AAR on American Civil War

[havoc1371]

I played with the Union as the AI in the whole war scenario till July 1863. Overall opinion of Matrix/Slitherine's Strategic Command: American Civil War is that it has merit as a game, but with issues. The AI is good enough to give you some competition while learning, but it has issues like the AI in the other SC games; it doesn't seem to be able to deploy special units properly, and often makes nonsensical moves with important units (like defending the line with HQ's and balloons). The strategic feel of the diplomatic issues and grand strategy does have a Civil War "feel" to it and I think would be interesting to players. The glaring issue is the disparity between units and the map scale. With only one unit per hex, the Eastern campaigns look more like WW I than the American Civil War. I think Matrix/Slitherine could somewhat salvage this by allowing units to stack, but with only the top unit in the hex able to attack and defend, allowing it to "swap" with other units in the stack and a lower action point cost than swapping with an adjacent hex. This would do a lot in bringing the "feel" of "point to point" warfare where opposing forces concentrated near a key town. Also, by only allowing one unit to attack or defend, you keep the mechanics of game battles as they are, but allowing the advantage of concentrating in a hex that multiple "in-hex" swapping gives in maintaining an attack. I would also change the reduction rules for settlements/town/cities that requires it be surrounded with "ZOC" before it starts reducing, to more accurately represent a "siege" I think two players could have a lot of fun playing the game if they are able to get over the mismatch of units to map scale, but they really need to fix this some way to prevent it from just being "okay" to play, and truly provide a historical representation of the American Civil War.