This is going to be an AAR of
Ultimate General: Civil War by Game-Labs. This is an
Early Access title that is still in development, so please bear with any bugs, problems and still missing features.
I'm going to play as Confederate States of America because... I can.
After the 1st two battles that serve as some kind of tutorial I'm thrown into the campaign. The campaign consists of a series of battles, where the "historical" ones need to be played in order to advance through the campaign and the "side missions" are optional.
Currently my army looks like this:
1 corps (with yours truly as commanding general), 1 division with 3 brigades, 2 infantry and 1 artillery. As can be seen all brigades are seriously understrength and need some manpower. You can also see that I currently have 42k $ and 3700 recruits. I also have 28 reputation points, which is the measure of my success as a general. If reputation gets too low the government may sack me. If I feel I have enough reputation I can spend it on better commanders and additional weapons.
The armory screen shows me the available weapons for my army, divided into weapons for infantry, skirmishers, cavalry and artillery.
The barracks screen shows officers currently available to command a unit and wounded officers. Sam Cabell, the commander of my artillery brigade has been wounded, I need to find some replacement for him.
And finally the career screen: here I can use career points (earned in battle) to improve certain things, like Training (cheaper veteran recruits) or Medicine (a percentage of the casualties are healed after a battle). A very important choice here is
Army Organization. The more points invested here the more corps/divisions/brigades can be used in battle. Also the number of men in a brigade increases with higher Army Organization. Reconnaissance is another very important point since it allows you to get an estimate of the forces opposing you prior to battle. You get a number of these point at the start of the campaign where you "create" your general depending on a few career choices.
I spend a career point in politics to get more money for recruits. More money is always good. I also spend 5 reputation points to appoint
James Archer to lead my 1st Division.
Both infantry brigades are increased to 1000 men with (expensive) veteran recruits. Those brigades I intend to use as my shock/elite forces. They are renamed the
1st Texas and
2nd Alabama brigade. The artillery brigade gets a new commander, the former division commander
Colonel Preston. Due to his rank the brigade is now eligible for an upgrade, I choose
logisitics (50% more ammo, 5% more efficiency). Last I recruit another infantry brigade, the
3rd Mississippi Reserve formed from rookies. This brigade will from the nucleus of my standard infantry: they will only receive rookie replacements and will have to fight with stuff not needed for the shock brigades. All infantry currently uses the
Springfield M1842 smoothbore musket. Finally I increase my artillery brigade to 7 guns. Since I'm running out of money I equip the brigade with (weak) 6 pounder field guns. And finally I buy some supply so I can resupply my troops with ammo from a supplies wagon. I've been told that running out of ammo during a battle is kinda not cool.
So much for the army building part of the game.
Now on to some fighting! Here we can see the campaign map. There is one historical battle (1st Bull Run) and one optional battle available for me at this time. I intend to play the latter one ("Battle for Newport") first.
I am ordered to defend the town of
Newport. I have 3 infantry brigades at my disposal, the enemy is supposed to come from the NW, N and NE. A friendly cavalry brigade (Stuart) has just arrived NE of my positions.
I will use it to scout, run down skirmishers and supply wagons and charge undefended artillery if possible. All of my infantry brigades have detached skirmishers with orders to advance to contact while the brigades will withdraw to the Northern part of Newport to form a defensive line there. Reconnaissance indicates I'm outnumbered but reinforcements are on their way.
Contact! I've spotted an infantry brigade, some skirmishers and artillery north of my position. I send Stuart on a quick raid into the enemy's flank, if that artillery isn't defended they're in for a nasty surprise in a few minutes.
Ooops... as Stuart's cavalry comes crashing through the forest they run headlong into some Union skirmishers! The cavalry starts cutting them to pieces when suddenly we spot infantry to the North, LOTS of infantry! Several brigades! Stuart manages to disengage and gallops South to join the main force. To the NE there are at least another 2 Union infantry brigades. This is gonna get tough...
A strong Union cavalry brigade tears into my left skirmishers while 2 infantry brigade push my center skirmishers back. And did I mention that there's A LOT of blue infantry coming down from the North? On a happy note: Stuart gets another brilliant (->suicidal) order to circle around the enemy's flank in order to silence the enemy artillery.
Just in time the Virginia militia arrives! Several brigades of infantry and artillery led by Johnston. I immediately order them to form into a front line South of the river. My skirmishers suffer heavy losses but they have succeeded with their main task: slowing down the enemy attack.
Stuart finally gets lucky and charges an enemy artillery brigade from behind!
On my left flank
Ewell's brigade has thrown back a union attack across the river. I now plan to order my leftmost brigades to attack the Union right flank, supported by an artillery brigade. The North and East front are held by 5 brigades in good cover, with artillery on my rightmost flank.
The battle is going well. We managed to roll up the Union right flank with
Bartow's and
Ewell's brigades while we held the center against all attacks. My cavalry managed to destroy another artillery brigade, but they suffered heavy losses in the process when they got chased down by the numerically superior Union cavalry.
Suddenly it is all over, as night falls the Union army starts to withdraw its forces.
VICTORY!
Not too bad. I need to be more careful with my cavalry but due to artillery fire from across half the map counting as "flanked from behind" which means cavalry ATM breaks just too easily while withdrawing.
Next stop: 1st Bull Run.