Shogun: the only worthy Total War ?

[Silva]

Understand "worthy" here as a fairly challenging game, not as a lego-like "mount your empire" game where the AI cant win even if you're a retardo playing blindfolded.

Now, I've never give the Shoguns much love before. I met the series with Shogun 1, but found it too difficult and rapidly gave up on it. Then some years later I've met Rome and its Total Realism and Barbarorum mods and I was in love. That is, until I realized it was so ludicrously easy even on VH/VH that my will to play it simply vanished. And then it went downhill from there: Medieval 2 was the same only on different garment; Empire reached a new low for the series and the entire strategy genre; Nappy was kind of cool but too linear for my tastes.

Then comes Shogun 2. I got it at launch but never played much, actually. Then I read some online discussion where people say its actually a good and challenging game, and I decide to reinstall it. But down there inside my chest I keep feeling like "Nah, people are exagerating, it must be more of the same wish-fullfilling retard AI experience as all games in this series".

Man, was I wrong. I got the latest Darthmod and went for H/H campaign. First FOTS, then default Sengoku. And the AI wiped the floor with my ass ALL THE TIME. Ok, I have some "house-rules" in place (Iron Man mode ON except if it was a technical mistake on my part instead of strategic one, and never getting one of the "easy" clans), but even then I hoped to fare a little better. Im a Alpha Centauri veteran damn it. In last campaign I got a checkmate from the AI where I lost my capital and half my generals in just one move.

So BROS. illuminate me. Is Shogun really the only worthy game in this series ? Or its also piss easy but Im simply bad at it ?


(oh, any tips on how to win with Oda and endure realm divide is welcome)

 

[flabbyjack]

Medieval 1: Total War
It had realistic collission physics between soldiers, whereas subsequent Total War treated squads like 'blobs' and they would rubber-band together it was so weird and unrealistic. It actually has huge gameplay consequences too...
In subsequent titles it was squad vs squad where 1 soldier = 1 hp, more or less.
In Medieval 1, each soldier fought other soldiers with a many:many relationship, potentially. Usually it was 1:1.

 

[Jick Magger]

It's probably the tightest out there. It lacks the variety of the other games in the series in favor of a more straight-forward rock-paper-scissors approach to combat. Since units in general don't have great armor battles tend to go by much quicker than in other games as well. I do appreciate what they were going for with Realm Divide, as the biggest complaints of the earlier games in the series was that end-game was a boring slog of you subjugating territories in the far corners of the map that were too weak at that stage to resist you, but feel the way they executed it was a bit ham-fisted, with everyone on the map, regardless of their pior relationship with you, will immediately band together and gang-fuck you, so there's no real way to mitigate it diplomatically.

 

[Silva]

Medieval 1: Total War
It had realistic collission physics between soldiers, whereas subsequent Total War treated squads like 'blobs' and they would rubber-band together it was so weird and unrealistic. It actually has huge gameplay consequences too...
In subsequent titles it was squad vs squad where 1 soldier = 1 hp, more or less.
In Medieval 1, each soldier fought other soldiers with a many:many relationship, potentially. Usually it was 1:1.

Yep, I've played a bit of this, with the expansion "Vikings" if I aint mistaken. I've found it as hard as Shogun 1 at the time so I ended up giving up quickly too. Would it be good to play nowadays ?

It's probably the tightest out there. It lacks the variety of the other games in the series in favor of a more straight-forward rock-paper-scissors approach to combat. Since units in general don't have great armor battles tend to go by much quicker than in other games as well. I do appreciate what they were going for with Realm Divide, as the biggest complaints of the earlier games in the series was that end-game was a boring slog of you subjugating territories in the far corners of the map that were too weak at that stage to resist you, but feel the way they executed it was a bit ham-fisted, with everyone on the map, regardless of their pior relationship with you, will immediately band together and gang-fuck you, so there's no real way to mitigate it diplomatically.

What you describe of Realm Divide didnt occur in my game, at least not so radically. In my two failed campaigns as Oda my allies remained with me till the end. Perhaps its an effect of Darthmod ?

 

[Jick Magger]

What you describe of Realm Divide didnt occur in my game, at least not so radically. In my two failed campaigns as Oda my allies remained with me till the end. Perhaps its an effect of Darthmod ?

Probably. IIRC in vanilla the moment Realm Divide occurs your relationship with other factions is immediately hit with a -50 per-turn status effect that doesn't go away, so after around two-or-three turns pretty much every faction in the game turns on you.

