new videos [Archive]

Vlad The Impaler

02-01-2011, 17:02

I'm not eager to play naval battles, I'll limit my experience here, I'll just use navy to protect my borders and so on. Is looking good, sure, but I just don't feel that naval battles were so important for that period. after all, the race for shogun was played on the soil.

I liked the naval battles in Empire/Napolen Total War because of the period and teh historical set up.

I like that ninjas will not be that good during the day, that's fair enough. should be slaughtered easily in the open field.

Now back to the naval battles I have the feeling that SEGA will produce a DLC with invasion of Korea. Doesn't have sense such a polished naval battle part of the game, only for Sengoku

Veho Nex

02-01-2011, 18:13

If I ever get around to finishing my review from when I did the play through in sf. You'll find that i wasnt too keen on naval battles, they seem sluggish but then I was only showed a beta version of the game and so its likely to be more polished when it comes out. By sluggish i dont mean frame rates, i mean the battle just seemed to go slowly even after the action started.

gollum

02-01-2011, 20:21

Good find, thanks for the links.

Revolting Friendship

02-02-2011, 02:33

I saw the ashigaru spearmen charge with their swords and pulling out swords for the melee... And my heart just dropped man.
Right then and there, my dreams were crushed. The hope that I would at least have one thing to do on the battlefield that would make this feel like an actual sengoku jidai experience... And the yari ashigaru pulled out their swords...

*sigh*

Alright. Ok.
Only one thing left to do now; hope for moddability.

Gregoshi

02-02-2011, 03:40

I saw the ashigaru spearmen charge with their swords and pulling out swords for the melee... And my heart just dropped man....Only one thing left to do now...
...zoom out far enough that you can't see this and get a proper perspective on what is happening in the battle you are supposed to be commanding. ~:pat:

Revolting Friendship

02-02-2011, 05:12

...zoom out far enough that you can't see this and get a proper perspective on what is happening in the battle you are supposed to be commanding.

This is less a question of aesthetics than one of functionality for me. Samurai armies employed pikes primarily as a melee weapon and everyone carried a spear of some description into battle. In fact, the backbone of the army was the ashigaru with their up to 5m long pikes and aside from the skirmish-phase which became increasingly dominant with the introduction of the portoguese arquebus, forests of ashigaru-operated pikes crashing into eachother was the dominant feature of any 16th century battlefield.

So in reality this game should be more of a pike and shot fair rather than macho swordplayin, and even if I can appriciate the popular draw of the latter, I wanted at least a nibble of the former... :\
Well I can still be glad they didn't omit firearms in homage to Last Samurai.

Nelson

02-02-2011, 15:32

antisocialmunky

02-02-2011, 16:13

I like the RPG system.

gollum

02-02-2011, 16:16

And some other patrons want historical accuracy with OR WITHOUT consideration of its impact on gameplay. They play then a few campaigns of excitement and within 4-5 months they conclude that the game "isn't challenging", like econ21 did for MTW2. What a surprise.

In any case, not to worry: no-one will be happier.

foop

02-02-2011, 17:21

I saw the ashigaru spearmen charge with their swords and pulling out swords for the melee..

Yes, but in other places the spearmen were in close combat and didn't pull out swords. Clearly something more complex is going on, although it's still not necessarily realistic.

Also, what's with the horsemen with colourful spheres on their backs?

Revolting Friendship

02-02-2011, 18:58

Nelson:
I honestly believe that if made properly even the strictly historical approach could also be thrilling and tactically satisfying, you'd simply have to rearrange some emphasis and also include some new ones, like for instance chain of command, discovery and application of special tactics (like counter-marching) and compound units and the ability to designate unit-structure. Adding such elements would bring the historical path to life sufficiently to keep it enthralling even for those among us who aren't history-nuts and just want challenges and cool stuff to fiddle around with.

foop:
I saw samurai fighting with those super-short spears yeah (they might as well be swords I mean seriously), I also saw ashigaru spearmen in a spear-wall like formation, but I assume this was just a copy of the way pikemen were presented in ETW. There too they only used their pikes in special formations to stop cavalry. I was happy to recently discover that Darth-mod for ETW fixes the pikemen to use their pikes also in melee, at least it looks less retarded.

