A number of reviewers made the same points, so I will be brief.

The good:

-Looks nice.
-Feels like a great game, especially during the first 5 hours.
-Army customization, upgrades and different weaponry are nice touches.

The bad:

-The AI is broken in various ways. For instance, it often charges irrationally, and seemingly to make up for this the developers gave it some super powers.
-Cavalry is useless, even against lone skirmishers or undefended artillery units. You are always better off investing the money and manpower in an infantry unit.
-Battles are heavily scripted, to the point of having a broken logic. You are supposed to defend a position. You do it and thanks to the AI's suicidal charges, the enemy gets almost completely wiped out or routed. Then the game hits a point in the script and you are prompted "Our position is being overwhelmed! We must fall back to that place!" Then the script magically teleports your whole army to the hill behind the position where you were doing just fine. Then you watch the comedy of the enemy trying to charge your new position with 10% of its starting force because you had killed or routed the rest before your position was "overwhelmed."

The ugly:

-No matter how badly you beat the AI, it keeps making up its losses and more. This renders your actions completely inconsequential. After 50 or so hours, (or sooner if you are smarter than I am) you realize that you are not playing a strategy simulator. You are instead playing one of those clicker flash games in which the numbers keep increasing as you upgrade your skills but nothing else changes because as your income increases so do the cost of future upgrades.

If that sounds too abstract, here is the same point made in concrete gameplay terms: I first played two campaigns with CSA. The first time when enemy kept making up their losses regardless, I thought "Well, I am a noob. So, I didn't beat them hard enough in the beginning. That's why they recovered." But then I played the same campaign again. Even in the easiest difficulty and right after I consistently mowed down 70% of the Union army battle after battle, the next battle they always had 10k more soldiers than they did before. Then, I said "Well, they are the Union after all. They had a larger population than the rebels" and I tried out the Union campaign. Who knew the South could replace 200k+ losses and keep pressing towards the DC? I didn't. They kept coming, their numbers kept swelling no matter how many I killed.

The Verdict:

I wanted to like this game. And to be honest, I enjoyed it for many hours. But the enjoyment was in part due to the illusion created by the game, the illusion that my actions and decisions mattered. Once the illusion was shattered by the realization that no matter how well I play, the AI will be able to match and raise my hand, the enjoyment was replaced with disappointment and frustration. Overall, I would have to say, the experience ended up being negative.

PS: I aslo want to respond to a common objection to negative reviews with many hours: "You played it for 70 hours, how bad can it be? Grow up and get a life!"

It is possible to enjoy something in the short term although the enjoyment is replaced by discomfort after a while. If you think that this is impossible, try telling that to a heroin addict who wishes that he had never done that first shot.

I've been playing this game off-and-on since its release and generally I enjoy it! I think this an all-around great RTS.

However, I have a bit of a concern about some of the historical battles. They seem to be FAR too scripted based on historical events, leaving little room for real player strategy. For example, in the Stones River battle, as the Union, I managed to to the CSA left flank and ball up his army against the river by the end of the second scenario of the battle (which extends to first scenario). However, by the third scenario, the game basically tossed away all my gains, balled my army up on the road, and left me with CSA troops on three sides (presumably per the history of the battle). It basically made all my efforts futile.

In a second, more recent example, during the Chancellorsville scenario, I managed to secure both the Plank Road objectives with the Union Army on the second scenario (the Stonewall Jackson flank attack scenario). But, like Stones River, by the third scenario my army was balled into a haphazard perimeter around that farmhouse per history and all my gains were lost. What made it particularly worse was that after I won the third scenario, I had to RETAKE all that ground I had already earned.

What's the point of fighting these battles if the player is simply locked into script that decides the outcome regardless of how well I do? It's very frustrating. . . .

I want to recommend this game because I have enjoyed the time I put into it but I can't, at least right now.

1) The scripting of the battles and the larger campaign leaves a lot to be desired. For instance, at Shiloh as the Union, I held the CSA at the first battle line. The game then said "fall back to this line" and I said "rather not, doing fine here." It keep telling me to fall back. I killed all but ~800 of the CSA army. Day 2 starts and I have an army of 25,000 facing their 800 - but I've bet set back to the edge of the map at Pittsburg Landing. Why? Also why did the AI engage on the second day?

