14 DAY TRIAL // The most interesting aspect of Napoleon: Total War, which has now been out for a few days, is not the chance to take control of Napoleon's French side from both a tactical and a strategic aspect as they drudge through Northern Italy, as they face the British and the Ottomans in Egypt or as they face the might of European coalitions in the replacement of the Grand Campaign. The real beauty of it seems to lie in the tactics-only battles, which follow Napoleon's career. I will try to play one of each a day from now on the highest difficulty level to see if there's both fun and challenge in following the fights of the tactical genius.
The first battle on the menu is Lodi. I like history but I admit to knowing nothing abut this engagement. The short video before the battle launches says it takes part after the kingdom of Piedmont – Sardinia was out of the fight and Napoleon was aiming to catch up to an Austrian army and cut off its potential retreat paths. The in-game battle seems a bit different from the real-life one, with the Austrians having forces pretty much equal to those of Napoleon and with the forced march to Lodi seemingly having little effect upon them.
The battle is pretty easy to win as long as you take care to pin and take out the enemy general quickly. The Austrians moved to hold the town, garrisoning two buildings and moving more infantry to the streets. I chose to pin them down with a skirmish line of my light infantry and two line units while moving the bulk of my men to force narrow river crossing. I also moved my artillery, which being horse drawn got into position rather quickly on a hill I cleared.
Not before long, I took the ford, in part thanks to the fact that the computer controlled Austrians actually crossed towards my clearly superior battle line. As soon as I crossed, the Austrian general made a hasty retreat but my heavy cavalry caught him and killed him (it would be nice to have a clearly labeled option to actually capture generals). Then, it was pretty easy to mop up the rest of the army, boxing them in with artillery fire, a dash across the bridge and an assault on the occupied buildings.
Lodi was a rather easy win but it showed me that the tactical battle Artificial Intelligence seems capable of holding out and defending a particular spot, taking over buildings and deploying infantry efficiently in a town, the only clear slip up being the counter assault at the ford, which probably made my victory so much easier.