Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence / Souzou on Steam

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Ok, after playing more of Ascension I think I've found it's cracks too.

1) As RK47 said, bows and muskets don't matter much. And worse, it seems their stats are indeed swaped around. I did a series of tests yesterday and my bow units did more damage than my muskets units. Also, the muskets are supposed to inflict confusion on the enemy occasionally but it never happened to me. So, if you use muskets in this game you're handicapping yourself (and it's bizarrely unhistorical too).

2) The problem with CPU never getting resources is true too. I thought the problem was with the daimyo, but in truth the problem is with the CPU Lords. As they now must ask the daimyo for resources (instead of getting it themselves or having the players simply send it to them). The result is that the daimyo fiefs develop normally but the Lord's houses stay pretty inane through all the game. I think this is by design and not a bug per se, but it's a design that can make some CPU clans weaker in the long run, and thus handicap the AI/make the game easier.

3) Back to muskets, it's also weird how it's handled in Ascension. While in SOI its a valuable and finite resource that you must strategically buy and distribute to your trooos/lords, and which makes the player anxious to receive a visit of European traders (as they bring the biggest amount of muskets), in Ascension it's something you "research" and then produce yourself with the condition of having a rare and random resource (Iron sand). Again the consequences for this sound bad to me. First that it can make clans that traditional used muskets earlier (like Oda) never having thenopportunity to get them. Second that it makes the different types of merchants useless. And third that it nullifies an apparent interesting mechanic from SOI that is the spread of Christianity and muskets (it seems if you take bases that had Christianity in them, you would get access to muskets too).

4) Same for horses. As they depend upon rare resources on the map, you may have a campaign where Takeda never get it.

5) The AI criteria for assigning Lords is solely honor in Ascension, while in SOI it also counted the officer main stats. The result is that in Ascension there are more weaker stats lords taking care of fiefs and leading armies for the CPU, and sometimes even famous leaders (like Shibata Katsuye or Toshiie Maeda) end up without their own castles or armies. This makes the game easier, again.

That seems to be it. I've not played original SOI (yet, I'll get i too) but just by playing Ascension more it's clear that some of it's design decisions (and bugs) could have benefited from a couple more updates/rebalancing. It's not enough to make the game bad, but once you play enough and see those cracks, yes, it leaves a sour taste on your mouth. Original SOI benefited from more updates and a whole PUK (Power Up Kit, how the Japanese called it, basically expansion) and it shows. If Ascension had it's own PUK I believe it would end up even better.
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Then I recommend playing RTK13 because personal relations matters more in that game than Nobunaga's Ambitions.
The most contrasting example is: Recruitment of officers.
Everyone is recruitable once their lord is conquered in Nobunaga's Ambition, not so in RTK. Kill their friend/family member and they may swear revenge upon you and refuse to join. In Nobunaga's Ambition, I can bribe some lord's son long enough for them to defect
Thanks for the info. I'll try to get it. The difficulty is that the PUK is not available in Brazil and I've heard it's mandatory. But I'll find a way to circumvent this.
 

turkishronin

Arcane
Joined
Sep 21, 2018
Messages
1,730
Location
where the best is like the worst
Regarding the officers doing their own thing, I just noticed that one of my officers after suffering a defeat from the enemy, instead of retreating back to his base, just goes into the sea and wanders around until his unit runs of out supplies and dies. 10/10 AI
 

Grimlorn

Arcane
Joined
Jun 1, 2011
Messages
10,248
How doe it compare to this game?
hqdefault.jpg
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Some old game stuff is better.
In order RTK 2 / 3 - you cannot rely on the AI to hold up their part of the bargain. They'd ask for alliance and can break it when you show weakness. They promise reinforcements, but never send any.
Not so much in modern games, where the AI would always respect diplomatic ties despite having all the advantage in the world, regardless of their personality.

I'd also add that it was simpler back then and the player has less option to deal with the AI's superiority; the later games have way more options and features for players to take advantage of, but the developers have neglected in refining the AI to use the options effectively. Case in point: RTK11 battle map that is basically a huge overland map that lets you build almost anywhere and fight everywhere. This is an amazing departure from previous games and was a step in the right direction but the AI can never seem to grasp how to take advantage of the terrain and unit in combat.

And as always with KOEI's insistence in 'reinventing the game' after every number - we won't get the refinement the system truly needed. RTK11's open battlefield concept was abandoned. And the AI has to relearn new features again. And they tend to suck at it.
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
RK47 , how do you see NA14/SOI in regard to the series? Among the top, the bottom, etc? I didn't play many other entries (just NA Iron Triangle, RoTK 3 for SNES and RoTK 8 for PS2 that I loved because officer play was super fun) but I get some NUXcom vibes from SOI, in that it's streamlined but in a good way.

