Napoleon: Total War redeems The Creative Assembly of the sub-par Empire with it's exceptional level of polish.
Empire: Total War hurt the trust between fans of the Total War series and The Creative Assembly, the developers. A good, good deal of people had problems with Empire. Crashing, glitches, asinine A.I., loads of problems. I couldn't get the game to work without flaws until a couple months after its release because my graphics card wasn't playing nice with Empire. I wasn't extremely sore about it but, if forums and word of mouth are worth a damn, everyone ever hated Empire.
Napoleon feels like an apology from The Creative Assembly. It's polished, relatively glitch and crash free. Empire always felt somewhat clunky in everything it did but Napoleon runs really smoothly with the campaign map, battles, menus etc. Perhaps I'm too quick to forgive because I really do love Napoleon and simply forgot about the debacle that was Empire. The quality of both games does lead weight to the argument that Empire was a beta while Napoleon was the final product. I think that is a cynical way of thinking and makes The Creative Assembly out to be some money-grubbing faceless corporate entity. If that were really true than wouldn't they have gone the route of consoles or heavily simplified their games?
Now, back on topic, the game!
Hence the name you are given command over three of Napoleon's campaign across Europe and the Middle East. The first campaign in North Italy is handled like a campaign tutorial, limited time to complete your objectives and you're more often than not offered missions that push you in the direction of the end. The second campaign, set in the Middle East, has you conquering Egypt and the area of Israel. This campaign has substantially more depth than the Italian campaign and also allows for technology to be researched.
The final campaign takes off all the safeties and gives you command over The First French Empire and lead Napoleon during his numerous campaigns of ass-kicking all across Europe. If you've want to lead opponents to this Corsican rampaging around than Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia are all playable. Sadly the Spanish, Swedes, Dutch and Turks are unplayable unlike in Empire.
These campaigns set over Europe condense the core experience of Empire onto the single continent. Your ships can provide expensive trade resources if they take supply lanes, little nations play a large part and you have the ability to form your own coalitions of smaller nations. A nice touch in Napoleon is the ability to liberate certain regions and give command to the natives. The Polish can, naturally, form Poland if Warsaw is liberated for example. These regions can be turned into a new faction that will become your protectorate providing a portion of its income and a strong ally that can provide a free army to aid you if the need arises but not under your direct control.
These campaigns all play out differently each time you play as some nations will declare war on you very often (I've learned to never trust those damn Russians always trying to seize my Eastern fringes, Prussian drill always threw them back). Sometimes these old enemies could become long-standing allies if you play as a different faction or if you cultivate an alliance early.
The AI of Empire was, I'll be honest, pretty damn stupid. Playing as Poland-Lithuania and with one of the largest armies around Prussia would always declare war on me when they had no allies and no chance of success. In Napoleon the AI will call her allies to aid them in conquest of your lands. As Prussia I had to face down the combined forces of Tsarist Russia and Imperial Austria numerous times. I remember one time I pissed off both Saxony and Hessen, they both moved forces under my belly and seized a couple of provinces all in one turn. Napoleon was also right outside my capital; he was allied with both Saxony and Hessen. Tricky bastards worked together to attack me.
The battle AI is also improved but far form perfect. Battle lines will hold, artillery will be used (more often than not but more on that in a sec) and cavalry will flank. This isn't always true though. Enemy artillery have the nasty habit of setting up wherever and shooting into a mountain which is good for your virtual soldiers but bad for immersion. Enemy cavalry also has the suicidal quirk of running in front of your men. The siege battles are sill all kinds of funky but it's much better than Empire. There are moments of genuine genius in battles but they're few and far between but the game is still often a challenge.
Napoleon is an extremely polished pill to swallow. The graphics are very clean, the battle sounds and music are both superb, AI is improved, isn't anywhere near as clunky. The game can easily provide hundreds of hours of entertainment as the Europe campaign for each faction can provide anywhere from thirty to sixty hours to complete depending on how often you auto-resolve battles.