Written By Lee H Fuller
Music by Kevin Wright
"...I found it challenging and intriguing."
- James Cobb (wargamer.com)
Rated 4/5 Cows at Tucows.com
Release History:
| 1.1 - Jan 2004 - | Bug fixes. Difficulty level lowered. Six new maps, including the battle of Waterloo. |
| 1.0 - Nov 2003 - | Public release version |
| 0.9 - Jul 2003 - | Beta version to friends |
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Help pages for English Squares.
English Squares is a turn based game of Napoleonic battles. It is not intended to be
a simulation, but rather an interesting and fun to play game that you can play
on your Windows desktop without too many hassles - perhaps whilst also switching between your
Office document and a game of Solitaire. ;-)
The only serious requirement is that you must have already installed the .Net
Framework (e.g. from windowsupdate.microsoft.com). Other than that, the game
seems run quite well on the lower specification Pentium-class PC's on all the
different versions of Windows.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
This is the opening title screen, which also plays Kev's excellent MP3 in the background. At this
point most of the menus are disabled until you actually start a game, which you can do with
the "New..." menu or the "Open..." menu (registered version only) which are both
under the "Game" menu. The game menu also allows you to close the current game (returning
you back to the title), save the current game (registered version only), exit the
game, or open the game status and battler status windows.
If you need to check which version of the program you are running, click on the
"About English Squares" menu under the "Help" menu. This about box is automatically
displayed on startup for the non-registered version of the game and includes
some additional "please register" sort of messages.
The "New Game" form allows you to select one of the available battlefields
to play on. These are broken down into "British", "Prussian", "French",
"Russian" and "Austrian" based battles, each against a variety of the
other countries. Click on each of the flags at the top of the screen
to change the list of battles available, and then either click once on
the battle and then press "Start..." or just double click the battle.
The map should then be quickly displayed, which displays both red units (the
side you are playing) and blue units (your opponent controlled by the computer).
Clicking on any blue units will display the possible moves that your opponents
unit can make, but obviously will not allow you to move these units. Whilst
clicking on red units, the bright red highlighted squares are positions you
can move your unit to, whilst dark red highlighted squares are positions you
can shoot at without moving (i.e. infantry or artillery). So clicking on
a highlighted dark-red square will cause your unit fire a volley at a
unit in that square and clicking on a highlighted bright-red square will
cause your unit to either move or attack a unit in that position. Clicking
anywhere else on the map will de-select the highlighted unit.
Under the "Game" menu, you can choose to display the "Game Status" window which
will display useful information about the game progress overall.
Under the "Unit" menu, you can click on the "Show Unit Status" to display a window
that will show detailed information about each unit you highlight. Additionally under
this menu are the commands to change the unit between the formations of "Square" (only
Infantry can do this and is good for defense against Cavalry), "Column" (good for
marching, artillery can only march when in columnn) and "Line" (best attacking formation,
artillery can only fire when in line, not in column). Changing the formation of a unit
is considered to be your turn. You can change the squares that are highlighted to show
both move and fire positions, or just fire positions, or just move positions from this
menu (choosing this display is obviously not considered a move). The same menu is also
available by right-clicking a highlighted unit.
Under the "Game" menu, you can choose to display the "Battle Status" window
which will display the last battle that was fought, along with details of the
calculation and damage caused to each unit.
The full combination of artillery, cavalry and infantry can be seen
on the following tutorial map. An artillery unit is being displayed,
which is highlighting the squares for which it can hit (the further
away, the less damage will be caused). If the artillery unit wishes
to change position, it must take a turn to change into column (after
which it cannot shoot) and then change back to line to shoot.
The Battle of Waterloo, playing as the British / Allied forces:
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