Good Starting Game in the Napoleonic Series?

[phoenix]

RBR is a fantastic title with some of the best maps in the series, in my opinion, Ditto Marengo. And both peninsular titles. The maps in the earlier titles can be a bit lacking in detail, I think. For me the least interesting map - of those titles I have - is Austerlitz, which is very bare bones. (That said, you can quickly come to appreciate the nuances of the battle of Austerlitz by playing the full battle scenario, which is excellent, so in a way the map isn't critical...) The titles which have larger numbers of company level scenarios often have very nice detailed maps for those scenarios. Bautzen and Waterloo, even Liepzig, for example. The Russian Borodino map has some slight inaccuracies, I fear. (For instance, the position of Gorki in relation to Borodino - it should be slightly north of Borodino, but is drawn as south of Borodino, which distorts the road network somewhat. But maybe these little map things wouldn't bother you.) From a gameplay point of view I don't think it's really worth choosing on the basis of how many AI scenarios there are, as like many others, I've found it a bit silly playing the AI once you compare it to playing a person. It's a pretty basic AI, I think. It's better to play hotseat against yourself if you want to learn the scenario or the history. In the absence of any historical yearning, I would, of course, recommend those titles which I've found most appealing, due to good maps and a wide range of scenarios and scenario sizes. These are WPW, RBR, Marengo, BPW, Bautzen.