Adapted from the GMT Games physical wargame of the same name, it depicts 10 of Alexander the Great's key conflicts, and simulates the interplay between Ancient Macedonian battle tactics and its rival military doctrines.

The team sought to make Alexander accessible despite the complexity of the wargame genre, and focused on polishing its audiovisual presentation and interface, the latter of which was inspired by Panzer General.

Critics praised Alexander's historical accuracy, graphics and audio, but noted its frame rate as a low point; a writer for PC Gamer UK argued that this problem helped to ruin the overall product.

[3][1] The game takes place on a hex map, and simulates combat at the tactical level; the player navigates an army of predetermined units on discrete battlefields, in a manner that PC PowerPlay compared to chess.

[1] The Great Battles of Alexander began development at Erudite Software in 1994, as an adaptation of the titular board wargame designed by Mark Herman and Richard Berg, first published by GMT Games in 1991.

At that point, the game was set to include play-by-email (PBEM) support, and Herman explained his plan to apply artificial intelligence (AI) routines he had created originally for the United States Department of Defense.

[14] Udell called this an example of the publisher's trend of "giv[ing] new life to an orphan wargame product", as it had done with Harpoon Classic 97 and American Civil War: From Sumter to Appomattox.

Seeking also to capture the effects of leadership in the ancient world, he created the game's phasing turn structure, which allowed leaders to better display their initiative and range of influence in gameplay.

[5][22] They sought a product "so friendly that you can jump right in and enjoy it", which offered historical accuracy for experienced players and educational value for novices, according to co-designer Gene Billingsley.

[22] A heavy focus was placed on polishing the audiovisual presentation,[22][4] which Bill Stealey of Interactive Magic believed would give the game a wide appeal.

[4] Inspiration for the game's audio was drawn from an episode of You Are There, in which Walter Cronkite performs a mock interview with Alexander the Great during the Battle of Gaugamela.

[2][20] However, they concurred on the overall strength of the product: Cobb called Alexander "simply the best-ever ancients system", and a wargame "otherwise flawless" beyond frame rate problems and minor historical oversights.

Although Trotter found these issues "minor in comparison to the overall achievement",[1] James Weston of the magazine's British edition argued that frame rate and AI problems ruined the product.

"[23] Writing for PC PowerPlay in Australia, reviewer March Stepnik compared Alexander favorably to real-time strategy titles such as Command & Conquer and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.

[27] The series' game engine was later reused in North vs. South: The Great American Civil War, developed by Erudite and published by Interactive Magic.