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Bringing the grim consequences of starvation to virtual warfare
Who’d have thought that, just 200 years ago, it was fashionable to hate the French? It’s one of the great burdens of having an empire. Poor Napoleon: before declaring himself the Emperor of France, he probably thought back to the time when he was the plucky revolutionary underdog, and all the blokes said “way to go, Naps,” and the girls were so keen to make an impression on him that they’d shove their tongues into their cheeks to give the slightly unconvincing impression of oral sex.
But his delusions of divinity grew – Napoleon came to believe that he was guided by God’s hand. And when you start believing that success is pre-ordained by a deity, you’re on the fast train to whoopsville. While Empire focused on the development of American Independence, over in Europe the story of a military genius was unfolding. But don’t start with that "Napoleon, the European bogeyman" stuff.
Long before the cartoonists of enemy states began to draw Napoleon as a physically tiny man in a massive bicorn hat, he was a revolutionary soldier, quickly adjusting to his position in the new world by claiming to be the Emperor of it. Fans of history will know that he was physically pretty average. When whole countries start spreading childish rumours about you, you know you’re doing something right.
In bringing the exploits of Napoleon to the Total War series, Creative Assembly have dealt with it in the same way they’ve always dealt with reality. Military history is the Plasticine from which they roll out alternative time-snakes. So, Napoleon starts out as he was – a fully-trained artillery commander, commanding an army of artillery-strong, but badly trained soldiers. The new units are true to the time – all 351 of them, created just for this sequel. But what you do with them is up to you. Napoleon, after all, made mistakes.
This standalone title is, to use Creative Assembly’s own words, “Empire under a microscope.” It takes the same narrative form as Empire’s Road to Independence campaign which formed the tutorial-esque segment of Empire. Whilst not a tutorial as such, the rise of Napoleon does give CA a chance to introduce you gently, again, to the classic Total War blend of turn-based world map strategy and huge real-time battles.
The first campaign sees Napoleon as a General in 1796, commanding a post-revolution French Army. On the border of Italy and France, the Austrians were the chief enemy of the French, and Napoleon had been sent to distract them. He did better than that: he won the war for his country. That’s what you’re aspiring to here. And before you claim supreme political power, you get to focus on the combat rather than the minutiae of running an empire。
One of Napoleon’s most famous quotes, which conjures a lovely image of breakdancing soldiers invading a country by doing The Caterpillar, is that an army marches on its stomach. That’s the new aspect of Napoleon, which brings something to Total War that’s never been fully acknowledged: the effects of starvation, plague and general attrition on a troop. On the world map, the further your troops are away from home and supplies, and the more hostile the environment, the more their morale and numbers will be whittled away before they’ve even had a chance to run away, morale shattered, from a battle.
This means scorched earth tactics become a real and occasionally sensible option, depriving anyone who follows you of the resources you’ve enjoyed. The Russians have used this tactic to great success in the past: under Stalin in the 1940s they fought Hitler by moving their factories east and burning down their own houses. They poisoned their own wells to wear Napoleon down in 1812. Now you can do similarly in Napoleon: Total War.
Or you can be slightly more proactive and take advantage of an over-extended army by cutting their supply chain. If they’re a long way from home and haven’t planned their advance properly, this could cripple them – just as it crippled Napoleon in 1812. The thoughtful introduction of attrition is a tactical game-changer for the series.
If the idea of fighting a campaign in Total War along the border of two countries seems claustrophobic, that’s just one reason this is being described as “Empire under a microscope” by CA. The other reason is that the turn time has been reduced from six months to two weeks. This change isn’t so trite as to simply mean the calendar moves more slowly – it affects your turn-to-turn considerations. You can’t just stack up your troops and send them half-way across the planet: now you have to consider the effects of hunger and supplies, and if you decide to take challenging terrain, morale.
The second campaign takes place in Egypt and the Holy Lands. Napoleon’s intention here was to disrupt the British trade routes, but his options were limited. He was far from France, with no way of setting up a recruitment queue in Paris and jetting them over to his location in a couple of six-month turns. So here, you’re forced to survive locally, build supply depots, and recruit from the residents, using their camel-riders and other units to your advantage.
A camel has two advantages over a horse, we’re told: first, riding from the back lets you use the hump as a shield. Secondly, they’re a bit more stupid, and don’t mind running into square formation pikemen so much. How that helps, we’re not sure.
