Shogun 2: Total War, who's playing?

The Game Room
81

Started my second Shimazu campaign a few days ago, partly because I wanted to try out Darth’s mod (which is very promising), and partly because I hadn’t read anything about the game before plunging into it and therefore was unprepared for the Real Divide event and didn’t know about the trade node bug. Therefore, my very spaced out, one-province-here-two-provinces-there empire quickly collapsed when everybody turned on me :slight_smile: (Seeing as I only managed to sign two or three trade deals I also didn’t have the financial reserves to do anything about it.)

My new campaign has been an utter blast! Started of consolidating the southern Island, which took a lot of years. (Playing Darth mod on Hard/Hard is a challenge, for me at least :slight_smile: ) I’ve now spent about 6-7 years consolidating my positions, researching and ramping up the economy, all the while playing the diplomatic/clandestine agent game on the main island in order to not let any clan becoming dominant. I’ve only snagged a couple of well placed rebel provinces on the mainland, as well as gold island to the north. Now, however, one of the clans (can’t remember the name), has become a bit to big for my liking, so I’ve built up three full strength armies, as well as ample reserves, and have sent my ninjas on a campaign of destruction, assassinations and sabotage to weaken my foe both economically as well as in leadership. I’ve already managed to send two of his provinces into open revolt, and am currently involved in diplomatic actions to pry his allies away from him. Then, I will strike, and with my reputation already nearing the DR event level, I assume I will enter into end-game mode pretty quickly after this.

Oh, have also been working heavily on expanding my naval strengt, including capturing the Black Ship, seeing as I have a lot of coast to defend. Am really looking forward to the upcoming campaign, as I believe it will get intense :slight_smile: As I’ve spent most of my time up to now on a strategy of dividing and power balance, I only have one ally - the Chosokabe, so I imagine I will have a lot of clans turning against me fairly soon - although I hope to offset this by creating a few vassals as I go along on my main offensive.

82

Never leave any vassal states within reach of undefended or lightly garrisoned cities after Realm Divide; remember that it’s continuously degrading. Betrayal is inevitable.

83

Yup, which is why I will only create new vassals after Realm Divide, I’ve read that vassals created after RD, won’t pick up the RD trait.

Besides, running Darth mod, and he has implemented a fix for RD, giving you a massive hit to diplomacy once RD hits, but then gradually lessening the effect - which seems more realistic to me. Hopefully I will have enough clout with my ally and some of my trade partners to survive that first bashing :slight_smile:

84

Granted, but as you say even Ashigarus work in that context where what you want is the morale shock and flanking penalties. The higher morale, combat stats and armour of the samurai don’t justify the higher price tag and upkeep in this situation where a pack of three legged mules would do the trick.

85

Realm Divide applies to all existing factions when it triggers, but that’s it. It doesn’t apply to new factions who (re)appear after the event happens, be it through rebels or vassal liberation. They got crushed once already, they just want to keep their heads down while the big boys play :slight_smile:

It’s still not necessarily a good idea to drop client states everywhere. If your vassal gets into a war, you’re obligated to join them in it or you take a ding to all your other alliance relations as well as the daimyo’s honor, which can kick off a nasty spiral, especially after Realm Divide. It’s a real no-win scenario when your new vassals, with their freshly reset faction relation table, manage to annoy a long-established partner.

Also, Realm Divide doesn’t necessarily mean everyone turns on you. I maintained two large alliances right up to the long campaign victory on my last one. The RD penalty builds slowly and caps out eventually. At full tilt, it’ll roughly neutralize your usual trade agreement + alliance + marriage, which means all you really have to do is cancel out territorial expansion with, well, everything else, which isn’t too hard, especially if they’re far away.

86

After winning the long campaign on hard my next goal in the current game is to capture every territory by 1600. Just for the fun of it. Seems do-able, since in my current game I’ve captured Kyoto and have about half of Japan and it’s only 1570. I think playing as the Date is actually easier than starting off on one of the smaller islands.

