One of the best Civil War games ever made.
AACW is a turn-based, strategic- and operational-level treatment of the entire American Civil War, from 1861 to 1865. There are a few short scenarios, but the game engine is really designed for the more epic scope of the grand campaign. It's the sequel to AGEOD's well-received "Birth of America," a turn-based treatment of the War of American Independence.
AACW has a neat movement interface. You drag-and-drop 3D pieces that "feel" like they belong in a miniatures tabletop game. Generals are depicted with lovely, hand-drawn portraits that capture the personality of each general pretty well, and the result is that the board often looks like a collection of generals eyeing each other warily. This reflects the way we talk about how armies moved in the Civil War: we don't say "the 5th infantry division moved here," we say "then Lee moved east while Meade moved to intercept him from the north." The interface takes a while to get used to, though; be sure to do the helpful tutorial. AACW has an even better command system -- indeed, it is this feature that vaults it to the head of the wargaming class. As the game puts it, armies that lack leaders move slowly, and fight badly. But it's not enough just to stick a leader on top of a stack; the stack will still be penalized unless the leader integrates the troops into a division, and ideally makes the division part of a corps, which in turn needs to be part of an Army for optimal performance. The system means you can't create "killer stacks" or "death stars" that so often mar wargames, because even the best Army leader has a limited ability to command thousands of troops. The command system takes practice; it's telling that the game ships with an entire tutorial devoted just to this crucial aspect of its design.
Another terrific facet of the command system is that one must frequently make hard decisions about who to put in command. To install your best officers, especially as the Union, you have to bypass less-skilled officers like Gen. George McClellan, at a significant cost of Victory Points and National Morale, both of which directly affect your chances of win. In my recently-completed campaign as the Union, I chose to leave Little Mac in place rather than pay the price of leapfrogging him with Grant -- a decision that I regretted in the short-term but may have been wise in the longer term.
Finding units is not as difficult as some seem to think. The game has a useful "roster" with a couple dozen filters for each unit in the game. You can sort lists by location, rank, power, etc. Clicking on a unit takes you directly to that unit's position on the map. Nor is it hard to understand the generals' special abilities -- another neat feature. Many generals have a colorful icon describing their particular strengths and weaknesses. McClellan, for example, has low combat and "strategic" stats, the latter reflecting his tendency to sit rather than move. But he also has special abilities that help troops under his command recover cohesion faster, and he's good at training troops, making him an ideal rearguard general. (Unfortunately, his high seniority and rank means you'll have to pay a price if you want to give someone else command of the Army of the Ohio.) What's more, these characteristics change as the game progresses, in RPG-like fashion. For example, Sherman starts the game with a set of benign abilities, but once he's promoted to two-star general, he becomes a "Hated Occupant," reflecting his scorched-earth tactics toward the end of the war. On top of that, you have options to build in a variable amount of randomness to generals' stats, thus more accurately reflecting the amount of information Lincoln and Davis had about their commanders when the war started.
Gameplay is turn-based, a "WEGO" system in which both players (or the player and the AI) plot their moves, and then the PC executes them simultaneously. This system is ideally suited for the Civil War, though of course it's in fashion in all sorts of wargames these days -- see, e.g., "War in the Pacific." Battles are resolved by the PC; your job is to prepare your troops for combat, and to maneuver them into the most advantageous position for combat; the PC rolls the dice for you. For any grognard who has played board wargames, this system will seem natural. That said, some players may miss having greater control over the tactical level of combat. For those players, they may prefer "Forge of Freedom," another excellent recent Civil War title, which gives players the chance to fight individual battles. (Forge of Freedom also includes some innovative features not present in AGEOD's game, such as the role of state governors, and a Civ-like research and production mini-game.) But it's easy to understand why AGEOD didn't include that feature in its game -- it took me 60+ hours to finish one campaign as it is. AGEOD chose instead to focus on making an excellent operational- and strategic-level wargame, and it has done that exceedingly well.
The AI in AACW is in some ways quite good. I've never seen a wargame AI that so vigorously breaks out of encirclements, for example. And this AI actually can put together a coordinated, large attack, on occasion. The great weakness of the AI, though, is that it hasn't yet learned all the command rules; all too often, my AI enemy comes to battle without adequate leadership. The devs say they're working on this, and I would think this is one thing the AI could do well. We're talking about efficient use of resources, not more elusive AI challenges.
Some aspects of the war are abstracted, and in general I think these design decisions are wise ones. The blue-water naval game, for example, includes "blockade boxes" and a "shipping box." (On the other hand, the "brown water" game is less abstract: you can blockade individual rivers and harbors with individual ships, which is quite fun.) Supply is likewise somewhat abstract, though again you can micromanage it to some extent by using supply units, which can either resupply your forces or construct depots to improve your chain of supply.
There are surprisingly few bugs here. I've encountered a few inaccurate tooltips; these are being fixed for an upcoming patch. More notably, I once had Admiral Farragut get angry when I promoted Grant to Army Commander. This bug comes about, I think, when you promote a general while he happens to be riding in a boat, as Grant was when I promoted him. I thought it was kind of a funny inter-service rivalry thing, but AGEOD says it's a bug, and they're going to fix it. Other than that, the game really seems to have been tested thoroughly.
Some players may poo-poo the graphics, but as PC wargames go, these are pretty good. The hand-drawn map looks gorgeous to me, and the filters help one make sense of the massive amount of information presented. My only complaint is that the developers ran out of time to provide portraits of every general in the game, so some generals are represented by a generic man. On the whole, though, the graphical look is quite pleasing to me.
The sound and music is fine, but not on a par with the graphics. There are too few musical tunes. Fortunately, they don't play constantly; by default, they play only every few minutes or so. Still, I've gotten tired of hearing the same dozen Civil War-era tunes over and over. Then again, that happens to me with almost any game. The sound effects, for their part, are OK, but again it would be nice to have a greater variety of "shouts" during combat.
But none of that detracts from the enormous achievement of this game. It really is epic in scope -- much more so than I realized when I first started playing. The game is fun from the get-go, but it didn't really "grab" me when I just played a short 6-turn scenario like Gettysburg or Shiloh. If you just want to fight the battle of Gettysburg, this isn't your game. This game only shines when you see all its parts fit together over the course of the entire 1861-65 campaign. Make no mistake about it: this is a big, rigorous game, not for the faint of heart. If you like serious wargames, and you're willing to invest an hour or so learning the rules, then you should give AACW a try. (I think there's a demo available now, though I'm not sure.) If you liked "Birth of America," then I think you'll love this game. Kudos to AGEOD on a stunning achievement. This one is staying on my hard drive for a long time.