Customer Reviews

Napoleon Total War Limited Edition

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I am a big Empire: Total War (hereinafter referred to as ETW) fan, and a few months ago, was wondering whether to get Napoleon: Total War (NTW). $39.99 for an "expansion pack" seemed rather exorbitant. However, since I am a huge fan of Napoleonic history (I read David Chandler's "Campaigns of Napoleon" front to back) I decided to take the plunge and pre-order off of Steam.

I would also like to address the oft discussed topic of Steam. This review will NOT solely discuss the criticisms of Steam; if you want to do that, start a topic in Amazon's discussion forums. This is a review of the game itself, not of the distribution system. That being said, I would like to add that I'm not sure why there is such furor over Steam. I've used it for the past four years, and never had a problem with it. Anyone who's played Counter-Strike, the Half-Life series, or Day of Defeat Source will agree that Steam is a very convenient content distribution system. I prefer not having to physically store my game CDs; Steam is a popular system, and I don't see Valve suddenly folding up shop over the foreseeable future.

Back to the review, installation from Steam took a few hours and 20 GB to download. The game requires Steam, so even if you purchase the physical DVDs from Amazon, Steam will be required for activation. Happily, the game is rock solid so far, no crashes of any kind. For comparison, here are my system specs:

Core i7 920
4 GB Ram
Single Nvidia GTX 260, Core 216

I'm running all settings on ultra, with the exception of a few token details. HDR is turned off, because frankly, I never liked the look and it unnecessarily burdens my system. Video optimization seems particularly smooth, and whereas the Campaign map would lag in ETW, I see no such problems here.

The differences between NTW and ETW are many, some slight, but even the smallest modifications make a big and improved difference in Napoleon: Total War. NTW is what ETW should've been. Here are the main differences, which I've summarized in 4 main categories.

VISUALS (Campaign map, battles, soldiers)
GAMEPLAY (Shorter turn time, Campaigns like Road to Independence)
ORGANIZATION (Historical Battles, Campaigns)
MULTI-PLAYER

First, the VISUALS. NTW is vastly upgraded over ETW in terms of visuals. There are now more soldier types per unit, some sporting brown or blonde hair, others with muttonchops or none. When you adjust the settings to the maximum, yes, there really are 64 face models as Creative Assembly boasts. Each engagement is a thing of beauty, with brightly besmocked soldiers, shakos and tri-corner hats, bayonets glistening in the air. Revolutionary Infantry soldiers march into battle barefoot! Napoleon's Old Guard Grenadiers look particularly resplendent in the new game engine. With white tunics, bear-skin caps with red plumes, and imposing figures, the Old Guard is brought to life and every bit as accurate as the history books. Heck, you can even make out the individual threads on the red epaulettes of the Guard.

Cannon shells leave explosions bursting in the air, and cannon-balls leave deep furrows in the ground. The camera view rocks from nearby blasts. A few new unit animations have been added, including a horse dragging a dead rider away, foot caught in the stirrup. Battles are amazing, to say the least. Now, muskets fire with greater flash and smoke. The Campaign map has also been upgraded, showing greater detail. There are also a plethora of short cinematic clips, which help to cement the 19th century feel as well as teach you a little Napoleonic history. Naval battles have also been improved, with clouds in the sky, and sun glinting off the ocean. The battle interface bar is sleeker, and the battle control menu from ETW has been replaced with a translucent menu. Soldier portraits are larger, and more intricate. Battle landscapes feature environmental effects which in turn have an effect on unit statistics. Battles feel faster and more magnificent. Units upgrade their veterancy in real-time as well, so you often survive a hard-fought battle with elite units.

