Still struggling to see the point of the coalition campaigns

Like I said above I'm still struggling to see the point of playing the coalition campaigns. I've started several so far and played every faction and apart from them all being pretty much the same, I really can't get very excited about the campaign objectives which simply seem to be based upon a principle of land-grabbing.

The coalition concept itself doesn't seem to exist and whilst in my current Russian Campaign I have managed to form an alliance with all of the other major powers other than France and Spain. There seems to be very little point and very little motivation to encourage me to do so. Russia has not received any of the financial support it should have recieved as a result, nor has it been given any forum in which to debate and negotiate the territorial acquisitions it will recieve in recognition of its coalition support.

Not only that but France has been remarkably passive, and neither Austria, nor Prussia have requested military assistance from Russia to support their defence against French and Spanish aggression.

So, basically my campaign has consisted of a protracted period of ecomonic and cultural expansion which has resulted in Russia being the richest and most prestigious empire in the world, and the only significant military activity has been the elimination of the Ottoman Turks, whose former land holdings now form part of the Russian Imperial Empire.

Russian armies are now camped on the key crossing points along the Imperial border waiting for something else to happen, but so far its been pretty quiet. Saxony became a Spanish possession for a few years but rapidly rebelled and after becoming independant was invaded by Austria and now forms part of their empire.

Russia has developed a thriving trade in Egyptian coffee, and is on the point of developing the first steam powered warships. Russia's victory goals would require it to declare war on both Sweden and Prussia which is really not an option if the coalition is to be maintained, so at the moment I'm ignoring those goals in favour of a purely prestige victory.

In practice of course Napoleon ought to be playing on Russia's ambitions for these territories by trying to negitiate our betrayal of the alliance in return for a guarantee of being given them once they are liberated. But as things stand the Franco-Spanish seems incapable of making any serious aggressive move, and Russia is not about to do their fighting for them, and I've seen no evidence of Napoleon's supposed brilliance either as a general or a statesman.

Compared to the Empire Grand Campaign there doesn't seem to be much going on at all, the are no colonial possessions to distract attention and resources away from the central confrontation and the geo-political situation is pretty frozen with no likelihood of the sudden shifts in power that occur during an Empire campaign.

Overall it just doesn't hold my interest, which is why I've not managed to finish a single NTW campaign so far and I'm only persisting with this Russian one because I'm curious whether it might suddenly surprise me, and because I'm wondering what steam warships look like.

Okay it's not just me right? I love Nappy total war, but I really can't find the willpower to play the coalition campaign, I've been playing Napoleon Total Factions and it adds a certain difficultly to the game which you do not have with the Coalition campaign.

I hear ya, I truly do.

The AI is very weak on strategies. The original motivation for the European powers been at war with France was the spread of republican ideas, this could create an upset in medieval Russia. The later motivation was Napoleon's insistence on the trade embargo of Britain. This was difficulat to comply with since Britain sent gunboats to open your ports.
Hence the game France should insist on a trade embargo of Britain or send an army your way.

All this would be fine if NTW was released as an expansion for ETW.

Originally Posted by wulfgar610

The AI is very weak on strategies. The original motivation for the European powers been at war with France was the spread of republican ideas, this could create an upset in medieval Russia. The later motivation was Napoleon's insistence on the trade embargo of Britain. This was difficulat to comply with since Britain sent gunboats to open your ports.
Hence the game France should insist on a trade embargo of Britain or send an army your way.

I agree, NTW has sort of missed the point of the Napoleonic Wars.

Certainly the British victory goal should be trade related, possibly based upon a target trade income by the end of the campaign.

The overall coalition goal should be the prevention of the spread of the republican desease, or more accurately the protection of their existing privileges. For the crown heads of Europe, Napoleon was a very personal threat as he was in the habit of removing them from power and of course they were all conscious of the fate that befell Louis XVI.

For that reason alone the campaign ought to make much more of the dangers of civil unrest. Coalition factions would be absolutely neurotic about any civil protest, and it seems bizarre that one can have a full blown revolution in NTW and the country remains part of the coalition instead of changing sides.

Like wise Britain ought to be financing the anti-Napoleon project and pretty much calling the shots. It would have been great to see the British faction issuing regular missions to other coalition partners with substantial financial rewards associated with them.

And of course the final missing aspect is the horse bargaining that went on behind the scenes about who was going to get what once Napoleon was defeated. We know that Prussia was particularly demanding in these negotiations, to the point where towards the end of 1814 Britain was thinking of forming another coalition against them, but all of the coalition members expected to get something out of the deal and the negotations were an ongoing backdrop to behind the operational movements of the campaigns with coalition members gaining and losing negotiating power depending on how they were fairing in the conflict.

About the best victory measure at the moment is probably the prestige count, which at least gives an indication of how your faction os viewed by other colaition members, However, there is no way to convert this into chips on the negotiating table.

I've always found prestige to be rather buggy in its calculations. I mean i'm blatantly ahead of the other nations in building, research and economy, not lost a battle and yet i still lag. The best way to advance it seems to be conquest and destruction of other nations which doesn't make it much of an alternative to... well conquest and destruction of other nations. It's not quite the "Glorious Acheivements" it should have been.

It's unfortunate that NTW is pretty lacking when you scratch the surface but in many ways it's not even trying to simulate the times. Just look at the battle engine and their rather fast and loose interpretation of napoleonic combat.

