Multiplayer update Q&A
We have made a number of improvements to multiplayer in Napoleon and The Peninsular Campaign in the latest update, and caught up with the Multiplayer team for the full scoop:
Since the update to Napoleon: Total War, what new units are available in multiplayer?
The whole Spanish faction has been completely revamped for the Peninsula Campaign, and this new Spanish faction is available in multiplayer for everyone, whether or not you buy the DLC. This includes new uniforms, as well as new and revamped units. Spain now gets horse artillery and lancer cavalry, as well as having their heavy cavalry and guard infantry options reworked slightly.
However, the biggest new addition to the Spanish faction is the guerrilla units. These units are experts at ambushing the enemy, and can deploy anywhere on the battlefield, except your enemy’s deployment zone. These units are only available to users who purchase the Peninsula Campaign DLC.
Can you tell us more about the guerrilla units available to owners of The Peninsular Campaign DLC?
The Spanish faction has gained 6 new guerrilla units, which are all capped at one unit each. These can deploy anywhere except your enemy’s deployment zone. This is a totally new concept for Total War, and the possibilities it creates for multiplayer gameplay, and the new strategies that will emerge, are really exciting. We can’t wait to see how players start using these new units and the interesting outcomes that will occur. We’ve been playing a lot with the guerrilla units in multiplayer internally within the studio, and they really are great fun.
What has been done to fix “failed to connect” issues in multiplayer games?
Players hosting games will now host on a fixed port, which is 51914. If this port is unblocked the game will use this first, before trying the old (much larger) port range. Players who are having difficulty connecting to other players should unblock this port and may find their issue fixed.
Previously, players can only do battle against people in the same geographical region. Has anything been done to address or improve this?
We’ve removed the Steam regional division between servers, so now everyone online can see everyone else’s games. This greatly increases the number of games available, and also increases the pool of players in quick battle, drop-in battle etc.
Can you tell us more about the new multiplayer maps that have been added to the update?
We added three new maps: Pyrenees Peak, Galician Ria and Salamanca Province. These are free for everyone, you don’t need to buy the Peninsula Campaign to get them. When making these maps we looked at a lot of the feedback on the forums, and looked at the statistics of which maps people were playing most, as well as what maps we most enjoyed during the making of Napoleon. We tried to make maps that reflected what the community most find fun, and best reflect the emerging gameplay trends. As a result we tried to make them balanced and reasonably symmetrical, to ensure competitive gameplay, but also to give them a strong real-world feel.
What has been done to refine drop-in battle searches?
The drop-in battle UI has been redone so now players can explicitly choose drop-in battles, quick battles or both, and whether they want naval or land battles. You can now search for as many or as few of these options as you want, depending on your preferences. And because of the removal of Steam regions the pool of players you’re searching for will be larger than before, which should make matching faster.
The game is also more generous when allowing you to choose the drop-in battle option during a campaign. Previously it only allowed you to opt for a drop-in battle when the game judged the balance of power to be very even. We’ve relaxed this requirement somewhat (not completely) as we found that, when choosing to enter a drop-in battle, players were more concerned about having fun than having a completely balanced experience (they have ranked games and regular quick battle for that).
Players will also find unit sizes are larger than they were previously in quick battles. Previously it was always choosing small unit sizes, whereas now it will look at each player’s unit size settings and choose the largest size supported by both players.
For all the latest Total War information, stay tuned to www.totalwar.com, and become a fan on Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks,
Mark O’Connell
The Creative Assembly
Reduce range of the unicorns down to the same as other howitzers in multiplayer for the smaller one and make the 20 one have 450
add more units for other factions other than brits and france
Posted by Splitatom on June 24th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
ive bought all your total war titles from day one and enjoyed them very much so but found empire total war a let down. since playing napoleon you’s have redeemed your selfs in the gaming market and i found the game brilleant. but iam deeply sorry to tell you that i think you’ve made a massive mistake in changing the morale on all troops on your latest update . have you’s played the game since,’ if not’ you should try it .evreyone you ive played say the same thing the moral spoils the game . please could you’s change it back!!.iam sure other gamers will leave you comments regardng the moral in the troops in the game . also the red screen horrific and there is too many crashes and steam going down. but the main issue is the troops morale please consider . thanyou for your time
[TNC]FREWSTA
ps this comment covers evreything
Posted by james frew on June 24th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
What about the “BETA????” of Empire total war. Are you ever going to release a mpcampaign like you promised???
