I’ve done the same as you, except for generals of the family who’ve just come of age. Then I’ll pump some points into survivability in order to retain him as long as possible. (Nothing’s worse than losing a four-star general to an ambush while trying to put a field stack together.)
If it takes 3-4 turns to replenish a unit you’re better off just disbanding and rebuilding it from scratch. A depleted unit costs as much upkeep as a full strength one, and upkeep is huge, roughly a quarter of the full cost, so it’s just bleeding you dry while you’re waiting on it. Replenishing also reduces the experience level of the unit, while a fresh one comes out with all the dojo and tech bonuses. Army cost management is a huge part of the game, especially by the end.
Correspondingly, there’s a general skill, underneath Poet, that simultaneously increases replenishment rate and reduces upkeep costs, drastically. At least from my late-game Legendary perspective, it seems like by far the strongest of the options.
If you have multiple depleted units of the same type, you can drag and drop to merge them together into a single unit, preserving their experience level. Better than just disbanding if you’ve got the option.
Finished my legendary Chosokabe campaign. I have to amend my earlier statement about the tactical AI being competent at siege battles. It does fairly well on the first tier of forts, but once castles expand into multi-level, the AI really begins to fall apart. It’s also crippled on siege defense by a complete refusal to ever leave the castle for any reason - even if it’s got cavalry units bottled up and the attacking force is nothing but archers. It skews the siege play far in the player’s advantage by the late game. If the campaign AI was more willing to starve out castles rather than assaulting with an insufficient force advantage, it’d be a lot more effective, because the tactical AI is surprisingly solid in open field combat.
The Realm Divided event also came as a surprise in its potency. Most strategy games like this tend to wind down in the late game into just being a series of well-controlled mopping up. In this one, once you’ve gained enough fame to have the country’s attention, an event fires off that steadily degrades your relations with everyone. Unless you invest heavily into diplomacy, even your staunchest allies eventually start to see their clan ending as your vassal. I really like the aura of paranoia it creates, as the question becomes when, not if, they’ll try to stab you in the back.
Unit balance seems pretty good. With the possible exception of the no-dachi samurai, each infantry unit has a time and place to uniquely excel, cavalry balances extreme power with extreme fragility, and the right ratio of ranged to melee power varies wildly depending on the terrain and unit mixes. Even the peasant fighters, generally useless in the Total War games, can present serious battlefield power in the right situations, and have high strategic utility due to their low cost, ready availability, and the immense upkeep costs on samurai forces. The special agents are all very powerful and are a core part of the campaign play rather than just an irrelevant sidegame as they often are.
So overall, I’d say that while Shogun 2 is, yet again, just another iteration of the same unchanging Total War formula, it’s the most polished of the bunch. Unlike the rest of the series, it’s also, thankfully, fairly clean of game-stopping bugs on release and the AI doesn’t pull nearly as many pants-on-head idiot maneuvers as it used to. It’s still only about 3/4ths of a strategic game squashed together with 3/4ths of a tactical game, but they’ve spruced up the weaker points of each enough that the overall effect is pretty engaging.
I know the thread is practically dead, but has anyone actually managed to win a long campaign on hard or above? I’m on my 4th long campaign game on hard and I still haven’t managed to win. The best I’ve managed to do is to capture the requisite 40 territories by 1605. In every game, just as I’m about to take Kyoto, regardless of my relationships with other clans, basically everyone in the game (including some of my vassals sometimes) declares war on me and with a single seeming purpose sets aside all other conflicts and throws literally hordes of stacks at me. Generally it’s all I can do for a couple of years to fend off the attacks as I watch my carefully horded money drop. In the last game I actually had over 250k in money and 8 food surplus and within 10 years I had dropped to less than 50k. By the end (this is the game I just said ‘fuck it’ and continued to play through until I finally captured everything, even though the game had officially ended) I was back to 3k per turn and had crushed most of the hordes, but I was still having to spend an incredible amount, and couldn’t take any territories as vassals, as within a few turns they would inevitably attack me, creating a problem in my rear territories.
So…anyone actually managed to win, and if so how the hell did you do it??
