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Too out of date...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I was looking for a cheap game that would hopefully give me a few hours of entertainment. This was not the right choice...way too out of date.

Great game, hope to see future advanced release

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

* The game's control lets you focus on the strategy, not keyboad typing or mouse moving. So you can enjoy more in virtual commanding.

* Out of my experience in playing all kinds of civil war games, dos or win, this is the best (the whole collection).

* Of course it has room to improve to increase the enjoyments:
- General quick attention (1~9 are not enough)
- Variants of brigade format: surrounding format, for example
- F1 map overview scrollable
- Mini map for quick locating or pointing to move troops, and points of fighting or attention
- Brigade charge function
- Commanding by bugle
- Bridges grouping
- More division or corp level commands
- Location bookmarks for quick checking
- Commander replacing or switching or promotion or demotion
- General review info
- etc

It is a fun game and makes you feel like a general

1/2... Relive the Civil War in your PC

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: July 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Ready your regiments, perch the artillery high up over those hills yonder... Sid Meier's "Civil War Collection" is a compilation of the series brought forth from the groundbreaking Sid Meier's "Gettysburg!". Esteemed programmer and game designer Sid Meier created a classic with "Gettysburg!" with it's historically accurate gameplay and fine graphics. Choose whether you will command the Union or Confederate armies to glory or infamy. Learn and experience what it's like to be a Civil War General: familiarize yourself with terrain, tactics, arms, uniforms, etc. You will learn how to deal and triumph with the ruminations of mid 19th-Century warfare, with all the intricacy of it's details and challenges.

"Gettysburg!" is broken down into different scenarios from the actual battle. The nice touch of the game is that the result of each scenario you play will affect the course of the battle. Want to better Marse Robert? Then you'll have to win each scenario or if not most of them. You'll get to witness being involved in historical encounters like Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, the Devil's Den, and many more. Playing Pickett's Charge is a delight, and will enlighten one even via computer screen the horror and heartbreak those valiant Southerners underwent. One can also have the choice of choosing the "Historical" version of the battle, which will accurately situate the battles as they actually occured; and the "Variant" option, which will randomly position units and scenarios across different areas of the battlefield, adding units or subtracting from those that actually participated, offering endless replayability for the gamer. One can also decide to play different scenarios from the battle alone and even choose the size of the contest one wants to play if the grognard doesn't feel like playing the entire battle. And with a competent AI who will parry your every move and exploit your slip should you falter, then you're all set. A nice tutorial will assist the beginner, while a good story of the battle with maps will inform the reader on how the battle actually occured historically.

"Gettysburg!" also includes videos of re-enactors portraying scenes from the end of a day of battle; if you had a good day, a festive group of talented thespians in historic garb will be feasting, relating the days successes by the fireside to joyful period music; if one's tactical faculties were a bit dulled, the result would be a group of moping men bemoaning the battle's unfortunate turn of events.

"South Mountain!" and "Antietam!" are from the same game engine, and will be immediately familiar to a veteran of "Gettysburg!". There are some differences, like the uniforms are more detailed, and for "Antietam!", one can play the entire battle in the same number of hours it happened historically. They also include the text of Ezra Carman's detailed and exhaustive narrative of the battles.

The downside of the series is it's age and the improvements needed, particularly for "South Mountain!" and "Antietam!". The graphics, as good as they are, creak with the passing of time. "South Mountain!" and "Antietam!" could use good AI co-management, for trying to control each and every unit in a large battlefield is like trying to grasp a handful of water in a shower. And the game needs a good revamp for ongoing computer changes, like the one for Windows XP and it's Service Pack 2.

Enjoyable, thrilling, frustrating, and challenging, the "Civil War Collection" is the best in the market. A landmark in gaming and RTS wargaming for PC, it has yet to be surpassed in the genre.

CWC- Gettsburg! and Antietam! work on WinXP(SP2)

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: June 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A complete set of instructions to allow Gettysburg! and Antietam! to be fully functional on Windows XP (Service Pack 2) can be found at http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewforum.php?f=8

This should re-assure buyers of this software package that their investment in this purchase will not be wasted, and that CWC is as playable now as the individual titles were when they were introduced.

True classics...

VG game, needs a major overhaul for XP

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 24 / 24
Date: March 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love Sid Meier's games. I had never played Gettysburg before but have always been fascinated by the battle. I picked up the Civil War Collection for under $20 the other day and have been both exhilarated and significantly disappointed with it.

First, the exhilarating stuff:

The gameplay is very interesting and can be extremely challenging. I've been playing RTS games for years, including AoE, AoK, AoKTC, Empire Earth, Empires: DMW, RoN, AoM and a couple of others. Gettysburg is refreshing compared these games because your sole focus is fighting (no economy to micro-manage) and the fighting is far more historically accurate than other RTS games in terms of the use of formations, flanking attacks, morale and line of sight.

