Customer Reviews

American Conquest: Divided Nation

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I am a big fan of Cossacks and the original American Conquest, so I was really looking forward to this expansion. The problem with the game is that it is nothing but battles. There are no buildings to be built, other than a few battlefield tents. There are no techs, no leveling up units, and no linear campaigns. The game has many of the battles from the civil war with a handful of conflicts from the Texas Seccession and The Battle of New Orleans from the War of 1812. While it is pretty fun at first to have these huge battles, it gets boring and repetive quickly. The unit amounts are pre determined, so there is nothing you can do to better your army. It is also incredibly tedious to march thousands of soldiers across the field to line them up across from the enemy troops. You can have way more men in an area getting mowed down standing in marching order by an organized enemy column and unless you spot it and make the fix yourself, there is no AI to assist you. In real life men would not just stand there and get killed because they had not been given the order to return fire. I usually find it effective to just mash charge all of my men straight toward the enemy general. Kill him and you win the scenerio even if you lose 90% of your force just to kill one man. This one could have been better.

There came a day while playing American Conquest: Fight Back, when I wondered, "What if American Conquest was also a civil war campaign game with the same awesome American Conquest style?" My question was answered May 27, 2006, when CDV released DIVIDED NATION. It was evident that this game would go down in history as one of the greatest stradegy games ever.

The dawn of modern times tore America apart. In the arduous wars and bttles of the 19th Century a great nation began to develop. Mexico and Texas, North and South fought hard and embittered for domination. Even far beyond the times of the occurences themselves the generals and battles are still known.

After the succesful add-on "Fight Back", American Conquest - Divided Nation sets forth into a new century.

For 29.99, it's a good deal. It also comes with the first American Conquest, so that makes it even better. The one thing i noticed about this game was that the AI was smarter than that of American Conquest, and even Cossacks. You can play as Texas, Mexico, Southern States, and Northern States. You can fight battles like Antietam, Gettysburg, and the Alamo. There are sub's, ironclads, better artillary, advanced calvary, and like i said before, smarter AI.

There are over 100 new units in this game alone, and over 20 new buildings. Though this game may not have as much civilizations/teams as the first two, this offers better quality, and better gameplay.

The game is divided into two parts:
The previous game pattern which has had a small selection of units from the Nineteenth Century, and the Nation of Pirates added to it. A new richly equipped battle mode from the Nineteenth Century with the Nations Texas, Mexico and both the Northern and Southern States. Altogether nine campaigns, with more than fifty maps that have been produced from historical material and information lead the player through the battles and offer eventful, varied, interesting and surprising challenges. A large range of different uniforms and units convey the dazzling array of the battle fields of that time, and gives an insight into the happenings as it must have been. We tried, as precisely as possible to produce the most important battles of the war, and to follow the most important generals with their success, or to lead each nation through the most important stages of the war. From the dazzling cavalry battles to the first trench fighting.

THINK ABOUT THIS: Any team may have up to 20,000 units on the battle field at once. If you are facing another team, then that means that there can be 40,000 units all together on the field at once. This is a game of extreme measures, and this one statistic proves it.

If you are a big fan of the original Cossacks, or even a gamer playing American Conquest, this third installment will definatly get your gamer buds going.

THINK ABOUT THIS: The first American Conquest allowed 16,000 units. Divided Nation allows 20,000. If you combine Age of Empires 1,2,and 3, you won't even get half as much units as Divided Nation. Empire Earth 1 only offers 800 units, while Gettysburg allows only 2,500.

IF YOU ARE A FAN OF COSSACKS, AMERICAN CONQUEST, AMERICAN CONQUEST FIGHT BACK, OR ANY OTHER OF THOSE STRADEGY GAMES, THEN AMERICAN CONQUEST: DIVIDED NATION IS FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

The concept for this game is a great one. Never before have I seen so many units on my screen in all my years. That fact alone makes this game at least a 3 star game.

Pro's:
-Amazing amounts of forces to play with
-Good Soundtrack

Con's:
-Map is way too big for my liking, and it causes the games to feel like ages before you actually fight.
-My computer is XP and is a 2.60GHZ with a Radeon 7500, 256MB and yet STILL this game runs very laggy.
-The Command system is not very clearly stated so It is kind of weird jumping right into a game.

Overall I would say this game is headed in the right direction, and I imagine that if you have the firepower (in terms of a computer) then you will enjoy this game, but I'm not having too much fun.

3 1/2 Stars...

Since Sid Meiers has not released any Civil War games lately, I had high hopes of a very enjoyable real time Civil War real time strategy game when I purchased AC:DN.

