Part 25

Master Napoleon in Civilization V with our Part 25 guide. Learn his strengths, weaknesses, diplomatic style, and military tactics to defeat the French leader.

Napoleon was one of the most brilliant generals of all time. He moved his troops with astounding rapidity, and he always knew exactly where to strike in order to cause the most damage. Domestically he turned out to be a decent, imaginative ruler and France flourished under his control (until his endless wars sapped her strength and will to fight). An Army general to his core, he never was able to create a navy able to seriously challenge England's dominance over the oceans. In the end, he just couldn't beat everybody.

Leader Scales

• Victory Competitiveness - 8/10
• Wonder Competitiveness - 6/10
• City State Competitiveness - 7/10
• Boldness - 8/10

Napoleon is a hard foe to face, simply because he is just very competitive, and is often overlooked by people and their blind hatred of Montezuma. He is willing to do whatever it takes to win, and that means competing in all arenas, and that is what makes him hard to face. He will build Wonders to dazzle the world, he will influence the City States, he will make threats against you should you annoy him.

Diplomacy Scales

• War - 7/10
• Hostile - 3/10
• Deceptive - 7/10
• Guarded - 6/10
• Afraid - 2/10
• Friendly - 6/10
• Neutral - 5/10

Funnily enough, Napoleon is quite willing to work with you, when he first meets you, but he is most likely to declare war on you with the French forces behind him. He won't be afraid by your show of force, so you will just have to crush him utterly and burn his empire to the ground to show him who's boss.

City State Scales

• Ignore Others - 4/10
• Friendly - 6/10
• Protective - 7/10
• Conquest - 7/10

Napoleon is as likely as to protect a City State as he is to conquer it, he will not hesitate to use ones near you as buffer states between you and him, and he isn't worried about people crying when he captures a city state being protected by someone else.

Ground Military Scales

• Offensive - 7/10
• Defensive - 3/10
• City Defence - 5/10
• Military Training - 6/10
• Reconnaissance - 5/10
• Ranged - 6/10
• Mounted - 5/10

Napoleon isn't that big a fan of Artillery as you would think, however, he is willing to go full out and be extremely aggressive. You can expect him to deploy a lot of frontline infantry, the melee type, such as spearmen early on in the game to riflemen and the French Foreign Legion later in the game if you let him live that long. His forces are going to be hard to defeat in battle less you have a technological advantage, and the only downside to his military abilities is that of defence and defending.

Naval Scales

• Naval - 5/10
• Naval Reconnaissance - 6/10
• Naval Growth - 5/10
• Naval Tile Improvement - 5/10

As you would expect, Napoleon isn't that interested in a Navy, at best, it will be used as a support role, or a self-defence force, he really isn't interested in using them to the fullest. This is expected though, he was outclassed by England during the Napoleonic Wars, and clearly, going to sea against the foes at the time was quite a foolish move.

Air Scale

• Air Power - 5/10

Again, Napoleon is another leader that really doesn't use Air Power to the fullest capacity, he will use them at best, in support roles, such as bombarding your cities or just taking out close units, he won't be using them exclusively, he has men on the ground to wipe you out for that purpose.

Growth Scales

• Expansion - 8/10
• Growth - 5/10
• Tile Improvement - 6/10
• Infrastructure - 5/10
• Production - 5/10
• Gold - 4/10
• Science - 7/10
• Culture - 8/10

Surprisingly, Napoleon is a man of Science and Culture, not a surprise given his actual administration of France. He is willing to expand quickly, so if you have the units, you can easily take a few settlers and workers off him. He is quick to move up the technology tree, and very quick to adopt social policy, in my Marathon game, I have reduced Napoleon to 3 cities, and he has already fully completed 2 policy trees, the best anyone has gotten to.

Civilisation Scales

• Happiness - 4/10
• Great People - 5/10
• Wonder - 4/10
• Diplomacy - 4/10
• Spaceship - 7/10

It seems that the AI loves to have a spaceship victory, probably because that is the easiest way to do it without bloodshed. It isn't that interested in keeping his people that happy, well, that's a given, seeing that most people were in the Army when he was in charge, so there were no one to be unhappy at all.