From a screenshot, the graphics will look virtually identical to Empire. But there have been improvements. On the desert level, a heat shimmer warps the screen gently. It’s not purely cosmetic – it’s a visual reminder that you’re in a hostile environment, and likely to be suffering from fatigue and thirst. A renovated particle engine throws dust into the air: a wind direction that has been set at the beginning of the level carries it slowly over the map. If you remember the build up to Empire, there was a lot of fuss about every bullet being individually calculated – every naval cannonball causing individual damage.
That perfectionist fuss is continued here – the dust kicked up may look like a cosmetic effect, but it will affect the visibility of troops. If something looks like it would have an effect on the battle, it almost certainly will. Even the new individual troop animations aren’t entirely functionless. Not only do they break up the uniformity of the battle, making it tempting to zoom in fully and follow an individual on the battlefield, they also give you feedback. When cavalrymen rear up against pikemen in the square formation, they’re giving you the important message that horses hate approaching geometric arrangements of spikes.
Often, you’ll see a dead cavalryman, an ankle snagged in his stirrup, getting dragged across the ground. That one’s fairly pointless, admittedly, but it’s understated. CA are keen to make their game make visual sense, and use as much as possible to show, not tell, the player what’s going on. But they’re far from mirthless – the joy that’s expressed at a dead man getting dragged by a terrified horse across a battlefield speaks volumes.
This is a period in which Napoleon suffered a defeat – giving you the chance to prove that you’re only one massive army away from world domination. Another visual improvement is the deformable terrain – cannonballs now leave marks in the ground. It’s not a battlefield tactic – artillery wasn’t big enough to leave huge craters – but along with the particle effects, it all adds up to make the battle feel that much more real.
A UI tweak now displays a blue ring that shows the area of effect for commander abilities such as Inspiration and Rally, which can boost troop morale. Rally can even bring your troops back from Empire’s new shattered rating.
However well you finish the campaign, though, the next one will snap your progress to the historical timeline. Allowing your bonus world tour to persist would imbalance the campaign and eliminate any attempt to seriously recreate Napoleon’s rise to power.
Over in the AI department, the renovations made in Empire have been built upon. Avid readers with steel-trap memories will recall the move from a chess-based consideration of possible moves to a to-do list. The computer keeps in mind a prioritised set of goals, with every action ranked on how likely it was to achieve any of them.
The refinements are minor, but interesting in a bookwormish kind of way. For instance, now the AI will consider how a goal’s coming along. If it’s finding itself unable to achieve something, and the goal isn’t something as fundamental as a victory condition, the electronic brain will reprioritise it and focus on something more likely to bear fruit. If the idea of putting human thought into code gives you a tremor in that secret part of you that you prefer to keep hidden from the cool kids, then you’d probably launch yourself into space if you saw the numbers at work behind the scenes.
Because that’s what the third and final campaign is about: the crash zoom out to the world map, the blue empire squatting over the chest of Europe, with more than a couple of fingers in Africa. Now you’re playing a more familiar game. Not as global as Empire, but with all the old concerns of taxes, the containment of unrest, and the movement of agents. If that’s not to your taste, you can always automate the micromanagement for a small cut in efficiency.
The stylish Rake has gone, so there’s no point building bawdy houses – but the age of the true Gentleman appears to have ended: he now takes on more Rake-like behaviour. During one duel cutscene, a gentleman flees, only to be gunned down by his opponent. Meanwhile, to fulfill those covert pursuits, the Spy makes a return.
This affects the settlements – there’s no point dropping brothels everywhere when they don’t attract Rakes – and the supply depots are vital, of course. This means a growing responsibility, in terms of setting taxes, to keeping the rabble happy. But as usual with Total War, you can limit your involvement in these money-minded matters and suffer the slightly (and deliberately) inefficient decisions of the AI to keep your game simple and streamlined. You’ll lose around 5% of your optimal income, but that’s the price of an easy life.
Napoleon’s charismatic and legendary life ran from 1769 to 1821, making it a perfect way to extend Empire’s remit of the 18th Century. The change in zoom level and the narrative of the campaign make it yet another Total War game that gives you a feel for an era, without ever going so far as to educate you. The amount of military knowledge knocking around in the Horsham HQ is formidable, but Creative Assembly aren’t history teachers – they’re game-makers.
With a deeper attention to the ways in which soldiers find themselves dying, the more intimate, up-close Napoleon campaign looks set to be the most realistic yet. It’s not like Total War was ever the most whimsical, throwaway series – but if they keep getting closer to the real experience of war, they might as well sell the game with a post-traumatic stress disorder counseling course.
Nov 12, 2009 |
发表于 2009-11-13 11:08:22
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