From: Simon Jackson <silsoft@DIRCON.CO.UK>
Subject: Comp: Empire's "The Civil War" - mini-review (quite
long)

I bought this game at lunchtime on Thursday (27th) and loaded it
up Friday night. I've been playing it on and off all day today,
so hear are my thoughts.

Format: PC CD-ROM. I beleive it also comes on a set of 3.5"
floppies. Min.Req: 386 DX-33, 4Mb RAM, SVGA (VESA) Graphics card,
7Mb Hard disc space, Mouse.

Overall feel: The game has a lot of the same components as VG's
board game of the same name. The main diference is that movement
for both sides happens symultaneously, so there is no Initiative.
The production rules are expanded greatly, as are the type of
units available.

Accuracy: Haven't got a clue. As the game is aimed at a US
dominated market, and is on a popular US subject, I imagine they
WOULDN'T DARE get anything wrong, for fear of the loss of sales.
;-)

Features: The following features make this game extremely
playable.

1. Adjustable skill/realism levels on a variety of subjects. So
you can have supply set to simple - all units always in supply,
and Unit Types set to Advanced to give you the greatest range of
units posible. As yet I've not progressed beyond simple on
everything. :-)

2. Battle level and Campaign level. You can fight the entire
Civil War, a day at a time! (time scale starts at 1:60 and gets
faster on the higher levels - don't worry, you can save and
re-load a campaign half way through!) Or you can fight a number
of historical battles. Supprisingly NOT including Gettysburg or
Antienam, I expect they thought that these had been modeled
suffisiently and they went for some of the others. 1st Bull Run
is there though!

3. Battles during a Campaign. If two sufficiently large forces
come together, the game gives you the option of calculating the
outcome as it would for a smaller engagement, or you can drop
into battle mode ansd fightthe troops youself. The Battle mode
has "realistic" sound effects - screaming, cannon and
rifle/musket fire, plus a variety of zoom levels which permit you
an overall view of the field, or allow you to watch individual
soldiers getting shot. If cavalry is involved, the battlfield
ends up littered with dead horses!

4. The Current Army List. This _Extremely_ usefull feature allows
you to quickly locate a brigade (the smallest "orderable" unit),
Division or Corps. Attach/detach/transfer units from one command
to another and promote/remove/transfer Generals between all
command levels. Add newly constructed Regiments (the smallest
unit in the game - must be in a Brigade to be used) to Brigades.
Create new units at all levels of command, etc......

5. Maps. I'm not sure how accurate they are (but see my comment
above), but they look very nice. Terain is quite easy to
identify. There are two levels of zoom on the Campaign map. The
first shows the entire right hand side of the US, from New York
in the East to Kansas in the West (Brownsville Texas is on a
small inset, with Matamoros) and from the tip of Florida in the
South to the Canadian border and the Great Lakes in the North.
This huge map area allows an aggressive Confederate player
(withthe supply rules turned off) to march North and capture New
York City. I wonder how the Union would have reacted in real
life! ;-)

5.b. The second magnification level shows a more detailed view,
on average the size of one state. Virginia or Kentucky fit on the
screen quite nicely. This shows All military units on your side
and a varying amount on the enemy side depending on the level.
Railways are shown as black lines, rivers as blue, small towns
as dots (red, blue or brown for CSA, USA and neutral
respectively), production centres as larger dots with a border.
(Incidentally, only the production centres and major rivers are
shown on the full map)

6. Movement Rules. Units can move by Rail, or by Ship/Riverboat
as well as by marching. Naval units of both sides fight for
control of the waterways and coastlines. In the more advanced
levels the Union player can build Railway Engineers who help
maintain his rail net.

Bad Points.

Every game has some!

1. Stability: The program seems to have a bug somewhere. I don't
know what causes it, but occasionally something crashes my video
card. The only thing I can do then is re-boot. I intend to report
this to the UK support desk after giving my registration card
time to arrive. Meanwhile I save the game regularly.

2. Pause feature. There isn't one. You give orders to your troops
during the night, and they're carried out during the day. At
night, the clock ticks away steadily, and if you don't finish
giving your orders by daybreak, tough! However, if the phone
rings or your wife demands that you sign this piece of paper,
you're stuck. There's now way to stop the clock.

3. Victory conditions. These are ok as far as they go, which is
that whoever controls the most production centres, wins. But they
miss out some important points. Like what would have happened if
the Confederates had captured Washington DC during the first few
weeks of the war? At the very least, France and Britain would
have entered the war on the Confederate side - I beleive the CSA
was pushing the Europeans in this direction, but Britain and
France wanted more than just promises before getting involved.
At best/worst - depending on your point of view :-) - the Union
would have rolled over with its (metaphorical) legs in the air.

Well, I'm playing the Confederates and guess what, Ive captured
Washingon DC, Baltimore, AND Chicago (beleive it or not!). And
the Union is still fighting. Mind you, they do hold most of the
northern half of Virginia, and my troops in the North East
(heading for New York) would be cut off if it wern't for the
supply rules being turned off!

Extras.

The game is playable by two people over a network or modem link.
It's only a two player game, and I believe it has a dial-up
facility for modem to modem play.

On the CD-ROM version (I don't know about the 3.5" version, but
I doubt it) there is an extensive database on the Civil war,
giving all sorts of material. Photographs and paintings of the
period; Weapons; Tactics; Biographies, Battles, Music and more!

Music: There is an option to turn this off. If you don't have a
sound card, I recommend doing so, as it will probably sound tinny
out of the PC's speaker. If you leave the music on, the sound
card plays a selection of "hit" songs of the period (from both
sides) including "John Browns Body", "Dixie" (Wasn't that the
South's National Anthem?), "Tramp Tramp Tramp", "Yellow Rose of
Texas" and more. The songs repeat after a while, in a random
order, and after playing for 4 hours, I found I was humming along
with most of them. :-<

PRICE: I bought the game from "Future Zone Games Centre". It cost
34.99 Pounds Stirling. Thats a little over 50 US Dollars. I'm
assuming the price is average for the UK. I didn't notice any
appreciable difference in the price of software when I was in the
States in May.

I hope this is of use to someone.

Simon Jackson
Silsoft@dircon.co.uk