And continuing the analogy, what would you say is the ultimate experience, the Classic XCom of the series? (ignore gfx here)
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
RK47 , how do you see NA14/SOI in regard to the series? Among the top, the bottom, etc? I didn't play many other entries (just NA Iron Triangle, RoTK 3 for SNES and RoTK 8 for PS2 that I loved because officer play was super fun) but I get some NUXcom vibes from SOI, in that it's streamlined but in a good way.

And continuing the analogy, what would you say is the ultimate experience, the Classic XCom of the series? (ignore gfx here)

Nobunaga Ambition feels like a robotic game compared to RTK that has character personality that matters.
By the end of every Nobunaga Ambition's playthrough, I only remembered the logistical challenges and absurd clan advantages. I remember nothing about the characters. They're just numbers to me.
By the end of most RTK, I'd kill a lot of people, made friends, made enemies and witness some duels in battles that changed outcome drastically. These are the things that you went through in RTK and sometimes duels cannot be planned. That's way more memorable than borging my way through NA with spreadsheets.
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
RK47 , I meant to ask where NA14 fall within the NA series Lol. Other than that, I agree officer play is the best idea in the series. Rotk 8 was my fave because of this.

Btw, playing base SOI I miss some features from Ascension, the idea of Houses is one of them: even if weirdly implemented in some parts, I found it made the fictional characters feel more human, with their needs and drives showing up more, and you having a deeper layer to manage in the form of Houses compositions. Also, the base development model feels better in Ascension, where you just assign an officer and he stays there continuously until the district reaches max level or you have to relocate him to another task. In default SOI it...doesn't make sense that you have to realocate them each turn. It's tedious. Oh, and Ascension Inner circles are a cool idea too.

Overall, I've found Ascension actually improved the base SOI game, and playing the original now feel kinda simplistic experience (?). The exception being the thing with the muskets/merchants (what's the difference between the 3 kinds of merchants in Ascension anyway?). It's really a pity Koei didn't finish patching it.
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
Patron
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
28,396
Location
Not Here
Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Eh. I hope it's dead.
KOEI milked its cow dry with nonsensical price tags and continual resistance to improve upon existing system.
RIP, you greedy bastards.
 

turkishronin

Arcane
Joined
Sep 21, 2018
Messages
1,730
Location
where the best is like the worst
RK 47 is right about the lack of personality. It doesn't feel right when basically everyone joins your ranks after you defeat their clan. It sometimes end in awkward scenes like this.
IBAUMoI.jpg


Retainer loyalty was done much better in M&B where you couldn't just solve things with an expensive gift or giving a fief to one officer would anger the others, even worse if you were to give a fief to a commoner.
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
RK 47 is right about the lack of personality. It doesn't feel right when basically everyone joins your ranks after you defeat their clan. It sometimes end in awkward scenes like this.
IBAUMoI.jpg


Retainer loyalty was done much better in M&B where you couldn't just solve things with an expensive gift or giving a fief to one officer would anger the others, even worse if you were to give a fief to a commoner.
WTF are you talking about? Lots of officers refuse joining you based on their alliances. It's obvious by the "X" symbol on the prompt "What should we do with the prisoners" show up.

Even covert/enticing isn't guaranteed, as it depends on the compatibility between your daimyo and the officer (dependant on Personality and Values) and his own compatibily with their ruler.
 

Matador

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
1,631
Codex+ Now Streaming!
I have downloaded NA: rise to power and iron triangle. Which of the two do you consider the best one or the more appropiate for a noob?

Or maybe should I go straight for SOI?
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
:necro:

So, is Taishi actually good?
It's good yes, if too barebones and unbalanced (the PUK version is more complete but was never localized in English). It cuts the intense "farm work" micromanagement of predecessors to focus on the macro stuff: diplo, map painting, etc.

There's a new Nobunaga in the works, Rebirth, expected in 2021 in Japan and (probably) later in the west. I'm wondering what direction this series should go. I enjoyed the recent games but they always felt lacking in some way. I have this feeling they struggle to hit the same sweetspot of fun that the great west series do with more frequency (SMAC, MOO2, CK2, Shogun2, etc), and so always end up feeling like 7/10 games to me. SoI was fun at first but late game when you must delegate stuff to the AI and focus on conquest and diplo it became a chore as those aspects are almost Facebook-game levels of shallowness. Taishi is the opposite, better at conquest and diplo but shallow on domestics. I would be curious for what the fans community considers the best entries in the series, it's 10/10 games. If they exist.
 
Last edited:

Matador

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
1,631
Codex+ Now Streaming!
I have downloaded NA: rise to power and iron triangle. Which of the two do you consider the best one or the more appropiate for a noob?

Or maybe should I go straight for SOI?
Did you play RtP and IT? Are they good?

It's been a while since I play them to and didn't play them as much as Sphere of Influence Ascension which I think is the best of the three.

I remember liking some things more in Iron triangle and others more in Rise to power.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom