Shogun 2 : Total War

[Gaius Marius]

Hello playgrounders!!

I bought this game last week and spent the week-end playing my first as the Date clan. I didn't really followed the advices of "medium difficulty", which is the rating for this clan. Just by reading FAQs over the net I learned about the terrifying power of the Date No-Dachi.. (two handed sword fighters).

I have set my starting blacksmith to develop weapons rather than armor, so I have a damage bonus. Add the natural bonus to charge the Date clan has AND the natural charge bonus the No-Dachi.. You can see the picture.

I want to tell you about my hour of glory of the moment. Before going to bed, I had tried a battle of 3 nodachi units, 3 Ashigaru spears and 4 Ashigaru bowmen against 5 samurai spearman and 5 Ashigaru bowmen.

I kinda got wiped, so I ragequitted and came back the next day with a different tactic. Midway through the battle, I noticed 4 of his spearman units were fighting 2 nodachi units alone, one of them completely flanked. I saluted my warriors, left them alone and ordered concentrated arrow rain on te melee, using the freed Nodachi to charge their arrowline.

I won the day, albeit battered. I was so happy to come back on mistakes and win it.

Things were not to remain rose. My victory was short-lived, for the Uwagi (?) clan attacked my target last city I just emptied and declared war unto me. I rallied all my forces (the surviving units and 2 katana samurai and 2 bowmen Ashigaru). And made my stand... 1600 of my men against 2400 enemies.. Most of them lowly Ashigaru.

I took an unorthodox tactic. I sent my last Nodach on a ridge close to the enemies while preparing a battle line to contain their main forces.

I saw they exposed bowmen near the ridge, so I took the opportunity and charged down with my mightiest warriors. They sent 5 units of Ashigaru uphill to contain me..

Well, these valiant warriors held of for the whole battle! They crushed and shattered 4 Ashigaru spearman units and 2 bowmen. The rest of my army inflicted heavy casualties before retreating. I lost the battle, but I killed 2100 of his men, against 1300 casualties on my side. The remaining armies were 300 vs 300... I was going to survive!!!!

Even if I lost these valiant men, I will never forget these brave warriors who, alone and battered, turned the tide with a violent downhill charge. Stuff of Heroes.

Let no one forget the Date No-Dachi.


And you, what is your story?

[Leecros]

I think my most intense battle in Shogun 2 was somewhat early on in my ownership of the game. I bought it when it first came out, but i don't play it that often.

I started as Shimazu and rampaged across Southern Japan. Once i had Kyushu firmly under my control, i turned my attention to Shikoku and crushed the Chosokabe. Then i turned my attention to Honshu and got into a long and bothersome war with the Mouri and...some Minor whiched owned the rest of the land between me and Kyoto. At around this time i noticed that Tokugawa were well on their way to uniting the northern regions After i defeated Mouri and the minor I started taking the land around Kyoto...at least what i could, IIRC Tokugawa already had a border on it and i didn't want to mess with them quite yet. Around this time The Divide happened(of course) and all hell broke loose(as usual), but i kept taking territories and so did they(Tokugawa) ultimately it was me in the southern regions and Tokugawa in the northern ones with a couple of minors here and there(including what was left of the Uesugi). We had a...well, divide. I believe i had a few more territories than they did at this point, but it wasn't any kind of major advantage.

so the Nasty War happened and their armies and my armies went back and forth for a couple of years. Ultimately i decided that i needed to open up a new front to divide their attention and built up an army to head back behind them and up into northern Japan and capture a (hopefully) weakly defended castle and defend it from everything. So everything was going well until they attacked that infiltration army with two full-size armies led by none other than Tokugawa leyasu himself.

So i started the battle...noticed that there wasn't any real defensive geographic spots to take advantage of...except what was on the other side of the field, but that did me no good. There was a small grove of trees off to the side that was just large enough for a cluster of spearmen, but other than that unit of spearmen sitting there i just took a defensive formation and waited. Spearmen in the front and angled at the flanks for flank attacks for cavalry, Samurai and other non-spearmen in the middle to get into the fight after the shock of the initial charge, and my general and archers in the rear...

it really didn't work out too well initially, the unit of spearmen in the patch of trees were destroyed by the second army and i was definitely taking more loss's than i would have liked, but i got insanely lucky...let me repeat that insanely lucky and leyasu died and the battle started to turn in my favor until i finally routed them.

After that the war started to turn in my favor and i won. Although killing their leader probably had little to do with it since i don't believe Total War has a 'you killed their leader, they take a massive morale nuke' like it should, but i like to tell myself that that's what happened. :smalltongue:

[Ceridan]

Although killing their leader probably had little to do with it since i don't believe Total War has a 'you killed their leader, they take a massive morale nuke' like it should, but i like to tell myself that that's what happened. :smalltongue:

It does actually. Killing the enemy commander is the best way to defeat larger enemy armies as it imposes a large moral penalty. This works in all the total war games from Shogun 1 up through Napoleon and Shogun 2.

[Leecros]

It does actually. Killing the enemy commander is the best way to defeat larger enemy armies as it imposes a large moral penalty. This works in all the total war games from Shogun 1 up through Napoleon and Shogun 2.

it does for the army in the battle. it doesn't (as far as i know) for the entire faction on the tactical screen and/or future battles.

[faceroll]

it does for the army in the battle. it doesn't (as far as i know) for the entire faction on the tactical screen and/or future battles.

Depending on the traits of their leaders, it can affect the macro part of the game, albeit marginally.

