The Best Strategic Level Napoleonic Game available

[Colonel Marbot]

As a amateur historian of the Napoleonic era, I have by and large, been disappointed with most game simulations of the era. Strategic level games are generally quite simplistic when it comes to battles and and frequently force players onto a script that locks them into following actual history.

This game is fascinating in that while being a Strategic level game, it does allow players to employ tactical Napoleonic elements, such as battle plans, leaders with historical attributes and diverse unit types. The player has a an infinite number of diplomatic options, with individual diplomatic relations maintained with over 30 nations and principalities. And while it does take time to turn around relations with a historical belligerant, it is very possible. Afterall, in the campaign games, you have over 400 turns in which to convince the United States to ally or to create a Defensive treaty with Sweden for example.

The Leadership factor is of great importance. As Napoleon, you begin the campaign with Armies under the Emperor and Marshall Massena. Who shall you give a third army to? Shall it be the rash Murat who is senior in line... or should it be Davout... Lannes? The choice is yours.

Strategically, you can recreate history or run your own course... invade England, stay allied with Spain, join Russia and attack Turkey? The game becomes infinately varied each time you play it.

The rapid advances in the military science is simulated in WON, by improvements in whichever direction you choose. Will you develop the use of Mass Battery Artillery tactics, Cavalry screens and reconnaissance, Naval advances? These are all in your control and can developed in an order that matches your strategy.

Let me share the decisions and flavor of the opening of the 1805 campaign from the French side. My beginning decisions and direction might be:

1. Get my naval fleets out of their respective harbors and attempt to consolidate them before Nelson can begin to pick them off.
2. Do I consolidate the Grande Armee and march my corps in supporting distance of each other on Ulm which will guarantee a victory, but also the escape of a portion of Mack's Austrian army, Or do I march to surround Mack completely, cutting off his retreat, but also risk a premature engagement with only a portion of my force. I generally choose the later and detach corp cavalry to screen my routes of advance and send Davout, Murat and Bernadotte around to Mack's rear... careful not to make the historic mistake of violating Prussian neutrality.
3. Reorganize and modernize Massena's army in Italy, before beginning a careful advance towards Venice.
4. Begin diplomatic overtures to improve relations with the Ottoman's and the Persians, knowing that eventually I can use them jointly to create a secont front against Russia. Similarly I begin to enhance diplomatic relations with the U.S., with the knowledge that they can help me with Britain, while swearing that I will keep Spain firmly in my camp and never create the Pennisular Ulcer.

The strength of this game is the vast complexity and flexibility within its design. No two games will be the same. The scenarios are interesting, but the campaigns make the game fascinating.

Before I finish this post, let me address some of the playability concerns that some have. First of all let me say that I have played all 400+ turns and taken a campaign to completion. In many ways I followed the historical approach of war with Spain and Russia, but in other ways I chose a separate course,.. with an invasion of England and Turkey. Ocassionally I did run into a minor challenge, but a change in direction would always allow me to carry on. Running the game on an older Computer system which has dozens of background programs did bring me an occassional error, which required going to backup (the game auto-saves every turn). But upgrading to new computer has brought zero errors. If you enjoy the Napoleonic era, this game is a must-have for your library.

[mr1948]

Thanks Colonel, great post.

[Ar373]

Originally posted by Colonel Marbot:

[...]If you enjoy the Napoleonic error, this game is a must-have for your library.

the napoleonic error :D :D i laughed my ass off, thats so fitting, this game is really for people who enjoy errors :D :D

[Light]

A++ Awesome review, and you show the very many positive aspects of the game that are being ignored.

[PocusFR]

@killedbypropaganda: did you try the game with the hotfix we released 3 days ago? It does a lot of good for people having hardware troubles.
If you had a 'soft error', i.e an error on game logic or historical events, we are really interested by your report so to fix it asap. WON is a complex game (this is not just painting Europe in your nation's color) and so is bound to have a some errors.

[trismigistus]

Having played AGEOD's Civil War and noting the visual similarities I have no doubt before purchasing that it will live up to any and all expectations.

