14 DAY TRIAL // The central premise for the existence of A House Divided, the expansion for Victoria II that has been recently launched by Paradox Interactive, acting as both publisher and developer, is that players (especially those on the North American continent) really want to play leader of the Confederate States of America and manage the feat of leading them to victory over the Union and then maybe even further towards world domination.
So I did what was expected of me and chose the CSA in the new 1861 scenario in order to see how the independent South can cope.
Unfortunately, my first attempt ended very quickly as I mounted a strong push towards Washington and the industrial center of the North only to watch my brave troops fight to a standstill by worse-led but numerically superior forces.
At one point I felt that I might tip the war in my favor as the North was forced to mobilize to stop my advance but, although I briefly smelled success, I was soon on the defensive and the routed, with both Lee and Jackson killed on the field, and the morale of my armies shattered.
My second attempt at Southern supremacy involved a different strategy, as I sought to shift the weight of the war from the East to the West and tried to just capture a number of border provinces while drawing out the Northern troops in order to destroy them during battles.
I paid more attention to my economy and my recruitment and for a whole I thought that I was making good progress, but the Union managed to recruit faster than me and translated its industrial advantage into a series of crushing defeats for the CSA.
You can watch the video attached to this article in order to see one of my first attempts (failed in the end) at keeping the CSA alive.