Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

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.

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.

I have done multiple playthroughs and won but my patience has worn thin with this game. It does have potential but the bugs are not likely to be fixed at this point and the economy systems is too big and complicated to be fun or worth investing time into. It really gets to me the poor response from the AI with positioning and carrying out orders. Don't waste your money even on a sale.

Every issue you ever find with this game will NOT be corrected. I've played this since early access (August '20) and there are issues and bugs STILL PRESENT that people have been complaining about constantly. It is frustrating, because the core is there. But instead we get more feature bloat. There are TONS of ideas and features in this game that are half developed or toned back because players ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about it. For example, every commander has a stat line, BUT THESE STATS DON'T MATTER. You can't tell the difference between a commander with 2 star initiative and one with 3. It's only vaguely noticable if you have a commander with 5 stars vs one with 1 stars. Not. Good. The game has a sandbox philosophy, but instead of being a sandbox where plausible situations can play out you get a sandbox where literally any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ can happen such as a 75,000 man army ramming through Missouri. Basically, the devs have shown they don't care to fix their game. It's a neat Civil War game, but you will always be disappointed in the end. Don't buy this. Don't buy anything else the devs make.

This is an interesting one to review, and a game I put off buying for a long time because the trailers were not selling it for me. Especially in a world dominated by Ultimate General: Civil War (UGCW). I think this game is actually better than UGCW in many if not most ways. The tactical side, which most compares to UGCW, is more complex but much more realistic. I like it. At the same time, this game is very imperfect. But I have yet to see a better American Civil War game. Many reviews discuss bugs. I have yet to find one. What the game does have is a lot of under-optimization. It's slow and clanky at times. But I think most of the 'bugs' people complain about are mostly just people not understanding the complexity of the game. In that sense, it reminds me a lot of Ultimate General: American Revolution, for what it's trying to do. That's also a great game, btw. And if you're into the historical complexity of logistics and feuds, etc. this game is what you want. If you want something more arcade-style, this won't be it. Finally, the price is a bit ridiculous, but at the same time, you pay it once. I'd go ahead and purchase the DLC from the beginning, and even start with the DLC (after the tutorials). The DLC itself works a lot like a tutorial - at least it did for me. It's pretty great, and sets you up to want to actually play the main campaign. There are A LOT of mechanics to learn, and while I would highly recommend the tutorials, they are so bad and lengthy that I never went past the beginning (which still took about an hour). So don't be turned off by the bad/overly in-depth tutorials that can take you hours. Just jump in with the DLC and you'll pick it up. I am at about 100 hours and have yet to find an end-game. I have a number of complaints - bad enemy AI with their artillery (always leaving them unprotected to be taken out), and an over-abundance of attacks from the enemy (despite the window saying it's winter and the armies will go more remote, the enemy is super aggressive and will destroy itself going Stalingrad on you through the winter). But overall, nothing compares to this game. The price is not super high, but I'm sure that's what killed the game. Most people won't pay that much. The developers have unfortunately moved on, but this is a much more finished and polished game than the reviews will lead you to believe.

Still needs a lot of work, both on the tactical and the strategic map. Lots of passion from the devs and im hopeful they'll eventually have a fantastic game here, and when it is it would easily be the best Civil War game on the market, but its just not there yet. Pathfinding and ai especially leave a lot to be desired. Units also seem to forget (or ignore) orders without any given reason or warning, which makes order delay frustrating rather than immersive. Would recommend Take Command: Second Manassas for the realistic civil war gameplay or Ultimate General: Civil War for large scale army command and career modes.

Get it if they ever fix it, or if it goes on sale for $2.99 Update: Fine I like it, but it isn't a healthy relationship.

I have installed/tried to play this quite a interesting game 3 times and it has very deep strategic dimension but it is war game with real time battles - that is core of game and economy and map play is other key part and then comes all rest. But that battle is the real problem - it ruins everything. Idea of battle is good but it so clumsy and annoying that even with my experience from 90´s pixel hell doesn´t help. I would say that user interface is practically unusable - small thing that makes this game annoying as hell and it spoils whole experience. Game developer has not changed UI or fix it anyway so game is practically doomed. Do not buy this - you just first get very frustrated, then angry and then sad about whole process. Trust me and save few lonely nights when you end up pulling your hairs off your head looking group spaghetti and breaking left click when nothing working. I like idea and depth of this game and it is small dev team and I liked to support it but this one is unsaveable unless they remake whole battle system and its UI. We will see.