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The ability to sack cities sounds pretty great. There are times when some annoying neighbour gets uppity and you just can't really spare the resources to properly conquer them, so that'll come in handy. Together with the raiding this would also allow you to send a small-ish force through the enemy's hinterlands to go on a merry rampage, drawing forces away from their borders.
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May 11, 2013 16:29
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quote:I actually doubt that. We've had ambushes, control zones and fortifying since Rome and there's been a couple of iterations on them up to Shogun 2 - they can't alter the main problem that there's no reason whatsoever to care about an enemy army in the field when you can march up to a city/castle and take it by storm immediately for no risk. They haven't elaborated on this in forever, but... http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/13/making-a-bigger-war-in-rome-2 quote:So far Creative Assembly hasn’t shown off the campaign map, but is promising many modifications to the way you develop your armies as well as expand your territory. “It’s a bigger map than ever before, which creates some challenges. We don’t want to create hundreds of regions to micromanage but at the same time we want to create a lot of strategic depth. So we’ve got a province system where a province is made up of several different regions. That means that you don’t have to manage each individual region, you’ve got management at a province level which is maybe four regions, which reduces the management burden, but gives you more strategic depth.” It sounds to me like you only get one fortified region per province (57 total provinces and 183 regions, IIRC) which suggests that camping behind your walls means giving up 2/3rd or 3/4ths of your territory and associated income, and going straight for the capital still requires you to clean up the remaining regions. Could go a long way to toning down the siege fests and make these other options actually mean something. Not to mention just beefing them up so that fortifying gives you actual defenses and a huge zone of control is pretty sweet and could change tactics some. There's also the whole "you don't train individual units, you build armies" thing that they haven't elaborated on yet. There's a lot about the campaign we just don't know at this point. madmac fucked around with this message at 16:52 on May 11, 2013 |
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May 11, 2013 16:29
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Alchenar posted:I actually doubt that. We've had ambushes, control zones and fortifying since Rome and there's been a couple of iterations on them up to Shogun 2 - they can't alter the main problem that there's no reason whatsoever to care about an enemy army in the field when you can march up to a city/castle and take it by storm immediately for no risk. The idea you can move armies around in your back territories twice as fast means there should be a significant increase in the pace of war and your ability to react as well as create mismatches. The fact that armies and navies have a toggle that determines 2x speed (similar to X-com's sprint) or normal speed and ability to fight is a big strategic improvement that will add depth and options at many layers - even if it is not immediately obvious. It's a huge improvement from my perspective. It also seems as if the map will be quite sizable and you probably won't be able to garrison troops everywhere you like. Meaning that dealing with invaders will lead to some fun choices like being able to catch them or being able to fight them. Ham Sandwiches fucked around with this message at 16:55 on May 11, 2013 |
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May 11, 2013 16:52
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The "forage" stance that halves movement is also kind of interesting because it means you're potentially able to keep many more active troops in the field for longer periods of time without breaking your economy with upkeep.
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May 11, 2013 16:55
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This really does sound like the best total war yet, I just hope for a more moddable game. Please CA, let us edit the map.
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May 11, 2013 17:08
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Kanos posted:The "forage" stance that halves movement is also kind of interesting because it means you're potentially able to keep many more active troops in the field for longer periods of time without breaking your economy with upkeep. Wow- this is pretty awesome. In Medieval 2 it's pretty much impossible to take advantage of natural terrain by creating a network of forts/patrolling forces and so one is forced to basically expand at a break-neck pace. This and (hopefully) an improved diplomacy system (admittedly I haven't played any of the Empire/Shogun games- I hear Shogun has decent AI/Diplo) would go a long ways towards making conflicts feel like they're following a logical narrative instead of "gotta win fast or else I'll go broke!".
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May 11, 2013 17:09
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Rakthar posted:The idea you can move armies around in your back territories twice as fast means there should be a significant increase in the pace of war and your ability to react as well as create mismatches. The fact that armies and navies have a toggle that determines 2x speed (similar to X-com's sprint) or normal speed and ability to fight is a big strategic improvement that will add depth and options at many layers - even if it is not immediately obvious. It's a huge improvement from my perspective. A border is still going to be a border. Either an army is in your way in which case you fight it, or it isn't, in which case you simply take the city and force it to displace.
