Have you noticed the hot air balloon flying over the battle field occasionally? No idea what it’s supposed to do (probably just eye candy), but it’s a cool touch.
-XT
Ouch…yeah, that is expensive. Is it significantly different? I’d say…yes and no. It’s not just cosmetic differences. There is a real change in game play here with the time change. Technology research is also changed quite a bit. Also, this game (so far…I haven’t played through yet) is oriented more toward a campaign scenario…you are Napoleon and all that. It’s similar to the American Revolution campaign in the original game…if you didn’t like that then definitely don’t get this until it goes on the UK equivalent of the bargain bin. But if you DID like the AR campaign then this is probably right up your ally. And it’s different enough to warrant the price (I’d have bought it for $70 now that I’m playing it…I’d have sacrificed getting King Arthur and just bought this if I had to pay that much is all).
No harm in waiting though…maybe the price will drop. Hell, in a year you might be able to buy it in a combo pack with all the DLC units and the tribes campaign (which, to me, was a waste, as I didn’t enjoy it at all and it added nothing to the game for me).
-XT
Sounds like I’d best avoid it until it shows up in the bargain bin, or wait until they do the Empire: US Civil War or Empire: Indian Mutiny add-ons in that case…
Probably your best bet. I’m sure it will drop in price eventually, and equally sure they will bundle it together with all the other add-ons at some point. I have bought all the unit DLC’s, and have been happy with them in general. The Tribes campaign was, IMHO, a total waste.
I wonder if they are planning another expansion…they did the tribes one and now Napoleon, which is generally all they do with any given engine before moving on. A Civil War expansion would be cool, no doubt.
-XT
I’d be interested to see what they move on to- I’ve heard whispers of a Shogun remake (which would be pretty awesome) but the 19th Century was really the age of Imperialism and I’m really, really surprised they did the 18th century (Empire) and not the Scramble For Africa and all that sort of thing from the mid-late 19th Century instead…
I’ve heard that they are considering a remake of Shogun as well (though you always hear stuff like this about popular games), and also that they may do something from the ancient world (or even China and the far east). I hope they do one more significant expansion with this engine before turning to their next series, but then I always liked the 18th and 19th century (Hornblower, Sharpe, etc ;)) and was glad when type did Empire.
-XT
I finished the Egypt campaign. I must say that I don’t care for the scripted events. The Cairo rebellion happened as my forces were sweeping south along the Nile, too late for them to protect the city. I lost my progress building my classical university and barracks :mad:.
I fired up the Europe campaign and took a look around but didn’t do anything else before taking a break. I’m interested in seeing how the naval side of the campaign works. A single theatre with trading posts lining its west and south edges should be easier for the AI to deal with (and therefore harder for the player to deal with). I felt that in Empire the trade theatres were too quiet once you took out the pirates. When I build my first ironclad, I’ll have to repeat the Civ IV tech quote:
“You would make a ship sail faster by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I have no time for such nonsense!”.
–Napoleon Bonaparte
In case anyone was wondering, this game doesn’t seem to have any of the stability issues that Empire had right after release (the current version of Empire is perfectly stable too, btw); at least when you run it on an old Windows XP machine. I thought I had a CTD once, but it was just Java crashing in the background (it does that a lot, especially when it isn’t supposed to be on in the first place); I just had to tab out and back in.
I’ve had zero problems with the game…it’s actually more stable than Empire is even now after all the patches (I still have Empire occasionally lock up or crash to desktop, especially after I’ve been playing for a few hours and if there is a really big battle). Not only is it more stable, but it also seems to play smoother, with less lag and less frame rate loss. Not sure how they did it, since both the visuals and the audio aspects have obviously been enhanced. The game just LOOKS a hell of a lot better, more realistic, with much better audio effects (though, strangely, they still have the English advisers in the game, which is a bit of a disconnect for me at least).