About the colorful spheres on the horsemen's back. Those are hori, canvas stretched over a light wooden frame. They were an alternative to the sashimono (flags for the back) and were used by some mounted samurai, commonly bodyguards and messengers.

samu

02-02-2011, 19:03

you shoud google "aka horo shu" (red horo unit) and "kuro horo shu" (black horo unit)

a horo is a kind of sashimono (back flag), shaped as a sphere

Oda nobunaga used these two colors for is bodyguard

andrewt

02-02-2011, 20:14

People here are of different minds when it comes to historic fidelity. I’m with you, I want the game to look and feel like 16th century Japan. But some patrons want a tactical battle game with lots of different units and stats with OR WITHOUT any regard to reality, with special offense units, defense units and rock, paper, scissors based strengths and weaknesses, all carefully balanced somehow. For them, fun game play, unreal or not, trumps history. For us, fun game play IS history.

In a few weeks we will see who is happier.

I don't think that the game should be 100% historically accurate. Some things have to give in order to give us good gameplay. However, we shouldn't need to have fantasy units using fantasy weapons. After all, if some weapons were underpowered in real life, they wouldn't have been invented in the first place.

The best RTS of all time, Starcraft: Brood War, didn't have an RPS system of arbitrary damage bonuses and counters. Units countered each other based on their abilities and design. Shogun shouldn't need one, either.

TosaInu

02-02-2011, 20:57

The game is about Sengoku Jidai. That's roughly mid/late 15th- early 17th century. Quite a lot changed in samurai warfare during that time. The large units of ashigaru with huge pikes became dominant during the later stages, mounted archers were still of use during the early stages. I certainly hope that TWS2 will give us enough time to enjoy both the early, mid and late era (maybe even a switch to turn events of and stay stuck in early or mid). What do we know about turns, will they be months?

I've played some pike and musket like games in totalwar, both in single- and multiplayer. They are different, but certainly not bad for me.

Gregoshi

02-03-2011, 02:47

Tosa, the turn will be seasonal like STW.

I prefer historical accuracy as much as possible, but with necessary tweaking to maintain some semblence of game balance. Historical accuracy for the sake of historical accuracy and at the expense of a fun and playable game is just as bad as fantasy units for the sake of making history "cooler" than it was.

Vlad The Impaler

02-03-2011, 15:00

I'll not start another thread. A guy at tw center posted some info from a Turkish magazine. most interesting stuff it about teh clans:

Full 10-game clan have selected:

1. Oda
2. Shimazu
3. Mori
4. Togugawa
5. Takeda
6. Uesugi
7. Date
8. Chosokabe
9. Hattori
10. Hojo

* A total of 56 clans in the game, including the states have selected:

1. Amako
2. Anegajoji
3. Asai
4. Asano
5. Ashikaga
6. Ashina
7. Bessho
8. Chosokabe
9. Date
10. Hatakeyama
11. Errno
12. Hojo
13. Honma
14. Hosokawa
15. Iga Ninja
16. Ikko Ikki
17. Imagawa
18. Ishida
19. Ito
20. Jinbo
21. Kikkawa
22. Kiso
23. Kitabatake
24. Kobayakawa
25. Kono
26. Kuroda
27. Matsuda
28. Miyoshi
29. Mogami
30. Mori
31. Murakami
32. Room
33. Uesugi Ogigatsu
34. Otomo
35. Ouchi
36. Rebels
37. Sagara
38. Saito
39. Sakai
40. He
41. Satomi
42. Shimazu
43. Shone
44. Sogo
45. Takaoka
46. Takeda
47. Tokugawa
48. Toyotomi
49. Tsutsui
50. Uesugi
51. Ukita
52. Urakami
53. Utsonomiya
54. Wako
55. Yamana
56. Yamanouchi Uesugi

pirates, ikko-ikki and also rebels.
and of course Iga ninja. I wonder if Iga ninja's horses will also have head cover, like in the presentation of Hattori clan:)

Revolting Friendship

02-03-2011, 19:43

11. Errno
40. He
32. Room

My curiousity has been spiked...

