@GELongstreet - Oh yes both iterations of
"Civil War General" by Sierra Games are just
brilliant. The first one is a tad better IMHO, as it has the option to play the campaign in multiplayer mode against another human opponent, sadly this pretty cool feature was no longer present in CWG2. I still have "Civil War Generals" installed on my computers ever since and they remain two of my favorites to this day (yes you can run them on modern systems). I was kind of heart broken, that Sierra never released a 3rd Civil War title (they had been working on one as far as I am aware but ultimately dropped it for unknown reasons).
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Turn-based Civil War games:
"
Robert E. Lee - Civil War General" (1996) from Sierra is a turn-based tactical strategy game set on a hex map, offering players the ability to either fight single battles or take on the campaign mode (in between battles players have the opportunity to upgrade/change unit's weapons, and change/dismiss leaders). The game allows you to change unit formations, assign leaders on the fly (who can get wounded an even killed), features unit attrition, fatigue and moral as well as line of sight and even allows you to dig entrenchments. Besides it had a map editor as well, something that such games rarely had back in the day. It offered both singleplayer as well as multiplayer not only for single engagements but also in the campaign mode. The visuals of the game are quite beautiful and even do hold up today in my humble opinion. The game was such a great success, that a year later a sequel, entitled "
Grant, Lee, Sherman: Civil War Generals 2" (1997) was released. While the gameplay, style and overall visuals remained the same, the sequel improved on a few rather minor things like the addition of some new unit types. Sadly the multiplayer campaign mode featured in the first installment was removed, but it still offered multiplayer for single battles.
On the left
the first "Civil War General" title is shown and on the right the sequel.
Let me go ahead and mention some of the other Civil War games I do play and have played:
"
Gary Grigsby's War between the States" from Matrix Games - looks like a very simple game at first glance - due to the somewhat crude interface - but is actually not, as one has to ponder unit compositions (especially with the sub-commanders option turned on, which I highly recommend), make production decisions, think about unit movements, select raids for your cavalry and where best to place supply depots, assign leaders to units (especially interesting if you randomize leader abilities and hide their stats so you have to try them to see what they do well and what not - like in real life). So the bottom line this one has LOTS more under the hood that one might think at first.
Screenshot on the right is showing the main screen for "GGWBTS", where one spends most of the time.
Another good turn-based Civil War title that I like is "
Forge of Freedom" from Matrix Games, as it offers both grand strategy as well as a tactical level (i.e. the tactical battles take place on randomized maps) of play, including fighting against human opponents. In this game you do anything from raising, equipping and moving armies about, to appointing generals and selecting the flags they carry into battle. You control economic and political development with governors, while trying to keep then on your good side so they support you and you have to think about diplomatic relations with foreign nations. While this might seem daunting you can opt to leave certain decisions to the AI when you start out (so you get not overwhelmed) and when you get more comfortable with the game take over more and more duties.
Screenshots showing the main screen for the grand strategy part of the game and the other one shows the tactical view during battles.
A forth good turn-based Civil War title is "
AGEOD's American Civil War", which offers grand strategy decisions about politics, economy, finances and diverse military matters and troop movements, it can also be played against human opponents. There is a sequel to this game, but I never played it, as I liked the visuals of the first title a lot better (and the two games seemed to be pretty much alike, apart from the visuals).
Screenshot is showing the main screen of the game.
Then of course there is
"John Tiller's Battleground" (mentioned by another member above) and the
"HPS Civil War Campaign" series - all turn-based as well and play nice too - but to be honest, my eyesight is not what it used to be and I have serious troubles seeing these very tiny units on modern computers.
A title I
can not really recommend is
"Strategic Command - American Civil War" as the scope and how units move and are set up does not fit well with the era. It does work alright for WW1 and WW2 (which other iterations in this game series deal with) but not in a Civil War setting. They should have included another layer and to at least let players put together their own unit compositions as that might have alleviated some of the problems with this game.
Real time Civil War strategy games
If we go over to real time strategy (RTS) we have the excellent
"Take Command Civil War Bull Run 1861" and
"Take Command - 2nd Manassas" by Mad Minute Games. These two practically revolutionized the genre and while both titles are single player only, they offer some very good and realistic AI opponents (ranging from brave and daring to cowards that did not want to follow your orders). If you can get your hands on those titles by all means do so as I consider them to be quite brilliant.
