Archive for January, 2010

The mountains loom over the terrain.

Grey rocky slopes, newly green with the grass of spring.

The land is always watching.

A massive explosion reverberates around the stone, carrying from valley to valley. Then another. And another.

Huge chunks of rock rain from the slopes as the mountains themselves are shaken by cannon fire.

Dust and smoke drift through the pass carrying with it the screams of the dead and dying.

In the fading light of the day the dust brings with it silhouettes, shadows of men carrying one another, tripping and falling; dragging comrades to the safety of the valley.

The bloody mess of a man emerges from the dust, his face caked in grime. Thick crimson streaks scar his face; some of it is his own blood. A bandage has been haphazardly applied to his forehead; already it is crimson from his wounds.

His uniform is tattered and torn, his feet bare. He wears the blue and white colours of France but there is neither pride nor bravery in his expression.  With a great effort he lifts himself and his rifle over a pile of rock and slides down the short, gentle slope the other side.

He comes to a rest and lets his rifle fall by his side. Others soon join him.

He closes his eyes and succumbs to exhaustion. His thoughts lead to home, to his village in the west. Would that he were there, not here. Anywhere but here.

Here is the northernmost tip of Italy, the land that bore the Roman Empire forth to crush the barbarians, the land that saw the armies of Caesar tame the world.

Here is the now forgotten war.

Looking to his left he sees a group of men huddled, trying to start a fire amidst the ash of the ground and the sparse vegetation of the Italian spring.

They can’t get the kindling to light and night is approaching. They look emaciated.

He has been here for too long. Fighting the enemies of the revolution, fighting for the ‘glory’ of France. And nobody in France even notices, nobody even cares. The war in Germany consumes the militaries resources and the nation’s attention. They are the forgotten few. The broken band that is the Armee d’Italie.

Another defeat like today’s at the hands of the joint Austrian-Piedmont force and this campaign will have no men left to fight it.

He hates the Austrians enough to know he will die here. To know he will die fighting them. The old order of France has been swept away and Europe’s kings, emperors and aristocrats fear it. They fear the great revolution that equalises all men and gives title to none other than those who earn it.

He had thought to earn his here.

To fight and win glory for the new world that France will create.

But looking now he is unsure. They have barely any men, and their commanders are no better than the aristocratic generals of old. Leading them into seemingly senseless blunders day after day. They simply hold. They go no further and retreat not a foot. They are content to die here.

Amongst these damned mountains.

There is a spark and he sees the men to his left smile as the first lick of flame begins their small fire.

Today sees the arrival of a new General, yet another erstwhile commander from Paris. A nobody who has nothing of himself, either in personal stature or indeed in renown.

“I heard he stopped the royalist revolts in the south.” Whispers one soldier as he warms his hands over the growing fire.

“Stories. He will arrive, do little, say much and abandon us.” Remarks another, cynically.

His hands are blackened from soot and grit as he extends them, palms out, to the fire.

“He doesn’t look like much of a soldier.” Sighs the first figure.

The fire pops loudly and sends an ember into the sky.

With that he turns from the group and looks to the tents that house the officers. They too are torn and in poor repair.

With effort he pulls himself to his feet, resting on his rifle to do so. He must command his small unit, what remains of it, and he needs information on the supply situation. If they cannot eat, they cannot fight.

He barely registers the pain in his feet as he steps over razor like stones and rocks. Walking in the fading light to the closest tent. Ready for more bad news and ill received words.

He coughs politely, then enters.

Before him is a man, short in stature, with his back to the entrance. He pours over a map of the position, identifying the Austrian cannon positions and asking questions of his officers.

He recognises Massena, much famed for his victory at Loano. He knows also Pierre Augereau. The officer peasant.

He stands straight as Augereau slams his fist onto the table and remarks in characteristically blunt terms that the situation here is dire.

Finally the remaining figure turns to face him.

He is momentarily lost for words. He is struck by some quiet confidence, by some, power.

