Total War - Recommendations?

[Zevox]

So, I'm finding myself with the rather rare desire to play a series I haven't in a long time lately - the Total War games. Quite some years ago I played Rome, Medieval 2, and Empire, and very much liked the first two. With Empire while I liked the expansion of the map to include areas outside Europe I remember being less than happy with the way the actual combat worked now that guns were commonplace. (Plus it ran very poorly on my PC at the time even on minimum settings and looked like crap since I had to use those minimum settings, which didn't help).

I've been thinking about just pulling out my old copy of Medieval 2 (I no longer have Rome), but I decided to take a look at what's come out in the years since I last played, and to my surprise found that my PC could actually play them - specifically Shogun 2 or Rome 2, I'm not interested in the Warhammer games and didn't check whether I could play those. So I'm curious for anyone who actually played them, how are Shogun 2 and Rome 2? Would anyone recommend one of them over just going back to Medieval 2?

[Tvtyrant]

So, I'm finding myself with the rather rare desire to play a series I haven't in a long time lately - the Total War games. Quite some years ago I played Rome, Medieval 2, and Empire, and very much liked the first two. With Empire while I liked the expansion of the map to include areas outside Europe I remember being less than happy with the way the actual combat worked now that guns were commonplace. (Plus it ran very poorly on my PC at the time even on minimum settings and looked like crap since I had to use those minimum settings, which didn't help).

I've been thinking about just pulling out my old copy of Medieval 2 (I no longer have Rome), but I decided to take a look at what's come out in the years since I last played, and to my surprise found that my PC could actually play them - specifically Shogun 2 or Rome 2, I'm not interested in the Warhammer games and didn't check whether I could play those. So I'm curious for anyone who actually played them, how are Shogun 2 and Rome 2? Would anyone recommend one of them over just going back to Medieval 2?

I enjoyed Rome II a lot, it is in my opinion better then the first one. The factions feel varied and combat is very dependent on developing tactics that work with your specific troops. I particularly love war elephants, hit something in the back with those and they all die.

Shogun 2 I haven't played but would like to. It looks gorgeous.

[factotum]

There's also Thrones of Britannia and Three Kingdoms come out recently, did you not know about those or won't they work on your PC?

[Crow]

I thought Rome 2 was better than the first, but it never really stuck with me. I actually ended up playing more Attila actually.

Shogun 2 is superb, and arguably the most polished Total War game ever released. I absolutely love it; and while I've never really had an urge to reinstall Rome 2, Shogun 2 is one I go back to periodically.

Something I really enjoy about it is that each of the two expansions for it greatly change the formula for success. The main campaign plays as one would expect of a Total War campaign; while Rise of the Samurai is far more tilted toward diplomacy, agents, and influence. Fall of the Samurai focuses on the clash between Industrialization and Traditions.

Shogun 2 is also the only one to have Avatar Conquest mode for multiplayer, and matchmaking is still quite active.

[Narkis]

Of the newer Total War games, Shogun 2 is by far the best one. It's the only one I liked enough to finish more than one campaign. All the others, Rome 2, Attila, Warhammer, had too many issues that, while not that large individually, built up and made me eventually quit in frustration.

Still, my absolute favorite of the series is the original Rome, with Medieval 2 a close second. I don't mind the graphics and I dislike the changes in the gameplay that all the new ones share.


There's also Thrones of Britannia and Three Kingdoms come out recently, did you not know about those or won't they work on your PC?

Three Kingdoms comes out this March. I haven't heard good things about Thrones of Britannia, though I haven't played it myself.

[Resileaf]

Thankfully for you, Rome 2 started off bad, but CA fixed it relentlessly and it's today one of the best of the series. I strongly recommend it myself.
Shogun 2 is the most polished, but since everyone is just about the same, it could feel very samey after a while. The AI is superb in that game though.

[Blackhawk748]

I can fully recommend Shogun 2. Its a lot of fun and is pretty different from the other Total Wars, primarily because the change to Japan forces you to fight very differently. While the units themselves won't be super different in each faction, each one focuses on a different aspect which shapes how you assemble your armies.

Lot of fun in my opinion.

[Zevox]

There's also Thrones of Britannia and Three Kingdoms come out recently, did you not know about those or won't they work on your PC?
Checking on that, no, my PC could not run either of those. I could apparently run Attila, but I only meet the minimum specs required, not the recommended ones for that. So I'm thinking I'll confine myself to Shogun 2 and Rome 2 as my options.

Interesting to see a bit of a split on which people are recommending, too. I will say though, I'm unlikely to grab any expansions for whichever one I buy (unless they come bundled in with the game at this point), or to play multiplayer - I'm just looking to play the main campaign mode, which was basically all I did in Rome and Medieval 2. That's the part that I'm finding myself with the desire to play again, the slow but steady process of conquering much of the known world, seeing my faction's color spread across that map until I dwarf everyone else.

I must admit that I'm a bit biased towards grabbing Rome 2 just because the first Rome was the game that introduced me to the series and I have fond memories of it, but that is an awful lot of high praise for Shogun 2 you guys have, and it is the cheaper of the two. I'm kind of torn there.

[Resileaf]

As far as I'm concerned, both games are great, as I enjoy the entire series. XD
I'm confident that whichever of the two you played, you would enjoy.

[Kadesh]

Attila is not really playable, even with recommended specs it is that unoptimized.

M2TW is still single thread, so if your PC has a higher single thread oomph than even a later one with a higher overall power spread over more threads, it will do well. You have a ton of polished and completed mods, and the Kingdoms expansion gives you 4 additional campaigns to play through, even if a few of the mechanics are a little janky and comparatively aged.

[Zevox]

Well, I'm eager to get started, so I made my pick, and higher recommendations and lower cost won out. Currently installing Shogun 2. Should be interesting, I don't think there was a Japan portion to the world map even in Empire. Thanks for the recommendations everyone - and maybe sometime later I'll get Rome 2 too.

[Narkis]

Well, I'm eager to get started, so I made my pick, and higher recommendations and lower cost won out. Currently installing Shogun 2. Should be interesting, I don't think there was a Japan portion to the world map even in Empire. Thanks for the recommendations everyone - and maybe sometime later I'll get Rome 2 too.

Good choice. Please share your impressions with us, I'd like to hear what you think of it.

[Resileaf]

Well, I'm eager to get started, so I made my pick, and higher recommendations and lower cost won out. Currently installing Shogun 2. Should be interesting, I don't think there was a Japan portion to the world map even in Empire. Thanks for the recommendations everyone - and maybe sometime later I'll get Rome 2 too.

You can easily wait for a steam sale for DLCs/Rome 2. Plus if you end up not liking Shogun, Steam can give you back your money if you are within two hours of play.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Shogun is good, but after a while it feels a bit same-y. Every faction gets variations on the same units, so while it's a good even playing ground, it doesn't have the freshness during play of Rome or Medieval or Warhammer. In Rome, it's totally different fighting Carthage v Rome, Rome v Gauls, Macedon v Sarmatia, Seleucids v Parthians. In Medieval, it's totally different fighting versus French, Hungarians, Italians, Turks. In Warhammer obviously fighting Wood Elves and Dwarves is going to be TOTALLY different.

Empire and Napoleon suffer somewhat from this as well; no matter who you're fighting, it's going to be functionally the same. Whether you're fighting the Takeda or the Oda, you're still fighting Samurai and Ashigaru. In Napoleon and ُEmpire, whether you're fighting France or Russia, you're still fighting line infantry backed by artillery flanked by cavalry. I can only do a few battles in these games before getting tired, while the other games, so long as I switch up my enemies, keeps things fresh.

[veti]

Well, I'm eager to get started, so I made my pick, and higher recommendations and lower cost won out. Currently installing Shogun 2. Should be interesting, I don't think there was a Japan portion to the world map even in Empire. Thanks for the recommendations everyone - and maybe sometime later I'll get Rome 2 too.

No, Japan was never one of the European imperial theatres.

I came late to Empire, but it's the one I play most often nowadays. It's not very convincing as an account of history - but it is a lot of fun to outstrip the competition technologically so that battles just cease to be competitive after a while. But then, that seems to happen in all the TW games to some extent.

I could never get the hang of Attila. Seems to me that no matter which faction I pick, every strategy ends up with me facing an uncountable horde of enemies, usually within the first 20 or so turns, and never having a chance to build up any kind of strength to resist them. Gets pretty disheartening.

[The Jack]

Shogun 2 is the TW game I've played the most. It's so painfully shy of perfection that it hurts.

The Gunpowder tech tree is messed up and is extremely end-loaded. The AI will only ever use grenade throwers if they use gunpowder at all, which is terrible. (also, historical note; The japanese were extremely fond of gunpowder
The Naval tech tree is freaking evil. Medium/sengoku bunes and the Bow/bom kaboya are all you'll ever use (the AI too). The rest are a waste of time. Heavier bunes are ****, Cannon bunes are limited to two for no freaking reason (Jesus gives you almighty cannon galleons with no cap, so the cannon bune limit is infuriating)
Naval combat is a mess and everybody hates it but auto-resolve leads to very unlikely results. Naval combat is horribly bugged.
In game encyclopedia masquerades a lot of BS as truth. The Katana wank is very real.
Spear commoners are the best unit and cavalry is really hard to use properly as a result.
AI mostly builds the same units Spear/bow peasants/samurai will be 90% of what your enemy will throw at you. Melee cav, katana cavalry and the occasional firebomb thrower pop up sometimes. I've never seen the AI use seige weapons,guns or monks outside of a mod.
Realm devide is BS It's not that I can't deal with it, I just feel it's a massive cop-out; It's very contrary to the historical political reality (IE nobody cares about the emperor) and doesn't make sense. Sure, it gives you a necessary challenge, but there are smarter ways to do that.

But hey, it's the most -one more turn- game I've ever played.
Recomend you grab all the DLC if you pick it up. I don't have all of it, and it saddens me. If I did have it though, I'd whine about the exclusive units being silly.

[Crow]

@Zevox: You mentioned that you like to build up and slowly but surely paint the map your color- For Shogun 2, you may want to download a mod to remove the time restrictions on the campaign then. The time limits can be quite restrictive, and in the short victories in particular, you're going to have to rush near the end if you wait too long. Rome 2 was really bad with this at first, but eventually CA greatly relaxed the restrictions to the point I didn't so much notice it.

@veti: Attila can range from mildly frustrating to infuriating, depending on which faction you choose. If you're really into the challenge, selecting the Western Roman Empire is a hoot. However, I've found the northern barbarian factions to be the easiest to get "stable". You're not really in the path of the major hordes, so you are mostly just dealing with your neighbors at first. In this way, it resembles your normal "start small, consolidate, then spread out" Total War gameplay; though with a twist. Your first job in-game should be to capture the other cities nearby to consolidate your province. Once this is done, hunker down and weather the storm. If you make it through this stage, you can then move on to building your empire.