Also I suppose Shone is Shoni and Anegajoji is Anegakoji.
If even half of those clans can be unlocked somehow I'm going to be a very happy man.

Vlad The Impaler

02-03-2011, 22:59

I think is a bad spelling from google translate rather than a room clan

Revolting Friendship

02-03-2011, 23:45

samu

02-04-2011, 00:35

so all these clans will be the former "STW- rebels" ?

Revolting Friendship

02-04-2011, 01:16

Depends on what you mean. I'm absolutely positive they'll be actual factions, competing with the big ones/player, as opposed to STW where they were just "dressed" rebels waiting around to be eaten. What's debatable is wether they can be unlocked somehow.

gollum

02-04-2011, 01:17

The rebels of Shikoku in STW, are the Chosokabe clan that did not make it and was turned into the Shimazu clan instead. You can see their faction leader and his heirs still in the Tosa province there.

The rebels in Kyoto, Ise and around Kaga are the Warrior monks of the great monasteries that made their own fiefs states therein.

The rest of the clans in the list were in the original within the territories of teh playable clans that were not - strictly speaking historically accurate in the Sengoku Campaign.

The different starting eras campaigns available with the MI expansion made a far more historically accurate repersentation of the playable clans in terms of territories, hence they had far more rebels. Within those rebels, lie the clans listed, yes.

antisocialmunky

02-04-2011, 02:58

15. Iga Ninja

Gangsters of Iga Unite!

It would be fun to play pirate/ninja only campaign.

Vlad The Impaler

02-04-2011, 09:54

Are you telling me you never read about the ferocious samurai of the Room-clan? ;)
I checked with google translate and apparently oda in turkish translates as room. So perhaps the less famous Oda of Hitachi-province will also be featured.

hehe, nice one. So "oda" in Turkish means room.

I didn't make the connection although in Romanian language we have an archaic word derived from Turkish "oda" with the same meaning: "odaie"
It is used in the southern regions of Romania.

Now back to the topic I don't think that Oda from Hitachi will be featured in the game because the list of 56 factions (we can't call them all clans, e.g. ikko-ikki) is simply resuming the playable factions.

Kagemusha

02-04-2011, 15:30

I bet He Clan is Satake.They were definetely important enough to be included.

antisocialmunky

02-05-2011, 06:35

I bet He Clan is Satake.They were definetely important enough to be included.

Aren't you surprised that Ran no Jidai campaign released 3 months before Shogun 2?

Vlad The Impaler

02-05-2011, 07:55

Spear Cavalry
01. -
02. Takeda -
03. Light Cavalry
04. Takeda Light Cavalry
05. Naginata Warrior Monk Cavalry
06. Yari Cavalry
07. Takeda Yari Cavalry

Bow Cavalry
01. Bow Cavalry
02. Takeda Bow Cavalry

Sword Cavalry
01. Katana Cavalry
02. Takeda Katana Cavalry

General
01. Ashikaga Haruuji
02. Chosokabe Motochika
03. Date Masamune
04. Hattori Hanzo
05. Hojo Tsunashige
06. Hojo Ujishige
07. Imagawa Ujichika
08. Imagawa Yoshimoto
09. Ishida Mitsunari
10. Kobayakawa Hideaki
11. Mori Motonari
12. Oda Nobunaga
13. -
14. Shimazu Yoshihiro
15. -
16. General
17. Takeda Katsuyori
18. Takeda Nobukado
19. Takeda Shingen
20. Tokugawa Ieyasu
21. Uesugi Kenshin
22. Uesugi Norimasa

