Games Like Battle of Zama

Battle of Zama is a video game about one of the most important battles in history. Scipio from Rome’s Army met Hannibal’s Army on the battlefield in Carthage. Historically, the Romans won. However, If they would have lost the world would be completely different, because Carthage would have been the primary influence in Europe and the Mediterranean instead of Rome.

Battle of Zama is inspired by old Avalon Hill and SPI games. It uses a square grid instead of a hex map, because historically ancient army units rarely moved at a diagonal. Units can change facing, move, ranged fire and melee. In addition, units that are part of a formation can move together to make movement faster.

One of the most interesting parts of this game is the Elephant Berserk Phase. Historically, when Hannibal attacked with his elephants the Roman cavalry blew large horns to scare the elephants and many went berserk and charged Hannibal’s own units. In this phase, the elephants are completely controlled by the AI and the ones that randomly go berserk will charge in a random direction and then do both a ranged and melee attack at whatever unit they are adjacent to. Afterwards, the berserk elephant’s handlers will kill the animals.

In order to win the game, the Romans must either kill Hannibal or cause the Carthaginian Army to surrender by reducing it to 10 or fewer units. The Carthaginians win if they kill Scipio or cause the Romans to surrender by reducing them to 10 or fewer units.

The three modes of play are 1 player where you play the Romans and the Carthaginians are controlled by an AI, 1 player where you play the Carthaginians and the Romans are controlled by the AI or 2 players where you can either control both sides by yourself or sit somebody else at your computer with you and play against them.