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At the start, use a force composed mainly of levies/ashigaru. They are solid units, samurai/line troops are way too expensive. In the midgame, transition into more elite armies for conquering and keep the conscripts for peacekeeping/patrols. The economy in shogun 2 is way more tight compared to other TW games.
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Jan 28, 2013 16:09
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Spakstik posted:Someone earlier in the thread said that longbowmen and their planted stakes ability worked wonders, but I don't think the Crusader States ever get a unit that can put down stakes. Stakes in front of the gate have saved me from thousands of French Noble Knights, but it feels very exploit-y.
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Jan 28, 2013 16:17
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Simple pikemen (NOT SPEARMEN!) In a > formation right after the gate murders all the horses in Mongolia. In fact, i think something like a double line of Sargeant Spearmen can also do the trick.
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Jan 28, 2013 16:20
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Stakes are also horrible in N:TW, they are barely visible and remain standing while the rest of the army moves. I once lost 3 squads of cavalry on flanking duty that way, gently caress that poo poo.
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Jan 28, 2013 16:22
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Mans posted:Simple pikemen (NOT SPEARMEN!) In a > formation right after the gate murders all the horses in Mongolia. My problem with that was that none of my cities were developed enough to produce pikemen. For the Crusader States they come out of towns rather than castles.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:12
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Samopsa posted:At the start, use a force composed mainly of levies/ashigaru. They are solid units, samurai/line troops are way too expensive. In the midgame, transition into more elite armies for conquering and keep the conscripts for peacekeeping/patrols. The economy in shogun 2 is way more tight compared to other TW games. Also Food > Economy Buildings, meaning unless it's a city with a goldmine or something similar, upgrading your markets is hardly worth it. Excess food grants growth across ALL provinces.
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Jan 28, 2013 20:44
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NihilVerumNisiMors posted:Also Food > Economy Buildings, meaning unless it's a city with a goldmine or something similar, upgrading your markets is hardly worth it. Excess food grants growth across ALL provinces. Oh, that's nifty. I come from Medieval 2, where you would upgrade ports, markets and roads as fast as you could to get gold. 
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Jan 28, 2013 21:04
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NihilVerumNisiMors posted:Also Food > Economy Buildings, meaning unless it's a city with a goldmine or something similar, upgrading your markets is hardly worth it. Excess food grants growth across ALL provinces. Uh upgrading your markets is incredibly worth it. There's just a heavy penalty associated with upgrading them.
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Jan 28, 2013 21:34
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NihilVerumNisiMors posted:Also Food > Economy Buildings, meaning unless it's a city with a goldmine or something similar, upgrading your markets is hardly worth it. Excess food grants growth across ALL provinces. Yeah, I have to agree with Zyla here, Market upgrades are incredibly worth it, but there is a trade-off you have to factor in, unlike the mere opportunity cost of earlier (and later!) titles. Saying to never upgrade them because it's not worth it is incredibly short sighted advice that could do a new player more harm than good, although I suspect it works out in the end because vanilla already has quite a few food pressures on the new player without the additional pressures of the market.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:03
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I've played more than a couple of games where fully upgraded to merchant guild markets in my top 5 provinces has provided me with immense, realm-divide-proof wealth. There's been games in which I never made a single ship past getting to a trade node first. I think town growth from food is basically useless. Even at a high advantage like say +10, with 12 cities you're only generating 120 extra koku from this a turn, and at most you probably have about 40 turns left till you finish conquering the rest of the map to finish your campaign. You're only realizing a fraction of that amount because of taxes only taking your standard 20-40% of that. Those upgraded markets are MONEY NOW. And they increase wealth in your richest cities dramatically when pared with metsuke. I've read a lot of really mathy posts that seem to completely ignore the basic fact that the income generation is taxed. Metsuke act to increase the tax in a city (which effectively decreases taxes from our perspective as we're the collectors.) It's far better to be getting 55%+ of 1000 (+20 a turn) as well than it is to be getting 25% of +10 a turn. I suppose if you have like 20 cities and +20+ food surplus you get pretty compoundy quickly, but if this is the case why not have built Merchant guilds and win 20 turns earlier with the money they give you IMMMEDIATELY after building them.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:29
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Huh, that's what you get for listening to math nerds on TWC then.  More specifically, this guide: http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?137395-Frogbeastegg-s-Guide-to-Total-War-Shogun-II quote:Does this mean that you should never upgrade your markets past level 1? Some players say yes. If you play a long campaign and expand quite rapidly in the earlier phases of the game then you gain more from the rice surplus effect. Choosing not to upgrade allows you to avoid researching certain arts, meaning you can pick up others which may be more beneficial to your situation. Finally, you save quite a bit on the cost of upgrade construction. Other players prefer to selectively upgrade one or two markets. Due to the way rice and building upgrades work, it's most effective to make an either/or choice about upgrading markets. Either you leave the market at level 1 and use the province for a rice surplus, or you upgrade it as far as possible in order to get the maximum back from your rice. To wring the last little drop of benefit out of the upgraded markets, you should site them in your richest provinces, ones where you have a metsuke to oversee the settlement and where you have other buildings which provide a substantial boost to your income. Regardless, you should not build upgraded markets in most of your provinces. It is simply a bad investment with an inferior payoff! NihilVerumNisiMors fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 05:47
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Yeah, upgrading them any further in the absence of a metsuke is foolish, I'll completely agree with that.