-XT

87

It depends on what you can afford to lose. Early game, Samurai Archers tend to be pretty expensive. But they can do a lot more damage (they’re surprisingly capable in melee). Add in their general improvements over Bow Ashigaru, and I don’t consider them worthless at all. One very nice thing about them is that they tend to beat Bow Ashigaru in archery. So if you can afford them, they’re great. Then you leave awounded units behind as garrisons while you press onward.

88

Garrisoning samurai isn’t really worth it due to the high upkeep relative to the cost of a new unit. For one turn’s worth of upkeep on samurai, you can get a brand new yari ashigaru unit, which’ll cost you less in the future. If you’re not expecting imminent attack or to rejoin your forces you’re better off just disbanding entirely. If your general has a replenishment boost or upkeep reduction, then you hurt yourself by pulling samurai out at all.

89

My current campaign is with a mod that’s supposed to disable the realm divide penalties. I’m the Shimazu, and after gaining control of Kyushu I sent a fleet over to around Settsu; I wanted to capture those libraries as early as possible. Since the Ashikaga declared war on me (because of an alliance), I decided to go ahead and capture Kyoto early. A year later, I was named Shogun despite having only 18 provinces. I didn’t win, but I got the special units and other Shogun bonuses. The turn after that, everyone promptly declared war on me. My fame gauge isn’t quite full yet. I don’t have a diplomacy penalty, but that’s probably the aforementioned mod. A couple of factions are only unfriendly with me, so I may be able to mend fences before too long.

90

One thing which really torques me off is that the reversed the order of units, dammit!

This irritated me with Medieval TW, but it absolutely drives me insane in Shogun. Becaue things worked very differently. Early clan conflict was all-Samurai (with a few amateurs or rogues running around helping). The end of the period was much different, with professional Ashigaru in massed, disciplined formations fighting. Samurai were still the “big iron” of the battlefield, but it’s the differences between a plain, sturdy infantry rifle and a high-precision machine gun.

The game should make Ashigaru units something you develop, because you shouldn’t start with those solid, several-lines-deep defender units. The early game should be more of a dance of different units. Then they can hand you the sturdier units and let you field much larger armies. I would really like to see increasing Chi and Bushido arts slowly increasing your base unit size.

On garrisoning Samurai Archers: it’s not about the money. You leave them behind because they’re really badass when defending castles. You can leave any wounded ones behind to control provinces and defend them from any sudden assault.

91

I’ve noticed that most of the times that I’ve been defending a fort, it’s usually on the turn after I capture it, so no time to repair the gates. Strangely, the AI still tries to scale the walls. The last time I didn’t even put archers on the ramparts; I put my katana samurai there with my archers behind them. When the yari ashigaru tried to scale the walls, they got smacked down hard.

92

I almost always ignore open gates when I’m assaulting, unless a large area inside the gate is completely undefended. You need to seriously outclass the enemy in troop quality to be able to push anything through that tiny chokepoint while fighting. Especially if you’re reliant on ashigaru, you’re better off just trying to get as many people up at once to swarm the enemy from multiple directions, because any single group is going to get cut down about as fast as they can trickle into the fort.

93

Seconded. Gates are for suckers. Always have been. Maybe a sword hero could punch through, or rather make his stand at the gate and cut down defenders one by one (in effect turning the bottleneck around). Other than that, zerging is the way to go.
Then again, I’m more of the “bring lots of trebuchets and burn the defenders to a crisp from the next hill over” school of sieging. Why get in when you can make them wish to the kami they could get out ?

94

Agreed. By the time I can get Samurai Archers I’m using at several thousand gold per turn. They are great garrison troops. Put two of the things in a first or second tier castle, with a couple of spear men and a regular archer or two and they can go up against a full stack of enemy troops. I’ve shredded Samurai armies in such a castle before, baiting them into attacking and holding my field army just out of their visual range, then after the broken remnants move back from their defeat snapping them up with the main army. It works well especially in the mid game, when everyone declares war on you and you are jammed up in the middle of Japan facing several clans with full stacks. If you put too many troops in a castle they either won’t attack it or they will siege the town until it surrenders (forcing you to have to fight as the attacker). Put a couple Samurai archers in there, with a couple of throw away troops and you can bait them into attacking and breaking their teeth on the castles walls.

