Grand Tactician: Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815)

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• Announcements·14 Aug 2026Official

  August DevBlog - Army Management

  Mon Général!In Grand Tactician: Napoleonic Wars, army hierarchy plays a big role in the campaigns. It determines the chain of command, but also command and control and logistics are built around the hierarchy. The basic functionality is similar to Grand Tactician: The Civil War, but there are a few changes in the mechanics and the UI has been adjusted to, what we hope is, a more intuitive functionality. Operational FlexibilityWhen opening the management view, as a veteran of The Civil War, probably the first thing that jumps up is the coloured backgrounds seen in the hierarchy – in the above image blue, red, green, orange. These are the maneuver elements on the campaign map, the columns and detachments. In The Civil War, the maneuver elements always followed hierarchy. This time around it’s more flexible. It’s up to you what kind of maneuver elements you’d like to use!These (let’s call them from now on) Detachments can be built around a Headquarters (HQ), or even single units. They retain the chain of command: in the image’s example, Detachment Gardanne (green, a single brigade of Division Masséna, which is part of Napoleon’s Armée d’Italie) receives its orders through the Division HQ, if not specifically detached from the division and placed directly under the Army HQ. Same is true with logistics and supplies: the army’s supply trains feed the army from available magazines, including the detachments. With chain of command and logistics comes distance based realities that need to be taken into account: order delays and the logistical capacity & reach.The end result is different from The Civil War in that all the detachments, including garrisons, remain as part of the army hierarchy. This simplifies management as there is no need to cycle through tens of separate independent units.Streamlined UIAs with officer management, which we showcased in July, in army management the controls have their focus on drag-and-drop functionality. When moving units within the army hier...
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• Announcements·30 Jul 2026Official

  Art Team Introduction

  In the recent development updates we’ve described how the art team is working on improving the battle layer’s visuals, while the campaign layer infrastructure and systems are being built. As the Corps has gone through reorganization recently, it’s a good time to introduce the expanded art team.Peter Lebek was our in-house artist since the early days of The Civil War development. This spring, after nearly 10 years of meritorious work on Grand Tactician, he decided to pursue other ambitions in his life, so recruiting new muscle to continue his work on the Napoleonic Wars art was needed. At that point we also decided to expand the team, as the amount and quality of required artwork was growing.The graphics team now consists of five artists, experts in the different fields of 2D and 3D art – a few of them actual engineers, which suits the Corps nicely. Their work is already seen in the recent updates. Here’s who they are, in order of appearance:Wasel Arar is the Corps’ most senior member, our own old guard, and has been working with the Corps since the Civil War, to which he created many of the visual elements, such as the hand drawn papermaps and colorized photos. He also recorded the game’s soundtrack with his band Wasel & The Weasels. In Napoleonic Wars he was already working on the papermap graphics, but he has also taken over the role of the UI artist, which work can already be seen in the latest dev blog video. He has a long history in visual design, reenactment and music:“I've been a graphics nerd since 1980 when I wrote my own graphics program to draw pictures on a ZX-80, and I used to be able to draw pictures by typing hex live. I had a summer job at the Finnish Telegraph, so I learned to read telegram ticker tape which is 5-bit Baudot code, so hex was easy. After high school in 1981, I established my first company – one of the first computer game import businesses in Finland. At the same time I started with CorelDraw and became a Photoshop nerd since version 1...
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• Announcements·9 Jul 2026Official