I’m still playing through the 1805-1812 European part of the campaign, and this is more like what people who played Empire will be used too. It’s a nearly free form game without, afaict, any time limits. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, IMHO, much more than the previous campaigns, and I’m loving the new units and new aspects when capturing towns and the ability to raid enemy trade routes on land and such. Even the sea battles (few and far between since I’m focused on land warfare as the French) are visually quite stunning, and play better than the original game. I like that I can do at sea repairs to damaged ships…it makes things more interesting.
Overall I am liking this more and more as I’ve played through. I’m not sure of the replay value of the campaigns, but then I never really replayed the Revolution either, but still enjoyed playing the Americans in free form mode post-Revolution, so this will probably be similar. If the free form game is what I’m seeing in this campaign I’ll probably never go back to just playing the original game, since I really like the new feel of the game better than the original.
-XT
I’m still going through the Italian Campaign, and am enjoying it. Definitely feels like a much more polished game than Empire (which felt like a more polished game than Medieval II).
I tried the “invite human player” option last night. It worked flawlessly (only about an extra minute of waiting first to find an opponent, and then to wait for him to load up) and it made what would have been a cakewalk against the AI, a tough battle that cost me dearly. I guess that experience is going to vary depending on how skilled your opponent turns out to be. Also I don’t know if the chat options were working or not. At least my opponent, never spoke to me, even though I tried to engage him in a chat. Maybe he was too busy trying to kick my ass. 
What’s this campaign multiplayer feature you mentioned? It sounds like you can flag yourself as willing to play the opposition in someone’s campaign - and then when they go to fight a battle, you’re called up and take control of the AI’s forces? If so, that sounds like a great way to integrate a multiplayer component into the campaign game. And if you just want to have a quick battle instead of getting sucked into the campaign, you could just play a small role in someone else’s campaign. If that’s what it is, and it works well, that’s a great idea…
I know how it works on the one side but not the other.
Whenever you get into combat with another army in the campaign (with the exception of a few scripted encounters) you can ask to be paired up with a human opponent who can take control of the AI forces. What I don’t know is how it works for the person summoned. Do they get a prompt durign their campaign? Can they see what the battle forces look like? I have no idea. I clicked on the option to have me as a possible online player, but I have not gotten a request yet. You cna also limit the requests to friends on steam.
Well, that might not be that interesting. I mean, the Imperial Age was not really very exciting in terms of great battles of campaigns - the local peoples were often outnumbers, outgunned, and defended by treacherous militaries of unstable states. Meanwhile, the Europeans were wmostly sending good money and men to hang out across the world for what was mostly a vague strategic objective.
It didn’t quite turn out as well as they hoped.
I don’t know. There were some major campaigns in the 19th Century - the American Civil War, naturally, as well as the Franco-Prussian wars, the Crimean, the Mexican-American wars, all of those South American conflicts, and who knows how many wars I’ve overlooked. Besides, the fact that major wars didn’t break out between, say, Britain and France, doesn’t mean they *couldn’t *have; in real life the Swedes didn’t conquer India, either, but they did the last time I played Empire.
I can see that in Europe - it just wouldn’t be very different from Empire in a lot of ways. But I was mainly responding to the concept of making it about Imperialism. That worked in Victoria, but I don’t know that a down and gritty Total War level of detail would be that hot.
To people who have played both Empire and Napoleon : they (that is, CA) say their battle AI is much much smarter than it used to be. Bearing in mind the Empire battle AI is dumber than a sack of rocks left in the sun for too long, how true is this ? And how about the campaign AI ?
They managed to make it work (and made it interesting!) in that Medieval: Total War add-on that covered the Conquest Of The New World, so I’m sure the same could be done for Africa, India, Asia, and The Pacific if they did Victorian Empire: Total War. Especially if the tail end of the game includes WWI.
