Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

The developers deserve as much credit as possible for taking on a vision with such a scale as this. Every aspect of the Civil War appears to be included--the tactics, logistics, and politics all factor into a successful campaign. However, you can run a perfect campaign, but lose your capital city because your defending armies ignore invaders. You can surround key cities with forts, which don't actually fire on enemy troops when they walk by. When you win major naval battles, the crushed enemy ships remain in place while your victorious fleet retreats to Key West, regardless of where the battle was fought (and you can't give orders to a retreating force). When your forts are attacked, the defending garrison valiantly destroys half of the enemy's army, then abandons the fort with full supplies and zero casualties--just because; then you can't reassign those troops to another fort or army, or disband them; they are doomed to wander the countryside and drain your resources. To the game's credit, the bugs make you feel like Lincoln did during the war: You can raise the largest armies, supply them with the most advanced weaponry, wait until they are fully supplied and ready to march, then watch them retreat from an unarmed, low-morale force half your size every time. Less of an issue, but worth pointing out: the cursor is large, and a lot of the buttons are tiny (especially the time management buttons); get ready to miss important deciding moments because you can't click off of the 50x speed (keyboard shortcuts would be great to avoid this); be prepared to transport the map view to Canada every time you try to click on an popup report in the upper left corner; go ahead and give up trying to click on any tiny scrollbars (which move screens opposite directions from if you accidentally click the background). After over 100 hours of play, I wanted to love this game, but I can't recommend it because it's just too frustrating.

I have to say that I absolutely love what this game is trying to do. No other game I can think of better portrays the finer details of strategy, from planning campaigns around telegraphs and railroads, to appealing to foreign powers to buy weapons, to the race against time before your volunteers' contracts run out. It truly is everything I have wanted from a grand strategy game, including details I never knew I needed. However... in its current state, there are so many issues with the game that ruin it for me: -It's a very complex game, but the tutorial has bugs that make it almost impossible to complete, meaning the last stages of it are locked away. This leaves only a text manual that rivals a small novel if you want to fully understand the game's mechanics. -Enemy armies can retreat endlessly, and there's nothing you can do about it. I like that battles don't end with the total destruction of an enemy force. But when that enemy force can retreat forever, reinforcing itself as it goes, and you can't do anything but chase it and inflict truly minuscule losses, it gets SO frustrating. Chase them, and you quickly outrun your supplies, not to mention losing an army that can be used elsewhere. Don't chase, and the enemy will either come back in a week five times stronger, or will run right through your lines and start wreaking havoc behind you. There is no winning! -The battle mechanics can be ridiculously frustrating. I love the ideas they had (fog of war, sending couriers with orders, commanders possibly disobeying orders) but the battles are so clunky as is that using these mechanics is just masochistic. Even turning those factors off, I find units just deleting orders I gave them at random, units literally turning around in place in the middle of a fight (exposing their rear for a morale loss, and stopping them from firing back until they finish their dance), and just not performing right. I've almost lost easy battles because my best unit decided it wanted to perform a 360 mid-firefight, losing half of its men and routing before it could finish its spin. There is more potential to this game than maybe any other I've played in recent memory, but in its current state I just can't keep playing it. If the devs fix the issues I mentioned and polish it up, I'll happily adjust my review but, as of now, I just can't recommend this game, even on sale.

I've been waiting for a game like this for most of my life. I got started in war gaming tactics and strategy when I was a kid. I used to play Avalon Hill games, and if if anyone gets the reference, you will know what I mean. Nothing since has ever come close. This game has everything. Politics. Economy. Policy on Agriculture, Industrialization, Railroads and their impact on your operations and conduct of the war. This was obviously a labor of love, and I chose to buy this game when it wasn't on sale, because I want these guys to succeed. Keep it up, gentlemen. We appreciate it.

The scope and ambition of the game are fantastic, and it tries to do more than any Civil War strategy game. However, nearly all aspects of the game are half-baked. Take for instance, the naval aspects. Despite the naval side of the ACW playing a rather large role in the conflict, and an appearance of a highly detailed naval system, the actual benefit of navies in the game is near zero. The effects of the blockade system are largely ambiguous, and the economic damage caused by your navy is almost never less than the cost of actually maintaining the navy. River control is effectively useless, as unlike real life, controlling the waterways does very little to assist the logistics of waging war in the West. The onerous readiness system ensures that penetrating strikes into enemy territory are significantly less efficient than simply steamrolling through land. The fact that territory can only be taken at the state level means that capturing huge cities along the Mississippi does nothing to provide a beach head in rebel territory the way it should. The economy is also hardly thought out, and most experienced players guides will start out by suggesting that you simply ignore the building system all together save for depots, forts, hospitals, and prison camps. Battles are probably the most fleshed out aspect of the game, but even they have elements that simply do not work. As far as I can tell, all artillery is locked to LOS targeting, even howitzers. This LOS issue is compounded by the seemingly arbitrary rules that determine if your cannons can actually see a target. Often times you will have your cannons on elevation, well in sight of your enemies, and they will simply not fire. Other times, your cannons can see right through vast forests and hills. It's actually hilarious to turn on AI control as your myopic artillerists will simply push their guns right into enemy lines because they can't see them from 10 meters away. Capturing objectives is also largely pointless, as you'd have to hold the objectives for several days it seems to earn enough VP to matter. Charges are also useless, though equally so for your opponent. I've yet to see a single infantry charge result in anything except both units retreating or just the attackers. I love it when the enemy charges as it's just free morale VP. Oh and when you do win a battle, good luck attempting to use the weirdly long time out at the end to double down on your victory, as your men will refuse to attack. They will slowly chase the enemy about 20% of the time, only to watch them run away at about 700 MPH.

