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So I started up an old game of Stainless Steel I had on the backburner again, and I have to say, while there's a ton of things I like about Medieval 2 that later games don't really have (wacky general traits, amusing pre-battle speeches, the pomp and feel of the period, the way units are visually upgraded with each armor upgrade, the early Renaissance period, etc. etc.), holy god I do NOT miss the agent micromanagement or the reinforcement system. I'm personally pushing for CA devoting their next game to the pike-and-shot era, but I would happily accept M:TW3 if it means that I can get my Reich on without dealing with like thirty agents every goddamn turn.
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Jun 18, 2012 13:55
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That is the most adorable battle.
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Jun 19, 2012 19:41
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Still holding out hope for a Total War game about the early modern period. I want to see cavaliers in action, damnit! Tercios facing off Gustav's musketeers! Big floppy hats!
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Jun 22, 2012 02:28
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Alchenar posted:The problem with pre-Classical warfare is that it's basically the same as Classical Warfare except a bit less interesting and with a bit less variety. If you want to do an 'ancient' game set in Europe then Rome is the era to do it in because Rome is the nation that actually did the 'Total War' thing and conquered the known world. As CA have already shown, you can happily adapt the assets you create for a Rome game in order to do DLC for an Alexander Campaign or otherwise. I dunno about that. The problem with using Medieval to cover the Renaissance is, well, pretty simply, by the time the Renaissance units are rolling out odds are good that you're already steamrollering everything in sight anyways, and good luck seeing AI armies of similar units in reasonable army compositions. Plus, slogging through the whole early medieval thing over and over to get to the good stuff is irritating (and don't talk to me about custom battles - I like my fights to have context!)
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Jun 23, 2012 05:49
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Alchenar posted:We're talking about a 150ish year period that was the transition between Medieval and full Gunpowder warfare. It's interesting history, but as a game there's nothing there that Medieval and Empire doesn't give. Is Total War really about providing entirely different gameplay experiences with each new game, or is it about watching a lot of pretty digital soldiers from your favorite historical period kill each other? Edit: I mean, for that matter, what would you say is the particular fundamental 'game" difference between Rome and Medieval 2? Tomn fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jun 23, 2012 |
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Jun 23, 2012 20:29
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Alchenar posted:The Senate and Roman Civil War. Sure, it wasn't implemented particularly well (nor was the Pope and Crusades in Medieval), but they exist and as concepts are perfectly expandable. Oh, come on. If you're going to go THAT route, a game that goes from the early Renaissance to early modern could be centered around things like the spread of Protestantism and the factors that led up to the 30 Years War. You could even argue that a game about the Renaissance should have a special system to represent the Holy Roman Empire. Any major historical period could be said to have various factors that could in turn become special features in the vein of the Senate or Roman Civil War (or Realm Divide, for that matter). As for this stuff about "Renaissance already exists anyways!", I'd like to point out that firstly, Empire was absolutely not balanced around pikes - pikes were nothing but chaff you used when you couldn't afford real troops, so that's not really an option. And as for Medieval, I'd point out that firstly, "Late era" is strictly a mod thing - vanilla just has "Start campaign" and that's it. Secondly, even with such a late start, the game really is still primarily designed with the medieval era in mind, and is not set up to properly represent Renaissance - early modern realities (not to mention that some factions don't really GET properly modern troops anyhow). And even assuming that, it's sure as shootin' that that Medieval 2 in no way tries to depict the age of Gustav Adolf or the English Civil War (and if you try to argue that "Well, the tactics are pretty similar anyways," you could say much the same about Fall of the Samurai and the ACW.) Frankly, it's a bit odd arguing about a game's "need to exist" in this context anyways. The real question is "Is the basic idea going to be an interesting one to romp around in?" The only time a "need to exist" would come into play is if you're discussing over-saturation of the market, but I don't really see a lot of games that focus on the pike-and-shot period, do you?
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Jun 23, 2012 21:59
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I think RTW 2 is going to sink or swim depending on how open modding is. Without a doubt far more so than the last few games anyway. Think about it, this is the first remake in the series of a highly modded game. People are so used to all of the incredible features that were introduced in the big RTW mods that not having them in the base game is going to be a shock. I have never played RTW with a single mod and enjoyed it thoroughly regardless. Go, my ridiculously overpowered post-Marian legions, and crush all before you!