Bow Infantry
01. Bow Ashigaru
02. Chosokabe Bow Ashigaru
03. Bow Ashigaru Garrison
04. Hattori Bow Ashigaru
05. Ikko-Ikki Bow Ashigaru
06. Oda Bow Ashigaru
07. Bow Hero
08. Chosokabe Bow Hero
09. Chosokabe Bow Samurai
10. Hattori Bow Samurai
11. Bow Wako
12. Bow Warrior Monks
13. Chosokabe Bow Warrior Monks
14. Uesugi Bow Warrior Monks

Heavy Infantry
01. Naginata Samurai
02. Hattori Naginata Samurai
03. Naginata Warrior Monk Hero
04. Uesugi Naginata Warrior Monk Hero
05. Naginata Warrior Monks
06. Naginata Warrior Monks Garrison
07. Uesugi Warrior Monks
08. -

Matchlock Infantry
01. Inspired Matchlock Ashigaru
02. Matchlock Ashigaru
03. Hattori Matchlock Ashigaru
04. Ikko-Ikki Matchlock Ashigaru
05. Oda Matchlock Ashigaru
06. Matchlock Samurai
07. Hattori Matchlock Samurai
08. Matchlock Warrior Monks
09. Uesugi Matchlock Warrior Monks

Spear Infantry
01. Yari Ashigaru
02. Yari Ashigaru Garrison
03. Hattori Yari Ashigaru
04. Ikko-Ikki Yari Ashigaru
05. Oda Yari Ashigaru
06. Yari Hero
07. Yari Ronin
08. Yari Samurai
09. Hattori Yari Samurai

Special Infantry
01. Fire Bomb -
02. Hojo Fire Bomb -
03. Kisho Ninja
04. Hattori Kisho Ninja
05. Tokugawa Kisho Ninja

Sword Infantry
01. Sword Ashigaru
02. Katana Hero
03. Shimazu Katana Hero
04. Katana Ronin
05. Katana Samurai
06. Hattori Katana Samurai
07. Shimazu Katana Samurai
08. Katana Wako
09. No-Dachi Samurai
10. Date No-Dachi Samurai
11. Hattori No-Dachi Samurai
12. Samurai -

Cannon Ship
01. Cannon Bune
02. Mori Cannon Bune

Galleon
01. - Trade Ship
02. Mori - Trade Ship
03. The Black Ship

Heavy Ship
01. Heavy Bune
02. Mori Heavy Bune
03. Nihon Maru
04. Mori Nihon Maru
05. -
06. Mori - Wako Bune

Light Ship
01. Siege Tower Bune
02. Mori Siege Tower Bune
03. Medium Bune
04. Mori Medium Bune
05. Sengoku Bune
06. Mori Sengoku Bune
07. Wako Medium Bune

Trade Ship
01. Red - Ship
02. Trade Ship
03. Wako Trade Ship

Siege Units
01. European Cannons
02. Hojo Cannons
03. Fire - Mangonels
04. Hojo Fire - Mangonels
05. Fire Rockets
06. Hojo Fire Rockets

source: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=423711

Kagemusha

02-05-2011, 08:48

Aren't you surprised that Ran no Jidai campaign released 3 months before Shogun 2?

Well my hat is off for the current Mod team of RNJ. During the time i was part of the mod nor afterwards the dev team never had resources of a game studio. I dont want to compare the Mod to the game, but historical accuracy wise can you talk about the two on the same day based on the previews of Shogun 2? Also if you look at some of the units in Shogun 2, some might think CA had quite nice 3d reference models to use to create some Shoggy 2 units and specially their armour colour schemes.

antisocialmunky

02-06-2011, 03:08

The RnJ team did a good job :)

I'm still not quite sure how many people cycled through the team.

PanzerJaeger

02-06-2011, 04:18

pevergreen

02-06-2011, 04:20

All I see is a lot of insta-routing. :no:

One of the (many) factors that, imo, made the STW/MTW engine superior in tactical game play than the current iterations was that you actually had time to fight tactically. Even if you sent peasants against - say - chivalric swordsmen, you had a solid 1-2 minutes before they routed to position other units and do other things. This lead to a lot more tactical game play instead of just throwing troops at each other with one side routing within 15 seconds.

It is hard to articulate what I am trying to say, but it made all the difference.

