No, you have it backwards. That is the argument I'm going to give to all those backwards Shogunate dogs who still insist on charging into battle with katanas.
Oh derp, it's been a while heh. One piece of advice: secret police agents (the guys who manipulate shogunate/imperial sentiment) are awesome. I usually get 5 ASAP.
You can build crazy wealth as satsuma by taking the rich island provinces near you, creating a power block, and then going for Bizen as your mainland landing point
As the Mori, I've managed to march all the way up to Kyoto (not into it) without much resistance. I then turned on the Ouchi, using my fleets to ferry ships down to the south. I've driven them off of the main island, and I've just managed to sail to Bungo, seat of Christianity, and take on their last massive army. I actually landed on either side of the island, but the Ito beat me to the one province furthest left (south?). I had to buy military access so that Mori Motonari, Daimyo, could march across the island and join his two sons with their army that had just landed. Together, they entered the battlefield outnumbered two to one, but with a favorable position: the sons approached from the opposite direction. The two armies acted as hammer and anvil and destroyed the Ouchi scum, albeit with some losses. Bungo was taken in the same turn. WOOT! Except everybody hate me. Stupid negatives due to breaking some trade treaty. And expansionism. Oh well. Yup, this game is still amazingly good.
Okay, I'm having a strange problem with Shogun 2. Whenever I select a unit/castle/ship on the strategy map, the game hangs. Usually for about a second, and then it's back to normal. I've watched this not happen on another PC that I have that can play the game, as that's the one Nate uses whenever we play multiplayer here at my house. I haven't checked if it does it in single-player on that machine, and it's booting up right now. I did end up having a full PC hard lock last night while playing, when the selection lag issue stretched into playing the game normally, which is weird. I've reverified files, I've loaded old saves and tested, I've changed graphical settings, nothing. It's like when it has to load something when I first click on it that it dies for that second. It makes me edgy. Any suggestions that aren't reinstalling a 30 GB game yet? EDIT: Yeah, the other PC is basically lag-free. Started a new Mori game, no issues at all. Copied all the graphics settings and then will duplicate them on this one.
The Otomo donderbuss cavalry really seem to serve to highlight the problem with normal cavalry units in the base campaign. Namely that cavalry are awesome except against spearmen and sieges, and the most prevalent troops are spearmen and the most important battles are sieges. Donderbuss cavalry can ride up and drop devastating volleys and ride away much like revolver cavalry can in the fall of the samurai campaign. Other thoughts on the Otomo - there is little point in teching up to getting otomo matchlock samurai other than being able to build them all over because the Portuguese Tercos are better in every way. They are a little more expensive but much more devastating on the rifle volley and actually competant in melee to the point where they can stand without melee babysitters against everything except massed katana or nodachi troops. Often they will win those battles too because they will have shredded the unit with fire before it reaches them. If you do tech up to matchlock samurai then you at least get fire rockets, which are utterly broken. They have a fairly challenging start as they are at war with two neighbors and have two land and one sea vector by which you can be attacked so you have to scout well and tread carefully. Starting as christian means no big issues changing to it mid game and your subversive agents are second in quality only to the Ikko Ikki, but you'll lack for friends because of your heathen ways. I invested heavily in gunpowder units in general but was underwhelmed largely due to AI issues with your guys simply choosing not to fire after forming up, particularly in siege battles. I'd fall back from a wall as they climb up and my troops would never fire at the enemy units while inside the castle even if they formed up with plenty of time. I savescummed a few times out of frustration when my units failed to attack in battles. One thing I didn't play with much is that you can gift land to Portugal, effectively permanently removing it as a place you can build, for instant cash grants. You get an honor hit for doing it. I could see it being interesting if you adopt raiding tactics with attack, loot province, trash all buildings, sell all the land, and run away. I tend to really like having generals, particularly ones that don't defect, so I didn't try that out.
It's a nice cash infusion (I sold one of the my starting territories right away) and it can help survive the early onslaught of a more difficult game. I haven't tried using it later game (Mostly because I haven't gotten there yet), but early on it saved my butt once or twice, but I don't see the point after a while; you'll never have a great trade income, but you'll be fine if you play your econ right.