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Jun 27, 2012 02:58
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VDay posted:So I've completely forgotten how to play Shogun 2, what's the best way to take a castle? I bring cannons and take down the gates, defenses, and whatever units I can but then I run out of ammo and am stuck trying to assault 1,000 dudes that are all packed together and I'm too far from shore to bring in a naval strike. Should I just not attack if there's that many units defending? I just autoresolve, myself. Much less hassle.
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Jun 27, 2012 11:26
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Aw, Rome. Oh, well, it's not terrible, it's just not pike and shot. The bit about fewer but more significant battles is certainly interesting. It was always irritating how if you didn't have a prepared blitzkrieg plan in position, you'd basically end up facing a minimum of one stack per enemy city, usually of trash. Also really hoping they bring back the more out-there generals. Every game from Empire onwards has had really anemic characterization for their generals, and picking through a skill tree just isn't the same (especially when you basically have a few set paths to run down and that's it).
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Jul 2, 2012 16:11
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NihilCredo posted:Actually I haven't seen it mentioned in either article, did they say if the stupid feudal Rome families will be back? The RPS article does mention that each faction (Rome, Carthage, etc.) will have its own "tech tree, content, and internal conflict" - no idea how that will actually end up playing out, though. Perhaps there'll be a more elegant solution modeling the great families feuding against each other now?
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Jul 2, 2012 16:53
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I have to say, the interviews RPS has up are soothing any hurt from having to wait for pike-and-shot pretty well. More interesting internal conflicts? Atmospheric events for each faction? Legionary histories, traits, and equipment? That's the good stuff. Got a bit of an eyebrow raised about the whole "zooming down to the individual view of a soldier and reacting when the guy next to me takes an arrow to the knee", though. Not quite sure how that's supposed to work out to help improve gameplay.
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Jul 3, 2012 13:53
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Sistergodiva posted:Should I get Shogun 2 or go straight for Fall of the Samurai? I've only played Rome before. Should I try any of the earlier games first? I just got a beefy computer, so something modern would be cool. Depends on your period of interest, really. If you like samurai, go for Shogun 2. If you like the idea of shooting samurai with Civil War-era technology, go for Fall of the Samurai. If you prefer to see Napoleon curb-stomping Europe, go with Napoleon. Stuff before that starts to get a bit iffy nowadays. Empire is kinda bland, and Medieval 2, while a good game, is also a bit dated and lacks many quality-of-life improvements (how do you like the idea of micromanaging two dozen agents every turn?) Barbarian Invasion has a neat premise and is a good upgrade for Rome, if you want something closer to what you're used to. In general, though, aside from Empire you'd probably do better just to look for your favorite historical period than trying to winkle out the objectively best game.
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Jul 4, 2012 01:37
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Mans posted:The funny thing about AI in Med2 is that even attacking Rebel towns lowers your reputation. Taking cities, even if you were attacked, is also a reputation killer. A bit late, but this is untrue. Here is a Wiki explaining how reputation works. The short version? In order to raise your reputation, have as many allies as you can get without needing to betray them eventually, don't be in too many wars at once, always occupy towns, release prisoners whenever it's safe to do so and ransom if it isn't. Also never give anyone towns in a peace treaty ever unless you're completely and absolutely sure that you will never again need to take it back. Chivalry, agents, and "who attacked first" don't matter at all. Arguably the "best" way to raise your reputation is to farm some hapless sucker by beating up his armies and releasing them on a regular basis without actually taking his cities. I used this info during a vanilla game once, and got my reputation up into the "trustworthy" and "very trustworthy" levels. It's amazing how willing the AI is to give you whatever you want you when your reputation is high, especially if you've got an army or two sieging largely empty cities. That said, the AI is hard-coded so that one of your neighbors will betray you regardless of your former relationship if you've been at perfect peace for too long. The best way to circumvent this is to be at war with one distant nation who can't do much to you at all times. That said, it CAN be handy if you've got an inconvenient alliance you'd like to be rid of without taking the penalty.