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May 11, 2013 17:12
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Alchenar posted:A border is still going to be a border. Either an army is in your way in which case you fight it, or it isn't, in which case you simply take the city and force it to displace. The above scenario description is very limited and doesn't capture any of the strategic aspects that would make the new system more interesting. The total war games involve multiple armies, multiple conflicting considerations, and multiple opponents. What if someone is moving to intercept one enemy army with their own army, and a different opponent decides to force march their army into the player's territory while they are engaged? Is that different than what would have played out before? Is that a new scenario to consider? Let me propose this question: If X-com removed the ability to either sprint or fire, would that make the tactical game more deep, or less?
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May 11, 2013 17:20
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Rakthar posted:The above scenario description is very limited and doesn't capture any of the strategic aspects that would make the new system more interesting. The total war games involve multiple armies, multiple conflicting considerations, and multiple opponents. What if someone is moving to intercept one enemy army with their own army, and a different opponent decides to force march their army into the player's territory while they are engaged? Is that different than what would have played out before? Is that a new scenario to consider? None of those situations ever actually arise in play though so your hypothetical is pointless.
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May 11, 2013 17:25
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Alchenar posted:None of those situations ever actually arise in play though so your hypothetical is pointless. It's been my experience that in Shogun 2 fall of the samurai, fighting multiple opponents at once is the norm, because of how they implemented the 'realm divide' feature through the whole Imperial / Shogunate faction aspect. I find it very well done and it creates an interesting endgame once it triggers, which is a nice iteration on Shogun 2's realm divide. I also find the same kind of scramble in the resource constrained early game, where one is trying to establish the initial toehold amid a ton of clans. One aspect I like about FOTS is that you have a very very tight economy for the early / mid-game which forces you into some tough choices. You can usually finance one mainline army with line infantry and artillery, and the rest you have to make do with levy units doing fort defenses and inflicting maximum casualties. There are many times where I'd really like to be able to move a garrison unit from a city that's safe to one that's about to be attacked next turn but I lack the movement to reach there, and being able to force march that stack would allow me to do so. Since I personally have encountered many scenarios in Shogun 2 FOTS where the flexibility to forage / attack / force march would have been really useful, I am quite looking forward to Rome 2's implementation of the same functionality. It seems they are keeping the same concepts of having less doom stack armies, a bigger map, and a focus on not being able to do everything you want, especially in the early game.
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May 11, 2013 17:37
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quote:A border is still going to be a border. Either an army is in your way in which case you fight it, or it isn't, in which case you simply take the city and force it to displace. Except with provinces broken down into sections, taking the city doesn't force out the army at all. You could potentially try to slip past an army and lure it into attacking you behind walls, but taking the city doesn't gain you anything except the city itself. The army is still there, the province isn't under your control, and you only hold that one piece, presumably with huge unrest and income penalties until you deal with the defending army. On the subject of rear end in a top hat campaign tactics, I like the idea of camping out an ambush/raiding stance army in a forest region of an enemy province. madmac fucked around with this message at 17:46 on May 11, 2013 |
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May 11, 2013 17:44
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Frankly until we get some hands on gameplay all of this is just theorycrafting. I want to believe it will add some depth, but we've had so much bluster from CA in the past about this kind of thing that I'll only believe it when I see it.
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May 11, 2013 18:14
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Were there already morale penalties for ambushed armies in previous TW games, or is that new to R2?
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May 11, 2013 19:16
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Captain Diarrhoea posted:Were there already morale penalties for ambushed armies in previous TW games, or is that new to R2? Pretty sure it's new, as far as I know ambushes just changed deployment unless commanders had +to ambush stats.
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May 11, 2013 19:22
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Shorter Than Some posted:Pretty sure it's new, as far as I know ambushes just changed deployment unless commanders had +to ambush stats. Sounds pretty cool then, it'll be interesting to see how viable these become. To be honest ambushes have never had a role in any of my campaigns, aside from walking into the occasional hiding AI who never capitalises on them.
