Ultimate General: Civil War

I have over 1200 hours of the game and have nearly achieved every single medal. It's an understatement to say I love the game and think there is a lot of replayability. I enjoy building your army, upgrading the units inventory, and slowly building brigades that are elite. Each time I play a battle I can try different strategies and approaches. The AI is fun to fight against and I feel its sufficiently balanced. My only recommendation is to launch a live player vs. player on a given map like the U.G. Gettysburg had. I really love the game and would buy it a second time in a heart beat.

煮豆燃豆萁，本是同根生，游戏中的战场上可以看到南北两军的尸山血海，即便最后获得胜利（无论我扮演哪一方），我也开心不起来。如果说这个游戏给了我最大反思就是，人在大历史中既是数字又不该仅是数字，一切东西都是有代价的，他的岁月静好，必定有人为此负重前行，也更理解他为何如此看重路线斗争，反反复复强调千万不要忘记……

This game started out alright but as you progress into the campaign it starts forcing outcomes that closely match the actual history,, instead of let the player advance on their own merit. Example: Bull Run. I have the confederates almost totally eliminated and encircled with most of the units they have left counted in double digits. I'm closing in for the kill and the game suddenly stops and says it's the "Next Day". My units reappear on a hilltop on the right with about half the units I had when the day changed. Additionally, two of the three supply units I had aren't there anymore. The defeated rebels start coming back at my belittled force with filled out units that were destroyed before the game changed to the next day. There is no way to win. It is litterally forcing the results of the actual historical events. Fun and challenging at first, but then it sucks.

I have tried for years to enjoy this game, but after one final, fated attempt, I have to give this a thumbs down. There's much potential in this sort of game, and the first in the series (Gettysburg) got right what the sequel got wrong. The game's strict adherence to keeping with the battles as they happened is so scripted that it's broken -- the inability to actually command the outcome of a battle is so frustrating. Sure, if playing the historical battles, I can understand the desire to have players follow the historical script, but to do so in the campaign when players are supposed to take the reigns is so poorly conceived that I will refuse to play this through, which is a shame, because almost everything else outweighs this (major) downside. Take Shiloh for instance: I manage to deal such a bloody nose to the Confederate attack at the church and along the river that I shouldn't need to fall back on the hornet's nest -- so why in the good lord's name did the Devs think it was a good idea to make that a necessity? Or, if not that, at least give me the option to reassign my units to the new positions post cutscene rather than to have it auto-assigned by the awful computer AI. The fact that this is not included to me feels like a significant oversight. What made Gettysburg such a great game was the choice players got to behave like a general and sort out strategy (flank attack or hold, etc.). There's none of that in this game ... so it doesn't live up to the title: no ultimate general here.

This is a fantastic game. I think it's the strongest in their entire series. (Although don't underestimate the calm fun of building battleships in Dreadnoughts) Anyway if your not a naval nut you'll find everything you want in Civil War, real-time strategy. The battles are smooth, and the army customization really adds to the flavor of the game. The only thing I would say is perhaps a weakness is the fact that when you win battles, it doesn't really affect your campaign in the sense that you can maneuver to different battles. For example, if you win Gettysburg as the Confederacy, you still just fight the next battle. Or if you really smash the Confederacy as the Union, you're still kind of stuck to the historical campaign. You just start each predesignated battle a little stronger or weaker. And it can actually get to the point where you've kneecapped the enemy army so badly that it becomes kind of a wash-over, but it's still a very fun game. Its the real descendent of Sid Meyers original Gettysburg. So I would say if you love maneuvering columns of Civil War infantry around, as well as managing cavalry that can dismount and a variety of artillery, you'll like this game. Play style is basically capture the flag, but like so many games in this genre, you're really trying to surround and destroy your enemy in encirclement battles where massed rifle fire makes the difference. And you can upgrade units with everything from Mexican-American War-style rifles all the way through state-of-the-art late Civil War guns, including the Henry rifle and Spencer carbine, things like that. Cavalry can be equipped as melee or dismounted specialists. There's also a variety of artillery, so you can customize your artillery force, it's quite fun. Key to the game is the barracks mode between main battles and skirmishes. These skirmishes serve as preliminary battles before major campaign battles like Antietam or Gettysburg. They give you an opportunity to win, to collect money and resources to optimize your army in order to win the big multi stage campaign battles. They are actually a lot of fun and cover dozens of the smaller ACW battles that do not warrant a large battle treatment. Think of them like mini bosses or tactical problems before the big multi echelon grand battles. The barracks are important because that's where you enhance your character (general characteristics like politics medicine and logistics) create new divisions to increase the size of your army, and add customizable attributes to your generals and individual divisions so you can take them from, essentially, greenhorn militiamen with antique 1840s weapons to crack infantry armed with state-of-the-art 1863 weapons after a few campaigns. Resource management is critical in this game, and it's quite fun to handle. The decisions you make in the barracks absolutely affect your potential to win the battles. For example, you can choose to reinforce a division with veteran troops and expensive weapons, but if you do that, it will come at the cost of massing large formations. And so you'll have these elite crack units that are capable of holding their own until attrition breaks them if you prefer that, and you're a good player, that will work. But for the same money, you could have bought four low-quality divisions with four times as many soldiers on the field maneuvering. So it's up to you. And that part of the resource management is actually a lot of fun pre-battle to see if you can tune the army just right for the coming challenges. Grand Battles put you into sometimes multi day or at least multi stage battles where you get a chance to bring multiple corps to bear on the enemy. They are fun but the big ones force you to zoom out quite a bit and manage large operational level maneuverers unless you constantly pause and orient every brigade you will take casualties on one side of the battle field as you manage another, not unrealistic they are just a lot to manage at once. The smaller battles between the grand battels really shine for the tactician because you usually bring only one or two divisions to bear on the problem so direct control and fine tuned tactics are most rewarding. But a lot of saving and redoing is required at first because you really cannot afford to lose battles as you go or you will never have enough gold and recruits to replace casualties. Later battles are set up that way on purpose. For example if you win a Pyric Union victory at Gettysburg you are very likely to get spanked at Chickamauga because there is only one small battle between them and the confederates come out aggressive in that battle. You swing back and forth between the Western and Eastern campaigns of the ACW so you will fight Shiloh and Antietam with the same campaign army for example. Its not a realistic campaign in that sense, you basically take a core army around and fight kind of like Panzer Corps. However many battles do offer auxiliary units to aid your battles. I really have enjoyed this game over the years and despite their other titles I find myself returning to this one again and again as it seems to be the most balanced and ROI friendly. I don't love mixing naval campaigns with ground campaigns like in the American Revolution and find the Naval battles a distraction before the next land battle. Here there is none of that, sometime you are supported by gunships from rivers but you dont have to manage them.

