Ultimate General: Civil War

[Rayfer]

Leaving aside the gamey campaign, I think it's worth noting that UGCW has now brought the excellent game engine of UG: Gettysburg to 11 more major Civil War battles: 1st & 2nd Manassas, Shiloh, Gaines Mill, Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville,Stones River, Chickamauga and Cold Harbor. The game is still getting regular work, the latest patch having been a hotfix yesterday. Devs say they are coming to the end of the Early Access period and full release is coming soon.

Starting to think this has been the best time for really good non-hexagonal wargaming in my life: UGCW, Steel Division Normandy, HOI 4 and Cold Waters are all real classics IMO, all in the last year.

So, you can play the individual battles one at a time without going through the campaign?  Can you pick and choose them in any order or do they require you to play them in chronologic order, unlocking one at a time?

[glen55]

Leaving aside the gamey campaign, I think it's worth noting that UGCW has now brought the excellent game engine of UG: Gettysburg to 11 more major Civil War battles: 1st & 2nd Manassas, Shiloh, Gaines Mill, Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville,Stones River, Chickamauga and Cold Harbor. The game is still getting regular work, the latest patch having been a hotfix yesterday. Devs say they are coming to the end of the Early Access period and full release is coming soon.

Starting to think this has been the best time for really good non-hexagonal wargaming in my life: UGCW, Steel Division Normandy, HOI 4 and Cold Waters are all real classics IMO, all in the last year.

So, you can play the individual battles one at a time without going through the campaign?  Can you pick and choose them in any order or do they require you to play them in chronologic order, unlocking one at a time?

Whenever you like.

[jomni]

Well you're right about single battles. But I really want to relive Siera's Civil War Generals and this has been so close but fell short due to the frustration factor in the campaign.

[glen55]

Well you're right about single battles. But I really want to relive Siera's Civil War Generals and this has been so close but fell short due to the frustration factor in the campaign.

Agree, it would be really nice if each front had its battles linked in a persistent historical campaign instead of the current gamey puzzlebox campaign. But I love the battle engine. It ain't Sword of War, but you can knock off an entire large battle in a sitting and then want to play it again to get it right.

[bboyer66]

The campaign has finally started to frustrate me as well. 

Playing as the Union I am outnumbered in almost every battle, all because it is painfully apparent that quantity over quality is the way to go. You start to realise about halfway through that all that money you spent on veteran troops, and new weapons, should have been spent on new divisions and corps.

Another problem I had was with the Shiloh scenario. The computer tells you to defend the hornets nest and shiloh church, which is fine. But then you have to defend Pittsburgh landing and half the Confederate army bypasses you and is already at Pittsburgh Landing 2 minutes into the start of that stage of the battle. So you lose. The second time I played Shiloh, I withdrew from Shiloh church and the Hornets nest and defended Pittsburgh Landing. It was a hard fight, and I had to battle hard for the VP marker. The Confederates captured it, but I knocked them back. The problem was that the VP marker would not revert back to me for 7 minutes (no Confederates were even close to the VP marker at this point) and I wound up losing the battle.

Another bitch is when troops rout they sometimes rout into the rear of the enemy quite often. Sometime they will just go into the woods behind enemy lines regroup and then attack from the rear.  Not the most realistic thing I have ever seen.

All in all though I think the game is terriffic. The historical battles are very well done, and shed light on a lot of battles that we do not get to game on the PC very often (Cold Harbor, Chancelorville,etc.)

[RyanE]

All in all though I think the game is terriffic. The historical battles are very well done, and shed light on a lot of battles that we do not get to game on the PC very often (Cold Harbor, Chancelorville,etc.)

I think this is the key aspect of this game.  Gettysburg is the Battle of the Bulge of the US Civil War.  Its really good to see a good game engine take on battles that were almost as important, and in some ways more important. 

Frankly, I don't play the campaign and really like the individual battles.  I see a lot of complaining about the campaign progression on Steam, never really paid much attention to it.

[Boggit]

Do you think they will revamp the way the campaign works in light of the feedback? IIRC, they were pretty good with the Gettysburg game, but don't really know how responsive they've been this time around.

[MengJiao]

All in all though I think the game is terriffic. The historical battles are very well done, and shed light on a lot of battles that we do not get to game on the PC very often (Cold Harbor, Chancelorville,etc.)

I think this is the key aspect of this game.  Gettysburg is the Battle of the Bulge of the US Civil War.  Its really good to see a good game engine take on battles that were almost as important, and in some ways more important. 

Frankly, I don't play the campaign and really like the individual battles.  I see a lot of complaining about the campaign progression on Steam, never really paid much attention to it.

Same here: Cold Harbor and Gaines Mill: very cool and interesting.  Campaign: don't know, haven't tried it yet.