@Narkis: Thrones of Britannia is actually a pretty good game, and has actually introduced a few new things that no other Total War game has. The real issue with it is that it was forced to exist alongside Warhammer; where most of the playerbase still resides. People who love Warhammer, hate ToB; The units and factions in ToB are a bit samey to begin with; but when you compare them to Warhammer it just gets ridiculous. IMO there is an underlying reason for this that most people are missing completely- ALL the units in recent Total Wars are samey. Even in the "diverse" titles like Rome 2, think about it- Really the only difference is skins. Pretty much every faction has some variation of the same units; and all those units basically play under the same rock-paper-scissors formula.

[Zevox]

Good choice. Please share your impressions with us, I'd like to hear what you think of it.
Well, so far, so good. I started up my first campaign as the Shimazu (aside: all of these Japanese faction names are going to take some getting used to, had to look this one up just to post this...), mostly because I liked the thought of starting on the western island and being fairly isolated from the cluster-crap that the center of the nation will likely become. (I always liked the Scipii in Rome for similar reasons - take Sicily early and used it launch your conquest of wherever in the Mediterranean you felt like hitting, with the core of your nation nowhere near any enemies until the time came to betray Rome.) Already conquered the small faction you start at war with.

There's certain elements that are a little strange and iffy to me. One being how your infantry can just scale walls in castle battles without needing to pre-build ladders or siege towers during a siege. On the one hand, it's nice to have that streamlined a bit, but on the other, it feels like it might make castle battles just considerably easier and much less distinct from battles on open terrain if you can get away with just bum-rushing up the walls. But eh, I'm only dealing with the weakest starting castles so far and don't even have any siege weapons yet, so we'll see how the game develops. I did find that it's apparently a bad idea to order my units to attack castle gates while some of my others scale the walls though, as one of those walls basically exploded out from underneath my own forces' feet during a battle and cost me a whole unit of Samurai. Woops.

Otherwise, combat largely feels like I remember - although for some reason it feels like it's not letting me create as many unit groups. And the formation options are kind of weird and non-intuitive. And I need to remember to edit the controls such that the spacebar in battle is pause/play, like it used to be IIRC, needing to click a button for that is throwing me off.

It's kind of nice that diplomacy no longer requires hiring diplomats and physically sending them to other nations' cities, but it looks like diplomacy is still going to be near useless, considering how even neutral factions are mostly telling me that simple trade agreements aren't even acceptable. Oh well, par for the course in Total War IIRC.

Have barely started building a navy, so haven't seen naval battles yet - I recall not being a fan of them in Empire, but this is a different time period, so I'll be curious to see how they play in this one. Not sure what trade ships are used for though, since once I got a trade agreement with another nation, it seems to just work like in old games, being totally automatic and not requiring me to build one of those. :smallconfused:

I like that each turn is now a season instead of a year, nice way to make the game's formula work for a setting where you aren't going to be passing hundreds of years. And there being a penalty associated with troops being on the move in winter is a nice touch too.

I also quite like that a single city can work on more than one construction project at a time at last. I don't know, maybe that was introduced in Empire and I just forgot, but it's a welcome change from the older games in either case.


You can easily wait for a steam sale for DLCs/Rome 2.
That assumes, probably incorrectly, that I'd ever have any idea when that was happening. I mean, buying this is probably the first time I've used Steam in over a year. I am not in whatever loop exists to let people know when Steam sales are happening.


@Zevox: You mentioned that you like to build up and slowly but surely paint the map your color- For Shogun 2, you may want to download a mod to remove the time restrictions on the campaign then. The time limits can be quite restrictive, and in the short victories in particular, you're going to have to rush near the end if you wait too long. Rome 2 was really bad with this at first, but eventually CA greatly relaxed the restrictions to the point I didn't so much notice it.
Hm, well, we'll see how that pans out. I set my first campaign to the long victory setting. And I'm not particularly eager to screw around with mods, personally, I have no experience with that and would rather just play the game as-is if at all possible.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Well, so far, so good. I started up my first campaign as the Shimazu (aside: all of these Japanese faction names are going to take some getting used to, had to look this one up just to post this...), mostly because I liked the thought of starting on the western island and being fairly isolated from the cluster-crap that the center of the nation will likely become. (I always liked the Scipii in Rome for similar reasons - take Sicily early and used it launch your conquest of wherever in the Mediterranean you felt like hitting, with the core of your nation nowhere near any enemies until the time came to betray Rome.) Already conquered the small faction you start at war with.

There's certain elements that are a little strange and iffy to me. One being how your infantry can just scale walls in castle battles without needing to pre-build ladders or siege towers during a siege. On the one hand, it's nice to have that streamlined a bit, but on the other, it feels like it might make castle battles just considerably easier and much less distinct from battles on open terrain if you can get away with just bum-rushing up the walls. But eh, I'm only dealing with the weakest starting castles so far and don't even have any siege weapons yet, so we'll see how the game develops. I did find that it's apparently a bad idea to order my units to attack castle gates while some of my others scale the walls though, as one of those walls basically exploded out from underneath my own forces' feet during a battle and cost me a whole unit of Samurai. Woops.

Yeah, this is one of the earliest complaints when the game came out, is every unit is ninja-climbing walls. Walls aren't impassable barriers to be sieged, they just slow down the enemy for a short time. If you're on the defensive, the trick is to match your melee and archer units, keep the melee juuuuust behind the walls so that once the enemy is about 1/3 of the way up the wall, you switch out the melee and archer units so by the time the enemy get to the top, they're fighting your sword infantry.




Have barely started building a navy, so haven't seen naval battles yet - I recall not being a fan of them in Empire, but this is a different time period, so I'll be curious to see how they play in this one. Not sure what trade ships are used for though, since once I got a trade agreement with another nation, it seems to just work like in old games, being totally automatic and not requiring me to build one of those. :smallconfused:

I like that each turn is now a season instead of a year, nice way to make the game's formula work for a setting where you aren't going to be passing hundreds of years. And there being a penalty associated with troops being on the move in winter is a nice touch too.

I also quite like that a single city can work on more than one construction project at a time at last. I don't know, maybe that was introduced in Empire and I just forgot, but it's a welcome change from the older games in either case.

Regarding the naval battles, they don't have the tactical precision of Empire or Napoleon, where you're trying to line up your broadsides while avoiding the other teams. All boats can shoot archers in all directions (once the archers on it switch which side of the boat they're on), so it's mostly a game of try to catch their archer boats with your melee boats. Doesn't even have the ramming of Rome II. Weakest part of the game.

Trade ships are used for the off-map resources, like in Empire. Being on the Western side of the map, you're perfectly placed to dominate these, as they're all on your side of the map. Look at the edges of the oceans.

The seasons are fantastic. In Fall of the Samurai, they up it even more and have each there be two turns for each month of the year, much as they did in Napoleon, to fit the more focused time-period they're dealing with.

And yeah, the multiple-building-queue thing was in Empire as well.

[Resileaf]

Otherwise, combat largely feels like I remember - although for some reason it feels like it's not letting me create as many unit groups. And the formation options are kind of weird and non-intuitive. And I need to remember to edit the controls such that the spacebar in battle is pause/play, like it used to be IIRC, needing to click a button for that is throwing me off.

Formations are a bit difficult to handle because units tend to decide which formation they want to have and will move to take it even if you've lined them up manually, so that's a little weird. Otherwise, the game is very much about learning how to make your own formation work since most units are the same.


It's kind of nice that diplomacy no longer requires hiring diplomats and physically sending them to other nations' cities, but it looks like diplomacy is still going to be near useless, considering how even neutral factions are mostly telling me that simple trade agreements aren't even acceptable. Oh well, par for the course in Total War IIRC.

Diplomacy is a bit more in-depth than previous games in that other clans now don't do agreements with you to make sure to prevent you getting stronger than them. Other clans see you as potential enemies as much as you see them as such, and so will not trade with you today while you are at peace if they suspect that after you've handled your current enemies, you'll come after them tomorrow. You will need to interact with other clans differently, making friends with them by using gifts or by fighting together with them.


That assumes, probably incorrectly, that I'd ever have any idea when that was happening. I mean, buying this is probably the first time I've used Steam in over a year. I am not in whatever loop exists to let people know when Steam sales are happening.

Well, if you log on Steam to play Shogun and look at the store once in a while, you'll see when sales happen. They generally have a store-wide sale every season on holidays.

[Blackhawk748]

Shimazu have one of the best starting locations, rivalled only by Date in my opinion. Also you can get stupid rich really easy as Shimazu, so have fun with that.

[Crow]

My preferred clan on that island is actually the other one, the Christians. I rush gunpowder to make my castles invincible; then send my Portuguese turcos out to size the Shogunate. :)

[Eldan]

Once you get tired of the units feeling a bit samey, check out the fall of the Samurai DLC. It's well worth it, and has a great trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj3-VkbRSKQ

[Zombimode]

So I'm curious for anyone who actually played them, how are Shogun 2 and Rome 2? Would anyone recommend one of them over just going back to Medieval 2?

I would. If you are after a new map or so I can recommend the Broken Crescent mod. It is set in the near and middle east from Constantinople to India, from just over the Caspian Sea to the Horn of Afrika. Timeframe is 12th to 14th century. A generally well made mod.


Form the new TW games the only that cathed my interest was Warhammer TW2. That one is good but the reason why I accept it is probably that it doesn't compete with the historical titles.

[Narkis]

Well, Zevox, you're in luck (or possibly out of it if it doesn't work): Steam's having a sale right now that includes all Total War games. You should be able to refund the game you bought for full price just to buy it again with the discount. The official guidelines say you have to have played for less than 2 hours, but you should definitely request a refund even if you've played more. They might agree regardless, and you lose nothing but a couple minutes.


Well, so far, so good. I started up my first campaign as the Shimazu (aside: all of these Japanese faction names are going to take some getting used to, had to look this one up just to post this...), mostly because I liked the thought of starting on the western island and being fairly isolated from the cluster-crap that the center of the nation will likely become. (I always liked the Scipii in Rome for similar reasons - take Sicily early and used it launch your conquest of wherever in the Mediterranean you felt like hitting, with the core of your nation nowhere near any enemies until the time came to betray Rome.) Already conquered the small faction you start at war with.

Yeah, my favorite starting locations were either on that island, or on the top right corner of the map, for pretty much the same reason.


There's certain elements that are a little strange and iffy to me. One being how your infantry can just scale walls in castle battles without needing to pre-build ladders or siege towers during a siege. On the one hand, it's nice to have that streamlined a bit, but on the other, it feels like it might make castle battles just considerably easier and much less distinct from battles on open terrain if you can get away with just bum-rushing up the walls. But eh, I'm only dealing with the weakest starting castles so far and don't even have any siege weapons yet, so we'll see how the game develops. I did find that it's apparently a bad idea to order my units to attack castle gates while some of my others scale the walls though, as one of those walls basically exploded out from underneath my own forces' feet during a battle and cost me a whole unit of Samurai. Woops.

Unfortunately that's the case with all modern Total War games and one of the reasons I prefer the older ones. At least the units who climb walls get tired, so the defender still has some sort of advantage.


It's kind of nice that diplomacy no longer requires hiring diplomats and physically sending them to other nations' cities, but it looks like diplomacy is still going to be near useless, considering how even neutral factions are mostly telling me that simple trade agreements aren't even acceptable. Oh well, par for the course in Total War IIRC.

Yeah, I can't remember any Total War game with good diplomacy. Not in the devs' priorities, it would seem.


