the most logical NapoleonTW review so far

[t1master]

It was pointed out by Captain Fishpants that Darth may not have had the final version.

I think that his evaluation of artillery and its effectiveness is a confirmation that, indeed he did not.

fisherking,

from darth's own hand... ;)

My main test version of the game was the “Dev Edition” which was pre-released for the journalists. I also have checked the retail version from a friend to see that the main problems were still evident (The Dev version lacks only some minor fixes to graphics, sounds etc. if it is not completely identical).

[gollum]

CA gave up on strengthening the RPS gameplay, in favor of diversity, many units etc.

TW is still an RPS game in battles, but the gameplay is poor because the system is watered and so tactics aren't razor sharp. We had at the org a number of people that made the point repeatedly, however eventually SPrs (mostly) told them to bug out, and shut it concerning the RPS, that nobody wants to play RPS anymore etc.

CA by taking the direction it took, attracted casual gamers and from other genres that had no interest in deep tactical dimensions. All the wanted was to see "realistic" battles in 3D. That's what CA did and it got very succesful. Most people who play pc games, do so in order to pass the time, and escape/be immersed; as long as the game is immersive, however mediocre, they are happy because immersiveness is teh point for them.

Players who want a deep tactical dimension have a completely different goal; they are competitive and are not afraid to challenge themselves, their skills etc. their enjoyment comes from a genuine battle and the learning curve that goes with it, and no battle can be genuine if the game is poor tactically or poorly balanced.

ETW and NTW have to do little with genuine tactics of the era, its simply Shogun gone Napoleonic as are all CA games - CA would never go into the trouble of re-creating the game from scratch. It just cashes the original concept.

Now if anyone is brave enough, go and post this in TWC :)

[caravel]

It was pointed out by Captain Fishpants that Darth may not have had the final version.

He claimed to have tested both the pre release and a full release version.

I think that his evaluation of artillery and its effectiveness is a confirmation that, indeed he did not.

I think the criticism was AI handling of artillery, not "effectiveness" as such.

I don't think the game is perfect but I think it is a very good expansion for ETW.

"Expansion" (rather than "evolution") is the right word.

Yohei

[Fisherking]

@ Yohei

Your first part, wasn’t it he asked a friend if it was the same?

Your second, it could have been but I am yet to observe anything the AI is doing poorly with its artillery...so far as any AI goes that is.

Third, we agree. It lacks the dept and scope of a complete game, unless of course you are only interested in the battle rather than the wider range of management.

The Campaigns from 1805 to 1812 are okay but even for Napoleon they don’t handle the full scope and if Bonaparte had defeated Russia and Spain there is little that would have deterred him from turning his attention back to a Navy.

It sort of leaves you feeling unfulfilled.

[gollum]

To be honest, scope wouldn't have been a problem for me. As long as the campaign is well balanced and challenging. But i will (unregretfully) never know - tw as an ongoing thing is dead for me.

[Fisherking]

Sorry to hear that, though you may have said it before...don’t remember...

Your opinions and thought on play and mechanics have always been insightful.

Anyway, I think you had ETW but I don’t know if you played 1.5.

There is the news of the unexpected next patch for ETW but I don’t know how much that will cover.

Back to the point of the thread though, NTW, for once seems to live up to what they said it would be, and in play it is the best they have done so far.

You could even say when they billed it as the best total war ever their was some justification for what they said, even though it is more expansion to me than full blown game.

Adding mod tools is still important. I hope they come through with more than just the uniform editor...

I couldn’t believe the block-headed ness of the fans that thought that was the most important tool when they conducted the poll.

[gollum]

I had ETW, yes, and played 1.5. I thought that it was only fair to give it a chance, although M2 was very poor imo. Unfortunately ETW just confirmed that there is no turning back for TW in terms of the tactical/strategic depth, imo.

1.5 was much better than 1.0, but nowhere near what tw was in terms of quality. I got rid of my etw copy and i;m not buying NTW or anything else further more, unless its clear from reactions/videos/screens that the game has drastically improved and does not have commercial goals above all others. Of course this is not going to happen.