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May 11, 2013 19:39
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Captain Diarrhoea posted:Sounds pretty cool then, it'll be interesting to see how viable these become. To be honest ambushes have never had a role in any of my campaigns, aside from walking into the occasional hiding AI who never capitalises on them. While I rarely used ambushes as well, (finding a forest when you really need one is hard) I did enjoy them and found them to come in handy on occasion, so now that you can try to ambush wherever maybe they'll actually be practical. I just hope there are plenty of bridges, I love decimating larger armies with my projectile units as a few weak infantry supported by cavalry plug up one end.  Fake Edit: Speaking of terrain, I noticed that Shogun 2 seemed use a lot of "stock" battle map terrains, but from what I can tell Rome and Medieval 2 (not sure about Empire) used many more varied maps. Is this my imagination or what?
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May 12, 2013 00:56
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The Droid posted:
I'm pretty sure Rome 1 /Medieval 2 generated the battle maps based on the tile you were standing on when the battle initiated. IIRC some of it was based on what the actual terrain looked like in real life.
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May 12, 2013 01:02
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quote:I'm pretty sure Rome 1 /Medieval 2 generated the battle maps based on the tile you were standing on when the battle initiated. Yes, the older games used procedurally generated battlefield maps while all the Warscape games have had stock maps linked to certain locations. Can't recall what they've said about Rome 2 but I imagine they're sticking with pre-rendered maps. More of them in general, maybe.
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May 12, 2013 02:55
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Actually I'm pretty sure they said maps were based on location again. That said, I would not say it is a straight downgrade to not do that. Anybody else remember fighting battles in Rome that are 90% mountain? Often you can't even move your dudes at all, they just stand there.
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May 12, 2013 03:51
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Koramei posted:Actually I'm pretty sure they said maps were based on location again. A little discussed fact is that every tree in BC272 was in fact a sequoia, but they were replaced by smaller trees in order to replenish the old growth.
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May 12, 2013 03:58
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Koramei posted:Actually I'm pretty sure they said maps were based on location again. Ah, but if you were placed right that you got to start with your lines right at the top of the slope. 
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May 12, 2013 04:01
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madmac posted:Yes, the older games used procedurally generated battlefield maps while all the Warscape games have had stock maps linked to certain locations. Well now my day is ruined. That also explains why when my armies met on what would be farmland or plains and then I get bogged down in a battle map of either 3/4 forest or just rocky outcroppings and really tall hills from out of nowhere with no farms in sight. And why siege assault maps also felt some same-y.
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May 12, 2013 04:16
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I always thought the field battles in Shogun 2 were pretty good representations of the area, although that may have just been luck. The sieges were all definitely the same for a particular castle, though, which makes sense. I had to defend one chokepoint castle a couple dozen times in one game and that got fairly old, but that's just the way it is.
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May 12, 2013 04:46
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So I have played maybe 7 hours of Shogun 2 now, and I really do not enjoy it at all. I hated Empire and Napoleon, and this feels almost as bad. They just keep adding poo poo in I do not want to deal with. Total War games are fun for me when I get to fight a lot of battles and sieges. The espionage, family management, and naval stuff is all annoying to me. I don't care about assassinating rivals and I really don't want to deal with horrifically boring naval combat. The seige warfare has somehow taken about 4 steps back from Medieval 2, and that was a step back from Rome. Maybe I am just missing the point of where Total War games are headed. I could care less about managing loving food supplies, having trade route disrupted, and having to worry about christian rebellions every 5 minutes. I want to fight my rivals on the battlefield, not get mad because I did not know the stupid food mechanic can essentially ruin a province if I upgrade 1 too many castles. Not to mention loving tech trees like this is goddamn Civilization.
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May 12, 2013 06:03
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WoodrowSkillson posted:So I have played maybe 7 hours of Shogun 2 now, and I really do not enjoy it at all. I hated Empire and Napoleon, and this feels almost as bad. They just keep adding poo poo in I do not want to deal with. Total War games are fun for me when I get to fight a lot of battles and sieges. The espionage, family management, and naval stuff is all annoying to me. I don't care about assassinating rivals and I really don't want to deal with horrifically boring naval combat. The seige warfare has somehow taken about 4 steps back from Medieval 2, and that was a step back from Rome. Maybe I am just missing the point of where Total War games are headed. I could care less about managing loving food supplies, having trade route disrupted, and having to worry about christian rebellions every 5 minutes. I want to fight my rivals on the battlefield, not get mad because I did not know the stupid food mechanic can essentially ruin a province if I upgrade 1 too many castles. Considering that Shogun 2 has probably the least complex and most battle-filled campaign since the original Medieval TW... what Total War games were you playing for the last decade? If you just want to fight battles, Shogun 2 multiplayer is there and is pretty drat good.
