History VideoGame / UltimateGeneralCivilWar

* AnyoneCanDie: It doesn't matter whether you've got Robert E. Lee or William Tecumseh Sherman leading your brigades or your divisions - any of your officers can absolutely suddenly die if their brigade/division takes damage. It's not very ''likely'' as long as the brigades have plenty of men or are in cover, but it's hardly impossible for them to still surprisingly wounded, if not killed.

* BottomlessMagazines: [[AvertedTrope Averted]], brigades have a red gauge which depletes to represent the percentage of individuals in a brigade having to reload before firing again. Brigades can also be interrupted while firing (such as being ordered to turn around while in the middle of shooting or getting engaged in melee while shooting), causing less of the brigade to have to reload again before fully-firing or shooting with the remainder before everyone has to reload before the next volley.

* DoWellButNotPerfect: Routing enemy units that find themselves encircled (and thus running into more enemies into melee range) are very likely to surrender. Surrendering enemies are exchanged at the end of the battle for additional recruits for your army...to a very small {{Cap}} of 1000 recruits, as they go back into your enemy’s ranks to try and kill you again. Combined without how this means many surrendering enemies will mean a lot less kills and thus StatGrinding for your units, actively encircling a lot of the enemy’s army entirely and breaking them from there isn’t quite as much of a masterful display of maneuvering that the enemy will be lucky to recover from and can be a lot less beneficial to your campaign’s prospects then leaving holes for them to flee into and get shot up.

** Grass are like roads while giving less of a movement bonus.

* RealityHasNoSoundtrack: The game has music for the main menu, pre-battle deployment, and the results screen after winning battles, but the gameplay itself does not use background music. The in-game battles only have the sounds of combat and marching, and the camp screen instead uses a bunch of sounds to resemble the bustle of busy military camp.

* UniversalAmmunition: No matter how rare and expensive the weapons a unit is using, any supply source – be it an allied supply wagon, a captured wagon or a controlled supply point – will be able to provide ammunition for these units until it runs out.
** It should be noted that the standard infantry weapons were all .58 caliber (the Enfield .577s use the same bullet) and artillery was fairly standardized as well, as the Confederates were using more or less the same cannon as the Union. So its less silly than it might at first sound

** You may see cavalry units with over 1000 men inside them in the computer's hands, while yours can only go up to 750.

* MoraleMechanic: Units have a morale gauge that is increased by killing the enemy, standing on high ground and being nearby a commander, and is decreased by taking losses, especially from the flanks or rear. Exhausted units are also lose morale much quicker. Units that are at around 17% morale will start wavering (signified by the color of their icon being whiter) and are rendered uncontrollable as they fight much less effectively and try to fall back from combat. Units that run out of morale entirely panic and rout from the battle, running away trying to flee from enemies as best and quickly as they can, though units that are not shattered can rally toward controllable morale fairly quickly once they get out of range from the enemy.
* MuckingInTheMud: Mud slows down units greatly while providing little cover. Attacking enemy units that are in range of this mud unless both their artillery has been silenced and the units there are greatly outnumbered is a ''very'' bad idea.

* SoundCodedForYourConvenience: A distinctive trumpeting happens whenever a unit charges at another unit (as well as the commotion and yelling from troops in melee or charging), making it helpful for realizing your troops are being charged at while you were expecting to be just trading fire with the enemy.

* TakeCover: Like ''{{VideoGame/Ultimate General Gettysburg}}'' before it, in a ''{{VideoGame/Company of Heroes}}''-esque manner, all units inherently TakeCover automatically to where they stand on the battlefield based on the terrain features around them with the protection it provides them infers by a “Cover” gauge that goes from 0% to 100% – a unit in a heavy forest or within a town’s buildings will be well covered from all forms of ranged attacks, but even on fairly open ground, it will be quite rare that units see their Cover gauge be absolutely zero, requiring the likes of them going into a river. Smaller units will also proportionately be better able to take cover in terrain, with small skirmisher units being able to gain a maximum cover benefit from smaller forests while larger infantry brigades will require the densest forests in the game to be as well protected.