Next, the GAMEPLAY. The biggest overhaul is to the Single-Player Campaign. It builds on ETW's "Road to Independence", featuring three linear campaigns which closely follow periods in the Napoleonic Era, from his early years with the Republican armies in Italy/Austria, to the forays into Egypt, and then the European theater. I think this type of linear storyline makes sense, given the focus on Napoleon's life. Additionally, the tutorials are more detailed, with three tutorials (land, naval, campaign) also illustrating early events in Napoleon's life on Corsica, and his travel to mainland France and subsequent rise to success. One huge change on the Campaign map which I really appreciate is the ability to speed up unit marching, which used to drag the single player turn time. Turn time is now two weeks rather than ETW's six months. Additionally, the campaign maps themselves are much more focused. Weather now impacts your strategic planning, so march your armies carefully! Troops must be supported by supply lines, and even the grandest of armies can be crippled by desertion and sickness. Rakes have been replaced by spies (good decision!) and greater flexibility is given to gentlemen. Spies have the ability to build up spy networks as well, if enough time is spent in an enemy city. When capturing a city, occupying forces finally have the option to either loot and kill the inhabitants or peacefully occupy. This option was sorely missed in ETW, even though it was present in the Rome and Medieval series.

In naval battles, ships now have the ability to make repairs at sea, and further health bars on added to show the hull strength on left and right sides of the ship. Naval battles with large numbers of ships were already hard enough for me to manage in ETW, so while the new health bars are a nice touch, I probably won't be able to monitor them unless engaged in one-on-one combat. For land combat, units' morale is shown in real-time with a morale meter by each unit, and generals may rally or inspire select units. Each general is based on a historical figure (another nice touch), and are irreplaceable, so conserve them carefully. Generals level up, but their veteran experience gives them a nice touch in NTW. Higher ranked generals can deploy their men after lower ranked generals have already deployed, thus increasing your tactical superiority. This presents a tremendous tactical edge; during one memorable battle against the computer AI, I was able to place my Grand Batterie of artillerie a pied and completely enfilade his entire left flank, crushing the infantry and routing them before contact. Depleted units also automatically replenish when in friendly territory.

Lastly, on the battlefield, there are additional inset video screens that bring your attention to critical news flashes, like when your general is in danger of being killed, or when a particular unit is in danger of routing. I could've done without the inset screen; it sounds helpful in principle, but in reality, the inset screen is too small and too low-resolution to discern anything useful.

Next, we have ORGANIZATION. As previously mentioned, NTW builds on the Road to Independence Campaign featured in ETW. NTW also has a greater number of historical battles, which I thought ETW was severely deficient in. To add some excitement (or consternation), the historical battles must be unlocked one by one, and some major battles are featured, such as Borodino, Austerlitz, and of course, Waterloo. I would've liked to see some additional major battles, such as the Peninsular confrontations, the giant bloody square at Wagram or Napoleon's return to brilliance with the Six Days Campaign in 1814, which featured tactically brilliant demonstrations with his Old Guard. Or event Murat's enormous 10,000 strong cavalry charge against the Russian center at Eylau, or General Senarmont's brilliant use of case-shot against the Russians at Friedland? Alas, we will have to wait for a fan-made mod to relive those battles, I'm afraid. The Grand Campaign aka Campaigns of the Coalition allows play as one of France's enemies; Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. However, the campaigns end around 1813; why not 1815 with the surrender and capture of Paris following Napoleon's abdication and permanent exile to St. Helena?

Lastly, the MULTIPLAYER has been heavily hyped. Since I was never interested in multiplayer for ETW, the same is true for NTW, and I'll just briefly mention some of the new additions, some of which are quite significant. Besides the usual Steam achievements and hyped uniform editor, friends can drop into campaign battles in the single player campaign! Some online review sites have said that the new multiplayer feature is the icing on the cake, but I'll let you find out for yourself.

