Napoleon Total War

Hello all, sorry I have not been blogging for a while so I hope to make up for it for the near future. I have installed Napoleon Total War to my PC, it was part of the same package as Empire Total War which I bought nearly 2 years ago.

This is a stand-alone game rather than an add on to Empire and it follows Napoleon's various campaigns. I have just started playing the battles and one feature I noticed is that some of the historic battles such as the battle of the Nile needs to be unlocked by reaching certain targets. This is a new feature on the Total War series.  Another thing I noticed is the quality of the CPU tactics in the battles is better than Empire which makes for more of a challenge.

Empire Total War - 2017-02-12

I've have been rather quiet on the ETW over the past weeks due to the Chinese New Year and various other family commitments.  I have moved on to 1824 on my game calendar and the conquest of Poland-Lithuania and the Maratha Confederacy is in full steam.  The Marathas should capitulate in a few more turns and one of its regions(Punjab) has already rebelled against its rule.  However I have lost a region, Wurtenburg, to a rebellion but I shall get that back in due course.  Once Poland-Lithuania has fallen I am considering a campaign against Russia.

Empire Total War 2016-11-17

Since the French faction has delcared war on me I have repaid the favour by besieging Paris.  In order to prevent the Maratha Confederacy from invading my Portugal region I sold it to the Huron-Wyandot native American faction. This means that Portugal is now occupied by native Americans whilst Spain is occupied by the Maratha Confederacy who successfully took it from me over the weekend.  ETW does come up with some strange scenarios.

Empire total war 2016-11-11

I have been playing ETW now since July 2016 and I am still on my grand campaign as the British.  It is still a very addictive game, to an event that I have been neglecting my Sony PSP.  My British empire as it currently stands consists of :-

Europe

• Great Britain and Ireland
• Spain
• Portugal
• Alsace-Lorraine
• Bavaria
• Wurtemburg
• Norway

the Americas 

• New York
• New France(Quebec)
• Maine
• Virginia
• Carolina
• Florida
• Louisana

I did have Flanders(Belgium) but somehow the Maratha Confederacy(India) managed to take it off me by sailing all the way from India.  The Maratha also took Jamaica and Bahamas off me as well. I don't recall learning that from history but it makes things more challenging.

My favourite weapon is the carcass shot mortar, it is a shell that bursts mid air and spreads lime or other burning substances over the enemy, as demonstrated below.  

Empire total war 2016-09-15

Last night I finally won the American revolutionary war and managed to repeat history.  It was a surprise how it happened because I had to put down a local rebellion in Maine and then both the Spanish and French decided to declare war on me.  So it would have been me against an allied coalition of Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and France.  The later three had powerful navies to deal with.  But before I had a chance to tackle the challenge the game announced that I had achieved my objectives and the USA was born.  Very strange ending.

Battle of Adrianople 378 AD

Whilst I was considering whether to buy Rome Total War 2 for the PC, I came across this 4 part set of wonderfully made videos showing the problems of the late Roman Empire that led to the its defeat of the battle of Adrianople using the Rome Total War 2 engine.  As a background the Romans were defeated by a barbarian army of refugees/migrants who then had the right to settle within the empire.

Rorke's drift on Napoleon Total war

This game has awesome graphics, enjoy.

Finally caught Mr Montabalan

After much frustration and enjoyment, I have finally captured my enemy Mr Montabalan on Sid Meier's Pirates on the Sony PSP.  On the easiest level, the game does tell you the goals you must achieve each step of the way before it reveals the location of Montabalan.  Once I found his hideout I had to win a turn based land battle and then defeat Montabalan himself in a sword fight which was easily done.  Capturing him does not end the game, although it does give your character 100k gold coins.

One bug I did notice was that even though I captured historical pirate Roc Brasiliano, it was saying that he was at large.  Ho hum!

Rome Total War

Has anyone out there defeated the Romans whilst playing as the Carthaginians in Rome:Total War and Rome Total War 2?

The History Channel:Great battles of Rome

After playing a few battle scenarios on the campaign and the quick play mode, alas, the bad reviews of this game have been confirmed.  I admit, I did not buy this game, but downloaded it free, so I did not have the instructions for it. But I eventually worked things out to an extent.  First thing that it lacked was a tutorial, that is, how to read the unit statuses, how to move troops, how to withdraw troops etc.  After working things out for myself I tried out the campaign.  Your object is to win battles, winning battles gets your money and fame in order to build and equip a better army to fight better opponents.  This is all well and good, I found a major handicap is that you can only move 1 unit at the time, using the thumb stick.  Next the screen was a major limitation, it was very difficult work out what was actually happening without constantly checking the battle status of each individual unit. 
I only give this game 4 out of 10 and if you want historical based strategy games I suggest you stick to your old humble PC. But nice try anyway

Snoopy and the great battles of Rome

Lately I have acquired 2 PSP games from net, Snoopy vs Red Baron and History Channel: Great battles of Rome.

SVRB is a third person flight simulator, where our hero flies a Sopwith Camel to duel with the Red Baron.  So far I am still in training mode, and in the actual game itself, your character does not die when the plane crashes or gets hit, instead you lose 'health'. Also there is a stunt indicator and the higher its value, the more stunts like loops and spins you can do.  You can top up your health by flying to hovering mugs of root beer.  It is clearly aimed at a younger audience and I find it quite enjoyable.  Because the plane is much simpler, it is easier to handle than the jet fighters in Air Conflicts.  It has a been given a good review by the critics and I will certainly give it my full test.