I also hope the mod-tools come out, the modding community is a big part of TW, especially given how much unfinished, uncalibrated and unoptimised the vanilla versions are. However its clear that most likely they are leaving the option to themselves for dlcs - which again doesnt endear ca/sega to the community.

My interest is purely academic in future tws, and yes i won't post that again here.

[caravel]

@ Yohei

Your first part, wasn’t it he asked a friend if it was the same?

I believe he actually played on a friend's copy in order to verify that the bugs in the pre-release were still present in the full release? I must admit his wording on that part is not at all clear.

Your second, it could have been but I am yet to observe anything the AI is doing poorly with its artillery...so far as any AI goes that is.

His claims were that artillery were still hitting his own men and being "stupid" in not calculating a good trajectory. He also mentioned that it went "wandering". He seems to have been misquoted/misrepresented here as stating that arillery were "nerfed" or ineffective. I have not seen that part of his post? Is the AI control of artillery good or bad?

Third, we agree. It lacks the dept and scope of a complete game, unless of course you are only interested in the battle rather than the wider range of management.

The Campaigns from 1805 to 1812 are okay but even for Napoleon they don’t handle the full scope and if Bonaparte had defeated Russia and Spain there is little that would have deterred him from turning his attention back to a Navy.

It sort of leaves you feeling unfulfilled.

A game that leaves one feeling unfulfilled can't be a good game in my book. From my perspective this should have been an expansion and patch up for those that bought ETW, not an expansion that masquerades as a full game. The whole thing smells like an attempt to sweep ETW under the carpet.

Yohei

[al Roumi]

CA gave up on strengthening the RPS gameplay, in favor of diversity, many units etc.

TW is still an RPS game in battles, but the gameplay is poor because the system is watered and so tactics aren't razor sharp. We had at the org a number of people that made the point repeatedly, however eventually SPrs (mostly) told them to bug out, and shut it concerning the RPS, that nobody wants to play RPS anymore etc.

Personaly, I find the resistence to RPS gameplay somewhat hard to understand. The best way I can interpret it is a desire for absolute realism, with little apparent concern for the inevitable and unbalanced "stack of doom" type army or unit a player ultimately generates. I see RPS as a convenient trick to add some balanced tactics to gameplay, but I am also very keen for the RPS elements to be at least plausible and as realistic as possible.

ETW and NTW have to do little with genuine tactics of the era, its simply Shogun gone Napoleonic as are all CA games - CA would never go into the trouble of re-creating the game from scratch. It just cashes the original concept.

I'm sure CA would argue differently to that but ultimately I agree with you: it's not apparent that the "revolutions" in the game engines are designed from the gorund up for a specific type of combat -or that could very well just be ETW's epic failure in the transfer to gunpowder & artillery, specificaly the tactics which evolved to counter gun-powder and artillery.

[Fisherking]

Oh my!

Two excellent posts guys.

Gollum,

I hope you don’t mean you aren’t posting at all?

Yohei,

The cannon may be a bit better than ETW but they still act a bit the same. May be a little better but still something you have to keep an eye on. I have not had them pivot on each other and kill one another any way. But hitting your own troops has been a problem in all the games and I don’t think they want to stop FF if someone goes in front of a unit of any type.

Both of you,

I don’t want you to have the opinion that NTW is not an excellent game, because it is the best I think of the 3D games they have done.

This one does not have the, just another knock off so we can get paid, feel to it.

I was very suspect of just that with the timing of the game and making it stand alone.

I understand there were technical reasons for doing that and not making it retro-fit with ETW was a big letdown for me.

That is part of my lack of enthusiasm for NTW.

It is an excellent system. It has everything going for it except scope. While the European map is large it just does not have a big feel.

Rome’s RTR was huge. I know it was a mod but just the same.

I came near to hating M2TW though the mods, especially the mods using Big Map saved it for me.

I saw ETW as having huge potential but with all of the stability problems it made it fall short. Most of the rebalancing was not productive up until 1.4 and 1.5 and I still have issues with the rebalance of the ships and some of the things that got nerffed.

I thought I was going to end up hating ETW the whole time from 1.2 and 1.3. I thought it was still broken and most of the changes made diminished rather than helped the game.

They also cut some features and eliminated some things, that while not missed in the end, it was more because of all the other problems that I feel they were cut out.