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May 12, 2013 06:30
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Well, I never actually play around with agents at all, and only put naval units around to block any naval dudes from getting into my trade routes in the back. Maybe you just wish there were only land armies running about? Also just set your taxes low and make a bunch of farms first. This is what I've always done for every single TW game ever. Put the tax sliders at low instead of default normal, and get a bunch of farms. This counteracts any unhappiness (usually), makes your population grow faster than any other nations, and usually gets you more money than setting your taxes higher. Plus, in the more recent games they have farms give you more money in a flat rate. jokes fucked around with this message at 06:48 on May 12, 2013 |
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May 12, 2013 06:39
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WoodrowSkillson posted:So I have played maybe 7 hours of Shogun 2 now, and I really do not enjoy it at all. I hated Empire and Napoleon, and this feels almost as bad. They just keep adding poo poo in I do not want to deal with. Total War games are fun for me when I get to fight a lot of battles and sieges. The espionage, family management, and naval stuff is all annoying to me. I don't care about assassinating rivals and I really don't want to deal with horrifically boring naval combat. The seige warfare has somehow taken about 4 steps back from Medieval 2, and that was a step back from Rome. Maybe I am just missing the point of where Total War games are headed. I could care less about managing loving food supplies, having trade route disrupted, and having to worry about christian rebellions every 5 minutes. I want to fight my rivals on the battlefield, not get mad because I did not know the stupid food mechanic can essentially ruin a province if I upgrade 1 too many castles. Medieval 2 is my favorite Total War game of all time that I've put hundreds of hours into and I can say it had way more annoying campaign map bullshit than S2. Between having to constantly suck the pope's dick to avoid being excommunicated and having your entire faction collapse into rebellions at the same time all your neighbors declare on you if you're not extremely prepared, your greatest generals randomly pulling the insane trait and becoming useless right when you need them to fight a 10 star mongol stack, and needing to blanket the continent in spies because moving armies around was a huge pain so you needed a lot of advance notice, I don't miss M2TW's map section. Sieges in that game were also horrific meatgrinders that made defending either trivially easy if the enemy had no artillery or totally impossible if the enemy did have artillery. There was no real in between. Meanwhile in Shogun if you don't like sieges you can literally skip the mechanic entirely by starving them out and it will force a normal deployment battle instead of "defenders all sally out of a choke point and get massacred before they can properly form up".
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May 12, 2013 06:45
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WoodrowSkillson posted:So I have played maybe 7 hours of Shogun 2 now, and I really do not enjoy it at all. I hated Empire and Napoleon, and this feels almost as bad. They just keep adding poo poo in I do not want to deal with. Total War games are fun for me when I get to fight a lot of battles and sieges. The espionage, family management, and naval stuff is all annoying to me. I don't care about assassinating rivals and I really don't want to deal with horrifically boring naval combat. The seige warfare has somehow taken about 4 steps back from Medieval 2, and that was a step back from Rome. Maybe I am just missing the point of where Total War games are headed. I could care less about managing loving food supplies, having trade route disrupted, and having to worry about christian rebellions every 5 minutes. I want to fight my rivals on the battlefield, not get mad because I did not know the stupid food mechanic can essentially ruin a province if I upgrade 1 too many castles. Start as Shimazu, train lots of katana dudes. When you fight, slow it down and zoom in to watch them. Eventually you will get a super unit of those awesome guys who destroy even more guys than the guys they already destroy. This thought will give you succor regardless of the game's complexities.
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May 12, 2013 06:47
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WodrowSkillson posted:Not to mention loving tech trees like this is goddamn Civilization. I dunno. I feel like Total War has always had tech trees, it just hid them behind building construction paths instead of a separate menu. Didn't bother me at all when I started playing Napoleon/Shogun  On the other hand playing Medieval 2 for the first time and I am so loving lost. France starts out with 5 territories, at least 3 different army groups, 4 or 5 different kinds of agents and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Cool looking game, cool sounding game, I just feel like I'm way over my head with getting to cool knight battles.
