"Right to discuss is a privilege." I'm Done with Creative Assembly.

Napoleon: Total War is two steps forward and one step back from its previous title Empire.

On one hand, the game is far less buggy and is infinitely more polished. Battles are improved on significantly, and there is more variety and challenge involved in your strategies, rather than just building stacks of purely line infantry, and making entire ai armies rout within seconds like in Empire. Diplomacy is no longer a nightmare, factions will make and grant reasonable demands, rather than courland demanding half your empire for 5 turns of military access.

On the other hand, the scale of the game is much smaller. And there is no true "grand campaign" mode like in empire. Only Napoleon's European campaign and the campaigns of the coalition give you somewhat of that, but it is far smaller and not as interesting.

All in all, Napoleon is arguably a better game than empire, and will not crash on you nearly as much, however I doubt it will hold your attention for as long as Empire.