Have barely started building a navy, so haven't seen naval battles yet - I recall not being a fan of them in Empire, but this is a different time period, so I'll be curious to see how they play in this one. Not sure what trade ships are used for though, since once I got a trade agreement with another nation, it seems to just work like in old games, being totally automatic and not requiring me to build one of those. :smallconfused:

Apparently Japan at the time was under the impression that warships are rafts with bowmen. It was kinda fun, but nothing beats building cannon ships in the late game and sinking rafts that couldn't touch me. And trade ships work kinda like the merchants of old: You park them in one of the foreign trade ports on the edges of the map, and they give you money. Really good money too, as long as you make sure no enemy fleet reaches them.


I also quite like that a single city can work on more than one construction project at a time at last. I don't know, maybe that was introduced in Empire and I just forgot, but it's a welcome change from the older games in either case.

I think that was the case in Empire as well, but I don't remember for sure. I know they switched it in Rome 2 and Warhammer so that each province has a main city and some mini-cities with fewer defenses, building slots and allowed buildings, that you nevertheless have to conquer and defend separately. I much preferred Shogun 2's campaign map for this reason.

[Zevox]

Yeah, this is one of the earliest complaints when the game came out, is every unit is ninja-climbing walls. Walls aren't impassable barriers to be sieged, they just slow down the enemy for a short time. If you're on the defensive, the trick is to match your melee and archer units, keep the melee juuuuust behind the walls so that once the enemy is about 1/3 of the way up the wall, you switch out the melee and archer units so by the time the enemy get to the top, they're fighting your sword infantry.
Eh, I'm less worried about how it'll affect me on defense than how it impacts things on offense. It becomes kind of lame if siege engines are made basically obsolete by it and you can just win by making a bunch of infantry and running right at the enemy.


Trade ships are used for the off-map resources, like in Empire. Being on the Western side of the map, you're perfectly placed to dominate these, as they're all on your side of the map. Look at the edges of the oceans.
Huh. I completely forgot about that being a thing in Empire. Goes to show how long it's been since the one time I played it I guess.


My preferred clan on that island is actually the other one, the Christians. I rush gunpowder to make my castles invincible; then send my Portuguese turcos out to size the Shogunate. :)
:smallconfused: Christians? I don't recall that being an option for me. The Shimazu were the only faction that I saw that started on Kyushu.


Well, Zevox, you're in luck (or possibly out of it if it doesn't work): Steam's having a sale right now that includes all Total War games. You should be able to refund the game you bought for full price just to buy it again with the discount. The official guidelines say you have to have played for less than 2 hours, but you should definitely request a refund even if you've played more. They might agree regardless, and you lose nothing but a couple minutes.
...well, I'll be damned. One day after I decide I feel like playing a Total War game again, suddenly they're 75% off. Holy cow. Yeah, guess it's worth grabbing Rome 2 at that price, even if I don't feel like playing it just after I finish with Shogun 2 I'm sure I'll want to play it sometime, and this is pretty cheap.

I have absolutely no idea how to request a refund for Shogun 2 though - that is not a thing I've ever done before and I don't see an obvious "request refund" button/dropdown in my initial perusal looking for one. I have played it for 4 hours at this point too.


Unfortunately that's the case with all modern Total War games and one of the reasons I prefer the older ones. At least the units who climb walls get tired, so the defender still has some sort of advantage.
Really? That's a little surprising to hear, I was assuming it might be a Shogun 2-specific thing. Hm, well, like I said, we'll see how it plays out and how I feel about it after I've played more.


I think that was the case in Empire as well, but I don't remember for sure. I know they switched it in Rome 2 and Warhammer so that each province has a main city and some mini-cities with fewer defenses, building slots and allowed buildings, that you nevertheless have to conquer and defend separately. I much preferred Shogun 2's campaign map for this reason.
Really? Huh, that's interesting. Not sure whether or not I like the sound of that. Will be interesting to see when I get around to Rome 2 at least I guess.

[Resileaf]

Yeah, I can't remember any Total War game with good diplomacy. Not in the devs' priorities, it would seem.


Have you seen the dev videos for Three kingdoms? The diplomacy and intrigue system is looking to be amazing.



...well, I'll be damned. One day after I decide I feel like playing a Total War game again, suddenly they're 75% off. Holy cow. Yeah, guess it's worth grabbing Rome 2 at that price, even if I don't feel like playing it just after I finish with Shogun 2 I'm sure I'll want to play it sometime, and this is pretty cheap.

I have absolutely no idea how to request a refund for Shogun 2 though - that is not a thing I've ever done before and I don't see an obvious "request refund" button/dropdown in my initial perusal looking for one. I have played it for 4 hours at this point too.
Wow, talk about being unlucky. Very unfortunately for you, the limit to get a refund on a game is two hours.

[Narkis]

:smallconfused: Christians? I don't recall that being an option for me. The Shimazu were the only faction that I saw that started on Kyushu.

They were probably a DLC factions, though I don't remember for sure.


...well, I'll be damned. One day after I decide I feel like playing a Total War game again, suddenly they're 75% off. Holy cow. Yeah, guess it's worth grabbing Rome 2 at that price, even if I don't feel like playing it just after I finish with Shogun 2 I'm sure I'll want to play it sometime, and this is pretty cheap.

I have absolutely no idea how to request a refund for Shogun 2 though - that is not a thing I've ever done before and I don't see an obvious "request refund" button/dropdown in my initial perusal looking for one. I have played it for 4 hours at this point too.

Welcome to the club! That's how game backlogs are made.:smallbiggrin:

For refunds, go to Help -> Steam Support -> Purchases -> Shogun 2 -> Request Refund. It's pretty streamlined these days, and you lose nothing by trying.


Have you seen the dev videos for Three kingdoms? The diplomacy and intrigue system is looking to be amazing.

I have seen enough to be cautiously optimistic, but I'm not getting on the hype train before I see it for myself. I have heard too many broken promises before.

[Zevox]

Welcome to the club! That's how game backlogs are made.:smallbiggrin:
If I were a PC gamer, I'm sure. In my case though my backlog is mostly due to getting games as gifts for my birthday or the holidays and then not getting around to playing them - or starting playing them and then having something I'm more interested in playing come out and make me stop. I'm sitting on my copies of Valkyria Chronicles 4 and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey that I got for Christmas, for instance, and just feel like I'd rather play a Total War game as my single-player game of choice for now than start one of those. And in about a month Devil May Cry 5 will be out and that will definitely take priority over whatever I'm on at the time, so odds are those two will be waiting a little while yet.

Anyway, submitted a refund request via the method you mentioned, so we'll see if I get that. Even if I don't though, will definitely grab Rome 2 - and I think the first Rome while I'm at it, since it's also discounted to just a few bucks and I no longer have my original copy. Will be nice to have access to that if I ever feel like going back to it.

[Blackhawk748]

Oooh, sale you say? Guess im nabbing Thrones of Britain then. I wasnt gonna for full price because of the reviews, but for 75% off? Why not?

[The Jack]

:smallconfused: Christians? I don't recall that being an option for me. The Shimazu were the only faction that I saw that started on Kyushu.

He refers to the otomo, who become playable in DLC and who start christian.
Every other faction but the ikko gets offered Jesus at some point in the game (if they live long enough) though the south west gets it first and staying inland will delay.
The bad is that your relations with other clans gets worse and you'll need to take more steps for public order. You also lose warrior monks.
The good is that you get to take more advantage of the game's guns4jesus initiative, you get a wonderfully overpowered naval unit and the nanban quater, and your trade and development increase from special buildings.

The Shimazu are one of the best clans for it because Kyushu where the AI goes christian anyway, and because you start at one end of the map and are island/trade based the diplomacy penalty is fine and the nanban trade ships are a godsend for controlling the sea. Also the Shimazu have a loyalty bonus which is good because you'll lose some when you switch.

When you build a nanban port you start conversion, you can choose to let it take you and switch or you can build a temple and whack a monk there so that the conversion is canceled out.

[Zevox]

Well, no refund for me. Oh well, not like I wasn't willing to pay the normal price, just unfortunate timing.


He refers to the otomo, who become playable in DLC and who start christian.
Every other faction but the ikko gets offered Jesus at some point in the game (if they live long enough) though the south west gets it first and staying inland will delay.
The bad is that your relations with other clans gets worse and you'll need to take more steps for public order. You also lose warrior monks.
The good is that you get to take more advantage of the game's guns4jesus initiative, you get a wonderfully overpowered naval unit and the nanban quater, and your trade and development increase from special buildings.

The Shimazu are one of the best clans for it because Kyushu where the AI goes christian anyway, and because you start at one end of the map and are island/trade based the diplomacy penalty is fine and the nanban trade ships are a godsend for controlling the sea. Also the Shimazu have a loyalty bonus which is good because you'll lose some when you switch.

When you build a nanban port you start conversion, you can choose to let it take you and switch or you can build a temple and whack a monk there so that the conversion is canceled out.
Ah, the faction that recently got wiped out in my campaign then. I actually just took their former capital (I assume, it was their last city) from the faction that destroyed them - and inherited a Nanban Port they had made in the process. So, guess I need to make a choice on that one quick. Sounds like mechanically it's almost strictly better to take it in the long run, particularly since I'm off on my own island (or will be once I conquer the one faction that's left there besides me), and thus don't need anyone's good will, but I must admit that for flavor reasons I'd kind of prefer not to. Feels weird to play a Total War game set in Japan and not have my faction's religion be Shinto Buddhism.

[Crow]

If you just research the gunpowder techs you don't have to convert for gunpowder units. It just takes longer.

Converting for matchlocks is really only helpful if you're good at using matchlocks; as you can leverage that early advantage to snap up some huge gains early on.

[Brother Oni]

Eh, I'm less worried about how it'll affect me on defense than how it impacts things on offense. It becomes kind of lame if siege engines are made basically obsolete by it and you can just win by making a bunch of infantry and running right at the enemy.

It could be just game mechanics following real life as the Japanese never went big on siege engines. Having seen surviving castles in Japan, the cost and difficultly of maintaining such a large stone building in a major earthquake zone required compromises in construction (mainly the quality of fit of the stone blocks in the walls).

They compensated by making the more easily maintained internal walls unclimbable and designing the castle layout like a maze. Unfortunately that's probably too much detail to be playable for a computer game.

[Kadesh]

Have you seen the dev videos for Three kingdoms? The diplomacy and intrigue system is looking to be amazing.

Battles look turd though.

[Inarius]

Well, no refund for me. Oh well, not like I wasn't willing to pay the normal price, just unfortunate timing.


Ah, the faction that recently got wiped out in my campaign then. I actually just took their former capital (I assume, it was their last city) from the faction that destroyed them - and inherited a Nanban Port they had made in the process. So, guess I need to make a choice on that one quick. Sounds like mechanically it's almost strictly better to take it in the long run, particularly since I'm off on my own island (or will be once I conquer the one faction that's left there besides me), and thus don't need anyone's good will, but I must admit that for flavor reasons I'd kind of prefer not to. Feels weird to play a Total War game set in Japan and not have my faction's religion be Shinto Buddhism.

