Napoleon: Total War - Games

I just got Napoleon, shit is fucking awesome. I just tried a dropin battle. So, after getting close to the enemy city in my Italian campaign, I am presented with the option of searching for a human player. I click eagerly. [IMG]http://filesmelt.com/dl/napoleon1.jpg[/IMG] Opponent found! The teams seem to be fairly even too. Hooray, so my game loads up quickly aaaaand... [IMG]http://filesmelt.com/dl/napoleon2.jpg[/IMG] Goddamnit people, get a faster computer! Anyways I deploy my army. As you can see, there's a little chat thingy up in the top, and a microphone option I think. [IMG]http://filesmelt.com/dl/napoleon3.jpg[/IMG] I completley outwit the enemy, and suffer virtually no losses compared to him. Hah! Perhaps the AI is smarter this time :v: [IMG]http://filesmelt.com/dl/napoleon4.jpg[/IMG] I deploy less, take less losses AND GET an achievment to boot. All in all, drop in battles are awesome!

wait how does that work? you're both playing seperate campaigns offline and you attack a npc army and then it picks people at random to play the battle?. This is rather interesting now. I had zero intention of buying this until now.

Yep ^^ Only decently even battles too.

Feature would be cool if I didn't suck at the game. People would drop in and I'd get steamrolled.

[QUOTE=Pinut;20408415] you're both playing seperate campaigns offline and you attack a npc army and then it picks people at random to play the battle?. [/QUOTE] Yeah pretty much.

the new UI looks amazing. I really really want this now.

I want this game but I don't have the room on my PC. [editline]08:44PM[/editline] Time to clean up my PC. [editline]08:44PM[/editline] :sigh:

My copy arrived last night. I'm not too far it in, but it mostly seems like a shinier version of Empire. There are hardly any units, and hardly any playable factions. Not to say it isn't fun however, it just seems a bit lacking contentwise. [B]edit:[/B] Austria, Prussia, Great Britain and Russia are all playable in the European campaign. France has 3 campaigns, Italy, Egypt, Europe. The UI is [B]very[/B] nice, but the game seems to be lacking a bit of content. The historic battles are pretty hard, got my arse handed to me on medium on my first go. This pc could run ETW all ultra with 60fps, and i need to run NTW on high just to get it to stop jumping around, which sucks. Hoping for a content patch or DC...

[QUOTE=Rusty Shackleford;20409924]My copy arrived last night. I'm not too far it in, but it mostly seems like a shinier version of Empire. There are hardly any units, and hardly any playable factions. Not to say it isn't fun however, it just seems a bit lacking contentwise. [B]edit:[/B] Austria, Prussia, Great Britain and Russia are all playable in the European campaign. France has 3 campaigns, Italy, Egypt, Europe. The UI is [B]very[/B] nice, but the game seems to be lacking a bit of content. The historic battles are pretty hard, got my arse handed to me on medium on my first go. This pc could run ETW all ultra with 60fps, and i need to run NTW on high just to get it to stop jumping around, which sucks. Hoping for a content patch or DC...[/QUOTE] Hopefully someone will retromod the UI into Empire. I love how it looks and works compared to the old one.

[QUOTE=Rusty Shackleford;20409924]My copy arrived last night. I'm not too far it in, but it mostly seems like a shinier version of Empire. There are hardly any units, and hardly any playable factions. Not to say it isn't fun however, it just seems a bit lacking contentwise. [B]edit:[/B] Austria, Prussia, Great Britain and Russia are all playable in the European campaign. France has 3 campaigns, Italy, Egypt, Europe. The UI is [B]very[/B] nice, but the game seems to be lacking a bit of content. The historic battles are pretty hard, got my arse handed to me on medium on my first go. This pc could run ETW all ultra with 60fps, and i need to run NTW on high just to get it to stop jumping around, which sucks. Hoping for a content patch or DC...[/QUOTE] huh, what are you talking about. there's a ridiculous amount of units [editline]06:15PM[/editline] then again, I have 15 extra units from preordering :v: also, everyone has said NTW runs far better than ETW so... [editline]06:19PM[/editline] good fucking GOD, historical battles are difficult

[QUOTE=JLea;20411130]huh, what are you talking about. there's a ridiculous amount of units [editline]06:15PM[/editline] then again, I have 15 extra units from preordering :v: also, everyone has said NTW runs far better than ETW so... [editline]06:19PM[/editline] good fucking GOD, historical battles are difficult[/QUOTE] I got some of the extra units with the imperial edition, including the towarczys (game.au bonus unit) but it still seems lacking from all the units they had in empire. It's not lag as i normally see it, it's more the screen jumping instead of moving smoothly. On another topic, I love naming units :) [img]http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac328/RustyJavelinShackleford/DAWG.jpg[/img]

I felt like posting that "The Complete Military History for France" joke but I couldn't be bothered. I'm still playing the shit out of Empire and I can't be bothered to buy this, especially after the PCG review.

