Leader Discussion - Napoleon, Revolutionary

[disjointaccount]

Well these turned out to be well timed! I'm putting this one up now to get some discussion in on his existing kit, and then come back to the threads post-buff to see how he stacks up (as well as probably a thread for first impressions on Lakshmibai once we've had a chance to get a game or two with her). Anyway, Napoleon, Revolutionary.
His leader ability is La Grande Armée, which is a two-parter:

• +1 Movement for all Land Units
• Defeating an enemy Unit provides Culture equal to of 50% its Combat Strength

His attributes are Cultural and Militaristic, giving him access to the Cultural Exchange and Military Aid endeavors, along with events for attribute points upon researching Discipline and Authority (per this post).
He has no starting bias.
Playing as Napoleon unlocks Normans (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Iron or having 5 ancient walls) and Spain (otherwise unlocked by recapturing a lost settlement) in the Exploration Age, and France (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Wine) and Prussia (otherwise unlocked by improving 3 Niter or having 3 Army Commanders) in the Modern Age.
As an AI leader, his agenda is Culture from Conquest - Decrease Relationship by Small Amount for every Alliance made between other players. Increase Relationship by a Medium Amount for the player with the highest Culture Per turn score.

So what are everyone's thoughts? Likes/dislikes? Strengths and weaknesses? Fun strategies? Good civs to pair him with?

 

[Siptah]

I rolled Revolutionary Napoleon in my very first game, but haven't played him since.

Yet, when I learned the ropes of the game with Napoleon, I severely missed the +1 movement in the next games. It's such a great bonus for fighting. And the extra culture is really useful in early wars/skirmishes with independents. Sadly, its use drops to around 0 around the middle of exploration.

You could probably go silly by combining him with civs and mementos that give movement bonuses. Super fast scouts? Mongolian cavalry?

 

[j51]

Yeah anytime someone in a 4x game gets a movement bonus it’s really strong imo. He was my first game and I’d go back to him at some point.

 

[A_Most_Foolish_Fool]

So, I have only played as him once (I linked my account fairly late), but I think I played him incorrectly, which means that I am not quite certain just yet about how I would assess their ability. That said, I think the biggest mistake I made with him was that I have a tendency to go for similar Commander Promotions in each game (so, I grab Initiative, complete the Assault Tree to get the Order Promotion and then choose from there). With Napoleon Revolutionary, this seems like a fairly big mistake. The biggest weakness for his extra movement ability is that it gets stopped by terrain features. I think what I should have done was grab Initiative and then go down the Maneuver tree to get the promotion that allows you to ignore terrain. From there, Order still seems too strong to ignore, but for the 2nd promotion it would be worthwhile to grab the one that increases your Commander's radius to allow more units to ignore terrain.

Curious to see exactly what changes the buffs will bring, but am definitely excited to try him out once more. That said, I am curious as to why he has felt so much weaker than Gran Colombia's similar ability in Civ VI as that may shed some light on how to make better decisions with Napoleon Revolutionary. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that Napoleon's ability only affects land units (and so since Napoleon's ability does not include naval units he misses out on a bonus for an entire class of units which have fewer terrain restrictions as Gran Colombia had). I also suspect that the way combat strength and commanders work in this game place a bigger priority on using your units well than on who gets the first attack, which makes the ability feel weaker. What do others think?

 

[disjointaccount]

I think commanders making extra movement weaker is pretty spot on. It's still definitely strong, but by and large moving lots of units over large distances of land is a thing of the past for me. And commanders by default have pretty solid movement once they have the first movement tree promotion. Napoleon's buff is still welcome, even if for no other reason than further boosting commanders, but it definitely doesn't feel as impactful as in past games, where its a larger relative percentage increase and seen across swathes of units.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Rev Nappy was one of the first Leaders I used, and I found what others here also found: the extra movement is so handy you really miss it when it's gone and you are playing another Leader!

What I liked was that the movement bonus is to Land Units, not Leaders, so you could get fast movement for almost Everybody without needing to flood the map with Leaders. Coupled with the Leader movement bonus, Nappy could, with a surprising degree of historical accuracy, swarm an enemy with units before anybody was ready for him, and keep feeding reinforcements in faster than the enemy could to keep the pressure on until goals were achieved. Nappy's units were also perfectly capable of running down Hostile IP scouts early on to keep raids from following them to my borders, an advantage I did not fully appreciate until a game in which I had 4 Hostile IPs around my starting position and every &*^%$ one of them sent raiders to harass my Civ (NOT playing Nappy that time!)

