Sid Meier's Antietam!

DEVELOPER : Breakaway Games
PUBLISHER : Firaxis

 

System Requirements Pentium 200 Mhz, 32 MB RAM

Recommended Pentium II 350MHz, 128+ MB RAM, 8 Megs Video card

Ratings
Code Issues Graphics: 7 Sprite based allows a great deal of unit detail, beautiful map Audio: 6 Unobtrusive, effective Interface: 9 Every single command has a hotkey, making control a breeze.	Play Issues Solo Gameplay: 8 An AI that feels human, and an ability to control not just the computer opponent’s “quality” but also their aggressiveness and tactical tendencies Replayability: 8 A host of mini scenarios as well as the full battle, a random battle generator but oddly, no editor? Multi-player: 8 LAN, TCP/IP, modem play all supported, the ability to have multiple corps commanders on a side makes this an interesting option for multiplayer Learning Curve: 8 very quickly learned
Other/Notes Documentation 10 Fantastic documentation, including unpublished material from the Library of Congress, also included as HTML on the cd for casual reading.  I wish more games did this. Pros: Great overall feel – an accurate Civil War game, yet reachable for non-Civil War fans. Cons:  Narrow focus might put off non Civil War fans, no editor. Other: +.2 for their packaging – in the “why didn’t anyone else think of that” category, as far as I can tell, they’re the first to sell a game using the standard DVD packaging – smallish plastic case will be a welcome space saver on my shelf of giant gameboxes filled with air. Please also see the National Park Service page on the Antietam Battlefield: http://www.nps.gov/anti/home.htm Overall: 9.0

When I first opened up Sid Meier’s Antietam, I was a little nervous.  When Sid had turned his prodigious talents to Civil War games with Gettysburg, everyone had been very impressed.  Antietam, while ostensibly still a “Sid Meier Game” is pretty much just that – a license that’s been handed off to Breakaway Games for the follow-on sequel.  Which, honestly, made me a skeptic.  Could it be as good, as visceral, as Gettysburg had been?

Antietem is the name of what has been called “America’s bloodiest battle”, where Union General George McClellan finally stirred from his inexplicable torpor and lunged at the Confederate forces arrayed before him.  Taking place on 17 September, 1862, more than 120,000 Americans (40,000 Confederates against 80,000 Union) struggled against each other in places that have become monuments in history – Bloody Lane, Miller’s Cornfield, Dunkard Church and otherwise forgettable places where men fought, struggled, and died for their beliefs.

It was originally a fairly neat plan, involving an attempted envelopment around the Confederate left (or a feint there toward, depending on which historical source you’re reading), but it turned into a slugfest as units all along the line were drawn into combat.  Antietam became a grinding and bloody battle of attrition in what would become classic Civil War style, where units were hurled forward only to disintegrate moments later in a fusillade of Minie Balls and grapeshot.  

When the long day had ended, one might have called it a Union victory.  But as a victory, it was Pyrrhic.  More than 23,000 casualties – nearly ten times as many American casualties as in the Normandy Invasion -  (complete stats at http://www.nps.gov/anti/casualty.htm) remained as the Confederate forces pulled back into Virginia.  Lee’s failure to follow up would prevent Great Britain’s recognition of the CSA as a state, and Lincoln took the opportunity to issue the famed Emancipation Proclamation, giving what had hitherto been a struggle over states’ rights a moral dimension that changed the character of the war forever.

The game Antietam! is a real time grand tactical simulation of the battle.  The units are regiments and brigades, the scale ranging from the intimacy of the East Woods to the complete battle from Sharpsburgh to Dunkard Church.  It uses the Gettysburg engine, and benefits from the patches and stability of the mature code.

When starting the game, you have the advantage of a very effective tutorial, focusing narrowly on the day’s opening probes in and around the East Woods with infantry and artillery.  Despite the historical anachronism, I could imagine that it would have been a slightly better learning experience with at least one or two units of cavalry as well..  If you didn’t play Gettysburg though, no fear: it will quickly teach you the basics of unit handling and issuing commands.

You have several options about just how you want to approach Antietam.  The whole battle is laid out in mini scenarios, each representing an important segment of the battle (either chronologically or geographically).  Of course, you can choose to play the whole battle as well, although I would strongly advise against it until you’ve mastered the art of handling the units.  Of course you can play either as the CSA (Confederate) or Union armies, and have the option of choosing the actual dispositions or one of many historical variants.  You can also control some of the elements of play by the AI,  selecting that it be prudent or aggressive, stupid or smart.  Finally, if you’ve tired of playing through the tons of mini scenarios, and the challenge of managing the massive full-battle scenarios has begun to pale they have even included a complete random scenario generator for the ultimate in fog of war.  With this, you feel much like a real life commander, complete with goals, troops, and no idea of the enemy’s dispositions.

Orders are issued very simply – clicking on a unit will allow you to give it movement orders (click & drag) or formation-changes, with the predicted results (i.e. future position or formation) ghosted onto the map.  This is useful for the smaller battles, but when managing a behemoth like Antietam it quickly becomes unwieldy (despite the ability to issue orders while paused – a nonetheless critically useful addition). 

Therefore, it is particularly useful that for these larger-scale conflicts, similar movement or formation change orders can be issued to the brigade commanders.  When these commanders are the order focus, their subunits all act as a team, forming battle lines, double lines, maneuver columns or march columns in groups.  Even on the smaller battles the ability to maneuver in large formations is important, as critical morale bonuses are available to units shoulder-to-shoulder with their brigade elements.

