Something every fan should have

Sid Meier, the father of the mega famous Civilization strategy game, now treats us with the Civil War collection, a fantastic trio of Sid Meier's Gettysburg! and Sid Meier's Antietam!, along with an extra eight map campaign called South Mountain, and those three games will surely keep you occupied for months, if not years on end. As with Civilization, the games do a fantastic job in bringing us the perfect strategy game where everything is thought of and there is absolutely no fault - the impeccable gameplay, the great real time action, the absolutely phenomenal graphics followed by great music to add to the atmosphere - this collection is a masterpiece. You can set the game's difficulty and, aside from the standard AI settings, you can also set a alternate historical paths, such as what would happen if a certain event in history didn't occur at all. The game gives you a great feeling of reality and excitement when playing. If you're a fan of Sid Meier's work and love historical battle strategies, this is something that you absolutely should have in your collection.

Wargame developers love the American Civil War, with its romantic notions of ‘brother against brother’ and the development of warfare from line battles to quasi-trench warfare slug-fests. Alongside the two World Wars, Napoleon’s conquests and the grand imperial conflicts of antiquity, it ranks among the ‘most gamed’ wars in all of human history. It probably also helps that a lot of modern wargame designers are American.

Unsurprisingly, for a war largely fought over whether white people should be allowed to own black people, American Civil War games have at times been a magnet for controversy. Nevertheless, the conflict’s key advances in warfare technology and its epochal importance in US history have made it an endlessly compelling and popular setting for wargames of every format throughout the 20th century, spawning a whole genre of games, many of which are worth your time.

There have been plenty to choose from over the years, in different scales and contexts, focusing on various key battles and engagements – so, to make your choice easier, here’s our list of Wargamer’s favourite American Civil War digital strategy games.

Download the best games on Windows & Mac. A vast selection of titles, DRM-free, with free goodies, and lots of pure customer love. Sid Meier's Gettysburg, Civil. Firaxis has produced several games, including Gettysburg and Antietam, based on their namesake famous American Civil War battles, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a space colonization game taking place in the Alpha Centauri star system. In early 2000, co-founder Brian Reynolds parted with Firaxis to form his new studio, Big Huge Games. Truly the best civil war game ever. Athanasius 2017-02-12 -4 points Imho the best adaptation of ACW ever - its complexity is just right, not as simplistic as 'Ultimate General: Gettysburg' and not as complicated as the enormous 'Scourge of War: Gettysburg', but something in between.

What are the best American Civil War Games?

Grand Tactician (Early Access)
Victory and Glory: The American Civil War
Ultimate General: Civil War
Gettysburg: The Tide Turns
Civil War: 1863
Civil War II
Scourge of War: Chancellorsville
Brother against Brother
The Operational Art of War 4 (Specific Scenarios)
War of Rights (Early Access)

There’s a couple of more suggestions right at the bottom of the article as well.

Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865) (Early Access)

Publisher: Oliver Keppelmüller
Available from:Steam

We’re putting Grand Tactician front and centre because at the moment we feel it’s going to become one of the most important ACW releases in recent times, although other recent games like Victory and Glory below were also pretty solid. Grand Tactician is proving to be quite ambitious in what it wants to do, and of Mr. Keppelmuller manages to pull it off then this game will easily take the crown.

If its rough edges are dealt with, this game will easily take the top spot

As things stand though, there’s some big caveats you should be aware of. It’s in Early Access, for starters, which essentially means this is a beta – warts and all. Our own Bill Gray was blown away by his time with the game and even Bill – who’s always tended to focus on positives over negatives – does mention problems, ranging from dodgy AI behaviour to off casualty figures.

Read around and you’ll see other people struggling with other rough edges this game still has. With any luck these will all be ironed out over time, but know that even though this game sits at the top of our ACW list, it’s not yet in the state it needs to be in to earn that spot.

Victory and Glory: The American Civil War

Publisher: Lock’n Load Publishing
Available from:Steam

One of Lock’n Load’s three digital releases in 2020, Victory & Glory’s American Civil War outing is an excellent board-game style experience featuring an area-control style strategy layer, card mechanics and a tactical battle interface. You can play out the entire conflict as either the Union or the Confederacy in a campaign that’s highly replayable.

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Naval warfare is highly abstracted, but the land war is well represented. Apart from some documentation issues around concepts like supply and some bugs, this is actually a pretty decent ACW strategy game and an excellent showing from Lock’n Load.

Ultimate General: Civil War

Developer: Game-Labs LLC
Available from:Steam

Ultimate General: Civil War is a wonderful follow-up to Game-Labs LLC’s already wonderful Ultimate General: Gettysburg. Civil War puts the player in command of either Confederate or Union armies throughout the entirety of the war, allowing the player to build their army composition, from unit size to weaponry of individual units. The title brings Total War-style tactics (the lead on this game did make several mods for Total War games) to the well-known battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg, as well as battles with less coverage in games, such as Gaines’ Mill and Chickamauga.

The ability to follow individual brigades and their officers throughout the war is one I learned to miss after playing this game. Seeing a unit you created during the first year of the war get utterly dissolved by enemy canister rounds is heartbreaking, but following an officer’s career path from lowly Captain to Major General brings pride I rarely get from playing games. It’s easy to connect with your army on a personal level, as you can name each unit in addition to being able to manage their training and outfitting.

For more information, check out our Ultimate General: Civil War review.

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns

Developer: Shenandoah
Available from:Direct, Steam

Appomattox Civil War

Speaking of Gettysburg, it’s impossible to list off the best American Civil War games without mentioning a game about Gettysburg at least once. Gettysburg marked the high-water mark of the Confederacy during the war, and The Tide Turns is a beautiful display of… well, how the tide turned. The map is wonderful, drawing inspiration from old Engineer Corps maps, with unit markers distinctly popping out against the backdrop.

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What makes The Tide Turns such an interesting game is the turn system. Units have their turn order decided by the random drawing of “lots” from the total amount of units on the field. This leads to an uncertainty of combat that is not present in IGOUGO or WEGO type games, but is certainly more representative of the chaos of Gettysburg.

Civil War: 1863

Developer: HexWar
Available from: Fanatical Pegasus2 r4 promise utility for mac rebuild raid kit.

HexWar’s charming Civil War: 186x series made the jump to PC from Android and iOS, bringing what our reviewer Jeff Renaud called a “quick hit” wargame. It’s easy to jump into a scenario pulled from the many different battles of 1863 (or any of the other years of the war, there are companion games featuring all of them!), with combat frequently beginning on the first turn.

A single scenario can take less than an hour, but the brevity

Sid Meier%27s Gettysburg Civil War Games Mac