I've never seen a battlefield more suited to defense. And it wasn't even a hill. My melee units sat in the gully next to the impassable pond. My gunmen could fire over their heads. And my cannon sat a bit to the right of the line, firing without the need of melee protection. Needless to say, the Shogitai that charged my line were decimated before they hit, and my sabre cavalry flanked them to send them running even faster.
I love scoring the better deployment area. Just doesn't seem to happen that often. I fought a battle yesterday where I was on defense but started at the bottom of a hill. I was just like "Hubba wut."
I've notched that river crossings never work out for me. Too many ways across. This map was solid impassable almost to the edge. Maybe 4-5 men across could go past a little cliff south of the pond.
Can three cavalry units (2 Yari Ki and a Revolver Cavalry General's Bodyguard) take on 4 levy infantry, 1 spear levy, and 1 general? The answer is absolutely, if you're on defense. They sallied forth out of the castle to break my siege. I had sent the cav ahead because my allies were marching an army to take the province, and I didn't want to let them keep it. Step 1: Split the enemy by sending groups running all over. Step 2: Rejoin the cavalry together over by one part of the split up army Step 3:Take out their general and the one nearby levy infantry with a yari ki charge. Bonus vs. other cav is nice. Step 4: Keep running around the battlefield, and lure the spear levy out in front away from the levy gunmen. I then used revolver cav on skirmish to tire and wear them down. Step 5: Throw away the revolvers. I ran out of ammo, so I charged my Yari Ki at them and broke them. Step 6: Continue running around! Tire out the enemy, split them up into small groups using one unit as a lure (general works best), and hit them with the yari ki from the flank or rear. Heroic victory! WOO!!!
The recent outpouring of Rome 2 previews really re-sparked my interest in Shogun 2. I've kept up on this game's new content via Steam sales and I've finally determined I'm going to really dive into it (now that I'm bored with Civ 5 and find myself between games and bored again wtih LOTRO after a week's play). So I d/l Frog's guide, emailed it to myself at work, printed it out in full glorious color, duplexed, and via restroom breaks today find myself on page 12 where the meat on gameplay mechanics start being revealed. I plan on taking it home and hopefully knocking it out in a day or two, but I'm looking for some general gameplay advice/tips above 'n beyond 'play the tutorials'. How important is trade, diplomacy (abysmal in Civ 5, but looking at the Sengoku period's map of clan location, seems like it should be very necessary for certain factions to survive early game expansion), etc.? Should I occasionally auto-resolve battles or does the AI still take too steep a cut out of your army for being lazy like previous Total War games did?
Trade is really important to your income at every stage of the game, and the basis for much diplomacy. you should really be checking the diplomacy menu to look for trade opportunities at least every few turns. Sending out an exploration boat (not a special unit, just send any boat along the shore) will open up diplomacy for every clan you float past. There are some frustrating aspects of diplomacy when you get backstabbed by an ally, but remember the period and that your fellow daimyo respect strength. You can weaken your borders with your allies, but don't weaken them too much. I only auto resolve sieges where I am the attacker, typically, or when I have a greater than 5:1 numbers advantage. The autoresolver vastly undervalues defensive positions. You can frequently win battles in which you are at a 1:4 disadvantage if you are a canny general defending a castle. Autoresolver would have you wiped to the man and killing like 10 guys.
Diplomacy is a huge, huge, integral part of the game. It's still a bit gamey in Shogun 2, but it's much much better than in f'rinstance Civ V. Definitely spend some time plotting who you want to cozy up to and who you can afford to piss off, and make damn sure to check alliances before declaring on anyone. The DLC that adds the Ikko Ikki as a playable faction is a great study in how an extremely strong faction militarily and economically still has a brutal actual position if they can't find allies (a heretic's life is a rough one indeed). I personally don't auto-resolve unless the combat is beyond trivial, as in a big stack stepping on a few loose ashigaru. Most annoyingly, the auto-resolve will damage any castle under siege, which matters a lot more than losing an extra dozen fighters (you have to pay to repair it and your unrest is out of control until that's done).
