You can see nothing. A thick bank of trees obscures your view. You look back over your shoulder and see assembled on the rolling hills behind you thousands of men lined up silently, men in blue, flags fluttering crisply above them. The sound of hooves at a gallop, and a rider appears. He sidles up beside you and you are handed a note.
“General Ali has taken position beside Cotton farmhouse on the eastern rise. You are to support him on his left flank in the cornfields stretching down to the wooded knoll. Keep the majority of your force in reserve.”
You look at the crude map. There’s something that might be a farmhouse, something that might a wooded knoll. You squint but you can’t be sure. You pen a hasty acknowledgement, send it off by courier. Turning to your men you call their officers over and point to a location on the map. “March there in column formation, taking roads if possible. Then face North West in double line formation and hold position in defensive posture.” There is a pause as orders are relayed and then half the regiments on the hill form into columns and snake past you into the wooded lanes.
There’s a knotted feeling in your stomach. You follow. There are two ways you can play Gettysburg: Scourge of War. The default setting is not unlike Total War, with the camera hovering high above the battlefield. The controls aren’t as intuitive, but are more complex. There are formation buttons, options that control the stance of your men, what ammunition your cannon fire, which direction they wheel to face and so on. But once these options are selected it’s simply right click on terrain. In the full on historical mode you are firmly in the saddle with the camera viewpoint tethered to within a dozen feet. You can still directly control your men, but only if you are within a hundred yards or so – in which case you would clearly be personally shouting at them or their officers. Units further away that you can see you can indeed click on, but any orders sent will have to be sent by courier. These horsemen will automatically detach themselves from your person and gallop across the battlefield towards the commanding officer. Once found, the officer AI will interpret your orders depending on their historical character: timid, cautious, plucky, aggressive or dangerously foolhardy. Fortunately if they prove themselves another General Melchett you can click a handy icon which says ‘Take Control’, effectively replacing the commander with your own direct, cannot-be-countermanded orders. Of course, the disadvantage of this is that although they can respond to threats; wheeling to face the enemy, returning fire, falling back; they are far less able to exploit opportunities themselves.
All of this assumes that you can see your men. Half the time you can’t. The maps are vast; truly, truly vast. They amply cover the five-by-five mile area of the Gettysburg battlefield, with assorted adjoining territories such as the ‘What-If?’ scenario of the Pipe Creek defensive line. They’re accurately modelled to the topography of the time, painstakingly reconstructed to include every fence, ditch, building and copse. With this fog of war in play it can be hard to know what awaits you, even when you pull out your telescope and scan the horizon it can be difficult to immediately figure out if the distant masses of men are indeed the enemy or of your allies. Quickly you begin to sympathise with how sluggish the generals of the US civil war were. Battlefield control is an aspiration, not a given. So half the time you are in fact forming orders out of block-instructions which are copied into a letter – all handily done in a few mouse-clicks – and sent via a courier to the man specified. The only question is, how long until your orders get there, and indeed, will they? Couriers can be intercepted, your orders read by the enemy, though this is only a double-tragedy if the enemy is human, like yourself. Happily, you can also intercept and read their orders, which in the case of the AI actually translates as coherent orders and situational reports. The AI clearly doesn’t cheat and uses the same system, impressive.
You advance down the lane, the copse of trees visible on an elevation. With relief you see a clear gap in the lines, space for you to slot in. All is quiet. You begin to move men up, into line. Looking back at the fields you vacated, you seem some more of your regiments, waiting patiently. You send couriers back to order them to move up to reserve positions a few hundred yards behind the line. Still, despite the orders, you feel nervous. This is all very much bigger than you imagined. The artillery rolls up and you place them in the central field. Another message:
"Enemy in sight North East of you, do not advance but stay in reserve. Lend support to Ali on your right. Protect the grand battery."
A cannon shot. You actually jump at the sound. And then you hear the distant crackle of musket fire. General James rides up at the head of a division, headed east to secure the main artery road. Twenty minutes pass. The waiting is intolerable. And then…
Here they come! Confederate cavalry riding hard up the slope, along a wide lane flanked by farmhouses and stone walls, headed straight to the knoll of trees. You assumed James had men in the position but with horror you realise that the cavalry are moving straight into the wooded knoll, resisted only by a single regiment and desultory artillery fire. Quickly you move a brigade up along the walls, pour fire into their flanks. The confederates scramble off their horses and take position in the neighbouring field, just shy of the little knoll. Fire is exchanged, but both sides are protected in main by the stout stone walls. This is no good. With the protected salient the Confederates can roll their men up the lane and punch a hole. You decide to pull some regiments back from further east along the fence line, put them into action against this threat.