Take note that another recent review has stated some things that aren't correct: Brigade commanders can move regiments at the Double-Quick simply by pressing "Q" while the Commander is selected, and while the units are already moving to a destination. Also incorrect is the assertion that cannon do not fire "canister" rounds at close range. This element of game design is transparent, but it is noted in the manual that all cannon (especially Napoleon batteries) do more damage from close range than from a distance - in order to simulate the use of canister rounds by intelligent artillery officers, so no need to micro-manage this.

Second, the not so good stuff:

The game is now 8 years from original release, and it shows in ways that are crucial to the player's ability to actually play it. Most players are using Windows 2000 or XP these days, and the Antietam and South Mountain add-on games don't actually work fully on XP. There is no sound for the add-ons, which is a shame because they are actually newer code than the original Gettysburg is. Of course, Firaxis has a "patch" that "allows" the Windows XP platform to run the game, but the patch is incomplete and there are still major issues with the game as a result. For instance, one can't see the name of saved games when trying to reload an ongoing battle! Also, there are issues with map scrolling which cripple enjoyment of the game. Specifically, after loading up the game and playing the first scenario of the day, you cannot continue to the next scenario in sequence because the map will not scroll at all. So you are forced to shut down CWC and restart it to get the scrolling screen back. This is VERY annoying.

I've tested these issues on two completely different XP machines over the last week, and it is a consistent problem with both with a default install of the game (default directories, etc.). The game is broken; perhaps because of a DirectX incompatibility (I have 9.0c (latest version) on both XP systems.

So, very good game with major bugs for XP users. If you're still running Windows 98, go ahead and get it. Sid, please have Firaxis fix/update this game!

Game play and historic accuracy poor

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 12
Date: March 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game play is clumsy. For example, if your units are all bunched together, trying to select a specific brigade is difficult. You may click on a unit of that brigade, but for some reason, it doesn't select the brigade. Secondly, selecting a brigade commander is supposed to allow you to move all units in that brigade at once. That works - except your brigade commander doesn't have the option to move your units 'double quick', so you end up needing to move each brigade separately if you want them to get to their destination quickly.

The historic accuracy of the game might be there as far as the landscape and units available, but as far as how the units were deployed, it fails miserably. For example, in the pickett's charge scenario, the confederacy starts very close to the union and the union army is not dug in (what happened to the stone wall that protected the union forces which Longstreet used as one of his main reasons not to attack? He reminded Lee that the confederates had one a battle in the past because they were protected by a similar wall). Even in the intro, it says the confederacy needs to march 1 mile to reach the union (this is false - in reality they had to march 2 miles). In the real battle, the confederacy were slaughtered long before they reached the union - part way along the march, they had to get over a fence, which bunched up their forces and made them especially vulnerable to union cannon - none of this is reflected in the game.

By distorting such crucial strategic points, they can not hope to claim that this in anyway puts you in a true historic battle. One may dismiss these descrepencies, but these strategic points are exactly why one side or the other succeeds.

Speaking of cannon, there is very little variety - cannon at the time, if they did any research for this game, would show everything from grapeshot to cannister. The game doesn't offer any options for what to fire.

I don't understand these other reviews that give so many stars to the game. Its clumsy and historically inaccurate. Maybe the other reviewers are so desperate to finally have someone pay attention to their hobby by making a civil war game that they are incapable of reviewing it critically.

A Patch for Windows 2000 and XP

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: February 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

There is a download available at the firaxis.com website to allow Civil War to run on Win2K and XP.

best civil war game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: July 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Although I heven't played any other civil war game I can safetly say that this one is the best.Getteysburg provides over 20 scenareos and tons of scenareo combonations.It's also nice because you controll the whole army and don't control one guy that can take tons more hits than the enamy like you see in so many other games.One of my favorate parts is that in addition to playing scenareos you can play the whole battle of Gettysburg or Antedam at once.The only bad parts are that in Antedam you do not have the choice of playing certain scenareos like The Corn Field or Burnsides Bridge.Also that you can't move an entire division or corp without selecting indivisual brigades and moving them.Over all I really like it though .Of course I'm a civil war buff so I would like it alot but I still think that you should get it.

Excellent Civil War Package!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 17
Date: July 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This set is a must for the Civil War buff and the gamer who likes historically-based games!

With real-time strategy, you are attacking and defending while the computer is doing the same thing. In my humble opinion, this is more entertaining and realistic than the turn-based games.

Both Gettysburg and Antietam offer several scenarios of two categories: historical (your chance to replay and perhaps change the outcome of what actually happened in the battles) and speculative (a chance to play and win "what if" scenarios that did not happen in the battles, i.e.- one Gettysburg scenario has Stonewall Jackson present - an interesting scenario indeed!).

The graphics for both battles are excellent. Since I have visited both battles several times, I was readily able to identify terrain features for both battles.

The player is also allowed to choose either North and South and the level of difficulty - in my opinion, these are excellent features.

Buy and enjoy the set! Highly recommended!

Reply to Trenton NJ

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: June 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

My husband loves these games...but couldn't get them to work when we upgraded our computer. Go to www.firaxis.com, then choose DOWNLOADS at top of the page. There is a download for the civil war games to make them compatible to Windows XP. The Gettysburg game we still get an error message, but if you choose to run it from the Programs menu, it's fine. Good luck!

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