* UselessUsefulSpell: A lot of fortifications verge on this, with how they spread the garrisoned unit out making it more likely for them to be counted as flanked, the unit tends to fire freely in trickles rather than volleys which can be counteracted by morale regeneration and makes enemies take longer to rout, and providing less protection for the unit in practice than nearby forests or buildings. They ''do'' provide a significant protection boost and melee effectiveness increase to a unit’s melee ability however, [[NotCompletelyUseless potentially making these usually-should-be-ignored fortifications handy by going into them if an enemy nearby them charges them]].
* VeteranUnit: All units have an experience bar that increases as their skills improve. Gaining enough experience for each bracket can earn up to three stars for each unit and each star for a unit means they can choose a perk which can improve their skills further or provide other bonuses. However, this make replenishing a unit’s numbers with veteran troops progressively more expensive and refilling a unit’s numbers with green recruits dilutes their skills and can even cause the unit to lose stars and perks.

** Smoothbore artillery tends to be the CloseRangeCombatant sort out of artillery units, preferring to position far closer to the enemy (though still generally hoping to remain outside of gunfire range unless they have support - only already rather demoralized units will rout first when artillery and them are shooting at each other).
** Cavalry and Skirmishers will frequently tend toward this as the campaign goes on - while infantry, cavalry and skirmishers' weaponry generally start out with similar range, better infantry rifles tend to have dramatically better range than the cheapest and earliest-available muskets while the range of carbines of cavalry and skirmishers generally do not change very much with higher quality versions. This applies further to sabre cavalry, who are armed with sabres and revolvers making them very good in melee and capable of devastating close-range fire with the cylinder revolver varieties, and even automatically move into melee range with attack orders (they must be ordered to stop/halt while in range of the enemy to continuously fire on them), This does not apply to long-range rifle skirmishers who are, of course, of a LongRangeFighter style instead.

* OneStatToRuleThemAll: The Politics skill is kind of hard when you're thinking about what your general should maximize first. Its increases to gold and recruits rewards from missions are pretty much universally useful to any kind of strategy, and improving it immediately is the sensible way to deal with it if at all since putting points in it later on means losing out on its benefits to earlier missions.

* TrialAndErrorGameplay: Battles' briefings don't completely tell the player how exactly it will turn out, making it hardly unlikely at times that they'll by shifting their lines and moving units over to flank the enemy only for it to turn out that enemy reinforcements will shortly appear to march right into these flanking units as they get into position.

** Mud is like scrub but doesn’t reduce accuracy while reducing speed even more.

* FragileSpeedster: Cavalry and Skirmishers, both units a fair bit faster than infantry or artillery. Cavalry units may have 250 more men than skirmishers, are faster, and are better in melee, but they are easier to hit with shooting and neither hide nor spot as effectively as skirmishers (though they still spot better than infantrymen and will probably hide better as well due to lower numbers).

* BottomlessMagazines: [[AvertedTrope Averted]], brigades have a red gauge which depletes to represent the percentage of individuals in a brigade having to reload before firing again. Brigades can also be interrupted while firing (such as being ordered to turn around while in the middle of shooting or getting engaged in melee while shooting), causing less of the brigade to have to reload again before fully-firing

* TheCavalry: All of your corps' units will rarely all be immediately present at once in a battle, so it's pretty common for your units to be desperately holding on just before your reserves March on the field.

* FriendlyFireproof: {{Averted|Trope}}, though since only 5% of allied fire can cause any friendly fire damage, the effect of it is usually unnoticeable except with serious artillery potentially causing a mobbed ally unit to rout.

* MoraleMechanic: Units have a morale gauge that is increased by killing the enemy, standing on high ground and being nearby a commander, and is decreased by taking losses, especially from the flanks or rear. Exhausted units are also lose morale much quicker. Units that are at around 17% morale will start wavering (signified by the color of their icon being whiter) and are rendered uncontrollable as they should much less effectively and try to fall back from combat. Units that run out of morale entirely panic and rout from the battle, running away trying to flee from enemies as best and quickly as they can, though units that are not shattered can rally toward controllable morale fairly quickly once they get out of range from the enemy.

