First impressions - Napoleon in England

[V for Vegas]

I have to say the game looks great, as did the original Napoleon’s Campaigns (although the text for the regions like ‘Surrey’ or ‘Normandy’ is hideous! It looks like some back alley graffiti has been sprayed all over my map – can this be modded into a different typeface? Something contemporary to the time like Baskerville would be much better!).

Zooming and panning across the map is smooth.

Starting up the Jan 1805 campaign as France, my armies are sitting forlornly in Calais. I have a transport fleet, but not much else. I decide to hell with it, load Napoleon and as many troops as the ships will carry and set off. There is a British Fleet off the coast of Calais, but I can’t see any ships off Cherbourg. I send Napoleon down the coast, with the plan to make landfall at Portsmouth. Map says 25 days – so 4 turns.

Don’t bother with the rest of the map. Hit end turn 4 times. Each time I expect a naval battle that will sink my fleet as I can see a 400 power British fleet sitting right next to me.

(Turn times are slooow. First turn was OK at about 2 minutes. But subsequent started dragging out to 3+ minutes. I thought this was a new engine that improved on PON? Doesn’t seem like any difference – even the waiting animations are the same!!)

But the British fleet decided not to sail one sea province across to cut me off and no battle emerges and Napoleon lands at Weymouth. 1200 power army against the local detachment of 50 soldiers. (Side note, all of my Corps that were loaded into the transports have merged into the Grand Armee and I see no easy way to split them back into the pre-transport organisation).

Move onto Portsmouth. The Brits are getting it together and start sending troops at me. 1500 power army under Duke of York. He loses 24k out of this 25k men. Then Sir John Moore – similarly wiped out. Two more large armies of recruits break up against my crack continental troops. The battles seem a bit lopsided but the detailed report shows I'm fighting exhausted troops who have been forced marched to the south to fight me.

Seven weeks into the year and the game is starting to seriously slow down. Scrolling across the the map is like treacle. Now I reach what seems like a serious bug or slowdown – even selecting my army in Portsmouth takes several seconds. I can’t select my transport fleet at all. Game is unplayable so I shut it down then restart and reload the save. Same problem.

Leave the game for several hours. Somehow when I started up the same save later on the problems disappeared. Very worried they will come back though.

Grand armee in Portsmouth was running out of supplies so sent them off on a suicide mission to London. They are now down to 900 power. 1700 power army sitting in London wipes them out. My transport fleet has been wiped out so no reinforcements.

So far had a good time. Kind of disappointed the perennial ageod lag issues are still around. If there are more engine updates coming, that would be greatly appreciated.

[Pocus]

About the problem of the game slowing down, then staying slow even if restarting the engine... but fast enough when you reboot your computer. This might be a video driver problem, with the memory not properly flushed out after using some textures.
A Windows application can't clog Windows memory if you terminate it, because Windows encapsulate each application and even if the game had memory leaks (and I'm sure it has some small ones ) then you would have been again to normal speed when you ran again the game, so in this case that's probably an incompatibility between the engine and the DirectX version it uses and your video card. best is to contact support at Slitherine: support@slitherine.co.uk

[V for Vegas]

As an experiment I loaded WoN onto my HTPC that has a much better CPU (i5 Haswell instead of i5 Lynnefield). First turn resolution dropped from 2min to 1:30m. Looked good on the big screen as well - might keep it on there!

[fred zeppelin]

I have to say the game looks great, as did the original Napoleon’s Campaigns (although the text for the regions like ‘Surrey’ or ‘Normandy’ is hideous! It looks like some back alley graffiti has been sprayed all over my map – can this be modded into a different typeface? Something contemporary to the time like Baskerville would be much better!).

Zooming and panning across the map is smooth.

Starting up the Jan 1805 campaign as France, my armies are sitting forlornly in Calais. I have a transport fleet, but not much else. I decide to hell with it, load Napoleon and as many troops as the ships will carry and set off. There is a British Fleet off the coast of Calais, but I can’t see any ships off Cherbourg. I send Napoleon down the coast, with the plan to make landfall at Portsmouth. Map says 25 days – so 4 turns.

Don’t bother with the rest of the map. Hit end turn 4 times. Each time I expect a naval battle that will sink my fleet as I can see a 400 power British fleet sitting right next to me.

(Turn times are slooow. First turn was OK at about 2 minutes. But subsequent started dragging out to 3+ minutes. I thought this was a new engine that improved on PON? Doesn’t seem like any difference – even the waiting animations are the same!!)

But the British fleet decided not to sail one sea province across to cut me off and no battle emerges and Napoleon lands at Weymouth. 1200 power army against the local detachment of 50 soldiers. (Side note, all of my Corps that were loaded into the transports have merged into the Grand Armee and I see no easy way to split them back into the pre-transport organisation).

Move onto Portsmouth. The Brits are getting it together and start sending troops at me. 1500 power army under Duke of York. He loses 24k out of this 25k men. Then Sir John Moore – similarly wiped out. Two more large armies of recruits break up against my crack continental troops. The battles seem a bit lopsided but the detailed report shows I'm fighting exhausted troops who have been forced marched to the south to fight me.

Seven weeks into the year and the game is starting to seriously slow down. Scrolling across the the map is like treacle. Now I reach what seems like a serious bug or slowdown – even selecting my army in Portsmouth takes several seconds. I can’t select my transport fleet at all. Game is unplayable so I shut it down then restart and reload the save. Same problem.

Leave the game for several hours. Somehow when I started up the same save later on the problems disappeared. Very worried they will come back though.

Grand armee in Portsmouth was running out of supplies so sent them off on a suicide mission to London. They are now down to 900 power. 1700 power army sitting in London wipes them out. My transport fleet has been wiped out so no reinforcements.

So far had a good time. Kind of disappointed the perennial ageod lag issues are still around. If there are more engine updates coming, that would be greatly appreciated.

AI sounds pretty brain dead. Hope that's not representative.

[Pocus]

I don't know, but if you read the details , the player invasion of England is a failure with unsupplied, exhausted French troops and the French navy at the bottom of the channel.

[agilabe]

Yes, you are right. I will have a look of it.