Producer: Lothlorien
Retail Price: £9.95

Imagine a cold December morning in 1807. Around 150,000 men are gathered on the field of battle before some of the most powerful leaders of Europe - and you have Austerlitz, Lothlorien's successor to Waterloo in their solo Warmaster series.

The packaging for Austerlitz is the same 'video case' affair that graced their previous effort. Inside the beautiful case, there's the usual manual and cassette. I was given photostats of the manual pages, as the finished booklet has not yet gone to print. However, as with Waterloo, the finished instructions will be in a slim, glossy A5 size booklet. In fact, much of the layout and text has been lifted from the previous game, as both use the same rules system.

The manual provides all the details on the mechanics of play, historical notes to accompany the game itself and character sketches of Napoleon's Corps Commanders (a brilliant idea which unfortunately couldn't be incorporated in Waterloo). All the instructions are clear and concise and within minutes of reading them you should be able to begin the game.

Austerlitz has three levels of difficulty. The first is a training level to allow you to become accustomed to the game. If you are familiar with the system (as I was after playing Waterloo for ages), this level ails to provide serious competition. However, do not under-estimate the difficulty of other levels. The second is the standard game which takes some time to achieve a good result on, but the third alters some of the setup conditions pertaining to the efficiency of the Austro-Russian forces (otherwise known as the computer), in order to create a very difficult situation for the French.

Once the game level has been selected, the battlefield is displayed. This is approximately four times the size of the screen display and can be viewed by scrolling with the cursor keys (making use of a scrolling routine that would grace many an arcade game, at that). The player's units (French) are displayed in blue whilst the Austro-Russians are shown in yellow. Terrain features are simply, but adequately defined and the only new feature is the frozen lake - a nasty affair which should be avoided at all costs (unless you can force the enemy onto it).

Many of the other details of the game come directly from its predecessor; infantry and cavalry actions only; terrain effects on movement; unit display and movement and combat procedure. Units are displayed as character blocks with crossed swords for cavalry and a rifle for infantry. Whether or not they are Commanders is also shown, as is the Corps they belong to. If desired, unit strength and morale may be shown (although strength only is revealed for enemy units). Combat is automatic, given that one or more units have entered an enemy zone of control (one adjacent character block on any facing from an enemy unit).

One of the interesting ideas employed in the game is the use of limited intelligence. This is to simulate the early mists that clung to the battlefield on that December morning and added so much confusion to the battlefield. After the first turn, only those units spotted by your advanced units or those encountered before combat, are revealed. Otherwise, during the computer's turn, 'blank squares' may be seen to begin to move to simulate partial awareness of the Austro-Russian dispositions. Otherwise, you're in the dark.

Game turns consist of giving orders to all your units and then entering them in one command, to the computer. Before entering your command sequence, moves for any unit may be changed at will. French movement and combat sequences follow, after which the computer's turn takes place using the same format. It's during your movement phase that various Corps commanders may offer alternative courses of action. Indeed it may be the case that they are more fully aware of the situation in that area than you, and to begin with, their advice is extremely useful. In more sophisticated games, however, be sure to read the character sketches from the manual. On one occasion, a commander who had been involved in very heavy fighting was down to his last five hundred men when he suggested that rather than retreat to a nearby hill, as I had ordered, he could intercept a 6,000 man infantry unit. On checking the notes, they referred to him as 'incapable of individual command' but 'personally brave: wounded 34 times in combat'.

The game looks almost identical to its predecessor and its aesthetic features are deliberately so. But as with all good wargames, the subtleties of the game are vastly different. Austerlitz plays well and makes an excellent addition to Waterloo. This is another goodie. Get it when you can.

Lothlorien
£9.95

I thought Austerlitz was a station in Paris. It turns out it's named after Napoleon's cracking victory over the third allied attempt to stomp on him. Incidentally, on that cold, misty morning in 1805, it was Russia and Austria that suffered the away defeat: our mob didn't manage to turn up!

This is the scene for the latest in Lothlorien's very collectable series of trad wargames. You attempt to repeat Napoleon's formidable victory by pitching your well-trained troops against the slightly larger but less effective Austro-Russian army and killing as many of them as possible.

It's all done as well as usual; there's a scrolling board (only a little larger than the screen) and square pieces marked with their type, number, morale and so on. The game's made much more playable because your Corp commanders are intelligent and will look after their chunk of the battle and offer reports and advice to you until you want to take over direct command of their units. Lothlorien also avoids 'eyes-in-the-sky' by making the Russian's disappear when they move. You'll only locate them when you meet them!

Entering orders from the keyboard is a bit fiddly and tedious but not so bad that it'll put wargamers off. What worries me is that it's all a bit in Boneys favour; you aren't fighting a losing battle. Still, I suppose it's the same when you play Welly in Waterloo. What I want to know is do the French think Waterloo is a station in London?

Publisher: Lothlorien
Programmer: Ken Wright
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K

It was the morning of December 2, 1805. Exactly one year earlier Napoleon had been crowned Emperor of France. The hostility of other European powers to the expansionist ruler had resulted in various alliances, the most recent of which was the Third Coalition. Napoleon's response was typically aggressive. He had already scored military victories but needed a yet more decisive demonstration of his might.

Austerlitz the game is a prequel to Lothlorien's Waterloo; a one player war game that gives you a chance to play the Napoleonic side for a change. The French player has to contain the Allied armies, dealing as much damage as possible and avoiding unnecessary loss of life.

The game ends if the Austro-Russian army reaches the left hand border with at least 7,500 men or when losses reduce either side to six units or less, or under 20,000 men.

You can't afford to get carried away with the prowess of your troops because the mists which hung over the battlefield that morning created confusion as to where the enemy was, and the computer reproduces that by hiding the movement of Allied units until they are in the proximity of your troops.

