulty settings, symbolized by several famous naval commanders and also comes with a game editor.
Unit types
Like its predecessor, the game introduces 3 different types units in the game:
[1] The Frigate, small but fastest ship in the fleet.
[2] The Ship-of-the-Line, the primary battleship in the fleet
[3] The Flagship, well armed but slow. Flagships are the moving strategic flags that need to be captured in order to win the game.
As aforementioned, the aim of the game is to capture all the enemy Flag ships while protecting your own Flagships. As added difficulty, you cannot create new ships however you can capture enemy ships by boarding them.
Political map
The political map provides information regarding friendly and enemy unit location, ports and certain waters that may cause damage to ships that cross it.
Reparations and supplies may be obtained in the many ports provided on the political map. Whether or not supplies or reparations may take place depend on the options or rules provided on the scenario setting.
Certain types of waters may be dangerous for your ships to sail across. There are two different types of waters: Shallow Waters and Dangerous Waters. The heavier the ship, usually the more damage they take when they cross those seas. This however also depends on the options or rules provided on the scenario setting.
Combat
Sea combat enters a 3rd Person Perspective view point where you can control several ships at once. During Sea Combat the aim of the game is to sink the opposing fleet by firing cannons or by boarding and capturing the ship.
When to ships collide with each other, the combat screen enters the "Boarding Screen". There are two different units provided when boarding: Swordsmen (Pirates with Cutlasses, for Melee) and Musketeers (Ranged Combat). The winner is the last man standing. Certain ports provide different type of pirate units, however this is not explicitly mentioned within the game.
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Trivia
Tandy-16 version
A Tandy 16-color version of
The Ancient Art of War At Sea exists, but it is extremely rare. It came on a separate 5 1/4 disk from the CGA version, and the executable is named WAST.EXE (instead of WAS.EXE)
Information also contributed by
JubalHarshaw
