Napoleon Total War review

Empire Total War was the last Total War game I seriously played. Then I got into making modding tools for Empire, but I never played any of the newer games other than a few quick battles.

I didn't get into Napoleon because I much prefer sandbox campaigns to scripted ones, and this is basically one big scripted war. Well, I'm going to ignore this and try to unify Germany as Prussia.

So here's how I played, and towards the end a bit of game review.

Opening moves

So playing Prussia at normal/normal. Started by trading some technologies, and making some trade deals.

There's a huge war between France and various minors vs Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and other minors. Prussia doesn't take part in it yet, but it has oversized army it can barely pay for, so it's time to get some new taxpayers.

So the obvious targets are German minors like Saxony and Mecklenburg.

First battle of the game was one for Saxony, where AI was actually trying to much harder than in Empire. Enemies formed line before charging, then ran forward. Cavalry only tried doing its things when infantry attack was imminent. When attack broke out and Saxony reformed its troops, it did so away from my line (and diagonally, so I had to reposition my artillery), instead of each unit doing separate suicide run into my canister shot. There was still some derping, but improvement is real. Also the battle mini-map is top quality. It was real bad in Medieval 2 and Empire.

Battle of Mecklenburg was even more fun. We both had about 800 regulars, except they also had 1600 firelock armed citizens. Mecklenburg put all its professional troops on one flank, and would not advance. After some feints, I charged my cavalry into the mob like it's Medieval 2 all over. This was sweet, and also probably wouldn't work on higher difficulty levels. 144 horsemen routing 1600 enemies losing just 10, that's some winged hussar tier charge. All this forced them to advance on me. AI still derped, and moved its artillery behind a hill just so it can shoot into it and not into my troops. Well, there's only so many bugs they can fix. Overall 872 vs 2408 battle ended up with just 45 casualties. I really like how they buffed cavalry, it was far too weak in Empire.

Lesser German Unification

I took it slow basically waiting who's going to attack me first, France or the Coalition. France annexed its two German minor allies by event. That's something that existed in Empire too - AI gets those annexation events, but player doesn't. In Empire it was Spain integrating New Spain and Britain integrating Thirteen Colonies.

I took Hesse, getting my general killed, and discovering just how damn expensive they are. I guess it's not such a great idea to use them as cheap cavalry.

Then Oldenburg was the last German minor I could take while staying neutral.

First War with France

It was now the question of which alliance to join. France held Hannover, Holland, Belgium, Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg, Alsace, and Tyrol, and it would be fairly clear Western / South-Western front.

Coalition would require fighting in multiple directions while horrible exposed to backstab from France.

I waited a few turns trying to get some diplomatic offers, but nothing came out of it. Well, time to attack France anyway. First turn I took Hannover, Amsterdam, and Baden-Wurttemberg. Another one of my generals died taking Brussels.

After that I wanted to do a quick swing East and take Bavaria and Tyrol, but my spies informed me that somehow Napoleon with a full stack found his way there. Damn. So instead I took Alsace, sacked it, and abandoned it to the locals. I likewise sacked Reims.

I was preparing for a big showdown with Napoleon, but just in case I asked him for peace, and he agreed, letting me keep all the lands, including Alsace and Reims, which were now going to be totally overran by rebels because they got sacked. Oops.

Napoleonic Rebels

In Empire occupying anything automatically looted it and gave -13 unrest for minor settlements, and -30 unrest for majors. What counted as major wasn't totally clear.

In Napoleon you can occupy peacefully which generates about -8 unrest, or loot which seems to generate about -25 unrest, damages a lot of buildings, but gives you lump sum of gold. I'm saying about as these don't seem to be the same between settlements. Or you can release as protectorate OPM, but only certain regions.

If you want to keep settlement, it seems that peaceful occupation is far more profitable. Repairing damaged buildings, town watch cost, loss of tax income from destroyed town wealth, and upkeep cost of troops needed to pacify a region all together are just far more than gold you get from looting.

Rebels in Alsace got absolutely ridiculous units. There was a tiny 3 unit stack I crushed. I didn't even notice that they also spawned second stack - 6 dragoons, 4 12-pound artillery, 10 line infantry, all with 3 experience. Like no country has this kind of units - they had huge advantage in numbers and in quality of infantry, artillery, and cavalry. Oh well, I guess I don't really need Alsace. I might be able to defeat that, but it was just the first wave, and next one would be coming in 3 turns.

In Empire they'd be like 4 Militia 1 shitty artillery 1 Provincial Cavalry.

Rebellion in Reims was much more modest, so I kept that.