Since then, with the plethora of Momentos and other effects that give extra movement, Rev Nappy's effect doesn't seem as 'revolutionary'. But, for starting players, it is probably one of the easiest to get the most out of, because it is so straightforward

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

So for still no Ancien Regime Napoleon yet. (one who wears 18th Century Bourbon era outfit).

 

[Lord Lakely]

I'd rate him somewhere in the middle. He's playable because bonus movement is a great boon, but it's less crucial than it was for Bolivar in Civ6. The Culture gains aren't really that strong but they're a nice little extra.

Basically, he's an unassuming military leader you can play with any civ and be perfectly fine with, even though he's mostly outclassed by the other military leaders.

 

[uppi]

Curious to see exactly what changes the buffs will bring, but am definitely excited to try him out once more. That said, I am curious as to why he has felt so much weaker than Gran Colombia's similar ability in Civ VI as that may shed some light on how to make better decisions with Napoleon Revolutionary. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that Napoleon's ability only affects land units (and so since Napoleon's ability does not include naval units he misses out on a bonus for an entire class of units which have fewer terrain restrictions as Gran Colombia had). I also suspect that the way combat strength and commanders work in this game place a bigger priority on using your units well than on who gets the first attack, which makes the ability feel weaker. What do others think?

Commanders are one point, but there are other factors as well:

1. Different movement system. In VI obstacles would require extra movement points, in VII they end movement completely. This means that a 3-move unit could go on a forest and then on grasslands in one turn in VI, while in VII the forest will end that units turn. This means higher movement is not as valuable, especially if you are fighting in difficult terrain without roads
2. No weird mechanics of siege units. In VI a 3-movement siege unit could move and shoot, which a 2-movement siege unit could not do. This made one extra move extremely valuable. VII does not have this nonsense
3. No city strike in VII. In VI, city strikes made you want to cover the distance to a city as fast as possible, to take not as much damage from the powerful city strikes. Extra movement would allow you to do that.
4. Entrenching is more powerful in VII. Especially with a Bastion commander, the entrenching bonuses mean it often pays to be defensive (even in enemy territory). If you do that and slowly push, you don't need as much movement.

 

[pjotroos]

Unless I misremember my game with him completely, there are a few serious gains from the extra movement nobody mentioned yet.
1. Scouts. Covering three tiles instead of two gets you to more huts quicker, and it continues to be useful for finding the distant land treasures and city-states quickly in exploration.
2. Merchants and settlers. Extra moves get your trade routes running faster, and get your next town in place a couple of turns earlier.
3. Catapults. They start at 1 movement, so you can't even use load, unload & fire on the same turn until the extra research. Napoleon solves that.
The last one aside, they are not really military benefits, either, which makes him a solid generalist pick. But the difference came up often enough during combat to matter, too. And extra movement on cavalry means you could reinforce the front lines quickly from anywhere in your empire, without needing a commander, provided you have decent network of roads.

I enjoyed him. Not a top tier pick, but meaningfully strong in a refreshingly simple way.

 

[disjointaccount]

Here are his buffs coming tomorrow

 

[stealth_nsk]

Revolutionary Napoleon becomes one of the best leaders for peaceful players. Additional movement for land units was already fantastic on scouts, settlers, traders, treasure convoys, etc. Now in addition to this, you get full defensive and counter-offence power for free if someone declare war against you.

Culture from combat is surely not so great for peaceful play, but you still often have to defend, so some nice bonus there.

 

[marius_kaparius]

This is the version of Napoleon I would play, I could care less to build armies and move them around. I will just farm the hostile IPs for Culture and get an in case of emergency break glass ability.

 

[SemiLazyGamer]

Culture from combat is surely not so great for peaceful play, but you still often have to defend, so some nice bonus there.

You're still going to have to deal with independent powers, so you can get culture from them.

 

[stealth_nsk]

You're still going to have to deal with independent powers, so you can get culture from them.

Yes, sure. Just not as much as with aggressive playstyle.

 

[Lord Lakely]

This is cool with forward settling, particularly if you're Assyria, no?

 

[Krikkit1]

This is cool with forward settling, particularly if you're Assyria, no?

It's just a really good strategy for Antiquity in General. do all the stuff to annoy you neighbor (bad greeting, wait till they a befriending an IP before dispersing it, etc) and get units that you couldn't build.

 

[Siptah]

Nice buff!

Now we just need an achievement for winning with him

 

[uppi]

It's just a really good strategy for Antiquity in General. do all the stuff to annoy you neighbor (bad greeting, wait till they a befriending an IP before dispersing it, etc) and get units that you couldn't build.

In my experience, some aggressive forward settling is usually enough.

 

[Krikkit1]

In my experience, some aggressive forward settling is usually enough.

And +1 move helps with that