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Jul 13, 2012 01:11
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Siets posted:I must say I am sorely tempted at employing this against the obnoxious uberbusinessmen that my "allies" send down my way to clean up all of my prospects. If I assassinate, I believe it breaks the alliance no? No, assassination just seriously sours relations. On a related note, chivalry is entirely a personal trait has nothing to do with diplomatic reputation - you can stab everyone all day every day and mercilessly tax your subjects and still have a spotless reputation. Just remember to occupy your castles instead of sacking them, and to release prisoners whenever it's safe to do so, ransoming if not. In other words, assassinate away.
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Jul 17, 2012 16:50
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Siets posted:Ah I see. Well in this case I'm already at war with Well, if I recall aright, dread lowers enemy morale and helps with public order, while chivalry boosts your morale and seriously increases population growth/public order. In general, dreaded generals are better for your main battle armies, while chivalrous generals are best at managing up-and-coming settlements to develop them faster. The reason why it's best to try and stack only one kind of trait is because if you have, say, +9 dread and +8 chivalry from traits, you effectively have 1 dread, which is nigh worthless. The fact that your diplomatic reputation has nothing to do with how chivalrous you are and how many innocent merchants, diplomats, and princesses you brutally murder is a bit weird, but hey, I'm not complaining. Also, in case you're wondering, the point of having a high diplomatic reputation is mainly that it makes other nations more willing to accept deals from you - most importantly, peace deals. With low reputation they can have literally one sick and dying soldier garrisoning a village against nine stacks and they'll never agree to surrender, while with high reputation it's really, really easy to convince enemy nations to give up settlements that none of your armies are even near (although you do usually need to have an army or two near or sieging one of their weaker garrisons first to convince them you mean business.)
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Jul 18, 2012 00:35
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On the subject of Shogun 2's naval battles, I actually had some fun with them. Admittedly, they weren't terribly complex, but once you get the basic ideas down I remember it being possible to win fairly handily against any even force, and it's a thrill to more or less gain a second fleet after a major battle. It's been a long time since I last played Shogun 2 and patches might have changed things (and my memory might be going fuzzy), but here's the basics to winning naval battles in Shogun 2. For your average fleet, you only really need two basic unit types: The medium bune and the bow kobaya. The bunes should make up the main battle line of the fleet, with their primary purpose being to slug it out with other bunes, while your kobayas should function as "flankers" - you should have 2-4 of them in a full fleet. Most other ship is some kind of variation on the theme of "heavy battleship" and "light escort" and can fit into the basic compositions and tactics described here. When in actual battle, you'll usually want to keep your bunes in line formation as you square up against the enemy. The idea is pretty simple - match up each bune against an opposing bune (or equivalent) and charge in to board. Hopefully you'll have more bunes than the enemy, in which case you want to use the spares to hang around other skirmishes, chucking arrows into the enemy bunes until they surrender. If the enemy has more bunes, you'll want to try and maneuver the initial clash so that the enemy excess is blocked by skirmishes and unable to properly concentrate their forces in time to make a difference. This is the easy bit which most of you have already figured out. The battle-winning bit is what you do with your kobayas, however. If possible, you'll want to use them early on to bushwhack and knock out the enemy escorts - if this isn't possible, however, successfully distracting them will do just as well. The key is to keep them alive and in range when the bunes come together. Once they do so, you'll want to slide your kobayas in to launch concentrated swarms of fire arrows at engaged enemy bunes. The threat of fire on top of a boarding action is usually enough to break their morale, causing them to lose the fight and freeing up your bune to go off and support his fellows, leading to a cascade as more and more bunes are freed up. That's really all there is to it as far as standard battles are concerned. One interesting point of note is the Nihon Maru, which you get when you become Shogun. It's effectively invincible against conventional Japanese warships and can easily solo entire enemy fleets if you're patient. The reason? It is really, really, really tall - if you don't board the enemy, you can basically rain down arrows on enemy decks with impunity, while their counter-arrows pepper the ship's sides without actually harming anyone. It's also big and sturdy enough that fire arrows and such don't really worry it. The result is that you can just sail circles around everyone until they run out of crew and flee.
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Nov 29, 2012 19:04
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Sheizerbrick posted:Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in If this is going to be Creative Assembly's way of handling the pike and shot era, I find that I am really pretty much OK with that.