-XT
I finished the long campaign on legendary. The time limit wasn’t an issue for me, I had 15 years to spare on victory, and most of the real fighting had ended 5 years before that. It sounds like you’re playing ultra-conservatively. I can’t imagine having 25k in the bank, much less 250k. 250k is enough to recruit three unit-capped all-samurai armies and pay their upkeep for 4 years, and that’s a force strong enough to simply sweep through most of Japan as fast as they can march. You could have done an awful lot of damage if you’d turned that money into military, and probably reduced your backstabbing threats in the process.
Or rather, your shameful greed and womanly ways betray you! There is no economic victory in the sengoku jidai! 
I just finished a hard Date domination campaign, won it by 1590. (Had control of over 50 regions by 1570, spent some time on the back and forth.)
There are some things to keep in mind:
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The Realm Divided is inevitable and irrevocable. Once it starts, your relationships with other nations will keep degrading over time - even your alliances and vasselages will inevitably founder. Never leave any states open behind your lines; fighting a war on multiple fronts will doom you.
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Keep a screen of ninja in front of your conquest’s advance. Keep metsuke with your field stacks to counteract enemy agents and try to use monks to pre-convert (or at least spread dissent) in clans who’ve adopted Christianity. Essentially, the moment a clan adopts christianity, you need to flood them with monks.
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Control the waves. Having your trade routes blocked will spell economic death, quickly. By the time you’re ready to trigger the Realm Divided, having three or four stacks of medium bunes is necessary. Better ships if you can, but don’t waste money on the biggest ships if you don’t have to. Also, send one or two of your generals to the seas early on, it’ll help having a proficient admiral later as the enemy likes ganging up on you with multiple stacks. I’ve not yet experimented to see if blocking enemy ports actually affects their production capabilities, but I doubt it.
Some Date-specific advice:
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It’s easily overlooked, but there’s a trade-point in the way north-eastern point of the map. Your first actions should always be to build a harbour and then a trade port in your capitol city and then immediately send trade ships over there. Get a full stack of trade ships over there, you’re probably not going to get hold of the western trade points before the endgame.
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As soon as possible, capture the small island to the north-west. It’s the starting area of a minor clan (can’t recall their name right now) which doesn’t have any friends. What it does have is a gold mine and a good position for a nanban trade port. This will help fund your early expansions (first 15 years).
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The northern territories are large and usually has multiple entry points. I recommend building a sake den on your second territory to get ninja right away, as getting good intel of troop dispositions will be necessary to avoid getting sidestepped by the enemy. (In my first campaign, I showed up for a siege with one stack. The Hattori retaliated by sending three full stacks along the opposite coast and razed their way all the way to my capitol.)
Anyone know what happens if you take Kyoto well before they turn on you?
Blockading a port doesn’t affect its production. Ships can be made, they just can’t leave the port, nor can outside ships enter, without attacking the blockading force. It’s basically just like parking right outside the port with your zone of control, except parking lets you take a cut (up to 100% with enough ships) of the trade route instead of shutting it down outright.
The northeastern trade post is, unfortunately, just iron. Date especially has a ready source of iron in a province close to their capital, so it’s not nearly as lucrative as the sole sources of silk, cotton and incense in the western trade posts. It’s a low-hanging fruit and can pay for itself if you have enough trade partners to export more than your land production puts out, but it’s probably not worth a rush to build a trading port while you’re still putting out the initial fires. The gold mine is totally worth every bit of effort though
I’m currently on a coop campaign with Oda. I appreciate why they’ve got such a crappy starting position now: the ashigaru bonuses are insane. I’m fielding larger and -more- armies than the legendary AI is, and still maintaining a strong economy, because the troops are dirt cheap, quick to throw together and utterly, completely expendable. The peasant forces are far stronger here than you’d expect from a Total War game. You don’t need dojos and the long infrastructure chain involved in them, you don’t need the hefty pricetag of samurai, you just throw wave after wave of your own men at the computer until it shuts down. Auto-resolve is awfully generous with enough weight of numbers available.
I must commit seppuku at once for my shame. Yeah…I’ve always been a turtle type player, very methodical, and I like to have a large cash reserve before I start my end game push. The trouble is that the end game push has always come to me and I’m in no position to do much about it. One of the problems I think I’m seeing is that I usually have 2-3 field armies at most, using the best troops available instead of cannon fodder. Maybe the key is to have a bunch more low or medium quality armies than a couple really good armies.