First I will say that I WANT to love this game ... and that it does have great potential if the devs are still willing to put in a lot of work... but overall the game especially the battle UI and controls andhow the troops move around and react to orders have a very dated, clunky, clumsy feel. Some apects of the game, things (like the economy) seem way more detailed and convoluted than they need to be, while other things like the grand campaign/strategic map and it's road networks (which is what you spend most of the game looking at) are too oversimplified Certain aspects of the game are utterly broken almost to the point of being unplayable .... -armies travelling on land sometimes get hung up on river bends or river crossings and even bends in the road when moving on the strategic map and slow way down or even stop completely. -armies traveling by riverboat also get hung up on the bends in the river and get stuck or stop completely -armies marching on roads on the battle map get bunched up and stop moving almost completely sometimes Especially when it's a large army/corps entering a battle from one of the entry points during the middle of the fight they will stop/slow WAY down, loose all cohesion etc without an insane amount of micromanagement, for what should be one simple order to keep moving down the road.... this is unacceptable. -when the game transitions to day 2 of a battle units (usually skirmishers) can fairly frequently, and annoyingly end up in random far flung places around the map far from where they were during the first day of battle. -i somehow took thousands of prisoners when my cavalry charged a broken enemy artillery battalion of ~200 men -during a battle I positioned a brigade inside a town, ~2000 men , (shepardstown on the sharpsberg map ) and they were holding well , barely had any casualties ~30 , but apparently the town was partially destroyed, and when the town took damage, the brigade completely dissapeared off the map and says it was "withdrawn" AND APPARENTLY THE ENTIRE BRIGADE IS DEAD AND COUNTS AS CASUALTIES ... -and many more bugs/problems or possibly just very poorly designed gameplay "features"

This game has so much potential that its current state hurts me. I can not recommend it as it is not finished. A function so basic as an attack order does not work properly; units will not chase or engage routing enemies when ordered, instead moving to where the fleeing unit was when the order was given, only to then stop and do nothing. The unique command system is excellent in that it adds realism and imposes extra challenges for the player; in an era before radios or even field telephones, we must now wait for someone to carry our orders to our units before they can respond - we must now rely upon the initiative of our commanders, who have their own AI, to respond to changing situations. As part of this system, when issuing orders, a small menu is meant to appear that allows the player to add modifiers to this order, such as telling units to wait for a signal or a designated time, so that attacks are coordinated to launch together rather than in a piecemeal fashion. Unfortunately, this menu often simply does not appear. The UI is workable, though not optimal; for example, I would like the OOB to appear in a side-window so that I can use it to select formations and issue orders, without having to open and close a pop-up window that blocks the center of the screen.

If your a Civil War buff and you want to take part in all aspects of guiding either the Union or the Confederacy then this game is for you. Dont worry about being over whelmed as the game is designed for all levels of play. Automanage feature lets your experts do the day to day managment in as much or as little as you want. Real time battles are very much like the Total War series but with more realistic game mechanics such as delayed orders and feuds. Delayed orders means the commanding officer has to send the order by carrier, you can watch the message traveling physically front the HQ to the intended officer for it to be carried out. Such mechanics brings a whole new level of realisim and forces the player into a chess match where you need to think ahead. Politics, policy, special projects and so much more allows you to experience this genre like never before. You want to cripple a enemy armys ability to fight by attacking supply lines? How about Utillizing railways for rapid movement of troops and supplies? Do you want to build a strong navy to blockade your rivals ports or to hinder aid from across the pond ? How about taking historical commander and assign him to a different theater of war to try and alter the pages of history. Hats off to the devs for pouring themselves into the history of the war to make the game as detailed as possible. Educational and fun , follow the historical steps or fight the war how your. A great game that allows you to armchair general your way through this amazing time in history. BTW I just got the game recently and am loving it in May 2025.