It’s definitely smarter…how much smarter is debatable. Personally, I think they mainly fixed the pathing algorithms and made the AI a bit more aggressive. It doesn’t seem to get stuck as much on the strategic map and just sit there like a rock. It seems more aggressive on the strategic map as well, more willing to take the offensive. On the tactical map it’s pretty similar, though it uses it’s artillery better. Also, it seems more willing to press an attack on a city, instead of sending units in piece meal…cavalry invariable still go for the flanks though, so you can pretty much predict they will do that if they have any cavalry on the field.
-XT
I’ve noticed that if I have the wings of my line “bent back” about 30 degrees, then the enemy cavalry has trouble properly flanking me. Sometimes it’ll charge my wing infantry head-on, sometimes it’ll go through their firing arc. If they do go all the way around, it gives me more time to redeploy my own cavalry from the other wing to help intercept them, or at least have my infantry square up.
I’ve had pretty good success using a lot of artillery in my strike forces. Nine infantry, eight artillery, two cavalry, is my standard mix, though it’s pretty low on cavalry. With cannons you can intersperse them throughout the line evenly, giving each artillery unit the protection of two infantry firing arcs, and lovely overlap of canister shot firing arcs (note that 12-pounders do have a longer canister range than lighter cannons). With howitzers I just park a line of them behind a solid screen of infantry.
In Empire I didn’t have much use for carcass shot or quicklime shells, but that may be because I favored mortars (the quicklime clouds seemed to travel farther along the ground with howitzers, probably because of their lower firing arc). Carcass shot didn’t seem to remarkable either. In Napoleon, things are more or less the same. Carcass and quicklime are more deadly, but not really noticeably more deadly than explosive shells. They seem to have a longer reload time, too. What’s more, you can’t even use them very much; only the experimental howitzers can fire carcass or quicklime (and only carcass or quicklime), and you can only have four units of them at a time. I’d just as soon have the standard 6-inch howitzers instead (they fire explosive shells or canister); four of each unit means I have to mess around longer deploying if I want a symmetrical line, and I can’t order them to switch shot types when I have both kinds selected. Better to just use the 6-inch howitzers exclusively, if you use them at all. Explosive shells are devastating, but a range of 400 makes them unwieldy if the enemy isn’t charging you.
I had an interesting battle today when invading Portugal. The map was bisected by a river, with a bridge on one side of the battlefield and a ford on the other. I had a bunch of howitzers, while the enemy had a few 12-pounder cannons. Now, a smart player would have kept their cannons out of my artillery range and forced me to come to them. The AI, unfortunately, tried to charge across into my infantry’s “Cross that bridge. I dare you.” formations. It was kind of neat, though, having a river for a defensive barrier for my artillery.
Okay, I have just purchased this game.
I got some sort of Collectors pack which came with a statue of Napoleon, a leather pouch and a Napoleon diary. There are also some elite units to download.
I have never played this game before but it seems that some of the mechanics are similar to Civilization- is that a fair comment? I haven’t loaded it yet- is there anything I should be wary of?
Also- what is this Steam bit? Again I have never used that but I gather it is some sort of authentication process. How many times can I register the same game- as in desktop and laptop? What happens if I buy a new computer?
Steam is the leading digital distribution platform on the PC. It’s a social site/game store rolled up into one.
For Napoleon and a few other games, you need to have it installed on your system. Once you register the game you can throw away your discs, essentially. You can re-download your game at any time as many times as you want.
I actually re-purchased all the games I care about that I owned on disc and gave the discs away. You cna log in with any computer that has Steam installed and be able to play your games there as well. So you can have the app on your desktop and laptop and play on either computer, or download any of your games to either or both computers without limitations. If you buy a new computer you can either backup your games locally to a disc or external drive, or not. You can just re-download them again, though obviously this will take longer.
We have an SDMB steam group you can join, in case you’re looking to do some multi-player.
The turn based overland map is indeed akin to Civ. The main differences is that units and settlements are less abstract. And of course there’s the real time tactical battles. Some common sense there will tend to win you the day (flank with calvary, hide units in the brush, prevent the enemy from flanking you, etc).