Toot-de-toot-de-toot! Fan-fa-ra!AGEod’s American Civil War
It’s a terrible feeling. You’re about to go into action with only the vaguest idea of the chaos and horror that you’re about to face. You’ve tried asking those who have been there, but they can never explain it. Their words are either vague and misleading, or fired with zeal and horribly deluding. You’re told it will all be over soon, but it is a lie. There is a long, hard, gruelling slog to come; a life of ninety percent boredom and ten percent of absolute terror. And the time approaches when you have to rise up and come to grips with the enemy, and the only way you can is to accept that you may very well be left a broken man by the end of it.
Yup, the folly of agreeing to play turn based independent war games, eh? They’re incredibly confusing, their fans are over-zealous nutters, they take ages to learn and complete and most of the time you’re actually bored out of your skull. In the end you just give up, four hundred miles from Moscow and deeply disillusioned, angry at your own inability to understand supply line management and raging against a hideous game-breaking interface.
The map studied carefully, I decided to build my barber shop in Richmond. So many beards, so many ladies desirous of only the carefully groomed.
Or at least they are in the main. AGEOD have been doing these games for ages, and if they are confusing and terrifying then at least they are significantly less so than their brethren. Sort of Battle of Falujah confusing instead of Stalingrad confusing. AACW differs a little from the traditional hex-games, and is a little more accommodating. To start with rather than hexes it takes place on a map divided into historical county regions and states. It’s a pretty decent map as well; colourful, easy to read with transport routes, rivers, forts, depots and towns and cities displayed prominently. There’s a handy mini-map so that you know where you are at any time, and lots of graphical overlays displaying ownership and loyalty, supply and whatnot.
There’s a tutorial too, which is as painless as the trappings of the genre allow. Happily it’s one that has been refined and sculpted over many patches since release, and there’s a very good forum to help you out with the inevitable questions. The menu bar is a bit cluttered, and the button descriptions aren’t always helpful, but you can get your head around it after (gngh) an hour or so of careful study.
The game unsurprisingly takes place in the American Civil War. You can play as either Confederates, who are better trained and have superior generals, plus the advantage of largely being on the defensive, or the Union who are far more numerous with better weapons but have complete dolts for generals with the added headache of having to venture deep into enemy territory. The two sides balance nicely and you get a real thrill of ‘what if?’ out of the entire affair. You don’t have to fight the whole war either, but can concentrate on a campaign or even a single state or county sized battle such as Shiloh or Antietam. The game is pretty customisable, with lots of difficulty options and main menu tweaks. You’d have no problem knocking up a good, novel scenario to test yourself.
Oh wait, we're the one's in blue? Ahhh. Ahhhh. Ah. Ahhhh. Right. Ahhh. Sorry, my bad.The atmosphere is decent. Throughout the game newspapers pop up with headlines heralding events out of your control, such as Emancipation Proclamations and riots or great victories and defeats of your own making befalling Confederate and Union alike. There’s a soundtrack of contemporary popular band songs and marching music of the time, but it recycles a bit too often, and feels a little flat. You’d be better off getting a mix of bluegrass, spirituals and period folk songs to be honest. The bulk of the immersion comes from your own noggin’, as you imagine your troops pounding the dusty road to Richmond, and hurried orders by messenger to a general guarding a lonely train junction to hightail it to a distance battlefield as a vital reinforcement.
How does it play? Basically your army splits into three command layers. You have your one star generals who run divisions and can perform limited army tasks, but who can never stray far and suffer penalties in battle for lack of chain of command and organisation. Then there’s two star generals who know their stuff when it comes to supply and battle, but who need a one star general to lean on or they get confused by either the great mass of men they're leading, or annoyed at being dragged down in importance in having to manage a little division from Bumfuck Arizona. Finally you have three star generals, who are the big shots. They’re incredibly rare, but can do anything. They’re awesome, they are. Unless they’re General McClellan, in which case they’re a hateful lazy bastard.
So what do you do with these guys? Well, the problem with armies is that you can’t dump a load of units into a pile and expect them to fight well. They won’t. They’ll get muddled and confused, run out of food and ammo. They’ll be soundly whupped by an army half the size with a proper general. Each unit you add on to a stack increases a combat penalty on how they fight, to a maximum of a hefty 35%. If you have a general, that lessens it a little, but even they are quickly overwhelmed. But if you have a one star and a two star you can form a corps, which makes a tight fighting force. And if you have a three star, he can form his own army headquarters which grants lovely bonuses and hugely reduces penalties for any corps attached to him – corps which can still operate independently up to a whole state or two away. It’s a good system, and means that you can’t just charge into enemy territory with a bucket full of units. You have to organise them and prepare them. It’s this that brings home the complexity and slow pace of the old wars. There’s no such thing as blitzkrieg.
Generals have traits both good and bad and special abilities too, all in keeping with their historical nature. Confederate General Jackson for example is formidable in defence and his troops have near unbreakable morale. The Union General McClellan is a dab hand at organisation, but wouldn’t get out of bed to piss in a bucket without sending out scouts, asking for reinforcements, writing letters for political support, asking for yet more reinforcements and then deciding that it looks a bit nippy outside and besides, he could scratch himself and get tetanus on the rusty bucket, and maybe he'd stay put. You really have to analyse which general is best for which situation or eventuality and plan ahead.
The range of units is diverse, but neatly described in notes. There’s never any difficulty in working out which unit has been badly mauled or is lacking in morale or ammo. You also get naval units too, but in truth they’re a bit of a sideshow. The AI is pretty vicious, and even on the easier settings will play with you in a cruel cat and mouse game. Fog of war makes moving units into unsafe territory a terrifying gamble and progress can be slowed by bad weather, militia taking pot-shots and useless, work-shy generals such as Mc-Bloody-Clellan. One game I managed as the Union to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, with a heroic effort by General Sumter, but was tormented by Mc-ArseyMcArse-Clellan refusing to move as per my orders, and my force left out in a dangerous salient leading to its getting wiped by Lee and Jackson. It was thrilling stuff, but frustrating and led to a stalemate. Next game I demoted him, but took a knock in political points and national morale equalling fewer troops. It can be a risky game promoting a more deserving general over a more incompetent senior. Even if he is Cunting Idiot McClellan. Ugh. I hate that man.
So it’s basically one of those games you have to play at for a week or so to get used to, but when you do there’s as much fun and depth as Civilization’s ilk. And after the learning curve is conquered, you can start ramping up the difficulty. There’s a play by email option that’s a bit fiddly, and a decent enough manual. In all, it’s a solid fun game that perfectly evokes the period. The only flaws lie in the realism of the crap Union generals being a bit too frustrating, and the inherent obtuseness of it all. But I can recommend it, especially if you combine it with a borrowed from library copy of Ken Burn’s ‘The American Civil War’ series on DVD. If you want to start somewhere with this terrifyingly confusing and glacial genre, then you can do a lot worse than AACW. It sorts the boys from the men! GRR!
Straining to be accessible, but still dauntingly complex, this is nevertheless a juicy and deep game to get hooked on. Or you might just want to dig out the old Amiga and play a bit of North & South, either way is splendid.
Verdict: B
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