Also a Mp campaign for Medieval 2 and Rome, would be great, why dont you do such things?
Posted by Markuskein on June 25th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I have recently tried buying the Napoleon Total War but it comes to find out that the game requires internet in order for it to work; I, unfortunately, do not have internet on my computer. The recent games, such as the Rome Total War and the Medieval Total War II, are the ones that I bought and had a great time with. They were and still are one of my favorite games that I have and it greatly disappoints me for the fact that the games right now, such as Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War, are games that look very extraordinary but i am incapable of getting the games that i have looked forward in buying but can not due to some of the requirements. Will there be a solution to the fact that you do not have to have internet?
Posted by Justin on June 25th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
the most annoying thing in multi is lack of polish i think, and i find the choice of using one second buffering for the bandwidth highly annoying and sometimes fustrating at critical moments.
i have 24mb broadband in a small village so i really wish for shogun u can utilize that without pausing to buffer, and hopefully give us savable 4 player campaigns with the choice to have a good old 3v1 battle where u can turn on allies!
good multi is key to shogun !
Posted by banzaii on June 25th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Prior to the release of NTW it was promised there would be co-op multi player campaign where two players are able to play against the enemy AI. However a release and several patches later the only multiplayer features for campaign are 1v1 player vs player. Me and my dad have brought two copies of NTW with the hope of playing co-op together.
Please tell me that something is being done with this as we are not enjoying playing this game without this feature.
Posted by Robert Smith on June 25th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Hi how do I find out what drivers I need to run Napoleun Ttal War using windows 7?
Posted by Frederick Gordon on June 27th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Finally bought / installed yesterday. (Cheers!) So this is comment #1.
I do tech-docs so: on HomePage in News column the month doesn’t show up. This reads as “24th , 2010 Napoleon Multiplayer update Blog!”
cya
Posted by Ben Tremblay on June 30th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
I don’t know where to file my complaints, because there is no complaints page on any of the websites. Also, I am very annoid by not having a contact number to phone. The contact number at the back of the booklet is not applicable to South Africa. In any case, it does not indicate the country code I have to phone.
This is now the second time this month that the game will be busy downloading uodates. The last time, it took 3 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The current indication, barely three weeks later, it will again do an upload which will keep the computer occupied for 1 day and 12 hours. There is nothing wrong with my internet provider nor the band width or with my computer. If fact, it is a brand new computer and I have 15G band width on the internet connection with a downloading speed of 1.0 Mbps.
If this is the case, in other words, if this is a feature of the game, please take it back. I did not buy a game to be available some of the time. I purchased for my pleasure, but currently, it is more busy downloading stuff than time for me to play it.
I wil advise you to contact me urgently. As you can see, I am highly upset.
Regards
Posted by Frik Wentzel on July 3rd, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Open Letter / Total Rant
Ok, this is the game I have been waiting for. This is a period of history I love and so far I have been playing a few warm up battles to get the hang of it. (I have other Total War Games)
So far so good, except for one major flaw and a minor one.
Forming a square is a “special ability”. Get real. The three manoeuvres all infantry were trained to perform Line, Column and Square. Also the fact that Light Infantry and Riflemen can not perform this basic manoeuvre is laughable. These were elite units.
Spain the battle of Fuentes de Onoro where the British Light Division covered the withdrawal of the 7th Division across an open plain in square fending off cavalry and infantry.
Rockets. The only European army to use them was Britain, the Congreve Rocket and they were highly manuverable as they were less cumbersome than cannon.
I will give way on the historical accuracies on this one point because they are just such great fun.
As I have said I have just been on “manuvers” at the moment and have not started any campaigns so things may be different in the full game. So I hope to see shrapnel and other weapons used by only the faction who invented them.
