Review by: Tim Still Game: American Civil War Publisher: Interactive MagicSPS: 35.99 Format: CD-ROM Available: Out now (US import) Requires: O/S: Windows 3.1 or 95 Processor: 486DX-33+ RAM: 8Mb+ HD Space: 30Mb Graphics: SVGA+ CD-Rom: X2 Soundcard: All major cards supported Tested on: O/S: DOS 7/Windows 95 Processor: Pentium 75 RAM: 32Mb Graphics: SVGA (2Mb) CD-ROM: Quad speed Soundcard: Soundblaster 16 Controls: Mouse, MS Sidewinder Pro
American Civil War
"The time for compromise has now passed, and the South is determined to maintain her position, and make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel."
These words, spoken by the president of the Confederate States of
America, Jefferson Davis, at his inaugural address, signalled the start
of the American Civil War. This game of the same name gives you the 
chance to control the destiny (and the forces) of either the Union
(North) or the Confederacy (South) from the first shots in 1861 at Fort
Sumter to the end of the war in 1865.
As either the North or South, you are President and Commander of the forces under you, including armies, navies and industries. The game is mainly military orientated, but you also have to take into account economic, political and diplomatic factors if you are going to win the war.
There are a number of options available to you when you first go into a game. You can play either against the computer, another opponent on the same machine (taking it in turns to plan your moves), or against an e-mail opponent. You can also let the game run computer verses computer, if you just want to watch the effects various options could have had on the real war. Some of the options you can change are Leadership Ratings, CSA Slavery status, Confederate capital city, and European Intervention.
The Leadership Ratings refer to how the leaders perform. The options
available are historical, i.e. they'd be up to the standards they were
actually at during the real war, slight variation, or random. The CSA
Slavery status refers to what happens to the slaves of the era. You can
change both of these options, and both choices will effect other 
variables in the game. Also, the chance of intervention by European
powers are user-defined. If Europe had intervened during the war, things
may have turned out differently.
The game itself takes place on a nicely drawn and detailed hex-based map. You can turn the hex display on or off, but with the grid off, the already tricky task of giving movement orders to your units becomes very difficult. The map shows the various terrain types, including cities, railroads, plains, woods, forests, hills, swamps, mountains and rivers, each of which have a different effect on units moving or fighting in these terrain types. You can also select a small overview map to move the viewing window around to see what is happening elsewhere in the theatre. There are also weather effects to consider. In poor weather, it becomes harder to supply troops at greater distances.
You can also have a naval force at your disposal. Ships you can build and
use include ironclads, which are the most expensive, but also the
strongest naval unit. You can also use standard wooden ships, which don`t
take as long to build, but are also not as strong. Transports are also 
available, and are used for moving troops and supplies around by sea or
river. These type are also used for conducting amphibious operations
against port cities.
When ordering units around, you have several options available to you. You can order units to withdraw, defend, advance or stay in place and conduct training operations. These options only refer to orders carried out in the face of an enemy attack. So a unit with orders to advance will advance to the enemy, and carry out an attack, whereas a unit with orders to withdraw will try to retreat and avoid combat.
Naval fleets have similar orders. You can tell ships to stay in port and do nothing, or dock for repairs. You can also order ships to move to another port, or attack an enemy held port, patrol around a friendly port, or embark on a cotton run to a European port to exchange cotton for supplies. You can also use ships to blockade an enemy port.
The other mode of transport for all those weary troops is rail. The program asks you if you wish to use rail transport, if it is available to you. For you to have the option, the start and terminal cities must both have railroad access, plus the track must be in your hands to attempt the journey. More rolling stock can be built at a later date, although the Union has an abundance of rolling stock, as was the case during the war.
The leaders play an important part of game. You have to learn to use them
to the best of their abilities, and not squander them in a insignificant
posting away from the front lines. You have the choice to promote or
remove leaders depending on their performance, or just transfer them to a
new command. To help you determine who is doing well, and who is cowering
in the bunker, there are a few stats to help you measure the leaders 
performance. These include aggressiveness, inspiration, training, and
morale shifts. These attributes all have different effects on the troops
he commands, so you have to take careful note to strike the right
balance.
Combat is tricky in Civil War. A lot of factors are taken into account when determining the victor of a battle, but even if you win, your troops may only just be in a better state than the vanquished enemy troops, and in many cases, both sides have to retreat after a battle, as neither side could afford to engage in combat immediately, and therefore have to pull back to re-group and reorganise. You can achieve outright victories, but such are few and far between.
There is more to the game than I have described above, but I think I`ve covered the more pertinent points. The whole thing (plus more, such as capturing cities and states and foreign trade) is covered in the manual. Not a large book in itself, weighing in at 87 pages, it is accompanied by a handy map which can be a aid to planning strategies. The game is also supplied with an interactive CD covering the history of the Civil War, with things like maps and battle-plans of the period, up to date photographs of the battlefields as they are now, plus images of key figures from the era. There are also some video clips supplied of reenactments of some of the battles.
Now onto my impression of the game. Well, the game itself isn't too bad, but it's not anything different. What really lets it down, however, is the way the information windows are badly formatted. The manual suggests you run the game in 640x480, but I tried three different resolutions, and found the same problems in all three. Buttons are half out of the boxes. The nice pop-up window backgrounds are all out of size, and only fill a corner of the window. Text overlaps text, especially in one of the unit info boxes. Most of the check-boxes look like they have been cut-and-pasted from other backgrounds. The battle report window has to be re-sized every time it opens just so you can click on the button that closes it. Even the extra history CD seems to suffer with the same problems, with some buttons that you just can't access due to being unable to re-size the window.
There are a couple of good points, however. There is a history function
within the game, which reads like a news report and gives you a run-down
on what's happened so far in the war, and this is a nice touch. The
background map is well drawn, with nice colours and graphics for the
different terrain types. There are also some rousing tunes on the CD, if 
you enjoy music from this era. You can fight your battles and plan your
troop movements to the likes of Cheer Boys Cheer, Tenting On The Old Camp
Ground, and the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
More bad points, however, are the manual tutorial. I know it's only supposed to give you a feel for the game, but after I'd gone though it, I was more confused than before I opened the box. It seemed to skip over sections that you thought you should know. Also, setting movement routes for units in the game, is rather fiddly, but I suppose that would come with practice.
Apparently, most of these problems stem from the way it was programmed in Visual Basic (so I was told), so it's likely that Interactive Magic could release a patch that would fix the majority of these problems. But until then, I wouldn't touch it unless you dearly love games from this era, and have a fair bit of patience.
============================================= Rating: 2/10 (Maybe 4 or 5 with a patch fix!) =============================================
