Napoleon: Total War – Slash and Burn in Northern Italy

It's hard walking in the footsteps of Napoleon Bonaparte with the difficulty turned all the way up. Borodino might have just been the last straw. It took me quite a few tries to complete that battle and I needed to actually cool off between tries with the R.U.S.E. beta. It's telling that I actually lost almost all the matches I played as France in that game. My love-hate relationship with Napoleon might have played an important part there.

So, I've now fired up what is the main event of Napoleon: Total War, the European campaign, which allows me to take the reigns of newly Republican France and basically conquer all the European nations that bother me, then gifting their thrones to relatives and friends.

It's a much more open experience than the battles, allowing for diplomacy to play out (I plan on making sure that Prussia does not enter the war too quickly and that the Ottoman Empire becomes my ally), for research to happen and deliver a new cutting edge to my armies and for some spy activity to demoralize the enemy enough to make the conquest of Vienna and Moscow realistic goals.

France's starting position is not great. Austria dominates Northern Italy and can mount a quick assault on the South of the nations. They also seem able to shift their focus to the Germanic minors and gobble them up, and I bet there won't be too long until masses of Russian infantry also pop up.

My plan is to consolidate all my armies North of the Alps and strike as quickly as possible towards Vienna while betting that Great Britain does not have the intelligence to land an invading force anywhere near Paris. If the country is threatened, I plan to return to my bases and deal with it then. As the Austrian campaign progresses, I also plan to invest quite a bit of money into developing my economy and research centers.