I’m playing but I need some serious help. My clan is constantly in a state of starvation and I have no idea why. I’ve researched every tech related to agriculture, I’ve built every upgrade to the fields and I’m at negative ten food with every province in a start of low grade rebellion. I have plenty of territories and lots of money coming in, trade agreements with like six other clans…but my folks are starving. WTF? Is there any way to buy food???
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-XT
Any word on game-breaking bugs?
I just know they have to be here. I’ve played every Total War game since release, so I know how this goes.
Where are the game-breaking bugs?
54 turns in and I’ve added the island of Kyushu to my holdings. The Shoni clan put up a valiant fight, but ultimately paid the price for attacking me. My new 14-year-old Daimyo had a trial by fire; Now at age 19 he’s got four stars. His strike force was very busy but spread thin. The war ended promptly after I landed a second fresh strike force on the other side of the island.
The most fun battle of that war was when I had 19-unit army defend a tiny fort (with ninja-sabotaged gates) from a horde of attackers. My 6 archer units were able line about 80% of the ramparts, but the enemy attacked from four different directions. My infantry and cavalry were just a huge overlapping mass in the middle ready to step in when attackers reached the ramparts. All of my archers ran out of arrows, so I actually had to send out a small cavalry sortie to take out that last enemy archer unit.
The campaign AI still has a fair bit of the Empire/Napoleon silliness. The Shoni navy definitely outclassed mine. They managed to keep my main port blockaded for over a year (totally crippling my economy), but they didn’t attack any of my undefended trading posts in their back yard. They also had that tendency to send their forces around the countryside in groups of one to three.
I noticed that up north, Fukushima has been a major battleground. It changed hands four times in maybe two years. Eventually a new rebel clan arose to take control of it. I couldn’t help but think, “Man, Fukushima just can’t catch a break.” 
The only solution I can think of is “don’t build too many buildings that consume food”. I get the impression that we’re not supposed to have a maxed-out castle and market in each town.
As for game-breaking bugs, there was this earlier today, but it’s fixed now.
ETA: Oh, and armies and navies move choppily when they have agents in them, but it doesn’t seem to lead to any instability.
Exact same happened to me, and it kinda made me pissed. I think it was because I was castling up almost immediately. Now I wait till I have one or two provinces down and it works.
Do the castles drain food away from the peasants to create siege stockpiles ? That would be neat, but other than that I fail to see how castles could lead to mass starvation.
I didn’t even notice that buildings used food. I’ve maxed out all my castles and built every building I can build in each. :smack: The problems really started when I went to war and started expanding. When I captured 6 territories my food went negative, but I researched all of the agriculture technologies and I was able to get it back to 2. But as I added new territories after that it steadily went down (it’s at negative 15 right now) and I have no idea how to fix it. I’ve had to station large garrisons because of the constant rebellions in the back field. But it’s not a money thing, as I’m running at 4-5k per turn right now and have tons of money…it’s just the constant attacks that are getting me down (you can’t auto most of the sieges unless you have an overwhelming number of troops…but if you fight it out it seems to me that defending is even easier in this game than it was in other TW games).
I think that if it’s the buildings doing this I’m going to have to restart, unless you can destroy buildings or castles.
-XT
I’ve installed it but haven’t had a real chance to play it yet. What’s the best clan to start with? The Chosuwhatevers from the tutorial? Having no understanding of Japanese history is holding me back a bit, the only clans I’d heard of were the Tokugawa and Oda clans.
I don’t know the clan names, but I think starting on one of the southern smaller islands is the best way to start off. I was able to expand from there with no problems. From the original game starting on the main island can be a bitch as everyone almost immediately attacks you (it might not be like that now) so you have to build up defenses and find choke points really fast.
-XT
The screen where you choose your faction will tell you the relative difficulty of a clan’s starting position.
The whole business of buildings consuming food is kind of weird. It occurred to me that it’s probably advantageous to concentrate on having a few large castles balanced out by a few backwaters. Better to spend one food to go from a 5% to 10% bushido mastery bonus than to spend the same food on going from 1% to 3% (admittedly this will cost more money). Plus, stables are more useful in towns with a wider variety of dojos. I can’t yet declare how useful markets are; the first tier doesn’t consume food, so it may be worthwhile to build several first-tier markets to boost your metsuke capacity without consuming food and one upgraded market (ideally in a province with the right bonus) from which to recruit skilled metsuke.
It’s the castles and their upgrades that consume the most food it seems. The first upgrade consumes two. The next three. If you upgrade all your castles as I did in the first game then you go negative on food and it’s constant rebellions. Also, for some odd reason the rice exchange consumes two food, and some of the tech advances consume food too! So you really have to keep an eye on that. Money doesn’t seem to be an issue at all for me but since you can’t seem to buy or trade for food it’s a resource you have to really watch. Doing a lot better in the second game. Picked the clan on the main island in the far north and it’s been cake so far.
-XT
Ninja movies? Are they any good?
Castles and higher end markets consume food resources, so you won’t be able to max out every territory. Playing to the strengths of the regions is fairly important.
My own impressions: the AI has finally been hugely upgraded from the earlier games in the series. I’m playing on Legendary so it’s hard to tell how much is good army control and how much is GIANT PEASANT ARMY but it’s putting up a decent challenge in the strategic campaign and watching out for its interests. It’s harder to con them over with diplomatic carrots that don’t actually help them, and they’re more aggressive, not just sitting in provinces waiting for you to pick them off one by one. More importantly, the battle AI is far improved. I’ve seen cavalry dart in through a brief hole in my flank, and you don’t see any of the “I’ll just stand here under fire” unless you force them to with another threat. Evenly matched forces actually can go either way instead of “I automatically win because I’m a human”.
