First published in 1998, this legendary series of operational wargames has seen six releases, including the latest Operational Art of War III, released to the wargaming audience in 2006. Now, as we conclude The Operational Art of War III, we are also taking a new step to continue the series into the future. Publisher Matrix Games and the TOAW Development Team have been working behind the scenes for nearly two years to take this landmark brand to new heights.

First, a long-promised update… with development for The Operational Art of War once again in full swing, many months of development both past and present have allowed us to complete the final update for The Operational Art of War III, version 3.4.1.9! This update allows us to bring the TOAW community a parting gift for TOAW III, including a feature enhancement, quite a few bug fixes and new and revised scenarios, while also laying the groundwork for a new release, The Operational Art of War IV.

The Operational Art of War IV started as an update intended to be TOAW III version 3.5, but when we were able to re-start full development on the series, it allowed us to do much more in the way of significant improvements than we had originally considered and it kept growing until it became a full release plan. As a result, we’ve invested the time and resources to continue the series while also continuing support for TOAW III and the TOAW community in the form of this update. As many bug fixes as possible, basically anything that was not too tightly intertwined with new features and code, were removed from the Operational Art of War IV process and are included in this 3.4.1.9 release.

The Operational Art of War IV will fully support modern computer hardware and operating systems. This will make it more user-friendly and able to scale to higher resolutions, especially in terms of font and button size. It reorganizes and adds functionality to many very useful screens and dialogs to make them more informative and easier to use. Once released, TOAW IV will continue to be supported for some time, hopefully leading to many more updates and improvements. TOAW IV will be the new base point for the TOAW series and future updates will be based on this new release.

For a complete list of changes for the 3.4.1.9 update, check here.

(You can download the patch here)

Get more information about TOAW III from its official product page.