Game of the Week, Jul 28th - Aug 3

This week we return to the Napoleonic Era with Campaign Austerlitz from the Napoleonic Battles series. It is on sale now through Sunday August 3rd, for 25% off normal pricing.

The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important military engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. It is often cited by military historians as one of Napoleon's tactical masterpieces, in the same league as other historic engagements like Hannibal's Cannae or Alexander the Great's Gaugamela. The military victory of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to an end.

After eliminating an Austrian army during the Ulm campaign, French forces seized Vienna in November 1805. The Austrians avoided further conflict until the arrival of the Russians, who helped increase the Allied numbers. Napoleon maneuvered his forces masterfully as the armies clashed east of Brunn, and the resulting battle saw the Allied forces routed.

The Allied disaster significantly shook the will of Austrian Emperor Francis to further resist Napoleon. France and Austria agreed to an armistice immediately, followed shortly after by the Treaty of Pressburg, on December 26, which took Austria out of both the war and the Coalition. Victory at Austerlitz permitted the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states intended as a buffer zone between France and the eastern powers, Austria, Prussia and Russia. The Confederation rendered the Holy Roman Empire virtually useless, so Francis dissolved it in 1806, but remained as emperor of Austria.

Campaign Austerlitz covers this campaign in detail, but it also includes the hypothetical Invasion of England, which was planned earlier in 1805 until repeated attempts by the French to gain naval superiority failed.

To read more about the historical background information and details on how the game was brought together, check out the Design Notes.

(All images can be clicked for full sized viewing.)

Campaign Austerlitz includes 146 scenarios both for play against the AI and for Head-to-Head / Play by Email play. Many of the scenarios have both 15-minute and 10-minute turn versions.

The battles included are:

• Wertingen
• Gunzburg
• Haslach-Jungingen
• Memmingen
• Elchingen
• Ulm
• Herbrechtingen
• Neresheim
• Caldiero
• Amstetten
• Mariazell
• Durenstein
• Schongrabern
• Austerlitz
• Hypothetical invasion of England

There is a wide sampling of variants and "what if" situations included as well. 

In addition to the stand alone scenarios, Campaign Austerlitz contains six campaigns, both in 15-minute and 10-minute turn versions, which bring an additional ~160 scenarios into the mix.

Note: The version now available in the Store is the newest one: 4.09.2.

Here's a sampling of books on the topic which you might want to explore:

And a great book for an overall view of the entire Napoleonic Period:

Next, we have a series of videos on the conflict from various Youtube channels. We'll start with Epic History:

Then one from Kings and Generals:

And then The Mack has a 4-video series covering game play in this title. Here's the first one:

Here's some more in-game images for you to view. As with the entire Napoleonic Battles series (14 games + Demo), you have five different views to choose from. Three 2D and two 3D views, as well as three different sets of 2D icons.