After just over a year in Steam’s Early Access programme, Oliver Keppelmüller’s ambitious American Civil War grand strategy game/RTS Grand Tactician launches today in version 1.0. The full launch adds a raft of new features and fixes, and prepares the historic strategy game for its planned slate of post-launch content.
As we’ve noted, version 1.0 of Grand Tactician adds two more campaign starts and six new historical real-time battles to fight. There are other upgrades to look forward to as well, however: Keppelmüller’s team has made Grand Tactician easier to understand through a series of new tooltips and a range of tutorial videos, which are accessible within the game client.
There’s also a new ‘field manual’ in Grand Tactician, which you can pull up at any time by clicking a question mark icon located near the compass in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and it’s packed with information about the campaign screen, tactical battles, and army management. Another nice touch is a scalable UI – there’s an option to turn on ‘historical’ fonts, if you’d like to read dispatches styled to look like officers’ elegant cursive handwriting in the mid-1800s.
Following the launch of version 1.0, Grand Tactician will see additional improvements and add-ons, such as the ability to build subsidised industries in captured territories, as well as field hospitals to treat casualties and POW camps for handling captured enemy troops. Keppelmüller also plans to add additional new maps, as well as an avatar creator, so you’ll be able to put together a Civil War-era self portrait to use as your Union or Confederate commander.
Keppelmüller, who’s already made a historic wargame about the Seven Years War, worked with LionHeart FilmWorks’ Kevin Hershberger and Wasel Arar from Finnish American roots band Wasel and the Weasels on Grand Tactician. It currently has ‘very positive’ reviews on Steam.