 

[praetor]

What you describe of Realm Divide didnt occur in my game, at least not so radically. In my two failed campaigns as Oda my allies remained with me till the end. Perhaps its an effect of Darthmod ?

yes. modding RD was one of the first things modders did early on. speaking of mods, it's a pity they released proper modding tools so late in the lifecycle so most modders left and abandoned their projects since there were a couple pretty good ones (certainly better and even more realistic than Darthmod), like TROM and Sekigahara, but now they're mostly broken or barely usable. nowadays, there's only Realism+ (which is a bit too pedantic and gets boring) and the Imjin war (which just released v2.0, but it still requires quite a bit of polishing... which i doubt it'll be done since it's pretty much a single dude with a tiny bit of support in the art department)

 

[Silva]

praetor, care to talk more about Trom and Sekigahara ? What do they do and why its better than Darth ?

Also, am I right to conclude that Darth nerfs the matchlock ashigarus because of the morale boost it gives to all units ? (the main function of matchlock was the morale impact, right ?)

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Shogun 2 is the game I'm playing the most right now.

It's pretty great, in many ways improving on Medieval 2's faults on RTS field but at the same time failing in a few ways on grand map side of things.

The city (and clan) development is lackluster in general, since variety of culture is non-existant within the setting of the game. Diplomacy has many important things missing from options available to players such as trades for province, demands for provinces and all that. Threat mechanic is wonky.
As it's been said above, they needed to spice things up for late game but RD shouldn't have been that crude: it is poorly executed and Clan's fame level estimation seems very arbitrary. (in 1 campaing I took 4 province but won 4 heroic victories and the RD hit, in another it didn't happen until I took Kyoto despite having captured all of Shikoku and Kyushu provinces which is around 12 in total )

However, the pacing of campaing is excellent, you have to push fast to get the 25 provinces by the end of short campaing, because otherwise you will be dredging through full stacks of ashigaru units by turn 10 and those units wear you out and ruin your army's momentum.

Agents are much more useful now, and I've noticed that I've fought with them the most instead of my armies. (revolts, sabotages, etc)

Found FotS to be pretty easy, truth be told but it was really damn fun, I'd really want to see me some WW1 done in that engine with the same level of polish. FotS is seriously great and in my opinion the perfect TW experience to date. Not to mention its pretty depressing backdrop of ambitious warlords selling out their country piece by piece to fulfil their ambition whereas the common folk is being pissed off more and more by it.

P.S.: So far, didn't beat Rise of the Samurai, it's pretty tough and my sister clan just always fucks me over whenever my army leaves main province.

P.P.S.: I'm using Camera Zoom Unlock and variety cosmetics mods. Nothing else at the moment since I thought vanilla balance to be pretty good.

 

[Average Manatee]

Shogun 2 has the best AI of any modern total war game combined with the least number of things for the AI to fuck up (e.g., the streamlined fortress battles, simplified agents and general managing, R-P-S units without OP things like horse archers that break the mold). Since AI has always been the biggest problem with TW, yeah, S2 is pretty good.

Also I'll throw my vote in for FotS being some of the best shit ever. It's crazy that CA managed to screw probably their most anticipated sequel (Rome 2) so badly after coming off such a high note where even the expansion campaigns were amazing.

(oh, any tips on how to win with Oda and endure realm divide is welcome)

IMO what you want to do most is check the map for the best unit-improvement province bonuses (stuff like armor/weapons for certain units) and quickly take those. Oda's strength is Ashigaru and Ashigaru peasants get far stronger with those force multipliers than the your samurai units will and will be able to combat enemy samurai fairly decently at a fraction of the cost. Also since you'll be using the samurai less you can optimize your cities for more money/agents and tech accordingly.

RD is a total bitch, on hard difficulties you usually just sabotage enemy armies so they can't move then go around them and snipe all the cities of each faction to destroy them. But I'm not sure how mods currently change RD, so I can't tell you how to avoid it or lessen the effects.

Also the general TW-stuff: Sell military access and shit to everyone for early cash, scout with agents, if you see an enemy army approaching your borders increase your garrison to ward of a declaration of war.

 

[Silva]

Fall is amazing, really. My most memorable operation was with the Jozai "guerrilleros" (forgot their names, those who can deploy beyond the default zone). I was lucky to deploy hidden near the enemy general and kill him before the battle even begin. When their cavalry found me out it was already too late and I ran away from the battle to the edge of the map.

I think it's no coincidence that the series started with Shogun, and Shogun 2 is one of its best iterations. The Sengoku Jidai setting is a perfect match for it, not only from a technical point of view (the smaller scope makes it easy on the AI) but also from a conceptual pov, as the simplistic yet chaotic political flow of pacts and cutthroats fits it much better than the european medieval or ancient periods IMO.

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

Shogun 2 is the one I play. Plus it wins on the aesthetic side etc. All the other TW are kind of blend to me. This game is cool.

 

[Blagrar]

whereas subsequent Total War treated squads like 'blobs'

Wrong, that started with the Warscape Engine (Empire).

 

[Eyestabber]

Medieval 2 has tons of cool mods. Stainless Steel is p. gud.