I though 1.5 was a huge improvement but it still had more to be done.

NTW is a big leap forward.

It wouldn’t have happened without what went before, so maybe some of the teething was necessary.

I was not even going to buy it but my wife got it for me.

The last expansion I liked was Viking Invasion. I have not bought one since BI.

And you know what?

I like it. I like it a lot...but is still an expansion that makes you feel limited after the fullness of its parent.
But even at that, I have to say, if feels like it was made by gamers for gamers, rather than by CA for Sega.

What I mean by the last is that it doesn’t feel like it was made only for commercial value by one company for its corporate management. It was made for those who buy games.

It feels like they put care and feeling into for the first time in a long time.

You can say that they had to, and maybe that is so but I am going to judge the end product for what it is, more than any motive I could read into it and it is a good solid game.

I don’t think I am being too forgiving. It is not an EPIC game because of scope but it is well crafted and I do like it.

There are still tactical elements that aren’t perfect. Like most games it could go deeper but where do you draw the line? Tactically it is better than most RTS battles. You can tell that CA made it. It is not a totally new approach but it is a vast improvement in its feel.

[gollum]

First of all "RPS" is a description not a fact. This however does not sit well with most people. What RTS stands for in reality is that units:

a) Have specific roles.
and
b) These roles do not overlap.

If so, the game becomes interesting tactically as success lies in combining and coordinating the units. Pacing also comes into it, ie unit speeds, rates of fire, melee rates, morale levels (how fast units rout in general), match ups (how fast rock beats scissors etc) etc etc. Not an easy job.

However what happened to TW is that the game was addressed to the SP market that wanted "realism" ("in real life armies were never balanced", "historically cavalry domnated the medieval battlefield", "HAs did the Parthian shot" etc) and "veriety" (= more factions, more units, bigger maps and timelines etc).

The first trend introduced gameplay mechanics that hurt balance or pacing or both. For example everyone knows that HAs rule in RTW/M2TW, and unlike MTW you don't need any skill, micro or tactical to do so. In M2TW cavalry had such a powerful charge that dominated anything and armies are based around cavalry for the most part.

The second, apart from sales, brought units that have duplicate and overlaping roles ie they blur out the very heart of RPS. In doing so, the game stops being fun because all its needed to do is find the most efficient units in terms of performance/price ratio and bang on the AI. In terms of mp this led often to rush on rush games, basically both players just lined up and charged as the defender did not had time enough to react (bad pacing too).

To top it off, CA on purposely changed the pace again to the benefit of the "casual SPer", by either making the game too fast (speeds and melee in RTW) or too slow (melee in M2), clearly making gameplay bowing to the intended effect: melee animations, making the game more accessible to younger players.

TW was is and always will be RPS as long as it stays in its original format. The question is not that, but whether it will be a working or watered down RPS.



PS No, heaven forbids no. You ain't getting rid of me that easily :) As long as i post, i'll drop the odd post here too.

[gollum]

I'm glad you enjoy NTW Fisherking. Through you description it sounds inviting.

[caravel]

I think the question is, do you want your historical battle sims to be physical, visual or both?

[Madoushi]

Just a quick question, what do "RPS" and "HAs" stand for? I guess HAs would be heavy artillery(s), but my brain keeps trying to parse RPS as Role Playing Shooter, so it' hard to put gollum's post into context. XD

Personally, I'm very satisfied with M2. Cavalry is powerful, but I havent noticed it being more powerful than M1. Much like M1, I just find they make Spearmen mandatory parts of my army, and they make English Longbows and Italian Arbalests worth the cost. Of course, I'll admit I haven't logged that many hours on it yet, and most of my experience has been as the English and the HRE, so possibly I'm just plain wrong. :)

[Fisherking]

@Madoushi

RPS is Rock, Paper, & Scissors. Just like the old hand game.

HA in this context is Horse Archers.

[Madoushi]

That totally makes a lot more sense, lol.

I will say that I haven't played it long, but Empire does seem to have somewhat of a lack of RPS. Just take as much shooting infantry as possible, form your army into the longest, thinnest line possible, close on the enemy, stop, let them approach your center, while your flanks move to envelop, win.