You can't afford to leave a gate open anywhere, and it's wise to use your faster moving cavalry to scout around areas where you think you may locate the Alliance, using the scrolling of the map to give you clues. It's probably also worth holding one or two units to move to trouble spots.

The map is in traditional wargame style, with the units represented by coloured blocks, the computer equivalent of cardboard counters. Every effort has been made to make it as large and clear as possible, so that it must be scrolled four ways to see the whole area, but the overlap isn't so great as to make you lose touch with what's happening elsewhere.

There are three main types of terrain - plain ground, ridges and frozen lakes - with streams, towns and castles dotted around. A strip along the bottom of the screen provides a menu for the single key command inputs, and messages appear in a separate overlayed window as necessary.

Once you've scrolled your way around the field you summon up a square cursor and choose a unit - a pity there's no joystick option for this. You can then look at details of morale and strength or the underlying terrain, or you can make a command.

Those can be on two levels. On the corps level you have a more sophisticated choice of options for each of the six corps commanders, such as movement, engage the enemy, retreat fast or withdraw.

The commander will take the three units under his command with him, though he may see fit to challenge your decision if it brings him into contact with the Alliance or results in heavy losses. At first it's wise not to overrule these objections as the commanders have more up-to-date information than you and a degree of intelligence.

The other level of command is to control individual units, and though that is slower it is necessary to regroup corps or draw up battle lines. You then exit the command mode and sit back to watch the blue blocks move in turn around the map.

Combat is resolved, with corps flashing as they take losses, the scale of which is displayed to the nearest 500. After which the computer takes its turn at moving and combat.

This is all very much the stuff of traditional wargames. In fact, apart from the hidden movement this could almost be a board game, though at least the computer takes care of all the book-keeping and calculations. However, I can't see it winning many friends among the uninitiated, who will probably find it rather slow. Not that the response times are slow - it's just that not a lot seems to happen. The whole thing may prove rather confusing too, and maybe it was a feature of the artificial intelligence, but I'm sure that one of my commanders was disobeying orders.

While it avoids the pitfalls of many early micro wargames Austerlitz is still far from perfect and it would be nice to see more originality taken in approaching this genre. Nevertheless, those who are interested in military problem-solving should enjoy challenging it at any of its three levels of difficulty.

MACHINE: Spectrum/CBM64/Amstrad
SUPPLIER: Lothlorien
PRICE: £9.95 (Cass), £14.95 (disk)

The sun of Autsterlitz rose over this battlefield in modern Czechoslovakia on 2nd December 1805 to show, through the morning mist, 80,000 troops of an Austrian-Russian Alliance confronting 70,000 under the great Emperor Napoleon.

By the end of the day the Allies were in headlong retreat, and Napoleon had won what is always regarded as his greatest victory. He won it with superior training of his troops, with superior manoeuvrability, with superior co-ordination of infantry, cavalry and artillery, and above all with the superior leadership of Marshals of France, each commanding one of the six Corps of his army.

The side that won took the offensive and carried the fight to the enemy.

The Lothlorien game which bears the same name as the battle offers none of these features, at least in the Spectrum version which I tried. No artillery is shown, and cavalry fight in exactly the same manner as infantry. The combat mechanism (given in full in the booklet) gives the greatest advantage to troops holding defensive positions, and the only way to win with the French is to place them behind river lines.

There is a very promising system of devolved command, whereby the player as Napoleon gives outline orders to his Corps commanders, who use their own initiative and personalities in carrying them out.

But it simply doesn't work. Marshals of France attack superior numbers with fractions of their own forces, march in the wrong direction, and generally behave in a manner which would get them all reduced to corporal, if that, in about five minutes. The computer-controlled enemy, on the other hand, shows a persistence and desire to fight well above that of the real Allies.

Any resemblance between the Austerlitz and the battle of the same name, or any other Napoleonic battle, is a co-incidence. It doesn't even feel like a wargame.

Lothlorien
£9.95
Spectrum 128

Austerlitz on the other hand shows how a good wargame should be presented. A large clear display with a well produced instruction booklet and an excellent game to boot. In 1805, Napoleon had manoeuvred his army to Austerlitz where, although heavily outnumbered, he sought to inflict a decisive defeat on the combined forces of the Austro-Russian army. That he did, mainly because his army was much more highly trained and he had better commanders, is a matter of historical record. What you must do is prove that you too possess the strategic and tactical skills of Napoleon. And in case you get too confident, there are three different skill levels to test you even further.

There are two main features in the game that make it notable. The first is that you have intelligent corps commanders and so can leave a lot of the minor tactics to them (you can also assume total control if you so desire or any combination of the two). The second major feature is that in order to simulate the confusion of battle, there is hidden movement by the Austro-Russian forces. Thus, whilst you can see their initial disposition of forces, as soon as they move, you have no idea of their whereabouts until you rediscover them by combat or intelligence.

The mechanics of the game are fairly standard and feature different terrain types, morale factors and victory conditions. Terrain is important for two main reasons. Firstly it affects how fast a unit can move through it and secondly, it can also affect the results of combat - it is a lot easier to defend a ridge than a frozen lake or marsh. Morale too is a vital factor. Combat strength is worked out on a basis of 500 men = 1 strength point so that a unit of 4500 men would have 9 strength points. If morale is absolutely abysmal, there is no adjustment, but if it is excellent, then that particular unit can get a +6 strength bonus which effectively means another 3000 men.

Austerlitz is a superbly presented game. The instructions are clear and the booklet also provides a brief summary of the actual historical situation, pen pictures of Napoleon's commanders and a reading list for people who get really interested in the historical aspects. If Napoleon had had this game to play, I can certainly see why he would be saying "not tonight Josephine".