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Dec 10, 2012 06:04
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NihilCredo posted:Could you give a philistine a quick rundown of what's cool about Warhammer Fantasy? Not like, there are factions X, Y, Z, more of an explanation of the general mood and themes of the setting, and what it offers over generic elves & wizard #5567. Quick sum up: The primary human faction is the Empire, which is essentially a more unified HRE during the 16th century - pike and shot armies with a few steamtanks, wizards, and battlepriests tossed in. Arguably the primary antagonist of the setting are the forces of Chaos, who are "ruled" by four gods who feed off human emotions and concepts - which leads to an interesting feedback loop since one of the gods is a god of war, and another is a god of change - so glorifying the military and waging battle against hordes of Chaos berserkers and trying to lead a socially progressive revolution both makes the forces of Chaos stronger, leading to a more crapsack world that requires more war to maintain and causes more social injustices. The inhabitants of the world are largely unaware of this fact, however. (The other two gods, incidentally, are gods of disease and pleasure.) Also, if I recall correctly human magic also feeds off chaos, making wizards powerful, but prone to accidentally misaiming fireballs, turning themselves pink, summoning demons, or becoming demons (also its use, even against forces of Chaos, may or may not in fact strength the gods of Chaos). With the two combined, you get ridiculously garish landschneckts forming pike blocks and arquebus lines to fend off shrieking hordes of daemons while priests of Sigmar (the deified first Emperor) wield warhammers and fight private duels with house-sized monsters in the middle of the battlefield, all in a dark and terrifying world rife with superstition and ignorance, which is actually a blessing in disguise since that same superstition and ignorance could very well be all that's keeping the gods of Chaos from having enough power to crack the world open like an egg. Also, the primary human nation keeping the forces of Chaos from overrunning the world is organized along the lines of the HRE, meaning that their nobles have plenty of time to spend squabbling amongst each other while a relatively weak emperor keeps trying to get everyone on task regarding the whole "keeping Chaos back" thing. Also there are elves and dwarves and orcs and things.
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Dec 10, 2012 23:55
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toasterwarrior posted:For anyone who played Empire with Darthmod: are naval battles supposed to be boring shitshows? I suppose I get basic naval combat theory: line your fleet up and concentrate your fire; but your ships have this dumb tendency to sail right into the enemy if you right-click-attack on them, even if they're in cannon range. Thus, I can't focus fire without manual control and broadsides, and microing each ship into position is really slow and doesn't really have much of a payoff compared to just using the biggest ships and zerging the enemy with them. I think alt-click or ctrl-click, one of the two, designates enemies as "primary targets" so that your ships will shoot who you want them to shoot (when possible) without charging off directly towards them.
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Dec 15, 2012 14:59
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Chomp8645 posted:I'm not trying to be combative here, but I honestly don't understand the point you're trying to make. How does the fact that campaign units "unpack" into multiple units on the battlefield have any relevance to how many battlefield units can be effectively controlled at once? Having them "linked" or something so they receive orders together doesn't sound any different than conventional control groups we've used for years and years. Am I not understanding something you said? It's possible that this indicates that individual battlefield units are autonomous, while the player just controls the one "battlefield" unit. Like, say there's a legion with three hastati battalions, one triarii battalion, and one archer battalion. You order the legion to attack the enemy army, in which case the archers move up to bombard the enemy while the hastati march forwards in line with the triarii bringing up the rear as a reserve force in case of line breakage or cavalry charges, all without your input and responding simply to your general order to "attack in that direction." Which would be interesting, but seems liable to lead to player headaches unless you can decide to individually interfere with subunits as you see fit. Would also represent a pretty big break from the usual Total War formula, too.
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Dec 19, 2012 05:59
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Incidentally, judging from the official wiki, there's going to be a total of eight playable factions assuming nothing changes between now and release. Any takers on what the factions are going to be? Rome and Carthage are confirmed, Gaul and Greece seem to be shoo-ins. The Seleucids and and Egypt similarly seem likely - so which of the remaining nations are most likely to fit the final bill? Germania and Parthia?
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Dec 19, 2012 09:55
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BBJoey posted:It's already "going through development", and it's exactly as spergy as you'd think it would be. Roma 2: Imperia Antiquitatis Not only did they start up a mod because Rome was "showing signs of Creative Assembly sacrificing historical accuracy for gameplay" (at THIS stage in development?!), they've got this whole ranking system laid out for all their contributors based on Roman ranks. Kinda amazing how almost nobody in the thread seems to be saying "Are you guys kidding me," it's all highly supportive "Good luck, guys, you can never start too early!"