HC:GBOR is an attempt at a Total War or Age of Empires real time battle strategy type game on the Sony PSP. I do understand that PSP's controls do not lend itself to this type of game, as a mouse is what is needed.  This game has negative reviews so I will see whether they are justified.

Sid Meier's Pirates - the end

After many attempts to find Montabalan, the protagonist who inflicted all the strife on my character, I have decided to give up and declare Montabalan the winner between us.  It seems that the game refuses to provide any clues as to his whereabouts after rescuing the fourth and final relative.

All in, I think this is quite a good strategy game, well worth buying and a good attempt for the Sony PSP, which is not the right platform for these games.

Pirates has received a lot of negative reviews, but I wonder if those reviews come from strategy gamers and did they spend enough time playing the game before the review?  I have enjoyed it and now I move onto my next game, which I will tell you about in my next post.

Pirates update - found all my lost relatives

I managed to find all 4 of my character's capture relatives on Sid Meier's pirates last night, so now I can concentrate for finding Montabalan and dealing with him. However time is running out as my character's age is now 37 years old and the adventure automatically stops when he reaches 47.  So far I have not found any clues as to Mr Montabalan's whereabouts as no CPU characters have been willing to sell me any clues.  I will keep you posted on the progress.

Finding lost treasure

I have restarted the adventure on Sid Meier's Pirates again, and this time I will make a concerted effort  to achieve the primary goals, that is to rescue all my character's relatives from captivity and take revenge on the real antagonist, Mr Montalbalan.  This meant I spent less time capturing ships and cities and more time searching for clues.  As a side goal, I have been looking for the lost treasure of the historical pirates which is a slightly easier task.  Early on, I went to the port of Trinidad and I was told I would not be welcome so I captured it by beating the local commander to a duel since there were less than 100 soldiers defending. Achieving the main goal is quite a challenge as the clues only come from mysterious stranger in the tavern and the evil Baron Raimundo.

Found an uncle and a lost inca city

Back to my pirates game and I managed to find a lost Inca city and freed my character's uncle, who looked a little worse for wear.

sid meier's pirates - another update

After much trial and error, set backs and reloads I managed to free one of my character's capture relatives on Sid Meier's pirates. The character with the clues is a Baron Raimundo and I have to keep looking for his ship, attack it and if I win he will give me another look on the map.  I managed to find all the clues and searched an area and then found the character's sister.  Now I have 7 more relatives to find before I am forced to retire.  Also I have found another lost city - Aztec - and defeated all but one of the historical pirates, only Captain Kid is at large.  The Spanish now have a 19,000 gold coin bounty on my head.  To deal with this I have captured several Spanish ports along the north coast of South America for the English, thereby changing history.  It seems that it is not worth capturing ships anymore, if I wanted my character to make lots of money, the trick to capture ports using the turn based land battle, find lost cities or find lost treasure deposited by the historical pirates.
I will post more later.

Sid Meier's pirates - a more in depth review

I have been playing this game on my PSP now for a few days and I must admit it has exceeded my expectations.  The character has a finite number of pirating years - 26 in fact - and I have taken him to retirement.  Since then I have restarted again.  During the game play my character has defeated 5 historical pirates, married a governor's daughter, found a Inca city and capture several criminals in the name of the English crown.  The only two things I have not yet achieved is to find a historical pirate's hidden treasure and more importantly free any of his held loved ones.  The main goal is to find his relatives and free them but as with all strategy games of this type, one be distracted by the secondary goals.  In my current adventure, I am the number one pirate in the Spanish main, so I cannot dock at any Spanish held ports.  I can if I want to, try to take the port, with a turn based land battle, but I have not yet tried it.

To be fair to the writers, they have done well because the PSP is not amenable to real time strategy games and there are faults which are obvious such as boats sailing over small islands and coral reefs.

I think alot of background research and thought has been put to its development.

I will post some more later.

Sid Meier's pirates

I have just started play Sid Meier's Pirates on the Sony PSP.  This is a real time strategy game, which is rare for the PSP, and it includes some action elements as well. 

The background story is that our hero's family has been taken hostage due to financial debt and he has to be serve as a pirate in the 17th century Caribean in order to make his fortune and rescue them. On the way he captures ships in naval battles, defeat opponents in sword fights, trade with locals, dance with governor's daughters and find clues as to the relatives of his loved ones.

The graphics are so-so, the sword fighting depends more on our heroes health and weaponary rather than the player's skills.  The naval battles take a bit more skill and is quite realistic compared to actual naval battles of the era.  One can upgrade the boats and recruit sailors as well. One interesting feature is that once you are at port you have the opportunity to dance with the governor's daughter. In this case you must press the buttons in time with the music rather like a simplified "dance dance revolution" game, but the prompts don't appear to coincide with the music, so you must rely solely on your eyes.  If you do well, you may get clues and hints to find high yielding quarry.

I will post a bit more later when I have played a bit more.

The Sims on the Sony PSp

I have had the Sims2 on the Sony psp for a while but got bored after a few goes.  I didn't understand the logic behind the game. Tonight I will make another attempt.  I am familiar with strategy games by the way.