La Grande Armee at Austerlitz
by Peter "Zhukov" PawelekArticle Type: Review
Article Date: February 07, 2002
Product Info
Product Name: La Grande Armee At AusterlitzCategory: Strategy
Publisher: Matrix Games
Designed By: Jean Michel Mathe
Release Date: Released
Min. Spec: P 500 or equiv., 64MB RAM, 16 MB 3D Video, 8X CDROM, Soundcard, 150 MB HD Space, DX 8.1
Rec. Spec: > P 500 or equiv., 128MB RAM, 32 MB 3D Video
Files & Links: Click Here
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Napolean Sans Papier Manual
La Grande Armee At Austerlitz (LGAAA) is an operational/strategic level Napoleonic game designed and developed by Jean Michel Mathe published by Matrix Games. It covers the 1805 battles of Napoleon against the Third Coalition, specifically the battles against Austrian and Russian forces at Austerlitz. Napoleon went into these battles without a numerical advantage and handed the Coalition a stunning defeat, consolidating his supremacy over Continental Europe. The game comes as a single CD in a DVD box, and is not accompanied by a manual or any other paper documentation.  |
| La Grande Armee At Austerlitz (LGAAA) |
The Good...
The structure of LGAAA is interesting since it relies on multiple levels of AI. The player is put in the role of Commander-In-Chief (CinC) of either the French or Coalition armies and must draw up the overall battle plan for his forces. The actual implementation of these orders is handled by different levels of AI, as the orders trickle down to corps level and then to individual regimental units. As the player, you can always override these lower level AIs and micromanage to your heart’s content.This system reminds me of the old Battlefront games that were published by SSG about ten years ago. Great concept, but you really have to have a rock-solid AI to pull it off since so much is left in its hands. The SSG games were able to do this, given the superlative AI programming by Roger Keating and Ian Trout. Although the AI in LGAAA is nowhere near as stunning as in the Keating/Trout games (then again, nobody has managed to surpass the SSG games for excellence in wargame AI, as far as I'm concerned), it is competent enough to provide an interesting challenge.
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| Setting up a battle in LGAAA. |
Briefly, the three levels of AI that can play the game are: strategic, tactical, and regimental. In most cases, you will not be dealing with the strategic AI which plays the role of CinC, since you will be filling these shoes. Once you’ve drawn up a battle plan, these orders are passed to the tactical AI, which simulates the role of Corps Commander. If you have historical realism activated, these receipt of these orders by the Corps Commander will be subject to a delay, and may even be intercepted by the enemy.
Once the Corps Commander receives your orders, he will decide the best dispositions of your individual units to carry them out. These dispositions are passed down to the regimental AI which will execute unit formations, movement plots and other basic unit functions.
As you can see, LGAAA has some interesting design concepts. However, some of the cracks start showing when one takes a closer look at the Strategic AI. According to the documentation, the enemy strategic AI can assume four modes: rigid, reactive, offensive and defensive. The first two and last two modes will be combined to provide the following ‘personalities’ of the CinC: rigid defensive, rigid offensive, reactive defensive and reactive offensive. This all sounds well and good until you find out that the reactive AI modes are not, as of the 1.2 patch, even implemented in the game yet! Sure you can select ‘Reactive AI’ when you do the initial setup of the enemy AI: the option is there in the menu…it just doesn’t do anything! This is more due to sloppiness than deception, since the documentation will tell you that reactive AI isn’t yet available. Too bad they didn’t think of removing this non-existent option from the main setup screen!
…The Bad…
Frankly, LGAAA is so bad that it sets my teeth on edge. The game is a mess at just about every level I can think of. The interface is a nightmare and completely non-intuitive. Important game information (e.g., unit status) is presented in obscure and inaccessible ways, such as panels of tiny graphical icons with no accompanying text to explain what they signify (this information is buried within a seventy-five page online manual, so of course you can't access it during gameplay).The text in the game is often grammatically incorrect and appears to be a mishmash of English and French characters (there are English words that have French accents over certain vowels). It’s clear that this game was designed in French and not in English, and it's a shame that Matrix couldn't have been bothered to do a proper localization for English-speaking North American audience.
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| The 2D map-view of a battle in progress. |
Frustrations abound in the course of trying to play the game. It is meant to be played as CinC of one side or another, so I didn't bother trying to micromanage my forces at the lower AI levels (tactical and regimental). From what I could tell, the AI is reasonably good at repelling offensives and launching counterattacks. It even seemed to handle artillery well and managed to harass my moving formations in an effective manner. The nice game concepts and AI mechanics, however, are mired in what has to be one of the worst game interfaces I’ve ever seen. Furthermore, only two scenarios are presented which limits gameplay.
…And the Incredibly Ugly
In addition to watching the battle in a 2D map mode, LGAAA also gives you the opportunity to watch it from a horse’s eye view in 3D “subjective” mode. Think of it as a Napoleonic version of Combat Mission, but without the nice graphics. In fact, the 3D mode is so ugly that it defeats its own purpose, which is to provide some immersion. As you rotate this 3D view, the soldiers in the formations start resembling two-dimensional cardboard cutout figures. Furthermore, the animations of the moving formations is unnatural; cavalry units whizz along the landscape as if they were trying out for a bit part in a Need for Speed game.  |
| French and Coalition forces clash on the battlefield. |
The biggest complaint that I have about this half-baked 3D implementation is that it serves no functional purpose. In Combat Mission the 3D view is an integral part of the game since it gives the player important information about terrain and overall lay of the land. In LGAAA, the terrain is completely flat and uniform, except for the occasional outcropping of forest. Therefore, the 3D view should be considered only on the merit of whether or not it provides additional immersiveness for the player. The graphical quality of the 3D view is so poor that it looks incredibly artifical ruining any sense of immersion. For this reason, it fails utterly.
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| A subjective 'horse's eye' view of a cavalry unit. |
Conclusion
Although LGAA has been patched to version 1.2, bugs and bizarre behavior still abound. On my system (Athlon 800 with a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX card) the game often freezes at the very beginning before the splash screen with a black screen and music playing. Nothing I do in this situation can bring up the menu nor get me back to Windows, so I’m forced to do a hard reboot. A quick glance at the official Matrix Games LGAAA Forum shows that many LGAAA owners are suffering from hardware-related gameplay issues.Combine this with the awful interface, the half-finished feel to the game, and the horrendous 3D view, and my recommendation is to pass on this game in its current state. We haven’t had a good Napoleonics computer wargame since John Tiller’s Battleground series of a few years back, but sadly La Grande Armee at Austerlitz does not fill this void.
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Articles:- 2002/02/07: La Grand Armee At Austerlitz Review
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