American Civil War

List Price: $29.99 Discount Price: $27.00

Features:

• Fight to reconcile the nation (USA) or ensure independence (CSA). Win militarily or politically, as national will play a crucial role.
• Play a scenario over a few hours or a full Grand Campaign following in Grant's or Lee's footsteps across massive operations or the entire war!
• Two playable sides, dozens of different troops, hundreds of events, over 300 historical leaders with unique abilities.
• Hundreds of events during the course of scenarios and campaigns to provide challenge and an element of surprise.
• Organize divisions, armies and corps, manage supply and morale, use sea, river and rail moves, and put the best leaders in command (if politics allow)!

Customer Reviews:

Not perfect, but damn good [Posted on 2008-04-16]
If sheer addictability is any measure of a game, then AGEOD'S AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, 1861 - 1865 probably rates six stars. It's almost criminally addictive, and has prevented me from doing much else but play it since I bought the frakking thing. I am a fan of strategy games on all levels, and this has "instant classic" written all over it.

CIVIL WAR is a grand-strategy piece, meaning that you are given the choice of controlling either the USA or the CSA from April of '61 to January of '66 - not merely their armies, but their economic development and to a certain extent, the internal and external politics of each. One must fight not merely a military campaign, but have an eye as to the political consequences of certain actions - defeats on the battlefield, capture of enemies, naval blockades, trade embargos, emancipation of slaves, taxes, drafts, etc. As in real war, the aim is not merely to physcially destroy the enemy army but to break his will to fight.

CW has many fascinating and engrossing qualities that give you a real sense of what Lincoln and Davis must have gone through as wartime presidents. First, you must decide how you want to raise your armies - by asking for volunteers or enacting a draft. (Each has its pros and cons) Then it is necessary to choose how to build up your infrastructure -building factories, buying locomotives, constructing riverine ships, transports, etc. Finally, you have to decide how you are going to pay for all this - via bonds, taxes, public appeals for money, etc. Political decisions relating slave emancipation, foreign intervention, etc., etc. frequently come into play for both sides as well.

On a military level, the game works like this. You control both an Army and a Navy. Spending money and using up manpower and supplies, which you don't have in unlimited quantities, you create forces (for the Army) on a regimental or brigade level, choosing from infantry, cavalry, artillery, militia, irregulars, support units, etc. which are all historically accurate and represented by detailed icons (men, cannons, ships, etc.) These forces come from your component states, and are always historically real. If you order the creation of a brigade in say, New York or Georgia, it will be a real brigade from New York or Georgia. Once the forces are created they must be trained, which takes a bit of time. Once trained, they can operate independently or be formed into detachments, divisions, corps, or armies, each of which requires a certain rank of leader and has certain fighting and logistical characteristics.

This is one of the frankly cooler aspects of the game: the leaders are real historical figures, represented by historically accurate portrait icons. These leaders are programmed to correspond to the actual historical figures' known characteristics - Custer is a hothead but a good Indian fighter, McClelland is a good organizer but a slow mover, etc. Therefore, the body of troops benefits or suffers from who is in command, and you, the player benefit or suffer from how good your pool of available generals is. Because the game is historically true, this pool is dependent on what year it might be. You cannot, for example, give Lee command of a Confederate army in April, 1861 - first, because he's only a two-star general at that time and therefore isn't eligible to command one yet, and second, because you, as commander-in-chief, are more or less obligated to fill vacant commands by seniority and not competence, or you will suffer corresponding political penalties. Generals become eligible for promotion only after winning battles, so you can't just make a good one-star general into a three-star general overnight, either.

The game is won or lost by two rankings: "victory points", which you get mainly from occupying territory, and "national morale points", which you get by winning battles or by making decisions which are popular politically. If your national morale falls below a certain level you lose automatically, as your nation has lost its will to fight. This adds an interesting dynamic to the game, as what is popular is not always what is smart.

