NTW: Special Forces Edition. Why?!? CA, why... :(

[econ21]

• Napoleon: Total War - Standard Edition. Includes the “Elite Regiment” Special Unit Pack.

• Napoleon: Total War - Imperial Edition. Includes Premium Packaging, A3 Poster “The Life and Battles of General Napoleon Bonaparte”, the “Elite Regiment” Special Unit Pack and the “Heroes of the Napoleonic Wars” Special Unit Pack.

From the Amazon UK website, it seems the elite regiment pack has 5 units and the heroes pack has 10 with the Imperial edition costing £5 more than the standard. I wonder what the 10 will be? King Louise has posted a link to what the units are:

http://www.totalwar.com/napoleon/add-ons/?u=1
http://www.totalwar.com/napoleon/add-ons/?u=2

Interestingly, they seem to be mainly "line" regiments with distinguished histories, rather than named "elite" regiments like Coldstream Guards etc.

The grand battery sounds the most attractive special offer unit, IMO. "Of the convention" does that mean French? The idea of a grand battery as a "unit" is a little odd though, as a grand battery was just an battlefield formation rather than a distinct unit like a regiment of Hussars or a named ship. Maybe it is just one way of getting more cannon into your stack of 20 units, which I guess is reasonable given the constraints imposed by that cap.

[Braden]

Honestly from that list, I ain't bothering. Nothing "historic" for me to latch onto certainly.

If I can find a copy for the same price as standard, yup. If not, CA can keep it.

[Durallan]

same as braden, and not buyin NTW day one, sorry CA! I felt burned after pre ordering empire. Still having too much darn fun playing dragon age lol, I might get it so the SF copy of empire on my shelf doesn't look lonely but its still disappointing, Even Red Alert 2 gave me a poster, soundtrack cd, nice big box, Pewter model! Hell my 1990 (92? don't remember) Edition of Ultima 7 comes with a REALLY nice cloth map and a small medallion thing, My Ultima 9 Collectors edition (which unfortunately got damaged in a fire sigh) came with a poster, a signed certificate by Lord British AKA Richard Garriott, a small Ankh Medallion, a soundtrack CD, Ultima Cards of the 7 virtues, and it came with a cd of all the old previous Ultima's!

Beat that CA and I'll Pre Order your collectors edition of NTW, but note, there has to be a good game inside aswell!

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

The grand battery sounds the most attractive special offer unit, IMO. "Of the convention" does that mean French? The idea of a grand battery as a "unit" is a little odd though, as a grand battery was just an battlefield formation rather than a distinct unit like a regiment of Hussars or a named ship.

Perhaps they mean the battery that Napoleon used to "disperse" the crowds in his rise to power.

[caravel]

I remember the days when you got the whole game, in a decent box, with a manual, a map etc and you didn't have to pay any extra for it as there was only one edition of the game anyway.

[antisocialmunky]

"Boy, the way that Starcraft played. Games that really made the grade.
Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days.
Didn't need no steam update. Every game pulled its weight.
Gee, our DOS games ran so great. Those were the days.
And you knew what they were then, games were good and hard to win.
Mister, we could use a man like John Romero again.
People seemed to be content. No Safedisk to circumvent.
Those games wouldn't make a cent. Those were the days.
Heal up at the local inn, explore where you haven't been.
Crawl through the dungeons fight the boss and save the world to win.
Now reviewers play along. On shelves so few games belong.
I don't know just what went wrong. Those Were The Days."

[Beskar]

Is anyone able to clarify this? You cannot get the “Elite Regiment” Special Unit Pack if you buy the game on Steam?

[Sheogorath]

I remember the days when you got the whole game, in a decent box, with a manual, a map etc and you didn't have to pay any extra for it as there was only one edition of the game anyway.

Personally, I don't mind 'special editions', provided they don't have exclusive GAME content in them.

