After recently reviewing
Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle, a game which uses the same engine as
Gettysburg! and
Antietam!, I figured that if
Waterloo was an 'easy' game to figure out, these two would be downright impossible. Turns out that my fears were greatly wrong. Even a non-grognard like myself managed to pick up the titles in the
Civil War Collection quickly, and soon enough I was commanding the Union and the Confederacy around and having them blow the bits out of each other. The games walk the fine line between accuracy and playability, and end up being enjoyable to those who aren't hard core historical strategy buffs.
Sid Meier's Civil War Collection is a compendium of two games, plus a sort of bonus mini-game. The two full games are Sid Meier's Gettysburg! and Sid Meier's Antietam!, with South Mountain as the smaller 'bonus'. Both of the main titles have more than enough gameplay to last for days, and all together, the pack is practically inexhaustible in its entertainment value.
The best one to start with is the first (release-wise, not historically), Gettysburg!. After you complete the tutorials -- which aren't required, but are highly recommended -- you can choose to either engage in a number of stand-along scenarios, or attempt to play the entire battle. Instead of actually simulating the entire battle at once, however, Gettysburg! has you romping around throughout the different scenarios, tallying your progress as you go and changing the outcome as it progresses. You can play from either side, and the battle unfolds before your eyes as you command the troops around.
The interface is amazingly clean, and quite easy to get the hang of. You click on a unit, then drag with the left mouse button to show where you want them to move. Clicking on a set of buttons lets you choose their formation, and you can have them wheel around when they get to their location. Regiments automatically turn to face enemies if they're only being attacked by one group, however, so you don't have to be terribly anal about the directions that you point your units into. You can use commanders to move more than one regiment at a time, putting them all into various formations that can facilitate trouncing the enemy or quick progression down a road.
Every unit has a number of statistics about it -- the experience of the people in it, their morale, and their general effectiveness. Putting a unit in the woods will definitely help defensively, but it will lower the moving speed. You can hide infantry in wheat fields, which has a great strategic effect. And so on.
The scenarios range from the short and sweet to the long and drawn out, and vary just as much in their difficulty. It's certainly possible to 'win' Gettysburg! from either side, even if that's not what happened historically. Winning is done by counting victory points, which come from the destruction of units and the holding of strategic locations. This holding must be for an extended period of time -- if it keeps trading back and forth between the sides, the battles will continue until something more decisive happens. Battles generally centre on these locations, which is as it should be.
Sid Meier's Antietam! is basically a new location for the same game, although there are some subtle graphical improvements, such as the addition of more unique uniforms mentioned earlier. This time, the main campaign doesn't do small scenarios -- you end up simulating the whole battle at once. This requires considerably more machine than the small skirmishes do, but anything relatively modern shouldn't have much of a problem with the battle. You can also play separate scenarios instead of the grand campaign. Expect to get trashed if you play as the Confederates -- with a 3:1 manpower ratio against them, even the more experienced troops don't really stand a chance, especially if the Union side has free reign.
The South Mountain scenarios are not quite as detailed in their scope, but still entertaining, as you fight on the slopes in Maryland. There's good fun to be had here, too, just not as much as in the other two.
You can also play these games multiplayer over the Internet, although not many folk are still around playing these. Expect to spend a lot of time on a multiplayer battle as well -- these suckers aren't short.
