American Conquest: Divided Nation

In case you are wondering, American Conquest: Divided Nation is the second expansion pack to be released for American Conquest. The original game was released at a time when real time strategy games were taking over the PC gaming landscape. This one here was popular enough at the time, but it never really made quite the lasting impact the developers were hoping for.

I Don’t Need No Civil War

What I liked best about this game was the setting. The American Civil War is the backdrop and this is a period of history I have always found very interesting. As you would expect, you have many different game modes to play through with the most notable one being the campaign mode.

Here you get to play the role of a general in the Civil War and try to lead them to battle. The game has a very “historic” feeling about it, but it lacks the cinematic flair that other real time strategy games have. Still, the setting alone made it something I actually wanted to play all the way through.

Keeping You Busy

As well as the campaign mode American Conquest: Divided Nation has other things for you to do as well. You can play a single mission that lets you jump in and play on through ten well thought out missions. You also have a random map option where you can play on your own map or back in the day, you could download one.

Packing A Punch

While this game may not be as well thought of as games such as Civilization and Total War to name a couple. I must admit that they went all-in with this expansion. The game gives you four nations in The Confederacy, The Union, The Republic of Texas and Mexico. Being able to take part in the Battle of the Alamo was certainly awesome. The game also gives you a ton of new units to play around with as you wage war to. Not to mention things like horse artillery and field fortifications which add to the scale of battles.

As far as the actual gameplay goes, I feel that what we have here plays it pretty damn safe. The game is technically fine enough and the AI puts up a decent challenge. The problem is that there are so many great RTS games for PC this one struggles to live up to many that came before and after it.

Pros:

• The American Civil War is a great setting
• I am sure history buffs will enjoy it
• Four nations to play as
• Tons of new features added to the battles
• The presentation is pretty solid

Cons:

• The setting is cool, but overall, the game is a bit lacking in the “pizzaz” department
• It is a tad basic

Now Let's Face it, the American civil war was not the most interesting of conflicts for a game. In fact, we've seen drunken scuffles outside The Pig Fancier's Arms of a Friday night that would make a more compelling backdrops for an RTS game. Nevertheless, GSC Game World has decided to drag us by the knees through a standalone expansion for its 19th century war game American Conquest.

We can certainly see the appeal of Divided Nation: all of the historical battles are there, the uniforms and generals are authentic-looking, and even the maps are topographically correct. The problem is that if you have as much interest in America's war-torn heritage as, say, a Canadian, the game quickly degenerates into a mindless click-fest around fields, searching for foreigners to bayonet.

It certainly has a historically accurate and original approach to the genre, although this is often at the expense of gameplay. Armies are allocated to you at the start of each campaign (numbering in the thousands), and it takes a certain level of tactical prowess and organisational skill to manipulate such huge forces well.

While American Conquest: Divided Nation is sure to have civil war buffs drooling over its adherence to historical accuracy, from a strategic gameplay point of view, it's not exactly going to give the more established and, let's be honest, more technologically advanced RTS games like Rome: Total War or Cossacks II a run for their money.