Look at Oblivion's special edition. It came with a DVD with dev information, production info, and so on, an AWESOME 'Guide to the Empire' and a septim coin. That was a good collectors edition. Plus, with mods, I still play Oblivion :P

The concept of holding bits of the game 'hostage' annoys me endlessly, especially since, I'm willing to bet, all of those units are already on the game discs and only need to be 'unlocked'.

The units themselves are, as was mentioned, rather meh. I guess they're saving the 1st Rifles, Pavlovsk Grenadiers, and Red Lancers for future DLC.


Without in any way implying that anybody here would do so, I ask, do you think this sort of thing only encourages people to pirate the game? To me, it seems like it does. When you charge 1/2 again as much for bits of things that you can get online for free, well...

If you want to get people to buy a collectors edition, give them physical objects. Not a crappy 'timeline of Napoleon's life'. A little cannon would be nice, or maybe a map of Europe at the time, or as mentioned, a hat.

[econ21]

Regarding the grand battery of the convention pre-order unit from Amazon:

Perhaps they mean the battery that Napoleon used to "disperse" the crowds in his rise to power.

Good thinking about "of the convention" bit. Apparently it has double the guns of a normal artillery unit so the "grand battery" part is the important one for gameplay.

According to a CA e-mail, the Steam pre-order unit is the Scots Greys. That makes it a hard choice between the Amazon and Steam pre-order for me. Ironically, the two units faced off against each other at Waterloo, resulting in something approaching mutual destruction. I guess they will make all the pre-orders available in a DLC at some time in the future, as they have done with the ETW ones. I'd like a disc, so I guess the Scots Greys will have to wait.

[al Roumi]

It's the purpose or business case for DLC which is interesting for me. For example, CA have given their marketing strategy full license to sqeeze as much extra revenue out of their game releases. Compare that to Bioware's DLC policy with DA:O and (as far we know at the moment) ME:2 which focuses on driving revenue from 'new' purchases of the game and mitigating losses through piracy or "lost" revenue in used-game resale.

Personaly, as a consumer I much prefer Bioware's strategy. Although I have paid extra for the "Warden's keep" dlc and also bought the ETW special forces edition, i'd rather not feel so openly exploited as the poor quality of the original product I purchased from CA made me feel.

I am not buying NTW in any form untill I hear good things about it from players, especially relating to program stability and AI.

[Durallan]

and yet people on the DAO forums are screaming blue bloody murder about the DLC's in dragon age in general and also about releasing them for sale on day 1 because the game was delayed. I have to say so far the only DLC's worth purchasing so far in the games i've been playing have been the ones from fallout 3. Theyve added quite a bit of extra content to the game, didn't really give you anything game breaking, and just great value all round. Empire Total war, its really hard for me to see how they can justify selling extra units in a game, that feels like blizzard trying to sell extra units for starcraft 2. In Dragon age they also have decided to continue this stupid bleeding ingame item DLC stuff.

I don't understand what they don't get,

We don't want exclusive units/objects/items to be the main focus of a DLC, I must say though that the armor in anchorage was nice, but you had to reallly earn it, and go through alot of stuff. I haven't played the Dragon age wardens keep, but from what people have been saying, it doesn't sound overly impressive exceptfor some nice looking armor I've seen some people wearing, so maybe I'll have to give in and get it.

CA, please please please, I don't want anyone to go bankrupt or lose their jobs but please really put the game throughits paces and get that AI shinin, if your going to release DLC, I dunno besides units and factions what else could they release as DLC? I really think the best way for CA would be to do maybe smaller expansion packs that add entire regions to the game, I would seriously have paid some money if CA had bothered expanding say america to the whole thing in the grand campaign and adding in africa (not interested in short campaigns in games like these), if people tell me NTW is amazing and fun, I'll get it. Goodluck Captain Fishpants and CA, I would like you to be a success this time round.

[Beskar]

Only problem with the DA:O DLC is that you have to be logged in and connected just to use the DLC. It is great as long as the faulty connection software they use actually allows you to download and use the DLC. (which it doesn't for me)

[NimitsTexan]

My real question is, how do I get the Imperial Edition (boxed) in the US. Everything I've seen so far just talks about UK retailers.