Nowake
05-02-2011, 04:07
But I've no idea where I ended up.
Should start with
Hello .Org
Bit of a longer entry than planned, just kept remembering tidbits all over.
I picked up the game a week ago and now I thought I'd want to chat a bit about what I've seen with a few more chaps.
My experience resumes to having played mostly the original Shogun in the first couple of years post its launch, and it seems I was an active member here for quite a while now that I look at my own postcount; I had totally forgotten I spent this amount of time here, and I am pretty sure this was a second account (I believe I had lost the first sometime in 2002). In fact, I had totally forgotten I was ever this active on any forum. A pleasure to be able to recognize a handful of names by the by. Now I am compelled to write I was genuinely saddened to read about TosaInu. I never exchanged more than three PMs with him, gives you an idea about the amount of contact we've had, yet he was what I call a sound character through and through and his conduct as a custodian of this community while I was around was not only irreproachable, but also commanding respect, which is an achievement when your only medium is the internet.
To change from the subject though, yes, picked it up I did (illegaly, yet I just bought it as well so don't frown gentlemen, old high school habbits kick in sometimes, no point battling them) and delved into it. First thing I try in years and I'm chuffed to bits about it. Being the "seasoned" codger that I am - not faking demureness at all - and appreciating the exigencies of the Single Player from memories past, I moved the slider to Legendary from the beginning. And yes, was I given a bloody nose; I so was. My first three choices were Chosokabe, Date and Shimazu, and I was eliminated in three to four years every time through a combination of digging my own grave by trying to do too much with too little (yeah, it is not really possible to defeat seven-eight hundred troops with two-three hundred in the first few turns anymore, har har) losing my daimyo due to using it as just another cavalry squad (some may remember that taking the head of a general, and especially a daimyo, in the initial Shogun, required twenty odd minutes) and not really caring about its radius on the other side, finding out what archers can hit if you infuse some sort of elven markmanship ancestry in them, being taught what three units of fey cavalry riding at break-neck speed all over the place can demolish in the hands of the new AI, learning to keep my head above the water economically and to prevent getting isolated and so on and so forth. And now, my fourth campaign (and of course, my fourth Legendary as well) I finished; as Uesugi, thought I'd try what I read was the more complex option and I did not want to play as the rest of the clans I had not tried yet at that point -- Short Legendary by the by, I do not see the purpose in choosing the rest, since twenty five and Kyoto is enough of a hint as in: well, it does allude you still have one or two more interesting adversaries, yet it also translates in the fact that you cannot bite the dust anymore.
So with this tidbit of experience behind me now, thought I'd give my take on it and read your input if you shall give it.
Attempt at structuring it a bit:
1. Battlefields
2. The Map
3. Must-have-patched-in
4. Missed Opportunities
5. Control
6. Encyclopedia
1. Battlefields
1.1 As to Battlefield mechanics first of all.
I'll write this up in one piece and avoid point by point arguments. It's more of a plea when I think about it. True, I was surprised by the movement speed of the troops, by the rate at which these perish in close quarters combat, surprised by the lethality of the bows also and so on and so forth. Then I only had to glance at the forums and see the community was too. Yet, all these choices made by the developers are justifiable up to a point in my eyes and, most importantly, they function habitualy. The most important contentious point is the newly acquired role of the general actually, and not the former features. And the problem stands thus: you cannot even argue its realism. Yes, especially Sengoku Jidai troops, where every soldier attempted to prove oneself in the eyes of his superior on the field, were truly giving their utmost in front of their taisho. Everything screams that, from their quaint tradition of engaging while presenting themselves to the enemy once hand to hand duels were spreading ulterior to the initial charge, to them giving their defeated opponents the time of day by taking their heads even before the melee was over. This was a feudal system in its core, and proving oneself individually mattered more to these warriors than winning or losing many a time.