[Ratwar]

You know, I haven't played N:TW yet, but this review just smells to me. I mean, a 6/10 for the interface because he finds the color bad? Seriously, if that's the only thing wrong with the interface, its a 9/10.

As for his complaints about Gameplay and Balance, most of them seem extremely nitpicky if not historically incorrect, but then again, I have not played the game, and I am merely comparing what he says to my experiences in Empire.

Oh, and his comments about casual gamers is rather offensive.

[antisocialmunky]

Hard RPS can suck big time if you have too much diversity. It works great in simple gameplay like STW or MTW. TW's have always had the infantry > Cavalry > skirmisher/ranged > infantry soft RPS system though.

[gollum]

ETW has an RPS:

heavy line infantry armies are vulnerable to arty and long range rifles.
Long range rifles and arty are vulnerable to cavalry.
CAvarly is stopped by robust line infantry blocks.

The long line is to maximise the lines that fire and avoid casualites from massing troops in multiple lines, because bullets can have back kills even if they miss. It also helps create enfilade fire ie two units fire in a slight angle to the edge of an enemy line and rake in kills faster.

With ranged warfare the player who can take a kills advantage first has achieved much, because that same small advantage is translated into a big one eventually, since gradually less and less enemy return fire. So the player who is lossing the shootout, is forced to either rush or take up position in highground or forests.

[Lucius Verenus]

It is also the most critically negative review of the game.

It makes some good points but it is also colored by some personal opinions.

From what I have seen those who like the game enough to say so is about 95% of postings.

Those who dislike it seem to be a very small minority, even if they try to be very vocal about it.

For my part I think they did a decent job, but I miss the wider scope and field of ETW.

There is another explanation for the relative (to ETW) lack of criticism Fisherking , I - and many others - said in the ETW fora that we will never buy again until we have been convinced by those who do that the game is actually worth the playing (and buying).

So maybe the most vocal critics of ETW are not critiquing NTW because we haven't bought it .

From what I have read here and elsewhere, there _are_ a few improvements, but given the limited nature of NTW and the cost (US$80 on steam so likely AU$100 in my local shop), think it's way overpriced and very limited in scope.

The 'praise' I have seen is fairly faint and often accompanied by negative comments about it's nature - including those from yourself :)

So I wont be buying this, so wont be complaining about it either, I think there's a lot more like me. w
e cared enough about ETW - having bought it - to plead for changes. These were valid issues as you well know and 1.5 has gone some way towards fixing those.

From DV's comments and others it appears the 'melee bug' has been improved but still occurs in some circumstances, as 'Naval Invasions' were 'improved' but still rarely happened in ETW 1.5 ( and from some comments this has not changed in NTW either).

Now if they had applied the fixes (if any) to the ETW BAI and CAI and offered NTW as a dlc expansion at US$15 I would definitely have tried it out.

Regards

LV

[antisocialmunky]

BTW - From what I gather from my gameplay, Artillery has a bad tendency to try and shoot UNDER your men if your cannons are on unfavorable land with respect to enemy units and bounce cannon balls into them. Also, cannons don't seem to calculate for cavalry is correctly.

Also, line infantry still have bad tendency to kill cannon crews in front of them. Fortunately light infantry still shoots around your own men.

[Forward Observer]

You know, I haven't played N:TW yet, but this review just smells to me. I mean, a 6/10 for the interface because he finds the color bad? Seriously, if that's the only thing wrong with the interface, its a 9/10.

As for his complaints about Gameplay and Balance, most of them seem extremely nitpicky if not historically incorrect, but then again, I have not played the game, and I am merely comparing what he says to my experiences in Empire.

Oh, and his comments about casual gamers is rather offensive.

I totally agree with your comments and while only halfway into the Italian campaign, I do have the game and I'm enjoying it so far. In fact when I first read his review with his opening, totally non-objective critique of the UI, it was hard to continue reading.---or at least take anything else he wrote seriously. Like you also, I thought he spent to much effort in nitpicking at the BAI. We all know it's not great, but so far I'm of the opinion it is improved in NTW.