2) The larger campaign has these same problems. I was playing the the series of battles in the Peninsula Campaign as the Union and won each one by huge margins. And the next battle would load - a holding action to cover our retreat. Why are we retreating? I've inflicted massive losses on the AI but am retreating because that is what historically happened?

This leads to a cognitive dissonance. I have control over the units on the battle but what the units do doesn't matter because the next events are all pre-scripted and rigid.

If we allow the player to deviate from history in the battles (e.g., by winning or inflicting massive losses in an ahistorical way), it doesn't make sense to have the next battles be bounded by history. A battle, like Gettysburg, happened because of what happened at Chancellorsville. Having Gettysburg occur in a reasonably historically accurate way after a union win at Chancellorsville just doesn't make sense.

Without a branching or dynamic campaign, it feels pointless to win/lose/draw the battles.

3) The scaling. I understand the importance of the scaling to keep the game challenging but it needs some sanity bounds. If I inflict near-complete losses on the AIs army, they need to start the next battle with similarly low solider counts. The soliders could be better under the hood (harder to kill, better shots under the reasoning that some of those who survived did so for a reason) but to inflict 80% losses and then see the army with near 100% or more than 100% recovery at the next battle just doesn't work.

4) Broken mechanics, specifically the AI's ability to run everywhere and do endless melee. Also the endless melee. It seems to have gotten worse. I recently watched a battle as the AI charged my lines. The targeted unit had a 2 to 1 or more advantage over the AI in troops, was totally rested and had 100% morale. There was no attempt to soften the target with rifle or cannon fire - just a charge. The AI unit was routed and it retreated about 300 yards, regrouped and then came back and repeated the charging process.

Elsewhere on the battlefield, an AI unit charged an approximately evenly matched unit, again totally rested and ready to fight. The AI did this charge up a river bluff and without any other prior engagement. They just saw my unit on the top of the hill and went for it. They had 2 batteries of arty that could have been deployed and another unit or two that they could used to provide some fire or attempted a flanking move. Nope. They just went for a headlong frontal assault. Which failed, lead to a rapid regroup, repeat and eventual sucess.

Basically, once the AI sees a unit, it charges. There seems to be no regard for the unit's relative strengths or the tactical situation.

This is a larger problem because the AI can charge over near-infinite distances and doesn't suffer issues with dropping condition in melee/movement/battle (at least as far as I can see). Melee itself is broken (sticky melee is the bane of my playtime). The AI also doesn't have the persistance that your army does - high losses are okay because they are reset as soon as the battle is over. So there is no reason for the AI to not meat-grinder its units into your lines.

This just results in tactically uninteresting battles. "Oh, there is the Rebel corps I was looking for - they are running across 2 miles of open ground in a charge for my center. Despite being outnumbered 3 to 1 and me having a strong position."

5) "Magic hill syndrome." The game has this by the truck load. The reason the hills became important on a field was because of the actions taken by the armies on the field. Suppose for some reason that Meade had set his line far to the east of Gettysburg and Lee had choosen to attack him there. Would Little Round Top have mattered? No. The hills and strong points became important in the tactical context of the battle - otherwise they are just as unimportant as the hill down the road from your house.

But that isn't how the game treats the hills. You absolutely must hold certain points on the battlefield because they were tactically important in the historical battle - regardless of their importance in your current battle. Kill and rout the AI but fail to capture the magic hill in time? Draw or defeat are your only options.

The AI is aware of these magic hills. I was playing Antietam and pushed the CSA back to the limits of the town of Sharpsburg. Both of our armies were very beat up. The only points on the battle that mattered tactically were where we were fighting to the NE of Sharpsburg. I'm getting ready to do a slight flanking move with my cav and notice the AI is marching a unit towards the VP at Dunker Church. That point has no value - the AI is about to have several units encircled to the NE of town and the first few blocks of Sharpsburg. But the AI is like "hey, Dunker Church is undefended and historically important, so we should capture that. The actual tactical situtation on the ground is irrelevant."

Eventually, every playthrough, I lose interest. Why spend this hour fighting this battle if the result doesn't matter when it comes to the battle I fight next? Or the army I face next? Or how well I fight doesn't matter as much as if I can send a unit on an end-run march to capture and hold some historically important (but not important in the context) point on the map?