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Dec 20, 2012 00:34
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There is an argument to be made in that by being given an unwieldy, massive army, a player's skill at preplanning and focusing during battle is tested in a way which MIGHT be interesting. Of course, that argument would also need to deal with how a lot of players will throw their monitors out of their windows on a regular basis if they keep getting beaten because some dudes flanked them out of nowhere and how the hell are they supposed to keep track of all this stuff and graaaaaaah. Besides, doesn't Total War rest chiefly on its single-player?
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Dec 20, 2012 03:55
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Alchenar posted:I would actually prefer something akin to a really light manpower and wealth meter, with you being able to raise armies of certain size and quality based on those resources. Didn't the first Rome have that option? Pulling your soldiers directly out of your settlement populations, I mean. I seem to recall getting frustrated playing as the Gauls because I was literally running out of people and was having trouble maintaining a proper defensive army while at the same time improving my cities.
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Dec 20, 2012 22:39
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MadJackMcJack posted:Aren't they implementing a Supreme Commander-style camera anyway? That should solve a lot of command problems. Zoom out, give orders, zoom in to trouble areas for fine-tuning. Job's a gud 'un! I vaguely recall the devs saying something about how the zoomed-out camera is specifically NOT designed to give orders in, because they don't want to turn the whole game into staring at symbols instead of mans stabbing other mans.
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Dec 21, 2012 01:19
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the JJ posted:I definitely remember having problems recruiting garrison troops out of provinces I'd burnt to the ground. 'Course, pop growth is exponential and by about mid game burning a city still leaves enough of a buffer that it's never really an issue. Can be problematic if a city swaps hands a buncha times, but apart from that it disappears as a limitation really quickly. Ah, I can answer this one. In Medieval 2, recruitment DIDN'T draw directly from the population (as far as I can recall), but it DID draw from a recruitment pool of units which replenished over time based on how many buildings of the appropriate type you had - higher level barracks, for instance, would place more and more spearmen in your pool and make them replenish faster. That's why burning cities to the ground and destroying all their advanced troop recruitment buildings made it hard to recruit garrison troops.
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Dec 21, 2012 07:02
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SeanBeansShako posted:I got questions about that as I have never tried it, do you lose all your generals too with your Imperial/Shogunate armies? Also, literally everyone declares war on you forever, including newly-established vassals, so you'd better not have been relying on trade income. Republicanism is haaaaaard.
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Dec 24, 2012 09:06
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Koramei posted:FoTS is the exception; it's at the start of more modernized warfare, where everything changes. Well, yeah, but what's more interesting for the player? "Let's have us a grand, glorious clash of arms in which my mighty army demonstrates its worth and valor and proves that their hiring was worthwhile!" "Let's either sit around waiting for ages or else send all my best troops into a horrible attritional meatgrinder of a push." True, in actual history, the patient generals who cost-efficiently spent their troops taking cities by waiting them out were much more effective than the impatient ones who went on and on about glorious battle and valor. But the battles are generally much more INTERESTING - there's a reason why there's tons of analysis about great battles and such and very few indeed of great sieges. Being that Total War is a game and not one that's ever been particularly strict about following in history's footsteps, why not encourage the bits that people find interesting and discourage the bits that aren't?
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Dec 25, 2012 05:34
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Chomp8645 posted:I'm not sure what in the world led you to believe this but you're completely wrong. Sieges in those times frequently ended without any fighting on the walls or in the city/castle, and it would have been an extremely rare situation for a besieging army to run out of supplies before the besieged. Really the only time that besieged cities/castles were able to hold out longer than their attackers was when they were coastal locations and the attacker had the ground forces to contain them but not the naval ability to blockade them. Remind me, didn't sieges usually end in negotiations of some kind anyways? During the medieval era, at least.
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Dec 26, 2012 00:09
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turboraton posted:Hey there guys. Total War franchise has a huge discount and I remember playing some bit of Rome Total War and a LOT of Medieval Total War and enjoying it. I dont think I have enough money for Shogun 2 but what other game do you recommend me? I dont care so much for graphics. It basically comes down to which time period interests you most, really. Historical interest generally trumps objective game quality in the Total War series. That said, Empire and Napoleon have less headache-inducing reinforcement systems than the earlier games, and Empire is generally regarded as the objectively worst game of the lot.
