Napoleon is a standalone !!!

Ninjas and samurai, how else?

Steam 

http://static.sega-europe.com/newsletters/shogun2/UK/index.html

"It's the pirates' fault!"

Supreme Commander flashbacks?? I think you are right to worry...

The first game i ever played was Shogan: Total War and i honestly dont think they have topped that so far. Sure ive bought them all but napoleon and with the exception of Empire i have loved playing them all for a long long amount of time all up. The only and i repeat only reason i didnt think Napoleon was worth buying after Empire is that i heard that like Empire the game worked in other areas at the sacrifice of the actual battles themselves. Thats where the multiplayer is now, and the whole reason you build your forces and diplomacy is to get in there and command your army!

As i thought from reading the last few posts, I heard wrong, you just nailed it home for me. Hype can go two ways i guess. This time i might have missed out on a great game for the sake of the one before. Im definetely considering doing some research on Napoleon now, might end up buying it on steam. 

It will require Steamworks. 

Campaign will probably an unnecessary resource hog with lots of pointless 3D. Afraid they'll imbalance it over the elegant simplicity the original had. Hmm!

After their recent forays, I will wait and see.

Oh and being able to choose our general's traits? What is this, genetic engineering come early? The feature sounds gamey.

I paid full price for all the Total War games up until Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War. I was right to do that, as in both cases, as within 6 weeks of the release of both games, I was able to buy the Special Editions for less than 1/3 the full price. Given that the Medieval II Total War expansion Kingdoms had more content than both Empire Total War AND Napoleon Total War COMBINED, shows how for Creative, just like Valve, Bethesda and Bioware, its become all about the money.

An interesting statistic I found was in a 1997 games magazine I still have it said 50% of all PC titles lost money. Today that figure is 85% (Games Industry News). If publishers went back to making games for the love of it then, paradoxically, the more money they would make.

Also, don;t believe the hype. Bethesda was happy to tell you Fallout 3 had sold more units than Fallout 1 and 2 combined. Of course, what they didn't mention was that Fallout 1 and 2 only came out on PC. So when you look deeper and see that Fallout 1 and 2 TRIPLED the sales of the PC version of Fallout 3 you learn something. That in this multiformat world it's a lot easier for publishers to hide the truth, and as as long as the gaming media cow-tows to the industry it will only get worse. Eventually leading to 100% of AAA games from the major publishers making a loss.

The way Bioware have gone from Baldur's Gate to Mass Effect and Bethesda have gone from Daggerfall to Oblivion, i think the direction of gaming is obvious, and it's not up.

They figured, why should we give all these content away after the stock price, when we can charge for it bit by bit online!!!??  It was the case with dedicated servers, now it's the era of the DLC.

The Multi-player Drop in Campaign or Single-Player Drop in Campaign are AWESOME. You get to fight the computer AI on the strategic map, but in the battles you face a Human Opponent, which as we all know, even the dumbest human is better than the smartest AI.

It's incredibly fun and challenging. If you liked TW and wanted it to be easy to do Multi-player battles, you'll like Napoleon.

I can't bring myself to even look at this game after paying $50 for empire. Worst gaming purchase of my entire life, hands down. Never again, CA. I hope Elemental takes the place of all games you make for the next 10 years. 

Now I just want to fight (as the Fuedal Japanese) against massive chinese armies.