Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

It's a great game that offers both a great strategic map experience combined with a good/unique battle management system. My two biggest gripes: Weird AI behavior: Sometimes your units will just think to themselves stuff like: "Today we will just randomly expose my flank to the enemy" or "Hmmm what's the worst possible way that we can can carry out that order and get wrecked." Or my personal favorite "Well we're here in this great entrenched defensive position, we should totally leave this spot and walk out into the open in-front of all those enemy units. Followed closely by "Oh you want us to re-adjust or lines slightly in these entrenchments? Sure, we'll march forward out of the defenses, turn around putting our backs to enemy fire, march back into them, turn sideways exposing our flank and then...oops we're routed from casualties, run away." The battle mechanic I HATE and that probably makes me quit the game more than anything else is that if you're holding defenses and winning the battle when night falls if the enemy has gotten close enough to your line it will forcefully push you out of your defensive position and give that position to the enemy, totally ruining your battle-line and turning the tide of the battle regardless of how well you're doing. You can also use this mechanic to cheese enemy defensive positions by just waiting until it's close to dark and then rush a bunch of troops close to one part of their defenses, it will push them out at nightfall and give you the position for the re-deployment phase. If you love history and particularly the american civil war this game is a must have and what it offers is more than enough to let you overlook some of the AI issues and just re-load saves when your troops occasionally do something incredibly stupid. If you're just a hardcore battle strategy game player though you're going to get frustrated with this one when your units every now and then do the most non-sensible thing imaginable and cost you the battle. 9/10 If you love history and the American Civil War. 7/10 If you just like strategy/warfare games.

Good game

Done the things right total war should do. the depth to the game fells realy cool. yeahr the ai is not realy the best but the working on it still amazing funny.

This game gives me mixed emotions, and I have played it during several iterations of development since the first beta. The Good: There are no other games, that have come out within the last 8 years or so, that can match the scope, and ambition of this game. Especially when it is centered on the American Civil War. The UI is aesthetically pleasing and I love the inclusion of historical documents, and there are tons of them! The army management on the campaign map, and in battle, is wonderful. This game is the closest to "real" that I have come across and it is enjoyable. The multiple campaign start points, which are historically based, and the historical battles are wonderful. Seeing one brigade holding the line in a close battle, then seeing it is the Irish brigade with the right commander is just amazing to see if you're a history nerd. The game manual is regularly updated in wonderful. It is the size of a small novel, but it is one of the better game manuals out there. The bad: The finances tab is a b**** to manage and understand, which often leaves me forgetting about it entirely and somehow doing ok. Weapon ordering is somewhat broken, especially for the CSA. You can change your subsidies to unlock the production or importation pretty quickly in game. This doesn't sound like a problem on its own, until you just place an order for everything you can, the max amount, and let the game run. After about 12 months into the 1861 CSA campaign I had an army that was larger, and better equipped than the USA while my credit rating was still fine. The way weapons are ordered need changed to reflect production or importation limitations based on the campaign map. Armies tend to retreat wherever they want, often to illogical locations. I won a fort battle outside Richmond with 4 federal corps, and they all immediately withdrew when a confederate corps, who was also in the last battle, marched closer. My army then withdrew, not down the peninsula as you'd expect, but into central North Carolina, with one corps almost walking to Wilmington. This caused me to not have those forces weeks in game as I waited for them to finish marching and to regain readiness. The game does need polish still, especially for the issue mentioned above and for unit movements in battle. I had a battery glitch into the map, be shown with Burnside carbines, and be useless for an entire battle. Now, that sounds like a lot of bad, but those issues are more recent for me and are easier to remember as they stand out so clearly from the absolute mastery this game is when it works well. I have played about 60 hours on the most recent patch, and this game has gotten better with each patch. I will update this review going forward as the game makes changes, and as I remember.

We need Chinese！Thank you !

Great game! Hours of fun

This is simply impossible to play, optimize the game, not design it