Hopefully some patch comes out that fixes the melee, fixes the endless charging and maybe someday a branching campaign mode. Because it certainly does not "fully depend on player actions and battle results" right now. It is almost fully independent of player actions and results. If that happens, I'll be excited to revise this review and put as many hours as I can spare into the battles.

gioco allettante dal punto di vista dell'ambientazione e dello stile tattico gestionale degli scontri a fuoco. La campagna si dimostra impossibile da eseguire, con scontri a fuoco costantemente in inferiorità numerica (spossante ) e truppe nemiche che combattono anche a ranghi decimati ( surreale) . forse se cominciassi la campagna con l'Unione le cose sarebbero diverse. Penso di disinstallare il prodotto e cestinarlo definitivamente come fatto con altri prodotti in stile bellico pubblicati negli ultimi 10-15 anni, dove i programmatori tendenzialmente favoriscono le fazioni dei propri beniamini. Consigliato a chi ha la voglia ed il temperamento di confrontarsi in una sfida dove la AI genera sempre situazioni a proprio favore. In conclusione sono soddisfatto di averlo comprato ad un prezzaccio, considerando giustamente quello che reputo valga.

Edited: A new mod has been released which fixes many of these problems.

Ultimate General: Civil War is a fun game when you first play it. I've even written a few guides for the game.

It bills itself as an authentic historical game with good AI. At first glance, the game does all of this wonderfully.
Deeper analysis of the game reveals fundamental design problems that only become visible with time.

Many of these problems are known to the developers. However due to the mechanism the devs use to solicit feedback these issues remain unaddressed since early access. Other problems are more fundamental, such as a lack of true player agency (a la Mass Effect 3)

Problems with the AI
Once you get past being beaten by the AI in the beginning and get used to the quirks of the game then the advertised 'strong' AI vanishes. Each map basically devolves into one of two strategies depending on if you are on offense or defense.

The challenge the AI provides against you is not in the AI being smart. Rather the challenge is in the sheer numbers the AI has versus you.

The problem gets worse if you play on half speed. With careful micromanagement, it's possible to defeat armies with 5x the number of men you have as well as drive back the relentless AI charges (if you aren't playing offensively that is). You can even cancel AI charges if you do things right. The AI pretty much always reacts the same way to you and it is easy to learn how the AI reacts and do the same thing every game. This is a regression from UG:GB where the AI had different personalities and acted differently.

Problems with Game Mechanics
Some of these problems with AI involve various bugs. These include AI breaking charges if you reposition units, AI favoring charges even if the unit is exhausted (which you can halt the advance by micromanaging artillery). Others are more fundamental. For example, early on in early access the AI had problems defending their artillery. So the game devs, instead of making the AI better at defending their artillery, made artillery invincible to melee.

Similar examples of game mechanic problems exist elsewhere. Melee mechanics were broken since early access. 2 brigades of 200 men in melee will perform 4x casualties as 1 brigade with 400 men in melee. Thus, some players (in a single player game mind you) liked to stack lots of tiny cavalry brigades and abuse the melee mechanic bug to beat battles. This bug was reported and these players complained the game was 'too easy'. Instead of fixing the broken melee system (or *gasp* asking the players to not use such strategies in a single player game), it was decided that 'cavalry was too powerful' (since this was the most commonly abused unit). Thus, cavalry got nerfed to the ground so much that the only way to use them is to abuse the melee bug. A 400 men cavalry brigade can't even chase down 90 skirmishers without getting routed.

Problems with Realism
These issues of game design, where bugs are not fixed but instead hidden, permeates to the entire game. It results in unrealistic situations that hurts realism of the game. Such as 750 cavalrymen who manage to surprise 200 artillerymen from the rear failing to beat the 200 artilleryman and instead being routed and losing half your men. BUT if those very same 750 cavalrymen were dismounted before engaging the artillery, then the results won't be as disastrous (AI will still not lose men though thanks to invincible AI artillery). It results in the best way of dealing with artillery being shooting them (and eating canisters to the face) rather than charging the cannons. It results in on harder difficulties having to play the game a certain way rather than having true agency.