In summary, here are the pros and cons:

PROS:
- Vastly upgraded graphics
- Gorgeous battles
- Improved interface and playability
- Napoleonic theme
- Multi-player (if you're into that)
- Stable build, no crashes
- Shorter load times

CONS:
- Need to shell out more cash
- No fife/marching music?
- No additional unit formations, e.g. mixed order formation?
- Sieges are best auto-resolved
- Minor AI Quirks
- Cannons shooting into the backs of own troops, !$#@%

Just a brief note about the cons; I noticed they added a fife playing soldier to each infantry unit, however, he doesn't seem to play any particularly famous historical tune. I used to play a MicroProse Napoleonic game in the 1990s called Fields of Glory, and it featured some brilliant period music, including La Victoire est a Nous, British Grenadiers, and Yorckscher March. I didn't hear any historical marching music (although the fife guy was playing some sort of tune), but Creative Assembly did mention the possibility of marching music, so my fingers are crossed. The fife guy was also playing too quietly to be heard over the din of musketry and game music. Additionally, I would have liked to see some additional formations besides square, column, and line. Troops seem to form square faster though, and graphically, they aren't thrown about as much by charging cavalry.

Now excuse me, I need to dig up Sergei Bondarchuk's 1970 masterpiece and re-watch it. Yes, NTW is that good, and I'm happy with the purchase. Now when will Total War: American Civil War and Total War: Franco-Prussian War be released?


**EDIT** (02/27/2010): Yes, there is fife music. The game music needs to be turned off, set your infantry to walk (not double time), and zoom in on them. You'll see the fife-bearing soldier playing away. I don't recognize the tunes though, but hopefully they'll include Victoire est a Nous or La vieille Garde.

Well I can't help it, that's exactly how to describe this game.

It's a stand-alone, meaning you don't need Empire Total War to play it.


However, if it weren't for Empire Total War's greater scope, in terms of a 200 turn campaign, more playable nations, and larger maps and starting in 1700, this could possibly replace Empire Total War.



Aesthetically, this game is beautiful. The battle map UI has been changed dramatically from the standard RTW/M2TW/ETW standard to something different, with the map on the upper-right hand corner. But the units have gone back to the Medieval II Total War system of randomizing them, so rather than the identical clones of ETW, people have a wide variety of faces, complete with distinct features, mustaches, beards, etcetera, uniforms vary differently. At one point, I saw a man dressed in red alongside my Napoleon Bonaparte unit, and thought HE was Napoleon, so I understandably freaked out when he died in the first artillery barrage. He was the ONLY guy dressed in red, too.


Reflecting the technology of the age, muskets have greater range, and shoot slightly faster. What I thought a rather odd change was that the UI cards (as in, the little pictures of the soldiers on the maps when you select them that show you what they look like and how many of them there are) are changed in style, in a way that is less like a pre-rendered CG creation, and more an actual in-game representation, all uniformly standing forward, which makes them look rather like childrens' toys.


Perhaps this is good, but generals now have actual historical portraits for their UIs. This is something I've seen done on Mods, especially for Medieval II Total War, where pictures of characters like Baldwin IV or Salah ad-Din or Guy de Lusignon had pictures of the characters from the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" for them. It's definitely a better thing for me to have the historical portraits, as it better shows to me that these people truly existed, and makes me giddy to be able to wield Bonaparte and Marshal Ney and all the historical favorites directly.


Save for the newer units and technological tactics, and the new functions of artillery where they leave craters where they strike, the battle gameplay is essentially unchanged. AI is still insane where enemy generals will charge head-on with the army five meters behind them, though more often than not, they will avoid this.


The campaign map is beautiful, a definite improvement over the eyesore that the ETW campaign map was. Colors are less bold and disruptive, you can clearly see what territory is yours and what isn't, and the region where units can walk is now soft blue rather than neon green. This makes it difficult in some cases to see where an army's route ends when it starts mixing with snow hidden under fog of war, but the edges are smoother. Cities look better and everything in general just looks smoother, more muted, and more realistic. Even the lighting changes in the seasons, with winter months being slightly dimmer than summer months.


The campaign map UI is more clean and organized, with important buttons all on the right side, leaving space open for the radar and unit/building screen and such.


