Ultimate General for Android

This is a very good Civil War game. My only criticism is the lack of customizing play. I'd very much like to select and place units to try different strategies. But no can do. I will still enjoy the game as is though.

This is a fantastic game that is tons of fun to play whether you are a strategy buff or a civil war buff (and I'm both.). There are some noticably absent things, though, that keep this game from attaining to greatness and I'm sorry the developer never implemented them because its a real shame. First, this game is screaming for a multiplayer feature. They would have seriously sold 3X the copies with it. Second, the AI is ultimately inadequate and once you have played the game enough to get to expert level its fairly easy to exploit. In fact playing the game at the highest diffuculties is all about repeatedly exploiting the AI in ridiculous and ahistorical ways. This can disrupt the realism when you handily slaughter an army three times your size not because of an ambush or good positioning but because you are doing wierd gamey things with your skirmishers that require you to constantly pause the game and make hundereds of clicks. Third, the campaign has an "arcade" style feel, where winning battles doesn't change the flow of the campaign or unlock new battles (for example, winning at gettysburg doesn't give you a chance to capture washington early.) Furthermore, on higher diffuculty levels, destroying the enemy army can actually be a bad thing because the computer just gets a free refill for the next battle whereas you lose more men by going all out. Because you need to win virtually every battle to survive the campaign, theres never a realistic situation where you try to retreat in good order and get your army out alive, nor does the computer ever try to retreat in good order- it will keep attacking you down to the last man even long after victory has become unattainable, which is part of what makes it so easy to wipe the computer out. Finally, its unrealistic to think that either side (especially the confederacy) could survive being completely wiped out in 4 major battles in a row. There are also some minor problems. A few of the fictional scenarios stretch the bounds of credulity (for instance, the union making an all out assault on a fortified richmond after it has already effectively won the war.) Secondly, the generals are all fully interterchangable, you can level them up differently but there is nothing that makes Lee or Grant inherently better leaders, which impacts the realism. Finally, the way that units break and reform repeatedly impacts realism and playability- a unit can rout and reform an unlimited and ridiculous number of times - the only way to "Break" a unit is to inflict 80% casualties, but real war a lot of units, especially green units, would realisticly flee the battlefield for a lot less. Also, the mechanics for forcing units to surrender are unclear and inconsistent and frustrating, and the skirmisher function is ridiculously easy to exploit. On the whole, the developers failure to add or correct these features make the game a great buy only for people like me who are really into strategy or the civil war.

The game is a work of art, normally this level of detail is reserved for PC games on Windows with Steam, but thank you to the developers for bringing this to Android, so worth every penny. It IS NOT difficult beyond the nromal learning curve of any new game, but a very rewarding experience. I hope they bring more of their games to Android.

Even though there are a lot of battles, can you please add more, whithout online play, it can become repetitious.

This game requires time to completely learn. By the way, there are many useful videos on Youtube! Sid Meier's Gettysburg is the top of the peak in my opinion, a standard tough to achieve, but this game comes very close to acheiving Mr. Meier's greatness. The game would be greatly enhanced by multiplayer and replay, but it doesn't take away from a very good game and a fine job by the develpers.