You don't really have to go Christianity as Shimazu, its just that if you are planning to do it they're one of the best factions to do it with for several reasons. They're also one of the better factions to just go vanilla Samurai army with due to the fact that they gain a slight bonus to their Katana Samurai and that's probably the best unit to use to form the backbone of your army in the campaign.

[Crow]

Shimazu Katana core with Yari Cav to handle enemy cav will chew through anything you point it at. Warrior Monks will give you trouble, but hopefully your Yari Cav will have beat up the enemy cav before the lines meet.

[The Jack]

If you just research the gunpowder techs you don't have to convert for gunpowder units. It just takes longer.

Converting for matchlocks is really only helpful if you're good at using matchlocks; as you can leverage that early advantage to snap up some huge gains early on.

More to annoyance;
Game has matchlocks very rare. The AI never use them, and the tech tree is an extreme investment, since everything beyond mangonels is the last thing you get: Matchlock samurai, rockets, heroes, monks., being able to recruit matchlock ashigaru anywhere... It's all 'gunpowder mastery', which requires attack by fire and the five elements; a significant investment and I'd argue a bad one. Especially since Attack by fire has a matchlock samurai on it; it's actually probably the best place to put at least the matchlock samurai and ashigaru, and I feel they were going to do that, but then screwed up in the last.

I really, really hate how the game gives you limits to how many of X or Y you can get. It feels extremely cheap and at times malicious. Maybe I was an idiot for trying to get good naval research for the first time in a legendary campaign, but when I got there I just wanted to give up.

Just stick with bows. They're easier to use, don't ruin your research progress. Stuff's great.

[Crow]

You definitely need to make use of research traits on characters, and events which offer research bonuses, otherwise it is a long road- yes.

[Blackhawk748]

You definitely need to make use of research traits on characters, and events which offer research bonuses, otherwise it is a long road- yes.

I do it every time.

My army core was Yari Ashigaru and Yari Samurai backed up by Ashigaru Bowmen with the occasional Samurai Bowmen. Didn't use cavalry as I didn't like it.

[Zevox]

If you just research the gunpowder techs you don't have to convert for gunpowder units. It just takes longer.

Converting for matchlocks is really only helpful if you're good at using matchlocks; as you can leverage that early advantage to snap up some huge gains early on.

You don't really have to go Christianity as Shimazu, its just that if you are planning to do it they're one of the best factions to do it with for several reasons. They're also one of the better factions to just go vanilla Samurai army with due to the fact that they gain a slight bonus to their Katana Samurai and that's probably the best unit to use to form the backbone of your army in the campaign.
Well, resisting converting is what I'm doing - although it looks like it might be difficult to beat the influence of that Nanban port in the city it's in, since it gives a pretty huge conversion bonus. And somewhat annoyingly it seems like the faction I'm fighting for control of northern Kyushu converted, so the cities I'm taking from them are mostly or entirely Christian already, which is making it harder for me to maintain order in them without keeping big chunks of my army back home or exempting them from taxes. That's making things slow going. I've got a monk going around to help conversions, but that only amounts to so much. Still, I'm already down to only two provinces left to take before I control Kyushu fully.

In general though, I'm liking the game so far - not necessarily for anything it does significantly differently than past games, but just in a "it's Total War in Japan, and that's fun" way. But I can definitely see what people meant by the factions looking pretty same-y, since my opponents are all fielding the same type of units I can recruit. I suspect that may make me substantially less likely to replay this game as much as I did Rome or Medieval 2 - though just having less free time these days already made that likely, so eh.

One minor thing that annoys me now though is that the tax rate is set for your entire nation, not on a city-by-city basis, aside from the ability to exempt individual cities from taxes completely. That makes it more difficult to strengthen my economy, since I can't bump taxes up on cities with higher happiness without also pushing those with lower happiness over the edge.

And I've had my first naval battles now, and uh, yeah, can see that's still a weak point of the series. The way the ships move in response to your commands feels awkward and strange - which I think I recall being one of my issues with naval combat in Empire too, though it's been so long it's hard to be sure. And the battles seem to move at a snail's pace except when I board enemy ships, which tends to significantly weaken mine even if they succeed. They're honestly kind of boring and just awkward all around. It's ironic, I remember being disappointed that you could only auto-resolve naval battles in the old games, but now that I can actually play them, auto-resolve is all I really want to do with them. :smallsigh:

[Resileaf]

One minor thing that annoys me now though is that the tax rate is set for your entire nation, not on a city-by-city basis, aside from the ability to exempt individual cities from taxes completely. That makes it more difficult to strengthen my economy, since I can't bump taxes up on cities with higher happiness without also pushing those with lower happiness over the edge.


It's actually a bad idea to raise taxes for long in this game. City growth is very important, because it directly adds money to your taxes. In the long run, you want to keep taxes at normal so you get more money later on. You should only raise taxes in emergency situations for a single turn or so.

[Eldan]

In general though, I'm liking the game so far - not necessarily for anything it does significantly differently than past games, but just in a "it's Total War in Japan, and that's fun" way. But I can definitely see what people meant by the factions looking pretty same-y, since my opponents are all fielding the same type of units I can recruit. I suspect that may make me substantially less likely to replay this game as much as I did Rome or Medieval 2 - though just having less free time these days already made that likely, so eh.

I'll bring up Fall of the Samurai again, then. It covers the Boshin War, Meiji Restoration and the Satsuma Rebellion. It adds some 40 new units, including machine guns, American and British marines, Ironclads, Artillery... I thought it was quite fun.

[Narkis]

Well, resisting converting is what I'm doing - although it looks like it might be difficult to beat the influence of that Nanban port in the city it's in, since it gives a pretty huge conversion bonus. And somewhat annoyingly it seems like the faction I'm fighting for control of northern Kyushu converted, so the cities I'm taking from them are mostly or entirely Christian already, which is making it harder for me to maintain order in them without keeping big chunks of my army back home or exempting them from taxes. That's making things slow going. I've got a monk going around to help conversions, but that only amounts to so much. Still, I'm already down to only two provinces left to take before I control Kyushu fully.

You know, you could just tear down the Nanban trading port and build the non-Christian version instead. You don't have to trade with filthy foreigners if you don't want to. :)


One minor thing that annoys me now though is that the tax rate is set for your entire nation, not on a city-by-city basis, aside from the ability to exempt individual cities from taxes completely. That makes it more difficult to strengthen my economy, since I can't bump taxes up on cities with higher happiness without also pushing those with lower happiness over the edge.

Yep, that's another annoyance shared by every modern Total War game


And I've had my first naval battles now, and uh, yeah, can see that's still a weak point of the series. The way the ships move in response to your commands feels awkward and strange - which I think I recall being one of my issues with naval combat in Empire too, though it's been so long it's hard to be sure. And the battles seem to move at a snail's pace except when I board enemy ships, which tends to significantly weaken mine even if they succeed. They're honestly kind of boring and just awkward all around. It's ironic, I remember being disappointed that you could only auto-resolve naval battles in the old games, but now that I can actually play them, auto-resolve is all I really want to do with them. :smallsigh:

Shogun 2's naval battles are actually the ones I enjoyed the most, I think. I'm kinda glad they stopped bothering with Warhammer and Three Kingdoms.

[Zevox]

And Kyushu is now wholly mine. The faction I've been crushing to take it still control one province just across the northeastern straight, but that's all that's left of them. Once I take that I'll start preparing for a bigger war with a faction that's conquered most of the northwestern part of the main island.

The year at this point is 1556 - not sure whether I'm progressing at a decent pace or not. My economy seems to be getting pretty strong, and I'm definitely one of the strongest factions militarily at this point, but I need to take another 32 total provinces and Kyoto by 1600 to win. Granted, that's a good ~175 turns given each turn is only a quarter of a year, but still, seems like a lot of provinces to take.


It's actually a bad idea to raise taxes for long in this game. City growth is very important, because it directly adds money to your taxes. In the long run, you want to keep taxes at normal so you get more money later on. You should only raise taxes in emergency situations for a single turn or so.
Well, it looks like normal taxes are basically what I'm going to be stuck with just to keep my cities under control, so I guess that works out.


You know, you could just tear down the Nanban trading port and build the non-Christian version instead. You don't have to trade with filthy foreigners if you don't want to. :)
I suppose I could, but I don't know that the cost of doing that and replacing it with another equal-level port would be worth it in the long run. For now one Christian city isn't that big of a deal - the fact that I'm conquering a bunch of them is more of an issue, but getting rid of the Nanban Port won't help with that.


Yep, that's another annoyance shared by every modern Total War game
Really? That's a pity. I wonder why they did that?


Shogun 2's naval battles are actually the ones I enjoyed the most, I think. I'm kinda glad they stopped bothering with Warhammer and Three Kingdoms.
Wow, so they just gave up on making good naval battles for this series? I'm honestly surprised by that - but after seeing the results of their first couple of attempts at it, not nearly as disappointed as I once would have been.

[Double A]

I've been playing since Rome and M2. Love S2 and Warhammer but I just can't do R2. I played it a few months ago, again, and it just doesn't hook me. How do I extract the fun out of it like everyone else seems to be able to?

[Tvtyrant]

I've been playing since Rome and M2. Love S2 and Warhammer but I just can't do R2. I played it a few months ago, again, and it just doesn't hook me. How do I extract the fun out of it like everyone else seems to be able to?

Play Carthage and just make money, that is my approach. Pay everyone to be your friends, make people who attack you vassals, and slowly build the largest elephant army money can buy.

[Crow]

Play Carthage and just make money, that is my approach. Pay everyone to be your friends, make people who attack you vassals, and slowly build the largest elephant army money can buy.

Carthage is actually a really fun faction to play as. They have an unusual mix of units, and they are the best faction for taking full advantage of mercenaries. You end up with these eclectic cores of Carthaginian units supplemented by the best available mercenaries. It's actually quite fun, and you get a real feeling of leading these strange mixed armies; made up of Carthaginian and indigenous troops like those Hannibal commanded.

Other than that though, I'm also one of those who couldn't really get into Rome 2 beyond a playthrough or two.

[Narkis]

Really? That's a pity. I wonder why they did that?

I would guess either the new engine doesn't support it, or, more likely, they wanted to simplify things to reach a wider audience.


Wow, so they just gave up on making good naval battles for this series? I'm honestly surprised by that - but after seeing the results of their first couple of attempts at it, not nearly as disappointed as I once would have been.

Yep, they did. Rome 2 is the last one to have naval battles, at least for now. It's a shame, it was THE feature I wanted the most in the series, and its Empire implementation was flawed but promising. But since they seem incapable of doing it right, it's better if they don't waste resources on it at all.

QUOTE=Double A;23692936]I've been playing since Rome and M2. Love S2 and Warhammer but I just can't do R2. I played it a few months ago, again, and it just doesn't hook me. How do I extract the fun out of it like everyone else seems to be able to?[/QUOTE]

I just have to say that certainly not "everyone else" has fun with it. I gave it more than a fair chance. Rome 1 was my favorite, Shogun 2 was good, a return to grace after the disappointment of Empire, and I may ultimately not have liked Warhammer, but it certainly had its charms. But I could never get into Rome 2.