Screenshot is showing the main screen of the game (the visuals between Bull Run and "Second Manassas" were pretty much the same).
One of the developers of the above went on to make "
Scourge of war - Gettysburg" by Matrix Games, which pretty much is like the previous titles concerning scope, unit movement, smart AI, etc. - but this time offered RTS multiplayer action (with or against other human opponents)! The latter is a lot of fun, though these days one will be hard pressed to find other players, but there is still the single player alternative and the AI that does a good job.
Screenshot is showing the main screen of the game (still using sprites like the previous titles the developer has worked on).
While I did give
"Ultimate General: Civil War" a try I was pretty disappointed in it especially when comparing the gameplay to
"Scourge of War" mentioned above. The final straw for me was when I flanked the enemy position perfectly with the greater part of my units and was about to attack them from the rear and flank, only to have the game suddenly and totally out of the blue (!) spawn an entire enemy army within a few meters of my guys. They did not even march there (as I would have seen them coming long before and could have reacted and beaten them in detail but no - game spawned them right on me. I really wanted to like the game, but sadly no - so from my gaming experience there I can not recommend it (especially when compared to superior titles like
"Scourge of War" or
"Second Manassas"). Same goes for "
Grand Tactician - The Civil War (1861-1865)" which I really wanted to like but did not, as the game mechanics and unit movements are very clunky and unimaginative, which left me feeling that "Forge of Freedom" offers players more (despite being turn-based).
First & Third Person Civil War Shooters
Last but not least lets take a look at first person shooters (FPS) - one member already mentioned "
War of Rights" by Campfire Games but I
can not recommend that game for various reasons some are game related, some are community related: While still in beta (after all those MANY years) the game still has lots and lots of bugs and runs pretty badly, even on modern computers but the bigger issue is all that hate, racism and antisemitism running amok there (I was pretty much horrified and appalled when I first played the game and was confronted with that sort of behavior and attitudes), I will not even mention "sound boarding" and all the other problems one encounters. Long story short: Utterly horrible gaming experience (especially due to those abysmal player attitudes). I would love to refund this title, but sadly spend so many hours trying to tweak the settings in the beginning to make the game run better.
One FPS title (which allows both first person as well as third person perspective) I do like
a lot though is "
Battle Cry of Freedom" (BCoF) by Flying Squirrel Entertainment: It offers a lot more "out of the box" than the afore mentioned title like: a map editor, character and uniform customization, infantry/artillery/cavalry/engineers, horses and horse drawn artillery, full modding support, ability to host your own servers, AI units to command, the ability to build fortifications (not only placing down prefabricated objects, but using terrain deformation, so one can actually make earthworks - i.e pile earth up - and trenches - i.e. dig down).
"
BCoF" not only has the usual team vs. team matches, but also allows players to take command of AI troops in so called "commander battles". This is pretty neat, as one can end up with pretty large scale battles (especially when you have up to 20 player commanders fighting it out with their units). The community is pretty small these days, but some of us still play regularly and we run custom events for the game.
The best thing is, "Batte Cry of Freedom" offers a demo version on Steam, that gives people access to all game modes, the use of one US and one CS infantry unit (as well as customization options for the enlisted, NCOs and officers of that unit) and allows demo owners to play with/against owners of the full game indefinitely. So just give the game a try to see if you like it (if you have any issues, need help or if you want to play with a group let me know).
Screenshots showcasing some moments from the game, including movement of AI units commanded by players, uniform customisation, players in the process of froming lines, engineers building a fortification together, an infantry unit firing at the enemy and several artillery units standing by to fire (in the background you see the horse-drawn limbers).
Someone made three pretty neat videos showcasing Artillery, Cavalry and Engineers in BCoF:
Ok that are almost all the Civil War PC games I can think of right now, which I have played over the years and some that I still play. I thought it might be useful to do this posting a bit more in detail, so people interested in playing computer games set during the Civil War see what PC games are out there and what might be up their alley. I hope this will help you guys!
If you have questions let me know.
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