Kohvi's review

[Beggar]

Hello, just finished a bunch of playing NTW again. There's already a lot of reviews up but one more wouldn't hurt eh?
I think everyone has now basic picture of the new features in the game and BAI is the most interesting thing, but I think I'll mention a couple of things about them too. I've bolded some words so it should be easier to find what you want if there's something specific.

In NTW you have the option to either follow in Napoleons footsteps or fight against him as the member of the coalition. Coalition campaign is available straight from the beginning, but if you want to conquer Europe as Napoleon you must first complete the Italy and Egypt campaigns. I did the latter, so let's start with them.

The Italian campaign starts with objective given to you - get to the other side of the map and capture the Austrian town there in quite few turns and with even fewer friendly factions. But friends can be bought, and after all this is total war.

Research in this campaign is disabled, but diplomacy is there, and it even works well. One of the missions you are given in this campaign is making Piedmont-Sardinia your protectorate, which happens simply by conquering their capital - no liberating or diplomacy included, it's a scripted event. Even though Piedmont-Sardinia is now your protectorate, it isn't at war with Austria. Unlike in ETW you can however ask it to join the war, or perhaps make a trade embargo. Obviously war is better choice.

As I moved forwards, I realized I couldn't train cannons more anywhere. What's this? All my cities had only two or even one building slot! Then I found out you'll actually have to make choices. The building trees in ETW were linear, but now if you have empty building slot you can basically build anything there if it hasn't already been built in that city. In big cities you can of course build more buildings, too. Another good feature regarding the buildings is changing the building type. Built a theater and now enemy is at your doorsteps? You can change it into a military building, and it's not even the lowest tier, but the same as the original building was.

Campaign progressed, Austria declared war on Venice. Why, I'll never know. I had previously offered an alliance to Venice, and they had declined. Now they were happy to accept, and I even got a military access. Good thing, because I got a reminder I had only a few turns left until the campaign ends. Napoleon marched through their lands, captured the most eastern Austrian settlement and the campaign was won. The length of both of the short campaigns is worth whining, I can see there has to be some challenge but the turns should have been shorter (1 week or so perhaps). Now it's just like "Ah, what are you enjoying the campaign we made, get out of here!"

Overall Italy... fun but easy - yes, there's a tutorial in the game but this is the real tutorial, there to just make you familiar with the game.

Egypt
Diplomacy was something I used a lot in the Italian campaign. So as Egypt loads, I see there's no diplomacy in that campaign. It's all out war, everyone hates you and attacks you.
Instead of diplomacy, Egypt has research enabled after you conquer a school for yourself. Research works exactly the same way as it did in ETW, except you are limited to the regular first rank shooting for the whole game - no fire by rank or platoon fire. Well, fire and advance is there. Attrition was included in Italian campaign also, but in Egypt it's much bigger factor. It's a feature I'm quite happy with, it's capable of causing decent losses even in one turn, though for some odd reason elites are immune to it and it seems to be problem only in winter in the GC. Would be better if it applied also if your too far from home settlements for example or something like that.

Egypt is more challenging than Italy of course. When I fought in Italy I just felt like vanilla ETW, I attacked a city and nobody tried to take mine. Egypt is much better now. If I besiege a city the AI will send army to attack me and I might be suddenly overwhelmed. Annoying time limit is present, but I think it works better in this campaign - you should hurry to destroy to ottomans while creating troops to get the unrest down, beduins keep on sieging your settlements and raiding your towns, british send their stacks on the mainland from their island. It was good campaign that offered a nice challenge, though in the end I rushed through the ottoman lands besieging their cities and clicking "surrender". Some have had more challenge with late campaign too, for me it was very easy.

Grand campaign then has all those features mentioned previously, and of course a big, beautiful map. I won't go as far as claiming it's a best European map in the Total War series - it would be, if Turkey and North Africa were there. Now they are just trade notes. Whether they played a major part in Napoleonic wars or not, it would have been good to have them.

GC has France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia available, but there are already mods unlocking minor factions for playing, which increases the replay value nicely. GC isn't entirely as free as in previous campaigns either. For example, it seems that Spain will remain allied to France no matter what, because every time they break their alliance it gets reforged. CAI is however much better and aggressive now.

Graphics are excellent, as you have seen from pictures and videos. I don't think I need to comment much on them. Performance is great.
Sounds on the other hand... musket sounds are horrible. Cannons aren't much better. Well, musics are decent, though there are still old ETW tracks included. There are fifers now, too, but all the factions play the same generic music that can be barely even heard on the battlefield.

In Battles Units move quite fast, and reload fast, which I think is done to replace the missing firing drills, which are lacking so that the units don't have to wait for all the soldiers to be in place to fire. Laser bullets are included. So far the BAI had been surprisingly good - it forms a line and stays in it, flanks nicely, but does stupid things from time to time (cavalry just runs in front of my line getting shot to pieces). Nonetheless it's quite good...
...until it gets fire and advance.
Fire and advance makes it worthless piece of , and provides us with our old friend, the melee bug. This makes the battles in the otherwise great campaign boring and annoying. With FAA the AI is still capable of good flanking, but what's the use of it when the rest of the army is completely destroyed?
Siege battles - yep, they suck.
See more about FAA: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...30#post6873230

To buy, or not to buy?
Buy. It'll require a couple of mods, but the game is fun nonetheless.
So what do I recommend?
There's one mod that you must absolutely download, playing the game without this doesn't make any sense.

FIRE AND ADVANCE REPLACED BY FIRE BY RANK OR COMPLETELY REMOVED - MOD BY RADIUS
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=337881

Note: if you install the FBR mod, then units will always have to form up and wait for every soldier before firing.
I play the game with that, reduced movement speeds, tracer removal mod and some sounds mods, but those are just personal preferences.

[MCM]

Nice informative report. I just received my copy of NTW here in Japan, bought in the US. I will probably knock out a review as well
Cheers!