Napoleon: Total War – first look

秋之回忆n

Take on the role of history's greatest compensatorWords: David Brown, PC Zone UK

Napoleon: Total War – first look Take on the role of history's greatest compensatorSome people, after reading our review of Empire: Total War, wanted to string us up and splice our main brace. We can’t help it if the bugs other people experienced didn’t happen to us. Still, it’s safe to say that there were some problems that perhaps could and should have been sorted out before release – specifically the AI’s total lack of ability to perform invasions over a stretch of water.

Of course, that and other issues have been fixed, tweaked and patched over since release. It’s safe to say it’s a more stable release than it was originally, even if some of us still haven’t had any issues of note. And now comes Napoleon: Total War, the first ‘expandalone’ in the franchise’s history. This English-mangling corporate buzzword means that you don’t need the original Empire to play Napoleon, but if you do own it, some of Napoleon’s whiz-bang new features will integrate into Empire. The stunted Corsican with delusions of grandeur won’t have any restrictions imposed upon his quest for glory, then.
Napoleon will be much more story-driven than Empire, akin to the Alexander expansion for Rome: Total War. The first of the three different campaigns will focus on Italy (1796), detailing the small general’s rise to prominence. The setting then shifts to the Middle East (1798), before moving to the Grand European theatre (1805-1812), where he invites everyone to rumble.
Creative Assembly say they are drawing inspiration, especially for the first two campaigns, from the Road to Independence bit of Empire, while retaining a lot of the core concepts from the main chunk of the game.

Turns have been chopped down to two-week periods in a bid to reflect the more micro-historical aspect of the events in question. This also applies to the way the campaign maps have been drawn up, focusing not so much on large regions with a big city plonked in the middle, but on smaller areas, villages and towns. Three different types of settlement will be available, focusing on either economic, industrial or intellectual pursuits. As you might have guessed, this will also necessitate the introduction of new technology research trees, both to reflect this change in the infrastructure and to cater to inventions and advances that had been made at the beginning of the 19th Century.

There’ll be up to 322 unique units in the game, although some of these will only be usable when playing certain historical scenarios. Interestingly, for those of you who are interested in military history, you might also notice some real-life regiments that are still around dotted about the place. To accommodate so many different varieties of unit, there’ll be an increase in the number of soldiers visible on screen during the battles.

Speaking of the battles, Creative Assembly have been stressing how they’ve wanted to make the battles feel and look more realistic. Smoke, rain and different environmental effects will all have more of a part to play this time round. For example, fight in the rain and there’s the chance that your gunpowder will become sodden, leading to the odd misfire that could have a big impact on the battle. Position the camera near cannons or cavalry charges and you might just see your view juddering about, adding to the cinematic feel of the battles.
As for the units on the field itself, the generals will have been buffed with new abilities. However, Creative Assembly have contradicted themselves a little with this.
The PR folks told us these new abilities will make us want to get the generals involved in combat a lot more frequently, instead of employing the usual tactic of hiding them at the back to make sure they don’t snuff it. However, they also tell us that the method of recruiting generals will be different, as they’ll be drawn from a finite pool instead of just created out of any unit you like.

This indicates that instead of risking him on the frontline, as the developers claim you’ll want to do, you’ll be even less keen to get him stuck in, because losing a general now would impact your chances in the long term far more than it used to. A curious idea this is, so we’ll have to see how this develops and works out in practice.

One of the biggest tactical additions to Napoleon will be supplies. You can’t just advance swiftly over the entire map as you feel like it now. You’ve got to consider the chain of supply, a vital theme that has never really been touched upon properly in the Total War series. This time out, it was absolutely essential to include it, for one main reason: Russia.

The primary reason for Napoleon’s first failure to force all Europeans to wear a big string of onions round their necks and constantly consume snails was, of course, the disastrous attempt to conquer Tsarist Russia. The sheer scale of the country stretched the French supply lines to the breaking point, until his soldiers started freezing to death in the hollowed out corpses of their horses.
In previous Total War games, the only hindrance said expanses would provide was to slow your progress. Now, you’ll have to set up a supply system to stop your guys from dying of hunger. To do this, you can build supply depots as you move along. It isn’t perhaps the most sophisticated way of handling the issue, but it should suffice. It’ll also provide a method for the defending armies to stave off advancing forces by going guerrilla on the supply depots. Cut off the supply and it doesn’t matter how big the enemy’s army is, they’ll soon be whittled down to nothing.
Diplomacy will be trickier, as you can imagine. Play as France and everyone will almost certainly hate you, being that you’re the most powerful, and to win you basically have to bump them all off. Luckily, you’ll be able to play as other factions as well, so it’s not all Francophilia.