Creative Assembly I am by no means an expert, so who are your military advisors?
You need to fire them and get a patch on this game now
Posted by Charles Mitchell on July 4th, 2010 at 2:06 am
yeah you reached your peak at medievil total war – fun to play, not too complicated, easy to control troops and never ending playbility.
empire is just way to slow way to awkward to controll your troops and lacks any fun at all, sadly this game is the same add to the fact i’ve played all the sries over and over there isn’t much to keep me interested
Posted by jay on July 7th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Having a lot of fun with the multi-player Peninsular campaign. My biggest 2 hangups are as follows:
General casualties are very frustrating and much too common in my opinion
It would be nice to know where your reinforcements are entering from while setting up. Reinforcement camping has been a problem in my games.
Other that that, My first multiplayer campaign went pretty smooth.
Mark
Posted by Mark on July 8th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Some good things came out of the last patch but so much more needs to be done,so please dont make it the last.
Light inf needs a big price increase,because of the fact they all shoot at once they have more fire power than line even tho they have fewer numbers,they can take more fire power than line because of the light inf mode,they out range line even tho they use the same guns and to top it off they are cheaper than line,i know lusted has said many times that they can not defend against cav but they dont need to as any competent person protects them with line,thats why the A.I always suicides there cav by attacking the lights but getting slaughtered by the line behind.
Change the stamina back to the way it was,there is enough camping in the game as it was now it is impossible to attack a camper with out your troops been exhausted.
And last if we are lucky enough to get anymore maps can you guys please stop your selves from putting large hills on them,any large hill becomes the center point of the whole battle and rest of the map is wasted,honestly 90% of the maps i play on in the campaign are better than the mp maps just include a few of them for us.
Posted by Liam on July 9th, 2010 at 3:33 am
yes, the download problem mentioned by Frik Wentzel is severe – at least in South Africa where data bundles cost a fortune – why do I need to download from Steam continuously and at great cost?
Posted by Craig on July 9th, 2010 at 7:26 am
3 years ago, when i saw rome tw for the first time i was amazed! i decided to buy the game and i had lots of fun with it for some time, then you released empire, a total letdown, and then when i saw trailers for napoleon i decided to give it another try, but still a disapointment becuase of a lot of things…
1. AI is the same sucky AI as before
2. lost connection to steam is a very common problem
3. inbalance, the french had the best troops for very low price
4. same game engine as before, feels a bit lame to buy a thing you already bought once just to get new skins
5. It feels like you just release a game with not that much content, and then you release add-ons that cost lots of money, feels like you are just trying to suck the money out of us gamers :S
If Shogun TW isnt as good like the classics rome and medival, i will probably stop playing total war games
Posted by Erik on July 9th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
you really need a patch for the multiplayer BETA in Empire Total war.
Posted by Eric on July 9th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
I can’t understand it, but it feels like its the same TROLLS comment everywhere on the net. Comment about how the will stop playing if THERE problems isn’t solved right away! I think SEGA and Creative assebly should fokus on people that is really interested in their products. I Like the DLC:s You don’t have to pay for things that you don’t need! And you can focus on one campaign and then buy the next on if you want it!
Even if I am a historian and an archaeologist I don’t care about some flaws in tactics etc. A working game! A fun game! Is most important!
To all the people that complain about noting. Make your own game instead of comlplain about things of now importance!
Posted by Indiana on July 14th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
This is an open letter to Creative Assembly’s Napoleon: Total War team.
To whom this may concern,
I have recently purchased, along with a few other people, a copy of Napoleon: Total War to play amongst friends and to use the new multi-player options in the game. We have disappointedly discovered that this game can not be played co-operatively for various reasons.
Making friends into enemies. If there is to be any use of the battle function during a multi-player campaign, both humans must play. I believe it was not taken into account that two humans may be allied and not wish to fix, play, or compromise their partners army because they have been forced to play as an AI nation’s army. It is my belief that if a human denies the option to play as the AI, the second human player can play a battle against the AI, instead of having to auto-resolve and removing the pleasure of using the battle system.
