Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)

This game has SOOO much promise but ultimately failed to deliver - big time! It is mostly the UX element (User Experience) Let me give you one clear simpl example: You can research and build and equip new weapons. In the research interface it does not tell you what weapons can be built for a given research. Oddly, you can have some of these weapons in your weapon depot before you have researched them ??? but if you click on the weapon in the depot it doesn't tell you what you have to research to be able to produce more of them. So everything is disconnected and you are left guessing - A LOT. I got tired and quit after a bug tipped the scales.

This game is extremely fun until it isn't. The base game works better since the AI upgrade, but while the Whiskey & Lemons DLC also purportedly received an upgrade its AI is all over the place... and the base game AI still has issues. Read to the end to understand why this is an upvote. EDIT: You might have noticed that this review is no longer an upvote. That is because the devs have not attempted any fixes since I posted this review, instead dropping development on this game to begin a new one. Their dev logs since then have had NOTHING to do with GTTCW save to comment on what they KNOW is broken in it, which they assert they are fixing or changing in the NEXT game. As a result, my "should be good when it's fixed" conclusion goes out the window, and so does this game. If the devs themselves are convinced this game is simply not worth their time, then it shouldn't be worth yours. For example, the AI seems to think in terms of individual divisions and their assets - not their command structure. So a given multi-division force is split all over hell and back fighting in multiple battles WHILE LOSING because it does not concentrate forces. A lot of people might say "well there were a lot of dumb commanders in the Civil War", and that's true, but I can't recall any of them NOT wanting their entire command to actually be close enough that a rider can send an order in less than a week of hard galloping. On the role-playing level (W&L), two battles stand out for me: a massed Reb assault on Alexandria, in which both AIs seemed to perform rather well and where I as a cavalry officer had many opportunities to seek out and attack enemy weak points... exposed artillery, routed troops attempting to rest up behind the lines, and so forth. It was a tough fight where we squeaked out a minor victory by holding against a superior Reb army, and was quite satisfying. Here's the other: it is Early 1861. I'm commanding 300 cavalry under General Hunter. A force twice our size comes at us but fortunately is strung out. I am able to hold the one ford their advance elements recognize as existing, by myself, for the entire day, dismounted behind breastworks. Hunter does nothing, having pointed 90% of the division at a completely different fording point which the Rebs evince no interest in. The following day, Hunter has dragged me off the breastworks and back to camp, where he continues to ignore the newly-reinforced Rebs. I hit-and-run, giving better than I get but nonetheless being slowly whittled down to unsustainable casualties. A single artillery battery which happens to more or less be pointed towards the Reb columns finally opens up on them, while the other battery - and the rest of the division - appear not to notice their existence. Indeed, two full regiments are lollygagging in a copse of trees when the Rebs draw up in line and open fire - only then resulting in a response. Which is not to withdraw twenty feet to behind the stone wall running perfectly perpendicular to the attack, but to stand and slug it out in the trees. My men spread out behind the wall to give covering fire, and soon enough Johnny Reb is repelled. And then again, and then once more, until the Reb AI notices that Hunter has absolutely no one protecting the actual objective points, which are on the main thoroughfare well beyond the town he has hunkered down in. Hunter knows only the one lone crossing point that no one is using, which nothing and no one can deter him from defending against no force which has any interest in it. I do SO love losing battles merely because my entire chain of command is comatose. So why is this an upvote? Because I've played most of the grand-strat Civil War games out there, including those which have tried to allow for dynamic battlefield action like Grand Tactician does. This is the best of the latter and there is distinct effort on the part of the devs to keep at it until it works as it should. Despite its flaws, it nonetheless has charm as well as one of the more approachable UIs in the genre. To be perfectly honest, the last time I was thoroughly impressed by a Civil War grand-strategy game, video cards were still EGA. I still occasionally play "No Greater Glory", and still recommend it.