Yet I believe it distorts the purity of the system that existed in the initial title. Troops hold too many times inspite of being outmaneuvred as long as their general's warbanner is near by. It is more and more difficult to rout them and they can withstand charges from behind, nevermind the overturn of a flank. Moreover, you see an AI which uses all its twenty units in minor flanking attacks itself in four-five spots at once, and your own strategy consists in one-two big large scale pivotal moves to cause routs, because you cannot keep the same pace of chipping away all over the place at once without Pause and without even the Battle Map. The issue becomes: the AI can wreak losses in those minor flanking attempts no matter where your general is, but your mass routs are really not happening too easily due to its own Rally. The result is not a superb tactical clash as you may think, it simply forces one to play in an unimaginative fashion on many occasions. You become prudent, you box yourself up, you counter rather than create situations. Sure, you can still afford to stealthily transfer forces from one wing to the other so as to create temporary superiority and break it somewhere, and then you do get to attack from behind and seal the deal, but the fact remains: the battle was won in a pitched fray through brute force on one flank or another, because attempting to cause a rout through large initial encirclements just won't happen anymore due to generals becoming what they've become. Moreover, and quite crucial, the spreading of your own troops to create those encirclements means you lack your taisho's radius for half to two thirds of your troops, and it just won't do for that to happen. Now, surely, the AI rarely gets to have a general anymore in the middle to late game because you murder three to five per season, yet that's another matter. What happens in multiplayer really? It just seems so important to bring your units under the general's umbrella in critical moments, I just can't imagine large movements with five-seven units at once being as viable anymore if it means spreading too thin for Stand and Fight.
1.2 Uf, where to head now. Lets talk about Environment.
a) Overall setting. For one, it is beautiful and the camera glides perfectly during the generals' speeches to show it so that not even the numerous typos in the subtitles detract from it.
b) Heights. I've to decry the lack of importance heights seem to have at this time. If there's any penalty, it certainly is minuscule enough. And to really make a pig's breakfast out of it, it seems they removed the range perks for archers on high ground aswell, which was disappointing. E.g. one of my Bow Warrior Monks was able to outrange a unit of Bow Ashigaru guarding the battlements of a fortress! The infamy of it.
c) Forests. Are all right. The penalty for cavalry units is where it should be. The penalty for volleys? It really is debatable, especially when you put it in context and next to Camouflage as well. Basically, arrows are blocked somewhat by foliage and tree trunks and what not, but because the engine does a splendid job (no sarcasm) in separating objects and trajectories, you really, really have to look for the thickest part of those copses or you may as well be in the open. Camouflage behaves completely inadequate in this context though. You can have a whole cavalry squad hidden in three bushes.
d) Villages. Awful. It is absolutely amazing that they can render three hundred trees worth of forest truthfully and not a wooden house and a haystack. I remember reading an article about Empire where they were advertizing the posibility of garrisoning troops within buildings. I'm not sure if it ever made it in, since I never played Empire, but seeing that Bune crews are animated fairly well when it comes to boarding vessels with higher decks, I do not understand the reasoning as to why some Ashigaru cannot step over one tree trunk in their way, or why, when walking through an alley between a barn and a house, they squeeze in holding hands two-by-two, eventhough there are ten yards left between them and any of the two buildings on either side. Of course, the problem is the object itself is larger than the visible contour, but should they be irritated to botch it up to such a degree when such care was given to a plethora of other details?
e) Castles. Much improved feature. Yet the Fort and Stronghold variations are too small and the inability to render buildings correctly probably motivates their almost total absence inside the walls, which is a considerable let down. There are though tiny variations between versions of the same strongpoint: I remarked it especially when it came to Fortresses. However, design wise, two issues. First, they lack a way to prevent entry through the gates. The AI never uses that path, ever. Probably hard-coded. Yet for a player without enough archers to rain death over every single unit inside, setting fire to the gates is yet another way of trivializing the assault. The fact that one Ashigaru gang can set fire to a gate and permanently destroy it in twenty seconds is silly. Allow the defending troops an ability such as Repair, where they have any sort of silly animation for extinguishing and patching it somehow, just as ships are able to. My second point; towers. A very elegant solution to use demarcation banners for the gates and for the dispute over the main dojo. Yet those should be removed when we speak of towers. Treat towers as battlements, even the most rudimentary ones. Place three to ten bow ashigaru inside, depending on size, and let the assaulting troops target them into silence (with a huge penalty to accuracy of course) or simply escalate the tower and cut them down. The artificial "bunkers" they are now detract from immersion.
1.3 Onto the AI.
With the caveat that I've only experienced engagements on Legendary, I have to write that the AI is brisk, arduous, truculent and overall satisfying in field clashes. The speed of the troops and its ability to control them simultaneously doesn't really let you dominate it fully.
