Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

So there are a lot of cases where you should listen to the good reviews. The bad reviews are for bad reasons. A lot of times you should listen to the good ones, because they're for good reasons. Listen to both good and bad, because this game is as mixed of a bag as you're gonna get. The orders of battle, roster of historical officers, historical weaponry and procurement of it, and state population/support-based volunteer/draftees makes this one of the deepest strategic games of the American Civil War ever made. It's definitely the deepest I've ever played. From there on out, everything is incredibly janky and kinda busted in too many ways to count. The economics system is wholly unnecessary. You'll only build a few buildings throughout a campaign, and will barely understand how, or even if they help you. You get next to no instruction; I'd say at a beta level, for how any of the dozens of resources do anything. It was clearly a developer's passion project on some level, and is in some way impressive, but it's hard to tell the practical difference from any normal strategy game "take territory, get/take more money." Being able to give division commanders vague orders to hold ground on their own is great. It keeps you from needing to micromanage too much, and also just experience two armies going at it. Ultimate General, for me, sometimes had a unit with high morale get charged and take 0 casualties, on multiple occasion, but in Grand Tactician, it's a real joy to see a couple of armies going at it, trading musket fire. But there's that problem of zero feedback, where sometimes a unit needs a sec to get moving because they have to disengage from fighting or something, or sometimes it just didn't respond at all, so you need to brute force commands until it works. This means the order delay system just kinda makes this a terrible experience. Are my orders en route? Or is the unit not responding? Sometimes the orders arrive and you can't tell if they worked. I have to play with order delays off. I like the game a lot. I think it's got a claim to being the best American Civil War strategy game on the market. But I also think that has a lot to do with there not being a whole lot of American Civil War strategy games coming out on the market.

Incredibly detalied, the pacing and command on the battlefield is excellent

L'idea di fondo è anche carina MA graficamente non è ottimizzato (spesso va a scatti), bug a vagonate, IA che ha tutto tranne che intelligenza, ma soprattutto la mancanza di un vero tutorial rende il tutto abbastanza frustrante all'inizio, ed è proprio quest ultimo che mi sta facendo abbandonare il gioco. Il tutorial si presenta in due diverse opzioni: uno per la campagna strategica e uno per le battaglie tattiche; tuttavia nonostante le 200 pagine da leggere per il primo e le 90 per il secondo ti spiegano un infintà di nozioni parzialmente inutili (ad esempio come è impostata l'UI, zoom sulla mappa, dove trovare gli eserciti, come costruire edifici... insomma cose che uno potrebbe riuscire a capire anche da solo) lasciando delle lacune a mio avviso enormi nella parte più pratica della campagna\battaglia. Inutilmente difficile.

Had soldiers not following orders, after a command i gave one unit kept running back and fourth...very buggy and just not fun at all, so in my opinion its not worth the price. If anything this game should be $5-$10 at most

It's a great game if you like map's , number's , graph's . It's not a shooter. The battle's are a lot of fun.

Fantastic Game. the fact they put this much love and authenticity into a Civil War game is unreal. Really appreciate it fellas.

I think this game needs to be considered based on price. This is not a triple-A title, with a price to match. However, I do feel that it is at its best value when you can get it on sale. I paid $25 and am very happy with it. Expect a steep learning curve, but if you put in some time with the tutorials and play a few practice starts, you really get a good feel for it. This is not the best real-time tactical game, but it does that well. It reminds me of Ulitimate General Civil War in that regard. It IS a very great grand strategy of the Civil War. Less rigid than ACEOGs boardgame-like zones. I love them both. What this does better than any of the others is theme. It FEELS like a game that can on be about the Civil War. The maps, the music, the video. The presentation is amazing.

Complicated but I will learn.

This is a really great game. Union campaign literally lasted 3 in game months for me after winning 28 battles and beating the confederates. On the other hand when I played the CSA campaign, I am struggling to keep up. I can't win. So it seems if you play union and keep pushing with all your advantages, you can win super easy. But as the CSA you are up to a big challenge. I love this game, but it has its bugs. The ranges especially on artillery can be wonky. You can be on a gorgeous hill overlooking the enemy yet unable to target due to weird fov mechanics. Anyways, with all the bugs in this game, it is just beautiful and the best to accomplish the grand scale of the american civil war. I can play for many more hours and won't be bored!

I'm torn....I want to really, really like it. It's so close to being a great game. For context I've mainly played with the economy on auto manage, order delays off and the readiness system on and with the Whiskey and Lemons DLC. I prefer to play with regiment level combat, so eastern theatre. The campaign map: It's OK. My main gripe is enemy armies, after loosing, often retreat deeper into your territory rather than back into theirs, meaning you need to chase them all over the place. I've also had enemy armies just waltz past mine as if they're not there. The readiness system, in my opinion, could be relaxed. It takes far too long before an army is ready to do anything. But playing without it is chaos, especially as the south, with northern armies wandering all over the place. The battle system is good. Just one thing annoys me and that's I find it virtually impossible to capture or kill large volumes of troops despite complete encirclement. They just happily flee through my line and then I'm lucky to have a 3/4-1 casualty ratio in my favour despite completely surrounding and breaking them. A bit like the campaign map, every now and then the enemy just marches regiments straight through mine. Sometimes a melee ensues and sometimes not. In summary it's worth playing despite it's frustrations. It's the most fun I've had with an American civil war game since the Take Command series.