The game's AI is better than I've previously encountered, and can be adjusted to smarter, dumber or more aggressive as you choose. CW's map includes the United States from the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast, showing the individual states in great detail, down to the individual counties. It uses a simultaneous turn-resolution system which I last saw back in the 80s playing SSI games like DECISION IN THE DESERT and CRUSADE IN EUROPE. Instead of moving, supplying and shooting and then letting the enemy do the same, you issue orders and then end the turn; both you and the computer execute simultaneously, which leaves you less a "commander" and more a "suggester" - a realistic if not necessarily satisfying way of depicting strategic war.

Which brings me to the game's flaws. Battle in CW happens during the turn, so you have no control over it - something very annoying to me personally. Outcome is determined by the commanders skills, troop strengths, terrain, and luck, and the computer has a strange way of determining whether you won or lost. (On one occasion I was informed I'd "lost" the Battle of Fredericksburg, despite the fact I took the town and inflicted 10,000 casualties against only 2,000 of my own. Hmmm.) Also, whether you are awarded morale points for victories or penalized for defeats seems to have no logic behind it. I've won major battles and been given zero morale points, lost minor skirmishes and been penalized heavily. I'm sure there is a logic to how these things are determined...but I don't understand what it is. Finally, the version I have -- which may be improved by the patches which are available on the Internet -- crashes enough to make constant saving a necessity.

Despite these and other flaws, I would highly recommend AMERICAN CIVIL WAR to anyone interested in either the States' War or strategy games in general. It's a highly addictive, very imaginative and visually pleasing game which really forces you to use your noggin against a very well-programmed opponent. Hopefully subsequent versions will iron out some of the more annoying aspects of play, but even as-is, it's a hell of an accomplishment. Any game you can play for a whole day without blinking is pretty good in my book.

UPDATE 6/13/08

I owe the makers of AACW an apology: two of the "flaws" I originally listed here are the partial result of my own stupidity. First, I wrote that the "enable divisional command" feature doesn't work. It does, it's just not explained very well (at all) in the manual. It is however explained in one of the tutorials, so I deleted that remark. I also said that it was impossible to lock formations so that they couldn't accidentally merge with others during drag 'n drop -- this was also untrue. Having said that, I would like to add that the manual is not very well written at all and that the tutorials are much better for learning the game basics. My final review of this game is therefore five stars ( *****).

Instability Ruins Potentially Great Game [Posted on 2008-07-11]
This could have have been a great game, but it isn't. The concept is that the player makes grand strategic decisions which effect the outcome of the Civil War. For example players can decide to suspend Habeas Corpus or impose martial law on certain states. They decide where and if to industrialize and how much to invest into railroads as opposed to river transport. Playing as the Confederacy I was having fun investing in ironclads instead of blockade runners. I don't know the eventual results of my gamble however for reasons I will explain shortly.

On the military side of things, the game goes into great detail about organizing brigades into divisions, corps, and armies. These military forces that you raise can then be maneuvered across the US. Here the game play becomes a little frustrating because of the "WEGO", or simultaneous execution of pre-planned movement of 2 week orders gives some undesired results. Once the armies meet on the map, the AI resolves the battles with what seems to be a reasonable algorithm based upon a number of detailed factors from terrain to nearby forces and the various generals' abilities.

The result should be an adictively fun game, but it's not. The first time I TRIED to play, I found it was 4 AM by the time I shut off the computer. My losing track of time however, was not all due to the immersive influence of the game, but due to the constant crashes that slowed down progess miserably. Finally, the continual plodding along and reloading became so tedius that I couln't stand it anymore. The game crashed at least once per turn. Fortunatly, the program has an excellent save function that is an absolute necessity because of it's extreem instability. But the crashes were not just mild "crash to desktop" problems, but would sometimes result in the entire computer shutting down. I figured no campaign was worth the potential damage to the hardware and finally uninstalled the game. I'd recommend others save themselves the trouble, and not install it to begin with.

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