UNION (American Civil War) by Joni Nuutinen
LINKS:
⊕ Play Store
⊕ Amazon
⊕ free turn-limited at Amazon
⊕ local turn-limited APK to to sideload
You are the commander of the Union armies during the most pivotal moment in American history. As you survey the vast front line stretching from the eastern coastline to the wild west, you are faced with crucial decisions at every turn. Do you prioritize raising new infantry corps to bolster your forces? Do you rely more heavily on the power of gunboats and artillery to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies? Or do you take a more strategic approach, constructing a comprehensive transportation network with railways, locomotives, and riverboats to optimize the logistics of your military machine?
⊕ Taking place from: 1861-07
⊕ Map size: 3000 = 60 x 50 hexagons
⊕ Specials: Switch Ammo Depots ON/OFF (playing with ammo requires long-term planning). Gold based resource/logistics management: Raise infantry corps, manage railways, riverboats, gunboats, artillery.
⊕ Released: 2023-03
WELCOME:
Imagine for a moment that you are the commander of the Union armies during the most pivotal moment in American history-the Civil War. Your mission is clear: conquer the cities held by the rebellious Confederacy and reunite a nation torn apart by strife. As you survey the vast front line stretching from the eastern coastline to the wild west, you are faced with critical decisions at every turn. Do you prioritize raising new infantry corps to bolster your forces? Do you rely more heavily on the power of gunboats and artillery to strike fear? Or do you take a more strategic approach, constructing a comprehensive transportation network with railways, locomotives, and riverboats to optimize the logistics of your military machine? Though the road ahead may be long and treacherous, you have the strength, the will, and the determination to see this through. The fate of a nation hangs in the balance, and it is up to you to make the tough choices that will shape the course of history!
VICTORY CONDITIONS: The game is over when either side controls all the cities.
AMMO DEPOTS: There are two completely different playing modes that have their own Hall of Fame listings. With Ammo Depots turned ON, the player must build, maintain, and transport around ammo depots, that are required for the units to attack and for the artillery and gunboat units to launch a barrage. Playing with ammo depots requires more long-term planning and consumes more gold, and therefore the Hall of Fame separates the scores based on the ammo depot status. Please note that turning Ammo Depots ON or OFF from Settings only applies to the game started AFTER changing the option.
GOLD. The amount of gold in your resource pool (instantly available for purchases). If the TRANSPORT GOLD option is turned on, the player must slowly transport gold that emerges from the tax locations to the key cities that take in gold. The cities that take in gold will have several yellow circles around them whenever a moveable gold unit is selected. Purchases with gold happen either via the gold-menu at the bottom of the screen or via the action-menu when a general is selected.
QUICK TIPS:
Locomotives and riverboats can transfer troops, artillery, ammo depots, gold, etc. by going into the same hexagon and selecting LOAD. Zooms buttons (Z) are located on upper-left corner.
Unit markings: Lower left corner shows HPs (Hit Points), upper left corner shows the number of MPs (move points), right side has several type of markings: warnings on red, attached resources on white, ground information (what is hidden beneath the unit icon) is marked on green.
Combat core concepts: adjacent units critically support each other in battle; encircling is often more efficient than using brute-force direct attacks.
CAMPAIGN NOTES:
Tips from players: You have to discipline yourself to build rail every turn. It's a critical advantage over the Rebels.
Tax riots and draft uprising will get exponentially rare, meaning, after getting through the first few, they should be fairly rare occurrence.
NOTICE: he army names changed nonstop during the first months. I had to pick one of the many to stick with it as changing the names all time would create even more chaos as all reports would point to units with old non-existing names. And yes, both sides used the same freaking names over the time. Yes, UNION had Army of Northeastern Virginia BEFORE renaming it to POTOMAC and whatnot. And, YES, the south had the army of Potomac, if you bother to read their freaking official period documents. And, YES, it too was renamed more times than I care to recount here. Oh, this is just the start of the chaos. Some short-lived names were only used by each side's some organizations! This led to such a chaos in the names that some units might be going under three separate names in the official documents at the same time. You know, if you bothered to look at the documents from all across the country, since the bureaucracy could not exactly keep up with the nonstop renaming in an era when letters might travel for months.
Since the army/corps names were constantly changing and the initial unit sizes were smaller, the naming and unit sizes stuck to the First Corps of Army Z model from the start to maintain at least some coherence. Similarly, the generals with the most famous, shortest, not-duplicated names are preferred.
Supply exception: Union units located in a land hexagon that is adjacent to ocean hexagon are considered to be in-supply thanks to Union naval superiority. This allows landing Union units in Confederate rear area with riverboats. See the note below for clarifications.
Gunboats and Riverboats can move to EITHER on a hexagon that is adjacent to a river or to a coastal water hexagon. Please note that this allows you to slowly transport infantry via coastal hexagons, but this units can only move back to land when that land hexagon is free of all units.
Union cavalry units have 3 HPs in 1861, 4 HPs in 1862, 5 HPs in 1863, and finally 6 HPs in 1864 and later to reflect the increasing size of the cavalry units as the war progressed.
The Confederate raiders unit type (used for various purposes like riots, etc.) and indians do not need to have a land route to an own supply city. However, these two unit types rarely receive replacements.
Anchor icon (ship units): All units (except gold and balloon) can be shipped between New Orleans and Philadelphia by moving them into the hexagon with the anchor symbol. Condition: Both cities must be under your control. Please note that the automated landing in New Orleans can be altered via the switch in Settings.
As you call upon a greater number of generals to serve in the conflict, the probability of a tragic outcome becomes increasingly likely, as it only takes one of them being struck down by Confederate sharpshooters to suffer a critical injury that impedes their ability to move and fight effectively, or even worse, to lose their life on the front lines.
To somewhat counter the superiority of the Northern resources, the size of the Confederate raids, riots, uprisings, etc. has been inflated to provide more random elements and challenge to the scenario.
In an effort to improve the practicality of riverboats as a means of transportation for troops, various rivers have undergone a process of simplification, while others have been deliberately expanded to accommodate larger vessels, resulting in a more viable and effective option for military deployment.
There is an option to enable physical gold units, that need to be slowly transported to the few main cities that take in gold, before the gold income from tax locations is available for purchases. Cities accepting physical transportable gold: Washington, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, New Orleans.
Hustle and Negotiate action by generals is only available on the Ammo Depot OFF mode, as it replaces the 'purchase ammo depot' option in the menu.
Scenario Specific documentation that includes links to more generic documentation on how the game series and the underlying game engine works.
To get a feel play the free turn-limited demo version (sideload or Amazon App Store), while screenshots are available on the app stores. No ads or tracking in these either.
There is also available a much ealier and a smaller scale game about the southern side of this conflict in case you like struggling against overwhelming odds.
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⊕ Developer Log: tidbits about military history and scenario updates
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