* SprintMeter: The Condition bar represents a unit's fatigue, which does down while moving, reloading or firing and goes down much faster while charging, in melee, running or reloading while out of ammunition. It regenerates while the unit is at rest. Condition affects a unit's combat effectiveness, speed and morale and penalizes the unit on these aspects as the unit becomes more exhausted.

** Infantry units are probably the best units in the game in a head-on melee fight due to their numbers, and can get some skills or equip certain weapons to further additionally specialize them in a close-combat fight.

* GlassCannon: Fittingly, artillery is capable of shooting the enemy from ranges that only other artillery can return, but are vulnerable when attacked by other units. Only weakened units will rout before artillery units in a mutual slugfest, and artillery has little hope of escaping and reforming on their own due to their slow speed.

* KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: Units who are hit from behind take a lot more damage, and routing units will inherently be running away from their enemies. Since units need to take a fair amount of losses before shattering (which only happens when reduced to 30% of their starting numbers) and can rally fairly fast while away from enemy contact, routing enemies should be chased and attacked as much as one can spare.

* TakeCover: Like ''{{VideoGame/Ultimate General Gettysburg}}'' before it, in a ''{{VideoGame/Company of Heroes}}''-esque manner, all units inherently TakeCover automatically to where they stand on the battlefield based on the terrain features around them with the protection it provides them infers by a “Cover” gauge that goes from 0% to 100% – a unit in a heavy forest or within a town’s buildings will be well covered from all forms of ranged attacks, but even on fairly open ground, it will be quite rare that units see their Cover gauge be absolutely zero. Smaller units will also proportionately be better able to take cover in terrain, with small skirmisher units being able to gain a maximum cover benefit from smaller forests while larger infantry brigades will require the densest forests in the game to be as well protected.

** Infantry units can go up to a maximum of 3000 men, skirmishers to 500 men, cavalry to 750 men, and artillery units at 24 guns.

** Just like in the actual Battle of Gettysburg, a Union player will be acting as one to John Buford's cavalry division.

* FragileSpeedster: Cavalry and Skirmishers, both units a fair bit faster than infantry or artillery. Cavalry units may have 250 more men than skirmishers, are faster, and are better in melee, but they are easier to hit with shooting and neither hide nor see as effectively as skirmishers (though they do both better than infantrymen)

** Fortifications reduce the damage of the garrisoned unit, much like being in trees or wheatfields. The effects of the latter can be noticed by clicking on a single unit and mousing over the terrain, but this isn’t a possibility with fortifications. Not to mention players [[UselessUsefulSpell will usually find them a lot less useful than they’d expect...]]

* HeroUnit: Generals automatically restore morale within their circular command radius. They cannot attack enemies at all however, and be eliminated to prevent the morale regeneration, though the AI usually will never try to attack them when there are actually lethally-capable units nearby.

* ResourcesManagementGameplay: On the "camp" screen for their campaign, players play around with available money, recruits, weaponry and reputation. General skills generally affect the player’s interactions with these resources in some way.
* SequelEscalation: This game isn’t just some sort of simulator of a single famous battle of the {{UsefulNotes/The American Civil War}}, but battles spanning the entire {{UsefulNotes/The American Civil War}}!
* SoundCodedForYourConvenience: A distinctive trumpeting happens whenever a unit charges at another unit, making it helpful for realizing your troops are being charged at while you were expecting to be just trading fire with the enemy.

* TrialAndErrorGameplay: Battles briefings don't completely tell the player how exactly it will turn out, making it hardly unlikely at times that they'll by shifting their lines and moving units over to flank the enemy only for it to turn out that enemy reinforcements will shortly appear to march right into these flanking units as they get into position.

* UselessUsefulSpell: A lot of fortifications verge on this, with how they spread the garrisoned unit out making it more likely for them to be counted as flanked, the unit tends to fire freely in trickles rather than volleys which can be counteracted by morale regeneration and makes enemies take longer to rout, and providing less protection for the unit in practice than nearby forests or buildings. They ''do'' provide a significant protection boost and melee effectiveness increase to a unit’s melee ability however, [[NotCompletelyUseless potentially making these usually-should-be-ignored fortifications handy by going into them if a unit nearby them is charged]].
* VeteranUnit: All units have an experience bar that increases as their skills improve. Gaining enough experience for each bracket can earn up to three stars for each unit and each star for a unit means they can choose a perk which can improve their skills further or provide other bonuses. However, this make replenishing a unit’s numbers progressively more expensive and refilling a unit’s numbers with green recruits dilutes their skills and can even cause the unit to lose stars and perks.