It seems like S2TW troops need to have more morale?

Togakure

02-06-2011, 04:41

All I see is a lot of insta-routing. :no:

One of the (many) factors that, imo, made the STW/MTW engine superior in tactical game play to the current iterations was that you actually had time to fight tactically. Even if you sent peasants against - say - chivalric swordsmen, you had a solid 1-2 minutes before they routed to position other units and do other things. This lead to a lot more tactical game play instead of just throwing troops at each other with one side routing within 15 seconds.

It is hard to articulate what I am trying to say, but it made all the difference.
I understand exactly what you mean. In a 3v3 SamWars game back in '08, our opponents launched a massive coordinated attack to one side. I was using an army consisting of four Yari Ashigaru, four Teppo Ashigaru, four Warrior Monks, and four Yari Cavalry. On the opposite side of the map from the attackers' focus, I sent my cavalry and monks to the aid of my ally there, who was quickly being driven off the field. My center ally also sent the majority of his army rushing to aid him. The attacker on my side of the field had innocently misunderstood the agreement not to use all koku (the game had originally been set for 4v4) and had some really good troops, including several Warrior Monk units he'd left behind in the woods. He sent these in behind us as we tried to help our triple-teamed ally. My lowly Yari Ashigaru and teppos bravely got in their way and held formation and position for a fairly long while, buying time for the stronger troops of mine and my center ally's to finish routing the majority of the attacking troops and return to do battle with the monks. What seemed like certain defeat turned into a squeak victory, and those ahisgaru were pivotal in preventing the monks from back-siding our counterattack before we could rout the main attack.

I certainly hope the morale system and game speed in the new game will allow for this kind of play.

PanzerJaeger

02-06-2011, 07:13

It seems like S2TW troops need to have more morale?

Well, it is difficult to make any real calls based on promo material because you don't know the circumstances surrounding the clip shown, but if the videos are indicative of real game play - yes.

In several of the engagements units begin to waver directly on contact (and sometimes before!) and rout less than 5 seconds later. Even if we assume the game video is sped up a bit for the promo, it hints towards the same issues we've seen since Rome. Once you get over the awesome graphics, there's not much there in terms of repeatably fun, challenging game play.

I certainly hope the morale system and game speed in the new game will allow for this kind of play.

Indeed. I've never been a big SP guy, but the insta-routing (among other things) really messed up MP.

In the newer games, you were rarely rewarded for tactical game play, such as getting a unit of cavalry behind enemy lines, as by the time you got them there, the battle was already decided one way or the other. Matches became about who picked the better army, not who played better - and the superior units always emerge soon enough, rendering everything else worthless.

In the old games, a better player was always superior to a better army. You actually had to work at being a good player, and it took a lot more than memorizing an uber army and rushing. It's chess versus checkers.

antisocialmunky

02-06-2011, 15:08

My feeling is that its going to be like melee in ETW with pikemen vs Natives(lol?). It takes long enough. Its a little better than Rome and about even with MTWII in routing.

gollum

02-06-2011, 16:22

That melee lasts less in TW titles past STW/MTW is part of the veteran's rhetoric against newer TW games, and not actually true.

In STW/MTW and Samurai Wars, MP or SP, the duration of the melee is determined by how well the player matches his units up. Match your spears to the enemy's swords in Samurai Wars or Shogun or Medieval and see how long the melee lasts.

In RTW it was all the same; match ups, and local outnumbering penalties determined how long melee lasted, as the morale part of the engine was at the core the same. There are MP games in RTW, many of them in youtube, that the melee lasts longer than in STW or MTW when match ups and outnumbering penalites are taken care of by the opposing sides.

The thing that was turbocharged and impacted badly gameoplay in RTW was the unit speeds. Infantry on charge speed could catch heavy cavalry in RTW. This was the primary factor that made battles feel "short" and "over in a minute". Most mods changed the speed modifiers for the various terrain types and sorted that out this way. The other problem the Rome engine had was that the relative speeds between cav and infantry were set in the engine and were not given out as parameters as in STW/MTW (where you could set any speed and hence any relative speed between unit classes).

