# Total War fans...Napoleon **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [November 24, 2009, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/total-war-fans-napoleon/518827 "2009-11-24T21:55:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/total-war-fans-napoleon/518827/1 "2009-11-24T21:55:26Z")
Don’t know how many Total War fans there are, but thought I’d start a thread with a link to the new expansion coming out (in theory) in February for Total War Empire. There has already been 1 (or possibly 2) expansions for the game, but personally I didn’t get much out of the Tribes expansion and haven’t been able to find the Asian one anywhere except in a compilation game pack with the full game (which I have no intention of buying again). [Here](http://pc.ign.com/articles/104/1049380p1.html) is the IGN preview for the Napoleon expansion: > [@](#): > > November 24, 2009 - For almost a decade, the Creative Assembly has tried to present historically accurate real time warfare with turn-based strategy and resource management as a key element of play. Whether players fought across the medieval period or ancient Rome, players essentially made their own story as they try to lead their faction to glory. However, Creative Assembly wanted to provide a bit more direction for their latest title, an evolution of franchise mechanics as ambitious as the man that the game is based on. Napoleon: Total War is coming in February 2010, and from what I was shown during a recent press event, this could be the deepest Total War yet. > [@](#): > > While players will have the option to select any country and play through each campaign like previous Total War games, Napoleon provides an additional focus on following the story of France’s emperor. This starts with the tutorial, which follows Napoleon’s childhood in Corsica and training as an artillery commander, so even veterans of the franchise interested in seeing how the game develops may want to play through this section. From there, players are presented with three separate campaigns in successive order: the Italian, Egyptian and European theaters, each with their own separate objectives and goals. One thing that was pointed out to me was that players would have the ability to essentially rewrite history by accomplishing different goals that Napoleon wasn’t able to achieve. For example, Napoleon never conquered the city of Acre during his Egyptian campaign, but if players have better tactical maneuvering, you can fulfill these goals, gaining achievements as well as possible advantages for these new objectives > [@](#): > > While these “bonus objectives” play into some of the new features, it’s not always worth it to engage in every battle you see, particularly with the revision of the turn-based system. Instead of the span of time that would pass between turns representing a couple of months, Napoleon introduces a two week turn period, which provides a number of adjustments to the game. Aside from making the action feel much more immediate and faster paced, the tax levied against your lands are much smaller, so you’ll be able to save your money for additional infrastructure projects or army recruitment. However, this also means that constructing buildings or raising armies takes much longer to do as well, so if your forces are decimated or your cities are destroyed, you’ll have to wait a much longer amount of time until you’re back at full strength. > [@](#): > > That brings up a final point, which is that the AI has been completely overhauled for Napoleon. Creative Assembly took the recent 1.5 Empire: Total War patched AI as a baseline for the decisions made by the computer, and added a number of additional adjustments to make battles much more challenging. Of course, there could be veterans out there who don’t feel as though the AI would be tough enough, so Creative Assembly added the option for “player drop in” battles, allowing your game to search out and actively seek other people to take up the controls of your opposing army. You won’t know whether that other person is a newcomer or a skilled player at the game until you step onto the battlefield, which ramps up the tension: a loss due to another player can easily set back your campaign by weeks or even months of game time. There are some pretty cool screen shots in the link as well. I figured this would be the major expansion for the game, but it looks like it might be even better than what I was hoping for. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/total-war-fans-napoleon/518827/2 "2009-11-24T22:37:02Z")
My problem with Empire: TW was the unbelievably frustrating pathfinding during the real time battles. I lost my temper so many times that I finally just uninstalled the game, never to be looked at again. I don’t think this has happened to me since trying to play single-player in X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. The Total War series of games, particularly Shogun and M2TW, have eaten up a lot of my time and I currently play M2TW with the SS mod. I like them for both aspects of gameplay. They can fix whatever they want, but if pathing issues cause you to lose a battle because 1 guy got caught somewhere then it’s just not worth it. Hopefully some of these good ideas, like the drop-in human opponent, will get patched into older versions of the game (or modded into). ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/total-war-fans-napoleon/518827/3 "2009-11-25T01:47:08Z")
Bah. My laptop can’t run the game. It’s like my nose is pressed up against the glass while everyone is playing with their shiny toy. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/total-war-fans-napoleon/518827/4 "2009-11-25T02:11:17Z")
Sure, the pathfinding sucks. And worse is units not firing until that last guy who got hung up on a fence makes it into position. But it’s pretty easy to work around the worst of the pathfinding issues, and not entirely historically inaccurate. I mean, do you really think a battalion deployed in line is going to advance obliquely across a fence in good order? Really? So deploy it into a column and advance it across the fence at something near perpendicular, and redeploy into line on the other side. Works like a charm. Of course, there was that time when a couple guardsmen got stuck inside a building, rendering the entire unit useless for the rest of the battle. Grr. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/total-war-fans-napoleon/518827/5 "2009-11-25T23:29:39Z")
I used to get frustrated when my ships would get hung up and then just sit there and get pounded to splinters…but then I thought, well, that probably happened a lot during this time period as well. Same with the golden-BB that occasionally happens, when a ship of the line(!!) blows up after only getting hit a few times. I actually had that happen to the USS Constitution (one of the special DLC units you can get), which REALLY sucked. But, that kind of thing actually happened during this time period. Still a really fun game and I’m totally (heh) looking forward to the Napoleon expansion. -XT