MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY

A complete, comprehensive, fine-grained AND playable simulation of the American Civil War has been one of wargaming’s most elusive holy grails for some thirty-odd years, and while many titles have gotten some aspects of that stupendous conflict right, and many others have achieved excellence in treating the individual battles and campaigns, very few have managed to incorporate all the major elements of the conflict into a single package that is both historically accurate in its details, AND addictively playable. I used to wonder why, if Grigsby. et. al, could cram the whole Russian Front into one monitor screen, it was so hard for designers to simulate a conflict only fifteen per cent as large. One answer, obviously, is that “politics” (of the internal variety) played little part on the Eastern Front: Hitler or Stalin ordered “Go there, do this!” and, lo, it was done…or at least attempted, by those unfortunate enough to draw the job; no questions asked. In mid-19th Century America, it was a wee bit more complicated… Narrow-minded politics and tunnel-vision fanaticism consistently influenced military affairs, often to the costly detriment of soldiers on both sides.

I never considered myself a “Civil War buff” until I began work on the North Carolina trilogy, in about 1984, and it didn’t take long until I was soaking up facts and lore like a sponge – now I get paid (albeit not much and far too seldom) to give speeches about the topic. I found it so compelling, so comparatively easy to write about, that I continued to wonder why, exactly, that historical event has proven so difficult for game designers to get right – at least all the grand strategic, all-inclusive level.

The subject matter, God knows, is perennially popular. Every American generation seems predestined to revisit the conflict and re-interpret various aspects of it from their contemporary perspective. And yet, partly for that very reason, the Civil War remains, for the most-written-about war in our history, a little slippery and facets of it are always shifting in and out of focus, depending on the sensibilities and scholarly/emotional agendas each generation brings new perceptions of it, at least in part, because it’s become dissatisfied with the previous generations’ certainties. That could well be the underlying reason, albeit a fairly subtle and hard-to-quantify one, why it’s been so hard for four-decades worth of wargamers to reach a consensus on what constitutes “The Great American Civil War simulation”. Like “The Great American Novel”, it remains as elusive and abstract goal, yet it brings out the best thinking, the deepest feelings, and most passionate energies in everyone who tries his hand at it – the titles that manifest such extremes of commitment cannot be regarded as “bad” games; more often they qualify, with regret on the part of those whose job it is to evaluate them in reviews, as “noble failures”.

Although many reviewers really wanted to embrace it, and invested large amounts of time trying to do so, the consensus about the most recent grand-scale Civil War title, Forge of Freedom, seems to have been just that; it was another "noble failure." And the primary reason was because the emotional power of the subject – that old tingle-down-the-spine factor – as cumulatively suffocated by a mass of detail so daunting that absorbing all its well-intentioned pedantry left most players too numb to give a damn WHO won the Battle of Bumbershoot, Tennessee, once they reached the combat stage....

So for war game designers, the American Civil War remains a metaphorical Mt. Everest. Few games (I almost said “no game”, but then I remembered a couple of hugely ambitious titles that were defeated not by bad design concepts, but because the technology, at the time those projects were developed, simply couldn’t realize their creators’ visions; those are “noble failures” in a special, but select, niche, already tantalizing footnotes in the history of electronic gaming), however detailed or well-intentioned, have managed to find that elusive balance between historical accuracy, alternate history plausibility, and the kind of hypnotic, One-More-Turn entertainment value that lured us to PC games in the first place (and have devoured, by my calculations fully nine per cent of my adult life, putting this “hobby” far ahead of the next two contenders, grooving on classical music and indulging in good, sweaty sex.) ((At least, at my age, the latter pastime is no longer anything but an occasional grace-note appended to an extravagantly debauched youth…)).

But a new landmark has arisen, and I’m here to sound the trumpets on its behalf.

Quelle surprise! From a relatively new French developer, AGEOD (no, it’s not an exotic mineral formation that turns bright green under a black light; it stands for “Athena Games Entertainment Online Distribution”), comes a serious contender, in my opinion, for Strategy Game of the Year. And it may also be the best Grand Strategic simulation of the Civil War ever devised. It combines a blessedly intuitive – yet actually rather complex – interface, marvelous depth-of-play, a compelling sense of epic drama, and a handsome, distinctive look that is also cunningly designed to add to the “period” atmosphere (the colors, textures, and slightly grainy shading is more than a little reminiscent of a Currier & Ives print).