The luxury of not having to handle a 100 year timeframe means that the game has done something no other Total War game has had---reduced the amount of time between turns to an incredibly low timeperiod. Every turn passes 2 weeks in-game, so you have 26 turns per year. This not only does wonders for historical (and physical) accuracy, but lets you recreate the Napoleonic campaigns without having Napoleon die of old age before you've even started entering Russia.

This compared to Empire Total War's American Revolution campaign, where I started in 1774 and ended up winning the war by 1798.



The Campaign AI has, however, not improved too much. At the very least, enemies are less insane and more true to history, though that could be that historically, the nations opposing Napoleon WERE insane in their lust to drive Napoleon out of power. But the heavy use of triggers has guaranteed that certain things will result in definite changes. For example, taking Vienna will have the Austrian Empire immediately sue for peace and sign a peace treaty.

As well, when you take settlements, you have the options of taking it peacefully or looting, with the screen showing you outright how much money you stand to gain immediately, long-term, and public order. Sometimes, you have the option to liberate settlements and create new minor factions that are vassals to you. I think Empire Total War could do this, but in my entire campaign, I was never able to liberate any settlements and bring certain factions back from the dead.



Annoyances continue to be the computer's cheating and being capable of fielding multiple armies without going bankrupt, while your nation is twice as large and cannot even afford two major armies. One peculiar bit that enrages me is the tendency for Marshal Ney to constantly die in battles that are auto-resolved with him in it. He ALWAYS manages to die.

I have been a fan and purchaser of the Total War series of games since they were first released.
Napoleon Total War is the best, bar none.

It is hands down the best historical strategy game I have ever played and I have played them all.

I cut my teeth on the old map and counter board games, graduated to computer games first on the Apple Macintosh MkI. Then to an IBM Clone 486 with a whopping 1 meg of memory.

Those are my bonifides. If you are a first person shooter fan, read no further.
If you like the mindless produce them as fast as you can type of "strategy" games go get a coke or latte'.

We are talking strategy game here. You gotta run an economy, build an army, maintain political relations, and a viable trade network to achieve your goals. Fail one and you fail completely.
No money means no army.

This all sounds familiar if you know the series. But what I never had much passion for is online gaming.

What they have brought to the table with NTW is the game drop in concept. If you are playing a campaign game and you have it set to allow it, an anomymous or not so anomymous gamer can drop into your othewise private campaign and play the part of an opposing general, replacing the AI opponent for just that one battle. This is way cool. One con to balance the pro. Some pantie waist, egg shell egoed little twits will drop into your game and instead of being men, when the going gets tough, drop out of the game, tanking the recent battle. You will have to refight it. I have encountered more than a few momma's boys who suffer from too much self esteem building in grade school to take a good ass whipping in game land. Poor diaper wearers. I fear for their future in the real world.

The online gaming of ranked games etc is rife with this ilk too. Too many looking to exploit the system, and circumvent the spirit of war gaming. You try to play true to the period armies, idiots!

Instead the online gamers will load their armies with ahistorical units, Super commando like Riflemen and Jagers, who in reality were rare and expensive units and whose rate of fire was half that depicted in the game. They "corner camp" that is sit in a corner of the game map making the attacker approach right into the teeth of their force, again violatiing the spirit of the game.

The online forums are all abuzz about exploits and the best makeup of an army. Too bad the programers did not see fit to put constraints on what could constitute an army along historical lines.

Other than these petty complaints, I have had a blast playing the game. I pre ordered and Steam and have been playing it a lot. Aside from the frustrations with the immature online gamers, it has been very rewarding.

Graphics are superb. One caveat. Make sure you computer hardware and internet connection are above average. I ahve a dual quad core 64 bit machine and an optical internet connection and it works smoothe as butter.

I've just started playing this game and so far I am fairly happy with it. I should warn you that you'll need a pretty hefty computer to run it due to the new graphical demands and make sure you have high-speed internet so you can download the necessary install content from the mandatory Steam account you need to have. This curve ball aside, and some weird crashes on XP, the game is a masterpiece.