[SirAndrewD]

Same here: Cold Harbor and Gaines Mill: very cool and interesting.  Campaign: don't know, haven't tried it yet.

They've done a lot of work on the campaign, and have really fixed some of the biggest problems of enemy scaling and added in carry over casualties for the AI. 

However, the campaign still has a problem of diminishing returns.  You can play the smaller interconnecting battles, which are supposed to give you advantages in the grand battles in the campaign, but what you end up facing is the problem that you'll endure such horrific losses in some of those that whatever gains you get from winning are soaked up and then some by your losses. 

The higher than historic casualty rates and costs of replenishment make holding together an army through a campaign, even for the Union, almost untenable as the time wears on.  A few patches ago, it simply became unplayable since the AI always scaled up regardless of your successes, and you'd hit a hard brick wall pretty early on.

They're working on this, and have listened to community feedback on a lot of the issues.  However, it's a stated purpose from the devs that they want the campaign to be HARD.  This hasn't really translated to them making the difficulty based on strategy, but based on a kind of puzzle "Find how to win without 80% casualties" mentality.   We'll see how it pans out now that the full release has been achieved.

[LAVA]

Hi all!

Just passing through...  :)

I'm presently playing this game and specifically the Union Campaign. I'm getting ready for the battle of Gettysburg, ATM.

A few thoughts:

1. At the beginning of the campaign you will have troops from other units help you out in the battles. Use them for any assaults and heavy lifting so as to win the battle and spare your own Corps catastrophic damage.

2. Use your Career Points to prepare your forces for a long war. I went pretty heavily with Politics at the beginning to assure a good flow of cash. Then I started looking at stuff which effected battle results such as reduced cost of weapons.

3. After a battle, especially at the beginning of the war, be prepared to use lots of recruits to fill out your ranks. When you buy new troops, if you buy recruits you will see the regiments training bar lower. I think you should almost always take at least some recruits into your regiments after battle and then top them off with veterans. With recruits, given you have the weapon in your Armory, it costs you nothing (except men) to fill out your regiments this way.

4. Weapons need to be allocated carefully. The Springfield M1842 is a pretty standard weapon for the first year or two. I use the Palmetto and the Lorenz for at least a couple veteran regiments. Any weapon that is not manufactured by the North, I sell.

5. The place I put my money on initially is artillery. Since probably over half of the Campaign puts you on the defensive, artillery is what is going to be the real killer... especially since the Rebs will attempt to charge you whenever they have the opportunity. Going into Gettysburg I have 3 Corps with 5 regiments of which at least 1 is artillery. As your artillery gets experience keep increasing them to about 24, gun by gun from weapons in your armory so they only cost you men.

6. Tactically the game is all about flanking, no matter what the brief may tell you. Look at the map before battle and determine where you want to fight and how you can flank your opponent in good terrain. Once you figure that out, put your artillery at a point where it can support your main line against charges and fire into the flanks when you push them.

All the RPG elements of the game, really set this game apart. But it is still a Civil War game, a war where intrinsically the defense has the advantage. As the Union battles are at least 50 to 70% defensive, whether you win or not and the amount of casualties you incur, will depend on the ground you choose to fight on.  Even in the battles where you must attack, the direct approach is almost always the worst way to go.

Am looking forward to ending the Union Campaign and am not sure if I will do the Confederate one next (probably) or repeat the Union on Hard. But IMO, it is a very good game and the Campaign is a really challenge as developers meant it to be as you must not only win today, but set the ground work to win tomorrow.

Cheers,

LAVA

[Sir Slash]

Hello LAVA and thanks for the info.  O0  Come back by again sometime when you can stay longer.

[MikeGER]

Hurra Lava is back !  O0
:hug:

[bayonetbrant]

Just passing through...  :)

you better not fucking be!

<:-)


took you long enough to get here

:hug:

[jomni]

4. Weapons need to be allocated carefully. The Springfield M1842 is a pretty standard weapon for the first year or two. I use the Palmetto and the Lorenz for at least a couple veteran regiments. Any weapon that is not manufactured by the North, I sell.

5. The place I put my money on initially is artillery. Since probably over half of the Campaign puts you on the defensive, artillery is what is going to be the real killer... especially since the Rebs will attempt to charge you whenever they have the opportunity. Going into Gettysburg I have 3 Corps with 5 regiments of which at least 1 is artillery. As your artillery gets experience keep increasing them to about 24, gun by gun from weapons in your armory so they only cost you men.

This is probably my and most player's problem.  We try to get the best weapons for all our troops and end up suffering.

[JasonPratt]

That sounds a lot like managing the brigades in Forge of Freedom -- which is a compliment.