American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

...these are the games your grand-daddy played![:D]

Forgive me if most of you already know about this site. But at http://www.the-underdogs.org you'll find almost all of the Civil War games that we've all played over the years. All the games from the mid-80s to the late 90s are there and you can download them all for free.[:p]

I remember locking myself in a room playing SSI's Gettysburg game for hours..and hours..and hours...trying to beat that dastardly AI. And it wasn't too shabby of an AI if I remember correctly. I just downloaded it and can't believe the entire game was ONLY 314kb!

Some of the other games they've made available for download are:
American Civil War: From Sumter to Appomattox
Ata: Extracts from the American Civil War
Battle of Antietam by SSI
The Blue and The Gray
Civil War
Civil War Generals 2
The Civil War by Avalon Hill
The Civil War by Empire Interactive
Decision at Gettysburg
Decisive Battles of the American Civil War, vols 1,2,& 3 by SSG
Gettysburg for Windows
Gettysburg: The Turning Point by SSI
Rebel Charge at Chickamauga by SSI
Road from Sumter to Appomattox 2
Shilo: Grant's Trial in the West by SSI
Sid Meier's Civil War Collection

To download their games, at the homepage go to the "Browse Games" section on the left side and select historical games under "By Theme". It will then pull up these games and hundreds of other games besides the Civil War games so you'll have to search for the Civil War games by name. Now granted, these games aren't the sleek modern games we're used to playing now, but if you're like me it's fun to have the old classics in your collection. They also are a good reminder to how far we've come in Civil War gaming.[:)]

Their website is kind of slow, (and you'll need to minimize your firewall to get in) but fortunately the games back then weren't very large so they shouldn't take too long to download. The largest one I've downloaded so far was 4.5mb. You can also download the documentation for each game separately.

Why are these games free? Because according to the website these are game "developers who recognizes that some oldies whose commercial value have expired are better shared freely than forgotten " Three cheers![:D]




Lt. Boyd "Bama" Denner
"Alabama Brigade"
1/3/III
ANV

Still have some of those SSI games and get them out once in a while. Unfortunately that was before PBEM came along but they were good systems, even though they were on a demi-brigade level. Too bad someone didn't copy the command system from them, better officers moved their units full while bad ones had half movement. Losses were in killed, wounded and missing and units lost men when routing if adjacent to the enemy. The graphics are a joke compared to today but considering the memory limits of those days they were excellent programs.

Lt.Gen.Ken Miller
Veteran's Divsion
VIII / AoS

Oh, man, I had ALL those SSI games! Many many many hours spent there.

One thing they did really well was have artillery crews lose men in 1-man increments (as other units, and now as HPS inf and cav). The effect, though, was what made it work -- an arty unit needed 16 men to fire each gun. As it lost men, it therefore lost effectiveness. They would then recover strength each turn, a simulation of drawing men from nearby infantry units to man the guns.

Some day we may have horses that can be killed (immobilising the battery, or part of it).

As for the game being 314k...I can remember downloading my first patch, for Avalon Hill's 3rd Reich PC. It was close to 400k and it took AGES! A long way from my 2mb ASDL line...



Maj Gen Sean Turner
3rd Cavalry Division, "Yankee Thrasher"
I Corps
Army of Alabama

Not all of them are free though, but most are.

Yours Respectfully
1st Lt. Kling
2nd Brigade
3rd Division, VIII Corps
AOS, Union Army