NTW VS ETW

[DaCMan]

Thinking about getting either Napoleon or Empire, I'm leaning towards NTW. I have played both demos and found the Napoleon one to be far superior, especially in graphics. I know demos aren't great at representing, but they seemed to be glaringly different in quality. I like the historical characters in NTW and it seems like its a refined ETW, but I also like all of the factions in empire and especially like the emergent ones. America and the giant map are my main favorites. In the main game is the graphical and gameplay difference noticeably different? Is there anything else I should know? Any sort of advice is welcome.

[Discoman]

Standalone NTW is far superior when it comes to AI performance and challenge. It is certainly more polished and less glitchy than its predecessor. I never really delved into mods for it, but it does a good job as is.

ETW with mods can be good, but it's seems to be a rather unstable game in general and alot of its bugs still aren't fixed. I too enjoy the scope of the game, but it isn't as hashed out as one would like and CA seems afraid of touching controversial historical aspects like the Triangle trade for instance.

Both games aren't good representations of battle in their periods, but atleast NTW doesn't turn into the melee fests that ETW battles sometimes turn into (I think one patch messed up ETW and enemy armies would just want to charge at you)

In closing I recommend NTW hands down, but maybe ETW if its on sale might be worth a try with some mods.

[Sirlion]

ETW has a different time period (1700-1800 vs 1792-1815), a much bigger world map with America and parts of Africa \ Asia, and lots of factions. That's all there is to it when it comes to pros for ETW. Everything else is by far better handled in NTW.

NTW has better graphics (not only better, but also dont have glitches - for example ETW's SSAO doesnt work), almost all bugs have been addressed (in ETW you can run your cavalry in an infantry square and your opponent can still form square trapping your troops inside of it, while in NTW you cannot form square if cavalry is attacking your infantrymen), the battle balance is dramatically improved: every faction has at least some stat differences and artillery (even rockets) doesnt destroy your infantrymen with extreme precision (in ETW artillery was very precise at long distances and would shatter your men no matter what). Cavalry in NTW is meaningful and does a lot of damage as it should, while in ETW it was just another generic unit easy to defeat. The only cavalry unit everyone used in ETW especially online was Light Dragoons because they were insanely fast and had OP reloading time making them unrealistic machinegun-lookalike. To top it off, NTW has somewhat realistic uniforms for each faction even in vanilla while ETW had bland representations of British oriented mid-1700s with just different colours for everyone.

NTW has also more mods in many different historical periods such as ACW, Italian war of independence of 1859 and WWI. With mods, NTW can also deliver a very realistic representation of the battles during the period, I suggest you try this mod which has already satisfied quite a lot of people.

[DaCMan]

Thanks for the advice, unless I find a great mod for empire I will most likely try Napoleon. America's campaign and the amount of factions were
my main factors for ETW. I'll probably play vanilla for awhile before looking at some minor mods improving graphics and AI.

[musketer]

DaCMan, do not waste time on the vanilla versions (empire and napoleon), download DarthMod, at least for the graphics (thick smoke pushed by the wind is awesome! and beautiful special effects) and for cool sounds (muskets finally do not sound like toy pistols). Believe me, vanilla napoleon discouraged me after a few hours, with DarthMod i have already 500 hours !!

[DaCMan]

I like to play vanilla before trying mods, I was hoping but didn't know if NTW had Darthmod. I'll probably try a short campaign with vanilla before installing Darthmod (Wi-Fi permitting)

[musketer]

Do what you want, maybe even better that you want to try out vanilla campaigns first because of that after downloading DarthMod the better you will feel the difference. It's like a new game. Here is the link do download: http://www.moddb.com/mods/darthmod-napoleon
I encourage you to read the description of the mod. The mod's Launcher will allow you to change various settings, such as bullet tracers On/Off.

[DaCMan]

I know it's a bit late, but I'd like to wrap things up on my decision. I plan on getting the GoTY edition of NTW/ETW which also has all DLC's. I like to get the expansions, and seeing as I can't handle a lack of American revolution. Thanks for the mod suggestions, along with your reasoning. If not for the giant campaign map which I have grown to value, I would be following common opinion and grab NTW.

[Leonardo]

NTW has better graphics (not only better, but also dont have glitches

Actually NTW do have at least one glitch and what I'm talking about is what I would call a landscape bug and that bug gets triggered when the player decides to play a battle in the Peninsula Campaign. Here is two pictures just to show what I mean.





No matter what I do the game will CTD as soon I click on the sword button, but the auto solve the battle button works just fine.

I discover this bug last year and I tested a lot of things, but it seems the game cannot for, unknown reason, create the deployment zone when one army is standing on a hill and the landscape in Spain has a rocky terrain.

[Steph]

NTW also has a lot of factions, especially with mods. In Masters of Europe for instance you can play 16 factions in the campaign, and 40 in the custom battles.

[JaM]

but NTW also has some nasty bugs that plague some players... like for example "cracking sound" bug that was "implemented by CA" with last NTW patch... sometimes when you click on a settlement or army, some type of "mechanical" looped sound starts to play, and only way how to get rid of it is to click on a border of map. Anyway if you ignore it, and enter a battle while its still playing, game will CTD... It happens mostly on PCs with NVIDIA cards, due to NVIDIA sound driver (i guess, as it happens to me on both PC and Laptop, both with NVIDIA GFX)

[Leonardo]

but NTW also has some nasty bugs that plague some players... like for example "cracking sound" bug that was "implemented by CA" with last NTW patch... sometimes when you click on a settlement or army, some type of "mechanical" looped sound starts to play, and only way how to get rid of it is to click on a border of map. Anyway if you ignore it, and enter a battle while its still playing, game will CTD... It happens mostly on PCs with NVIDIA cards, due to NVIDIA sound driver (i guess, as it happens to me on both PC and Laptop, both with NVIDIA GFX)

Yeah, I know what you mean. I too have notice it, but the CTD is probably cause by at least one missing file and that file seems to be lost when the sound goes *beserk* in-game.

The only solution I know of is to exit to Windows then verify game cache in Steam and the result will always be like this.

• One file missing - 176 Bytes
• One file missing - 0 Bytes

[Sirlion]

The bug with the metallic sound is present yes, but for me it never caused a game crash, ever. I've always used Nvidia cards. The sound goes away next turn, if you zoom out in the campaign map, or if you enter a battle.

[Gustav Mahler]

Wow - Steph, Sirlion and JaM together in one thread - I must be in heaven. Guys I love and appreciate your work since I played all of your mods. When talking about ETW what I eagerly await is implementation of Sirlion's settings to ETW and JaM's adding of more diverse units and factions into the Empire Realism mod, which is by itself game mechanics wise great.