So, what's all the fuss about? Where to begin?

For fans of Medieval TW like me the anticipation of Empire was too much, but the product was panned by hundreds of loyal fans and I steered clear of it. NTW was given more praise and my real reason for buying it was, a) I love this period and b) naval combat. I've become a bit of a nerd for the love 18th and 19th century fighting ships and the chance to weild one of these beasts in combat was all too aluring. If you understand naval combat of the period, the game doesn't disappoint, although true sailors might be frustrated a little by a lack of data on hand. But, that does fit the era of seamanship in this period and reinforces the skill level of the captains and admirals in charge.

Graphically, and those running dual graphics cards and high-end systems must be revelling in it, the sea battles are fantastic. The ships lumber towards each other and you have options to fire broad-sides or different types of shot to cripple ships and or board the enemy. The distortion effects from cannon fire are particularly impressive. Bits of wood and splinters fly off the vessles and sails are shot away leaving you languishing for control. I managed to dismast an enemy recently, which was cool to watch.

Now, I must stress I've only had a few hours of game play and am still getting to grips with land battles and the ins and outs of naval combat, but my early impressions have been positive.

The first thing you notice is the campaign map which is just freaking awesome. I love the reduced time component, so that each turn is two weeks which provides a feeling of more control over events. The campaign map's color scheme changes more subtlely to suit the change in seasons and late autumn early winter is breathtaking.

The complexity of the build and research trees have changed a little and you can set what technologies you want to research with the help of the self-spawning gentlemen who pop up. You also have more control over your government and can sack ministers, recruit generals and admirals, and thus have more input into the structure and composition of your society.

I'm still mucking about with the English right now, again, because of their inherent sea power in this era, so there is much to explore yet.

If there is a fly in the ointment, it's the odd crashes I have experienced. Sometimes during turns, sometimes mid battle. The cause is a mystery and could be my system, but I get the black screen, which is better than the blue screen of death. Aside from this hassle, I really love it and make sure i save it more regularly...I've not had this experience with Medieval TW, alas alack. Still, in terms of the total experience, in terms of government, settlement experience etc, and battles, the game provides a riveting experience and hopefully hours of game play which fans of the franchise should enjoy...

The sheer scope and size of Total War games have always been awesome. But what really provided a truly unique game experience was fighting the battles. And for that we need a decent battle AI. On playing the game, I can say that NTW has a battle AI which is hopelessly bad and beneath the standards the Total War franchise has set.

First of all, we will see very familiar AI problems such as:

1. Suicidal generals who are just too eager to throw the lives away and decrease their army's morale.
2. Weak and samey formations. AI army tends reform for no reason and run in a criss-cross fashion rigth in front of your line taking on your heavy fire. After taking heavy losses,it has no choice but initiate melee change.
3. The cavalry just charges senselessly straight ahead and particularly likes going after your artillery.
4. AI passiveness. You can take the AI units one by one when AI defends.


But this is not as bad as the behaviour of your soldiers. Your soldiers are no longer men who are able to react to everything that happens around them but they are mindless gamey little cyborgs that are wired to see and react to only the things that happen straight ahead of them,. If they are engaged from one of the flanks or from behind, they will remain perfectly idle until they receive enough casualties to make them rout. Come on, archers in Shogun Total War, a game which was released a decade ago, show much better AI behaviour!!!

This has a huge impact on how you fight battles. You have to pause the game every minute and, in the heat of the battle, even much more frequently to make sure your units are not outflanked and to rotate them so that they face the enemy, otherwise they will just stand and die.

For me, this is a huge step backwards for the franchise and it totally puts me off. I want a better game not a better looking game and for me, as far as the battle AI is concerveed, ETW and NTW hold little advantage over other RTS games. So I will do what I did with MTW2, I will wait till our fantastic Total War modding community creates an interesting and challenging mod and rescue the game.

