The greatest strategy game in my entire library, bar none. Nothing else even comes close.
I cannot wait for the release of their next title, Ultimate General: American Revolution. If you love grandstrategy wargames, you owe it to yourself to get this game. Even at full price it is worth every penny.
I have over 3000 hours invested into this game via steam, and it hands down dominates the genre not only of the civil war, but many other war games. Advanced logistics, competent AI, a brutal campaign system as you move up in difficulty, and an amazing map.
After you conquer this absolute gem on vanilla, look into the J&P mod via google, and continue to dump countless hours into a perfectly curated version of this game that is even better than your initial experience.
I'd rate this game nearly on par with the Total War series, and that is not something I would say about any other game honestly.
This game is quite easy to get into, but has a good amount of depth and challenge. In fact, I often fall asleep thinking about how I will place my units the next time I fight a particular battle.
The game has two components. There is a light management component where you create/equip regiments, divisions, and corps; assign skills and bonuses to your army and your units; and choose whether to participate in some minor battles. This is all pretty streamlined and simple once you get used to it, but there is also great depth here. Do you want to focus on lots of small units or a few huge brigades? Do you want an army heavy on artillery? Should they have close-range or long-range guns? How are you going to pay for that? Or maybe you want lots of cavalary units? If so, should they be outfitted for charging into enemy ranks or for dismounting and fighting? Once you figure out these questions between battles, you actually get down to the fighting...
The actual battles are a wonder to behold. It's easy to start moving your units across the beautiful maps; just click where they should go and on what they should attack. Anyone can grasp this. The real challenge is more abstract: figuring out where and when to defend, or trying to find weak points to attack, or which units require the presence of your general, and so on. Making these choices is hard; acting on them is easy, thanks to the intuitive interface!
I expect that I've got about 50-60 hours in this game by now, and I am only up to Gettysburg in the Union campaign. This game is a great value.
P.S. If you don't want to bother with campaign modes, there are a lot of stand-alone scenarios you can jump right into.
This is an excellent strategy game. I am on my fourth playthrough. It has become one of my most replayed games. There are not many games out there on the American Civil War and this one does an excellent job of scratching the Civil War itch. As a historian and Civil War buff, this game seems to be mostly historically accurate. Ultimate Generals: Civil War recieves my approval as a strategy gamer and historian. If you want to enjoy a excellent strategy game while getting to have a historical glimpse of the strategies employed during the war, this game the best you will find.
This game is utterly brillant! It manages to create a very strong historic atmosphere by not only let you fight some of the most famous and giant battles of the ACW but by also giving you many possibilities to create and equip your own army: You chose what rifles and canons your men get, you recruit new men, you try to use your political renommee to get advantages and have to balance very carefully with your resources. Everything is expensive - but the state of the art-rifle with scope can make a real difference when you equip a small but capable group of skirmishers with it, you can use them to take out enemies and artillery from afar. There are so many decisions to take the whole game feels very serious and your army will be a very personal matter.
The battles are very intuitive to control but enormously dynamic and living. You have to manage your brigades carefully, look out for ambushes and flanking fire, hold up their moral with your officers and by replacing exhausted brigades with fit ones you keep as reserve behind. The campaign features smaller engagements as well as really epic battles that take much time and are very tense.
Overall what makes the game different from others is the feeling you get by playing it: It feels like being in an corps commander's boots and while there is much to manage it never gets boring because every decision has an impact. Every unit you lose in one battle will be missed in the next, every resource you use is gone, every enemy canon you capture can be used later by your own artillery - thus the game manages to give a very organic, very realistic impression of what were the important pillars of ACW warefare, it's full of nuances and details but it never gets too much and stays very playable and accessible. A brillant game, my new favourite for ACW-games.