What're the best single-player games about the Napoleonic Wars?

[Nito]

So I've been reading/watching a lot of history about the Napoleonic Wars lately, and it dawned on me that it's a subject that nominally, has quite a lot of games made about it, but very few I'd outright say *definitively* capture it.

Games seem to fall mostly into two categories: Very-very dry Avalon-Hill style wargames or other computer strategy games; or multi-player games like Mount and Blade or Holdfast: Nations at War.

Do any of you know of any underappreciated games set in this time period, use it as a backdrop, or maybe just borrow its aesthetics?

 

[JarlFrank]

Napoleon: Total War is pretty decent, especially with mods.

If you want a more realistic and difficult experience than what TW can offer, try Scourge of War: Waterloo.

There's a Mount and Blade mod called L'Aigle which is set in the Napoleonic wars.

 

[Tacgnol]

Napoleon: Total War is pretty decent, especially with mods.

If you want a more realistic and difficult experience than what TW can offer, try Scourge of War: Waterloo.

There's a Mount and Blade mod called L'Aigle which is set in the Napoleonic wars.

I was shocked at how much better than Empire NTW was at release. They fixed so many of the annoyances of ETW.

 

[Falksi]

I'm pretty sure Napoleon stars in The Dwarves

 

[Nito]

Napoleon: Total War is pretty decent, especially with mods.

If you want a more realistic and difficult experience than what TW can offer, try Scourge of War: Waterloo.

There's a Mount and Blade mod called L'Aigle which is set in the Napoleonic wars.

Thanks, these are really good suggestions.

 

[Aemar]

What's the current situation regarding the Histwar games? A series that has been in development since forever. Some people deem it the most accurate Napoleonic era product, while others say it's still buggy and unplayable.

 

[Smoker]

Pre Emperor Napoleon is a main character in the game The Council

 

[NJClaw]

Cossacks 2: Napoleonic Wars (and, even better, the standalone expansion Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe) is a very fun and addicting strategy game, albeit limited in scope. I really don't care for the campaign mode, but the Battle for Europe mode is one of my favorite things ever. The game is incredibly good-looking and, honestly, its only flaw in the visuals department is that Spanish units in the expansion use recycled models from the base game and that clashes a bit with the rest of the game.

Sadly, even with recent patches, it's almost unplayable on new systems.

 

[d1r]

Probably a Mount & Blade Napoleonic Wars mod.

 

[AwesomeButton]

What, nobody has played Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle or Austerlitz: Napoleon's Greatest Victory?

IMO these games are uniquely good, both as games and as historical realities approximation. Can be downloaded freely from a fan website. The biggest issue is to get them to run on a modern Windows.

 

[markec]

 

[AwesomeButton]

 

[Aemar]

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/crown-of-glory-emperors-edition



Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition, published by Matrix Games. Found this grand strategy game, and it looks like Victoria meets Field of Glory. There's not much info on the game other than a couple of reviews from around release time. Is it worth a try? It appears the game manual has like 200 pages, so there's definitely quite a lot going on in this game.

 

[Harthwain]

Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition, published by Matrix Games. Found this grand strategy game, and it looks like Victoria meets Field of Glory. There's not much info on the game other than a couple of reviews from around release time. Is it worth a try? It appears the game manual has like 200 pages, so there's definitely quite a lot going on in this game.

It looks and sounds amazing. I am thinking about giving it a whirl myself. I was looking for a Napoleonic era grand strategy game with deeper mechanics and this appears to be it.

 

[Sranchammer]

Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition, published by Matrix Games. Found this grand strategy game, and it looks like Victoria meets Field of Glory. There's not much info on the game other than a couple of reviews from around release time. Is it worth a try? It appears the game manual has like 200 pages, so there's definitely quite a lot going on in this game.

It looks and sounds amazing. I am thinking about giving it a whirl myself. I was looking for a Napoleonic era grand strategy game with deeper mechanics and this appears to be it.

40 bucks for a 11 yr old game though

 

[Harthwain]

40 bucks for a 11 yr old game though

Yeah. It is a big stoper. That and lack of any gameplay videos, so you can't tell how the rules of combat work out in practice.

 

[Harthwain]

I just wanted to inform anyone who is interested that Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition got a video showing off its gameplay in action:

Spoiler

 

[Harthwain]

There is a hefty discount for Crown of Glory: Emperor' Edition on matrixgames site right now (-76% = ~10 Euro!): https://www.matrixgames.com/game/crown-of-glory-emperors-edition

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Fields of Glory but its really old.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I'm currently watching that old Sean Bean series Sharpe so I might get into a few Napoleonic games after... or not. The mod author for that M&B Napoleonic mod gets my vote for the most hypersensitive and neurotic modder of all time judging by some of his posts on the M&B forums but it is a beautiful mod.

 

[Sranchammer]

You'll find more with boardgames.

Tactically, C&C: Napoleonic is the best

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

AGEOD's Wars of Napoleon. Bit on the dry side, but it's a nice armchair general game. Slitherine/Matrix have it on sale now for about 10 bucks.

 

[General Disarray]

Cossacks 2: Napoleonic Wars (and, even better, the standalone expansion Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe) is a very fun and addicting strategy game, albeit limited in scope. I really don't care for the campaign mode, but the Battle for Europe mode is one of my favorite things ever. The game is incredibly good-looking and, honestly, its only flaw in the visuals department is that Spanish units in the expansion use recycled models from the base game and that clashes a bit with the rest of the game.

Sadly, even with recent patches, it's almost unplayable on new systems.

I can second this. It's really a great tactical game. Shogun Medieval 1 total war style campaign map, but no buildings. On the skirmish maps you have small side quests also you want to fight small militia units for control of villages that then give you supplies, and this system is the same in multiplayer. I played this game multiplayer a lot back in the day, really fun. All units move fast on roads but have stamina once deployed, gain defensive bonus after a time that disappears if you move them. It has hollow square formation to protects against cavalry, overall the balance between cavalry, infantry, artillery and skirmishes are great. Cavalry can be fast and effective on the flanks but vulnerable to shoot. Skirmish units exist as either regular light infantry or small 15-30men units that has unlimited stamina and can harass or manage to kill artillery crews, officers or drummers ( which was a kind of upgrade I think that you could equip you platoons with like in DoW games ). You have canister shoot for artillery so you can use it historically and you can recrew from ordinary infantry units. You can choose which ranks that should fire, also I think you could set them to shoot once targets are near, like a smart order, but not that smart ;p. Your units retains experience, unless they are broken, then all the modeled soldiers just disperse and run home to your base and you can form a new units of them, but the experience is lost. This makes the Battle for Europe mode really great because you don't want to lose ultra experienced troops. And the scale of the game, once you get going you have like 9 120men units running around that you make battlelines of. Also the set battles that you can play are really fun as well.

Honestly it's a hidden gem, easily one of the best rts/rtt games ever made. If I were to compare it to anything else it would be the Wargame games from Eugen System in terms of the scope, with units that move fast on roads and hit hard once any action starts. But Cossacks2 got a more traditionally rts multiplayer with buildings and resource points to control.

But yeah, it's hard to play on modern systems.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

There was a shitton of Napoleon games released by Talonsoft in somewhere in 1997. They are the best because they did not discriminate owners of low-spec hardware as they were compatible with Windows 3.11.

 

[Comte]

AGEOD's Wars of Napoleon. Bit on the dry side, but it's a nice armchair general game. Slitherine/Matrix have it on sale now for about 10 bucks.

This is absolute buggy trash avoid!