Problems with Player Agency
On the topic of player agency, UG:Civil War does a poor job of this. On easier difficulties player agency is somewhat there as the AI is not gifted tons of men to produce artificial difficulty. Thus as the game goes on if you manage to defeat the AI (where the AI loses 3-5x your men) the AI won't be able to reinforce. This creates other problems such as the 2nd half of the campaign being too easy.

Due to this complaint (and also due to complaints from players exploiting game bugs and AI weakness on higher difficulties) combined with the lack of difficulty levels, hard and legendary difficulties are not only incredibly broken but also unfun, a tedious chore, and lack player agency. The AI patently ignores the 'army intelligence' screen where you see how many men it should have and deploys much more men than the number shown. This means you can't play with a small, elite army that's lowered the AI army strength, no, you have to bring as much men as possible.

Since the game ignores the army strength on higher difficulties there's no point to capturing or killing AI at all. Instead it's a matter of force preservation (since you only get limited recruits). As the AI is gifted a new army each time you destroy an army, the facade of player agency collapses completely. It simply does not matter what you do or how many men the AI loses.

Fundamentally these problems are a result of a lack of dynamic campaign. This is compounded by game bugs exploited by players on hard/legendary that were never fixed which makes the game 'too easy' for them. Or the lack of a true dynamic campaign where you can choose to end the war early if you manage to defeat the enemy army.

No, the solution chosen by the devs was to brush the bugs under the rug and just give the AI more men (or men invulnerable to their weakness such as invincible artillery). This doesn't result in a fun game. Rather it results in a game where battles become a CHORE to micromanage and abuse AI weaknesses (not to mention all the small bugs which still have not been fixed). It's not any more challenging or hard in a tactical level.

Problems with Feedback
One aggravating factor which lead to these decisions has to do with feedback. Due to the many different ways one can play a game, issues which may crop up for some players may not crop up for other players. Similarly, due to the vast difference between normal and hard in difficulty (different AI bouses), playstyles/bugs which may work on normal may not work on hard.

Instead of soliciting feedback from the playerbase as a whole, the general impression I have from watching the game progress since early access is that a small privileged group of testers (who tend to be experts and or play using certain strategies) have their suggestions favored more by the devs. This isn't necessarily the fault of the devs, as these players are simply more active in providing feedback.

This generally wouldn't be a matter if it wasn't for the fact that some of these more active players have a habit of discounting other player's problems (since it doesn't occur for them with how they play). This leads to issues where unless a problem is faced by a majority of players, problems which only affect some players are routinely ignored or outright dismissed. It also leads to poor balance changes and honestly a terrible experience for new players who are thrown into the game (eg the patches making the first intro/tutorial level harder and harder and harder to the point where new players have to go on the forum and ask for how to beat the FIRST LEVEL).

Hostility to Modding
Many of these fundamental issues would be solvable if there were modding support by the devs. One would think the modder DarthMod would have supported modding in his/her commercial games, having come from the modding community.

Instead, impediments to modding were added on purpose to reduce the basic modding possible in UG:CW.

Conclusion
I would honestly prefer to play the first early game access version of the game rather than the current version of the game as it is now. I lack faith the devs will be able to fix fundamental problems based on experiences since early access.

Everyone who has ever read a history of the American Civil War will stop at one point or another and ask themselves how things could have gone differently.

Ultimate General: Civil War does not answer that question.

In its first few hours, the game is a sure winner. The scenery is gorgeous and well-modeled, the tactics fun, and it's easy to lose track of time as you figure out winning strategies on each battlefield.

The longer you play, the more the game's flaws come out. Eventually, you realize the biggest flaw of all: What you do doesn't really matter.

Ultimate General: Civil War runs into the walls that most historic games face. By hewing too closely to history, they deny the player his or her agency. Everything is fated.

So what if the Confederates win on the first day of Gettysburg? The Union forces will rebound and the Confederate player finds themselves fighting battles farther and farther south.
Pursue the Army of Northern Virginia to ultimate destruction as a Union player on the third day of Gettysburg? It doesn't matter. The Confederacy will miraculously find tens of thousands more soldiers to fill its ranks.
This game, while beautiful, is a handful of tiny sandboxes with only a limited path between. The player does not get to choose where to fight his or her battles, and his or her successes rarely matter.