Uhh. This is better than Empire in every concievable way.

[QUOTE=JLea;20412809]Uhh. This is better than Empire in every concievable way.[/QUOTE] Explain.

Anyone tell me if the campaign turns don't take ages now?

[QUOTE=Monkey pie;20412828]Explain.[/QUOTE] Think of everything good (and bad) in Empire. Then think of it in a better way, that's Napoleon. [editline]12:33PM[/editline] Also this SomethingAwful post v v v [quote]Holy poo poo. The sheer obscene awesome of the battles in this game make Empire's feel like an amateurish mod. They seriously upgraded everything about the look and feel of the tactical game. Artillery is loving DEADLY AS poo poo, especially those beautiful bastard-rear end Unicorn guns. Round shot leaves divots in the ground; explosive shells leave massive craters. The screen shakes and blurs and the explosions are huge and loud as gently caress. Artillery from forts is actually relatively accurate, and can easily decimate an entire unit in one shot. Instead of Empire's system of "oh well these three idiots got nailed and everyone else is fine", this game opts for "yeah, that cannon ball just BLEW A MASSIVE HOLE through an entire regiment". Seeing a unit of Highland Foot lose more than half of their strength to one shot from a fort cannon that fire down the length of their line (they had turned their left flank to the wall and were advancing to the rear of the fort to attempt to scale the walls) was goddamned amazing. Even rocket artillery is both impressive as all hell and actually effective for once. Infantry generally feel more responsive. They don't have to wait for some poor gently caress stuck on a fence in order to open fire, and the pathfinding in field battles is generally pretty good. Granted, I have not played many battles thus far and cannot really comment on that further. Fort pathing, by the way, is still really wonky, and I definitely saw cavalry units that I had ordered to sally out to assault artillery getting stuck on a corner near the gatehouse and simply not moving, so they definitely haven't fixed that poo poo yet. Infantry movement in forts is a bit better, and the AI will actually move their artillery into a better firing position if their current one isn't doing so well. (This seems to be done pretty rarely, however. But then again, artillery is much more effective in this game than in Empire.) The sound is much, much more impressive. Whereas in Empire you felt as if you were commanding an army of deaf-mutes, in Napoleon there's pretty much a constant cacophony happening all around your units. Men screaming orders or screaming in pain mixed with musket fire and artillery rounds either traveling overhead or impacting around them. I think I even heard a Scotsman start hurling verbal abuse at... someone. I'm not sure if he was yelling at my troops or his own. I do know that the French officers bitch at their men, including calling them imbeciles. There's also fifes and drums, though I don't know if there's bagpipes for the awesome Scots (I hope there are). I'm playing at 1280x1024 (my monitor is old, alright?), 16x AF, 2xAA, and all the bling on with everything else on Ultra on my 4890 HD, and the game actually seems to be running better than Empire. This is really surprising considering that there's a lot more poo poo happening. All the familiar effects from Empire, be it musket fire, carcass shot, or rocket artillery, are redone and in many ways improved. Rockets look (and sound) much more impressive, in addition to their newfangled ability to actually inflict casualties (though they're not nearly as effective as proper artillery). Carcass looks terrifying, and hell even Round shot is improved (as I said, it will easily dislodge about a dozen men from a formation... seeing it hit a square is goddamned incredible; men fly through the air like toys, only a dazed few actually recovering and returning to formation). Smoke is highly prevalent across the battlefield, and not only hangs in the air but is, I believe, actually carried by the wind to a certain degree. (I may be wrong, though.) Smoke effects are oddly more pronounced from musket fire than artillery fire, which I'm not entirely sure is correct (if someone can correct me on this, please do). Another nice touch is the variation in the units. They really did reduce the overall chance of clones existing in the same unit, although it's obviously not completely removed. It is, however, far, far less prevalent than Empire's copy-paste poo poo. Some of the other nice changes are not just facial hair, but facial features. While most troops seem to have the same general face as a base, some of the have different ones and that, coupled with kickass sideburns or beards -- to say nothing of the much more flamboyant uniforms of the era -- really makes them look a hell of a lot different than they did in Empire. The uniforms, by the way, are awesome, especially the Scotsmen. They really put Empire's uniforms to shame and, although there's not a massive amount of unit variety present, I don't think there'll be as huge an issue with clone armies, at least from a visual standpoint. A side note, the battle maps are actually pretty interesting this time around. Instead of Empire's "Field A" and "Field B" style, relatively simplistic layouts, you can actually have rivers, hills, and so on to make for interesting tactical challenges. There's still an assortment of more traditional field maps, and I'm pretty sure one or two of them are making a return from Empire, but it's nice to see some real variety. On top of that, the fort maps can prove to be really, really nice... one that I played had a western artillery fort situated on a high hill with relatively steep slopes that put the attacking British at a significant disadvantage. So yeah, this game generally FEELS much more polished than Empire. The battles are certainly impressive to watch. That said, there's still some issues. I'll start with a nitpick: they used much more impressive volumetric effects for artillery, musket fire, etc. etc. and it all looks great, but they may have gone a bit overboard. If you catch a foggy day be prepared to not be able to see a whole hell of a lot through the (admittedly nice looking) fog and massive amounts of smoke. I guess that's realistic in a sense, though. Secondly, the Battle AI is improved over Empire (the artillery will actually occasionally redeploy, and units won't simply blob together and charge into melee quite as much), but it's still pretty braindead. There's already instances where I've seen old Empire AI issues crop up, like the units of cavalry that seemingly ignore everything going on around them and either wait for your artillery to demolish them (which won't take long, trust me), or start crawling ahead in this agonizingly slow lurch. Chokepoints will also result in the AI grouping together in massive piles that are just asking for the goddamned incredible artillery to slaughter. Cavalry will still charge headlong towards artillery that is integrated into your line, even though it's covered by flanking units and their (slightly more effective) musket fire. It does seem to be a bit more capable in handling both its general, infantry, and artillery. I specifically saw a 6-lber. cannon reposition twice because it's shots were bouncing off a hill instead of landing in the general area of its designated target. Granted, it then moved directly into range of my artillery, thereby earning it a swift death... but baby steps are ok. I have seen the AI withdraw units temporarily, apparently recognizing that it was losing a fight instead of haphazardly hurling units at me until they rout... though that may have been a fluke as I have not seen it repeated since. I haven't played any of the campaigns yet, so I'll comment on those once I do so. But thus far, I'm actually surprised. I haven't crashed yet (though I never really had much of an issue with crashing in Empire after they finally fixed the "Hardlock Fleet" bug way back after release), and everything seems to be working just fine. (I'm on Win7 x64, if that is any help.) Basically, Napoleon is roughly what Empire should have been, had CA not botched that release. It's not perfect by any means, but it generally seems to be an improvement. Take that statement with a grain of salt, however, as I have not yet spent enough time with it to really see it completely. Thus far though, I'm actually pretty impressed.[/quote] [editline]12:38PM[/editline] Think of what Medieval 1 was to Medieval 2. The same but improved in almost every way.

