So I haven’t delved into grand tactician in a while, and wanted to see what state it was in.
1 AI is pretty aggressive in the first year of the war. Attacking everywhere, and with numbers equal to the Unions in most armies.
2 In the tactical battles, the AI does a decent job, but is prone to attacking your defenses head on, with little in the way of flanking attacks. Numerous times I set up troops to defend areas from possible flanking attacks, and just wound up redeploying them since there was no threat.
3 So after a few battles North of the Potomac that I defeated the CSA and had all crossings back across the river covered by armies, and fleets. The enemy is still able to magically retreat across the river at a ridiculous high speed and cross the Potomac back into Virginia as if nothing is there to stop them at all. If anything the Civil War was a war about river control, and using it stop movements across, and along the rivers. At Washington DC I had a fleet that didn’t do anything to stop a CSA army from crossing the Potomac to attack DC. So in effect, river fleets are useless, and river control is nonexistent. This for me is game breaking because so much of the Civil War was based on river control, and chokepoints on the rivers.
4 It seems there is no way to decisively entrap and destroy an army. Something like Vicksburg just doesn’t happen. The armies just magically retreat wherever they want after a defeat. They seem to be able to just sit indefinity behind the lines, despite being cut off from supplies. Heck one started building a supply depot in Gettysburg, despite not having any supply lines to begin with.
5. The decision and tech tree are well thought out, and gives the player numerous opportunities to change the decisions the CSA or Union made throughout the war. The problem is everything I detailed above, which means researching something like river iron clads is useless within the flawed framework of the campaign map gameplay.
This game seems like it is close to being good, but so far away the same time.
