Impressions of a new player

I resisted buying this game for some time, I was enjoying DMUC on ETW, and felt no need to basically pay for the same game again, with no grand global scale.

Eventually however, the game save bug that ruined so many ETW campaigns pushed me onto this, and after a little tweak to bring the unit sizes up to my liking (around 400 for an average Line unit), I jumped in.


One of the first things I noticed was the evolution in Naval warfare, after playing ETW for so long it feels weird to thing of a 56 gun vessel as underpowered, but anything less than 78 is not fit for my navy
Also the ships can take much more of a beating, when my first rate fired it's broadside into the side of a french frigate, I really didn't expect them to be sailing away alive!

Also enjoying the land battles as well, just fought a battle for Caen with 10,000 men involved, won the field inch by inch with harassing cavalry on the flanks, and the Line infantry 'advancing by fire' (which actually works in this game!)

I am now digging in, having won Caen (and liberated Brittany), winter is coming so I am changing tactics to Guerilla, sending small cavalry forces to harass their country side and keep the French economy in check. I am also modernising my Navy, Scuppering smaller vessels and investing in first and second rates fresh for the campaign season in spring.

so far, two thumbs up

Well, if you want to have an even greater impression of the Multiplayer part of NTW, you have to download "Napoleonic: Total War III" in the hosted modification section.
It's just awesome. You'll still be a able to play the normal NTW version (vanilla) thanks to NTW3's launch icon.