Well, after that read, I'm sure as hell glad that I bought the game. Was unsure whether or not to buy it at first, thinking it would just be another 'L4D2'. [editline]09:26PM[/editline] [QUOTE=KingQ8;20403514]Umm, unless you're a crap General, you usually loose 2-5 volleys (depending on whether the situation allows you to dwindle their numbers because you have superior firepower) then charge in with bayonet. This game is largely based around melee fighting. In that era, you'd normally shoot once or twice then charge in for the kill. The American revolution happened after the French revolution. Get your crap right. Americans only revolted when they were promised help from French, when she declared Liberté, égalité, fraternité "Liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood)" and this caused the Americans to revolt. She also said that she would help any countries who were held back by England or wanted liberty.[/QUOTE] You are truly a colossal idiot. In some sense, the French Revolution was caused by the American Revolution.

The historical battles alone are awesome. There's nothing like taking 2 full stack armies on at once with 10 cannons going off all around you

[QUOTE=angelangel;20413285]Well, after that read, I'm sure as hell glad that I bought the game. Was unsure whether or not to buy it at first, thinking it would just be another 'L4D2'. [editline]09:26PM[/editline] You are truly a colossal idiot. In some sense, the French Revolution was caused by the American Revolution.[/QUOTE] I remember me'n angel do some funky battles in our time. Never forgot those moonwalking horses because of your signapore connection.

Saw it today in my local gamestore. SO basicly what changed compared the Empire?

Read my post.

I don't know wither to spend the last of my money on this or not. What do you guys think? I enjoyed the battles in empire, especially online with a friend against AI. But I wasn't a huge fan of the big map thing.

How much hard drive space does the game take?

[QUOTE=Aertz;20414223]How much hard drive space does the game take?[/QUOTE] 15 gigs i guess.

Why isn't this bitch on pre-load? Fuckers.

I got my copy in the post today. Seems that I can't activate the key until tomorrow :argh: All having it delivered the day before release (Which Amazon does just about all the time) achieves with Steam games is frustration. Why the traditional games on a Friday in the UK has to apply on Steam too is beyond me.

Is there a non-steam version of the game?

Got my copy today, can't wait for tomorrow!

I enjoyed Empire but I was very disappointed in the lack of support post-release, and NTW seems to be completely soulless. It may play well (better than Empire, even, so I've heard) but it's not really very inspired. Frankly I'm shocked that they decided to do so similar a game after so short a time (if anything I would expect a time gap more like that between Medieval 1 and 2). What I would really love, but only if they [B]DID IT RIGHT[/B], would be a space based TW game. I'm not sure on how many of the mechanics would work, but if planets/star systems worked like cities/regions and the space combat was fleshed out properly (ideally with planetary combat as well) the game could be fucking epic. Something like Spore's space stage but with character and a sense of purpose and grandeur.

No that would be terrible.