No Greater Glory: The American Civil War

Disappointing - you are just buying a DOSBOX port to a game you might have played as a kid like me. This was a favorite of mine back in the early SSI days. However this version fails around 1863 pretty regularly - would have thought that the seller would've fixed obvious errors like this. I'd suggest to save your money but at least you dont have to answer the annoying "what page is the first word "TBD" on"!

There are no words. And yet I still must speak. In the closing days of the Civil War, in late 1866, a catastrophe on a scale unknown to mankind devastated the area around Grafton, West Virginia. As Richmond fell to Federal troops led by Genera Sherman, half a million Union soldiers were killed instantly when the staging point for the assault in Grafton suffered a catastrophic chain of ammunition explosions, resulting in the Union army there being annihilated in the blink of an eye. This event would be known as the Humbling of the Republic. In the days that followed, Lincoln would disappear from the White House. He would last be seen by a West Virginian farmer, walking in a daze towards the rapidly flooding hole where once an army stood. Sherman would march on Washington, and depose the Democrat Andrew Johnson when he attempted to assume the office of President, forming the Federal Junta. Johnson would flee west, and link up with Democratic army elements led by General George McClellan. These forces would become known as the Constitutional Union government. Texas, the last standing bastion of the Confederate States of America, would maintain its independence with the aid of …

Been playing for 30+ years. It's very fun once you figure out how to manage the politics.

No Greater Glory: The American Civil War, developed by Space Time Simulations and published by SNEG, is a deeply intricate strategy simulation that places the player not on the battlefield as a commander, but in the highest seat of power as the leader of a nation at war. Rather than focusing on direct tactical engagement, it builds its identity around the broader responsibilities of leadership, asking players to manage political alliances, economic stability, military organization, and public morale all at once. It is a game that treats war not as a sequence of battles, but as a complex system of interconnected pressures that must be balanced carefully over time. The core experience revolves around taking control of either the Union or the Confederacy and guiding that side through the course of the American Civil War. The player’s role is less about issuing battlefield commands and more about shaping the direction of the entire war effort. Decisions must be made regarding cabinet appointments, policy changes, resource allocation, and diplomatic strategy, all of which influence how the war unfolds. The game constantly reinforces the idea that success is not determined solely by mil…

I get that it's a port for an old game, but there should at least be some optimization. No settings or customization, meaning on my screen resolution the mouse is off-center so I have to click slightly off of the buttons I want to click. There's also no tutorial, meaning a lot of somewhat obscure features that are actually really important to gameplay aren't explained. My first battle, I outnumbered the enemy 16,000 to 8,000, defending my fortified capital. I lost the battle (and my capital) losing 2,000 men while the enemy lost 0. Old school RNG is unforgiving...

This is more like a grand strategy game than other genres. It still holds up really well despite being from 35 years ago, with a wide range of player choices: >multiple ways for the game to end, including the Union player avoiding the reconstruction era >you can feint the enemy, tricking the CPU into keeping one of their armies fixed in place. Generals like McClellan have a very low aggression rating, but you can use it beneficially >rudimentary but effective supply line gameplay: if you cut off the enemy's ability to resupply their troops, they will have to requisition them from local areas at a cost of money and "loyalty" >"loyalty" (its kind of a compromise term for what an administration's level of support and also what the public morale is like) can absolutely sink like a stone if you suffer defeat after defeat on the battlefield in just a single turn >attempting to pass reforms too fast (e.g. the budget, recruitment, emancipation) without sufficient support from the moderates also sinks "loyalty" >UK and France can intervene economically or even militarily >attrition based on low exp troops joining a high exp army (disease) or a large army with low morale (desertion) >"presti…