It seems to be an unfortunate problem, that it is either auto-resolved or fought out between two human players. I would like to request a response or some guidance on a possible fix or excuse to this problem. I will be forwarding this letter within the next few days to CA directly as well. I do appreciate your time and thought, and this is my only complaint to a superior game. It seems like a simple patch to the problem, though I am unsure myself. The comment box fields have my information.
Thank you,
-Stephen
Posted by Stephen S. on July 16th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
is there any chance of hotseat coming back into total war?
Posted by Ice-ay on July 18th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
I have to unfortunately agree with my fellow South Africans! The download time is excessive – I’ve had to stop playing napoleon altogether. And who needs steam – I just want to get home from a hard day at work and make war. Is this too much to ask?
Posted by Edward on July 23rd, 2010 at 2:14 pm
To the gentleman called Indiana
Quite right too!
I look forward from the trolls on the “perfect” historical military/economic/political simulation,after all they know best right?
In the meantime I foe one will be sticking with CA….
A great franchise guys! Well done!
Posted by Mr Savvy on August 8th, 2010 at 1:02 am
I like their games
Posted by fabian on August 12th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
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I agree with Stephen S, it’s ridiculous that you either have to fight a human opponent (your ally!) or autoresolve, I fail to see why human vs ai is not possible with the other player as a spectator, this was acceptable in hotseat for obvious reasons so why not now.
I don’t care if I have to watch someone elses games play out it’s part of the fun!
This lack of function is a total deal-breaker in the MP Campaign…. it’s not coop at all it’s forced to be adversarial!
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Posted by Gray on August 17th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
I have loved all of your games, and while most people wouldnt agree, Empire was your best one. The scope of Empire was amazing. And while there were some bugs, i have enjoyed your games immensely and am looking forward to shogun 2 total war.
Posted by Sethology on August 27th, 2010 at 2:34 am
Hey total war gamers
I just wanted to say that I am an avid fan of the Total War series, having bought each title since Rome Total War. I was also disappointed when I originally bought both Empire, and Napolean Total war, to find out (having spent $2000.00 on a gaming comp these were my first two game buys) that I required steam to install a game that I had purchased for $70.00..come on team i’m sure you can secure your games without the necessary internet connection hassle. I almost took them back. I resolved the issue, and I am glad that I managed to, because I have thouroughly enjoyed Both Empire and Napolean. However, the lack of a North American or Indian theatre in the Napolean Total War is WEAK. A Rome redux would be greatly appreciated.. A Medieval:Total War III would be best…
Posted by Derek on October 15th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I have enjoyed games like Rome total war and medieval 2 total war. They were great games but one thing that I didn’t like so much in Rome total war was the fact that my cities became poorer and poorer the larger they became. This one problem I hope is left out of shogun 2 as I am looking forward to it very much. One more thing, why can’t CA just make a game that doesn’t need patches and wasted hours updating a game that I would much rather like to spend playing.
Thanks,
X
Posted by endlevelboss on December 16th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
when do you think you will make rome total war on xbox and ps3 it would be really cool
Posted by h drew on January 30th, 2011 at 10:49 am
i would just like to echo stephen’s comment about the multiplayer, in a coalition campaign i want to fight against a hard A.I france and not have to auto resolve any and all battles or have to face my friend who is playing a different nation.
Posted by richard on May 24th, 2011 at 11:21 am
Dear CA,
to be honest, I’m bitterly disappointed after purchasing and installing the E:TW and N:TW Game of the Year edition. With my wife, we are avid fans of the M:TW2K hotseat experience. The fact that there is no way to play decent co-op campaigns in either E:TW and N:TW makes me regret my purchase. Instead, we’ll go back to M:TW2 (Hotseat) and Paradox’s Victora & Europa Universalis (stable LAN co-op gameplay) series.
Who made the gaming design decision to remove the best features of the game? Please listen to the gaming community – hardly any other franchise has such vocal, creative (mods!) and devoted followers. Please patch E:TW & N:TW to provide a decent multiplayer campaign!
With respect,
Adam
Posted by Adam G on October 12th, 2011 at 6:42 pm