1.3.1 Parts the AI does well:
a) Flanking. It will constantly try it without it being done for the sake of it; it exploits any breach in your line and the amount of times it leaves itself open because of it is quite rare. In fact, it can be said it is a calculated risk, and worth taking in most cases, because its maneuvres do sometimes threaten to break your line before you counter-flank or attack its now vulnerable lines of archers lets say. Due to or simply taking advantage of the speed of the cavalry, it even attempts to bait you, though I am unsure whether it is intentional or not: it charges your spear wall, loses a few riders but then retreats quite orderly, runs circles around your pursuing troops and attacks whatever was behind them. Not bad at all.
b) Setting up the death of your general. It is not something done for "flavour", you do not see an attempt to reach your general so you have a realistic experience, the AI actually attempts it proficiently; no point raving about it, just an anecdote: AI's Yari Cavalry charges towards a spearwall; it's a feigned maneuvre, my general finds itself towards its left, in Stand and Fight; the Yari Cavalry makes a ninety degree turn and aims straight at it now -- to its new left is one of my Yari Ashigaru troops fighting its own Yari Ashigaru, to its new right are my Yari Samurai trying to cut the charge with Rapid Advance; and now comes the raised-eyebrow: the Yari Cavalry was riding in five files, in its usual and a bit silly fairly square formation used by the AI; it switched to three files and barely dodged the Yari through the small gap left between the engaged Ashigaru and the pursuing Samurai, only 3 or so of its riders were caught and it continued to charge towards my general. Would I say most human players would not have been able to pull that off properly, and certainly not while attempting other maneuvres with other six-seven troops over the whole front? Yep. It matters not that the success rate of its attempts is close to zero after it surprises you for "thinking" about it in the first couple of battles, point is, they're as well done as you can wish them to be for the most part and they challenge you to step up your game.
c) Use of archers. Not amazing, yep? However, you have to show appreciation when you see it having a solid priority system: it can only shoot other archers, then it will shoot other archers, you advance some Yari Samurai, it will target them; your Monks charge subsequently? It will again properly switch.
d) Use of camouflage. Not bad at all, again; it proactively searches for Camouflage spots before the battle; not so much during, yet the uses of Camouflage at that point in time are debatable (something I will touch upon when I write my take on Controls). Anecdote time, as it is worth recounting: open field, AI taisho and a crew of Samurai Archers, forest one hundred yards behind them (where I thought most of its army was), five-six bushes and half a tree stump or something similar to their right. Now, I am aware of the fact that those can constitute cover, and I did expect one or two units to be there, since I had no cavalry or archers though, I simply advanced cautiously with three units of Yari Ashigaru, ready to charge whatever was there and its general, pinning them down while I'd rush reinforcements. It was beautiful: the AI had amassed all its other six Samurai Archers troops within those few bushes, and you could see it was intentional, the place was so crammed, the archers were not overlapped, yet there was no space between the units. Now, it did not win the fight, but it did begin it with a superb blazing volley; seven units (the one in the open aswell) of Samurai Archers throwing volleys of flaming arrows at once towards unsuspecting troops advancing slowly. I had time to issue an order for an one hundred eighty degrees turn, yet I still lost perhaps thirty men out of each hundred from those three Yari Ashigaru troops. Tip of the hat? Yep.
e) Use of heights. I don't intend to make each paragraph that long, suffice to say, I saw it passing up on a good position maybe only once in ten battles. And it will rush you for king of the hill if the spot is between you. On many occasions it can force you to maneuver for twenty minutes solely to obtain a less dire direction of attack.
f) Army composition. Sure, you get the full Yari and Bow Ashigaru armies sometimes, but truly only from the most poor. Any AI daimyo with four to six provinces will end up fielding large armies with a mix of Katana and Yari Cavalry, Katana Samurai and Samurai Archers, usualy experienced up to a level of three to four. Other troops types are not rare, yet this seems to be the usual focus if it can afford them and, due to the decent maneuvres the AI is able to pull off, you really don't get the sense of fighting an improperly balanced force.