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Jan 29, 2013 06:53
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Zyla posted:Yeah, upgrading them any further in the absence of a metsuke is foolish, I'll completely agree with that. With the notable exception of the Infamous Mizu Shobai District, Famous Temple or Law Court, obviously. e: Not to mention there are certain situations where the short term gain is more useful than the long term wealth, either where the long term is too far in the future to change the outcome of the game or when the short term boost enables you to grab more wealth (ie. Lets you conquer another province since you can now afford the troops). shalcar fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 07:02
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Spakstik posted:The best part about playing the Crusader States is watching stack after stack dash themselves against the rock that is Jerusalem. You'll inevitably get a jihad called on you in the first 20 turns, but since the computer can't siege worth a drat you can handily dispatch anything they send at you with minimal casualties (this is helped along by Jerusalem getting a few unique units that it can produce, along with the low-upkeep, high-value foot soldiers that the Templar/Hospitaller guilds can crank out). Unfortunately once the Mongols come around you're in deep poo poo, assuming you conquered eastward. They still use the same dumb siege tactics like every other faction, except they're coming at you with approximately nine million horse archers. Horse archers on their own are generally lovely against units on walls, but the sheer number they field means they'll decimate your army down before they even knock open the gates. I never figured out a way to beat them, since you sure as hell can't do it on the battlefield (or at least I couldn't). Someone earlier in the thread said that longbowmen and their planted stakes ability worked wonders, but I don't think the Crusader States ever get a unit that can put down stakes. I pull my troops off the wall, and wait for them to come crashing into me at the gate. I leave some knights at the bottom of the wall, a line or two of fodder spearman at the gate with more knights behind. Gate down, whatever they send charge into my mass of bodies, and then my heavy infantry walks in and introduce them to the term 'meatgrinder'. 
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Jan 29, 2013 07:03
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Weissritter posted:Homeworld: Total War ...So the planets are your settlements and every battle is a Homeworld(2) Skirmish? Hmm. Could work, to be honest. But how do you handle the Motherships? To say nothing of Hyperspacing. If it's post Homeworld 2, the Gates would be something to consider, also. Universe Conquest as the Bentusi, weee! No, wait-The Kadeshi.
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Jan 29, 2013 07:09
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shalcar posted:With the notable exception of the Infamous Mizu Shobai District, Famous Temple or Law Court, obviously. The best thing short term is always to recruit more troops to take more territory, not upgrade markets. Mid term, upgrading markets is better and long term food surplus is by far the winner. The question is which you want.
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Jan 29, 2013 07:24
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Cynic Jester posted:The best thing short term is always to recruit more troops to take more territory, not upgrade markets. Mid term, upgrading markets is better and long term food surplus is by far the winner. The question is which you want. The problem is short term gains can snowball. Extra troops now can take that province now which lets you take that income now and pour it into more buildings now which lets you do more now. Say you invest 1000 dollars in a long term deal that'll double your money in a year, and a 1000 dollars that'll get you 1050 back in a month. Even if you put that 1000 back in you'd get less than 2000 at the end of the year. But, you take the 1050 and invest it at the same rate, and take that and invest it at the same rate and take that etc. etc. etc. Hi there compound interest!
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Jan 29, 2013 07:34
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the JJ posted:The problem is short term gains can snowball. Extra troops now can take that province now which lets you take that income now and pour it into more buildings now which lets you do more now. Which is my point. The short term gameplan(Troops, more provs) goes very well with the late game plan of keeping most provinces pretty much bare bones except for farms.