[Zevox]

One thing I'm very much appreciating is how generals and agents now allow me to select bonuses they'll get as they grow. It's so much nicer than the purely randomized ones from the older games. I can actually intentionally get a ninja who's particularly good at assasinations if I wish (and I do!); or I was able to focus my one Monk so far on being very good at converting the populace of provinces, so that he's speeding up my conversion of conquered Christians that much more. That's a big boon to how helpful those kind of units are. It's a bit less of a big deal with generals, granted, but still appreciated.

I also like the various random events where I can choose how my Daimyo governs his nation and get bonuses based on those choices. I know they're not exactly unprecedented, they're sort of like the missions from the Senate in Rome or the crusades in Medieval 2, but those felt more like an annoying burden most of the time, where these add to the feel that I'm managing what amounts to my own country while also giving me actual benefits, something its past counterparts were much lighter on.

And on the subject of missions, I was rather amused when my first mission from the Shogun came in, and it was to go to war with the exact faction I was already planning to hit next and conquer any one of their cities, because apparently they'd grown large enough that he wanted them taken down a peg. (Even though they were about the same size as me and several other factions, and there's definitely one that was larger that he didn't issue this mission for...) Just, wow, that was crazy convenient.

[Resileaf]

And on the subject of missions, I was rather amused when my first mission from the Shogun came in, and it was to go to war with the exact faction I was already planning to hit next and conquer any one of their cities, because apparently they'd grown large enough that he wanted them taken down a peg. (Even though they were about the same size as me and several other factions, and there's definitely one that was larger that he didn't issue this mission for...) Just, wow, that was crazy convenient.

It's not that much of a surprise. The game knows your objectives, and it knows that you need to keep moving and conquering to accomplish them, so they'll send you a mission where they estimate you are likely to strike next, or where they think you should.

[Inarius]

I would guess either the new engine doesn't support it, or, more likely, they wanted to simplify things to reach a wider audience.

If I remember right it was basically to cut down on the busywork bloat that tends to pile up on the campaign map as your empire gets bigger. That's also why they began bunching cities up into provincial groups in Rome 2 to make it quicker to cycle through all of your cities on each turn.


One thing I'm very much appreciating is how generals and agents now allow me to select bonuses they'll get as they grow. It's so much nicer than the purely randomized ones from the older games. I can actually intentionally get a ninja who's particularly good at assasinations if I wish (and I do!); or I was able to focus my one Monk so far on being very good at converting the populace of provinces, so that he's speeding up my conversion of conquered Christians that much more. That's a big boon to how helpful those kind of units are. It's a bit less of a big deal with generals, granted, but still appreciated.

The randomized traits are back sort of in Rome 2. They have the level up system where you pick what traits you want combined with the ability to gain 3 randomized traits. That being said if your general is about to gain a negative trait the game will typically give you a warning about it. A trait saying something along the lines of your general has been spending too much time lazing about in the city, perhaps sending him out on campaign would be a good idea. If you don't take the suggestion of this trait you'll find it eventually replaced with a trait that provides a penalty.

It basically just adds transparency to the traits system Rome 1 had where you had to guess what was causing your generals to get bad traits. It took me the longest time to realize that if your tax rate isn't high enough to cause the yellow face unrest symbol on towns they're governing your generals usually gain corruption in Rome 1. Of course going beyond yellow tier to purple unrest could cause other negative traits to occur too.

[Kadesh]

One of my favourite factions to play in R2 is Pergamon, but it is DLC.

You have insanely high charge elite cav generals who don't have the tankiness of Cataphracts. Early game charges are brutal, and it is not hard to gain buckets of experience for your generals and claim the 'Claret' traits to drop enemy morale. However, you still need to be aware of risks to your general in combat.

Their late game roster has some really nice units, like Picked Peltasts and Agema Spears, which are amazing in their square formation.

They have a nice challenging early game Galatian roster Iirc, but but have easy access to Merc Rodian Slings and are close to being able to get Syrian Archers, and have challenges on the doorstep like Pontus, Seleucids, Galatia, and Macedon, while being able to Client State recruit from Colchis or Sparta to claim more conventional disgustingly powerful Hoplites if you push for that and economically support them while you head south and east.

Like all games, it can become a Steamroll and make end game boring, but they are one of the few factions I've been able to enjoy to enjoy through to that stage, and claim the campaign victories in legendary, as well as military and economic victory.

One thing that also might seem a bit daff, is actually roleplaying along with the missions you are issued or bonuses you receive, and trying to complete even if it seems like more effort, or it is something bad might happen. Or the old chestnut of recruiting a full stack for a campaign, only to then get negative recruitment cost or veterancy modifiers for your elite units the following turn: instead, you only recruit those units when you have the cost modifiers.

It adds to challenge.

The other thing I think should be picked up is an agent mod. Rome 2 agent spam is especially bad IMHO.

[Double A]

It basically just adds transparency to the traits system Rome 1 had where you had to guess what was causing your generals to get bad traits. It took me the longest time to realize that if your tax rate isn't high enough to cause the yellow face unrest symbol on towns they're governing your generals usually gain corruption in Rome 1. Of course going beyond yellow tier to purple unrest could cause other negative traits to occur too.

Actually (and this may only be true of M2), generals would only get good taxation traits when they finished constructing buildings while happiness was blue at the start of your next turn (ie when the building actually finishes constructing).

[Crow]

Plus it was good to let all your generals and governors take a trot around the countryside each turn, to keep from getting lazy and depraved.

Lord help me though, avoiding the dreaded "Chinless Wonder" in Medieval 1 was damn near impossible!

[Inarius]

Actually (and this may only be true of M2), generals would only get good taxation traits when they finished constructing buildings while happiness was blue at the start of your next turn (ie when the building actually finishes constructing).

I think in rome 1 thats the administration trait line and can also trigger on recruiting a unit. Honestly its kind of fuzzy I just remember needing high taxes and borderline unrest to get the best traits when governing a city in rome 1.

[Resileaf]

Literally everything you do in Rome and Medieval 2 will give traits to your generals. Taxes are low? Your governor's ability to gather taxes gets lower because they allow people to pay less and less. General not moving in a city? Gets fat. Recruit lots of units? Discount on unit recruiting because he's doing a lot of it.

[veti]

If I remember right it was basically to cut down on the busywork bloat that tends to pile up on the campaign map as your empire gets bigger. That's also why they began bunching cities up into provincial groups in Rome 2 to make it quicker to cycle through all of your cities on each turn.

I find it very hard to believe that there's anything about the later games that's designed to reduce micromanagement. Especially by simply removing an option that was there in earlier games.

I suspect the reason is more historical: post-medieval period, with an increasingly centralised modern bureaucracy, and increasingly connected population and economy, that sort of local variation in tax rates just isn't viable any more.

[Narkis]

I suspect the reason is more historical: post-medieval period, with an increasingly centralised modern bureaucracy, and increasingly connected population and economy, that sort of local variation in tax rates just isn't viable any more.

Rome 2 is decidedly pre-medieval. And you can wholly exempt provinces from taxes.

[Zevox]

Played some more today, and a few interesting turns happened in my campaign. The faction I was fighting in the northwestern part of the main island has been wiped out - but only half by me. Seems that while I distracted their two big armies, another faction swooped in and conquered the other half of their territory. Sneaky bastards. Don't recall anything like that happening in the older games.

Actually, maybe it's just my not having played a Total War in such a long time, but it feels like the AI in general is more proactive in this one than in the older games. The early turns were just a whirlwind of "this faction has been destroyed" messages as early wars all across the map resulted in tons of extinctions, whittling things down already to a single-digit number of factions, which I don't think was the norm when I was playing Rome or Medieval 2. And really, it's mainly two major powers that have emerged at this point - myself in the west, and the Ikko Ikki in the center of the main island. Everybody else is more modestly sized, and I'm pretty sure the three out on the far east are in losing wars with the Ikko Ikki.

Which meanwhile leaves me with two factions to deal with between me and them - and somewhat surprisingly, I won't be dealing with the one that swooped up half of the territory I was planning to conquer first. The other faction, the Chosokabe, who control the other western island, Shikoku, were in an alliance with me, but all of a sudden decided to call that off and then, not two turns later, declare war on me. With no apparent game plan either since all they did was start harassing my sea trade routes. So yeah, going to conquer myself Shikoku and then turn my attention back to the main island.

I actually had my first really close fight when I landed my first forces on Shikoku. Quickly grabbed a lightly-defended city, then found out that the Chosokabe's main army was right nearby. Rough battle, with them having a lot more archers than me and the castle in the city being pretty low-ranked. I wound up losing a lot troops and one of my two generals that was with the army - but won the battle and killed both of their generals, one of whom was their Daimyo, so I'd say it worked out for me. I will say that a defensive battle at a city like that is starting to make me dislike the whole ability to just climb walls willy-nilly though. Being on defense behind city walls doesn't feel like the huge advantage that it used to with that. Even though yeah, you can just pull archers back and move up melee troops when the enemies get close, it's still a far cry from being able to line archers across the walls of a city in Rome or Medieval 2 and rain death down upon approaching foes with impunity while they needed to bring siege engines to bear to break in, which was a much more fun dynamic. Also, trying to position troops in a castle battle really made me dislike the weird way Shogun 2 handles formations - those fancy formations that are meant for whole armies might work fine out in the field, but in a castle they're not really the way to go and I want more precise control of where my guys line up than they give, and without simpler formations I don't really have it without commanding each unit individually, which is tedious.


The randomized traits are back sort of in Rome 2. They have the level up system where you pick what traits you want combined with the ability to gain 3 randomized traits. That being said if your general is about to gain a negative trait the game will typically give you a warning about it. A trait saying something along the lines of your general has been spending too much time lazing about in the city, perhaps sending him out on campaign would be a good idea. If you don't take the suggestion of this trait you'll find it eventually replaced with a trait that provides a penalty.

It basically just adds transparency to the traits system Rome 1 had where you had to guess what was causing your generals to get bad traits. It took me the longest time to realize that if your tax rate isn't high enough to cause the yellow face unrest symbol on towns they're governing your generals usually gain corruption in Rome 1. Of course going beyond yellow tier to purple unrest could cause other negative traits to occur too.
Eh, some random traits while still having the level up system sounds fine to me. Although, I wasn't aware there was anything specific causing some traits to happen in the older games - I never saw much of a pattern to any of it, so I had assumed it was all completely random.

[Resileaf]

Actually, maybe it's just my not having played a Total War in such a long time, but it feels like the AI in general is more proactive in this one than in the older games. The early turns were just a whirlwind of "this faction has been destroyed" messages as early wars all across the map resulted in tons of extinctions, whittling things down already to a single-digit number of factions, which I don't think was the norm when I was playing Rome or Medieval 2. And really, it's mainly two major powers that have emerged at this point - myself in the west, and the Ikko Ikki in the center of the main island. Everybody else is more modestly sized, and I'm pretty sure the three out on the far east are in losing wars with the Ikko Ikki.


That's actually because every major faction begins at war with one or more neighbors, which means that they will begin fighting quickly. And some minor factions start in a very advantageous position over their rivals, so they are likely to wipe them out, if not in the first turn, definitely in the first few. Then things will just snowball, because those wars will have caused other clans to take notice of it and create militaries to contest their now stronger rivals.

