American Conquest: Divided Nations (PC)

For the history buff this is unmatched, accurate battlefields and armies with seemingly hundreds of different uniforms and dozens of guns, delivered to their posts by horses and limbers with lots of lovely detail. The mexican armies of Santa Anna are especially stunning as they assail the Texans in the Alamo fort.

The random map singleplayer/multiplayer game is very much in the classical RTS mould, and has a great range of buildings, units, upgrades and research available, and gives you the opportunity to fight some massive battles against opponents by lan or internet.

Not the newest engine, and the game is complex to understand and learn (though the manual is excellent), but once it is mastered there are real depths of strategy and tactics for even the most demanding player

Although based on the same engine as the earlier releases, the graphics are still excellent and the uniforms are as true to the historical counterparts as an RTS computer game will allow. Having said that, there is perhaps too much choice. With a massive variety of troop types to choose from: Zouaves, Berdan Rifles, Marines, Line infantry, etc., to name just a tiny few, it is often difficult to decide which ones to actually produce and can distract the player from the need to conduct the campaign and concentrate on the building up of other resources.

The underlying design philosophy behind Divided Nation continues to be the production of masses of large units that can, unfortunately, threaten to overwhelm all but the most powerful computers. I have a fairly high spec machine with a good graphics card, but it still struggles in the longer games as units grow in size. As with the earlier releases including the Cossacks series, the AI never stops churning out countless soldiers and peasants, which is difficult to overcome as the human player tends to concentrate on other things and falls behind the curve. It would certainly be useful to have a population cap to limit this. Whilst the need to produce houses does go someway towards a limit, realistically this has no actual effect on reducing numbers as the AI just builds more of them! Unfortunately, games can often turn into slogging matches as a result.

It certainly isn’t all bad though. The campaign scenarios are excellent and I believe give a far better game than the recent Napoleonic period Cossacks II release. Naval gunboats and ironclads are also represented, but be warned: the effect of their gunfire against land targets is greatly reduced compared to earlier games where one galleon could cut vast swaths through the enemy ashore. The buildings and general scenery are beautifully rendered and add much to create the flavour of the period.

Perhaps the best consequence of a more limited historical time period is that players cannot advance through two or three hundred years of history by rushing out technological developments that mean larger battles set in the earlier period are often few and far between.

Overall, American Conquest: Divided Nation is a great addition to the pc game collection and probably the best of the bunch so far. Certainly one for history buffs and wargamers alike. A recommended buy and excellent value too.