Naval Battles (NTW)

Napoleon Total war continues the tradition of playable Naval battles, originally started by it's predecessor, Empire Total War. The battles are fought in real time instead of being automatic resolved like in previous games before Empire.

General Information

In Napoleon, the campaign map is reduced to include only Europe, on the Coaliton and European Campaings, the northenrn part of Italy including the Alps, on the Italian campaign and Egypt,Israel,Syria and Cyprus on the Egyptian campaign. Those maps, unlike Empire's campaigns, offer reduced naval activity, like using ships for transportation across continents that cannot be reached by land (with the notable exception of isles like Great Britain and Cyprus). The main use of the navies in Napoleon is for blockading enemy ports, raiding enemy sea trade or preventing enemy fleets of doing so. Big naval battle, including more than 5 ships per side are unlikely to happen on late game.

The Battles

The set up for the naval battles is almost the same as the one for land battles. The player positions his/her ships on a restricted area, resembling the starting position of the ships, before the begining off the battle. When the battles begings the are two important things that the palyer should always have in mind: the dirrection and speed of the wind and the condition of his own ships. Wind plays a very important role on the outcome of the battle. Ships that sail-based will have their speed increased or reduced, according to the direction they are sailing. Ships thar are steam powered will be less affected by changes in the winds dirrection and speed. The second thing that a player should keep in mind is the condition of his own ships. During battle, the crew mounts the guns the ship that use three different kinds of ammunitions to damage enemy ships. Round shot is the default ammunition and is used to damage the enemy's ship hulk and destrot their guns. Grape shot is used to kill the enemy crew at close distance so that the player ship can send his crew can board the enemy ship and try to capture it. Finally, Chain shot is used to destroy the enemy's masts and slow them down, but is a very innacurate shot. While the gun of the ship are firing, any boarded men that armed with long ranged weapons will try to shoot the enemy crew when the ships are at close distance. After all this fighting, it is normal that a ship will become damaged or even set on fire something that sometimes , if not stopped, can cause the ship to explode. A new feature in Napoleon Total War is the in Battle naval reapairs. The crew can reapair the ship while on battle restoring its hulk to a better condition while making it unable to use it's cannons or move. If a ship under reapairs is given an order, the reapairs will stop. The main purpose of the naval battle in Napoleon Total war is to capture or rout all of the enemy ships or make them surrender. Ships can rout or surrender if the morale of their crew is low. The crew morale is detemrmined by many reasons as the what the outcome of the battle seem to be or if the admiral is alive or not. A surrendered ship will stay idle.

Naval Units

Napoleon has a variety of ships to choose from, ranging from small sloops up to overpowered Heavy First Rates. While Big ships have the most cannons and number of men aboard, small ships are faster and more easy to maneuver. Also different kind of ships exist with different use on the battle field, like the rocket ship and the bomb ketch.