EMPIRE II - THE ART OF WAR Welcome to the demo version of Empire II, The Art of War. This is a playable demo which shows most of the features of the commercial game. The game itself may be purchased at your local software store or direct from New World Computing at P.O. Box 4302, Hollywood, CA 90078. Installation: Empire II, The Art of War requires an IBM 386 or greater, some hard drive space, 4MB of RAM, SVGA, CD ROM Drive and a mouse. Insert the CD into your computer. Type the letter of the drive and a colon (i.e. D: or E:) and press ENTER. You then need to enter the Empire II directly by typing 'cd empire2' and ENTER. Type 'install' and press ENTER one more time. This will lead you to the installation program which will lead you through installing the demo on your hard drive. About the Demo: The demo of Empire II, The Art of War is designed to show you most of the features of the commercial game including allowing the play of an actual scenario. Many of the features such as saving files, modem and network play, and play of other scenarios not included have been disabled. The scenario included with the demo is The Battle of Agincourt. Below is a brief description of both the battle and the scenario. ---------------------------------- Agincourt, 25 October 1415 Background: During the 100 Years War, the English developed a tactic of chevauchée, the sending of forces through French territory to inflict damage, win plunder and undermine the French King’s authority. In 1415, a generation after the last major conflict between England and France, a young King Henry V organized another chevauchée into France. On 13 August, Henry’s forces landed near Harfleur France and surrounded the city. What should have been a simple conquest turned into a drawn out siege costing Henry both time and many men (mainly to disease). Finally the city was take on September 23. On October 8, Henry took off with 6000 men, what was left of his already decimated army, from Harfleur with the intent of marching to his base at Calais. A French army of 25,000 under the constable Charles d’Albret began pursuit, finally placing itself in Henry’s way at the village of Agincourt. The Battle: The battlefield was a narrow set of muddy fields bounded by forest. To which Henry set up a strong position protected by English longbow men, possibly the most powerful combat force man for man in Europe. The French, being forced into the narrow front, were forced to deploy into three sequential lines. Henry moved his men into longbow range of the French, set up defenses of stakes and started firing. The French cavalry plodded forward under the deadly fire. They reached Henry’s front lines only to be repulsed when Henry’s archers exchanged bows for axes and swords. Again and again they struck against Henry’s lines to be repulsed once more. Finally, the French could not take the carnage anymore, and retreated in disarray. Aftermath: The French suffered 7,000 casualties, including d’Albret. English losses were about 1600. Henry then proceeded to Calais. Encouraged by his victory, Henry returned to France two years later to conquer much of Normandy. Scenario Notes: The stakes used by the English archers proved to be quite effective against the French cavalry. As such, the English longbow men are given the entrenchment capability.