To be honest, the game is a mixed bag and here are my comments:

Good:

1. Different wars covered - War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Civil War.
2. Graphics seem to be pretty good.
3. Ample number of scenarios and campaigns to play.
4. Great if you like controlling thousands of figures.
5. Good variety of uniforms shown.

Bad:

1. Manual is awful! Other games I have (Sid Meiers Gettysburg and Antietam, Take Command) have excellent manuals that are easy to read and comprehend. The manual for AC:DN is light and not very helpful.
2. No tutorials. Would have been nice to have some to demonstrate before you play.
3. Game comprehension - the game is a bit more difficult to comprehend and some strategies I learned by accident!

All in all, this is a game that had great potential but didn't quite deliver. CDV should go back to the drawing board and come up with a much better manual, tutorials, and easier-to-understand and execute commands.

A mixed bag.

This game is actually pretty cool. I've never seen an RTS that did full scale battles before. There isn't much of a population limit at all in this game. So you can have 5000+ infantry trading lead in a field, with artillery in the background.

That said, I'm still trying to figure out how to do certain things (upgrade my officer rank, ect). On games like Age of Empires, you have to pick a huge map just to have some breathing space. In this game, the huge map is so huge that it takes your infantry half an hour to march to the enemy's town, assuming you ever find it. Getting the formations to do what you want when crowded by trees/engaging the enemy is a trick.

The graphics aren't all that great. That isn't too much of a knock, seeing as how graphics aren't the end all be all purpose of a game.

If you love RTS' click-fest games then you'll like this too. If you are looking for historically accurate games that contain real strategy and tactics AVOID AVOID AVOID this game.

Just like warcraft, make buildings, gather resources, build guys and throw them at the enemy with very little strategy.

Worse yet, no tutorial and no player aide of building-unit progressions means you play many games simply to learn with no possibility of winning.

I've played similar games and can see that this one has some merit, but the manual is pathetic and fails to describe any of the initial steps necessary to start a game. My guess is that you have to blunder through numerous starts before you stumble on successful moves, something I am too old to enjoy. This one goes on the shelf until I find some literature explaining what should have been included in the manual.

I am very interested in history, the history of warfare in particular. I found this game to be historically accurate and entertaining.

I've had this game for a couple years now. I've always been interested in historical events, particularly wars and I have always wanted there to be a great game made about one of these events. In this case, the Civil War. But I'm afraid I'm still searching, as AC: Divided Nation clearly does not fit the bill for me. I bought it online thinking it would be sort of like Command and Conquer or Age of Empires, which if it was like either it would totally kick butt! But it's nothing like it. Even after playing it many times, I still find it frustrating. One major problem is it freaks out frequently and I have to close it and reopen it to fix it. Another problem is it just seems rough around the edges, like it was slapped together in a basement the night before it was due, it doesn't seem fine tuned or anything. It is frequently confusing and reading the manual won't help because it doesn't address any of the problems, so most of the time I would just tinker around until I finally figured it out or just give up. Another thing that really made me mad was the little telegraph offices that are stationed around the map in random map mode, every time I would march guys by them, 10 or 20 guys would freeze if they touched it. I couldn't get most of them unstuck and ended up killing them to get them out of the way. It was like there was glue next to it or something.

There are three modes: campaign, single skirmish, and random map. The campaign follows a specific general, like Grant, Lee or Jackson on several battles. Single skirmish is just like it says, there is only one battle instead of several like in campign. And random map is a poor attempt to copy C&C. Instead of just being given the troops and resources like in the first two modes, in random map you have to collect supplies and make men, just like C&C or Age of Empires. But everything is so much more confusing, tedious, and annoying that it just makes me quit and actually play C&C, even though I would rather play in a Civil War era.

Bottom line: don't get this game if you're looking for a fun Civil War game (it also does the Mexican War, where you can be Texas or Mexico and the War of 1812). Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there isn't a good Civil War game out right now. History Channel: Civil War gets like a 5 out of 10 on several gamer websites, which isn't horrible but even the reviewer himself said it was only worth a few mindless hours of fighting and that's it. Hopefully we will get lucky and some company will make a good game, for PC, PS3, Xbox 360 or all of the above. This game isn't expensive at all, but no sense to waste even 5 or 10 dollars on this as you will probably dislike it. You almost have to graduate from West Point to be able to understand everything in this game! I think they went way over the top in trying to make it super realistic, it's like they were so intent on doing that that they forgot about the fun part. Come on! The whole reason I play games is to have fun and relax, not get frustrated and mad.

Lack of tutorials with this game make it a real bummer to try and learn. Still haven't played it, trying to plow thru the manual.