The game is very much set up to erupt in war all across the country from the beginning to make sure that you yourself are forced to get stronger as well lest you be destroyed by your rivals who have never stopped conquering.

[Inarius]

Which meanwhile leaves me with two factions to deal with between me and them - and somewhat surprisingly, I won't be dealing with the one that swooped up half of the territory I was planning to conquer first. The other faction, the Chosokabe, who control the other western island, Shikoku, were in an alliance with me, but all of a sudden decided to call that off and then, not two turns later, declare war on me. With no apparent game plan either since all they did was start harassing my sea trade routes. So yeah, going to conquer myself Shikoku and then turn my attention back to the main island.


Thats a pretty good place to expand to for your faction. I think its the only place on the western third of the map that has the stone resource which is used to upgrade your castles to the last 2 tiers.

[Crow]

You're in the position now where you better start gearing up for total war. From this point out, you need to treat your expansion strategy as if you will be at war with every faction you border- and have a plan for it.

[Resileaf]

Keep a particularly close eye on your fame meter. It will get up with every battle you win and every province you conquer, and the moment it's filled up, the entire country will declare war on you. Do not let it take you by surprise, you'll have to make sure your economy is up to snuff before you jump into the realm divide.

[Zevox]

That's actually because every major faction begins at war with one or more neighbors, which means that they will begin fighting quickly. And some minor factions start in a very advantageous position over their rivals, so they are likely to wipe them out, if not in the first turn, definitely in the first few. Then things will just snowball, because those wars will have caused other clans to take notice of it and create militaries to contest their now stronger rivals.

The game is very much set up to erupt in war all across the country from the beginning to make sure that you yourself are forced to get stronger as well lest you be destroyed by your rivals who have never stopped conquering.
Eh, that'd explain all the faction wipes early on, but enemies still seem more proactive even given that, with things like the Bessho coming in and grabbing half of that other faction's territory once I had their armies' attention, or just the way I'm seeing a lot more enemy armies maneuvering about than I recall in older games. (Actually, I find it odd that the AI doesn't seem to like letting armies sit in cities in this one - I've had far more battle out in the open than I have at cities, just because they seem to like parking their armies outside for some reason.)


You're in the position now where you better start gearing up for total war. From this point out, you need to treat your expansion strategy as if you will be at war with every faction you border- and have a plan for it.

Keep a particularly close eye on your fame meter. It will get up with every battle you win and every province you conquer, and the moment it's filled up, the entire country will declare war on you. Do not let it take you by surprise, you'll have to make sure your economy is up to snuff before you jump into the realm divide.
Well, I'm pretty much ready for that anyway. I only border two factions, one of which, the Chosokabe, I'm at war with anyway, and the other, the Bessho, I've been worried could declare war on me at any time (we've been harassing each other with ninja and metsuke for a little while now), so I have had an army left behind to guard my borders with them. And I'm assembling another army on those borders so that I can hit them with two at once when I start my war with them, which is coming up soon.*

I have recently gotten the warning that the Shogun is getting nervous about my faction, so yeah, I guess that's coming up. Annoying to hear that literally everyone will declare war on me, but eh, I should be in good shape. Might have trouble on the seas if the Ikko Ikki become a problem before I've purged the Bessho navies, but otherwise it'll mostly be annoying that I can't take a couple of turns to recover from my war with the Bessho before I go to war with the Ikko Ikki.

*As far as my status goes, I've got control of most of Shikoku now. The Chosokabe surprisingly put up more of a fight than the other factions I've fought so far despite having only five provinces, I had to kill three good size armies during the war on Shikoku. And almost a fourth, but I took care of that one by assassinating the general and then bribing most of the army to switch sides** - which cost a pretty penny, but my economy is really good right now. But now they've got only token defenses at their last two cities and I have two armies to crush them with, so it's just a matter of a couple of turns of travel time before they're wiped out. Then I go after the Bessho, which will complete my control of the north-western corner of the main island, and then it's final boss battle with the Ikko Ikki, who are by far the biggest faction at this point, and Kyoto.

**Speaking of, holy hell agents are even more useful than I was expecting. I swear my Ninjas have killed more generals than my armies, and bribing armies is insanely powerful even if it is expensive, and surprisingly easy when there's no general. They might just have made them a bit too good, honestly.

[Blackhawk748]

Have you used a Geisha yet? Cuz Geisha are straight up BUUUUUULLLLLLLLSSSSSHHHHH************!!! Seriously, Geisha are flipping nuts, but I am gladthat the agents are so much better than they were in M2. I mean, I love M2, but the Diplomats are kinda meh (but thats more of the Diplo system sucking in general) Princesses are sporadic in usefulness, Spies are always solid and Assassins get used too much which make your King an evil jerk.

But ya, the whole contry will come down on you like the hammer of god, but thankfully half of them will ignore you as you're on the other side. Try doing it when you're the Oda. Its so much fun!! There's no sarcasm there, none at all.

[Crow]

You're going to love how this is the one Total War where the AI launch competent amphibious assaults.

[Zevox]

Have you used a Geisha yet? Cuz Geisha are straight up BUUUUUULLLLLLLLSSSSSHHHHH************!!! Seriously, Geisha are flipping nuts, but I am gladthat the agents are so much better than they were in M2. I mean, I love M2, but the Diplomats are kinda meh (but thats more of the Diplo system sucking in general) Princesses are sporadic in usefulness, Spies are always solid and Assassins get used too much which make your King an evil jerk.

But ya, the whole contry will come down on you like the hammer of god, but thankfully half of them will ignore you as you're on the other side. Try doing it when you're the Oda. Its so much fun!! There's no sarcasm there, none at all.
I have not used Geisha yet, no. I'm not far enough into the tech tree to have them, and the areas I've been focusing most on are the economics and katanas/archery trees, not the agents-related ones.

As for Medieval 2 agents, eh, to my recollection spies were the only really reliable ones. Diplomats were, well, the way diplomacy always has been in Total War, Princesses I don't even recall what they did, and assassins were one you tried to use but that often didn't work out. I recall it being very hard to raise an effective assassin in past games because they tended to have a high chance of dying if they failed - or at least a much higher one than ninja seem to have in Shogun 2 - so it was often difficult to get them past their first star or two and up to a level where they could actually be useful more than once in a blue moon. By comparison, the ninja in Shogun 2 escaping with their lives so much more often and getting to pick what bonuses they gain when they level up makes them so much more reliable it's not even funny.


You're going to love how this is the one Total War where the AI launch competent amphibious assaults.
Hm, well, the Chosokabe didn't exactly give me that impression, considering they started a war with me and then didn't send any troops over to my lands. But eh, my navies are pretty strong at this point, between having been built up to combat the Chosokabe's navy and all of the ships I captured from them. (Aside: it's very nice that auto-resolve is giving good results pretty reliably, often including capturing half or more of the enemy fleet.) As long as I can get the Bessho navy taken care of before the Ikko Ikki get on my case, I'm pretty confident I'll be good there.

[snowblizz]

Hm, well, the Chosokabe didn't exactly give me that impression, considering they started a war with me and then didn't send any troops over to my lands. But eh, my navies are pretty strong at this point, between having been built up to combat the Chosokabe's navy and all of the ships I captured from them. (Aside: it's very nice that auto-resolve is giving good results pretty reliably, often including capturing half or more of the enemy fleet.) As long as I can get the Bessho navy taken care of before the Ikko Ikki get on my case, I'm pretty confident I'll be good there.
Oh now I have to bring up one of the coolest moments in all of the Total Wars I've played.

I was playing Date up in the North and conqured my way half-way to Kyoto. About. My armies are all close to the front. When the Mori, out of nowhere, land an army (a big one, might been 2 even) a couple days' march from my capital. The Mori are based on the tip of the main island so literally other end. I have nothing assembled that can meet them but I start building units. And remember I can sap movement by attacking. So I send wave after wave of 1 unit spear ashigaru in a gerilla war that attack, run around and retreat from the battle when I can. Takes about 3 of those to pin down the enemy for their next turn. They also attack them and again I run around effctively losing but saving the unit. This means that for 5-6 rounds the enemy can't get anywhere. Whereupon first one, then another son of the Mori clan deem their leaders to be honourless (that's what they said) and join my clan with some troops. After 2 such defections I join them with some newly raised troops and crush the invasion about when I get enough troops to the area to challenge it anyway.

I don't know what in the game system that allowed it but it was absolutely awesome. So yes the enemy AI can do amphibious invasions.

[Zevox]

Well, the Chossokabe have fallen, and Shikoku is now fully mine. I quickly started my war with the Bessho, and it looks like they won't put up much of a fight. I took three provinces from them in the space of two turns.

And the moment I took the third, I triggered the Realm Divide. It's definitely a little intimidating have the entire world - or country in this case, but same thing as far as a Total War game is concerned - declare war on you at once, but considering my situation, I think I can handle it. It did hurt my economy, dropping my income per turn by a few grand from all the lost trade, but I'm still getting a good sum despite that.

The Bessho hit back with the one big army they had, but I managed to shatter it on defense despite being outnumbered. I liked the castle defense a bit better with the slightly bigger castle I had this time, but the spiderman-climbing thing still bugs me. Anyway, they don't look like they have much left to put up a fight with, so I might just mow them over quickly from here and be on to fighting the Ikko Ikki for dominance.

And actually, the other factions out east might have softened them up a bit for me. One of them that was almost extinct, the Takeda, has had a resurgence, and conquered a chunk of five or so of the Ikko Ikki provinces right out of the middle of their territory, effectively splitting it in two. That could be awfully convenient for me if it makes it hard for their western provinces to get any support from their eastern ones, which, as long as they don't agree to a truce due to the Realm Divide to focus on me, I'd hope it should.

[snowblizz]

the spiderman-climbing thing still bugs me.

This is an essential historical feature of Japanese castles. If the game "fixed" it it'd be like not being able to tear down castle walls in Medieaval.

[Resileaf]

Fair warning, the other nations will ally against you sooner than later. You can't expect them to fight one another for long, so take advantage of the few turns you have before they fully focus you down.
Keep as many agents as you can spare in enemy territory. You don't want to be surprised by the sudden appearance of a full stack somewhere you're not expecting. Especially because the AI is known to cheat and spawn armies in provinces they shouldn't be able to train units in. I think having line of sight on where they spawn their troops will keep them honest.
Furthermore, you can expect a lot of attempts at sending troops by ship. Keep your navies strong so they don't sneak past and start wrecking your undefended lands.
Finally, the Shogunate will spawn a few free armies when you attack Kyoto. Consider this their final boss battle.

[Zevox]

This is an essential historical feature of Japanese castles. If the game "fixed" it it'd be like not being able to tear down castle walls in Medieaval.
I might be willing to just accept that, had another poster not told me earlier that it carries over into Total War games that came after Shogun 2.