-XT

95

I am rather late to the party; I have to get a new rig for the game.

Having never played a TW game extensively before, I find myself rather lost after the tutorial. Here are some beginners’ questions here, so please bear with me.

  1. Is it better to have archers in front or behind your melee troops?

  2. In the tutorial, my general has the Wedge ability, but in starting a new campaign, he don’t, how do I get it?

  3. Are there any ways to transport troops to the mainland bu ships?

  4. In the tutorial, before the battle begins, I remember being able to access various formations. Do I have to learn them for the real campaign?

96

In front, set on skirmish. If you set them behind, the AI will just deploy its own archers just beyond your range and pelt your melee troops, and archers are deadly in this game.
Skirmish seems to work just fine in this game, too. There’s no nonsense about the whole unit waiting for that one guy to finish his animation before they go away, or using the same skirmish range vs. infantry as vs. cavalry.

It’s one of the Bushido (ie military) techs, just like archer fire arrows or spear squares.

ETA: however I would advise you to ignore Bushido techs early on (or maybe just develop the first one for katana dojos) and focus on the Chi techs first, particularly the farm and market lines. That way you’ll build a strong economic foundation for your empire - besides, early on samurai of any kind are going to be out of your league.

I’m not sure what you mean but as usual, any fleet (including fleets composed of a single kayak) can transport any number of land units, yes.

Depends what you mean. If you mean stuff like cavalry wedge formations or spearmen spear walls, then some of that has to be researched, yes.

If you mean group formations that pop up on the left side of the screen when you form up a group (like Swooping Crane or Raging Tiger & whatnot) then those are available from the start - they’re just automated ways to setup your forces before battle if you’re not into deploying them by hand.

97

Actually cavalry wedge formation isn’t a bushido tech. It’s a general skill in the second tier. Which means I don’t get it, because I dump all my general skill points into the poet skill.

98

I think that there is a way to hide them, which can lead to confusion. IIRC, there is a small triangle on the mid-left side of the screen (if you aren’t seeing all the group formations) that if you click on it unhides the formations.

(I generally only use the formations when I have troops coming in from another stack off screen, as I’m usually fighting for my life somewhere else on the battle field and don’t have the time to wait for troops to move so I can reform them)

As Kobal2 says, definitely in front. What I do is set up my cheap archers way in front (on skirmish), the Samurai archers just past my main line, and if I have monk archers I set those behind the line (since they are very fragile, especially in skirmish). An enemy has to go through several zones of fire that way, and I can concentrate different zones on different parts of the enemy formation. The Samurai archers can fight, as well, especially if the main line is right behind them.

As Gorsnak says, I think you get this as your general levels up. There are all sorts of abilities you can give the general…I generally orient to enhancing the capabilities of the army, instead of the general and his personal guard, but then I don’t use my generals to fight except to pursue broken formations or if things are really desperate.

As Kobal2 suggests, I’d go with just the basics from the Bushido tech tree (until you’ve got all the important ones…even then, I’d look to build the stuff that gives you monk warriors and archers as a priority as well) and concentrate on the far right of the Chi tech tree concerning agriculture and money. In the long run that will help much more than having the best troops, especially when you start conquering a lot of provinces. I’ve had to stop campaigns in the past because I was out of food and didn’t have the latest agricultural tech, or because I was out of money since I didn’t have all of the merchant techs.

Any fleet can pick up any stack of troops (as well as specialty characters like ninja or monks). You just have to be careful…if you put your guys on a weak ship or fleet and the enemy swoops in and crushes it you lose the troops…which can seriously suck.

You move your stack of troops to a ship the same way you move them into a town…just put the ship or fleet offshore, then click on your stack and click on the fleet. To move off the ship you click on the fleet, then mouse over the land where you want to set them down. When the cursor changes to a troops icon you can offload.

-XT

99

Just to add, it’s best to embark/disembark troops in a harbour town. If you embark/disembark at a random place on the shore it uses whatever movement points your units have remaining. If you use a harbour you can still use any remaining movement points.

100

Didn’t know that. Neat. Thanks!

Can you disembark in your enemies’ harbours as well?