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May 12, 2013 06:48
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trashcangammy posted:Start as Shimazu, train lots of katana dudes. When you fight, slow it down and zoom in to watch them. Eventually you will get a super unit of those awesome guys who destroy even more guys than the guys they already destroy. This thought will give you succor regardless of the game's complexities. This is what I tried to do, started as shimazu and had the starting island under my control in about 20 turns or so, maybe 25 because I was not keeping track. Now I am completely outnumbered navally, have not enough money, and upgraded one too many castles so now I have a starvation problem that got out of hand and spawned a christian revolt that has some better troops then I have. Cue losing the territory to the rebels and setting me back a bunch and pissing me off. I restarted as chokosabe so I don't have to worry about idiot missionaries spawning armies in my heartland so we will see how this goes.
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May 12, 2013 06:54
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Kanos posted:Medieval 2 is my favorite Total War game of all time that I've put hundreds of hours into and I can say it had way more annoying campaign map bullshit than S2. Between having to constantly suck the pope's dick to avoid being excommunicated and having your entire faction collapse into rebellions at the same time all your neighbors declare on you if you're not extremely prepared, your greatest generals randomly pulling the insane trait and becoming useless right when you need them to fight a 10 star mongol stack, and needing to blanket the continent in spies because moving armies around was a huge pain so you needed a lot of advance notice, I don't miss M2TW's map section. Sieges in that game were also horrific meatgrinders that made defending either trivially easy if the enemy had no artillery or totally impossible if the enemy did have artillery. There was no real in between. Meanwhile in Shogun if you don't like sieges you can literally skip the mechanic entirely by starving them out and it will force a normal deployment battle instead of "defenders all sally out of a choke point and get massacred before they can properly form up". Well, the excommunication thing was easily counter-able by lowering taxes. Alt: put a levy militia in every town as your anti-God Crusade.
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May 12, 2013 07:02
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quote:I dunno. I feel like Total War has always had tech trees, it just hid them behind building construction paths instead of a separate menu. The real benefit to having the tech trees separated from buildings is that it allows you to tech up and gain a sense of progression in a way that isn't limited entirely to that one castle you've been spending a hundred turns painstakingly building upgraded barracks and stables from. It's the number one reason I can't go back to Med 2 anymore despite being completely in love with the game a few years ago. Hell, Shogun 2 not only has a vastly smaller pool of building upgrades, but you can potentially upgrade every slot simultaneously instead of queuing up one building at a time. As a long time turtler, I can't express how much I love the changes to teching from Empire on. madmac fucked around with this message at 07:16 on May 12, 2013 |
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May 12, 2013 07:11
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Do you still have your Shimazu save? If you have the island you have all you need to win the game. Decommission ashigaru except 1 or 2 in each town and make a doomstack in your northeast province where enemies have to cross. Even 4 kat sam + 3 or so bow ashi with armour bonus is enough to stand against a stack or two. Send 1 or 2 ships around the SW side of the island to see which factions control the trade routes. With the saved upkeep build 1 really strong fleet. Fleets who win battles multiply with captured ships, it's counter-productive to build several weaker fleets. Decide which you don't mind going to war with (those far away) or if you're lucky, park a ship on trade points with no rival ships. Your trade goods will become more appealing and with a bit of turtling you'll be in a position to attack Chosokabe and take that island, or if your NE rival forces the issue, push along the main island. Basically the key for minor island factions is a dominant navy. It might even be worth converting to christianity, you'll get a ship that buttbangs almost a full stack of every other faction for the first 20 or 30 years if you have a supporting ship or two.