A papier-mache fictional final series of battles for the Confederate campaign doesn't do much to fix this problem. By the time you reach that point, you'll have already become frustrated with the structure.

It's enormously disappointing, because it only needs a good campaign layer to fix these problems, then the courage to be willing to end the campaign early. Win Bull Run overwelmingly? You could end the war in 1861. Win Antietam as the Confederacy? The war ends in 1862 after the French and British recognize the Confederacy.

If you enjoy playing the historical battles, you'll likely enjoy this game, but you may be frustrated by a handful of bugs -- regiments that become stuck in rivers or on map borders are the worst of these. The game also fails to correctly model repeating weapons: A regiment armed with Henry or Spencer rifles fires no more quickly than one armed with a Springfield.

If you find yourself satisfied by history, you may find something to enjoy here. If, however, you're looking for the answer to "what if," you won't find it here.

A friend best described this game as a historical battle simulator with a campaign bolted on to it. If you want to fight individual battles, you'll have fun and I would recommend this game. If you want to play a campaign, then no.

No matter how well (or badly) you're doing in a battle, the game will force you to follow what happened historically. On the 2nd day of Gettysburg, I've stopped the Confederate attacks and am in the process of counterattacking and rolling up their flank. My army's beaten up but I've two corps on the field and the CSA probably has two badly beaten up divisions. I'm about to rout the remnants off the field but the game stops me because it has to do Pickett's Charge the following day. So I get to watch about 5-7k troops (depleted from the previous day) charge 30,000 troops, mostly behind stone walls. I didn't even bother controlling that fight, I instead take two divisions and start rolling up the Confederate army from the south, letting them bleed themselves against my centre. And of course as I'm about to destroy the last division on the field the battle stops because it's now time to fight Lee's retreat.

The adherence to history is incredibly frustrating in a campaign game where you can be more successful, inflict horrendous losses on the enemy but you're straightjacketed into following the scripted historical path. There's no point in wiping out an enemy corps because it'll be rebuilt next battle and filled with veterans because the game needs to keep the CSA going until the final battle in the campaign. Apparently Lee didn't realize he could just use magic to keep respawning 2-3 star brigades right up until the battle for Richmond.

This game can be good but often becomes an exercise in frustration when you're steamrolling the enemy but the game grinds to a halt because it has to go to another prescripted battle which may no longer make any tactical sense (see Pickett's Charge). I wanted to like this game but it's so damn frustrating.

Campagna molto bella, sistema logistico profondissimo, controllo delle unità in battaglia così orribile che mi chiedo chi c***o ha permesso una tale porcata

Boy, I'm torn. Most positive reviews here lack any mention of some serious deficiencies in command, mechanics, and the campaign, and from the small number of negative reviews it seems that only a small number of players ran into the same issues I did. I LOVE aspects of this game (particularly unit and army customisation), but since "The Good" has been covered by so many people, I'm going to focus primarily on the negative, but even with the positive, I would not recommend this game for a very important reason I will get to.

So as much as this is a standalone game, it should be remembered that the designer started his career in game design as a game modder- going on to create a comprehensive set of balance patches for Total War games that focused on a more flexible morale system and realism. The changes that his mods made in those games generally have now become the "default" for this game. Morale is more of a give and take, and rather than simply "routing" your units can leave and return to combat several times during the duration of a mission. Lots of casualties taken at once also are now more critical to your units morale, and flanking is even more important than in Total War games.

With that comparison out of the way, it's very obvious that despite learning what changes in mechanics from the Total War series were beneficial, Ultimate General is still one of his "early" games. Some quality of life improvements are missing (such as stances or formations that would be useful- as it is now you have no ability to quickly form up your units and must resort to slowly lining up units one by one before "locking" them into a stiff formation that cannot shift it's arcs of fire effectively), and the "drag to" command style, while sounding good hypothetically, is at best unneccessary 90% of the time, and at worst will actually draw BEHIND your unit if it's moving and cause them to about-face mid battle, often routing them immediately. These facing issues continue when your units "fall back" or rather, "fall beside", through their own right flank, again exposing themselves to enemy fire. When choosing a target, your unit may select an enemy group further away than others, again exposing their flank causing a rout.