Hope the guide is useful to you. The game has had a bunch of patches and game-changing DLC since I signed the guide off as complete, but it should still be mostly accurate for the Sengoku era campaign. Certainly on the essentials of gameplay, and on the concepts. The biggest change I can think of is the Nanban Nerf. At the time of writing I could sink entire fleets with a single Nanban trade ship. Now, nope. Cannonballs struggle to sink ships nowadays. Give them support, or use several per fleet. Sail-by musket firing is still nice. Simply sail your Nanban close by an enemy ship, and let the musket-men on desk shoot into the enemy crew. They will do this automatically, all you need to is steer and laugh strategise. My quick tips would be: 1. Ashigaru are not useless. They are your bread and butter (rice and miso?) for the early part of the game, and continue to be relevant throughout the campaign. Use a few samurai to support them, not a few ashigaru to support samurai. Katana samurai are particularly nice in the opening phases as they are strong against infantry. But wait until you can afford them! 2. The AI is capable. Treat it with some respect and things will go much more smoothly for you. Particularly on hard and above. It knows how to do coastal invasions right in your weak spots ... although it generally saves that for the later stages of the game. 3. Diplomacy does matter, and it does function for the most part. Work at it. Don't let your daimyo's honour go down, and don't take actions which stack up diplomatic penalties. They will make your life harder. Patches have added warnings about breaking treaties before the 'honourable' amount of turns have passed; I can't decide if that's because the penalties have been stepped up, or if they're being more transparent. I took a year-long break from the game, only returned to it a few weeks ago and found quite a few minor tweaks like that. 4. Trade is a vital source of income. Trade treaties are harder to come by since the FotS release patch. Expect to trade with several clans, not half of Japan. 5. Pay attention to increasing your income. Attention in the early days will reward you with a strong economy later on. For this reason farms are important. The more fertile the province, the more money you will make. Upgrade better farmland ASAP. Farms also give rice. At a basic level, you only need to know that having a surplus of rice is very nice indeed, and a deficit will cause a world of pain. See the dedicated rice chapter in the guide for the detail if you like. 6. Auto-calc is fine. I use it quite a bit. If the red/yellow odds slider is 2/3 in your favour it's almost always safe provided you can afford a bit of time for your army to recover losses. Sometimes I risk it if the odds slider is 50/50, and generally I win. It will undervalue castles, however, causing the defender a lot more losses. This can be helpful or not depending on which side of the walls your army is on. 7. Changing religion is a big deal. Commit to it only if you are certain you want to follow through. 8. Keep an eye on province happiness, particularly in freshly conquered provinces. 9. Agents are useful. All of them, excepting geisha. The sooner you recruit them, the sooner you can start training them up. It's a good idea to try and get at least one of each type reasonably early, say by the time you've got 5 provinces. 10. Play. Enjoy. Learn while you go. Read the tooltips and encyclopaedia entries in the game, think about your decisions, be a bit cautious whilst you are learning, and nothing should go dramatically wrong. If something does go wrong, it's likely to be educational.
Oh shit, I forgot about how awesome agents are -- frogbeastegg is underselling them if anything. I make agents a priority, especially since the get exponentially more effective with experience.
Geisha are awesome as well; they boost your town growth exponentially and with two full level geisha you can create an economy that will literally destroy all your enemies through the sheer amount of men you can recruit.
That's FotS Geisha. FotS geisha are awesome. The geisha in the original campaign are spies and assassins. They take a lot of time and resources to access, and by the time you've got them you will have some high-level ninja capable of doing the same job with similar skill.
It's metsuke that help boost local economies in the base game. Set them in provinces where you are building economic structures, or where you have a gold mine, and they will boost your tax rate so you earn a lot more per turn.
On page 35 of the guide. Haven't started my first game, want to finish the guide first, but I'm going to start on Easy with either the Shimazu or the Chosokabe; nothing dampens interest more for me than a thorough curb-stomping or two from the AI while still in the learning phase, and I'm not much of a strat gamer anyways. The guide's been very informative so far on how spare rice is useful, how to kick-start your economy, castle/province improvement slots, focusing provinces toward military or economic interests, etc. Hell, I would've started pumping out expensive samurai units as soon as they were available if I hadn't read the guide first.
That's the first mistake most players make; "Peasants? Fuck that, I want Samurai!" "wait, why does everyone hate me!? I have so much extra food, but no money! Nooooo!"
