by Marc M, 28 August 2024
Arete, the Battles of Alexander is a new mobile strategy game from Bill Kalpakoglou and Molotov Cockatiel Games. Arete (pronounced “ah –reh-TEE” and a term defined as a combination of virtue and excellence) is a hex-and-counter strategy game set in the 300s BC. Arete focuses on battles of Alexander the Great, covering seven conflicts with Athens, Persia, Scythia, and India. Bill was kind enough to give me access to his new game before launch. The game’s available for iOS and Android on both phones and tablets. I’m looking at the Android tablet version. This isn’t a typical mobile game. This is a strategic war game designed and scaled for mobile devices.
click images to enlarge
The Arete Maps
The hand-drawn maps are attractive and varied, with usable terrain ranging from clear to forest and from brush to rivers. There are also mountains, blockade/wall hexes and cities. While none of these are accessible to units, they add visual interest to the maps.
The Arete Units
The counter set also has variety. It offers typical infantry, archers and calvary, but adds period-specific units like peltast infantry, the Macedonian phalanx and the Greek hoplite, as well as chariots and elephants from Persia and India. There are elite units as well, like Persian Immortals infantry and the Sacred Band of Thebes. And of course, there are leaders to aid in combat and rally the troops, including Alexander himself. Like the maps, the illustrations are hand-drawn. They’re colorful and each nationality has its own unique look.
The Rules of Arete
The app enforces the game rules but they’re simple to pick up. With a little experience from other hex and counter games, you can jump right in, but you’ll miss a lot. Thankfully Arete includes a blessedly quick tutorial that gives you the basics of the rules. Read the full rules though and get a full appreciation for the game and design. You’ll learn about bonuses from linking phalanx units and from surrounding your enemy, how to trample with elephants, how to return ranged fire, and what happens to leaders in combat. The rules are comprehensive but make a quick read. They’re well organized too, so it’s easy to check them as you play.
The Gameplay of Arete
You can play Arete against the computer, as I’m doing, or you can take on a human opponent, either with a pass-and-play mode or by creating an account with Molotov Cockatiel for online play. Solo play is challenging. There have been no easy victories for me in Arete.
Each round starts with rally checks and a roll for initiative. The side with the initiative has their turn, with movement, ranged and close combat phases, followed by the same sequence for the opponent.
The app makes movement easy by showing you where you can move, but you’ll need to do some planning. Keeping your spears together in a line, setting up a multi-hex attack, positioning ranged units for best effect and perhaps even providing a path of retreat when needed, are all things to consider in this phase.
Ranged combat typically isn’t terribly devastating in my playthroughs but can be useful in whittling away at defenders before close combat. The challenging part is giving your ranged units clear LOS to the target. And while the ranged units aren’t usually strong enough to regularly deal a lot of damage, a roll of 9 on the 10-sided die has a satisfying impact.
Most of the combat is close combat. Modifiers come from terrain, surrounding the enemy and attacking and defending with leaders. The game helpfully shows you the modifiers in play, so you see what you’re actually attacking with. One downside for me is that, since I’m not calculating them myself, they’re easy to ignore and that doesn’t go well. Like ranged combat, you see the odds of dealing and (in low-percentage attacks) receiving damage from your attacks, with the odds changing as you add or subtract attackers. Nothing novel, but the odds are easy to read and use in Arete, so I can quickly decide if I need to pile on combat factors or save some to attack another enemy. Arete uses the step system for damage results and some units have up to four steps. This means they’re often difficult to kill. You get victory points by eliminating enemy units, so take advantage of the modifier and odds information the game provides.
As I’m playing solo, I’m able to see how the computer opponent plays and how it affects the pace of the game. The computer makes reasonable choices in movement and combat, trying to surround my units when possible and setting up ranged combat more effectively than me. There aren’t a lot of units in each scenario, but I’m impatient and kept willing the computer to hurry up. One thing that slows the pace is acknowledging each die roll an opponent makes. You can turn that off, but I think it’s much better to leave it on, so you actually pay attention to what’s going on.
The Arete App
So how does the app itself function? Really well in my experience. It launches quickly, runs smoothly on my two-year-old tablet and I haven’t experienced any crashes, lags or freezes.
The graphics are colorful, clean and crisp, even when zoomed out. I often need to zoom to read unit names, but I think that’s down to the age of my eyes, unfortunately. Another nice feature of the display is the status area where you keep track of the phase of each turn. This helps remind me where I was when I put the game down for a bit and helps keep track of what my opponent is doing.
This isn’t a graphic-intensive game, but it’s nice that zooming and panning the map works smoothly. There are a few occasions when the display stutters a bit, but not enough to detract from the experience. There are two zoom settings, the desktop standard of buttons and the mobile pinch and zoom. The settings suggest buttons for older devices, but pinch and zoom is so automatic for me on a tablet, I found it easier, even if my display did chug a few times.
The sounds aren’t fancy, but they’re appropriate to the action, whether it’s the marching of movement, the snap and whoosh of bows and arrows, the clash of men and weapons in combat or the rattle of the dice on the table. The one factor that doesn’t hit the right tone for me is the music. It feels too modern and contemplative or atmospheric for the subject. But it’s low unless you really crank the volume and it’s easy to turn off if it really bugs you.
Since this is a game I’m playing on a tablet, there are a few other technical things I really appreciate. You can play it without an Internet connection (so pretty much anywhere), and, to that point, it doesn’t seem to be a battery hog. I find Arete makes modest use of power during gameplay and, even if I leave it running in the background for hours, it doesn’t drain the battery.
I experienced just one troublesome interaction between the app and the tablet. Sometimes when the app is in the background, bringing it up to play results in the tablet interface overlapping the game at the top and bottom edges, making it almost impossible to use the game buttons.
I’m guessing this is more an issue with the tablet OS than the app, but it usually requires me to quit the game and restart. Thankfully, with autosave I don’t lose anything.
The Historical Background of Arete
Arete isn’t just a generic strategy game with an Alexandrian theme slapped on top of it. Combat plays out as you expect for the period and the ways the units interact make sense. To underscore that, there’s a wealth of research behind the History button in the game menu. You’ll find pages and pages of background on Alexander, his father Phillip, and the battles included in the game. There’s also a bibliography in case you want to do your own research.
My Arete Impressions
I’ve played some disappointing mobile games, but this certainly isn’t one of them. I found a lot to like about Arete.
- The historical context and background speak to careful research and design.
- The rules are simple to pick up but have enough depth to keep the gameplay interesting.
- The mechanics of the game are challenging for me, but they work well and are satisfying when you get them right.
- The graphics, from the maps to the unit illustrations are attractive and feel right for the topic.
- The app itself runs well, even on a tablet that’s a couple of years old.
Minor quibbles about music and the tablet OS aside, playing the game is really satisfying. Arete seems to have strong roots in tabletop strategy gaming and an appreciation for history. Whether you want to play solo, play against a friend or play against someone online, the mobile game Arete gives you a quick way to get a taste of ancient warfare, wherever you are.
A few other images from the game
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