1.3.2 Parts the AI does poorly:
a) React to a castle assault. I think everyone complains about it. It feels as if the original AI of Shogun survived in this small tactical niche. The AI is beyond brain dead, to a point where it can lose entire strategical situations on the campaign map because of it. It is a situation where more players should cry "Shame" for the developers stultifying through carelesness what it can clearly be a capable AI.
b) Introducing it right after, because it is similarly baffling; during Naval battles, the AI will not identify land. Sail behind a rock, so that it finds itself right between you and the advancing enemy fleet, and the AI will sail its ships aground and stay there until the time expires if you so wish it.
c) Those Cavalry charges I was raving about; has to be said they're not always thought through properly, and on about a quarter or so of occasions, they're done prior to the general assault, rendering them useless, no matter how beautifully executed. You can almost smell the "burned circuit" which causes the AI to go ahead and proceed.
d) Loose formation. Never used. I speculate that, because it was too difficult to give the AI parameters to decide - given the multitude of situations when you find yourself under fire and it is a bad idea to order Loose - the developers just took it away from the AI's arsenal.
2. The Map
2.1 The Campaign Map is solid. It is beautiful. It is true to history. It provides a great many variables to take into account before making a decision.
It also is... the same.
Amusing when you think about it, yet the fact remains, the new Campaign Map is not a whole lot different from the old one in terms of where one can establish one's "Maginot line", if one so wills it. You were making a "Do your worst" stand in Owari, Mino and Echigo in Shogun? Worry not, geography agrees with that in an odd way and if in the past you could not advance past a two-three province front because of the way borders touched on the drawn Map, now you cannot because of geographical obstacles. Of course, the irony is, this is realistically depicted. All these armies crossing from east to west and viceversa were confined to using the predecesors of the Gokaido and other major roads and e.g. there was no way to move a large army from Kai to Kyoto without using what would later be known as the Tokaido and Nakasendo.
Fact of the matter is however, you are left with less options now than in the past. Provinces which were open from 7-8 sides back in the day like Hida, nowadays one can only invade from Etchu and northern Shinano. I find that this should be compensated at a provincial level, and while the ability to raid and ambush and what not does it, it does not seem sufficient. But I will speak about that in the Missed Opportunities section.
2.1.1 I'd also want to touch on the issues regarding Movement taking place on the new Map. Those areas of action which you can visualise upon selecting your army are elegant solutions and very posh; yet when it comes to fine tuning your Arny placement, it is in so many cases outright frustrating, and I could give many examples of egregiousness in setting that up. Anecdote: I had the misfortune once to have three divisions which could each reach a town individually, yet after I merged the first with the second, and the new korps with the third, I was quite far away from my target, eventhough none of them had to take any type of detour to acomplish those mergers. I was compelled to make use of the autosave and move them independently to their final destination, and there they of course were merged happily. What a pity I had succesfully initiated a revolt before it, and of course, I had to attempt it again with a 46% chance; unsuccessfully. Second anecdote: a monk spreading the buddhist faith in Echizen can reach Inabayama in Mino with no difficulty and you can clearly see the yellow area spreading through Wakasa, Omi and Mino right up to the castle. Yet when I issued the order, the monk decided it should only travel through my own lands, and so chose a route through Kaga, Hida, northern and southern Shinano and, finally, Mino. Of course it barely reached Hida in that season. Give us a way to preview the exact path and the exact spot armies and agents will be able to reach, it can decide a whole campaign.
Moreover, divisions go around cities by default, eventhough going through increases the distance they can travel. Army korps also go around their own agents, impairing themselves.
And here intervenes yet another issue concerning agents accompanying armies. Should you choose to enter a town, the agent will not follow the army further by default, and there's no way to select both the units and the agent when you wish to leave town, you have to manually reassign it each time. Now, this is just annoying, but here's the question: once you enter the town with your army, the distance you can travel by road increases a bit. Since you cannot know by how much it would've increased beforehand, I am unsure if it takes into account the campaign map movement perks the agent was providing the army prior to entering the town or not.
Another oddity / perk / annoyance. Generals reinforcing your army and who join you on the battlefield receive the same experience as your primary taisho. Not the case for generals that are already included in the primary army. Of course, it's amusing to take advantage of it and walk around with four generals in one division, only to remove three prior to engaging the enemy and place them as Reinforcements, with the real posibility of advancing them all at once. It's odd. It's a perk for the player. It's annoying and unfair doing it.
2.2 The Economy, Technological Advancements and Province Development
The reason I am treating them in one section is explained by the fact that they're intertwined to such a large degree, and also because only as a whole can they add complexity to the game. Fumble any of these three and the other two will become unimportant or easy to disregard. Allow the player to tech too much and one will be able to overlook a very gripping economical system. And viceversa.