  July DevBlog - Officers Pt. 2

  Mon Général!Let’s have a quick look at the officer management UI functionality.Less Clicks but no less ControlOne of the many things we want to improve from GT1 is the UI functionality, mainly how fluid and intuitive it feels. This means, among other things, populating the UI with meaningful info and controls, placement of different elements and simplifying certain operations the player is doing often.Officer management offers an excellent example. Let’s say you want to promote your brigade commander to command of a division, and the division commander to command of the army. In GT1 the process is:replace brigade commander with someone suitable -> brigade commander becomes available to be assigned (click the brigade, click replace, finding the new officer may require multiple clicks, click to select, click to assign)repeat to replace the division commander with the now free ex-brigadierrepeat then the same with army commander…and the required promotions will take place only after closing the management panel, but this is communicated to the player by only placing the rank in \...…so, a lot of clickety-click-clicking and some rules that are easy to miss.In Napoleonic Wars, it's a bit shorter story:drag and drop the division commander to armydrag and drop the brigade commander to divisiondrag and drop a replacement to take over the brigadeconfirm planned changes.…and much of the controls are directly explained in the tooltips.While we are still no UI/UX development studio by any means, hopefully this is a step or two in the right direction! Check out this short video showing the functionality in action:Summer is ComingWhile work on the campaign continues, the art team has been working on the battle layer to improve the overall visuals there. This includes new models, uniform textures, animations, images, environment, lighting, sky… See some of the progress in the video below. It’s all work in progress, and subject to change. At the same time, the game’s soundtrack has...
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• Announcements·24 Jun 2026Official

  June DevBlog - Officers Pt. 1

  Mon Général!Managing your military is one of the key tasks in a campaign game. Let’s start with officers. When describing how the officers work in GT2: Napoleonic Wars, let’s compare the changes to how officers work in GT1: The Civil War. While the big picture remains similar, we’ve added a bit more player involvement in how the officers’ careers will progress and what they can become.Image (ASSETS ARE NOT FINAL!): commander info, career honours, attribute progression and seniority. Attribute ImprovementsOfficers command your most important units, both on land and on sea. In addition to field command positions, there are also staff positions, a bit like in the Whiskey & Lemons DLC. We’ll take a look at the staff in a later blog. The main difference to GT1 is scale. In the Italian campaign single units are battalions, squadrons and batteries. Officers command brigades and divisions, not single units like in GT1, where single units are brigades. What we wanted to improve in GT2 is the players’ attachment to their commanders. Here, another sip of Whiskey & Lemons is served. In GT1, the officers have their attributes according to (a person’s opinion on) their historical performance. This “score” is the maximum the officer can have, and how much of it he can utilize depends on experience. So, a commander with low initiative will remain so, whatever you do. This has now changed. Instead, when a commander gains experience in battles, he will generate “attribute points.” When enough points are available, the commander may be assigned one additional star in one of his attributes. So, while in the starting attributes the officer in question may have low leadership skills, you can improve this as he gains experience. Or you can strengthen the already stronger attributes, it’s up to you!DecorationsThe tracked commander attributes are, like in GT1:experience: gained through battles, required for promotions, increases attributesfame: increases morale and chances of promotionleade...
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• Announcements·4 Jun 2026Official

  May DevBlog - Graphics Updates

  Mon Général!While the core team pushes on with the campaign layer, the art team tackles the battle layer, improving the visuals and historical authenticity, starting with the soldiers.Models and AnimationsThe initial artwork, as seen in the announcement video, Steam screenshots and other places, is being developed further. With more experience under our belt using the new development tools available in the GT2 engine, we’ve been able to optimize the 3D soldier models. At the same time, the models have many adjustments, like more correct hats and bayonets for the muskets. The animations are better synchronized with realistic movement speeds and cadences, making them look more lively in general, with musket lowering before firing, and other minor touches here and there..The uniform logic on units has been changed from soldier specific to unit specific. This helps a lot with data handling, but also with ease of modding. Now a single texture file contains all textures used for a battalion. With some cunning use of UV mapping and material use, the units will show a lot more variety in uniforms with no impact on performance (especially VRAM use.) This is a nice addition especially to the Revolutionary era French, with the still quite ad hoc nature of clothing their units. Even though national uniforms are already in use and issued during the Italian campaign of 1796-97, there is not enough materials for all the units formed through mass conscription, especially in the secondary theater of Italy. The updated French have that rag-tag look from the renowned painter Keith Rocco’s famous works (that are used in the game!)When the roster is ready, 3D modelling will focus on adding entrenchment elements, improving the look of the trees in battle, as well as creating the required Italian theater buildings. All this combined, the battle layer will look even better - and run better, even if the average FPS is currently around ~60 (or more when no fighting is taking place.) Also con...
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