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

Nostaljaded

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RK47

Give Taiko Risshiden (太閤立志伝) 4 & 5 PC version a go if you are into turn-based games.
(Chinese version available as well if your terracotta reading skill is passable)

Taikou_Risshiden5_9.jpg


yamanaka_shikanosuke.jpg
 

TigerKnee

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I swear I saw RK47 post a really similar post before.

I guess that means Koei has been making some half-baked games recently
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
I swear I saw RK47 post a really similar post before.

I guess that means Koei has been making some half-baked games recently

I can respect NA:SoI's price point.
I honestly don't understand why this game is worth USD60 especially to owners of NA:SOI
 

RK47

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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Welcome to McNobunaga.
This is your first day on the job?
OK Steve, I will assign you to a kitchen.
You must now grow buns, make beef patties, bust out our world famous golden fries, have pickles ready and apply sauce.
Understand? Good.
If you put the frier next to the fridge, it will increase efficiency and produce more fries.
Never forget that increasing oil flow around the friers will increase the output as well.
This is important, because more fries = more customer.
More customer is needed to win the war against other fast food chain.
But don't forget, we can't go to war without Coke, so build a few coke dispensers.
To increase Coke output, build it close to the ice dispenser.
Good. Special resources like Chicken allows you to create McNuggets when you place the proper appliances around it.
Try it now.
See? Now you have McNuggets to increase popularity and customers!
Don't forget when you have enough resources, you can apply Staff Training to unlock new machines and improve the productivity even more.
Advanced Fryer station needs Advanced Refrigeration and Advanced Oil Flow to hit Level 5.
Alright, order up. Please provide the following:
1500 Buns
750 Patties
1000 Fries
800 Coke

Serve the Daimyo and be honorable!
Ganbatte motherfuckers.
 

RK47

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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Hi, I'm Oda. Your floor manager.
I see you've been productive lately.
Here is 100 Honor.
Good job.
I will now give you new rank of Newcomer.
I see you have space for a new Coke Machine here.
Please buy one and put it here, I will give you 200 litres of coke if you do so.
Keep up the good work.
 

RK47

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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Hi, I'm Honda. I work here too.
Let's be friends.
Would you like to marry my daughter?
No pressure.
 

RK47

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Steve, my station is running low on Coke,
Can you provide 100 Coke?
Thanks Steve, you are true nakama.
 

RK47

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The absurdity of vassal battle is the straw that broke the camel's back.
I finally gathered enough troops to participate in a campaign.

01.jpg

02.jpg

03.jpg


Whereby upon clicking me and my troops were magically teleported to the battle with the man himself.

04.jpg


That wasn't the end of the confusion. Apparently my wife joins in as well.

05.jpg


A heated battle ensues as both sides took heavy casualties through atrocious AI where I can't even tell my own wife what to do. Both Oda and I lost our wingman and we ended up on a showdown.

06.jpg

07.jpg


A fight I would've nearly won if not for his fucking ability.

08.jpg

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OK LAH U WIN LAH HAPPY NOW?

11.jpg


The battle ends, I return to the whole district management again and try to contribute to the whole kickstarting process.
WONDERFUL.

12.jpg


KOEI TECMO: PUTTING THE FUN IN REFUND.
nothanks.png


You guys should try it yourself.

lol-no.png


Sad!
 
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Silva

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SoA default is on sale for PS4, but Ascension is not. Should I get the default? (I understand Ascension is shit?). And how are these games nowadays anyway. Did updates improve them?

Oh and ninjas. I want ninjas. Are there ninjas in these games? Can I recruit Hattori Hanzo and the Iga clan to burn my rivals farms down?
 
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SoA default is on sale for PS4, but Ascension is not. Should I get the default? (I understand Ascension is shit?). And how are these games nowadays anyway. Did updates improve them?

Oh and ninjas. I want ninjas. Are there ninjas in these games? Can I recruit Hattori Hanzo and the Iga clan to burn my rivals farms down?

The game you want is Inindo: Way of the Ninja (aka Inindo: Datou Nobunaga)
 

eric__s

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Ascension is not shit. It's the same game as Sphere of Influence, but with the added ability to play as an individual, not just as a force. If you play as a daimyo, your game will play very similarly, if not the same, as Sphere of Influence. I'd say it's better.

Town building as an officer is very tedious and I don't enjoy it much, but it's not a big part of the game and after you've gained a few ranks, you don't need to worry about it anymore. If you want to play as the lowest ranking officer, you'll need to do the town building, but you could also just start as a higher ranked character too.

Definitely get Ascension.
 

Silva

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Ascension is not shit. It's the same game as Sphere of Influence, but with the added ability to play as an individual, not just as a force. If you play as a daimyo, your game will play very similarly, if not the same, as Sphere of Influence. I'd say it's better.

