Gaming Napoleon: Total War Review

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/03/04/napoleon-total-war-review/1

He may have been short and French, but Napoleon was still a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. Can the collective might of bit-tech possibly stand up to the diminutive invader? We jump into Sega's Napoleon: Total War to find out once and for all!

 

If you'd watched QI a couple of weeks ago, you'd know that Napoleon wasn't actually short - he was actually 5'7", which was average height for the time. The whole height thing was propaganda by the British at the time to undermine his authority and power.

How much of Napoleon's battles does this cover? Does it go all the way to the doomed Russian invasion and his defeat at Waterloo? Or does it only focus on his more successful battles?

 

If you'd met Tim, Alex, James, Hiren and I then you'd know we're all a lot taller than 5'7". Thus, Napoleon = Short.

Spoiler

Tim and Alex combined form the tallest editorial team outside of Rivendell

 

The campaigns are Corsica (tutorial), Italy (proper war, short time frame), Egypt (low tech desert storm kind of affair, again short time frame), Europe (where you have the choice to invade Russia, or not, as you take the world on) and Waterloo, where you are basically in a world of hurt. Then you get the allied campaign as non-French. The battle of Waterloo is in there as a scenario, as are a bunch of other battles but given that they play very much like ordinary battles, albeit it with some quirks, they're not a particularly significant inclusion. You don't get to see a couple of hundred thousand guys in battle at Waterloo for instance, it's not too dissimilar from any other two stacks versus one battle.

 

Just because you're all freakishly tall (I'm 6'2", btw), doesn't make you normal
Napoleon was average height for the 18/19th century - he'd be shorter than average by 21st century standards, but not by that much - and certainly not by the amount that he's portrayed by English propaganda.

On another note:

Spoiler

They publish gaming mags in Rivendell now?

Hovis: Thanks for the sensible answer - I knew it was too much expecting one from Joe

 

Well I kind of err on the Napoleon is a midget side of the argument too at 6'2.

Hard to imagine an army made up of people averaging 5'7 really isn't it, must have looked like massed munchkins with muskets.

 

Haven't played empire in a while. When did they add multiplayer campaign?

 

It never officially went in but was available for everybody as a beta. Can't be sure exactly when it began but I think it was around the end of last year. It was buggy at best though it got better and it made the game vastly more challenging. Considering they were promising it quite soon after launch it was very late and still barely finished.

Fundamentally it's only a game you can really play with friends in the campaign though because you can struggle to get through more than one or two turns in a night if there's loads of fighting, so it really is a long term project. I don't think I ever got much past 1720 or so in it.

 

bit annoyed as someone who still plays empire that a lot of the stuff has just been put in a new game rather than as a patch / expansion

 

Greetings!

Two centuries old british propaganda still going strong, hen?

Campaigns of the Coalition is what it is called.

The article should have mentioned the new ability of transforming a building from one type to another, a barrack to a cannon foundry, for example.

It was in Beta:
http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/65812

If you are going to play ETW again and have a nVidia graphic card, dont forget to update the graphic card driver to the ones released this week. nVidia finally solved a six (!) month old conflict with ETW.

CAs justification is that the updates/upgrades to Warscape were too profound to make a proper ETW patch. Anyway, NTW is a very polished game, nothing to do with ETW on release or currently. Uninstalled ETW this Tuesday.
Am concerned on the replayablity of NTW though, too few factions.

 

Not really interested in the game, but that screen shot of the ship, wow. The water looks incredible.

 

Really enjoyed Empire:TW, sank a lot of hours into it but the bugs were a travesty; as were the bug fixing patches that effectively killed any campaign you were in the middle of by unbalancing it.

Tempted to pick this up but I can't face more bugs and it sounds like a lot of the new features such as attrition aren't fully realised.

 

Been playing this all week, awesome game. Multiplayer campaigns are good fun too. If a bit lengthy!

 

After playing and loving King Arthur, the TW games don't really do it for me anymore. Guess I need that little bit of fantasy in my 'realistic' wargames.

 

You mean this time the game actually has an AI? :O

I kid, I kid.

 

I really wanted to like that King Arthur game but I played the demo and just couldn't. The battles were just grim.

 

Greetings!

Demo:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/34050/

 

Greetings!

FUSIL:
http://www.filefront.com/15756463/Le-FUSIL-v1-0-NTW.pdf/

Royal Academy:
http://totalwar.honga.net/napoleon_faction.php?encode=en

Spraetters Guide:
http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/69328

 

not bad.. still think age of wonders type gameplay is a lot more fun- least it plays like a better game of chess =]

*edit here's to getting rudy roped trying to take on a whole garrison.. look at all my dead guys XD you can't really ninja your way through the game.. you have to have the units and cannons, then it's a cakewalk

bet waterloo will be rough.. I thought napoleon was 4' 9" and liked to do somersaults