Friday 5 February 2021

Ultimate General: Civil War - First impressions

A scene from the first day at Gettysburg
I'm not getting much painting done and obviously no gaming with miniatures, but I have revived my interest in PC strategy wargames. 

I'd grown tired of the small screen on my ageing laptop so replaced it with an Intel NUC i5 and a 28" 4K monitor. This wasn't with any gaming intentions, but the NUC seems to be adequate for strategy games and having a big screen was an asset I couldn't ignore. 

My first new purchase has been Ultimate General: Civil War. This is a realtime grand-strategy game, but proceeds at a reasonable pace and is not a clickfest. And you don't have to micro-manage each unit. The AI does a lot for you. 

The game certainly works at tactical level. Play is very intuitive though you will obviously benefit from skimming through the guidance document. I've played through all the historical battles as Confederate at intermediate level and am now repeating this as Union. 

The historical battles are split into different stages. This is scripted and I'm not entirely clear how performance in one stage influences resources in the next. I really prefer the approach in the Total War series of games in which you control the whole battle. 

I'm not attracted to the fictitious campaign battles.The game is fun but when I've completed the current round of historical battles I'll probably move on to something else and come back to the game another year.

2 comments:

  1. That looks superb. I'm going to have to pick this up on steam now :)

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    1. I've also got my eyes on 'Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)'. Although still in development it might be even better.

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