Muskets? Bah!

How many of you have attempted Napoleonic: Total War?
How many still have enjoyed it?

I have been playing it the last few days, and have found every faction to be unforgivably easy.
This is not because of starting position, funds or troops, it's because the AI is almost non-existent on the campaign map!

There was a situation, as the Dutch-Belgians, in which I invaded Ile De France with 1450 troops, rather light infantry and artillery.
The province was garrisoned by 1800, led by a 4 star general.
The garrison retreated, and then the province I held was surrounded by approximately 4000 French.

I waited over ten turns, and the troops didn't even move!

England let me walk all over their territories with a 1500 strong army, preferring instead to retreat it's 2300 men all the way from Scotland to Wessex, before retreating Britain without a fight and going off to live in the Sinai.

It has quite simply been no fun at all - and the problem is the battles are absolutely superb, but the only way you will ever get one is by sending 500 militia against two enemy armies, because if you send 600 they will retreat.

I probably don't need to mention then, that the AI, in my four century-long campaigns did not once ever attack me, I had to provoke them.
This also ruled the 3 full armies of Prussians who simply refused to invade my neighbouring garrison of 650.
Even though I was at war with them.

Completely ridiculous, I'm reinstalling XL right now, and hopefully I won't be so softened as to be slaughtered in my next Feudal campaign!

Hi Glen ,, Frustrating to the extremes ,, I never have played it but i don't think i'll download it just yet either ,, Im sure it was the most recent version you were playing ? Anyway its good that we have mods and just plain old MTW to fall back on ,, Do check out ATW as well .. cheers .

Is not the AI in MTW hard-coded, apart from GA goals? I know there's a faction behaviors setting in the startpos files, maybe if you set them all to expansionist you'll get more action. I don't know what else you can do to affect the AI.

If you don't like NTw try out Pike and Musket Total War. I took Ireland once, and they rebelled with a army 5000 strong! cegoroch says thats avergae!

I feel I should bring some balance, I stayed with ntw because i'm bored of swords and instead changed a few settings and since the game has been more fun. Provinces rebel and the factions are more aggressive, it aint perfect and more factions would be nice. maybe xl set a plato, perhaps its because I let xl become so boring to me, after years of it, I like ntw.

To be honest I find the idea of any kind of firearms based TW game to be rather dull. This is pretty much the main reason why Empire doesn't interest me at all.

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Originally Posted by caravel

To be honest I find the idea of any kind of firearms based TW game to be rather dull. This is pretty much the main reason why Empire doesn't interest me at all.

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Indeed. About the only gunpowder-based units I use at all are the siege pieces (bombards, culverins, etc.), and even then I usually don't employ that many. If the battles aren't about getting up close and personal with your enemy, then I'm probably not going to be that interested. ~;)

The era of the most interest to me is the ancient one, thus why Rome was such a big disappointment to me. Artillery, muskets and even catapults and trebuchets, don't really do it for me. The one thing I'll say for Rome, despite it's numerous flaws, is that I definitely prefer it's seige battles to those in MTW. The latter of which I tend to autoresolve.

There are a few things I like about RTW, too:

the idea of rewards of specialised units for successful battles

having a retinues which increases roleplay depth

the battles are very elegant to watch, with nicely made physical movements of throwing, running/stopping etc.

apart from the battering ram I didn t get to use other forms of siege equipment, as it did funny things with the game...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Glenn

How many of you have attempted Napoleonic: Total War?
How many still have enjoyed it?

I have been playing it the last few days, and have found every faction to be unforgivably easy.
This is not because of starting position, funds or troops, it's because the AI is almost non-existent on the campaign map!

There was a situation, as the Dutch-Belgians, in which I invaded Ile De France with 1450 troops, rather light infantry and artillery.
The province was garrisoned by 1800, led by a 4 star general.
The garrison retreated, and then the province I held was surrounded by approximately 4000 French.

I waited over ten turns, and the troops didn't even move!

England let me walk all over their territories with a 1500 strong army, preferring instead to retreat it's 2300 men all the way from Scotland to Wessex, before retreating Britain without a fight and going off to live in the Sinai.

It has quite simply been no fun at all - and the problem is the battles are absolutely superb, but the only way you will ever get one is by sending 500 militia against two enemy armies, because if you send 600 they will retreat.

I probably don't need to mention then, that the AI, in my four century-long campaigns did not once ever attack me, I had to provoke them.
This also ruled the 3 full armies of Prussians who simply refused to invade my neighbouring garrison of 650.
Even though I was at war with them.

Completely ridiculous, I'm reinstalling XL right now, and hopefully I won't be so softened as to be slaughtered in my next Feudal campaign!

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Difficulty is one of the major issues with NTW. Unfortunatelly it is almost only a MP mod if you enjoy a challenge.

For gunpowder armies I can only recommend Pike and Musket - difficulty is one of the VERY MUCH PRIMARY objectives I tried to achive so I can guarantee that if you chose one of smaller factions you will often struggle to survive in the mod.:yes: Of course on expert level, but personally I have never played on anything lower except in very few, very fist battles in the vanilla many years ago.