"Innovative command system: You decide which level of control you want. Command every unit individually or just give them a main goal with one button click and watch if they can take that hill."

No. This is a dreamy wish. Your friendly AI is lobotomised (think total war AI controlled army) and your individual units are incapable of handling themselves without constant micromanagement. Weirdly enough, the enemy AI seems competant, but that could be because they had a 5-15% advantage in numbers over me most of the campaign. I understand that people complained about this in the first game as well, but it doesn't seem to be quite capable yet. Additionally in a campaign where you're TOLD ("sometimes, foreshadowing can be relatively obvious") that you will get better rewards if you take more objectives, you will NEVER cede control over to an AI if you can help it.

I guess I should get to the anecdote that brought me to put the game down, saying "Ah, I'll pick it up again a little later." I have yet to pick it up again even though I enjoy the game immensely.

When you begin a mission, generally you have no idea what to expect. You will get basic information, like the number of armies you can field, and the aproximate composition of the enemy force, but your particular objectives or what they might CHANGE TO throughout the mission are absent. You do not get to see the number of days a mission can go for.

One major problem with this:

When you are composing your army, questions such as "Should I recruit more men, or should I get the ones I have better rifles?" arise. Often times it's best to go with a balance of both, but in certain situations a large force of moderately equipped troops WILL BE REQUIRED to smash through the often superior numbers of the enemy, and in others the exact inverse. On missions that last more than one day (of which there are a few), larger numbers of troops generally are needed to absorb the casualties of large fights. However since there is no way to know before the mission starts how many different stages of objectives it will have, or how many days it will go on, designing your army is a completely crap shoot the first time around.

Suddenly the mission you had properly provisioned for when you thought you only had one objective to capture/defend now goes on for another set of objectives or god forbid another day, forcing you to desperately push forward to capture it before you're destroyed, or to restart the mission with a different army now that you have the hindsight of save-scumming. You would think that a mission briefing would show you ALL your objectives at once, but no as the General you've decided you don't need to be privy to the exact objectives on the map until you've chosen your army and played through half the mission. What the ♥♥♥♥? I can understand the surprise of a whole other day of combat being REALISTIC but why would you not tell me plan B, and C?

And hell, it's not like YOU (as the general) get to decide if you want to fight another day, or split a small mission into a 2 day cake walk, THE GAME decides that for you, but still doesn't tell you when it has arbitraily decided to have a two-dayer.

The worst perpetrator of this is a confederate mission that pits (even after acing all previous missions) 45000 Union troops, against (at my best) 37000-40000 troops. After spending the better part of my play time with this game just trying to get past the first sets of objectives with enough men that I didn't have to restart, it told me that if I pushed hard enough, I could take the hill and victory would be mine!

It was such a high, pushing harder than I had every pushed before, using the combined tactics of what remained of my advances rifle squads and my cannon-fodder line-riflemen. Several valiant charges later we broke through the defended position! We captured the objective, with the enemy recapturing it once more- WITHIN THE LAST 5 SECONDS I captured the point and secured it! I jumped out of my chair-

-only to see the game roll me over to the next day, move all of my units BACK to a previously captured objective, spawn a fresh set of union units on the hill (who then recaptured it before I could stop them) and give my entire army ZERO rest of recouperation/reinforcements.

I was heartbroken.

I don't mind buying this game as a thanks for all of the work he's done on the Total War games- as a thanks for the mods- but this game does not have a "Dynamic Campaign" or an "Innovative Command system", and the small quality of life failures (proper missions briefings, fall back, drag-to, moving goal posts) pushed me away from this game. I can't really say if it's really a good game or not- all I can say is I only played 47.7 hours.

Adoro i giochi di strategia e in particolar modo la serie di Totaal War. In "Ultimate General: civil war" speravo di trovare qualcosa simile, ma purtroppo sono rimasto deluso. Le battaglie sono molto accurate e ci sono tantissime unita da poter gestire, ma la grafica non é eccellente e non vi é la possibilita di poter cambiare l'angolo della visuale ne di poter zummare. Un buon gioco, ma Totaal War é tutta un altra cosa!