Fair warning, the other nations will ally against you sooner than later. You can't expect them to fight one another for long, so take advantage of the few turns you have before they fully focus you down.
Keep as many agents as you can spare in enemy territory. You don't want to be surprised by the sudden appearance of a full stack somewhere you're not expecting. Especially because the AI is known to cheat and spawn armies in provinces they shouldn't be able to train units in. I think having line of sight on where they spawn their troops will keep them honest.
Furthermore, you can expect a lot of attempts at sending troops by ship. Keep your navies strong so they don't sneak past and start wrecking your undefended lands.
Finally, the Shogunate will spawn a few free armies when you attack Kyoto. Consider this their final boss battle.
So I see. I must admit, I'm less fond of the Realm Divide concept after finding that it makes the other factions all set aside their other wars an ally against me. And significantly less fond if it's true that it also just lets the AI straight-up cheat and spawn armies they shouldn't be able to - at that point it's less of an extra end-game challenge and more just annoying BS.

Still, going well for me so far. The Bessho are dead, they pretty much rolled over and got conquered without any trouble after that opening series of attacks destroyed their only real armies. After that I had to dig in to face a couple of big armies the others sent after me though - one from the Ikko Ikki, one from the Takeda, both with a whole stack of generals leading them. My ninja managed to kill or wound their leadership (including both Daimyos, though they were the ones I only wounded) and sabotage them a couple of times to buy me time, which ultimately allowed me to shatter the armies themselves when they were leaderless or down to just one 1-star General. Now I just need to give my armies time to recover from those big battles, and I can start conquering Ikko Ikki territory. I'm at 27 provinces now, so I need another 12 provinces plus Kyoto to win. I already have one province adjacent to Kyoto conquered, but I think I should save them for last, particularly since it looks like the Shogun's faction is content to sit and just defend Kyoto rather than attack me directly.

My navies have managed to fight off enemy navies quite effectively too - and with all the captures, I'm only getting more and more control of the seas. Unless the Honma (the faction at the other end of the map, which I have yet to see any forces from) turn out to have invested heavily in naval technology and have a force of more advanced ships, I'm pretty sure I have little to worry about there.

[Crow]

I might be willing to just accept that, had another poster not told me earlier that it carries over into Total War games that came after Shogun 2.

Except that it really doesn't. Unless we're talking about Warhammer's themepark walls and quantum ladders.

There was no such ninja wall scaling in Rome 2 or Attila so far as I can remember.

[Zevox]

Except that it really doesn't. Unless we're talking about Warhammer's themepark walls and quantum ladders.

There was no such ninja wall scaling in Rome 2 or Attila so far as I can remember.
Really? Narkis said this back on page 1, in response to my initial reaction to finding out about the wall-climbing mechanic:

Unfortunately that's the case with all modern Total War games and one of the reasons I prefer the older ones. At least the units who climb walls get tired, so the defender still has some sort of advantage.
I was surprised to hear that, since I'd been assuming it was something specific Shogun 2 and Japanese-style castles, but nobody contradicted him, so I thought that he must be correct. Is that not the case? :smallconfused:

[Crow]

Units in Warhammer have ladders that they pull from their asses. It also didn't have an entire settlement, but rather a section of wall you attack in siege battles. I don't know if that changed in Warhammer 2 because I frankly found Warhammer to be awful for me.

In Rome and Attila the lesser settlements have weak spots you can get units in; but heavily-fortified locations can't be climbed into.

[Resileaf]

Units in Warhammer have ladders that they pull from their asses. It also didn't have an entire settlement, but rather a section of wall you attack in siege battles. I don't know if that changed in Warhammer 2 because I frankly found Warhammer to be awful for me.

In Rome and Attila the lesser settlements have weak spots you can get units in; but heavily-fortified locations can't be climbed into.

To be fair, the ladders in Warhammer only appear if you have siege weapons built to assault a city. If you don't have siege weapons, you can't attack at all, even if you would have ladders otherwise.
Ladders are more intended to be a kind of anti-frustration measure for siegers so the loss of all their siege weapons is not an instant loss for their assault.

[veti]

Infantry units in Empire, three years before Shogun 2, come equipped with grappling hooks and ropes as standard.

But the thing is, the attackers can only climb so fast, and they get very tired doing it, so walls are still powerful even in the age of universal cannon.

[caden_varn]

@Zevox: You mentioned that you like to build up and slowly but surely paint the map your color- For Shogun 2, you may want to download a mod to remove the time restrictions on the campaign then. The time limits can be quite restrictive, and in the short victories in particular, you're going to have to rush near the end if you wait too long. Rome 2 was really bad with this at first, but eventually CA greatly relaxed the restrictions to the point I didn't so much notice it.
[

What mods would you suggest for this? I tried Shogun 2 many years ago, but I could never get into it - if I remember correctly I just felt far too rushed to enjoy it & pretty soon gave up.

[Crow]

What mods would you suggest for this? I tried Shogun 2 many years ago, but I could never get into it - if I remember correctly I just felt far too rushed to enjoy it & pretty soon gave up.

I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think modding this may be as easy as changing one value in the desc_strat (or equivalent) file.

[caden_varn]

I'll have a play with this, thanks for the info...

[Zevox]

Well, the end is in sight. I've taken a big chunk of Ikko Ikki territory, almost the entire western half of their empire, and basically have Kyoto surrounded. I've had to fight off a number of Ikko Ikki and Takeda armies, but after the first few they've tended to consist mostly of Ashigaru units, so they've been much less trouble. The Ikko Ikki and Takeda daimyos are dead, one killed by my Ninja and the other slain in battle when I conquered his capital city, depriving them of their best generals. And my navies have easy control of the seas at this point. The only real complication I'm facing is trying to keep religious unrest from the Ikko Ikki's religion in all these territories I've conquered down.

I'm at 35/40 provinces in 1570, so plenty of time to spare, and there's two more lightly-defended Ikko Ikki provinces that I should be able to grab quickly. Time to begin preparations to take Kyoto and finish this up.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Would it be okay to ask about other Total War games here, or should I start my own thread for that? I've been struggling with Thrones of Britannia after the final DLC and updates basically rewrote the game's rules. :smallredface:

[The Jack]

You killed a daimyo with a ninja?
It defo wasn't shingen, and was just their 1/2 star replacement after a series of takeda defeats, right?

[Kadesh]

Would it be okay to ask about other Total War games here, or should I start my own thread for that? I've been struggling with Thrones of Britannia after the final DLC and updates basically rewrote the game's rules. :smallredface:

Sure, what's the issue you are having?

[Zevox]

You killed a daimyo with a ninja?
It defo wasn't shingen, and was just their 1/2 star replacement after a series of takeda defeats, right?
Not sure what "shingen" means, but no replacement as far as I'm aware. He was a full 6 star general, so I assume it was their first daimyo. Even my best ninja had only around a 50-50 shot of success, but after a few tries (and having wounded him instead of killed on a couple of previous attempts), I won that coinflip.

[Resileaf]

Not sure what "shingen" means, but no replacement as far as I'm aware. He was a full 6 star general, so I assume it was their first daimyo. Even my best ninja had only around a 50-50 shot of success, but after a few tries (and having wounded him instead of killed on a couple of previous attempts), I won that coinflip.

He speaks of Takeda Shingen, the starting Daimyo of the Takeda clan in the game. He's in disbelief that you managed to kill one of the most powerful Daimyo with a ninja. XD

[The Glyphstone]

He speaks of Takeda Shingen, the starting Daimyo of the Takeda clan in the game. He's in disbelief that you managed to kill one of the most powerful Daimyo with a ninja. XD

He tripped on a banana peel while walking down the stairs?

[Zevox]

He speaks of Takeda Shingen, the starting Daimyo of the Takeda clan in the game. He's in disbelief that you managed to kill one of the most powerful Daimyo with a ninja. XD
Oh. Well, hey, like I said earlier, agents are powerful in this game. The ninja who did it was maxed out, with an effective assassination rating of 12 stars and several bonuses to his critical success chance, and even he was a coin flip to do it and only managed after multiple tries, some of which only wounded him, so it's not like it was easy.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Sure, what's the issue you are having?

It's more how to juggle a host of issues, especially in the early game. Back before the updates and stuff, shortly after the game's release, I had a quite successful campaign as Mide, and I wanted to go back and play it "properly" now that it looks like CA is "done" with Thrones of Britannia, and I'm finding the beginning much more difficult despite playing on Normal difficulty like last time. My expansion options always seem frustrated by Airgialla, since they swoop in and take territory from my immediate neighbors that I wanted (Brega in one playthrough, where I helped them against Dyflin, and in another where I conquered them instead they marched into Breifne, my next conquest target, because Breifne had started a war with Ailech, Airgialla's master and my ally). And my army building seems to be going a lot slower than that of my rivals, who are deploying stacks of 14 or even 19 while I'm struggling to get even one stack up to 10 troops.

I'm also having difficulty keeping my populace fed and my nobles happy at the same time, since a lot of them are asking for agricultural estates. When I have Agricultural estates, they provide extra food that my army needs, but when I give them to my nobles, that bonus flips to a penalty, and before I know it I'm dealing with a food shortage on top of rebellions in my conquered regions that take food-producing towns from me and making the shortage worse. Add to that the fact that my Legitimacy keeps tanking and it creates a snowball effect where I can't keep my realm under control and am spending more time defending what little I have while other territories fight each other around me, something I eventually can't keep up when I finally become targeted from outside.

In short, I'm sort of struggling with my opening moves, as with these updates the game is much more challenging than it was at launch (and for the record I do think the changes they've made ARE for the better, I'm just really having a hard time relearning the game). I'm certain there's a way to get "over the hump" so to speak and get to a point where my own progress snowballs into me conquering Ireland and beyond, but I'm having a hard time figuring out that way...and Mide is supposed to be one of the easier factions to start as! :smallredface:

[Zevox]

And it's done. Kyoto fell before an attack from two of my armies working together - and was finally a battle where I deployed my first siege weapons, fire mangonels, which I quite liked and wish hadn't taken so long to get ahold of. One year later, in spring of 1574, my Daimyo was declared Shogun by the Emperor, and his second-eldest son captured the Takeda capital of Minos, marking the fortieth province to fall under my rule. Campaign complete, victory.

So yeah, nothing really new to say at this point. Aside from not being thrilled with the wall-climbing thing, I quite enjoyed that. Don't know if or when I might play another campaign in this one, particularly since other factions will still largely play the same just with different starting positions, but I'm happy to have played it at least once. Thanks all for the recommendations on it!

Part of me wants to go start a campaign in Rome 2 now, but it's only a little under 2 weeks until Devil May Cry 5's release, and I'm definitely not going to be playing Total War once that game's out, and based on how long this campaign took, I probably wouldn't finish a Rome 2 campaign before then. Maybe after I'm done with DMC5. Guess in the meantime I'll find other games to pass the time - or maybe keep playing Shogun 2 a little just to finishing conquering as much of Japan as I can until DMC5 arrives.

[Blackhawk748]

If you want to have a very different campaign down the line, try playing as the Oda. Not only is your starting position crap (seriously, its awful) but you get Super Ashigaru as your special unit, and that really messes with how you play the game as your Ashigaru will kick the crap out of everyone else's.

[Inarius]

Part of me wants to go start a campaign in Rome 2 now, but it's only a little under 2 weeks until Devil May Cry 5's release, and I'm definitely not going to be playing Total War once that game's out, and based on how long this campaign took, I probably wouldn't finish a Rome 2 campaign before then. Maybe after I'm done with DMC5. Guess in the meantime I'll find other games to pass the time - or maybe keep playing Shogun 2 a little just to finishing conquering as much of Japan as I can until DMC5 arrives.

