Apologies for the delay in posting this, but you will be surprised at what a seventeen and a half hour train ride will do to a person! Anyway, here is my review on Napoleon Total War from the San Francisco event, as well as some information I gleaned from discussions with CA's Keiran.
Napoleon: Total War
After spending a very entertaining morning wandering around San Francisco, I arrived at the cunningly disguised SEGA office. I was met by Julian from SEGA, and was introduced to Nuccio and Urza who were already waiting. After a brief chat, Keiran arrived and we were shown into the conference room where several high spec Alienware PCs were waiting for us. We were to be playing the release candidate (the Gold version) that was on the disks available in stores, however CA are at this moment working on a patch that will be released through Steam just before the game itself, so it will install itself during the game's own installation.
Keiran began by showing us a short video, then ran through some of the new features of Napoleon, including showing us the intro movies to the Italian and Egyptian campaigns. I have to say, I was already off to a good start. In my opinion, the intro movies in Rome have never been topped, but these are certainly the best since Rome, possibly even better. Keiran also confirmed that each of Napoleon's campaign features its own victory movie to tie the campaign into the next one. He then gave us a quick look at the Italy and Egypt campaign maps, and they're pretty impressive in scale. Egypt especially is going to be challenging, as attrition is going to play a huge part, and the French are limited to the two armies they begin with - all other units must be raised from local tribes!
After watching the videos we were eager to get down to business, so Keiran set up a 3vs2 multiplayer battle on a desert map that was fairly flat, with one large ridge running down the middle between the two sides. I played as the British, choosing a mixture of Line Infantry, Riflemen, Black Watch, Highland Line Infantry, cannons and Howitzers. I also had a unit of Dragoons, and chose the Duke of Wellington as my general. In custom and multiplayer battles, there is a choice for different Generals. You can take a generic General Staff unit, which is cheap, but has only basic bonuses. There are also some historical Generals available, for the British these were Picton, Howe and Wellington. Each was progressively more expensive (Wellington alone cost 1000 points), but each has progressively better bonuses.
As we quickly discovered, Western troops in a desert move at a snail's pace, and will be pretty much exhausted within fifteen minutes moving and fighting! Units themselves look spectacular, with a lot of variety within units themselves. In addition to the drummers from Empire, there are now flutists added to the unit's officers. Also, men in the units will be talking to each other, insulting the enemy, or just chatting to their friends. As I scrolled down for a close look at one of my Line Infantry units I heard one of the soldiers say, “Sarge... I'm scared...”
There is also a rather large change from previous TW games' UI, one that I am pretty happy to see – thirty foot high bouncing flags are a thing of the past! Instead, units use the standard being carried by the Standard Bearer. In addition, when a unit is selected or moused over, you get a popup of the owning faction's flag, and a bar showing the unit's morale.
I will admit that when I initially heard of this morale bar system I was skeptical. I tend to turn off things like the underfoot markers, and other 'gamey' things when I play. However, I'm happy to report that this new system is very intuitive, and most importantly, doesn't break immersion at all! In fact, it leads to some quite fun and realistic situations.
In one of the battles we played, several allied and enemy units engaged in a small forest. With a combination of the improved lingering smoke, the trees themselves, and the lack of massive banners sticking out over the foliage, it became very difficult to tell where each unit was, and who owned it, leading to a confused firefight, and eventually a melee. Keiran explained that they wanted to strike a balance between the chaos of a Napoleonic battlefield, but still have the player feel like they are in control. Personally, I think these changes have been very effective in achieving this.
Having played that battle, Keiran then set up another, using the historical battle map of Waterloo. This time I played as Prussia, with Nuccio on my side with the Russians. Now, I will point out one of the first things I learned playing Napoleon. Do not charge cavalry straight at a Grand Battery of the Convention. Seriously. One second I had 45 glorious Prussian Hussars descending on the French gunners, the next I had three terrified Prussian Hussars fleeing for their lives, several riderless horses scattering in all directions, and a big pile of dead men and horses in front of the guns.
