The Great Battles of Alexander

The Great Battles of Alexander was adapted from a board wargame of the same title, which had achieved commercial success in a period of declining sales for the medium.

The Great Battles of Alexander began development at Erudite Software in 1994, as an adaptation of the titular board wargame designed by Mark Herman and Richard Berg, first published by GMT Games in 1991.[4][5][6][7] The physical Great Battles series was known as a commercial success in a period of falling sales for board games.[8] Alexander's computer adaptation was first announced in late 1994,[5][9] under the direction of Mark Herman,[9] and was created with assistance from GMT.[10][11] Erudite, a business software developer founded in 1990, initially hoped to self-publish the game.[12][4] However, the company had partnered with publisher Strategic Simulations (SSI) by the time of Alexander's announcement. At that point, the game was set to include play-by-email (PBEM) support, and Herman explained his plan to apply artificial intelligence (AI) routines he had created originally for the United States Department of Defense. A summer 1995 release was planned.[9]

Alexander experienced a long and troubled development cycle; Scott Udell of Computer Games Strategy Plus later called it "a 'lost child' of the computer wargaming world, moving from one publisher to another and then seeming to disappear completely."[5] By August 1995, production delays at Erudite related to Windows 95 development had pushed the game's projected release back to the following year.[13] As development progressed into 1996, Computer Gaming World's Terry Coleman reported that SSI had grown "tired of waiting" for Erudite to complete the game.[11] As a result, the company dropped Alexander in the first half of the year, and the team was left to search for a new publisher.[14][11][5] However, Coleman wrote at the time that "two other major wargame publishers" were rumored to be in talks with the developer.[11] That May, Erudite was purchased for $12.8 million by GSE Systems, a developer of simulation programs for energy companies.[12] The following month, the publication rights for Alexander were picked up by Interactive Magic.[14] Udell called this an example of the publisher's trend of "giv[ing] new life to an orphan wargame product", as it had done with Harpoon Classic 97 and American Civil War: From Sumter to Appomattox.[5]

Interactive Magic and Erudite Software released a game demo for Alexander in January 1997.[15] Later that month, Interactive Magic declared its intent to publish the title alongside two sequel products: The Great Battles of Hannibal and The Great Battles of Caesar. These three games together formed the Great Battles computer wargame series, all produced by the publisher's S. Craig Taylor. At the time, Alexander was slated for release in early 1997; the sequels were given unspecified release dates.[16] In May, Interactive Magic rescheduled Alexander for mid-June.[17] Erudite completed the game on June 12,[18] and it was ultimately released on the 22nd,[19] at a price of roughly $50.[20]

Mark Herman described Alexander as an attempt to simulate the "interplay" between Ancient Macedonian battle tactics and the tactics of that nation's opponents, such as Persia and Greece. Based on his research into ancient war, he determined that Macedonia relied on a combined arms approach, while Persia favored ranged combat and Greece relied on infantry charges. To capture this clash via game mechanics, Herman categorized each unit into a specific tactical system: when units of rival tactical systems collide in shock combat, a bonus is awarded to the unit with the better system. He noted, "Many wargames treat all combat units as a singular entity while only varying speed and strength to show unit distinctions. I believe this approach is fundamentally wrong and removes most of what is important about tactical interactions in combat." Seeking also to capture the effects of leadership in the ancient world, he created the game's phasing turn structure, which allowed leaders to better display their initiative and range of influence in gameplay.[21]

The Great Battles of Alexander was designed to simulate Ancient Macedonian battle tactics and their collision with the tactics of the nation's rivals.

Alexander was adapted from the 1995 Deluxe re-release of the board game, rather than the original 1991 version. In converting a physical game design to computers, Herman hoped to "capture the essence of [the] original intent while using the strength of the new venue [...] to its best advantage." He considered the computer adaptation to be a "simulation", and a more accurate portrayal of Alexander the Great's battles than had been possible in board form. This led him to streamline, automate or eliminate several of the board version's features, including the trumping mechanic, whereby a leader with a high initiative rating could roll dice for a chance to interrupt an enemy leader's momentum. Trumping had been created to cut down on die rolls in the original; with a computer to automate this aspect, he felt that it was no longer necessary. Features from the board game that interrupted game flow, including those that required regular notification prompts, were removed. Herman argued that adapting board rules too literally made for poor computer gameplay, and that "the less times you remind the player he is playing [on] a computer and the more times you keep the interface environment constant and uninterrupted the better".[6]

Erudite and Interactive Magic hoped to make Alexander both accessible to wargame newcomers and appealing to hardcore enthusiasts in the genre.[5][22] They sought a product "so friendly that you can jump right in and enjoy it", which offered historical accuracy for experienced players and educational value for novices, according to co-designer Gene Billingsley.[22] A heavy focus was placed on polishing the audiovisual presentation,[22][4] which Bill Stealey of Interactive Magic believed would give the game a wide appeal.[17] Craig Taylor noted the team's choice of a miniature wargaming graphical style, in opposition to wargame visuals akin to "a few figures [pasted] to the top of a counter".[4] Inspiration for the game's audio was drawn from an episode of You Are There, in which Walter Cronkite performs a mock interview with Alexander the Great during the Battle of Gaugamela. Taylor likened the sequence's sound design to "a really intense football game".[22] The team also simplified and streamlined the game's interface; at the time, Billingsley criticized earlier wargames for being needlessly inaccessible to newcomers. He remarked, "We believe strongly in the Panzer General type of interface, because it was so successful in getting the game to the player."[22]