There is something about him.

He stammers…“General, the men are injured, tired and unfed. We must withdraw to more fertile ground and find provision.”

The General regards him for a moment.  A youthful, soft face with piercing eyes. Dark hair swept over his brow.

He feels like the man is looking into him, like he is somehow reading the fear and failure he portends.

“Stand straight.”

“I will see to it you are fed. And I will see to it we crush the Piedmont Austrian alliance on these very slopes.”

This young upstart from Paris looks at him flatly as he delivers the words.

It is at that moment that he realises. This General really believes he can do it. He honestly believes he can drive the mighty Austrian army from the very doorstep of southern France.

He feels something he hasn’t in a long time. Hope.

This man can do it. This man can actually change things here.

“Go and tell your men to be ready to assemble, for I will inspect the army, I will feed it, and then we will engage our enemies and defeat them utterly.”

The General turns back toward the map, ready to move the first of his armies against the first of his nation’s foes.

History is about to be written.

“You will not die here soldier. You will be born here.”

The officer takes a step back, regarding the generals back as he does so.

“I am General Napoleon Bonaparte. And I will lead you.”

The war for Italy has begun.

When we were making Empire: Total War we wanted the flow of the game to broadly match the flow of history. The idea was that the European powers start off in a relatively stable situation where major warfare in continental Europe is very expensive, very unpopular, and for the major powers generally a bad thing. There is much more fertile ground abroad, and so the major powers export their rivalry and conflict to the new world and India. As the century continues the major powers grow richer and more powerful, and they divide the world up between them. By the end of the century there is nowhere left to go, and the focus return to Europe for a grand denouement. In real life, this began the Napoleonic Wars.

Empire: Total War does try to steer things in this direction with variable success. Even when it all works out perfectly, what we would really like to have happen – something that is recognizably the Napoleonic wars – is just not feasible.

Firstly the timescale is not ideal – the Napoleonic wars were fought over a relatively few years. We could probably have coped with that though.

Secondly, by the time the player has played a couple of hundred turns and got to the starting line for the denouement wars, his game world will have diverged from history so much that anything remotely resembling the Napoleonic wars is very unlikely. But we could probably have worked out a way round that too, maybe even without putting the game in to such a tight straightjacket that it would cease to be a game.

But thirdly and most importantly, the level of detail required to successfully depict the Napoleonic wars is an order of magnitude greater than we were working to with Empire: Total War. The period was documented in great detail, and that detail is readily available and widely consumed. Fans of the period would be disappointed if we failed to delve in to that detail. And I am one of those fans. I started Napoleonic table top war gaming when I was a teenager in the 70’s. I also had the great pleasure of working on Peter Turcan’s “Waterloo” series of games at Mirrorsoft in the late 80’s. It’s taken another 20 years to get back to this era, and I wanted to do it properly.

So that’s what we’re doing. There is more than enough material in the Napoleonic wars to sustain a TW game, and Empire: Total War provides the perfect platform to build it on.   With a tight feature set and all the tech working before we start we can focus on making the game as close to perfect as we possibly can on day one.

So what exactly is Napoleon? A full Total War release? An expansion pack?

You don’t need to have Empire to play Napoleon. In comparison, we’ve put about 4 times as much effort in to it as we did for BI. The vast majority of the content is completely new. Some of the battlefield buildings and textures are the same as is some text – no reason to change them – but all the other graphics and data is new.

Code wise all areas of the game have advanced from Empire, there are a fair number of new or changed features, and the game has the same kind of twists to the gameplay that we’ve done to make it play quite differently. The character focus also gives it quite a different feel. And of course by keeping the historical scope reasonably limited we’ve made sure we deliver better quality code on day 1.

Overall, to seasoned Empire players it’s a huge new experience and step up in quality. It should be fresh and different and interesting enough to hold their attention for many, many hours. To anyone who hasn’t played its predecessors, Napoleon is the best TW we’ve made, and a great way to get in to the series. Everyone wins.