Hundreds of grey shirts swarm. A battery of four cannon rolls into position their side of the field, opens fire. You race men into the trees but they are pushed back as the dismounted cavalry pour onto the knoll and down in the sunken lane beyond.
A rather curt order appears from James. “Hold your positions; let me deal with the lane.”
But you fear he is not dealing. You send your men in under Colonel Stuart. Fixing and flanking, you force them back. But Stuart, flushed with success, makes a charge on the cannon. Caught up in the moment you cheer him on, but the cannon opens up with grape shot and two whole regiments are cut to pieces by the fire and turn in panicked retreat.
James: “Stay in reserve. You are throwing away your men. This is not the main attack.”
It sure as hell looked like it, but you pull back, chastised. The enemy cavalry retreat, and James vacates, continues along the road to some distant part of the battlefield. Still, the enemy attack and the sharp knock from their artillery has given you an idea. You bring up reserves and occupy with a full brigade of four regiments, with two thirds of your artillery batteries atop and holding a fine field of fire. You look through your telescope at the distant hill. Of course, that must be little round top! And your eastern flank must be held by General Wood. Four generals, standing shoulder to shoulder – but can they act in concert?
Gettysburg shines when it imposes the same fears and uncertainties real life commanders laboured under. Tutorials and campaign completed on the more forgiving easy and normal settings, the glee of being brutally abused by a robust AI sets in with the formidable historical mode. It is able to present a challenge even to four players attempting a comp-stomp. And here is the real magic of Gettysburg: Scourge of War: multiplayer. You see, the way the game’s community plays is quite genius. It is played out by the in-game free-text order system, in which you can choose the recipient and then just write what you want, clicking the ‘Your humble obedient servant’ signature to send. As a result, genteel messages give way to increasingly panicked requests or strident demands. You’ve even got to remember to send situational reports, as you realise that your sense of cluelessness is shared by your allies. In an added boon, voice chat or direct text messaging is shared when generals ride up to within talking distance of each other. If you feel satisfied your men are safe, that your position is a good one, there’s nothing to stop you racing off and finding out how things lie elsewhere. Just be sure you’re not caught somewhere else when things go down.
And it’s here as well that time delay plays a factor. The further away you are from your allies the longer their couriers take to ride to you, as it is all delivered in real time. A request to reinforce may come too late, an opportunity to exploit a gap lost. You can be confused by vague orders. The command structure is pretty glorious as well. In setting up a game you can choose an overall commanding player. He then chooses his corps commanders who then choose division commanders. Up to sixteen players can play on one side. And here is where you realise why chain of command is so important. You have to let your immediate superior know, who, informed by your buddies, will make the call on whether to pass your request up on high or to send a reassuring negative back to you. The army commander, receiving all this information, can even opt out of commanding troops himself and just sit on top of the best hill, dispensing general orders to his trusted subordinates, figuring on the main chance.
But in the example I present to you here, our commanding General was very much in the field. Yet still orders flowed from him to my commanding officer who told me what to do. They didn’t have time to waste informing of the over-reaching plan. I was there simply to obey orders. You can see why this game is actually on the curriculum at West Point.
You had been assured that the main attack would not come through here. The Major-General was clearly anticipating a left or right flank punch, not right up the left-hand centre, towards you. And yet here they are, thousands of enemy, marching up the slopes. They roll back your skirmish lines and brush aside the men at the fences, occupying the cornfield a mere few hundred yards from you. The sunken road is in jeopardy, the wooded knoll is threatened once again by a fresh mass of troops. How can your thin blue line stand against this colossus? How can you hope to keep Ali’s grand battery safe from harm?
And so you bring up your reserves, form a fresh line. And when they are worn down, when men flee and holes appear, you begin to panic. Is there no end to the enemy waves? How do they stand this murderous fire I pour down on them? Ali urgently begs assistance as Confederate brigades break into the open and advance upon his strung out batteries. Increasingly strident orders sound from James as he demands you send Ali more men from your reserves. Reserves – what reserves? Relieve? I can barely hold on myself!