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Jan 2, 2013 11:39
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Arcturas posted:I did finally get explosive shells, so I'll give it another go, but I find I can't keep more than 2-3 of my ships in range of theirs, while they do a much better job kiting and keeping all their ships firing constantly. FotS naval AI isn't much good, so try arranging your entire fleet in line, and then sailing off at an angle to the side of the enemy formation. When you get close enough that you can begin firing and the enemy starts to push in towards you, they'll just go at you one by one, giving you fire superiority. That said, the best way to handle naval battles is to get some manner of European ship or other, because they have far superior range and can blow up ships from a distance while giggling like maniacs.
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Jan 9, 2013 22:07
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skooma512 posted:As Imperial, I vassalized a civ in FOTS who was Shogunate. FOTS is pretty terrible in that whenever you create a new vassal, the clan is aligned with whatever faction it was aligned with before it went under, which means that if the new clan happens to be on the other side, whoops, they're rebelling! Why the hell does the game not allow you to force new vassals to be part of your side? Relatedly, in vanilla and FOTS alike, I would dearly appreciate it if CA were to make the AI treat "Attacking my vassals" to be equivalent to "attacking me." Too many times I've been forced to choose between my ally and my vassal.
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Jan 11, 2013 11:13
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^^^ It's possible that this happened after realm divide, yeah. I do know for a fact that if you go Republican, any attempt to create a vassal results in war the very next turn because they're imperial/shogunate and not Republican. Pretty sure it still applies for the Imperial/Shogunates post-divide, though. Promontory posted:There are some things that can be done within Medieval 2's diplomacy system. Namely, bribery. If you want to avoid a war with a faction, park a diplomat in their territory and offer them a gift of 100 coins every turn. For some reason, the computer does not value a 'gold per turn' -type of deal as much as that singular donation. The small cash boost should help you even in forming alliances. I find that a huge part of M2's diplomacy lies in your honor rating. High honor, they'll fall all over themselves to give you stuff and even agree to vassalage sometimes. Low honor, and they'll never, ever, ever consider peace, not even if you have their capital surrounded with five full stacks and are offering them their entire kingdom back. Honor is ruled by a lot of things, but the most important (and repeatable) bits are how you handle prisoners and captured cities. Occupying and releasing is good for honor, while sacking and executing is bad for honor. Also, alliances add to honor, while active wars decrease it (note - I'm pretty sure conquered nations count as being in an "active war" against you. You can wipe off the dishonor of being at war with them if you make peace with one of their allies before they went under, though - for some reason that'll trigger a peace treaty with the conquered nation as well.) That said, however good you are with diplomacy, I think the AI is hard-coded to declare war on you if you've been at peace for too long, which is why occasionally you get long-term, staunch allies stabbing you in the back out of nowhere. Something like 20 turns of peace, I think. Also, cheesy but effective diplomatic tactic - make an alliance with the Pope ASAP when the game begins. He'll generally be willing to accept for cheap terms, and once he does, he'll like you more and dislike your enemies more over time. If you're not willing to game the system that much, though, one other thing to do is to round like up eight or nine priests, stick them all on a boat, and ship them out to the nearest heathen province. The successful mass conversion of provinces usually gives enough piety for them to become cardinals, which eventually allows you to pack the Curia with your candidates. Tomn fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jan 11, 2013 |
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Jan 11, 2013 17:59
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Spakstik posted:In FOTS (or Shogun 2 in general, although I only have FOTS), what is the benefit of making someone a vassal as opposed to conquering them outright? Recent posts make it sound like a potential pain in the butt, and from reading this thread it sounds like there's a decent chance they'll knife you in the back during the realm divide if you opt for a particular path. In vanilla, it's absolutely essential, since vassals are your only guaranteed trade partners after realm divide, and trade brings in a whole mess of cash. In Fall of the Samurai, it's a decent way of palming off crappy provinces which would probably have ended up being a net drag on your expenses due to garrisons and such. Funnily enough, it's generally more worthwhile to create vassals post-divide in vanilla, while it's generally better to make vassals pre-divide in FOTS.
