Robert E. Lee: Civil War General of a trend toward ease-of-use in the computer wargame genre spurred by "Panzer General"s commercial success. He further noted that Impressions " 'borrowed' half the title" from SSI's game. T. Liam McDonald of "PC Gamer US" likewise reported that the "Civil War General" title was chosen to capitalize on the commercial performance of "Panzer General" and "Allied General". "Civil War General" was based on Robert E. Lee's campaign against the Army of the Potomac because of his popularity among Civil War enthusiasts, and because Fiske believed that this confrontation "converts to computer gameplay better than any other" from the period.
Rifles in the American Civil War such, officers typically failed to realize the power of rifles and continued to launch massed attacks against fortified enemies, which invariably resulted in heavy losses. For years, one of the standard manuals used in the US Army had been an 1835 translation by General Winfield Scott of a French work. Shortly before the Civil War, William J. Hardee (later to become a Confederate lieutenant general) updated it to include information on rifles, but he still assumed the use of linear formations in the book. Nonetheless, Hardee's book was produced in a huge variety of editions during the war, often for