Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865) on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information

Take command of the Union or the Confederacy. Prepare your nation for war, recruit and organize great armies and fleets under legendary commanders like Grant, Lee, Jackson or Farragut, plan cunning maneuvers on an epic campaign map and defeat your enemies in real-time battles!

Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865) is a strategy, historical and rts game developed and published by Grand Engineer Corps.
Released on September 24th 2021 is available in English only on Windows.

It has received 2,150 reviews of which 1,637 were positive and 513 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.4 out of 10. 😊

The game is currently priced at 44.99€ on Steam.


The Steam community has classified Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865) into these genres:

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865) through various videos and screenshots.

System requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 64bit
  • Memory: 6 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 2 GB
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 10 GB available space
  • Sound Card: supported

User reviews & Ratings

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Dec. 2024
I recommend this game along with its DLC Whiskey & Lemons. Lets talk about the positives. This game has a massive map spanning from Texas to Maine just about which for some could be a positive or negative as it could be overwhelming. This is a large game and by that standard yes the whole game could be for players who are newer to Grand Strategy games. You have ultimate control over EVERYTHING. From building up your navy to naming the individual regiments within the game. For any total war players out there its a mix between a total war game and Hearts of Iron. Playing real time 3D battles is pretty fun and can be challenging no matter what side you decide to play as. As the Union you can't go into a campaign expecting to steam roll the rebels but as the CSA you can't underestimate the power and might of the Union Army and Navy. In this game your actions have consequences. If you decide to auto-resolve a battle it could be the difference between winning the war or losing it just like real life. It has a good research system and even with about 1,000 hours I still don't know exactly how the economy works. I do love getting to decide what rifles I want to give to who etc. It's pretty much Ultimate General Civil War, HOI4, and Total war. The Whiskey & Lemons DLC is very very fun. Getting to start out as a officer of a small regiment and climbing your way through the ranks is very enjoyable. Your actions can negatively affect the way your men look at you and it adds more a bit more to the game... Do i think you should buy this full price???? No. Wait to get it on sale and get the DLC with it trust me you'll save a More money that way. Now onto the negatives. This game is one of those trial and error kind-of-games. It takes a lot just to do one campaign. The enemy and friendly AI can be, well, brain dead. But in other times you'll find yourselves scrambling to do something about the enemy force. This game is also complicated. If you're a veteran of these games you'll have a better time than someone who wants to throw themselves in the deep-end. There are bugs which I haven't came across but am aware about and recently the developers have decided to move on from this game so take that as you will. If you have further questions let me know in the comments and I'll gladly respond.
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Oct. 2024
It is a great game with an enormous amount of potential. The career mode and character creation are fantastic. There are some problems with the economy and research, and AI needs some work but it is a really good game on the whole. I was very excited for this but the Devs don't seem to be updating it anymore.
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Sept. 2024
I enjoy the game. It has far more strengths than weaknesses. Perhaps the most frustrating for the hard core strategic war gamers is the inability to verify the economics mechanics are working as intended and that the game may not even allow for enough time for those mechanics to have a meaningful effect. But, the vast playground and openness to do as you want more than makes up for its limitations. If you just want to fight pre-determined and historical battles along a linear path, there are other games that may be more appealing to you. Those who have the time and are willing to invest it in can mitigate most of the game's limitations with relatively simple modding, while recognizing the potential consequences in terms of balance and historical feel. Comparatively, the game offers the freedom to plot the course of whichever side you are playing like AgeOd's Civil War while providing the option to fight the battles in the Diet Total War graphics that have become more common today. There are very few public mods (I only know of one), but the game is extremely moddable in terms of how things are calculated. For some, if not many casual gamers, this one might be complicated or at least more time intensive to do well than games like Ultimate General Civil War, but it is far simpler and more casual-friendly than Gary Grigsby's Pacific War type games.
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Sept. 2024