In M2TW, melees lasted far longer than RTW on average and longer than the older games due to the individual melee animations, so that should have made people who were having a problem with it cheer. But they didn't then and they don't now, because they stick to the "veteran's retoric" more than anything else.

Having said that, there were differences between teh original and newer TW engines and plenty of them were important. Some of them include the responsiveness of units (that was independent of animations), the melee cycles (that were better coordinated with the animations), the tracking of the engine of missiles with a no drag physics engine that gave more realistic casualties on volleys (less casualties for moving units), the better for gameplay set up values of relative infantry to cavalry speeds, the more realistic in the old engine turning redii of cavalry, the more realistic charge results due to the lack of cavarly charge animations/mass and many others. Some of these points have been rectified in NTW, or are available for being fixed as modifiable parameters.

It's no doubt important to point out the superior/inferior points of the various TW engines, but its equally important to do so on actual grounds instead of just restating before every new TW game comes out other peoples' same rhetoric all over again.

CBR

02-06-2011, 17:08

Melee was on average faster in STW than in MTW as units did not have as much in defense. STW did have the highly defensive Naginata Infantry though.

In RTW there could be a big difference between factions, so one could have Roman infantry that fought just like Men-at-Arms in MTW and then a lot of lowly armoured barbarian infantry. IIRC RTW also introduced the concept of morale shocks where lower quality units took a big morale hit from being charged. That could cause some massive chain routs at the moment of impact or shortly after.

gollum

02-06-2011, 17:28

It seems that units/battles in RTW were made faster for 3 reasons, and all are SP related, imo.

The first was that, with the new map, there would be on average far more battles (even if only one counts the trivial ones against bandints) to play in the course of a campaign, as there were far far more meeting spots for armies, than just the very few ones (that amounted to the number of provinces) in the old "2D" engine. Since there would be more battles though, the overall time to play the campaign would tremendously increase if battles would be as long to resolve as in MTW.

M2TW on the other hand while it also had the 3D map that gave more battles was more unforgiving economically and there were less stacks on average around, and so less battles, speaking always in a vanilla context.

The second reason was certainly that CA wanted the game to be more accessible to younger players at the time. Its no accident that RTW broke TW to the mainstream.

The third, imo, was that the RTW battle AI was less competent than the MTW equivalent one, especially before patch 1.3 (for RTW) and the higher speeds can hide that better. The MTW AI can change in the middle of the action row configuration for units, but i've never seen teh RTW one being able to do the same. Also the RTW (and M2TW) AI cannot coordinate reinforcements, hence they will come to the player from 2 or more surrounding stacks piece meal. The RTW AI could not tell the difference between spear units and phalanxes and so used the latter as the former which made battles against AI phalanxes much easier than they would have been.

STW melees are indeed as CBR says generally faster than MTW, as there is less armour around.

STW battles did not have pavise units that made mp games too long, as they prolonged the shootout phase by much, mostly unecessarily. Also the maps in STW are smaller and more coordinated with the fatigue of units. In MTW the maps were far too big for the fatigue rate of units and that also made battles longer especially for lower unit settings that gave more stacks and so battles with lots of reinforcements in SP.

Togakure

02-06-2011, 21:42

From RTW forward, is there a significant morale bonus for units being in close proximity to each other? In the example I gave, there were three monk units, which were countered by 6-8 ashigaru units (yari and teppo). I had them grouped together initially, and I think this had a lot to do with them lasting as long as they did. The monks also lacked the "fear" bonus from STW, as this was an MTW-VI mod. Even in STW, I don't think this bonus applied to MP.

When a player hovered the cursor over units on the field in STW and MTW, it would give information about their attitude, "happy that flanks are covered," "worried about so many enemies," etc.. Is this the case too with the newer releases?

Edit:

In RTW it was all the same; match ups, and local outnumbering penalties determined how long melee lasted, as the morale part of the engine was at the core the same. Ok, so in RTW this was true at least to a degree. What about the subsequent releases?