While it's still not perfect, the BAI does seem to give a better account of itself in maintaining a cohesive frontal assault. I'm only playing at the normal battle difficulty, so I have no idea if they perform any better at the higher levels, but I would assume this might be the case.

Like others, I am not a big fan of the structured campaign/mission type of game, but it appears that there is enough diversity of strategic choices to give this portion of the game some re-playability.

I will say that the battlefield visuals are simply fantastic and eclipse Empire--if that is possible. In addition to playing the French campaign, I have also set up and played several "1 X 1" single player battles just to test how the A.I. handles itself. Once again I only played these on the normal difficulty, but I felt that the BAI still managed a more cohesive attack than I've seen at this level in Empire.

I have noted some of the problems that A.I. controlled artillery has with the terrain such as setting correctly. In both a campaign battle and one of the single player battles, I have seen them set up their cannons up in range of my lines, but with a hill between a direct line of fire. Consequently all their shots plowed into the hill and careened over the heads of my troops which gave no support to their assault. Consequently, I held my artillery fire until their troops crested this same hill to do plenty of damage. Thinning the enemy ranks with ranged fire did what it was supposed to do and helped insure a win.

This game does not feel like an expansion to me, but more like a new TW game--only with a narrower scope than its predecessor. And to those complaining about the cost, I can only offer this. In a day and age when one can spend up to $50 US for the latest and greatest FPS that will only give one 7 to 10 hours of game-play----any Total War game, regardless of its scope--is an absolute bargain by comparison.

Cheers

[gollum]

Watched a few mp videos in youtube.

The game looks absolutely stunning, and i think its safe to say that its perhaps the first time that the 3d-men engine starts looking and playing well regardless of the scale used to view it (no more despicable sprites like the ones in RTW/M2). The smoke/fire effects are indeed as good as were promised. The UI seems far better than all recent twrs, and closer to STW than ever, which for me is a good thing. The colour codes (blue for friendly and red for enemy) are fitting, subtle and unobstrusive, far better than the salad/neon green of other 3d-men tw games. It would have seemed that Darth took it a bit more personally regarding the UI than warranted. Uniforms and animations are also very good and the "laser" bullets are few and just to show which unit is fire which from a distance - very useful and totally acceptable to me. Accents fully ok, and the game lacks the overly childish and intrusive in-battle unit audio responses of M2 - its far more like STW/MTW that original languages and accents are employed only for unit response. From a historical perspective aesthetic feel, i have to say that battles seem to fully deliver.

Cavalry (and infantry) indeed seem faster than ETW, but the rate of fire has also increased, and so cavalry cannot trample extended line infantry with frontal charges if the inf. have a shot for quite some time/area. Difficult to say yet full impact of this in the gameplay, however it wasn't completely midlessly introduced apparently, and that can be only a good thing. Considering that battles, in mp at least, take place over very broad fronts mostly, perhaps it was warranted.

The game comes with an array of interesting mp maps, that were in very short supply in ETW - better late than never.

MP feature works fine it seems, as well as the drop-in feature in campaigns. In my opinion the mp campaign is very cleverly implemented (more than two players it would have been very unpractical, playing all the battles of the opponent sounds really great), and i'm sure that lots of enjoyment can come out of it.

All in all, and despite my resolve to stick with my decision and not to buy, NTW seems to be worth it and it also seems to fulfill some of the potential of ETW that went unfulfilled, especially if one is determined to play in mp mostly (no idea about the AI, it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't really good).

[gollum]

Here are 7 videos from Point_Man, who seems to be part of the Gods of TW clan:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ReflexC.../0/9htZdNnOvBQ

They showcase my points above.

Nice commentaries/tactics and play too.

[Suraknar]

One thing I will agree with that Darth review thought.

Is the nostalgia of the STW AI, I have very fond memories of STW, and the quasi-chess like game play, with move and counter move and shock troops that actually delivered one, the flanking mechanics but most importantly the formations holding and not blobbing.

It is odd that the only blobbing that happened in STW was the map with a river and a bridge, where you could rain arrows on them and a substantially smaller force could hold a substantially larger one. yet if these two same forces met in a n open field it was a sure loss.