If you really want to read a more comprehensive review, go to the Total War Centre and read one by Darth, who is a PC magazine journalist and a creator of excellent battle and campain AI mods for TW series.

[...]

Two words: Steam Sucks. I don't know how much simpler I can put it. After having to go through the install process four times, I was excited to play the game. But wait, you can't play until Steam patches the software... so twelve hours later I get to play the game. Unfortunately, any enjoyment I might have gotten from this game is totally sucked dry by the awfulness that is the Steam experience. Whether it's staring at the "Preparing to launch" screen for a half hour or repeated messages that "The Steam Server is unavailable" just firing up the game is a hit or miss proposition. In a moment of weakness, I decided to try and order a game via Steam while I was waiting (I assume part of the whole Steam idea is to sell you more stuff, right?). Went through the whole order and then got "Sorry, there's been an error with your order. Contact customer service." Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Not gonna call for the privilege of buying your stupid software. That's right; buying. I paid good money for this damn bundle of code, I'd like to be able to RUN IT WHEN I WANT TO PLAY! Thanks a lot Steam and thanks to whatever moron decided to ruin a perfectly good game series by tying it to that train wreck of a system.

Napoleon Total War (NTW) does a great job bringing the Total War franchise back to life. Completely overhauled, it gives you the sense of playing a polished product, something Empire Total War could not. Graphics are stunning, with the new gun fire and smoke effects providing some dazzling visuals. The campaigns are a bit small, and have to be played in order to access the next, but they do a good job focusing your attention. If you purchased Empire, you may find the value of this game to be considerably less, considering you are getting much of the same content. But for those who were disappointed by Empire, NTW does a great job at making up for it. In all its best to view this game as a stand alone expansion pack, rather than a brand new game, since it will give you that "haven't I seen this before" feeling. Which leads me to my only criticism of this game, is that I had wished for just a little more content considering its a "all new" game.

For those with concerns about Steam, this game does requires its use. For some it may be a deal breaker, but I found the hassle to be well worth it.

SINGLE PLAYER = 1 STAR
The campaign AI (strategic) seems passive and the diplomacy is still a weak spot for the AI. The AI nations do not know how to cooperately work together to defeat the French and are easy to pick off piecemeal. This is a smaller issue when you look at the tactical battle AI which is incompetent (but slightly improved over the Empire BAI). The worst issues are (1) Suicide generals that stupidly attack ahead of their troops and cause a morale drop when they are killed, (2) Poor field placement of artillery that needlessly exposes them to attack, (3) AI does a poor job of maintaining line formation with indiviudal units breaking line formation, (4) AI forms square formation based on cavalry proximity not based on threat, (5) Cavalry predictably flank to attack your artillery, (6) Sieges are HORRIBLE with the stupid batman grappling hooks.

MULTI-PLAYER = 4 STARS
If you are buying Napoleon to play Multiplayer or for its player drop in feature, this game is worth serious consideration. Creative Assembly/SEGA has done a nice job of adding a lot of features that make this game enjoy. Note this is really only for the battles as there is no player vs player campaign game. If I was to rank this game on Multiplayer alone, I'd give it 4 stars as I've encountered a few glitches and crashes

GRAPHICS = 5 STARS
Stunning visual graphics.

MUSIC = 3 STARS
Seems like most of the music is a recyle of Empire's music. Its ok, but nothing great.

CONCLUSION:
Whether you like Napoleon or not is going to depend on your expectations and the type of gamer you are. I'm a wargamer by nature, play single player, and enjoy a decent challenge. Arguments about whether the AI will ever be able to beat a human are moot points with me as I play in a straight forward manner meeting the AI head on, in line formation, no flanking, and I do not deliberately single out the enemy general. Prior to Empire, the total war series AI (STW, RTW, MTW, MTW2)offered a respectable challenge to me. These eras were mostly hand-to-hand melee and not musket fire. The battle engine simply doesn't do a good job of handling line formation fire and manuever. The other features save it from a 1 star rating by me.

