"Damn Yankees!" shouts Philippe Thibaut as Union forces march on Atlanta, crushing a bastion of Confederate troops stationed there as a desperate defense. The Lead Designer of AGEOD's American Civil cares about the outcome of this bloody war perhaps more than you'd expect from someone not of American descent. This is a man whose knowledge of the war reaches levels far beyond anyone attending his demonstration—not to mention his experience designing strategy games.
The turn-based strategy game painstakingly follows both sides of the war from declaration in 1861 through its bloody conclusion in early 1865. Four campaigns chronicle each year of the war, with the last four months of combat during 1865 tacked to the end of the 1864 campaign. Breaking down the game by year simplifies scenarios for play, letting you run through the recreated events of that year turn-by-turn.
Three battle scenarios act as tutorials to get you acquainted with the game's mechanics. Although initially quite intimidating, it's possible to learn the basics of its immensely deep strategy gameplay. American Civil War breaks down to organizing units for battle and deploying them to complete objectives. Working through each of the campaigns requires capturing objective cities by assaulting their defending units. Additionally, you can take secondary strategic cities to gain resources and bolster national morale.
Resources, which are turned into supplies for your troops, are vital to keeping your war machine going. Playing as the Union, greater industrial power enables ease of access to resources; on the other hand, the Confederacy must push hard to keep a chain of supplies without which troops will die or desert. Keeping units supplied requires building infrastructure around a central supply depot. Satellite depots extend the range of the central post, as do rail lines that enable transport of supplies to remote regions—getting this up and running puts you in a better position to achieve victory.
Whether you don the blue garb of the Union or put on the gray of the Confederacy, you had better express a bit of pride. National morale measures perception of the war at home, which can either cripple or energize your forces. Most scenarios set a baseline for national morale; in short, drop below a certain percentage out of a possible 100% and you lose. Losses on the battlefield drop your morale—not to mention personal pride—and winning naturally brings it back up.
The drive to boost your army's pool of supplies and increase national morale is for the express purpose of securing victory in the war. Thibaut explains, "The focus isn't on looking at an individual regiment in battle; instead, the game is more about operational strategy than individual tactics." Instead of bothering with the minutia of battlefield-level tactics, American Civil War wants you to think more about regional strategy and how you plan on winning the war.
Before even confronting the competition, you first need to structure your troops. The game adheres strictly to a command hierarchy replicated from military records of the period. "Dependence on command structure makes the game like a true war," Thibaut contends. Confederate and Union armies are organized into small divisions, corps, and regiments. The number of troops grouped together determine its designation, as does the rank and leadership capabilities of the presiding commander.
