When starting a new game, you will be presented with the several options that allow you to customize your main character. The options you choose largely depends on how you like to play however, I find these choices to be good for a beginner level:

• Leadership
  
• Tactics
  
• Pessimism
  
• Shooting Training
  
• +10000
  
• +1 Infantry Regiment
  
• Easy difficulty and Limited Reinforcements

It is important to note that if your main character/general dies, your campaign will end. Therefore, it is paramount to keep him alive! With that being said, your character is an extremely versatile unit and one that is generally hard to get killed. Furthermore, removing the main character from field command will result in you no longer being able to recruit additional officers.

Once you are in the game, you will have relatively few options to begin with.
Beginning with 4 regiments, your opening moves should be to capture Rhode Island. Move your 3 regiments and your general towards Providence and Newport while moving your regiment in Portsmouth unit to Leicester.


Note that all 4 of your starting regiments spawn as 1* units and you can immediately give them a perk. I would recommend giving them the Endurance Course perk as condition will always be a critical component of battles.

Don’t forget to open your minimap on the right as this can provide invaluable information:




On April 19th, you will be presented with an event which will launch a tactical battle. This battle is meant as a tutorial and is fairly easy to win. However, while fighting and winning the battle will gain you some extra reputation, it is largely unnecessary as the battle is fairly outdated.




Scouting in Ultimate General: American Revolution works through the use of your generals. While vulnerable, they are highly mobile units which can reveal the fog of war within a certain radius giving you perfect information.

Outside of this radius, you will receive periodic updates on units' position, both friendly and enemy. However, this information is generally inaccurate without funding your intelligence department.

Furthermore, the minimap will alert you to any ongoing battles outside of your generals' radius.

To initiate a tactical battle, you will need to have a general in range. Their range is indicated by the yellow circle around the general. When a general is in range, an indicator will appear and when selected, you will be able to enter a tactical battle. While the distance in which a tactical battle will spawn is not set in stone, regiments within skirmishing range is typically a good distance to keep your forces at.

Note that positioning on the campaign map will determine the positioning of all units on the tactical map and therefore it is key to maneuver carefully on the campaign map.



The red box indicates which units will immediately be in the battle and the yellow box will determine which units will come in as reinforcements.Finally, the flashing balance circle indicates that the ai is likely to retreat from the battle as they are heavily outnumbered.


Before any battle starts, you will first need to deploy your units using deployment zones. Note that these zones are for each individual regiment or brigade and therefore campaign map positioning is key in ensuring your army can spawn near to each other in the tactical battle.

Tactical battles play out fairly similarly to the other Ultimate General games and I won’t be going into much detail about them in this guide. One interesting note, is that you can leave battles whenever you want, resulting in a draw of the battle.



There are two ways to fight on the campaign, skirmishing or close combat. Depending on the composition of your regiments, these values can greatly differ.


Skirmishing occurs at long range where very little damage is done and is used as a prelude while the main force of your army gets into position for the main fight. Double right clicking or just moving your unit into an enemy will initiate close combat which essentially simulates a battle occurring.

Note, that settlements and especially forts provide defensive bonuses to units which can make them difficult to take. Personally, I fight every single battle manually as that will usually provide significantly better results.

On April 21st, you will receive an event that unlocks the headquarters and provides you with some goodies.
Make sure to move the regiment that spawns near Leicester to a settlement.


The headquarters menu is located in top left, the last button on the right where you will be provided with a lot of cool options.
The first step is to immediately rush the departments which are represented as projects. While most research will need to be researched the long way, any research that has less than 20 days remaining can be instantly completed by spending reputation.




Fast forward a few days and you will have your initial projects researched.
Note that additional projects have spawned which can give you some immediate resources. However, these really should only be used when needed.
Note that not all departments will be initially available but remember to immediately research them when they appear. Your current research will be saved even if you switch off of it.


By clicking assign on any department, you will be able to choose an officer to lead this department. The main stats which affect the department are highlighted and you generally want to choose the officer with the best stats to lead the department.


Finally, your next step is to choose a technology to research for each department which have their own unique trees.
Some of the more important techs include getting extra generals, unlocking of regular regiments, better guns, etc.

Many of your starting regiments will spawn not with a full complement of companies and should therefore be reinforced. To do so, a regiment must first be garrisoned inside a settlement where they can rest and replenish their casualties. Outside of settlements, they will begin to take attrition so unless you are on campaign with your units, it is generally advisable to keep your units garrisoned.
Regiments are replenished locally however, extra recruits, supplies, ammo, etc will be transported throughout your supply lines which vastly speeds up the rate of recovery for your units.


By either double clicking on a unit card or by pressing the edit menu, you can open up their customization.