This is not an expansion pack for EMPIRE: TOTAL WAR. This is a stand-alone game. Lower price, but the exact same game engine.

As far as I know, I've played every installment in the TOTAL WAR series (including the expansions), since the very first one: SHOGUN. In my judgment this is probably the best so far. (Really, I think the most solid, the most atmospheric was the original SHOGUN, but when I say that I have in mind the versions up until the patch that added the "battlefield ninjas" and other inanities.)

Although the format is rich in possibility, it seems like they always manage to include something that ruins the long-term playability of every outing:

SHOGUN: the "battlefield ninjas" were preposterous.
ROME and ALEXANDER: You give your cities everything money can buy, but they eventually revolt because of overcrowding and disease, forcing you to periodically slaughter the inhabitants to get some peace and quiet. Plus the constant bandits that you had to micro-manage became a headache.
MEDIEVAL: "A heir who has escaped detection" has arisen to slosh up your rear (together with constantly being excommunicated) made this one hard to enjoy for long. Also: mass revolts in all your provinces (typically about 1160) for no discernible reason.
VIKING: Okay, this one shouldn't be here. That was a fine game with no real problems I can think of.
EMPIRE: Released before it was ready: too many crashes to desktop. Plus, having to deal with Steam.

I guess what I'm saying is that NAPOLEON is excellent not so much because it's original or well-programmed; it just lacks the infuriating things that have been in other installments of the series. Some other things that -- God be praised -- ain't here:

* Trade is not a crock. Other installments had it where you could set up trade routes that were actually costing you money. In this one, trade is an unequivocal good and that's a relief. (I would still like to note that it's absurd that you can't trade with yourself, like the states of the U.S. do: once you approach map coverage, your trade does become a crock, since you get no money unless you're trading with a foreign power.)
* Generals don't die, at least not before the campaign deadline. At least I've never seen this. This was a bit of unwelcome realism in ROME. It got to the point where you felt like it wasn't worth the effort to "train" a general on easy battles, the way you could in SHOGUN.
* Bandits don't regularly appear.
* Storms and other natural disasters (e.g., big black clouds hovering mysteriously right over your fleet) are gone.
* This has never crashed to desktop on my setup.
* Religion nowhere near as important: it's been heavily toned-down, almost eliminated.
* You don't have to periodically decimate your cities.
* The "heir who escaped detection" b.s. is gone.
* Retraining (called "replenishment") is automatic. A welcome advance!
* The diplomatic penalty for territorial expansion is still there, but it's not so crippling.

All is not blooming roses, however. The AI is as retarded as it's always been. I'm talking about other states declaring war on you (or refusing an alliance) in the face of all historical logic or (more irritatingly) the logic of that moment in the game. I thought the AI, at least as far as the part that makes broad strategic decisions such as whether to enter or withdraw from war, was really poorly written. I mean, there could be a province you have surrounded for HUNDREDS of turns as an ally without touching -- and furthermore you've lent them aid repeatedly in the past, and you've completely got them surrounded by a million guys, and yet they'll attack you for no reason. Or refuse protectorate status. Or peace treaties, or whatever. I'm the kind of nerd who really gets into these games: getting a piece of paper and a pencil and mapping out my grand strategy, taking notes, etc. And yet it seemed like the AI was simply rolling the dice whenever called upon to make a decision.

Something else that saddened me was that the history blurbs were missing. I loved those in MEDIEVAL and EMPIRE. Shame those were 86'ed.

All in all, I have to say, the pre-patch SHOGUN is still my favorite. I still play through a couple of campaigns every few months. But NAPOLEON has now become my second favorite.

I could never get this game to launch either online or offline with my 56K modem so I cannot comment on the game's performance other than to warn potential buyers not to buy without broadband or DSL. I had no problems with Rome Total War, but this game requires access through Steam and it never worked for me. I did successully install the game through Steam.