Oddly enough this blog tactic by the AI I first experienced in RTW. But since it was a melee game it passes, in M2TW too but in ETW it is annoying, so maybe this has something to do with the move to a 3D engine, only CA would know.

Other than that, I do not agree with all the points (UI excelent, Tracers etc are all fine and part of solid gameplay, it is a game first and foremost some people just do not want to acknowledge this) but I can understand the temper, or if you will the style of expression, having Hellenic blood running in my veins as well.

Cheers!

[gollum]

It has nothing to do with nostalgia. In RTW the blobbing penalties units were getting were removed. In STW/MTW the programmer and CA were farsighted enough to give combat penalties to units that blob in order to prevent people from cheating by superstacking units in a small area and create local superiorities that gave unrealistic results in melee. In RTW that was taken out, hence the player blobs and the AI blobs when safe and necessary in melee, and under certain circumstances its best to do so (especially agains the AI that he can't really envelop properly).

The blobbing you see in ETW, is of another kind - the AI used to do it since STW, if you watch how he used guns (especially if he had many). It has to do with the well known inability of teh AI to maintain a cohesive missile line using flat trajectory missiles, like guns and crossbows. In multiplayer all players use missiles like this ever since tw began.

Guns and crossbows give backkills ie bullets/bolts that miss continue travelling till they hit something, the ground, a tree or another man that the guy was aiming for. This means that concentrated formations suffer heavily from fire, as even bullets that miss, find their targets. The AI not really being able to make up a cohesive, and cohesively firing front was simply not up to the task of a gunpowder era game.

In any case, there is now multiplayer campaign, if i had the game, i would't play a single campaign against the AI, i would get online and in forums and pick up friends and foes to play against.



PS Be aware of that "blood" and "temper" because although it has good aspects it has very much more bad ones. Objectiveness and calm are far better than giving in to your temper, and ending up saying things that you might regret.

[Suraknar]

Perhaps this is the case, yet how many years have passed and how many games later, one would think that this AI behavior would have been corrected and addressed, to some people's eyes there is no excuse no matter how you justify it.

And this is actually something of a "wide" issue in the gaming Industry, I play also many MMORPG games, and over the years game after game it simply seems that no one is working in any pro-active way and repeat some of the mistakes of previous games (their competition none the less), instead of taking care of it and coming ahead.

As for the temper, I said I understood it, I did not say that I was this way myself ;) And while I agree with your practical standpoint on it, sometimes it is just a cultural trait, after all, it maybe what made the Hellenic people act the way they did back when invading forces were at the doorsteps of Europe. Older Cultures have gone through allot and that has fashioned not only their world view but also how some deal with certain issues. it is well known that Mediterranean cultures are more "warm blooded", more argumentative and ready to debate without necessarily always taking care to be "Politically Correct", it may also be the factor which led the Hellenic people to establish Philosophical foundations which were later adopted by other cultures. In its day to day application it results in a tempered expression which is honest and in your face. I understand that it may still poke to the sensibilities of some younger cultures.

All I can say there it is that we simply can't have it all in life when it comes to people, and perfection is just an ideal which we can all strive for, yet knowing that we will never attain perfection nevertheless, it just happens that some cultures know this better than others and this is expressed by a more "laissez-faire" approach to some things in life or by a more tempered posture within their respective societies. But we are getting off topic a bit ;)

So in the end, and since this is debate for a game, and not a question of life and death, maybe what is more important to draw out of it is the message and not the way that the messenger delivered it. because through this criticism, maybe someone will take note and it may indirectly help in improvement in the future, if everyone stands there applauding and remains in a state of conformism, then things stagnate, or even worse, those in aposition to make decision take for granted that it is ok to repeat mistakes as long as the $$$ keep coming in.

Cheers!

[gollum]

I didn't try to excuse the AI behavior Suraknar; in fact i have been a harsh critic of it, and if you read carefully you'll see that i criticise CA for making a gunpowder game with the same engine over and over. The AI was stripped indeed from BI and then built up, but the basics of it are the same, which predictably gives the same troubles.

[Suraknar]

Yes indeed, and a logical conclusion Gollum.

[loony]

I believe this thread needs a follow up: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/napoleon-to...1075020p1.html
TWO STARS from gamespy...