What can I say about this other then it is a far superior product then Ultimate General in every aspect. It follows the battles YOU fight. So...if you move down South and fight Bull Run and destroy the rebel scum? Well, that actually matters! You may not fight historical battles now. You'll be fighting the war in how YOU'VE been playing. Not how it actually happened. You can equip your men, deploy them and go cav, infantry, artillery with much more flexibility. As for the battle itself? Slow, but thats taken into account with x2, x5 and x20. You can shatter the entire enemy morale and win a battle, even being outnumbered. The AI does need some work but it has shown improvement. In defense battles, I will dig in and form a line that they can't break and instead of following the quickest route to the objective as they used to do...they'll skirt around to another avenue of attack and I'll need to shift my forces to counter. Nice. The economy aspect is...well trash. Easily. I've found much more enjoyment in modding the game and removing the economy aspect. The military is where its at. The surrender mechanic REALLY needs improvement though. I shouldn't be able to sorround an enemy army...5 to 1 and they route and run THROUGH my line of Union blue. All in all: This is one of the best Civil War games out there, 2nd only to Sid Meier's: Gettysburg!
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Aug. 2024
This is the BEST American Civil War game I have ever played, and I have played a lot of them (starting in the 1970's before they were on computers). There are quite a few idiots who have given this game bad reviews over the years. I think I encountered about 1 in 9 who had good points; but even in that case, the guy had played the game for like 250 hours (so I think you could say he must have got his money's worth even IF he doesn't intend to play it anymore). This game is NOT easy. This game is NOT a quick fix. There is a steep learning curve and it has very little of the standard sickly sweet putrescence which is so common in modern games which deal with war. Nor is it full of "Gotcha!" mechanics in which the bot opponent gets special favors and that is the primary source of challenge in the game. This game has been made by people who must be fairly expert in the subject matter, considered very broadly. I would say that they have played at least as many ACW and war games in general as I have which is scores of them if not close to 100. It seems clear that the developers of this game have put their love into this game and it is a pinnacle of beauty, elegance and complexity. Not to say it is perfect and I'm even still hesitant to call it a "masterpiece;" but it is a contender and I honestly don't know enough about it yet to deem it that. NOT recommended if you do not have the patience and fortitude to learn. (Original review at ~45 hours of play on ~19 Aug 2024) -=-=-=- ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: After playing the game for 94 hours I can say that my initial assessment was solid: the game is the best American Civil War game I have ever played. It is of course not perfect. There are some deficiencies and oversights in the core design, and given it is a single player game in which the computer opponent is the source of challenge it is inherently lacking in some respects compared to play against human opponents. But playing against human opponents always has its downsides too. I will recommend playing the game on Easiest settings first and with default settings. I recommend against using ahistorical settings (such as picking alternate starting policies for the Confederacy) as this seems to be a source of bizarre behavior by the Union opponent. You've got to play it for quite a bit to get a sense for it but if after 20 or 30 hours it seems too easy, then restart with harder settings. I did not finish my first campaign because of the aforementioned bizarre effects of using ahistorical starting settings. Below is a a bit of an AAR from my second campaign, which I think will prove to be a long and satisfying one: This game manages to capture the dynamic and unpredictable nature of ACW operations and tactics more than any other game I've ever played. Aug 1861, BG Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah is my heavy hitter in the Alexandria area. Has won at least one Major victory and a couple Minors. The Yanks were kinda beat up in that area (even though they are sitting on top of Nashville right now as my Cumberland Region Corps get their shit together). So Johnston made a bold move in late July and invaded. Defeated someone on the north side of the Potomac in the D.C. suburbs and I was then going to withdraw. But then a couple three Yank Corps managed to catch him and the battle was on the map with Pierce's Mill (which the game seems to love to set as the strategic objective). Long story short: I moved south on Day 1 to try to wrap around Pierce's Mill, Lee on the right flank (and on the other side of the river), Beauregard in the middle, and Longstreet further southwest, also on the opposite side of the river, and then Bragg with the arty behind Beau. When the morning of Day 2 came, my skirmishers I had out to harass the forces the Union had on the eastern side of the river near Beauregard opened fire immediately. But Yank Bot has re-positioned over night and was clearly gonna make a push into my middle at Beau (between Longstreet and Lee). This obviously was a very bad situation for me which was quickly made worse by Thomas' Corp showing up just to the northwest. I have managed to wrangle a Minor Victory out of it, but took more casualties than I would have liked, ammo is low and I'm outnumbered at least 3:2 if not worse, so . . . time to retreat over night I think. VERY rarely does a game with computer opponents as the challenge manage to capture that sort of emergent dynamic in which you take some risks, and the opponent response appropriately making you pay costs you did not intend to sustain and putting you at risk of catastrophe. That to me is the ESSENCE of the first year or two of the eastern theater of the ACW and it is amazing that it can be captured at all in a game.
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Steam data 30 March 2025 00:11
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Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865)
7.4
1,637
513
Online players
120
Developer
Grand Engineer Corps
Publisher
Grand Engineer Corps
Release 24 Sep 2021
Platforms