作为非常少见的线列步兵题材作品，这款游戏是我玩过的最好的一个，我的评价是制作组压根不会写简介，因为它的内容远比简介看起来好的太多太多。线列步兵战斗相比经典RTS节奏更缓，更加注重战术上的阵型调遣而不是微操，而且这游戏的ai是真的很聪明不是某4那样的一眼辣鸡脚本，这就导致你玩起来不仅难度适中没有PVP压力还非常有成就感。骑兵散兵全图开花迟滞骚扰敌人，正面不断冲击配合火炮消耗最后叫上预备队撕口子扩大包围，这还仅仅是一局。 很多小众战略游戏都有高度同质化的问题，但我可以说这游戏单一周目北军战役里的五十小时里我没感到任何同质化的无聊，这和它非常优秀的战役进行机制有关。整个战役几乎每一关都是一张历史大地图，根据史实分割成几次小地图给你明确的任务式目标去完成，最后合并为一整张大地图进行决战。这样历史性不用说，不仅极大减轻了上来就进行整张大地图巨量操作的困惑和压力，还保留了大地图作战的宏大感，甚至还给每一关带来了消除同质化的新鲜感。 很多评论说这游戏画质不行，恰恰相反，整个游戏画面是非常优秀的。这种看似简易实则细腻的手绘风格保证了它极佳的优化与永不过时的观感，视觉效果更是在游戏和真实中找到了绝佳的平衡点。我弃坑的某个游戏就是太过追求真实比例导致视觉效果奇差无比，开枪是没效果的，炮弹爆炸是平淡的，更糟的是它还无聊。哎，不说了，总之这款游戏没有以上问题！开火效果是真的很好！ 说真的，你都看到这里了真该去试试！

AI cheats to such an extension that it makes the game-play unplayable. My soldiers get tired VERY easily while the opponents never seem to get tired. They start a march to the battle location and by the time they get there, they are tired.

Рот болит, и попе больно, быть южанином прикольно

So, the battles themselves are generally enjoyable. The AI sometimes shows some skill. The battle clock is sometimes short making any significant maneuver problematic. Some of the battles have victory conditions that are absurd. Nevertheless, the battles are fun. The campaign is crap. All is well if you win. End in a draw (or most certainly a loss) in any significant battle and the game will put you into a death spiral: the campaign is over - you will be defeated. It does not matter if you crushed the enemy in every battle beforehand. With a draw (or loss) the game mechanics stack the enemy strength up against you in a very significant way. Your next battle will require you to achieve every victory condition with insufficient combat power to do it. Eventually, the enemy will get bigger and bigger and you have no chance. This mechanic is just plain lazy on the part of the developers. Buy it on sale, it still has some value - just don't expect much from a campaign.