Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

After several false starts, I finally completed a Union campaign and came away with mixed but overwhelmingly positive feelings about Grand Tactician. First, the positives. The atmosphere and presentation are outstanding. The strategic map is beautiful, detailed, and full of character. The period fonts, handwritten reports, messages, newspaper articles, and overall Civil War aesthetic do a tremendous job of immersing you in the era. Few strategy games make me feel like I'm actually running a government and commanding armies during a historical conflict, but Grand Tactician absolutely does. The tactical battles are also one of the game's greatest strengths. The command delays, chain of command, delegation systems, and imperfect control create an experience that feels very different from most strategy games. At first, it can be frustrating when units don't immediately do what you want, brigades don't arrive exactly where you expected, or a carefully planned defense falls apart because subordinates fail to execute perfectly. However, I eventually realized that many of these frustrations are intentional. The game is not trying to give you perfect control. It's trying to simulate the experience of commanding Civil War armies. There were multiple moments where I found myself thinking, "If only those troops had held that bridge the way I ordered them to," and I imagine real Civil War generals had exactly the same thoughts. Grand Tactician deserves a lot of credit for attempting to recreate that experience rather than turning everything into a perfectly responsive game system. The grand strategy layer is also deeper than it first appears. Army organization, recruiting, finances, weapons procurement, brigade management, and force composition all took me quite a while to understand. I probably started three or four campaigns before everything finally clicked. Some of the interfaces can be unintuitive and a little finicky, but once I understood how everything worked, I genuinely enjoyed organizing armies, upgrading weapons, consolidating damaged brigades, and managing the war effort. My criticisms are less about bugs and more about pacing and AI behavior. The biggest issue for me was the retreat system. I appreciate that armies didn't simply disappear after losing a battle. Historically, defeated armies often survived, reorganized, and returned to fight again. That's realistic. However, in practice, the game often created situations where shattered enemy forces would retreat deep into my territory and become more of an annoyance than a meaningful military threat. Instead of thinking like a Civil War commander, I sometimes felt like I was playing a game of whack-a-mole, chasing remnants of armies that had already been decisively defeated. The concept is historically grounded, but the implementation occasionally produced strange gameplay. Similarly, I found the AI extremely aggressive, even on the easiest settings. I understand the historical reasoning behind this. The Confederacy could not realistically win a long war of industry and finance, so initiative and aggression were critical. However, as a new player trying to learn the systems, I was hoping for a slower-paced campaign where both sides would spend more time building forces, establishing positions, and testing each other before committing to major offensives. Instead, I felt pressured to spend aggressively, recruit constantly, and launch offensives of my own simply to keep up with the AI's pace. Ironically, I ended up winning the war as the Union by December 1861. While that was satisfying from a gameplay perspective, it felt ahistorical and left me wishing the campaign had lasted much longer. This is probably my biggest suggestion for future titles: consider adding a truly relaxed or beginner campaign setting. Not necessarily an easier campaign in terms of combat outcomes, but one with slower operational pacing, reduced AI aggression, and more breathing room for players who want to learn the systems and experience a longer, more methodical war. It would not be historically accurate, but it would make the game more approachable and allow players to enjoy the excellent strategic systems without immediately being thrown into a race for survival. I had similar feelings about some of the readiness and fog-of-war mechanics. I appreciate the concepts, but occasionally they felt overly restrictive. For example, the idea that a large army cannot conduct even minimal scouting because readiness is too low felt excessive. Likewise, while I completely understand not knowing the location of distant enemy forces early in the war, it seemed odd that I could lose track of a large defeated army operating in friendly territory. The concepts are excellent, but in a few places they felt pushed slightly beyond what was necessary for gameplay. The naval war occasionally suffered from the same issue. I appreciated the historical asymmetry, but there were times when Confederate naval forces launched attacks that seemed obviously suicidal. Watching tiny Confederate flotillas repeatedly challenge overwhelming Union naval superiority was technically historical in spirit, but sometimes crossed into comedy. Despite all of these criticisms, I want to emphasize that they come from a place of appreciation rather than frustration. Grand Tactician is one of the few strategy games that genuinely attempts to simulate the challenges, uncertainty, and frustrations of commanding armies and managing a nation during the American Civil War. Not every design choice worked for me personally, and some aspects of the pacing ultimately discouraged me from immediately starting another campaign, but I still believe the game is a remarkable achievement. Most importantly, it has me excited for the developers' future projects. If the upcoming Napoleonic title builds upon the strengths of Grand Tactician while refining some of the pacing, AI behavior, and player onboarding, it could be something truly special. Grand Tactician isn't perfect, but it is ambitious, unique, and far more historically minded than most strategy games on the market. For that alone, it deserves recognition.

