Ultimate General: Civil War is a real time tactical strategy game set in, you guessed it, the American Civil War. This title builds upon its predecessor, Ultimate General: Gettysburg, and expands its focus from one battle (Gettysburg) to the entire war, featuring many of the most famous battles of the conflict (as well as several other fictional battles and smaller skirmishes).

The principle feature of the game is the campaign. In the campaign, players will take on the role of a fictional Union or Confederate general, fighting battles and using the spoils to build more elaborate armies to fight battles on a larger and larger scale as the war escalates. The meta-game of building your army and assigning equipment is reminiscent of the Panzer General/Fantasy General series from the mid 1990's (there was a Civil War General game in the same vein but I don't recall it nearly as well), while the battles themselves are played in a pausable real-time tactical interface that any RTS or Total War player will find instantly familiar.

The battles strike an excellent balance between abstraction and realism: players must contend with supplies and ammunition, positioning of troops/artillery, morale, maneuvering and scouting with skirmishers/cavalry, and terrain without having to micromanage units' lines of sight or specific behaviors too intensely. Even large battles are generally managable (though you do have the option of assigning divisions or corps to AI command with general instructions) and satisfying to command.

The goal of battles is usually to try and hold (or take) specific positions on a battlefield within a certain window of time, but there are a very wide array of tactics that one can use to do this depending on your army composition choices. For example, if you must take a fortified hill, you could bombard with artillery and overwhelm with waves of infantry. Or, perhaps you could use skirmishers and sharpshooters to wear down the morale and numbers of the defenders before charging in from an unexpected direction with cavalry. Or, use your cavalry to steal the enemy's supplies and move in once the enemy have exhauseted their ammunition...or a combination of all three!

The AI is good enough to block flanking maneuvers (as well as attempt some itself) and reactive enough to make a feint tactic worthwhile, but not foolproof. That said, the AI does tend to emphasize infantry charges a bit more than would likely be efficient (but I guess that's not entirely inaccurate for the Confederacy, anyway). The tactical battles in this game are quite satisfying, and conducting your maneuvers just right to steal enemy supplies or encircle an enemy infantry unit is a great feeling.

The campaign does a good job of tieing all of the battles together, and inflicting heavy casualties on your enemies/capturing their supplies can greatly help you/harm them in the long run of the war (even though all battles play out in their historical order regardless of what happens in the battles).

Overall, this game offers a great and varied tactical wargaming experience at a very modest price. I highly recommend it.