How to fix steam_api.dll file missing error, crash in Napoleon : Total War

Well what do you know? Another Total War game has hit the gaming scene. Those of you who played Empire : Total War, must be eyeing this game with a little skepticism. Although it became a hit, ETW by no means was a perfect game. It felt a little unpolished and there were plenty of bugs present during the game’s initial release - some of those remain unresolved to date, even after 9 update patches. However, the story with Napoleon Total War is different – the game is seemingly free of showstopper bugs, has improved AI and is better than ETW in most technical aspects. So far, we didn’t get a lot of queries from our readers to post a dedicated troubleshooting article but here are some possible fixes for a common problem some of you seem to be having with the game.

Napoleon Total War is distributed via Valve’s Steam content distribution platform. Sometimes you may encounter a steam_api.dll not found error and game will crash upon launch. There are three possible workarounds that may alleviate this problem:

1. If you are launching the game from a desktop or quick launch shortcut, try running the game directly. Browse to the game’s installation folder and double click on the game executable.
2. Reinstall – reinstalling both the game and the Stream client may fix this problem. It’s a possibility that the initial installation somehow got messed up without all required dll files being copied to your hard drive.
3. Copy the missing dll files from a full installation of Empire – Total War. If you are a TW fan chances are high that you already have ETW installed. Browse to the game installation dir, search for the missing dll, when found make a copy of the dll file and copy it to appropriate folder in NTW.'

I will add more fixes/post a separate article if any more issues are reported. Feel free to post the problems you are facing as comments.

Tweet