Yet another game that thinks it is the only one in the world, so it has non-standard UI commands. I really am beyond the point where I want to read a 100 step tutorial before being able to start and when I get back a few weeks later I need the re-learn it all over again. Plus the aforementioned tutorial is broken and the devs seem to have no interest in fixing it. I tried doing it three or four times and it broke down in a different spot every time.

A great game completely undone by game breaking bugs. Supply is completely borked (if supply moves along railways, why must I build a supply hub every 30 feet?). If one of your forts is under attack, don't move an army to reinforce it or it'll fall the second the army makes it into battle. Want to inflict more casualties on your enemy after they break in battle? Too bad, your cavalry need to be told to use their sabres each and every unit they go after, and even if they do get to that unit on time they almost certainly wont do anything to them anyway. Add in rather obvious Total War-style rule bending permitted to assist the nearly brain-dead AI, such as knowing where all your units are at any time, an ability to ignore the readiness system, and complete disregard for any and all economic limitations, and what you have is a mess of a Civil War simulation that aspires to be a strategy game but collapses under its own weight.

There was so much potential with this title, bug with little to no support for its endless bugs, not to mention completely useless options, it becomes an absolute slog.

Not worth $45 (or $20 on sale). I would not spend $25 for the DLC either. Three words to describe this game: buggy, nonsensical, frustrating. Awesome concept that genuine effort was put into, but extremely questionable execution and a poor overall outcome for players. You have the overall strategic map of the country and move armies + fleets around on it, construct buildings (hospitals, POW camps, markets, military academies, etc.), implement policies to provide perks to keep your country in the fight, manage your finances, recruit new troops, etc. You can choose to fight individual battles at the tactical level, or you can just autoresolve them from the strategic map. Units will not follow your orders correctly regardless of what you toggle in your settings (i.e. disabling feuds between commanders so they'll -supposedly- cooperate better, disabling order delays so they'll move when you tell them to). They will not follow them on the strategic level nor on the tactical level. You will watch your brigades rout and have your men get mowed down because they did not time a flanking maneuver correctly even when you disabled order delays. Forts and sieges are very odd in how they work. I've had 4000+ man armies supported by artillery lay siege and lose to forts with 100 man garrisons... because who knows why. I've lost ironclad fleets when taking underdefended harbors. Parapets and defensive engineering are more useless than they should be. Your men do not know how to use cover. You will somehow dig earthworks in tactical engagements, place your men inside them, and they'll still lose hundreds of people even when the enemy is standing in front of you on open and unprotected ground (typically I've lost about half of what the enemy ends up losing in those scenarios, to clarify) with no artillery support. Had this experience in the 1863 scenario while occupying Port Royal, GA. Automanage is supposedly a feature if you don't want to concern yourself with personally overseeing everything about finances, policies, etc., but it does not actually work. You WILL have to micromanage these things yourself if you want decent outcomes for your economy and the war effort. The game simply tries to cover too many things in too many areas in my opinion. The result is just a buggy, chaotic mess where things frequently do not work right and you're constantly being punished because of it. Which hey, that does accurately describe the American Civil War. There was a lot of chaos and things not working out like they were supposed to in historical reality. But for a video game, this is simply not enjoyable. And I speak as someone who grew up playing grand strategy + RTS titles. Especially (again) considering the price. It's your money, you can do whatever you want with it. But I would not have bought this had I known it doesn't get better. Avoid it.

This game has good concepts but has a horrible execution. Battles are janky, commanders hardly ever follow orders, when they do your soldiers respond 3 days later, half the features on the campaign map don't even work, and overall a super unenjoyable experience. 1/10.

The game is overly complicated for the sake of just being overly complicated. The idea is that you have complete control over the country you are in command of, but in reality, you just don't have control of anything. To do anything in this game you have to go through multiple channels and wait for results. Now, I'm not one who is against stuff like this, but when the enemy appears to be able to do everything they want instantly, that's where I draw they line. The game is clearly is too ambitious and the developers are too full of themselves to adjust. Yes, they've got the praise of the intense war gamers, and maybe that's the only audience they want, and it is the only audience they'll get if they don't simplify the game.

