Here’s the rub: while I love turn-based strategies, they oftentimes become an exercise in endurance — particularly during long games. Commander: Napoleon at War is no exception. Towards the end of the grand campaign, I found myself constructing the same units over and over, pushing a ubiquitous force of line infantry seasoned with horse artillery and heavy calvary toward Moscow in attempt to accomplish a single goal: end the game; finish what had become inevitable but now, simply, formality. Though this is no rub against CNAW, perhaps it’s an observation on design pitfalls surrounding the genre as a whole.
Continue reading ‘Commander: Napoleon at War for Mac, Part 1′
Late in several games, particularly turn-based strategy, I have a tendency to amass several units of the same type — a homogeny of military forces, if you will. I suppose that’s a personal flaw. Something attributed to lack of patience, to my need for ending things in the quickest and not necessarily most efficient manner. The side effect, of course, displaces me as a fictional agent within the game. I become a person with the realistic but short-sighted goal of game completion.
I noticed the same trend with Commander: Napoleon at War. While I won’t reveal too much opinion, I’ll say this: CNAW allowed me reprieve from my natural inclinations, though I found myself churning out line infantry near the campaign’s end in attempt to quash a heavily insulated Moscow. I’ll speak towards this in the upcoming review.
What you don’t see is that which lies beyond the war fog. While I thought my campaign would end at the closure of 1808, Moscow drug me through three attritional, ego-crushing winters. By now, I was the world’s naval power and could focus my resources toward land — almost exclusively at the eastern front. By now, French production had begun shifting to line infantry and the occasional heavy cavalry for shock.
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