You may want to wait if you're going to be occupied with DMC 5. Steam spring sale will probably be coming up soon and Rome 2 will likely be on sale during it.

[Zevox]

You may want to wait if you're going to be occupied with DMC 5. Steam spring sale will probably be coming up soon and Rome 2 will likely be on sale during it.
Oh, I bought Rome 2 already - there was a sale literally the day after I bought Shogun 2 where it was 75% off, and I grabbed it then.

[The Jack]

If you want to have a very different campaign down the line, try playing as the Oda. Not only is your starting position crap (seriously, its awful)

Oda's starting position is excellent. What're you doing? You've got awesome neighbours and a good route south.
Oda's the one clan where i thought the starting difficulty was a complete lie (mind you, I've never played Mori or Tokugawa and don't have the Hattori)

Now Takeda and Uesegi start with BS (though maybe I'm bias with Takeda cause it was my first hard game) but the Uesegi are slow and the Takeda are completely surrounded. My Takeda campaign only went well because I was really trying hard to be BFF with the imagawa. Like towards the end I'd periodically gift them thousands just so I could wipe out everything East without needing four armies west.
To my Chargrin, when I got everything East and hit realm devide, I Rolled through to kyoto and never got to use the great guard as a takeda because that ended my long campaign.

Now the Otomo... That starting position is a sick joke.
You get a nanban trade port but it's in the wrong province.
You border five provinces
Everyone hates you, you're at war with two factions and you're going to be at war with more very soon.
The Starting dude talks about how you're rivals with the shimazu, who never last long enough to be seen.

[Blackhawk748]

Oda's starting position is excellent. What're you doing? You've got awesome neighbours and a good route south.
Oda's the one clan where i thought the starting difficulty was a complete lie (mind you, I've never played Mori or Tokugawa and don't have the Hattori)

Now Takeda and Uesegi start with BS (though maybe I'm bias with Takeda cause it was my first hard game) but the Uesegi are slow and the Takeda are completely surrounded. My Takeda campaign only went well because I was really trying hard to be BFF with the imagawa. Like towards the end I'd periodically gift them thousands just so I could wipe out everything East without needing four armies west.
To my Chargrin, when I got everything East and hit realm devide, I Rolled through to kyoto and never got to use the great guard as a takeda because that ended my long campaign.

Now the Otomo... That starting position is a sick joke.
You get a nanban trade port but it's in the wrong province.
You border five provinces
Everyone hates you, you're at war with two factions and you're going to be at war with more very soon.
The Starting dude talks about how you're rivals with the shimazu, who never last long enough to be seen.

You're in the middle of the map and if your neighbors decide to kill you (like mine did fairly early) you are gonna have a very, very hard time fighting them off. Granted it was my first playthrough so I probably did some stupid stuff, but god it was awful.

Now my second playthrough was a curbstomp with all of my super Archers as the Shimazu can get a province that boosts them stupid early. That and stacks of Katana Samurai will just let you roll everything.

[Kadesh]

It's more how to juggle a host of issues, especially in the early game. Back before the updates and stuff, shortly after the game's release, I had a quite successful campaign as Mide, and I wanted to go back and play it "properly" now that it looks like CA is "done" with Thrones of Britannia, and I'm finding the beginning much more difficult despite playing on Normal difficulty like last time. My expansion options always seem frustrated by Airgialla, since they swoop in and take territory from my immediate neighbors that I wanted (Brega in one playthrough, where I helped them against Dyflin, and in another where I conquered them instead they marched into Breifne, my next conquest target, because Breifne had started a war with Ailech, Airgialla's master and my ally). And my army building seems to be going a lot slower than that of my rivals, who are deploying stacks of 14 or even 19 while I'm struggling to get even one stack up to 10 troops.

I'm also having difficulty keeping my populace fed and my nobles happy at the same time, since a lot of them are asking for agricultural estates. When I have Agricultural estates, they provide extra food that my army needs, but when I give them to my nobles, that bonus flips to a penalty, and before I know it I'm dealing with a food shortage on top of rebellions in my conquered regions that take food-producing towns from me and making the shortage worse. Add to that the fact that my Legitimacy keeps tanking and it creates a snowball effect where I can't keep my realm under control and am spending more time defending what little I have while other territories fight each other around me, something I eventually can't keep up when I finally become targeted from outside.

In short, I'm sort of struggling with my opening moves, as with these updates the game is much more challenging than it was at launch (and for the record I do think the changes they've made ARE for the better, I'm just really having a hard time relearning the game). I'm certain there's a way to get "over the hump" so to speak and get to a point where my own progress snowballs into me conquering Ireland and beyond, but I'm having a hard time figuring out that way...and Mide is supposed to be one of the easier factions to start as! :smallredface:

Biggest challenge for me is that 14 Strong Stack that goes for your villages from the Vikings when you side with Brega.

My actions were; pay/secure Military Access with Brega (3Kish), and defeat the rebels, return home, and recruit more (mainly Jav Cav and Archers), before heading south to protect against the Vikings, staying near to the crossing. Rush the Jav Cav over, and alpha strike the general, then try and bait them over. Leave Brega to claim Viking Territories, and head north to take on Briefne, and claim the Iron. Depending on food needs, head south to the Hlymrekr and take the farm. Issue Agriculture estates only to those who do not have the Virtuous or Wise trait groups, as they are Food negatives. Build garrisons to improve your reinforcement range, now you can support your allies more, fight more offensively with a more secure homeland, and then spend time on emphasising trade and leadership to gain the Legitimacy needed to eventually Annex people.

[Inarius]

Now Takeda and Uesegi start with BS (though maybe I'm bias with Takeda cause it was my first hard game) but the Uesegi are slow and the Takeda are completely surrounded. My Takeda campaign only went well because I was really trying hard to be BFF with the imagawa. Like towards the end I'd periodically gift them thousands just so I could wipe out everything East without needing four armies west.


Huh, for me Takeda wasn't so bad. Their starting position is fairly easy to defend because the mountains create barriers that funnel enemies to certain cities. There's one particular city who's name escapes me that is the terminus for 4 separate paths to your capital so if you take that city and garrison it you have free reign to expand southward to the coast.

Uesugi is indeed BS though, partly because the provinces in its starting area are so large so moving armies takes forever which can dramatically slow your expansion. There's also a lack of good defensible choke points in that region of the map so it winds up just being a slog to get started.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Biggest challenge for me is that 14 Strong Stack that goes for your villages from the Vikings when you side with Brega.

My actions were; pay/secure Military Access with Brega (3Kish), and defeat the rebels, return home, and recruit more (mainly Jav Cav and Archers), before heading south to protect against the Vikings, staying near to the crossing. Rush the Jav Cav over, and alpha strike the general, then try and bait them over. Leave Brega to claim Viking Territories, and head north to take on Briefne, and claim the Iron. Depending on food needs, head south to the Hlymrekr and take the farm. Issue Agriculture estates only to those who do not have the Virtuous or Wise trait groups, as they are Food negatives. Build garrisons to improve your reinforcement range, now you can support your allies more, fight more offensively with a more secure homeland, and then spend time on emphasising trade and leadership to gain the Legitimacy needed to eventually Annex people.
I'm stuck at the part where you fight the Vikings at the crossing. My Jav Cav won't cross the bridge, giving the Vikings enough time to engage them in melee. Am I at the right crossing (it's just outside Cnodba, which the Vikings have taken from Airgialla)? Also, just like in previous attempts, Airgialla swooped in to chomp up Brega the moment they started a war with Dyflin. They just can't stand on their own it seems.

[Kadesh]

I'm stuck at the part where you fight the Vikings at the crossing. My Jav Cav won't cross the bridge, giving the Vikings enough time to engage them in melee. Am I at the right crossing (it's just outside Cnodba, which the Vikings have taken from Airgialla)? Also, just like in previous attempts, Airgialla swooped in to chomp up Brega the moment they started a war with Dyflin. They just can't stand on their own it seems.

Yeah, that's the one. Seems strange that they don't cross. Have you turned off the autoskirmish, or will they literally not cross? And yeah, it's the one giving you a Religious Estate, if I'm misremembering. Can't say I've had issues with them getting chewed up by Airgialla. Might be worth trying a Migration campaign, or just eating the Viking's up once they've taken Brega (whose only role is to be eventually swallowed by you anyway), and then striking back against their more defensible settlements when the Viking's have overextended?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Yeah, that's the one. Seems strange that they don't cross. Have you turned off the autoskirmish, or will they literally not cross? And yeah, it's the one giving you a Religious Estate, if I'm misremembering. Can't say I've had issues with them getting chewed up by Airgialla. Might be worth trying a Migration campaign, or just eating the Viking's up once they've taken Brega (whose only role is to be eventually swallowed by you anyway), and then striking back against their more defensible settlements when the Viking's have overextended?
You're right, it was the autoskirmish. Once I turned that off, they did what I needed. Now we've got Cnodba for ourselves, and we're researching food and building up our food buildings, but I'm concerned I'm over extending myself.

Bardr may be dead, but his army is on the mend, looking to secure their remaining lands from me, and my army's got attrition issues due to the food shortage I incurred building it up to deal with Dyflin's. I've added some troops to my second army and marched them to our border, but Breifne looks like it's about to make war either on me or Ailech, which I'm concerned I'm not ready for...

[Kadesh]

Ah, seemed strange, so glad that that's sorted.

All units cost food upkeep, so surely by building new units, you're putting your army you want to gain replenishment under a worse circumstance if it's that which is preventing you from gaining troops back. Being fair to Britannia, I've found it to be one of the more challenging early games, and have restarted a number of times. The only thing that was more difficult for me was release Attila, when I wasn't very good at horse archery.

I've found Jav Cav to be ultra effective units ever since I learned about them with Mercenary Tarantines in Rome 2, however, and absolutely love fast short ranged AP units like them who can decimate Heavy Cav etc.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

That is true, but after building a granary and upgrading my food buildings that's less of a concern. I'm more worried that I've only got one major army, and that it's tied up in Brega while Briefne is looking to start a war of its own, and my second army is nowhere near as strong.

[snowblizz]

That is true, but after building a granary and upgrading my food buildings that's less of a concern. I'm more worried that I've only got one major army, and that it's tied up in Brega while Briefne is looking to start a war of its own, and my second army is nowhere near as strong.

War on two fronts hard? Who knew. :smallbiggrin:


What's the deal with that Game of Thro..Britannia game? I must have gottne burnt on Rome 2 because bought Attila on a whim in a sale and coudln't get into that either.

[Kadesh]

The battles are among the most boring, but I preferred the campaign play of Britannia compared to virtually any other, even modded M2. I have high hopes for 3K.

[Crow]

Now the Otomo... That starting position is a sick joke.
You get a nanban trade port but it's in the wrong province.
You border five provinces
Everyone hates you, you're at war with two factions and you're going to be at war with more very soon.
The Starting dude talks about how you're rivals with the shimazu, who never last long enough to be seen.

Gunpowder is your friend.