The game just doesn't make much sense. Non of the mechanics seem to work properly and credit rating seems to flip like burgers at a fast food place. AI seems to just either rush the objective from one end of the map to bunch up until contact is made. Your troops seem to shoot at whatever they want but not the enemy, cannons seem to be pointless, cavalry are pointless. Units run out of ammo within 30minutes of fighting. I feel that I'm fighting the mechanics of this game more than the enemy... who just seems to be able to walk right past my armies with full readiness when they are orange. It is overly complicated for the sake of being overly complicated. Game is a broken mess with too many pointless mechanics and no simple explanation for them. Tutorial is just a silent slide show of a few pointless tasks but doesn't actually explain anything.

Overall... it's much more frustrating than it is fun. I don't recommend it. You will spend A LOT of time screwing around with the controls, wondering why the RTS battle controls that every single other RTS uses, don't apply here. Basic stuff like holding middle mouse to adjust camera angle... nope. The battle order delay seems like a good idea on paper... very frustrating in practice. Again, in other games if you need to readjust where you send a unit, you just quickly tell them. Here, every single click counts. Your unit will go where you originally told them until they "receive" their new orders. You WILL be save-scumming regularly when you screw this up. It's not fun. Oh, you want to click-and-drag your mouse to select multiple infantry units, like in every single other RTS game? Nope. Can't do that either. Instead, you can move all units under your command in formation, by moving your general's "HQ" unit. No, this is not a better system -- the HQ unit is invincible, which is... weird... and sometimes you want to split the units up and move them as separate groups. It's a shame, because the systems that are setup within the game seem like good IDEAS. The order delay system could be fine, just needs work. The "troops are supplied if they're within radius of the HQ" thing, could be good. It's just, throughout the RTS-style battles, you will feel like you just don't have the control that you want... you'll always be wondering why this one guy won't move like you told him to. The most fun I had in the game was, with Whiskey and Lemons, playing as a low-ranked officer of 1 cavalry unit. When all I had to worry about was maneuvering one cav unit, it was fun. The readiness system... most YouTubers even tell you, turn Readiness off entirely before you start a campaign, that it just adds frustration. The expansiveness of the map is great, the general bios are great. But the devs ultimately shot too high with this and didn't see the required fixes through to the end. The complicated systems in-game fall apart under their own weight, and it just... isn't fun.

Fun, but insanely difficult, even on easy mode. You start off in control of half the country, either the Union or the Confederacy, complete with their own strengths and weaknesses. You are brought up to speed on the condition of the land via cabinet reports and newspaper articles (which will report on your actions and the result of those choices), and you're tasked with maintaining the economy, international relationships, national morale, and military. And it takes you a good while to get the ball rolling, as building something like a simple flour mill costs your country millions, and even millions more to subsidize any aspect of the country. So you have to play this delicate balance between them, as they are not entirely intuitive, and focusing on any one of them (say military) completely destabilizes your economy, screws up your national credit rating, and sends your country into massive debt. And after you're just beginning to stabilize your country, then the Battle of Fort Sumter erupts, and you're suddenly off to the races. You find your 9k troop regiments you struggled to build up are no match for the sudden appearance of 19-20k troop enemies that suddenly appear, and they stampede all throughout your land, ransacking and attacking everything in sight. Your economy tanks, morale drops, and outside countries like Great Britain start siding with the enemy, despite your attempt to dissuade them via policies. And that's on easy mode. I think if there are any tweaks to the game that should be made, I think the economy and timings of the game should be adjusted. I think you should be able to at least get your country mobilized without bankrupting your economy. To tell me I need a flour and iron mill to help the economy, only to turn around and cost me millions of dollars to build one of each and send my country into 30+ million in debt, causing my treasury to have to take out loans via bonds, and watch my national credit rating go straight from A+ to BBB-, shouldn't really be a thing. On the plus side of things, I think the AI of the troops are pretty spot on, more or less. The delay in orders, the necessity of rail lines and telegraph stations, the fog of war, troop fatigue and emotional states, really add to immersion of the gameplay. It does add a bit of intentional frustration when your flank crumbles and falls back because your officers in command of the flank disagree with you and the go rogue, threatening your position on the battlefield. And the need to build and maintain supply lines across the country is also a nice touch, as armies do need guns, gunpowder, cannons, food, and medical supplies, which are a constant need for any regiments, especially when in enemy territories.