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Jan 11, 2013 22:51
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Bolow posted:Is it possible to make Vassals actually commit troops to wars? I have 2 Vassals that are completely worthless with 3 stacks of troops that mill around their main province doing jack poo poo. I've actually won at least one game because my vassals went out and conquered the last few provinces for me. They generally need to be adjacent to enemy provinces, though, as Trujillo mentioned earlier. Brownie posted:Man playing as the "easy" Shimazu is so much harder than I expected. Within 2 years everyone I've met has declared war on me and as a result I have no trade partners and no money. I rushed the trading outposts as soon as possible but as soon as I had my 5 ships total the enemy had several 2-3 sized fleets waiting to attack me, which was pretty frustrating. The AI also has several stacks of units, which I feel like it's not possible to have given how few economic development tools you have this early in the game. Try mousing over your relations with the nations at war with you to see WHY they declared war. Could provide good pointers for what not to do next time. That being said, when you just start the game you're better off focusing on conquering the hell out of your neighbors to build up a decent powerbase. Once you've got 3-5 provinces and the taxes from them, then you can start thinking about peace and proper economic development. As the Shimazu in particular, you probably just wanna blitz the hell out of your home island and begin working on your economy proper only once you've secured it all. That said, sending lone cheap ships to hog as many trade nodes as you can early on is a good thing - even if you lose some, by the time you've conquered your power base you'll probably have enough secured nodes that you can really start sending ships in to rake in the cash. Also, once you're settled, try sending lone ships along the Japanese coastlines to find new clans and thus new trade partners.
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Jan 12, 2013 13:26
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Brownie posted:Well the diplomacy screen only said one thing, that I was a different religion than them (it was the Shoni and the Otomo, both of which are christian early on), but I'm actually pretty sure it was because I had the trade points (the first thing both clans did was attack the trade ports). Really I followed your advice to the letter before you've even posted! I tried just steam rolling the province but the lack of any trading partners or foreign ports (the Otomo and Shoni very quickly outpaced my navy meant that I was in the negative very quickly. My focus on troops meant that my states were super underdeveloped and I basically went bankrupt within 4 years. I started disbanding units but the Shoni showed up with a full stack at my capital and that was basically it for that game. Hmm. It's been a while since I played, so I'm going a bit off memory, but it may be that you're "overdeveloping" your army - spending too much time and resources building them up with the biggest and the best before you send them into the field. That's not really economically feasible in the very first years of the game - slamming out some ashigaru and the odd starter samurai (usually the yari, I think?), enough to get you one stack's worth of troops, is usually enough. Heck, depending on the situation of your target clan, you don't even need a full stack, necessarily. The game is fairly well balanced right from the start so that most clans are roughly even in strength with their neighbors, so if you strike quickly you should face them more or less evenly, as long as you face one enemy at a time. Actually, come to think of it, I just took a closer look at what you said. They declared war on you, not the other way around? That's a problem - during the first few turns you really want to be curb-stomping your closest neighbors the moment you have an army that can beat theirs in the field (roughly even if you're confident in your warfighting skills, one or two more samurai or three-four more ashigaru if you're not). Like I said, don't stop attacking until you have at LEAST three provinces, and preferably a few more. I'm pretty sure every clan starts out at war or about to go to war with some clan or other - whoever you start off against, make it a priority to annihilate them entirely as soon as you can. Forget about naval war, too, at least until you've carved out a nice little stronghold for yourself - that can wait until you're established. When fighting close, small neighbors, resources spent on the army to crush their strongholds and wipe their clans off the map (thus eliminating their blockade fleets) beats resources spent fighting naval skirmishes that temporarily keep your trade routes open. All that being said, as I mentioned earlier, it's been a while since I played and it's possible I'm telling you stuff you already tried, so I apologize if I'm doing that! It's just that I distinctly remember it being fairly simple to get yourself established right at the start in Shogun 2, and was trying to work off memory to remember what it was that was done. Incidentally, what difficulty level are you playing at?
