While the idea behind"B:CW" is a strategic overview of the war, zooming into real time battles when you choose to (so it is not an actual campaign) is good the result is abysmal. A real opportunity to recreate Empire's "The Civil War" has gone to wast on a mobile platform-based fast (make that VERY fast) implementation behind "The War College" of using blocks and lines to represent troops, artillery etc. What of the game? What game is what I ask?
Move your troops (lines, blocks) around generic maps (Shiloh is as bland a map as Antietam...without the town) using 'pause' constantly to issue orders to units that may or may not decide to follow them. What is annoying is that by NOT following orders, these units can be out of the game for battles that can last as little as 5 minutes. Pathfinding too is a nightmare when ordering troops to move. More on that in a bit.
The real problem of "B:CW" is that there's not a great deal to it. Hot on the heels of "Ultimate General: Gettysburg" it's an absolute bomb! The history of each encounter is well done, promising a wealth, or at least a modicum of strategy but when taken to the map you'd be hard pressed to tell where you were fighting and what with. Use of 'Pause' is essential, as not only is issuing orders a task unto itself, but the Confederates in their light grey are very hard to see, when playing as the Union. They can be upon your lines before you know it...the FoW being ludicrous.
The battle of Shiloh, which they strangely have called Pittsburgh Landing (the correct Union name for the battle, but not it's popularly known one) is virtually barren of trees, a major feature of the battle. The only areas that were in fact open were a fairly large area to the NW of the engagement and the smaller area around "Bloody Pond". The gunboats played no role in the actual battle itself, but here they are mobile artillery - that's if you pick up on the fact they are combat units, missing in the dim tutorial.
One last gripe - units thinking about taking orders or not. Stupid design choice in a game where battles can be over in 5 minutes. Worse still, there's going to be DLC. That means, I'm guessing that we'll get the full game only by purchasing more content if the Devs even make a dollar from this superficial, odd project. Finally, pick this up at a sale if you enjoy the period, but don't expect any strategic depth. It's more how fast you can move lines and blocks to capture zones in a rush for dominancy of an objective.