Is there a clever play I'm missing with Emperor Napoleon?

[pjotroos]

I'm trying to cycle through all of the leaders at least once and play to their strengths, and - at a glance - baseline Napoleon looks so underwhelming he's no better than a blank leader would be.

The gold per antagonised leader is flat value, not a percentage, so it maxes out quite low. If you alienate absolutely everyone you meet on a standard-sized map, that's 32 gold per turn in antiquity, and up to 112 gpt in exploration (24 and 80 on small, which is the default setting). By mid-exploration, it already feels like a pittance, and you only get it by forfeiting any bonuses alliances would give you, any of the collaboration projects you now won't be getting 'cause they hate your guts, and (most importantly) all of the +10% per alliance bonuses you can otherwise get from the skill tree. Beyond a bit of extra gold in early antiquity, I don't see how & where they are worth the trade off. The rest of his kit appears to serve no other purpose beyond antagonising the whole map to enable the gold per turn.

More than that, for a leader designed to push everyone to hate you, he has nothing that would help you when the war starts; no combat bonuses, nor bonuses to pillaging. The actual benefitial effects are all allocated to the other persona. Meanwhile, the other economic leaders (Amina, both Xerxeses, Isabella) just generate extra gold passively from the things you want to be doing regardless, and often give you extra burst of gold each time you trigger a specific condition.

Is there an interesting play I'm not seeing?

 

[Siptah]

No. He is the worst leader in SP. Maybe „fun“ in MP. And he also has bad momentos. The other persons is quite fun though.

 

[Tuvok694]

In my opinion both Napoleons are completely worthless. If they do not re-work their abilities completely, they might just as well remove them from the game.

 

[Krikkit1]

I'm trying to cycle through all of the leaders at least once and play to their strengths, and - at a glance - baseline Napoleon looks so underwhelming he's no better than a blank leader would be.

The gold per antagonised leader is flat value, not a percentage, so it maxes out quite low. If you alienate absolutely everyone you meet on a standard-sized map, that's 32 gold per turn in antiquity, and up to 112 gpt in exploration (24 and 80 on small, which is the default setting). By mid-exploration, it already feels like a pittance, and you only get it by forfeiting any bonuses alliances would give you, any of the collaboration projects you now won't be getting 'cause they hate your guts, and (most importantly) all of the +10% per alliance bonuses you can otherwise get from the skill tree. Beyond a bit of extra gold in early antiquity, I don't see how & where they are worth the trade off. The rest of his kit appears to serve no other purpose beyond antagonising the whole map to enable the gold per turn.

More than that, for a leader designed to push everyone to hate you, he has nothing that would help you when the war starts; no combat bonuses, nor bonuses to pillaging. The actual benefitial effects are all allocated to the other persona. Meanwhile, the other economic leaders (Amina, both Xerxeses, Isabella) just generate extra gold passively from the things you want to be doing regardless, and often give you extra burst of gold each time you trigger a specific condition.

Is there an interesting play I'm not seeing?

He probably is the worst... but I think the goal should not be to piss everyone off, but to select your Targets one or a few at a time. Build up a strong base and crush (and cripple with your Sanction) one, let them keep hating you, crush another, let them keep hating you, etc. Maybe keep one Ally the whole game (or till ideologies) but make sure that they don't get any benefits from any other civ because you eliminated all possibility for other civs to trade with them.

 

[A_Most_Foolish_Fool]

The problem with Emperor Napoleon is that it seems like he is fairly difficult to balance properly depending on how you play him. If you play a large Pangaea map, he is going to feel quite overpowered since it is not entirely unlikely to get +64 gold per turn with him in that scenario, which is incredible for tempo (I quite like combining him with Egypt to build wonders and use the gold for everything else that I need immediately while I focus on Wonders; Also Medjays are a fantastic unit when you anticipate fighting a few defensive wars where you plan to wear down your opponents). On a default map, he is very weak. Buffing Emperor Napoleon could mean that he is broken in different scenarios, but it is hard to argue against such a buff.

If the devs care about a perfectly balanced game (which I personally don't think is realistic when there are so many ways to play), then his ability likely needs to be reworked entirely. As far as how you would do that in an interesting way, I am not quite sure, but there is definitely a lot of space to be explored when it comes to Sanctions and how they work.

Edit: If he doesn't get changed at all, I would be very curious to see how strong he is once we finally have working large Earth maps with TSL in the game. That is a map type that is very popular and where he might actually be S tier (as opposed to the weak state he is in on standard maps).