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Jan 29, 2013 07:43
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Cynic Jester posted:Which is my point. The short term gameplan(Troops, more provs) goes very well with the late game plan of keeping most provinces pretty much bare bones except for farms. You never actually backed that little bit of information up. Your argument is for never investing in anything as troops are always better, so it would be spend the farm money on troops to take more provinces. It's a long and complex argument with a large number of assumptions which we have no indication that we are even on the same page. Certainly almost every "All farms all the time" maths I have seen makes several insane assumptions about marginal utility of the koku, along with a great many oversimplifications regarding clan size. They also almost always work on the long campaign numbers, despite the game being balanced around the short game-span. Food glut can be quite viable, but it's certainly not anywhere near always the best strategy.
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Jan 29, 2013 07:53
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Bloodly posted:...So the planets are your settlements and every battle is a Homeworld(2) Skirmish? Hmm. Could work, to be honest. Mothership/Carrier or battlecruisers as the unit where your leader/admirals are. Short hyperspacing is free, so that works like normal travel. Maybe resources for a 'long jump'. Progenitor DLC 
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Jan 29, 2013 07:57
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shalcar posted:You never actually backed that little bit of information up. Your argument is for never investing in anything as troops are always better, so it would be spend the farm money on troops to take more provinces. I think it's also important to remember that markets will amass you more than enough koku as it is. Perhaps in the long run a food surplus will be more profitable, but that really is the long run; like two thirds of the way through the campaign before it starts to take effect. By that point in the game Shogun 2 is already too easy. I'm just guestimating with the times here but really, let's be liberal and say you have a 15 food surplus and maintain it for a long time; that's 15+ town growth per season, so 60 a year. In 10 years you have 600+ to town, which is... what, the same as a market (or thereabouts)? In 10 years? It'd take the better part of 10 years to get to the point where you can farm that much, and 20 years on top of that before it starts really raking in money beyond what you'd get by more sane measures. Perhaps it'd work as a challenge for yourself, but it'd handicap you to hell in the early game and that's the time you really need the koku anyway. The Realm divide trade severing can be tough but it's still hardly ever an existential threat; the beginning is where the trouble is.
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Jan 29, 2013 08:24
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All this long-term vs short term food talk has me wondering what level castle people tend to build up to. My simple little mind doesn't think town growth vs instant wealth, but rather big castles vs big markets. I myself rarely build past the first upgrade, saving the higher levels for big provinces with lots of connections, gold mine provinces or library provinces. I tend to try to at least put a level 2 castle in every province, but I don't know whether that's a good plan or whether it's just my feeling that one building slot isn't enough for some reason.
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Jan 29, 2013 08:38
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I typically keep all castles at the first level except for my few "factory" provinces where I get to churn out a lot of high quality soldiers. Those are usually picked out pretty early and are dependent on which faction I'm playing. Though, I also usually cheese campaign map behavior in order to get my pre-RD holdings with as few troops as reasonable.
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Jan 29, 2013 10:46
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Are there any mods that change the unit cards in Shogun 2? As in, colour-code them, so it's easier to tell what kind of unit each one is? There were a couple of mods like that when the game first came out, but I can't find any that have been updated recently.
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Jan 30, 2013 11:42
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Krazyface posted:Are there any mods that change the unit cards in Shogun 2? As in, colour-code them, so it's easier to tell what kind of unit each one is? There were a couple of mods like that when the game first came out, but I can't find any that have been updated recently. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=443470 http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=429427
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Jan 30, 2013 11:58
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Jabronie posted:There were a couple but they haven't been updated since the middle of last year. As far as I know one of the DLC packs, specifically the Otomo DLC, killed off this kind of unit card modding. Why's that?
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Jan 30, 2013 12:41
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Jabronie posted:There were a couple but they haven't been updated since the middle of last year. As far as I know one of the DLC packs, specifically the Otomo DLC, killed off this kind of unit card modding. The units are colour coded in Radious' mod, which includes the Otomo units, so I don't see why it isn't still possible?  Personally I think the vanilla cards are actually really good and clear though. Once you know which are naginata units and which are yari units it's easy to tell what's what at a glance.
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Jan 30, 2013 19:05
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Agreed. Also, the game puts Samurai cards side by side. By the way, I see that the smaller focus in this game means your armies tend to be smaller, both in size and quantity, than in Medieval 2. Also, my best general has almost no loyalty, and I just gave him the chance to redeem himself. 
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Jan 30, 2013 20:13
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Azran posted:Agreed. Also, the game puts Samurai cards side by side. Isn't it about the same. Not speaking from experience as I don't own medieval but hasn't it always been about 20 units per army? The number of dudes in a unit also changes depending on the setting you have in the menu (took me about a month to notice this). Now I roll about with ashigaru units of 200 men and drown my enemies in a tide unwashed plebs.