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May 12, 2013 07:16
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Stop making a bunch of castles to hide behind and conquer provinces like a man. Castles suck. Don't build a castle in every province, you're not gonna need all those build slots. Upgrade farms whenever you can, problem solved. This isn't hard. If you don't want to use agents, don't build them. There were assassins and spies and poo poo in Rome and Medieval, they worked the same way so I dunno what part of that is new poo poo to deal with. I don't understand what kind of game you're playing that forces you to deal with christian rebellions and family drama and agonizing over tech trees? Like, just build military units and conquer people, and pick techs that look good. Like if something says like "+10 percent to tax rate" that means you get more money so go and research it. How complicated can this be? Use the extra money to build more military units and conquer more people. Oh poo poo, naval battles. I dunno, just outnumber people and use the special abilities a lot if you are playing a battle you need to in. Otherwise you can just autoresolve everything. I don't remember fighting a lot of naval battles during my first campaign. Speaking of bullshit naval battles, who on the Empire design team thought it was a good idea to give the Spanish a basic trade ship that mounts 60 loving cannons? I cannot build a single ship that comes close to that number until like turn 50, so the trade node poo poo is completely not worth it. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 07:24 on May 12, 2013 |
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May 12, 2013 07:17
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:If you don't want to use agents, don't build them. There were assassins and spies and poo poo in Rome and Medieval, they worked the same way so I dunno what part of that is new poo poo to deal with. The point is they affect me more than they did previously, which is the annoying part of the agents. 10 turns in I lose a province to a christian rebellion spawned by a missionary because I was "conquering like a man" and my stack was sieging the next region. The same missionary then converts the 3 ninjas I send after him and keeps causing problems in that region.I get rid of him by wiping out his clan, but my apparent ignorance of the fact that I'm not supposed to develop my cities in this game as opposed to every other total war game caused me to outpace my farm production. I did not realize I had to research a stupid tech to build another farm, instead of just building it. I'm not worried about family drama, its little things like appointing commissioners and dealing with nigh unkillable missionaries that are just annoying and don't add anything fun to the game. Having to research tech just adds another layer of unneeded complexity to the game and is just one more thing to pay attention to. Thanks for explaining to me that 10 to tax revenue is a good thing though, I had no idea what those numbers meant at all. Do you have any other advanced learning like that? I am rather confused as to what "plus 1 to melee attack" means since I am a drooling idiot.
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May 12, 2013 07:38
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Whoa, let's all calm down for a minute and have discussions like rational adults. There is no need for name calling in this thread. Woodrow: People are having trouble because the majority of complaints levelled against Shogun 2 are that they removed a great many things, with most of the additions being minor and which resulted in reduced complexity. The number of things you need to keep track of is less than ever before, making it easier to learn and what was removed tended to result in a game that works better, not worse. Food problems are the number one issue that newer players struggle with in Shogun 2. While the game will tell you how much food you have and how much food you will have after everything finishes building, it doesn't stress quite how completely crippling negative food works out to be. The fact that negative food gives such huge penalties to happiness is likely partially responsible for your uprising problems. Note that the penalties stack up to an impressive -15 if you leave the food negative for long enough. With the fact you can't pull down castles to free up food and the computer likes building forts on the borders but upgrades their farms inland, you can often find yourself heavily food starved taking a province. Forts represent a long term cost and investment to support, to help reduce the attractiveness of the "super province" that tended to happen in earlier games and instead focuses development of dedicated specialist provinces. Developing your provinces is still vitally important, but upgrading castles first is no longer always the right choice. Commissioners are fairly straightforward bonuses designed to make you want to split experience across multiple generals rather than have a single super general. You can completely ignore them if you want, they don't make a huge difference although their bonuses are noticeable. They function almost identically to the titles from Medieval 1. The missionary beating 3 ninjas is bad luck on your behalf, generally speaking ninjas will make short work of monks and missionaries, although the missionary sounds like he might have been rank 3ish, which would make him tricky to take out. Researching arts is not exactly arduous or complicated, but instead designed to boost specialisation between various factions. For the most part, it works very well. Are the issues you didn't know what to research and found yourself lacking key arts/buildings/units? Rather than gating buildings through castles which take increasingly longer to build (and so only ever appear in your most developed province), researching arts allows smaller, specialised provinces to see new chains unlocked or further developed, giving you more province development options not less. If you were having trouble working out what to research, we will be happy to answer your questions and give you a basic primer on it. I will concede naval battles are terrible (auto-resolve time!), but Shogun 2 has the most field battles and sieges of any of the Total War games. As for how you feel the siege combat is worse than Rome, I just have no idea what to tell you. Why do you feel the siege combat is worse? shalcar fucked around with this message at 08:03 on May 12, 2013 |