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Jan 12, 2013 21:09
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Sober posted:So third time's the charm, ran another Shimazu campaign and finally grabbed all of Kyushu by about 1555. Had a few hairy battles where literally it was just a line of ashigaru pounding at one another (almost one for one) but I must've gotten distracted because they had cavalry and I didn't, so I put all my attention to countering their maneuvers. I pretty much have the whole island, kinda wish there was a way to knock trading boats off posts without declaring war. Do I just move across the land bridge and keep going? Or should I settle for a few turns or something and reorganize my army. It's mostly been ashigaru spam (since someone advised I just blitz the island as much as possible before other clans start outproducing me) so I assume now I need more samurai and mix some cavalry in as well? If you've taken the whole island, then yeah, it's a VERY good idea to stop, rest, and regroup. In fact, strictly speaking you don't even need to go to war now - you can hang back, begin focusing on economic development, and generally improve your power base and infrastructure. You want to expand quickly early on, yes, but once you've gotten about three to five provinces under your belt, or more, you can afford to hang back and build farms, roads, markets, dojos, and all that kind of good stuff. In fact, if you've taken Kyushu, you probably want to do that anyhow to prepare yourself for realm divide. So sit back, research, develop, and generally take it easy. And yeah, building in places that offer production bonuses is a good idea. Regarding samurai, here's the rundown: Naginata samurai are the most heavily armored of the lot, which means they're best equipped to last out a slugging match or withstand arrow storms. Excellent troops if you want to focus on creating an unbreakable anvil of a line to hammer on. Katana samurai are the best all-around units for breaking enemy infantry, and can win most one-on-one fights with anything else...eventually. Very good as a basic line unit, but watch out for cavalry. Yari samurai are, well, good at killing horses. Useful as early battle-deciders when you're facing mostly ashigaru, and as a reserve to counter cavalry charges. No-Dachi samurai hit hard and fast with a good charge bonus, but die quickly. Use them to break weaker or wavering sections of an enemy line, or as a flanking force. Cavalry are dead vital, and I'm kinda impressed you've made it this far without using them. The fact that they're samurai doesn't really matter as much as the fact that they're cavalry. With their excellent mobility and hard-hitting charge, they're your go-to units when you want to flank and break the enemy line, or form a sudden reserve. Don't dismount unless required, they're much better on horseback. Just be careful with them - they're powerful, but like most units in Shogun 2, a bit fragile. Don't send them into scrums unless you need to - they do better by charging, pulling out, and charging again. All samurai are generally much better than ashigaru for their morale bonus alone - they'll stand and fight long after the ashigaru run away screaming. The main downside is that they cost a lot and take a lot of time to produce, but an all-samurai army is a fearsome thing, and with Kyushu under your control, you should be able to afford to build up your samurai forces to some degree without (much) interference. Also remember that you don't need ALL samurai types, though you probably do want to have either naginata or katana samurai to build up your battle line. You can get by relying on only katanas, or going without no-dachis, or whatnot - just pick a build that suits your strategy (and your research). Definitely do not go without cavalry, though. Also, if you're having trouble building up your ninja, a slower method of leveling them is to stick them in your armies to act as scouts. It takes a while, but there's no chance of failure, plus it makes your armies go faster and see further. Still a good idea to send them out to bushwhack lone wandering units or outlying buildings or anything else with like a 80% or higher chance of success, though. Even if you do kinda wanna pull out your hair when one of them fails a 95% chance mission.
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Jan 14, 2013 10:45
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Xenoborg posted:I'm not sure about mods, but the SS super powered heretics were one thing I never felt bad saving scumming. For those savescumming along - I'm not ENTIRELY sure, but I think the RNG seed doesn't reset on loading until you've done something else - like, if executing a heretic doesn't work, it won't work if you load up again unless you send a spy mission elsewhere first or something like that. I might just be insane, though.
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Jan 14, 2013 16:23
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Shasta Orange Soda posted:I mostly just left the Stainless Steel heretics alone unless I had an assassin that happened to be nearby. They're powerful, but there aren't really enough of them to do any serious damage. I get pretty lazy on letting those tiny rebel armies live, too. They never seem to really do anything anyway. Does having one in your territory reduce your income? If it does, I guess it's not by much because I never noticed. I think if they park on a road they'll reduce trade income, and if they're big enough they cause devastation, but the tiny little random stacks bumming around the backwoods aren't really worth bothering with most of the time I find, save as training dummies for assassins, spies, or young generals you want to make warriors.
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Jan 16, 2013 09:25
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Lord Tywin posted:Edit: Jesus loving christ, why did I got to that website http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=579065 . Who the hell would bother to be an angry nationalist about nations from Antiquity? It boggles the mind.
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Jan 18, 2013 15:48
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