You whip out your telescope, try to make out what you can see of your flanks. Are those union men around Cibrushille Orchard? Around you shells burst, and you back up to within the safety of a treeline. Faintly, you can see the stars and stripes ascend the far western hill… on to their flank! And now, to the east, are those Ali’s men working their way down the far valley slope? How long until they start hitting the side of the central mass? How long until they can ease the pressure, a half hour – perhaps longer?
A message arrives… “Hold at all costs.”
Your battered brigades fall back to a new line, right on the edge of the sunken road. Nothing left for it, you redeploy your artillery and take personal command. Canister shot begins to boom across the field, followed by grape when they close within a hundred yards. Slowly, the enemy falters. You hit them again and again from the wooded knoll, the few regiments remaining fixing them with relentless fire. And then… miraculously… after thirty minutes of hot action, when the shot began to run low… the enemy begin to pull back. A relatively fresh regiment is found… two regiments… and you send them off to help defend Ali’s imperilled cannon. You don’t want them taken after all and used against you. And now, with the teeth of your allied generals dug firmly in their flanks you begin to push forward, cautiously. The enemy, once so innumerable, begin to retreat, to melt away like ground mist in the summer sun. You reoccupy the cornfield. Thousands of bodies lay around you. A holdout unit opens fire from behind a farmhouse, but you deal with it. Opportunities remain for fresh blunders… a battery seemingly caught within charging range wipes out one of your regiments with a few shots of grape… and you regret the loss severely, now of all times, when the battle is almost won.
And so the enemy quit the field, and you count the bodies. Full half of your command lay dead or wounded, but you inflicted twice the loss on the enemy. You meet with your fellow generals and discuss the day’s victory, and receive a gratifying slap on the back.
And you look at your watch. You have been fighting for four hours. You feel utterly drained.
And that’s what the game is like! Everything I described in this narrative, transpired. No fictions. It really is stunning stuff when you get into the meat of the game. The graphics are nowhere near Total War’s standard when it comes to units and building models, but the terrain is evocative and realistic enough for you to override that. Plus the engine affords more troops than Total War’s, with a ratio that can even scale up to 1-1 of real life troops. I went for 1-2, which meant that I could see 80 of my 160 regiment. And in a full scale battle you get a hell of a lot of regiments – brigades – divisions!
The sound is pretty good as well. The first thing you always hear is the flapping of the nearest flag and the sound of hooves, and it is pretty evocative. Not Total War standard again, but enough. In this case graphics indeed do not matter so much. In Gettysburg: Scourge of War they do enough, and the fierce AI, clever game mechanics and sense of dynamism to the battlefield absorb you to a degree not to be found in Total War. I mean, when I bombard the enemy… they lay down flat on the ground! Or pull back! Or direct counter battery fire! The AI knows what to do! In addition you get a replay feature. Though the engine doesn't manage to render the troops in this, you get classical big coloured blocks respresenting the units, and it all flows pretty well. It's amusing to learn that your human enemy really was genuinely fooled by a bluff, somewhat alarming to know that he could have easily slapped down an uncautious advance if he had seen it in time.
Are there flaws? Well, sort of. The learning curve is steep, true. The UI is hardly intuitive and the text-ordering system badly needs a tutorial. There’s a disconcerting lack of tactile clicky-response feel when giving orders, you’re sometimes unsure if you properly clicked to place a troop. The campaign battle briefings can sometimes be vague about what win conditions actually are, due to the shifting historical circumstances of the battlefield. (Oh, my attack was expected to fail and I shouldn’t take it to heart, the important thing is to hold on? Couldn’t you have provided me with that historical detail in the briefing?) But these are all overcome with a willingness to learn and in multiplayer – even versus AI – the game is unmatched. Simply put Gettysburg: Scourge of War is the best large scale RTS out there, with only Company of Heroes running it close in AI stakes.
And there’s nothing that compares in gaming when you capture a human opponent’s critical orders!
With two expansion packs bringing the war to Antietam and Chancellorsville, there’s no excuse for a US Civil War buff to pass up on this, and if you’re willing to experience a few failures of command and put a little time into learning the system, there’s no more rewarding a battlefield strategy game.
9/10
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