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 2017-03-11

Tonight I have achieved a significant milestone on my campaign as I have just captured Warsaw.  My next target is Moscow therefore going one better than Napoleon and Hitler.

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 2017-01-08

I've had enough of the Maratha confederacy and I started my invasion of India yesterday. This region will be the hardest to conquer.

Empire Total War 2016-12-14

My Grand Campaign has now reached year 1782, it is still a challenge and I still enjoy the game despite work and home priorities have often kept me away from playing it.  Conquering more regions does not translate into greater tax revenue.  In fact it brings in more costs such as construction projects, replenishment of armies, and also the cost of putting done rebellions that always occur early on.  The trick is find the right balance without over-stretching resources, on that note the Total War franchise has mapped historical realities very well.  The only immediate gain from capturing regions is that you can have a quick technological advance by capturing universities.

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.

Empire Total War - update 2016-09-12

After the my debacle last week and the fact that I failed to save the game on a regular basis, I went back to American revolutionary war campaign after having to defeat the French in the seven years war again.  This time, the Spanish did not declare war on me and in fact they offered me a military alliance which was accepted.  It was the Dutch (then called the United Provinces) that declared war on my and after dealing with their raids, I got my revenge by successfully invading their colony on Curacao.

I've managed to all but defeat the British forces on the American mainland but I am leaving their last region, Quebec to remain British for now because I want to see if I can take Jamaica off the British and Suriname off the Dutch.  Well I do have a powerful navy after all.   One thing I noticed about the AI on the realtime battles is that the CPU's forces do not co-ordinate well with each other especially when it is on the attack.

Empire Total War - defeat

After a month on the campaign, my US colonials faction was beaten by the British last night.  So therefore American independence and the real historical timeline have to wait.  Unfortunately since I did not make any recent implicit game saves, I have to go all the way back to my last save which was during the Anglo-French wars in America (which was the setting of the book/film 'Last of the mohicans'). I have to say that the British army definitely fight better than the French.

Empire Total War

In the past few weeks I have been playing the Empire Total War strategy game on my PC.  It is not the latest output on the franchise but it is definitely a step up from Rome Total War 2 and Medieval Total War 2.  There are now advanced real time naval battles that uses the available naval warfare techniques at the time and when you play in campaign mode, there is more than the upkeep of your armed forces to monitor.  I am playing the "Road to Independence" campaign which is about the creation of the USA from being a small group of settlers fighting and trading with the native Americans. Then it moves to the Anglo-French American war and then onto the American War of independence which is the stage I am at right now.  Basically you are trying to emulate George Washington.  My only complaint is the quality of the enemy forces during the real time battles, they seem to lack co-ordination or co-operation, meaning that the battles I have fought so far have been easily won unless I am vastly outnumbered.

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.

Gender neutral Sims

The makers of the Sims franchise have announced they will allow for gender neutral Sims in Sims 4. Unfortunately this comes a bit late for the Sony PSP version, I wonder if it will be rolled out on the Sony PS Vita.  I would love to create an Eddie Izzard sim, the question is, "will it confuse the CPU characters?".

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!

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.

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.