Here you will be able to add/delete companies, assign the regiment's officer, change the equipment for each individual company, and generally get additional information on the regiments overall abilities.



Raising regiments can be done at any settlement under your control. Simply select any controlled settlement and select the plus button to the right of popup.
At the start, you only have the ability to recruit militia regiments. Additional regiment and company types can be unlocked through research.
Furthermore, you can only raise a limited amount of regiments/unique regiments which is indicated at the top of the screen by the red swords. This value can be increased through tech, quartermaster stats, and through infrastructure.
The settlement in which you first raised a regiment will act as its home base. By taking high casualties, the settlements loyalty will be negatively affected however, exceptional performance by the local regiments will also increase loyalty.

No war can be won without an industrial base to support it.
Your first step is to build infrastructure in Hartford and to turn it into a military stronghold. Infrastructure can be built by either selecting the region itself or by selecting the left most button at the top of the menu. Begin by building a production infrastructure and agricultural infrastructure to both bolster your early factories and increase provisions.




Every settlement has the option to build buildings with the total amount available to built being reliant on the level of its town hall. Additional buildings can be unlocked through technologies where some buildings are locked to certain regions.
For the most part, infrastructure and buildings are independent of each other however a few do synergize such as the granary and agricultural infrastructure.
I would begin by building the Recruiting House, Armory, and Warehouse as Hartford will become your primary center for your military. These buildings and infrastructure choices are also linked to early quests which I highly recommend completing.
The remaining construction materials can be used on whatever you like. I personally like to build some early Carpenter's Shops to quickly increase the gain of my construction materials. It is worth noting that buildings can only be built one at a time and their speed is determined by a settlements construction points and therefore it is generally best to spread your buildings out.



You are able to produce a wide variety of different items in the game with the vast majority of these items being unlocked through technologies.
Initially, you will not have any factories and is one of the reasons for wanting to build the production infrastructure in Hartford. However, to kickstart your production, I would recommend renting a factory from your Chief Engineer in the Headquarters menu.




The most difficult part of the game is undoubtedly trying to establish a self sufficient economy. For a significant portion of the game, you will be mostly relying on selling produced goods, both through buildings and in the production menu to fund your campaigns. This means that you will very often be running a deficit which is not a sign of failure. So long as you keep below -1000 per day, you can usually sell enough to keep up with the deficit. Furthermore, there are events in the game that are designed to give you extra money in exchange for loyalty when you have a low treasury and take money from you in exchange for goods when you have a high treasury.
Balancing what to build and when can also be very tricky. Would generally recommend to focus on building buildings early rather than infrastructure as they cost significantly less in resources. Schools, Carpenter Shops, Production Buildings, and Money Generation Buildings will be your goto's that you will want to prioritize in every settlement.
In terms of infrastructure, the mining one can provide a lot of income through selling and I tend to get them first when I am able.
Finally, you will initially be producing an overabundance of provisions but this will slowly decrease over the course of the game. While agricultural infrastructure is lackluster, building them in wheat resource regions and coupling them with buildings can increase their effectiveness.

Now that you are in a stable position, having taken some initial territory and hopefully have gained a little better understanding of the game, you are now ready to progress deeper into the campaign. It is important to remember that you start off in a very weak position against one of the most powerful militaries at the time. Take things slowly, retreat from unwinnable battles, abandon areas under enemy pressure, conduct raids on enemy supply lines or settlements, and generally being a nuisance for the British are all viable ways of stretching out the enemies forces. While it is ok to turtle, advisable even, you always want to be active, planning and preparing your next moves. Create a goal and push all your resources into achieving it while still maintaining your position elsewhere.
For new players, I would personally recommend to hold tight in only engage in light fighting until S2 opens on June 1st. With the maps expansion, you can push hard into the NY frontier capturing critical fortifications and gaining excellent bonus. Think of Boston as a major boss fight, you aren't yet ready to take on it at the start of the campaign but rather bide your time, build up your strength, until eventually you can kick the British out of Boston completely.

I hope this short guide will help with the beginning of the game! There are still more topics I need to cover such as loyalty, financing, colony management, diplomacy, naval, and probably most importantly, the ui. Although this guide doesn't go into the nitty gritty, I would be more than happy to discuss it on the official discord [discord.gg] as I truly love discussing this game and the various strategies that can be pulled off.
Apologies for any weird formatting or whatnot, this is the first steam guide I have ever written and it will take some time getting used to.

Welcome to Ultimate General: American Revolution!

WilliamTheIII

If you are interested in some video walkthroughs of basic aspects of the game, I would recommend heading over to youtube.

Thanks to Gnosport Gaming for the vids :D

• Character Creation
  
• Perks
  
• First Steps