Town building as an officer is very tedious and I don't enjoy it much, but it's not a big part of the game and after you've gained a few ranks, you don't need to worry about it anymore. If you want to play as the lowest ranking officer, you'll need to do the town building, but you could also just start as a higher ranked character too.

Definitely get Ascension.
Are you saying Ascension is an improvement over Sphere even in the daimyo game, is that it? Because everywhere I look Ascension is criticized for being a pool of bugs, inocuous features and shitty AI. Was it updated/fixed through patches, or was everybody wrong from the beginning?
 

Silva

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Ok, got it. Started a recommended scenario (Mori clan) on easy to know the game mechanics, and Ivr already conquered 10 or so castles.

My first impression was finding this shit boring as fuck, and even regretting the purchase, but then things clicked and I couldn't stop playing it. As Mori you have two sons nicknamed "the two rivers" (kikkawa and kobayakawa - "kawa" means river in jap) that you see growing from promising talents into truly war beasts that's really gratifying. Lately my conquest plans usually involve thinking "Should I release the "rivers" over them, or are some common troops enough?"). There's this RPG aspect to the game (not so different from CK2) that's really interesting.

One thing I've heard though is that officer play is broken because there's no competition at all, and the game assumes you'll become super-powerfyl and depose of (or abandon) your daimyo eventually. Anyone can confirm that?

Mire impressions later.
 

eric__s

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Ascension is not shit. It's the same game as Sphere of Influence, but with the added ability to play as an individual, not just as a force. If you play as a daimyo, your game will play very similarly, if not the same, as Sphere of Influence. I'd say it's better.

Town building as an officer is very tedious and I don't enjoy it much, but it's not a big part of the game and after you've gained a few ranks, you don't need to worry about it anymore. If you want to play as the lowest ranking officer, you'll need to do the town building, but you could also just start as a higher ranked character too.

Definitely get Ascension.
Are you saying Ascension is an improvement over Sphere even in the daimyo game, is that it? Because everywhere I look Ascension is criticized for being a pool of bugs, inocuous features and shitty AI. Was it updated/fixed through patches, or was everybody wrong from the beginning?
Sorry for the late reply, very busy lately.

Ascension is an improvement over Sphere in all regards, and I'm not sure where these reviews are coming from. The biggest feature is the inclusion of officer play, but there are a number of new daimyo features as well, and if I recall, there is a new diplomacy system that is much better than the older one. I can't remember the specifics of the AI changes, I'm sure it's about the same. I don't recall any bugs, but I do remember getting random graphical bugs in Sphere of Influence that I did not get in Ascension.

Oh, vou forgot the ninjas. Do the exist in Ascension? If so, what do they do?
Yes, there are ninjas, and you can even play as one if you'd like. Hattori Hanzo is a playable character, as are a number of other prominent ninjas. I don't think the ninja officers themselves do too much, but there are ninja clans (and other clans as well) that you can ally with who will help you during battle and help prevent subterfuge being used against you.

One thing I've heard though is that officer play is broken because there's no competition at all, and the game assumes you'll become super-powerfyl and depose of (or abandon) your daimyo eventually. Anyone can confirm that?
This is true. It's very easy to become extremely powerful during officer play because you can just keep switching sides when things turn south for your lord. You can make requests from your daimyo, such as additional castles or officers, and get all of his best stuff, and once you become the second highest rank, everything you conquer automatically becomes yours. If your lord is conquered, you can continue playing under your new lord. It is much easier than playing as a daimyo from the get-go, and a good way to build up power.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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And it makes for a pretty fun experience climbing the ranks and starting with a crappy ass hut in the mountains or somesuch, before gaining the clout to make preparations for a massive backstab. ie, my campaign as the strapping young Hidetora Ichimonji ended with stabbing Nobunaga in the back after I had seized the North from his enemies, thus leaving Ichimonji controlling a somewhere around 25% at the time of betrayal.
 

Silva

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Thanks for the info. At this point I think people who said Ascension is broken is overreacting. Yes l officer play is kinda dull because there isn't really competitors and it feels like your fief is in its own pocket dimension separated from the rest of the map, but then it seems the intention here is for you to ascend to daimyo eventually and not really spend the rest of your life as a retainer. It doesn't intend to be Sid Meier Sword of the Samurai.

About daimyo play, I'm finding it solid and didn't notice any serious bug so far. I've heard people saying the CPU daimyos don't buy resources nor assign lords and because of that their domains don't evolve through the game or something, which I call BULLSHIT because my Chosokabe campaign shows all the CPU domains growing like shit - I took a picture of the general Bases list from all of Japan in he beginning and the biggest fief was Nijo with 4 districts or something, now 5 years later Oda owned Gifu fief has 15 (!!!) districts together with half a dozen another ones. So, as I said, Bullshit.

One supposed bug I didn't have the opportunity to check is the weather effects on troops. Some people say in SOI heavy snow, bad weather etc. nullified muskets fire/bow volleys/cavalry charges etc. and it doesnt work in Ascension. I'm going to check this next. But judging by the other "bug" above I suspect the devs must have released some stealth updates and fixed most things but the haters decided not give it another chance.
 