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Jan 31, 2013 02:53
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Mr.Sloth posted:Isn't it about the same. Not speaking from experience as I don't own medieval but hasn't it always been about 20 units per army? The number of dudes in a unit also changes depending on the setting you have in the menu (took me about a month to notice this). Now I roll about with ashigaru units of 200 men and drown my enemies in a tide unwashed plebs. It has always been a maximum of 20 units per land stack, although in Shogun 2 you can have up to 40 units on the field for each side at once, so if anything, you get the biggest battles out of the entire series in it, certainly bigger than anything Medieval 2 threw at you.
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Jan 31, 2013 03:00
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Nah, I was referring to the upkeep of each individual unit. In Medieval 2 I could get a big army right out of the gate (3/4 full stack) and only mercenaries would start being a hindrance upkeep-wise. But in this game, 4-5 Ashigaru and 2 Samurai as consuming just as much gold per turn. It's been a while since I booted Medieval 2, though, I should go and check that. Azran fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 03:58
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Koramei posted:The units are colour coded in Radious' mod, which includes the Otomo units, so I don't see why it isn't still possible? Oh, my mistake then. Last I heard of that kind of mod Radious himself posted about why some of didn't work anymore and they were never updated. It's cool that Radious has that in his compilation mod but I'd prefer the base game with the unit cards.
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Jan 31, 2013 04:23
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Azran posted:Nah, I was referring to the upkeep of each individual unit. In Medieval 2 I could get a big army right out of the gate (3/4 full stack) and only mercenaries would start being a hindrance upkeep-wise. But in this game, 4-5 Ashigaru and 2 Samurai as consuming just as much gold per turn. Radious upkeep mod, done.
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Jan 31, 2013 04:35
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There's this mod, which gets overlooked often: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=519382 It really does help. The AI tends to build more stacks of Ashigaru to compensate.
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Jan 31, 2013 04:54
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shalcar posted:It has always been a maximum of 20 units per land stack, although in Shogun 2 you can have up to 40 units on the field for each side at once, so if anything, you get the biggest battles out of the entire series in it, certainly bigger than anything Medieval 2 threw at you. You can actually mod the savegame to allow an unlimited number of units on the field, but your performance tanks rather predictably.
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Jan 31, 2013 05:33
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ArchangeI posted:You can actually mod the savegame to allow an unlimited number of units on the field, but your performance tanks rather predictably. Yeah, I was just talking about vanilla, as with mods basically anything is possible.
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Jan 31, 2013 05:37
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NihilVerumNisiMors posted:There's this mod, which gets overlooked often: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=519382
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Jan 31, 2013 05:45
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Keep going, even if you fail, the ability to do so is one of the things that make Total War a good game, and your attempts to hold on to what you have are sure to be dramatic. Plus, you know, you COULD win, if you're close to realm divide your clan should certainly be powerful.
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Jan 31, 2013 05:56
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I'm at war with the Date clan in the far east, as is pretty much the entire rest of the map, but the three or four big powers (including myself) are sitting right next to one another with my bigger "ally" (he has maybe 4-5 more provinces than me) seated right between them. Of course, I have Kyushu and Shikoku but he has all of the western part of Japan, so when poo poo starts to go down it's gonna be real nasty, which now you make me morbidly curious about. It's going to be super dumb because I have to march my troops (or sail them) past everyone else to get to the Date clan's lands to even attack them while my allies are closer. Guess I better suck it up.
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Jan 31, 2013 06:03
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As long as you won't fall into the negatives once your trade collapses, you'll survive. After realm divide I tend to create vassals out of provinces I conquer for buffer and guaranteed, realm divide-proof trade partners*. Also, find a gold mine, stick a market chain in it and shove a metsuke in it. My one completed vanilla Shogun 2 campaign was as the Oda. I was allied with the Takeda pre-realm divide so they left me alone for a while before they succumbed to realmdividitis. Of course, you won't be able to rely on cheap, brutally cost effective peasant fodder and an overwhelming desire to win because you've got Nobunaga as your daimyo and you've played too much Samurai Warriors. *Don't lose Kyoto. Recapturing it seems to restart the realm divide penalty. Oh, and don't worry about having to sail past your allies. You'll be at war with them soon enough.  If you have Shikoku you're a stone's throw away from Kyoto. Capturing it and becoming shogun gives you a morale bonus, I think an economic and happiness bonus, a free stack of 2 yari cav and 1 great guard cav, and a big-rear end ship called the Nihon Maru. It also changes your faction name to "The ____ Shogunate," which is purely cosmetic but might put some swagger in your step. Gimnbo fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 06:14
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