[Ar373]

@trismigistus: I thought EXACTLY the same because I played To End All Wars (which is really great), but WoN is a disappointment. The game mechanics and historical accuracy are great as always but the game is incredible unstable and badly optimized and the UI is a real pain. The game feels like running with 5 fps (the debugger says 25) on my i5-4690k with 16gb corsair dominator platinum, constant stuttering at everything you do. Every few turns it crashes. Since you now have a douzen factions and not 2 (like in CW) or 3 (like in TEAW) and the engine calculates everyone of them, the waiting time between rounds is 10x longer while many turns nothing interesting happens (because youre not necessarily the center of attention with so many factions unless you play France). Also the increased number of factions makes diplomacy much more complex and the new diplomacy interface is super-inconvinient. The manual is ♥♥♥♥ as always (many things not explained), many quality of life things that are actually standard in 2016 are missing. I could go on and on. It's sad because this was my most anticipated game this year and I was going to become a regular customer of ageod. I didn't refund because I hoped that I would change my mind if I play more than 2h, but the longer I play the more I regret it.

Edit: Turn times really make me mad. The game could be fun, it runs a bit smoother now (altough I observed it sometimes dropping to 10fps) and the bad UI can be dealt with, but average turn calculation time is like 5 minutes (no exaggeration), 80% of the time playing this game is waiting.. As a customer I feel cheated, I would even pay 60€ for this game if it was polished but this feels like an early beta still a half year after release. Thats not acceptable. Please ageod polish your games or go bankrupt trying (and we are a small team or this is niche is seriously no excuse for this).

[trismigistus]

Worrisome for sure.

[Ar373]

Btw I fixed the stuttering. Apparently the game didn't save my changes for memory usage in the settings and always reset them to 10%. I had to edit a text file in the game directory (wtf ageod?) and now it uses 75% and runs smooth without stuttering. But that didn't noticeably improve turn times which still makes it a pain to play.

[Queeg]

Originally posted by trismigistus:

Having played AGEOD's Civil War and noting the visual similarities I have no doubt before purchasing that it will live up to any and all expectations.

CW2 is a much better and more playable game than WoN. Apart from the extremely long turn times and lingering bugs, WoN simply tries to do more than the game system is capable of handling. The event system in WoN is too rigid - you're basically just trying to achieve a fixed set of historical objectives based on what Napoleon did instead of playing to achieve objectives based on what you do. And the AI has serious trouble thinking in terms of multiple sides - it does a pretty good job in CW2 of thinking for two, but the added number of sides in WoN, with the added complexity of strategic decisions that necessitates, often is well beyond the abilities of the AI.

[Ar373]

Originally posted by Queeg:

...WoN simply tries to do more than the game system is capable of handling.

That's exactly my impression too. AI is still better than in Creative Assembly games though. I really hope they continue polishing the game, it could become a real gem, but I doubt it.

[mr1948]

That is why the original Napoleonic game was broken into smaller campaigns. But so many people insisted that Nap2 has to include a grand campaign knowing athena wasn't up for the job.
Well they got it.

[Queeg]

Originally posted by mr1948:

That is why the original Napoleonic game was broken into smaller campaigns. But so many people insisted that Nap2 has to include a grand campaign knowing athena wasn't up for the job.
Well they got it.

Exactly. The Napoleonic Wars is plural for a reason. They didn't want a pure sandbox game, like Crown of Glory, so they tried to string together the various historical campaigns through a rigid event mechanic, which just ends up making the game feel too linear - almost like a series of Steam achievements.

I suppose too that they needed the events to tell the AI how to behave, but even that often breaks down the second one of the events is achieved because the AI often doesn't know what to do next. And since the AI seems scripted to play toward an event, it seems completely incapable of dealing with much outside the script.

It's certainly a beautiful game and all the pieces are there. But it just doesn't play very well.

[Sharky]

How does this game compare to TOTAL WAR: Napoleon? That is one of my favorite games.

[Queeg]

Originally posted by Sharky:

How does this game compare to TOTAL WAR: Napoleon? That is one of my favorite games.

No comparison. Very different games. WoN is a more hard-core wargame, where you have to enjoy the details of supply and army composition. Battles are largely automated.

[Light]

Originally posted by Sharky:

How does this game compare to TOTAL WAR: Napoleon? That is one of my favorite games.

The Total War game is a great game, but this is much more strategic and dynamic. A much more in-depth grand-strategic title than the Total War game. Totally (sic) different in their approach.