 

[GarfunkeL]

If you think Shogun 1 is difficult, just grow a bit so you can have a decent defensive army and wait until you get geisha. With 100% success rate, use a single geisha to kill every clan leader ever until all opposing clans have disintegrated into single-province "neutrals", then walz through the map picking them up one-by-one without encountering any organized resistance.

 

[Silva]

Eyestabber, but does Stainless Steel make Med 2 actually challenging while feeling more or less fair like Shogun ? Or I'll be steamrolling the AI as soon I'm out the tutorial like in Rome/Empire/Nap/Med vanilla ?

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Stainless steel makes Medieval 2 pretty difficult but that game misses a lot of conviniences that Shogun 2 has. (Interface, general speed and vastly different approach to melee)

 

[zlocish]

Medieval 2 with Stainless Steel is also great but in my opinion Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai is the best total war ever made.
Empire Total War has a lot of problems but was also pretty unique for the series. Napoleon was basically upraded Empire.
Rome 2 is absolutely the worst TW game ever made to date.
Atilla was supposed to be an upgrade and overall better version of Rome 2 ( excluding that "Emperor Edition" which also made some minor changes ) but fell short of expectations.

 

[catfood]

If you think Shogun 1 is difficult, just grow a bit so you can have a decent defensive army and wait until you get geisha. With 100% success rate, use a single geisha to kill every clan leader ever until all opposing clans have disintegrated into single-province "neutrals", then walz through the map picking them up one-by-one without encountering any organized resistance.

Didn't they fix this in the expansion though?

 

[Blagrar]

Didn't they fix this in the expansion though?

if they did, they screwed it up with Kensai instead.

 

[ikyu828]

even w/o mods shogun 2, imo is one of the best, i honestly like rd since it makes the gameplay become chaotic
rome 2 n attila are also getting better after every patch

older games like rome 1 n med 2 are great w/ mods, but w/o mods they are very lacking in gameplay

 

[GarfunkeL]

I don't know, I didn't play the expansion.

 

[Reject_666_6]

Shogun and Medieval nailed the board game feel while having some of the better combat of the series. The nailed board of greatness.

That, and the AI could actually cope with the simpler campaign maps and pose a real strategic threat.

 

[Raghar]

The reason why shogun was so great was they get Turnbull, which is Japanese buff, and let him enjoy himself during design and development.

 

[Eyestabber]

Eyestabber, but does Stainless Steel make Med 2 actually challenging while feeling more or less fair like Shogun ? Or I'll be steamrolling the AI as soon I'm out the tutorial like in Rome/Empire/Nap/Med vanilla ?

Stainless steel makes Medieval 2 pretty difficult but that game misses a lot of conviniences that Shogun 2 has. (Interface, general speed and vastly different approach to melee)

What this guy said. Plus the pope is less annoying.

Also, play as the Crusader Kingdoms. Cool units from both Kingdom of Jerusalem and Principality of Antioch (from the expansion) on a Grand Campaign with mudslimes everywhere trying to murder you DED. Tons of fun.

 

[Silva]

Funny. I've heard a lot of people say this game is the least replayable in the series, but after trying a handful more games with different clans it seems each one is pretty distinct in playing style. E.g: Takeda and Date lean to direct blitzkrieg, Hattori is all about sabotage, ambushes and night attacks, Oda Nobunaga is a fucking Zerg-swarmer of doom (well, at least if you survive the first turns), and Ikko-Ikki is like that bitch Sister Miriam from SMAC only here they are actually better at religiously converting the shit out of your people and making revolts pop everywhere. Not only that, but each clan also incentives different routes through the tech tree and generals/agents skill tree, as it seems fairly advantageous to potentialize each clans particular strengths.

Frankly, this may sound absurd, but I played the hell out of Rome 1 both vanilla and modded, and I dont remember it having this much replayability and diversity in playstyle between factions. I remember the bigger difference was in the tactical level where some armies were hoplite-based and others infantry-based, but besides that it was mostly a matter of different colored units and buildings with slightly different bonus here and there. I really dont remember the strategic layer having this degree of nuance and distinction between factions playstyles that Shogun2 has. But then, perhaps my Im just too excited by the game right now and its clouding my perception. Time will tell, I think.


EDIT:
oh, and I've found two cool aesthetical mods that make the game even prettier. One is a events mini-mod for Fall of the Samurai that adds beautiful yet subtle new images to it. And the other is a "kabuki" portrait pack for the default/sengoku campaign (I was looking for some portraits in the style of KOEI games, but ended up stumbling with this one and liking it better). It's beautiful and I think it complements the original art of the game really well.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?565469-FOTS-Campaign-event-pictures-updated

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?490124-Kabuki-Portraits-Mod

(preview of the latter, as that thread pics vanished )

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