Not unless you do something stupid. I’ve had a long-term (65-ish turns) trade partner on my border maintaining peace for a long time. An ally of theirs declared war on me due to my expansion near them, but my trade partner is still happily raking in the money from our 1300/turn partnership. The mouseover showing the modifiers on diplomatic relations suggests that honorable dealings with someone over the long term outweighs just about anything else except possibly religious differences.
I caved and bought it.
I thought that that’s the total food consumption of the castle, not in addition to the previous rank. If I’m right, you should be able to have a lot of big castles if you don’t build markets. I’ll find out tomorrow. I’ve been holding back on building both castles and markets, and I just got the mastery for land consolidation. I’m at about +20 food. We’ll see how things go tomorrow as I invade the Bessho and continue to build big swanky castles in my current holdings.
I got it, too. Sorry, but playing the Shimazu can be a mutha!
First I got going, made some newb mistakes but still got rolling, when I was attacked by a former friendly who got nervous.
And hit me when my forces were depleted by terrible battles.
With an army at least as big as all my forces.
OK, so I did some decent damage. I still was going to get stomped, because while my troops were reinforcing it was just taking too long, and they had knee-capped by second army.
So I restarted. 
This time I made them my ally and cooperated via marriage, making them a much more reliable friend. While I’m unsure of how far I can allow them to exapnd, I think I’ll be able to move fast enough. I almost feel like I’m playing Europa Universalis, with its complex diplomatic balancing acts.
My current enemy’s campaign AI isn’t giving me any help, however - they’re tricky and keep their armies mobile and large. Sometimes they will send a force too small, and that’s when you pounce and then strike back. But they’ve been surprisingly strong, and unfortunately I simply haven’t had time to stand back and build my forces. So far I’m about 20 turns in and have a large army trying to cripple the north end of the island’s defences. If this works (and I have their whole army beseiged, I’ll be able to roll up their other settlements quickly. Down the line my lord’s son will probably turn on his current allies, but that’s for another day. Further, they hunted down and killed off three of my four trading ships, though I’m building a fleet to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Still have money, though. Markets are very useful, even if you don’t build them up further. Roads are no longer the best thing you can build, and there’s some real choice about what you want to build.
I will probably go Christian, for the guns. I’m just not happy with the way masses of archers tend to work out. In fact, I’ve been (ahistorically) positioning archers behind the melee and then rushing them into the thick of it to break the enemy lines once all forces are engaged. The AI tends not to handle this well - it can unit-match, but it doesn’t know what to do if you flank that effectively.
I also like that happiness management is easier. In previous games, I often would crank up my taxes and then fill the cities with huge hordes of old units and peasants, partly because a heavily-damaged unit was useless and if retrained lost all its bonuses. Now I want to keep my good units, and if they have to rest for a while it’s no problem. - they’ll be back in action in a year or so. Once I own all of Shikoko I will probably turn my baleful gaze on the Chokosabe, and then begin rolling up the southern end of Japan (or on the in-game map, the western end of the main island of Honshu)
Are you guys going pretty heavily down the line with bushido or way of chi, or are you kind of mixing it up?
Just had a proper hands on through the tutorial. First impressions are pretty good, it doesn’t have the ‘unfinished beta’ feel of Empire or the ‘glorified expansion pack’ feel of Napoleon. One thing I hated there, probably due to the time period, is how battles were so damn boring. They all looked the same, line up your things that go boom and wait until the enemy falls over. For one thing, load times are far better - Empire took ages. They’ve obviously done some work in optimising the engine.
I’m glad gunpowder here is treated more like it was in Medieval II, exotic and rare. Melee clashes look great, the physics really make things entertaining - spear cav charges send men flying, as does artillery impacts. Gives the whole thing weight. Troops also seem less stupid, on both sides; mopping up after a battle is more how is should have been - Empire ruined it. Try and mop up an enemy in Empire and your stupid cav meander around from one fleeing man to another. Here, the Japanese cav goes straight for the bulk, allowing good old Total War style battles of annihilation.
The campaign map looks beautiful, and the fully rotatable thing works well. Unlike the samey battlefields of 18th century Europe (seen one rural field with a fort in the background, seen 'em all) where you fight actually matters. Also love the seasons. I was worried that it’d be a bit small, just the islands of Japan (minus Hokkaido) compared to the whole of Europe and parts of Asia and North Africa? Fortunately my fears were dashed, the map size is suitably epic.
This may have seemed like one big dig against Empire, but I think Empire did one thing better - naval battles. I’ve only fought a few in Shogun, but they lack…impact. Kind of the inverse of the land situation. Peppering with arrows lacks the same feel as blowing chunks of ships hulls off with cannon fire, splintering the wood and toppling masts. I do like way that land is included, though.
The little details are also great, like the way men lie writhing on the ground after a clash, the glinting katanas and spears and the ambassador’s reactions in diplomacy. Siege battles are also a million times better than in Empire. Ninja movies - also great. Not sure about all the agents though, think they should have stuck to the assassin/spy dynamic from the earlier games - how exactly do geishas differ from ninjas? I’m sure this sort of stuff will come to me in time, but for the moment it’s a bit confusing.
Not very far into it, but I’m going first into Bushido according to any missions I have (unlocking better units) and then far enough into Chi to manage my economy a bit more effectively. Post Roads and a little discounting and tax bonus can go a long way.