Artillery are particularly well handled (in Gettysburg they were broadly generalized into only a couple different types) with differentiations for range and effect for everything from Parrot Rifles to Napoleons.  Note that artillery units are not attached to brigades – they are independent units.  Upper level commanders do have the ability to “gather artillery”- a useful shorthand for a common command, allowing the player with a single button to form grand batteries.

Surprisingly there is no implementation of command delay.  Units take time to move into position or change formation of course, but immediately begin these actions at the player’s say-so.  With the confusion and chaos of the Civil War battlefield, and the very small timescale of some of the mini scenarios, I would have expected at least an option button for a delay in order implementation by brigades and units.  Historically, I think this was a not-insignificant factor in some battles.  As it is, your troops are amazingly flexible and responsive – as long as you happen to see what’s going on around them (an important limiting factor).  Interestingly, something on this order IS however implemented for the AI.  In Gettysburg, the AI was ultra-responsive, brutally so.  Launch an advance, and enemy units (especially enemy artillery) would happily and instantly change targets and collectively annihilate your troops.  Now, according to the designer notes, there’s an AI “governor” algorithm between planning and implementation.   The computer may recognize that an assault is coming, but units aren’t always freely able to respond.  This makes playing against the computer feel much more like playing against a human.

Once the action is joined, everything seems to happen at once.  Units drive forward and retreat with staggering frequency.  The cannons wheel into place, load canister and discharge into the lines of men, brutally checking an enemy assault.  As the battle wears on, replacements appear and are tossed into the cauldron, usually pell-mell as reserves melt away.

As a mainly turn-based gamer, I had some trouble with this. In the first few games I found myself hitting Pause frequently, although  I felt somehow that this was a betrayal of the immediacy of the event.  After a half dozen games though, I was confident enough in the orders I’d issued to sit back and watch events develop.  I’d strongly recommend to turn-based devotees: don’t necessarily pass this title by because it’s “real time”.  I found that  in most cases the real time structure is in this game functionally realistic – it more effectively simulates the limits of the commander’s (your) strategic focus than any artificial mechanism of ‘command points’ or suchlike.

Units are represented by surprisingly detailed sprites (you can tell the Iron Brigade from normal Union troops, and the Confederates are clad in a motley collection of butternut and brown).  The number of “men” shown in a unit visibly decreases as the unit is whittled down through fire, melee, and desertion. 

Fire volume and effectiveness is represented numerically and graphically, so you can tell which regiments are pouring fire onto the enemy and who is sitting on their thumbs.  This graphic is dynamic, with occasional sharp-shooting only rating a thin red arrow (20) and canister cannon fire into close-by troops in enfilade a huge thick red line (200+).

The sound is better than average, with the occasional “We’ll get it back General!” when you have suddenly lost a victory location, as well as the obligatory repertoire of cannon and rifle fire, cavalry, etc.  It would have been nice to have the sound stop when the game was paused, however.  The music is pretty good, and not terribly repetitive.

The Civil War has been gamed extensively, and the designers didn’t venture into these waters unprepared.  They appear to have thought a lot of about what they were trying to do. In the issuance of orders, you have a great deal of flexibility.  As mentioned in the designer’s notes, the game is designed to pull you into the action at an appropriate level.  Therefore you don’t really have to order your units when to fire or at whom; it’s assumed your regimental commanders are bright enough to understand and deal with their situations.  Your goal, as overall commander, is to employ your troops effectively and it that sense it really becomes a game of movement and timing. 

And what a game it is.  I was initially going to complain about the unforgiving pace (the speed slider notwithstanding, it’s hard to keep an eye on what’s going on everywhere at once, and I wasn’t too fond of the fact that whenever you leave ‘paused’ you start at normal full speed).  That is, until I did a little historical research.  Reading the “Illustrated History of the Great Rebellion” written as a serial on or about 1870 with many eyewitness accounts of the battles, I developed a great deal of respect for the efforts of the designers in historical verisimilitude.   It’s hard to believe how quickly the action in the game is, until you read from firsthand observers that the entire scenario you just played in a half-hour (without pauses) took only 30 minutes in real life!  Suddenly, the seeming-compression of events was to me not a hindrance, but an asset.

A valuable look at the action is available from the after-action reports and graphics, showing you graphically what happened, unit “blocks” moving to contact, taking fire and disintegrating into a mob before your very eyes.  Complete casualty stats are also available.  Furthermore, the game names awards certain formations by naming them “most effective” and “hardest fighting” (my interpretation of this last is that it got it hammered repeatedly).

Sid Meier’s Antietam is very much a worthy successor to Gettysburg – from the engaging and immerse gameplay, to the comprehensive history on the CD (a previously unpublished work from the archives of the Library of Congress).  Even the map on which you play – a reproduction of a post war survey – is educational and quite interesting.   For me, Antietam started as a chaos of too many things happening at once.  Importantly, however, I should note that it was never the game itself that was confusing (I couldn’t imagine a more completely hotkeyed command set).  I’ve said in many reviews that what I like in a wargame is its ability to put me in the position to make realistic (as opposed to game-based) decisions.  In that, and in many other ways, Antietam succeeds with flying colors.  By the time I’d played through the tutorial and a scenario or two, I was confident in my ability to stay on top of the information and manage the battlefield.  Besides that, it was fun!  Whether I was any good at it or not, well, that’s not the subject of the review, is it?

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Reviewed by Steve Lieb