French Tyrol fell to rebels and then to Austria. Romania emerged somehow. But the main war between France and Coaliton was rather uneventful. Napoleon just stayed in Munich while Austrians and Russians did basically nothing.

Napoleon in Vienna

I allied Austria because mission gave me 1000 gold for it, and I didn't really have a good reason not to. They bribed me to join their war against Switzerland, and that did not call France into war against we. Wat?

Second Reims rebellion spawned full stack of professional troops, even if not quite as ridiculous as one in Alsace. At this point, it was finally possible to keep it under control, barely.

Napoleon left his entrapped Bavaria with no garrison behind and sacked Vienna. Undefended Bavaria fell to the Austrians, but the war continued.

Well, I didn't have anything better to do so I got best stack I could and assaulted Alsace. I sacked it again just to send the message. Thus ended year 1805, first 24 turns of the game.

Fighting OP stack of Alsace rebels. As usual I deploy to the side with artillery embedded in the line. Skirmishers deployed stakes to protect the left flank, right one is protected by end of the map and by cavalry. When attacked I fell back a bit to better expose the enemy to canister shot fire.

Most important on this screenshot is the glorious minimap.

Second War with France

I had 2.5 stacks, one in Reims, one in Alsace, and half in Switzerland. I got some of that replaced by militia, recruited a few more, until I had one full attack stack in Saxony and another in Switzerland.

I was ready to backstab Austria with that, but instead France declared war on me. Great timing France, you're barely holding to what you have and Great Britain took Brittany.

Well, my Western borders were sort of secure thanks to my two stacks of leftovers in Reims and Alsace.

France held Bavaria, Vienna, and Venice behind my lines. Napoleon did the silly thing and split his forces into three between Vienna, Munich, and his personal stack, so taking them all was easy. I ambushed Napoleon as he was trying to sneak back West. Napoleon is unkillable, but I wounded the bastard, and it will take him a while to respawn.

I tried to very generously offer to return Vienna to the Austrians for Bohemia so I'd have pretty borders and one fewer rebellious province to worry about, but they didn't take it.

After taking Vienna I accepted Russian and British offers of alliance for some petty cash, basically joining the anti-French coalition.

Wounded Napoleon accepted peace treaty.

War with Austria

Germany was basically unified, the only victory condition region left was Bohemia, so I needed to cause a diplomatic incident with Austria. Austria allied Pope without the rest of the coalition getting involved.

So I sent a polite letter to the Pope inviting him to Vienna for my coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. Austria and Naples somehow got involved on Pope's side, but Russia, Britain, Sweden, and Sardinia ignored that. I instantly took Prague, Milan, and Zagreb without a single shot being fired. Then Tyrol and Piedmont with a lot of shots being fired.

And that was exactly 25 regions I was supposed to have, including all regions on the list, which unlike Empire (where I'd need to wait for time to run out) instantly popped Supreme Victory dialog. No Steam achievement for it somehow. Oh well.

AI puts infantry in the middle and splits artillery and cavalry between flanks. This glorious light cavalry charge crushed artillery on one flank, then routed citizens of Munich. It then tried to go behind advanced enemy lines and do the same to other artillery, but it got crushed by enemy cavalry.

Overall great strategy not really possible in Empire, as balance is worse, and AI deployment is too much just tossing everyone at random.

Overall Impressions

This is an expansion pack for Empire, not a real new game. It doesn't fix any of the fundamental issues of Empire, like godawful naval battles, or poor moddability, but it improves it in many small ways.

I liked most of the changes. Battle AI is definitely better. Good battle minimap is great quality of life improvement. Battles are much more enjoyable. Units not requiring any cost for reinforcements, but requiring stay in home province for a while, with rate based on tech, buildings in province, and generals is a great idea. There's even winter attrition, but I'm less sold on that really. Various economic numbers got rebalanced quite hard, and I think new numbers are better overall.

The big downside is that there's basically one big war on a small map, and you can't really play it as a sandbox game. They included a few extra campaigns, but they're even more scripted and less sandboxy.

One big exception to balance changes are Napoleon rebels who are just ridiculously too strong.

If someone managed to have Empire style big map with Napoleon engine enhancements, that would be combination very much worth playing. People did just that for Medieval 2 and Kingdoms (Retrofit Mod). Unfortunately moddability of the game engine is too poor for it. There's a "retrofit" mod for Empire, but that's just for some battle and balance changes, and still runs on the original Engine.

Ironically after praising Napoleon so much, I can see myself coming back to Empire much more than to Napoleon.

I definitely don't hate this game the way LegendofTotalWar does. I don't see that much replay value, but it was enjoyable.