[Crow]

Sadly I have not gotten a chance to play this game yet. My greatest moment of Total War glory was back in MTW1 (The last game with good battle AI...though I hear SGTW2 has brought it back!).

I was playing the Viking Invasion expansion as the vikings in a hardcore (no saving except to exit the game, can only command battles personally if the king is in the army) game. I had conquered northern england, and had just made powerful drive south which fizzled out after the offensive had sustained more casualties than expected. I had claimed a lot of territory but it was sparsely defended. The next year, my adversary the Saxons consolidated their forces into a single province, and I knew that an attack would be coming next. I decided that I wasn't going to sit and wait for the inevitable attack. I ordered all of the forces (including my king) bordering the heavily-fortified Saxon province to converge on the Saxon force.

The battle deployment screen showed that my 901 viking warriors were about to attack a 6700-strong saxon army. A little nervous, I clicked to command the attack personally.

When the battle started, I located my enemy sitting atop a high hill. Due to the way reinforcements worked back then, his entire force wasn't there, but my guys were still outnumbered about 2 to 1. I noticed that my foe had positioned his horse units along his right flank, on a particularly high portion of the hill. I quickly organized my armored spearmen into a tightly-formed block on my left, and marched them up the hill, while moving my archers and own small mounted force to harass his left flank. My core infantry held the center.

As the spears engaged his horse, who had charged my spears as they neared he upper quarter of the hill, my foe brought his own infantry from the center to hit the exposed flank of my spear block. The brave spearmen were managing to push their way up the hill, but when the enemy infantry hit, the rout was almost instant. It was then that I charged my king and my infantry up the hill to hit the enemy infantry as they pursued the spears. The two infantry forces his hard, and they fought for some time. My concentrated force held on quite well against their spread out force. Long enough to allow my spears to rejoin the fight. As soon as the spears reformed and charged in, the enemy began fought hard, but slowly began to rout one unit at a time. My forces pursued, and after a hard uphill battle had claimed the crest of the hill. As the enemy sent in waves of reinforcements, they broke like water on rock against my forces on top of that hill, my archers raining death from above the whole time, while my horses ran down and captured countless fleeing saxons.

All told, it ended up being something like 450+ dead on my side, and over 2000 dead and nearly 2000 captured on their side.

After that battle, I saved the game, and haven't returned to it since (though I still have the save file). I just can't see any way to top that in that particular save.

[Leecros]

Depending on the traits of their leaders, it can affect the macro part of the game, albeit marginally.

that's just the problem though. It's marginal and it's usually not so much of a negative impact as it is the lack of a bonus.

It's one of the issues i have with the Total War series as a whole. Leaders are more or less just another meatsack leader to throw at the enemy and if you lose 'said leader then you can just shrug it off and move on. When in reality they should be your most valuable asset...and target for that matter.

[Rockbird]

I've been playing as the Shimazu on hard, and once i got past the first 20 or 30 first turns (It took like 5 attempts...) things have been going swimmingly. I converted to Christianity to crush everyone under early guns, and took control of basically every trade route to pay for it. I've been sending my priests across japan inciting rebellion everywhere, ensuring that I've basically encountered no opposition since i started attacking mainland Japan. Hopefully I'll be able to mess up the Chosokabe before realm divide hits.

[Derthric]

I have been playing the Shimazu on Normal, and have gone through about 5 heirs before my Leader died. I appreciate the leveling system and actually setting my generals paths as they grow but I would prefer to get something at the start of their careers to set them up.

The Mori were giving me trouble but then the Shoni reappeared and now there is a nice little power vacuum I can move up in. I love how life works out that way.

[faceroll]

that's just the problem though. It's marginal and it's usually not so much of a negative impact as it is the lack of a bonus.

It's one of the issues i have with the Total War series as a whole. Leaders are more or less just another meatsack leader to throw at the enemy and if you lose 'said leader then you can just shrug it off and move on. When in reality they should be your most valuable asset...and target for that matter.

Then it discourages you from using your leader. I'd rather have an epic leader.

In one battle (overwhelming odds against me), I had every single unit of the leader's bodyguard slain, but I managed to micro like a boss and the hero general escaped back to our last stand.

But it turns out monk bowmen are totally OP, so we slaughtered the bejeezus out of the ashigaru and samurai storming our walls.

[Flickerdart]

Losing a general isn't important if your empire is thriving (as well it should be) but a clan relying on its royal family's bonuses to unit upkeep and taxes to stay in the black can find itself ruined economically, and an already disrespected country losing the 'leader commands respect' bonus will make you some new enemies.

[Leecros]

Then it discourages you from using your leader. I'd rather have an epic leader.

The last time i've had a true epic leader was way back in Medieval 2...back then epic leaders meant a lot more(although the effects of losing 'said leader were still minimal) since the fancy new level system, given time, almost every leader can become some form of epic.

hmm...It would be an interesting thing to bring up in the main TW thread. People posting their best TW Generals/leaders. I may do that when i find one of mine.:smalltongue:

Losing a general isn't important if your empire is thriving (as well it should be) but a clan relying on its royal family's bonuses to unit upkeep and taxes to stay in the black can find itself ruined economically, and an already disrespected country losing the 'leader commands respect' bonus will make you some new enemies.

There are ways to stabilize your economy rather easily though and if your economy is that bad that it all hinges on your leader, then you really should be looking at improving it rather quickly. I've never have run into a problem like that and if i did, i don't think i would have a difficult time fixing it. That said though...I have been playing total war games for years, so a newbie at the game may have more trouble.