The other thing I’m finding is that, to me at least the tactical AI is driving me nuts. It seems a lot better than in previous games, and so even though I’m winning a lot of fights (most of them really), I’m getting attrited to death. I’ve noticed that the enemy AI seems to really like archers too, and that a lot of armies I’m going up against are half archers in some cases. This SHOULD be a cavalry armies dream, but what I see happening is that they wipe out my cavalry charging from the flanks if I send them out in front, and they the damn samurai archers can hold off whatever is left! If I send in the foot first and move my cav to the flanks my foot gets the shit kicked out of them before the horse can drive home. If I set up a defensive line then they either smack my line troops or my own archers. I’ve never had these kinds of problems in previous TW games.
-XT
Yeah, archers are murderdeath. Even Ashis are pretty darn fearsome and precise. Could stand to be toned down a bit. One possible option is to use archer monks - they’re expensive, but they can fire further than regular archers. Outranging them forces them to move towards you, even if they’re on the defensive. Helloooo ambushes.
Also, don’t forget the Spread Out formation while you’re closing in. Makes a huge difference. Fought two battles recently, both were 1 general units of mine vs. 1 unit of ashi archers. First one, charged straight in from out of range, 13 survivors. Second time I spread them out, charged in and toggled close formation right after their second volley. 18 survivors. Just don’t forget to toggle it off once your troops are in melee or they’ll get butchered.
Other than that, which kind of cav are you using ? Light cav is hopeless. Good for rooting out hiding units, chasing routers, mayyybe flank or backstab a unit that’s pinned by infantry. But mostly, don’t bother. Sword cav is pretty meh as well - they’re a bit worse than regular Katana Samurai, only of course they’re faster. There’s also fewer of them and they’re big targets, so they don’t last long.
Yari Cav is where it’s at, but they have very little staying power. Charge in, disengage immediately, repeat. Not sure if wedge is good or not, I never really bothered with it in any TW game so far - maybe I’m using it wrong but most of the time it wedges the cav alright… and it’s a bitch to get back out.
As for your trouble with the Realm Divide, well, you and me both pal. This game is hell on turtlers - cheats its arse off too. Whenever the AI has armies hidden by the fog of war, it underhandedly spawns free units and/or gives XP to those it has up to a “balanced” point - basically until the fight is even between you and them. Which would be all right if it did that on a Japan-basis rather than a Clan basis. As it stands, not only is financial warfare as well as sabotaging troop buildings useless (the AI will even spawn units it cannot possibly build) but the more map is hidden, the more Clans border you and the longer you wait before launching WW0, the more you’re screwed by this “balance”.
Apparently there’s already mod out there to zap this crummy mechanic, but I haven’t tested it out myself - I’m a bit afraid that, once deprived of its cheated units and having to actually build stuff the AI will resort to waves upon waves of ashigaru…
Archer monks are expensive, but worth it later in the game to supplement your ashigaru and taking out pesky elite units like no-dachi or naginata samurai. I wish their unit stack was larger though. Samurai bowmen aren’t really worth the effort though, in my opinion - you’re better off just teching past them and getting monks. I just tested it and two archer ashigaru takes out one archer samurai unit just fine.
I actually haven’t gotten any of the monk combat units (just the regular monks you can buy to convert enemy characters). I usually go the gun powder route. I also go with the samurai archers, but maybe that’s been a mistake.
-XT
I don’t think Samurai Archers are really worth it either. Maybe once you’re absolutely swimming in gold and you’ve got the buildings to make them at the same rate as Ashis and even then, heh. They’re not explodingly better at shooting than peasants and while they can certainly fend off spearmen in melee, if you’re sending your archers in melee you’re probably doing something wrong :). The higher armour helps in missile duels, but then you can also make armoured ashigarus if you’ve got a blacksmith or two.
The only good use I’ve found for them is to defend bottleneck castles. There they perform admirably on the walls where they get to both fire at them on the way then melee the survivors, all without risks of facing cavalry.
I preferred samurai archers over the monks. Being able to hold their own in melee is pretty handy in the flexibility it gives, as it means your archers are never dead weight, even in the heavy scrums where you can’t shoot at anything without hitting your own men, and they can even handle most cavalry if need be. More than a few of my sieges as Chosokabe were won with my archers climbing the walls and carving up the survivors after running out of arrows. Adding another research path and upgraded building into the mix makes the monks significantly harder to produce, too.