* YouLoseAtZeroTrust: The Reputation stat on the campaign side grants a bonus to the morale of all of your units, but can be lost by consuming it to bargain for additional government support (such as more money, recruits, weapons or officers) and when defeated in battle. If a defeat makes a player’s Reputation goes to zero, they will be removed from command and their campaign will end.

* AlternateHistory: Pretty much inherent, considering for example, the commanders of the armies involved at the Battle of 1st Bull Run were completely different than the Battle of Shiloh while it’s pretty likely that your Corps commanders (including whatever you named yourself) will be presiding at both...not to mention that a Confederate player can win the {{UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar}}!

* EasyLogistics: Players certainly should be trying to make sure their units will have enough ammunition for the next battle by investing enough to their supply wagons and bringing the wagons to their units while [[ResourcesManagementGameplay managing their units' numbers and weaponry against available money and recruits]], but any sort of actual strategic supply lines, [[UniversalAmmunition matching all of the many varieties of weaponry]] their units will surely be using or dealing with sufficient food and other equipment are not matters that come up at all.

** Additionally, much of the information about the enemy will be unknown without having enough points in the Reconnaissance skill even while you can see the unit. 2 points lets you see the starting enemy's numbers, 4 lets you see the enemy's designations and the overall enemy army's strength, 6 partially shows enemy units' status, 8 fully shows enemy units' status while giving partial information on their attributes and weapons, and 10 now fully shows enemy unit's attributes and weapons.

* GuideDangIt: Disbanding units puts them back into the pool of recruits...because of this, disbanding veteran units will improve the average skills of buying new green recruits. This has the funny effect of doing this being cheaper for the player if their entire manpower pool is depleted as green recruits cost less to buy even if the manpower pool is really only veteran men.

** The different kinds of artillery can be a little bit more complex than the statistics and blurbs provided for them (so [[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1105446690 this guide is suggested]] for fully understanding them). For example, the 10Pdr Parrott and 12Pdr Whitworth cannons are highly effective at long-range and are still useful at canister range, but are atypically poor at shell shot range.

* KilledOffForReal: Officers absolutely can and will die throughout battles, though their odds will be better for the more men that are in their unit. Be very careful about placing {{UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant}} in an infantry brigade just because you couldn’t afford to give him a Corps yet...

* NoRangeLikePointBlankRange: Units’ reliance on accuracy to hit their enemies goes down as they get closer to enemies – this can cause units standing just outside of melee range with an enemy unit’s back to shoot a lethal volley that will rout just about ''any'' unit immediately.

* StartsStealthilyEndsLoudly: Player should definitely be fanning out their skirmishers, detached skirmishers and cavalry into good positions for them to spot the enemy coming toward you before your army inevitably starts shooting at the enemy.

''Ultimate General: Civil War'' is a RealTimeStrategy game depicting {{UsefulNotes/The American Civil War}} developed and published by Game-Labs, in a similar vein to ''{{VideoGame/Ultimate General Gettysburg}}'' that it is essentially a sequel to.

* {{Cap}}: Unit skills are incapable of going above 100. 3-star veteran units are far from unlikely to hit these caps over their service and thus there can be a financial benefit to.
* DecapitatedArmy: A General unit being eliminated makes his army far easier to defeat, as units only shatter entirely when reduced to 30% of their original number and can rally from routs fairly quickly after being out of enemy contact range – the lack of a General unit around to replenish their morale can cause enemy units to rout again soon after the pursuing enemy starts shooting at them again.

* EasyLogistics: Players certainly should be trying to make sure their units will have enough ammunition for the next battle by investing enough to their supply wagons and bringing the wagons to their units, but any sort of actual strategic supply lines, [[UniversalAmmunition matching all of the many varieties of weaponry]] their units will surely be using or dealing with sufficient food and other equipment are not matters that come up at all.