Renaissance, The

Renaissance covers a fascinating century of warfare, from the close of the Medieval era to the eve of the Thirty Years War. The period starts with the French invasion of Italy in 1494 and the armies are still largely Medieval in weaponry and organization.

While firearms and artillery are present on the battlefield they have yet to secure a dominant tactical role. However, by the close of the sixteenth century, traditional missile weapons such as the longbow and crossbow had been supplanted by arquebuses, muskets and pistols, while the proportion of firearms to pike had greatly increased since 1500.

The pike, once the primary infantry weapon for many armies - and often a decisive battle-winner in the hands of professional Swiss and Landsknect mercenaries - was, by the close of the period retained primarily as a protection against cavalry, a role it continued to perform for another century until the invention of the bayonet made it redundant.

With Renaissance, you can refight the Italian Wars between France and Spain as well as the various Anglo-Scottish battles of the 16th century, or lead Ottoman armies against Persians, Mamelukes and Western Christendom! Experience the pike & shot warfare of the French Wars of Religion and the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule. These conflicts involve a wide range of different troop types and weaponry, providing a diverse and rewarding gaming experience.

Renaissance Scenarios

• 112 stand alone scenarios and 5 campaigns to choose from with another 115 scenarios specifically for the campaigns.
• A wide sampling of battles from small to large actions.
• 60 unique maps ranging in size from 480 hexes to 76,800 hexes providing ample ground for scenario designers to create their own actions.

Additional Features

This title is the first in a new series of games by John Tiller and his team called "Musket & Pike". Fans of the other pre-twentieth century games offered by Mr. Tiller will feel a sense of familiarity in this new engine, but there are also quite a few differences from anything put forth before, including a vastly expanded style of OOB that allows for many attributes to be set on a unit by unit basis instead of globally, such as:

• Movement allowance
• Victory point value
• Melee bonus value
• Armored value
• 26 different weapon types, plus a new weapon.dat file allowing customization
• Multiple additions to the PDT file for weapon flags including: Soft & hard targets
• Reduced melee effectiveness
• Can fire indirect
• Single use
• Requires setup
• No defensive fire
• Earthworks, trenches & abattis
• Ability to reflect army coalitions of 8 to 7, with a maximum of 3 to 2 armies facing off in any given OOB
• Play modes include A/I, Hot Seat, PBEM, LAN & Internet play. A Scenario Editor is also included so existing scenarios can be altered or new ones created.
• The Renaissance has 2D zoom in and zoom out modes and a large Units.bmp file to represent the vast array of forces covered in this title.

Minimum Requirements

• Pentium-based 1GHz PC
• 256 MB RAM
• 300 MBs disk space
• Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista
• MicroSoft DirectX 9.0+