Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2131 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: ASCARON Entertainment (UK) Ltd.
• Released on: 2007-10-12
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
American Civil War is a historical operational strategy game built on a simultaneous turn-based engine (WEGO system). Players are placed at the head of the Union or Confederate armies during the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Political aspects of the conflict (especially during the Grand Campaign) are taken into account, impacting militia and guerrilla levies, foreign intervention, shifting loyalties, information gathering, reconnaissance, and more.

Units can be organised into brigades, divisions, corps and armies. This will depend on the nation’s military structure, as well as the presence (or absence) of a leader of appropriate rank. Armies give combat and march bonuses as well as some of the abilities of the overall commander. Player will have to promote the right leader at the right time, paying a political cost if more senior leaders are relegated without command. With only a few but well-integrated and explained constraints, this optional rule will let players experience how generals like McClellan influenced the outcome of the war.

Units move using their movement type and capacity. Movement is affected by various factors such as weather, types of units moving, terrain, presence of generals, development and transportation network (i.e. railroad) level of the region, moving through friendly or enemy territory, and whether the unit has been ordered to force march. In addition, unit movement attempts are checked for the initiative level of their leaders; a unit that fails its check usually stays idle. Advanced movement types such are rail, river and sea transport (for supply) are available to the player, thanks to a pool of transport points.

A vast array of special orders is at the disposal of the player, to define precise actions. Units can then be ordered to intercept, assault, Ambush, Entrench, split, combine, counter-move or force march. Naval units can pursue, bombard or intercept. Units can also choose an offensive or defensive stand, which impacts strongly on battle results. Units may board on ships and river transports, and disembark from same. A new feature allows creating or disbanding divisions, corps and armies, to better represent the organizational and command chain advantages or liabilities of the era. Finally, orders to build supply lines and depots, or destroy them, can be issued.

Players must supply their units either through foraging or by building and maintaining supply lines, depots and wagons. Supply lines and depots are expensive to build and must be defended (or they will be captured or pillaged) and thus players must plan their deployment very judiciously.

Cities can store supply if they are linked to friendly depots, and provide much needed conscripts, war supplies and ammunition. Victory in the game comes with the capture and continuous control of the key objective cities of the scenario in play or the defeat of the enemy’s armies before milestones like the 1864 Election or the historical end date.

Armies can either besiege or assault a city. Assaults are extremely costly in terms of casualties, and sometimes provide speedy results. Sieges may drag on for ages, especially that of port cities or key forts which are much harder to capture unless they are also blockaded by naval units hostile to the port city. Earthworks can be built by units, and engineers can help create strong defensive positions for heavy and coastal artilleries.

Ship combat incorporates the technological innovations of steam power and ironclad protection, along with more traditional factors (ship quality, crew and leadership). Combat peculiarities in coastal areas and on the major rivers are included. Dominance of the sea and major waterways allows for faster and easier strategic redeployment of forces in a theater where land movement is painfully slow and harmful. Ships may also bombard during amphibious assaults and attack in ports.

Customer Reviews

Civil War game review
I've seen varying reviews about this game from various sources, and I can see both sides of the argument. Personally, as a long standing fan of strategy games this is right down my street. A word of warning to start with, however. The game is extremely high in memory use and once you load the game onto your PC you don't need the CD in to play, which explains the high useage. PCs with lowish memory and graphics cards not entirely suitable will crash out.
The 'board' map is huge, covering from the west the Indian / Kansas territories and going east to the Atlantic, and south from the Gulf of Mexico to virtually the Canadian border. It takes time to scroll across and lagging can be frustrating unless you got a high-spec machine that works out PI in 3 seconds.
Those concerns aside the game is great. If you're into shoot-em-up or battles, forget it. Battles are done by the PC and all you get are the results. Basically, you're the guy who moves the units, assign generals and armies, ships and boats. Its a grand strategy game with at its heart the Ledger. Its here you determine the economy, resources, diplomatic and army building course of your side. Its close to the scenario of real life so that the South can win even if they appear to be losing. The North has to keep on conquering to keep the 'War' party in power and not lose the election of 1864.
Generals appear only when they are supposed to, so that the North starts with McDowell and McClellan and the South with Beauregard and A.S. Johnson. Those of you who like the 'building' aspect of strategy games, such as planning long term industry and reinforcements, will take to this part of the game. The manual is helpful but what you also need to do to begin with is use one of the inbuilt 'tuition' scenarios. Attention must be given to building armies, corps and divisions in order to avoid severe battle penalties.
Its about time someone came up with a big strategy game for this war and if you can bear the problems inherent with high memory useage then I recommend this one.

Intricate and detailed
This is quite simply put one heck of a realistic account of the events it is trying to re-inact, simple to install and from there on its time to learn and keep refering to the manual on what to click to send troops here there and everywhere, not as intuative as I would have expected but once you start to get into it it becomes more enjoyable. This will run on a relatively low spec PC so will play on old laptops too for when your out on the road and have a spare 30 mins.

I would say though that this game will appeal to anyone who loves strategy games. I would even go as far as suggesting that this is the most advanced version of Risk you will ever play. An easy way to sum this up is that it is easy (ish) to play once you have studied the manual yet it is hard to master...

Enjoyable although it seems like hard work to progress. If you have not played turn based strategy games before I would not recomend you start with this one but if you have played them before would say to give it a go.

This is a toughie. I find it more a "simulation" than a "game"
AGEOD's American Civil War is, I think, an astonishing piece of software. It tries to produce a meaningfully realistic version of commanding a major, "modern" war (because, let's face it, the American Civil War is "modern" warfare in many ways - certainly compared with the great number of middle-ages inspired warfare games) and it does a remarkably decent job.

At least, I think it does - I don't really KNOW, having not actually studied either military command nor this era in history.

The fundamental problem, though, is the sheer complexity of this beast known as "modern warfare". To be a realistic simulation this piece of software has ended up becoming such an involved thing that some of the basic fun has been left by the roadside.

This is one of the reasons I like "fantasy war" simulations more than those which seek to be realistic to an actual era in history. In fantasy war games the game designer has only one requirement, to make it fun. In games such as American Civil War he has two - because he must also make it real. If you have two requirements, sometime you end up sacrificing the one for the other.

I THOROUGHLY RECOMMEND this game for those who have a fascination for the era, or a fascination for the true complexities of modern, military command - but I suspect that for a lot of people it will be bought, installed, never really "got into" and end up neglected.

This is why I (somewhat reluctantly) give this software a lowish star rating for fun. You have to be a VERY SPECIFIC style of gamer to get the best out of it, and to really enjoy it.

Yet as a wonderful, fascinating simulation - great.