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May 12, 2013 08:01
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WoodrowSkillson posted:The point is they affect me more than they did previously, which is the annoying part of the agents. 10 turns in I lose a province to a christian rebellion spawned by a missionary because I was "conquering like a man" and my stack was sieging the next region. The same missionary then converts the 3 ninjas I send after him and keeps causing problems in that region.I get rid of him by wiping out his clan, but my apparent ignorance of the fact that I'm not supposed to develop my cities in this game as opposed to every other total war game caused me to outpace my farm production. I did not realize I had to research a stupid tech to build another farm, instead of just building it. I'm not calling you an idiot man, I'm sorry if I sounded like it. I find the tech tree to be loads more straightforward then the construction trees from older games because it does spell everything out when you mouse over the little tabs. After you're familiarised, you won't be spending a lot of time on the tech screen. Like a lot of the extra bits in the game, it's a click and forget deal. It sounds like you were hit with a combined food shortage and religion penalty, which are both things you can avoid now. You're not going to see christians in your new campaign, at least for a while. When you do, you can use your own monks to passively convert provinces back and also reduce unrest when garrisoned in a city. The game expects you to assassinate monks, but that's sometimes a toss-up. Conquering the monk's clan is a pretty good strategy as well. Only one clan starts the game christian, and they're on Kyushu. The other faction that might cause religious strife is the Ikko-Ikki, and they sometimes blob up in the central region of Honshu. Other times they get eaten during the first few turns, but be prepared for them if they're still around. You can level baby ninjas pretty safely by burning down paddy fields and other lowly poo poo, but if you focus on the assassination upgrades, you'll have an easy way to get rid of monks and missionaries. Early warning: The foreign trade port you get an option to accept will also passively convert the province to christianity. Shalcar covered the food stuff pretty well. Always shoot for a surplus. And keep in mind that markets also consume food, but you can tear those down when you're pinched for rice.
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May 12, 2013 08:41
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Speaking of bullshit naval battles, who on the Empire design team thought it was a good idea to give the Spanish a basic trade ship that mounts 60 loving cannons? I cannot build a single ship that comes close to that number until like turn 50, so the trade node poo poo is completely not worth it. Just do whatever you can to avoid war with Spain until you can handle their galleons. Of course, the pirates have galleons, too, but if you pay close attention to your trade ships, you can often move them out of the trade theater and away to a safer one before the pirates attack. Or just make one of your early priorities in a new game conquering the two or three poorly-defended pirate islands in the Caribbean and eliminating them as a faction entirely.
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May 12, 2013 13:28
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Sharkopath posted:On the other hand playing Medieval 2 for the first time and I am so loving lost. France starts out with 5 territories, at least 3 different army groups, 4 or 5 different kinds of agents and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. In M2TW it's extremely important to be very aggressive at the start and grab as many territories as you possibly can. That way you grow much faster and can make money. Build economic-related buildings first. Farms, dirt roads, lower level markets, port structures, and at the very least the first level of church in every territory. Agents in M2TW are really freakin' simple. Spies are mobile points of vision; their sabotage abilities are kind of a waste in my opinion compared to their ability to show you the map. In some games I like to spam spies and give me vision over pretty much all the land around me. Stick merchants sort of above and a little to the right of the resources you see on the map. Little tiny pictures of hard to see things. If you hover you mouse over them it'll tell you what they are. If you hover your mouse over them while controlling a merchant it'll tell you how much that merchant will make per turn while working that resource. Diplomats are used to start diplomatic talks with other nations. That's the only way you can talk to people. No magical instant diplomacy button with everyone you've met. Princesses are the same thing as diplomats but they can get married. Be careful and pay attention to names when a window pops up saying "do you want this marriage to happen?" because princesses are really good at diplomacy. Priests spread religion. The higher your religion is in a territory, the less religious controversy there will be in that territory. Just put a priest in each territory and you should be good. France doesn't need to worry much about other religions because it's all Catholic, along with its neighbors. I have no idea how the heresy mechanic works, but I think if you piss off the pope by fighting catholic nations too much that causes heresy? Don't worry too much about it, just level up your church in a town if it's have trouble. I haven't played vanilla M2TW in a while so I don't really remember what towns France starts out with, but I might suggest going after Rennes, Bordeaux and Toulouse if you don't have any of those. After that just sort of find any rebel territories and go after 'em.
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May 12, 2013 13:54
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 06:20 |
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Oh wow, thanks for that write-up! The merchant bit gets me the most because I ran through the tutorial and it didn't talk about what they do at all. The other agents I could figure out based on what they do in Rome, et all.
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May 12, 2013 14:21
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