Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

Very detailed American Civil War games i have ever played, the campaign mode is quite hard especially for confederate sides due to lack of guns, less ships and lower industry/economy compared to Unions, but i still love to play the CSA due to its challenging environment. Cant wait for the next step (whiskey and lemon) for the career mode. Downside: The Economic is still quite confusing.. even if we tried to build more economic building, the result is not linear.. I think the developer should make the economic simpler with Total War like systems (every building yield some value either for trade or resources can be utilized / money that can be spent)

This game has me torn. My mind is in civil war between approval and disapproval. POSITIVES: Huge strategic map with countless playable tactical maps Faithful historical rendering with attention to detail Impressive economic engine Land force weaponry is simulated accurately and expansively Diplomacy, finance, morale, fighting spirit modeled well Individual officer apptitudes and progression a feature of the game NEGATIVES: Tactical army commands extremely frustrating Eg. At setup placing a division and orienting its troops to face correctly takes multiple multiple attempts Army recruitment frustrating E.g. Different speeds of troop arrivals depending on marching time from state of origin Strategic commands frustrating Eg. Want to start an Army in New York? It appears in upper New York and takes a month to march to the front lines - because of snow - in April. Eg. You make an orderly retreat from a battle because the odds are poor. You get stuck in a river ford and the entire army is paralyzed for a week. Were they sleeping underwater? A lot of different commands for a unit is good - but orders delay mechanic makes using a lot of different commands impractical. [You can turn orders delay off] Bottom line: it can take many hours to play a tactical battle with just 10,000 troops and the result of your best efforts are a marginal victory with a few hundred prisoners, a couple cannon, and the enemy marches away scot free. [Battles can be automated - but then the game becomes one dimensional] Due to the difficulty of managing multiple armies in multiple states where the enemy may pop up at any time the game must be played at a slow speed. Finessing arrival time of several armies to a battle requires intensive micro-management so more time is frittered away. The game becomes a micro nightmare. Officers must be assigned and reassigned regularly. Troop equipment must be upgraded regularly. Troop recruitment same. Tactical battles same. Strategic army movement same. To its credit the game permits auto-management of many functions, e.g. economy. This speeds up playing time. OVERALL EVALUATION Game design A+; Game mechanics B-; Strategic layer B+; Tactical layer F Game is fun to play C- SCORE 6/10 I only play when I am extremely bored with my life

20240611 no change to my review. No update since early Feb 2024, not a good sign. PROs A brilliant concept and a valiant attempt at implementation. Frustrating and buggy as anything but rewarding anyway. CONs BUYER BEWARE this game runs on the UNITY ENGINE and thus will NEVER be a polished, complete game. That is the nature of the Unity Engine. It is garbage and it produces garbage. Unfortunately it now seems to be the industry standard and is dragging the industry down to is very low, gutter level. Unity seems to be the reason soooo many modern games are described as something like "Brilliant BUT buggy/frustrating/incomplete...." The Dev's provide the brilliance, Unity provides the buggy/frustrating/incomplete.... Don't believe me? Check out the comments on any unity based game and note the similarities.

Tutorial is hot ass. You better hope the game is fire or this thumbs up goes to a thumbs down. Literally it says "Advance 10x speed" while pointing to a 20x button. And since it goes too fast, the tutorial bugs out. Really brilliant design guys. Increase the top speed but don't adjust your tutorial.

I found the initial grand campaign quite a steep learning curve - the Whiskey and Lemons DLC has been a perfect entry point into learning the game mechanics. It will be great to see the AI development continue and perhaps smoother redeployment between days of battle but I have enjoyed the game a lot so far.

never culd play it because keep stuck in tutorial

I got gifted this game and i was really excited to play it when i got it. I played some Whiskey and Lemons Campaigns and quickly got constantly frustrated with how dumb the AI can be. For example in one session i was playing as a officer in the CSA and the corp/army that i was in moved out to southern Ohio and then sat there, did nothing, and did not do anything else. i sped up the time scale to see if the army would moved to contest a union army somewhere or attack/occupy any holding but no we sat in the middle of a forest with no supply for 2 years doing nothing!!! to sum up the rest of the session the CSA lost pretty quick. Also this isn't the only campaign I've had this happen in as i did a union game where pretty much the same thing happened. my other issue for the game has to do with combat, you could set up barricades or trenches for your men to sit in and they will move out into the open out of cover once they see a enemy, whats the point of me building this crap if they wont even use it!

This is a really great game. Union campaign literally lasted 3 in game months for me after winning 28 battles and beating the confederates. On the other hand when I played the CSA campaign, I am struggling to keep up. I can't win. So it seems if you play union and keep pushing with all your advantages, you can win super easy. But as the CSA you are up to a big challenge. I love this game, but it has its bugs. The ranges especially on artillery can be wonky. You can be on a gorgeous hill overlooking the enemy yet unable to target due to weird fov mechanics. Anyways, with all the bugs in this game, it is just beautiful and the best to accomplish the grand scale of the american civil war. I can play for many more hours and won't be bored!