Cavalry is definitely very finicky, though. Light cav is useful only on the charge - they will lose against everything except bow ashigaru in extended combat, and have to be continually pulled out to reform and charge again. Very much only a support unit. Yari cavalry is only a little better, unless they’re fighting enemy horsemen. Katana cavalry are the only ones that are actually solidly useful as an extended combat unit, and can dismount to simply murder yari ashigaru straight up. I’ve yet to find a good use of bow cav, they just don’t throw enough weight of fire to do much more than annoy.
Bow cav is good if the enemy doesn’t have much or any cav of their own. I send them way out in front and on the flanks and they will draw off at least some of the enemy force from the main attack. You can set them to skirmish mode and they will stay out of melee range of anything attacking them.
They suck if the enemy has enough cav to go after them and to still come after your main force, though, so I generally don’t use them much.
-XT
I tried bow monks for a bit. I found them too fragile for field battles, where their range bonus is easy to charge through. In sieges, they’re totally different from bow samurai. For starters, they can whittle down the archers on the ramparts with impunity. I imagine that if you’re patient, you could even have them shoot a volley of fire arrows, stop and wait for the cooldown, shoot another volley of fire arrows, rinse and repeat. When I took Kyoto in my first campaign, they could do this across the citadel’s moat. They cleared the way for my infantry to ford the moat (the bridges are apparently just decorative), but they were useless after they ran out of ammo. I felt a little undermanned storming the citadel, and kinda wished that I had instead brought bow samurai that can melee a bit.
After two and a half campaigns, I’ve gotten to the point with this game that I’m ready to tinker around with mods and whatnot. I’m trying out a few minor mods along with some mega-sized unit shenanigans. If you track down your preferences.script file (on my machine it’s in C:\Users\My Name\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\scripts), you can alter your campaign_unit_multiplier without any mod at all (but it might reset if you adjust your graphics settings). A value of 1 is the highest you can set it in-game, meaning 160 men in a katana samurai unit and 200 men in a yari ashigaru unit. I set it to 5; you have to start a new campaign for it to kick in, but a katana samurai unit is 800 men and a yari ashigaru unit is 1000 men. It’s ridiculous. The auto-resolve can’t really cope with it, but even the early battles I’ve fought so far have been epic and bloody. I think that even in proportion to unit size, there are more casualties. You can’t just crash your line into the enemy line, even if you have superior troops. Units take longer to rout, so flanking and other trickiness is more useful.
Upon further testing, I think I set the unit sizes too big. My computer is pretty beefy, but battles with nearly fulls stacks make it run strangely choppy. I can still move the camera around smoothly, but the troops on the field have a framerate of around 1/sec. In my computer’s defense, there were about 27,000 men on the battlefield.
Finally won a game on hard. I just have to turn off my tendencies to turtle and build up and just attack. I also used my fleet well, and used extra stacks early in the game to go after ever rebel province that turned up before everyone went nuts and attacked. That let me get some good provinces around Kyoto before the Realm Divided madness hit everyone, and that let me break up Japan into thirds (I had both of the large islands, a foot hold on the North Western part of the main Island, and most of the central regions around Kyoto before everyone turned on me, so I could isolate clans and take them out one at a time, while my defensive fortresses just soaked up attack after attack and whittled down all those stacks the computer gets).
Tried out bow monks and naginita monks, both of which work well in certain circumstances. I really like samurai bowmen for defensive battles, as well as samurai musketmen, and you don’t have to shift them from the walls as much. I had a good mix this last time between disposable, cheap troops and high value troops, and it worked well. I enjoyed some of the really key defensive battles, as it’s a lot of fun to have to constantly shift your guys around to make sure the right guys are on the battlements and protect the fragile missile troops. I had a few battles were a couple of ashigara archers, some spear-men and the garrison troops took on full stacks of high value enemies and managed to win.
-XT
Dead wrong, there. Always send your archers into melee - even ashigaru.
The reason is that it will turn the tide if you time it right. First they weakent he enemy, then you wait until the enemy morale is breaking in melee with your dudes. Then the archers charge in and the foe flees. That’s not the only way to use them, but it’s effective.