Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

I bought this game yesterday and am wondering if anyone has it too?

Chef de bataillon Ranson Lee
Commandant de 7ème Division d'Infanterie
IIèmé Corps d'Armee Nord

Not yet. A little leary of Total War anything after their Empires game got poor reviews.

The model doesn't seem right for the period. I can live with it for Medieval and before but not sure that anything beyond that will work.

Lets us know how it plays. Does it have some sort of doctrine that it will follow or are the units going to run all over the place like before. Units pursuing after units that run and all that.

Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!

I have being playing Empire and its great. May have need a few patches to "tweek" it but even HPS needs them to occasionally[;)].
Problem is it a bit "complex" so the instant gratification player gets a headache[:o)]

Field Marshal Sir "Lucky" Jim (K.G.)
1st Regiment of Life Guards

"And let my sword not sleep in my hand"

Picked up the Imperial Edition yesterday and playing the tutorials today. The ship fighting is fun!...but slow (might be just the tutorial).
Wonderful pack and the Imp Ed. comes with an 8' resin statue of himself crossing the alps, an A3 size wall chart of his life AND a FANTASTIC leather (fake) dispatch pouch with gold lettering and a 1/2 A4 pad of printed eagle pages!![:p]
Plus all the "elite" and "heroic" unit add ons.
Im impressed (but buables do that to me[8D] ). The game play I'll get into tomorrow if Im not too hungover from a mates 40th B'day Im off to tonight.

P.S Ive not bought Empire becuase of the reviews but I love Medieval TW!


Col Mike Ellwood
Commander Officer
3rd Dragoon Division
Reserve Cavalry

I would really like to hear how the units act. Do they remain in Line formation and so on and how are the melees handled. Do they end up being hand to hand fighting or do the units fall back?

How does cavalry fight? Do squares keep cavalry at bay? How does artillery fire work for losses?

In TW you group units together into maneuver groups. That is handy when you want to move in a large open field formation or just in a column down the road.

Anyway, some report on it from Napoleonic players would be nice. I have all of the TW games (have yet to play Empires though) and yes, Med2 is one of my favs. The first Med was a good game too. I actually like the campaigns better from Med1 as you didnt have to win a campaign in order to use the other nationalities.

Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!

Ok a quick update on Napoleon:Total War:

The game cost me $2400!! I needed a new laptop with increased specs to run it [:D]. My 3yr old desktop JUST missed the cut [:(] !
Make sure you check out your pc's SPECS!!

The introduction is REALLY COOL and quite inspiring [:)][:D][8D][:p]

The complexity and interactions of diplomacy, trade and alliance negotiations seems to read as a step up (maybe two) from Medieval:TW, but I'm yet to play it.
Construction and tech tree looks more realistic in both time frame and ability to change production without starting from scratch.

The Battles! Well they are full of detail and you can put units IN biuldings! Your formations work exactly as Med:TW with the drag and drop. Firing is automatic or you can be anal and micromanage it. Its difficult to give orders to formations as they are still as per Med:TW ie you form what groups you want (no set bdes, divs etc).

The on screen unit info is good but takes a bit of getting used to all the detail. Losses seem to be a little excessive before units break but all the normal combat modifiers seem appropriate at this stage.

The Battles take <u>A LOT </u>of management!! You have to go thru the Napoleons Battles to get a feel for it and start at the LOW level as the IA will KICK YOUR ASS until you hget a good understanding of HOW to fight the troop types effectively.

Havn't even looked at the main game yet [:D]

To be continued........

Col Mike Ellwood
Commander Officer
3rd Dragoon Division
Reserve Cavalry

Then its not for me. I can live with battlegroups for the medieval period and before. After that I like some sort of military org.

Even with Total War: Rome there was no legion organization, something that I thought was odd at the time.

TW needs to get past this inability to control large amounts of units and give you layers of command with units under them. You should not have to micromanage each unit and they should not just follow the unit off the map.

That is what is going to happen when you give a battalion an order to attack another battalion. It will follow it to the map edge unless you change its orders. Which is why I dont play TW too much as I got tired of having to scroll all over the place.

I am hoping that LG:HistWar turns out to have a good command model/unit performance to it. So many of these 3d Masterpieces do well on the eye candy but the command-control model is helter-skelter.

Colonel Bill Peters, 17th Dragoons, III Corps, French Army
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt, Austerlitz and ... more to come)
Swiss-Swedish Army CinC, Musket and Cannon Game Club - Come over and see what we are all about!

My own responses to your inquiries based on 12-14 hours of play...

<i>I would really like to hear how the units act. </i>

They act like they always have in TW games...with a few nice improvements to be sure...but without resolving the fundamental ahistoricity of their attack and defense.

<i>Do they remain in Line formation and so</i>

Longer than they used to, but melee rushes are far too common.

<i>(H)ow are the melees handled. Do they end up being hand to hand fighting or do the units fall back?</i>

Remember S, M, R, M2? Same rubbish.

<i>Do squares keep cavalry at bay?</i>

Nope...for this, cf. Histwar: LG.

<i>How does artillery fire work for losses?</i>

The fact that most on-line games you see prohibit the USE of arty should tell you all you need to know.

<i>In TW you group units together into maneuver groups. That is handy when you want to move in a large open field formation or just in a column down the road.</i>

I have many other criticisms of the game, but this is becoming #1. The higher-level formations are nigh-identical to those of Rome and Medieval. For the Napoleonic period that's just silly.

It's a fun GAME. I like it and would recommend it as such. As simulation, it's, as I said, rubbish.

GdB Jim Owczarski
IV Corps
GA
Commanding


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