Battles of Napoleon

Battles of Napoleon is a turn-based strategy game from Strategic Simulations, Inc. about the battles of the Napoleonic Wars. The DOS edition in this collection is in English and identifies itself as version 1.1. Its title screen credits the PC conversion to Edward Haar and the design to David Landrey and Chuck Kroegel, and it shows an SSI copyright of 1989.

The map brings together regiments, cavalry, and artillery on a terrain made up of squares. Rivers, elevations, and forests affect your orders. Each unit has men, ammunition, a status, and operation points: moving a counter consumes resources that may later be missing for other actions.

Four battles and an editor

The menu lets you choose Waterloo, Borodino, Quatre Bras, and Auerstadt. It also offers to create a random situation, generate a scenario, edit it, or load a save game. The copy also preserves scenario files with names such as Albuera, Marengo, Eylau, Wagram, Leipzig, and Ligny, along with their historical documents.

Borodino is a good way to learn how to move through the panels. Before you reach the map, you choose the sides and the battle settings; after that, the force and objective summaries appear. Sound On turns the sound on, and the timer lets you adjust how long messages stay on screen. The game separates leader command, objectives, operations, and combat.

Objectives for leaders, orders for units

In the Leader Objective Phase, you can cycle through the leaders with N. The panel shows the assigned objective and the cursor coordinates. Move that cursor and press O to set a different objective. When you return to the same leader, you can check the new destination. E moves you on to the next phase.

During the Movement Phase, the cursor moves around the map without moving the soldiers. You have to place it over one of your own units and press G to select it. Its name, men, weapon, formation, direction, and operation points then appear. The same direction keys now give orders to that unit.

The test with the French 1/12/3 LN regiment shows the difference: a move north changes its position from (1, 9) to (1, 8) and reduces its operation points from 11 to 8. Z lets you abort a move order and restore the previous situation. It is worth checking the position and the available points before leaving the unit or moving on to combat.

Read the map before ending the phase

O switches between the general map and the tactical map. The first makes it easier to follow the distribution of forces; the second shows the nearby terrain better. The panel describes the square and its elevation, so you can check what is under the cursor before attempting a move.

The Standard layout uses the numbers on the top row with its own compass: 1 for north, 3 for east, 5 for south, and 7 for west. The diagonals appear on the on-screen compass. Do not read these numbers as the usual layout of a numeric keypad. The other layout is chosen at startup.

C requests the end of the movement phase and brings up a confirmation. That step is no longer an individual order: it lets the battle move forward. Check the units you want to use first, because not every order on the panel has the same effect in every phase.