Acies

Draw up your legions, hold the line, and break the enemy's nerve before they break yours.

Acies is a real-time battle game of the ancient world, fought on a parchment map where every soldier is a small square. Thousands of men fight it out one by one: lines buckle and bend, flanks give way, and whole armies run when their courage breaks. Pause whenever you like to give orders.

FEATURES

- The Gallic War: Caesar's conquest of Gaul in six battles, from the Arar to Alesia, with one army that carries its losses and its veterans from battle to battle. Rebuild it in camp with the plunder.

- Seven famous battles: Bibracte, Cannae, Zama, Cynoscephalae, Carrhae, the Teutoburg Forest and Pharsalus, each with a note on what really happened. Plus five more of the game's own.

- Last Stand: hold a hill against ever bigger waves.

- Custom battles: seven peoples (Rome, the Gauls, Carthage, the Germans, Macedon, Parthia and Pompey's Romans), 43 kinds of unit, random ground, rain and fog.

- Flanks, charges, fatigue and morale all matter. Keep your general close. Elephants terrify, horse archers harass, a testudo shrugs off arrows and a wall of spears stops cavalry.

- Replays, an after-action report, a map view of the whole battle and a codex of every unit.

- Four difficulty levels, a short tutorial, rebindable keys, gamepad support, interface scaling and colour-blind palettes.

CONTROLS

- Left-click or drag: select units

- Right-click: move or attack (double right-click to run)

- Right-drag: draw a line for your units to form up on

- Space: pause Tab: map view F1: all controls

The game plays in your browser. For the biggest battles, the Windows download runs best.