I read your comments and decided to go and double check the prestige scores in my game to see what was contributing most to my success.



As you can see a hefty portion of the score is contributed by the military and naval expliots of the Imperial Russian Empire.

Military = 890, which is probably the prestige gained in the war against the Turks.

Naval = 240 which can only be from building ships, as I haven't fought a single naval battle in this campaign so far. (The Imperial Navy current consists of 6 x 1st Rates, 4 x 2nd Rates and 9 x 3rd Rates, its probably the most powerful navy in the world but has yet to leave port.)

Enlightenment = 930 and is the biggest contributor, but as I said above I have pretty much researched the entire tech tree. In fact, I only have four more to go 'Limited Liability Company' (4 turns), 'Passports' (8 Turns), 'Interchangeable Parts' (16 turns) and 'Precision Cap' (not started). Its currently July 1809 in my game.

Economic's = 880 and is based on a trade income of 9,081 and a tax income of 25,742.

As you can see Britain is not doing very well at all and its worth noting that the French rule the waves in this game and are regularly blockading British ports.

P.S. I found Napoleon last night. He was skulking about in Hannover with two and a half French armies and one of my cossack cavalry patrols spotted him and triggered a battle involving a nearby Prussian Army. Which was a victory for Prussia and resulted in him being wounded.

Originally Posted by Didz

I agree, NTW has sort of missed the point of the Napoleonic Wars.

Certainly the British victory goal should be trade related, possibly based upon a target trade income by the end of the campaign.

Well historical Brit government revenue tripled from 1793 to 1815. Although they were off the gold standard so it perhaps only doubled in real terms.

I agree, NTW has sort of missed the point of the Napoleonic Wars.

Maybe a spiritual element is missing form the game. Instead of the priests of ETW you could have liberals running around corrupting your population from autocracy. Assassinate too many liberals and you have a war with France.

I guess the only way to have an interesting Coalition campaign would be to play in Multiplayer and have a human playing the french.

Originally Posted by CK23

Okay it's not just me right? I love Nappy total war, but I really can't find the willpower to play the coalition campaign, I've been playing Napoleon Total Factions and it adds a certain difficultly to the game which you do not have with the Coalition campaign.

I hear ya, I truly do.

The thing that F-ing sucks about total factions is that it's so damn hard to get an industrial town. Among all the independent states I think only Naples starts with one one, so you have to go wrangling with the likes of Prussia early if you want one. It's hard as Denmark having a whole tech tree denied me especially since my war with Sweden bankrupted.

I've never played as France, I just have an aversion to them.

True, but you can't complain too much . . . there is a reason those factions were not designed to be player controlled . . .

The trouble is that you have players that want depth and history and players that just want to kill things.

Obviously CA sees that the larger market share is in those who just want to shoot things up. It also makes fore less development time, and lets face it, they still have not mastered the AI so this is what we get.

They toss in a few named units to add historical flavor and that is as far as it goes.

Rather than have units that are realistic you have a rps balance system and a lot of people complaining that their favorite units are underpowered while all the others are overpowered.

Factions that convert to Republics should join the French and oppose the old order.

The territorial goals of the game are unrealistic but the more realistic ones would likely be imposable to include in a game with these limitations.

Unless there is some greater economic benefit in catering to those of us who want more historical realism, I don’t see a likelihood of change. It will just be focused on conquest...for ever.

NTW was the much bigger game to ETW. ETW should have been NTW's expansion, at least that way, ETW would be sorta decent!

If ETW was made with the graphic and features of NTW that would have been perfect.

I feel your pain Didz!! NTW was poorly thought out and the CAI and BAI have hardly improved since Empire! The problem is even playing a multiplayer campaign the game becomes a bit farcical at times with the CAI behaving like retard of the century!

I've been saying this from day 1.

You know what Napoleon's CAI should have looked like? Remember the appearance of the Mongol hordes in the East in MTWII? Remember how menacing those were?

I remember that I used to beef up my armies and defenses out of my fear for that 'arrival'.

In NTW, the coalition SHOULD have some aspect of coordination (for example, as a coalition nation, your alliances should be binding and you could call for assitance at vital points given you're relations with your allies are, say, +80 or above---then, an allied army or two rushes to form and assist you at those 'important' times---like the crusades option in MTWII).

Come to think of it, MTWII had so much more game-changing interesting options (leaders and their traits actually mattered...remember, piety or terror? stuff like that)...

I guess the point of the Coalition campaigns is to show how each nation had it's own agenda and were not really fully united against Napoleon. There were 7 coalitions because nations kept dropping in and out, as the situation was favorable or unfavorable. And not all shots were fired at the French. There was plenty of small region land grabbing back and forth. The problem is, the diplomacy is so limited that you can't make a real deal with other factions. You can trade regions (assuming the AI goes along with it) but you can't make deals beforehand.

France too weak (all factions start on equal terms). Also the AI is still stupid, allowing you to beat Napoleon himself with ease despite having ridiculous morale.

Try it at Very Hard/Very Hard.

Austria at least is a real challenge.

I've learnt the hard way that increasing the difficulty on TW games doesn't increase the challenge it meanly allows the AI to generate more armies and rendered half the strategic aspects of the games (such as diplomacy) redundant. What you actually end up with is a none-stop kill-fest that has no strategic content whatsoever.