Something else I noticed is that battlefield buildings have become much stronger. I garrisoned a unit of skirmishers in one of the farmhouses (possibly Hugomout, or maybe La Haye Sainte). The same Grand Battery that had slaughtered my Hussars bombarded the building for almost the entire game, and only did 29% damage to it. Garrisoning units has just become a much more viable tactic.
I've seen some concern that units will be moving very fast, and that they will never get tired. I found this not to be the case, in fact I noticed units seemed to be moving slower than in Empire, and they also seemed to be tiring at a realistic rate. At the end, the battle was very close. I had two units of Musketeers and one of Grenadiers, who do have grenades, but seemingly enough for only a single volley, perhaps two. (In fact, most units carry a lot less ammo than in Empire, and so you will find yourself running out much more often.) Each unit had no more than 35 men left in it. I advanced them up the sunken road that runs along one edge of the map to provide cover from the fire of the Grand Battery. After resting my troops in the cover while Nuccio's surviving Russians advanced, I charged out of the cover and routed the Militia guarding the battery, but my few survivors were in turn routed by the French General. However, the distraction had allowed Nuccio to close, and he managed to charge and rout the Grand Battery, before killing the French General and winning the game for our team!
After this, Keiran set us up playing a multiplayer Italy campaign. I was France and Nuccio was Austria. Now again, a few things learned from this. Republican Guard and National Guard units are not Guardsmen like Empire's Guard units. In fact, Republican Guard don't even have shoes, and are so unreliable in a firefight that their default formation in battle is a column! National Guard are little more than glorified militia as well.
France begins the campaign in a pretty weak position. You have one city, your army is made up almost entirely of low grade militia and conscripts, and the very best unit you can train are Fusiliers of the Line. On the other hand, Austria has many provinces and can train professional troops from the get go. In terms of diplomacy, I tried many times to get some Italian allies, but was consistently rebuffed. Keiran explained that this was partly because at this point in history almost everyone was looking down on France and not taking them seriously, but also because I was at war with Austria, the most powerful faction on the map, and none of the small Italian states wanted to get dragged into a war with them. I did successfully persuade Genoa to break its trade agreement with Austria and make one with me instead, but that was the extent of my diplomatic success.
One thing I'm sure a lot of people will be pleased about diplomacy wise, is that the AI is no longer obsessed with military access. I offered factions who were very friendly towards me a deal where they would ally with me, and I would give them unlimited military access, and they turned me down every time, because of the whole not wanting war with Austria thing. Keiran explained that the way the AI worked in Empire meant that it made it an absolute priority to get military access everywhere so it would have no limits on where it could plot routes for its armies. This behavior has been fixed in Napoleon, thereby fixing the exploit.
I'd read in previews that by taking the capital of Piedmont-Sardinia, the French player made that faction their Protectorate, so I made that my goal. I started with two small armies, one I sent to besiege the closest enemy city to keep their garrison bottled up, while I sent Napoleon with the second to take Turin, which he did, without a problem. What I discovered to my horror though, was that the Protectorate mechanism is not in the Multiplayer
Campaign, so as not to unbalance it for the Austrian player too much. I now had two small, battle damaged armies, right at the point where Nuccio, having gathered every Austrian unit he could into a full stack, turned up on my doorstep.
Needless to say, I had already strategically compromised my entire campaign. I held off almost the entire Austrian army with Napoleon's force, but in the end he just had too many units. Only the fact that I had Napoleon on the field kept my units around, and it was a close battle, with him only having some Dragoons left on the field at the end. However, I'd lost my only Grenadier unit, most of my artillery, and cavalry. Napoleon was also wounded, and sent back to Paris. I started rebuilding, training as many units of Fusiliers of the Line as I could in Nice. There was no way to replace the other lost units though. Eventually Napoleon recovered, and I combined my new troops (pitifully few of them) with the survivors of my second army. We ended up having a full stack battle on the border between my territory and Austrian occupied Turin, where eventually the quality of the professional Austrians won the day, and my army was routed.
At this point, there really was no way to salvage the campaign. Both of my cities were pretty much ungarrisoned, Napoleon was back in Paris again, and there was no way I could train enough troops fast enough to hold back the Austrians and their allies. It was very different from Empire, when I would have been able to churn out units much faster, and probably been able to hold the enemy off for longer. The loss of my elite units early in the campaign really hurt me later, as they were irreplaceable. I did get one slight consolation in the last battle we played, where my last cannon unit fired at his infantry, missed, and hit his best General square in the face!