Silva

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By the way, how do you guys compare this formula to the other more popular western games like EU4 and Total War? From my part I'm finding it really refreshing. It's like it's a midway between EU grand strategy qualities and Total War tactical qualities, with a heavy dose of CK2 human management, only it's in a more streamlined package than all of those. I must admit I'm really liking it. Let's see where my opinion falls when the honey moon ends.

Edit: I forgot to cite Civ over there. Honestly though? I find Civ one of the weakest strategy formulas. The only Civ game I love is Alpha Centauri and that's more due to it's ideological factions personalities and their effects in gameplay (the stats bonuses, social engineering, etc) that makes me feel like I'm roleplaying.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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I actually rather like the little village in a pocket dimension that you get. It's a pretty likeable little hamlet with the right sort of touches to make it seem to have a bit of life in it.


Anyway, personally I'd say it's a huge leg-up over either of them, because it gets a lot of the little details right that neither of them even try (ie, harvest and growing food) and has a great map (and because of the way movement and turns work, it's used much better for strategy than in Total War, and in a way moving all those troops in the right places for pincers on some mountain road is equally tactical), but very importantly it basically jettisons anything that doesn't service the gameplay experience. It makes it more streamlined, in a very positive manner. The reduced number of units in tactical battles is a good example of this, it makes the battles far less chaotic and maneuvering more interesting (whereas I've only ever had fun in a battle in Total War when I defended a castle in modded Shogun 2 against a numerically greatly superior enemy force, using the castle's structure like it's intended to; with this I've always enjoyed trying to find the best way to engage enemy concentrations on my chosen battlefield and conserve troops). It's got that same weakness as Total War though, which is that there's not that many ways to play it differently, which is what Paradox excels at even before considering mod support.
 

Silva

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My very ignorant opinion from looking at couple reviews indicates Taishi seems a weak entry in the series, not because it was released incomplete as is the norm until an expansion/PUK comes along to fix it, but because it's design choices were bad, throwing everything that was being built through the last entries in the trash and changing things for changes sake.

I actually rather like the little village in a pocket dimension that you get. It's a pretty likeable little hamlet with the right sort of touches to make it seem to have a bit of life in it.

Anyway, personally I'd say it's a huge leg-up over either of them, because it gets a lot of the little details right that neither of them even try (ie, harvest and growing food) and has a great map
Dont know if by "them" here you mean EU, TW or Civ or all them, but I think you're touching here something I felt immediately when I fired up the game: it strives for immersing the player in this world and the personal stories of its characters in a way neither of them do, with the sole exception of CK2 (and even then, NA: Ascension makes it in a stark different way). Which brings me back to my earlier point about Alpha Centauri: I play games to be immersed in stories and scenarios first, and to engage with mechanics second. Alpha Centauri understands this, NA understands this, CK2 too. Europa Universalis on the other hand, always felt so abstract and numbers-centered to me that I could never endure it. All that is to say I think the "manage your fief with some pretty gfx hearing a cricket in distancr and smelling the smell of cow dung by the morning" has its value.

Anyway I digress. It's interesting to see how Japan came up with it's own formula that's pretty unique and (kinda) free of western influences, like an animal that evolved in this isolated environment.

(Btw I've been playing japanese tabletop rpgs and the same reasoning applies. If you can, take a look at Tenra Bansho Zero, Ryuutama, and Shinobigami for eg. and contrast them with D&D, Vampire etc)
 
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RK47

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I wouldn't bother trying Taishi with that kind of price tag.

Anyways, Ascension isn't that great of an improvement IMO. The biggest deal is having a hard nerf on most officers active ability. That was a step in the right direction, but they removed Cavalry charge & Musket Volley for some reason and replaced this with this mini-game that boosts attack power temporarily from RNG. Pro-tip: Don't get any unit types - and just spam Bows. Go to officer mode and keep spamming the Release attack, do formation change until the Release appears again and click.

Officer play is a constant disappointment at your lord's inability to manage diplomacy and war. And yes, the best way to play an officer is to spam the ever-living crap out of Food & Troop and carry your force to victory.
Try playing as one of Mori's sons and you'll see what I mean about stupid lords.

And their attempts to add 'personality' by having the officers randomly decide to do their own thing in battle is goddamn annoying, nothing like suffering additional casualties because officers decide to pull out of engagements at random interval. You can override it, but why even add it in the game? It's pointless and annoying. Autonomy on a macro level is ok. But they're still meh at improving their fiefs.

I like how you hold 'Oda clan' as the example of the game's AI being capable. I suggest you re-examine the name of the game's title and realize that the entire meta is pro-Oda. His events, officers, territories plus resources are insurmountable by other AI clans.

I play games to be immersed in stories and scenarios first, and to engage with mechanics second.

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.
 
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