A new AI Director system should make the campaign flow better than before, with a substantial raft of improvements to the AI. For example, computer-controlled factions will have more short-term campaign objectives, not just “Kill the player at all costs.” Hopefully, this will mean some of the quirks of Empire’s diplomacy will also be ironed out, like certain factions refusing to trade with you, despite you being on the best possible terms with them.

Civilian units will also change. Gone are the wandering preachers, unrealistic in this particular timeframe, while the Rake has morphed into the Spy, who’s able to slip into enemy camps for purposes of sabotage. Gentlemen are still around, and will be able to distribute pamphlets for propaganda and political destabilisation purposes.

Strangely, naval combat seems to have less emphasis placed on it than in Empire. Whether this is true or not, only time will tell. It would be a strange decision, given the importance navies played in the Napoleonic Wars: Trafalgar, anyone? Some improvements will be made, like the new ability to repair ships while at sea. Again, whether this means completely repaired or just patched up a bit, we don’t know just yet.
Creative Assembly are claiming that Napoleon will appeal to a broader base than any other game in the Total War franchise. The focus on smaller-scale campaigns instead of distant grand strategy will, they say, make it more appealing to regular strategy players. Ones who like to micro- rather than macro-manage, perhaps. This is the sort of thing we can only determine after playing the game first-hand, so we won’t comment on the validity of these claims just yet.
Having said that, it does make sense that people put off by the sheer scale of the grand campaign will be more likely to embrace a cut-down version. Those who weren’t enamoured with Empire won’t find this expansion changing their minds. However, the smaller scale, extra development, and tweaks made to the engine might be enough to convince you that it isn’t a wreck after all.

Creative Assembly have a history of making good expansions for their games, so we can’t see any reason this won’t follow in that grand tradition. And if you’re wondering where Waterloo is, you’ll be able to play that as a historical scenario. The main campaign finishes in 1812, so Napoleon’s final bow will be taken elsewhere.
Oct 15, 2009

[ 本帖最后由 秋之回忆n 于 2009-10-17 03:07 编辑 ]

皇帝的副官

坐等。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

有些内容貌似在帝国发售时也说了

cux47

CA每次都说自己的AI有多好
          结果呢。。。。。。。。
                   不过补给线的出现是一大惊喜啊

bdaabc

这个画面看起来比帝国好很多。。。。。。。。。。

加里森敢死队

那么喜欢管麻烦先管管某网站抄别人文章好了

119911

我希望你是真的不明白，而不是故意装不知道：你转的是哪家媒体的哪位记者撰写的评论？看看我翻译的帖子，这是你以后转载文章的样板。

再重申一遍，转载任何文章都要注明作者和出处，如果确实找不到原文章作者或原文章为集体创作，要在转载文章的第一行注明。

这是基本的网络规范，希望你作为版主能带头遵守。

以上

[ 本帖最后由 119911 于 2009-10-16 10:18 编辑 ]

秋之回忆n

先看清楚我的发帖时间，再来说我尊不尊重版权。我上午就发了！

[ 本帖最后由 秋之回忆n 于 2009-10-16 15:42 编辑 ]

没啥可起d

必须买破坏光驱！！！

等了皇帝好久了

估计到时候也能换新机子鸟

119911

唉......智代，我早就跟你说过转贴要注明作者和出处，你怎么就是记不住呢？
版主不尊重版权，上梁不正自然下梁歪
全文翻译就不用了，自己去大妈那看吧：

h t t p://3 d m game.chnren.com/bbs/showtopic-958577.html

上帝无罪

Napoleon: Total War – first look Take on the role of history's greatest compensatorSome people, after reading our review of Empire: Total War, wanted to string us up and splice our main brace. We can’t help it if the bugs other people experienced didn’t happen to us. Still, it’s safe to say that there were some problems that perhaps could and should have been sorted out before release – specifically the AI’s total lack of ability to perform invasions over a stretch of water.

拿破仑：全面战争-第一次看就以历史上最伟大compensatorSome人的作用，看了我们的审查帝国：全面战争，我们要串起来，我们的主要支撑拼接。我们不禁要问，如果其他人遇到不发生在我们身上的错误。不过，它可以说有一些，也许可以而且应该被释放之前，整理出的问题-特别是认可机构的能力，以执行一水之隔的入侵完全缺乏。

donaldwang

有很多以前都有报道过了 我觉得重点是补给线的设定 把补给线给断了再强大的敌人也只是个0 呵呵

秋之回忆n

全文翻译者，视翻译质量奖励100-200金钱！