I'd like to go into a bit of detail on one or two things, firstly unit formations. There is no button to form units into a column automatically, instead you must form it yourself by clicking and dragging. Some units, like the Republican Guards, start in a column formation, and if you want them in a line you'll have to drag them into one. When in a column, only the first rank, and men around the edges of the column can fire, but the unit itself is much more resilient. In one battle, I advanced Fusiliers of the Line in line formation against Nuccio's Line Infantry, but they were routed by Austrian musket and artillery fire. I then advanced Republican Guard in column formation against the same unit, they managed to reach it, charged, and actually broke through the middle of it in melee, before eventually being routed when more Austrians piled in.
Another change for the better is that square formation now cannot be selected when a unit is in melee. Gone are the days when a unit fighting an infantry unit will be charged by cavalry, and still manage to form square, despite already being engaged twice.
With our time rapidly running out, we sat down with Keiran for a Q&A session. We learned a lot of very interesting things here, and I'll do my best to briefly describe the best bits.
There will be a unit editor for Napoleon that will let you create units with unique appearances, stats and names. CA expects to release this about a couple of weeks after the game itself is released.
There are trade nodes on the Egypt and Grand Campaign map, but not on the Italian map. These function the same as in Empire, only they are at the edges of the campaign map itself, rather than in a separate theatre.
There is a time limit for starting a drop in battle, where if no one is available after a certain amount of time you will play the AI.
Gentlemen have been given an expanded role, if owned by a Republican faction like France they will spread discord and rebellion amongst the Lower Class in whichever enemy province they happen to be in. If they are from a faction with a Monarchy they will do the same thing, only spread discord amongst the Upper Class.
We also had a very interesting discussion about how Napoleon has changed CA's 'Revolution/Evolution' development cycle. Traditionally, CA has created an engine with a new game, then released a second game on that engine before building an entirely new engine for another new game. (Shogun/Medieval, Rome/Medieval 2). However, Keiran confirmed that the fact that Napoleon was initially designed as an expansion has changed things slightly. Also, CA is very happy with what they are getting out of the Warscape engine itself, and so are looking to keep using it for a while longer. Napoleon is not the end of Warscape! I mentioned to Keiran that I was rather pleased with this, as I'd been playing Rome recently, and the more I played it, the more I felt that it simply had to be remade on Warscape. His response to this was a slight grin and a, “Well, that's interesting...”
I also asked about how Naval battles have changed. On the very basic level they're going to be pretty similar to Empire's, however CA have improved the collision detection even more to prevent ships accidentally bumping into each other. Also, ships are able to repair themselves in battle by re-assigning crew from the guns to repairs. Keiran also confirmed that there would be new types of ships, including Ironclads! Also, in the same way that each factions Land units are different in appearance and stats, the same is true for each faction's Naval units.
At the moment there are no plans to release a demo before the game itself, although it's something CA will look at as a possible post release plan. This is because CA want to make sure that Napoleon is as good and as stable as possible at release, and so don't want to take anyone out of their programming or testing departments to get a demo thrown together. While this may mean a few extra weeks of not being able to experience Napoleon, I'm happy to wait for that extra assurance.
On the whole, Napoleon is looking amazing, with three more weeks of testing, polishing and patching still to go. The game looks absolutely beautiful on the high end graphics I experienced, and it ran very smoothly through our whole time there. The multiplayer options are excellent, and may even convert me, a dedicated SP man, to trying some more MP campaigns!
After all that, I would like to thank SEGA for being such generous hosts, and especially Julian and Keiran for attending to our every need and answering nearly all our questions (and Nuccio was trying hard for that exclusive on the next game!). I had an amazing day, and I can't wait for my copy of Napoleon to arrive.
Another review on the SF event
Originally Posted by Sol Invictus
If it indeed correct that forming units into Column Formation enhances their cohesion and ability to charge then this is a great change for the better. This is the first person I have heard mention it.