And in Shogun 2 they really are quite sound.
a) Everything from Upkeep to Food supplies forcefully guides you to choose to develop identically to a daimyo of the age: all your provinces grow agriculturally and comercially while your power resides centralised only behind the walls of a couple of superb citadels. The half a century that led to the Tokugawa shogunate contained the Azuchi and Momoyama intervals, and those names are the names of the citadels of Oda and Toyotomi after all.
b) The mix of soldiers you bring to the battlefield is also forced upon you very delicately to bring you in a historically accurate position. Yes, you can field a division comprised entirely of monks augmented only by one or two squads of Yari Cavalry to ensure no one shall live to tell the story, yet that division is one of a kind. Attempt to double up on it and your economy will run into the ground. Not with a twenty thousand revenue per season (which is more or less what you reach before crossing from Acclaimed to Legendary) will you be able to sustain more than one of those forces when you need four more to cover the spots where that crack division can't be in, maintain your fleets, rebuild the provinces you conquer as you see fit, pay your agents and shower your allies with large sums of gold. Thus your armies will have Ashigaru in the same proportions the daimyo of old had. There's this amusing quote from Asakura Toshikage, which I managed to find again now to give in full: "Swords of famous warriors ought not to be coveted. A sword worth ten thousand pieces can be overcome by one hundred spears worth only one hundred pieces". It's not only that the economy is designed to not let you afford a full blown elite army even when making the most of your fief, it is the fact that many times, they're really not worth it.
c) The Warchest. Indeed, you need to build up that warchest if you wish to conquer Japan, and you can only be thankful for this touch of realism. You develop everything and amass. I spent 100.000 koku in 21 months after I broke into RD. All the extras necessary for a massive military advance, bribes, payments for revolts and enhancing Kyoto (around 20.000 spent there in one season) meant I required the fortunes gathered in the prior years of peace. Can one execute it without the spending? Yeah, but it would've been a pain. And unreal, truly. You initiate wars when you have the resources. Daimyo of the time themselves initiated wars only when they had some sort of warchest. If the Onin War had taught them something, it was that. And the costs of war were huge, just as they are for the players.
d) Research. Totally hellacious. Any choice you make is not simply good or bad when you review it with hindsight, it subsequently allows you capitalize on opportunities which can lead you very far from your initial plan. I read most prefer the agricultural side of the C'hi, yet I opine that going straight for the arts enhancing Honor and diplomatic relations pays off a lot better in the beginning. Long before you upgrade agriculturally the few provinces you own to the level where you need Chonindo, you benefit tons from having all twenty or so clans "go green" on you and being able to trade with each and everyone without giving them any incentives, not to mention the fact that unexpected wars are avoided to a large degree. They're also a prequisite for Epic Architecture, so you'd want to go through them anyway. Best to research them in the beginning, when they do you the most good, and then focus heavily on the agricultural tech; in this timeline, those should be under research right about the time you finish your conquest of the 12-14 provinces you want to obtain before settling in for pre-RD build up.
I'd emphasize here the importance of temples and generals.
I know the common way of going about provincial development outside the ones designated as training grounds is the building of a Stronghold, allowing for Market and Sake Den. I would suggest going for Temples when possible or appropriate, the bonus to C'hi seems important and even made me think about upgrading.
I would back the development of a numerous general retinue even more. Level three generals are easy to obtain and really great to have due to access to Poet. Actively increasing your retinue by six-seven generals (by attacking without a general present, you have a good chance of being given the opportunity to promote one afterwards) appears a very smart path to boost your Bushido research quickly.
2.3 Agents and Traits
2.3.1 I shall only write about Metsuke, Monks and Ninja (Geisha and Missionaries are Terra incognita for me). And you cannot complain when you do. They allow you to act upon armies, cities and populations exactly as you'd wish to act and I do not feel anything important is missing. Metsuke and Monks in particular are in a good spot right now, without crossing the line. Even with five terrific monks available one will not be able to throw the balance of war in one's favor. The number is good by the by. A tad too many for those "safe" players who make sure to secure the "corner" before hitting RD, yet five is a perfect figure for one who has to spread one's resources on two fronts.
However, Ninja.
- First of all, I am unsure what you chaps make of their Traits, but there's one path that is by far superior to the rest: Assassination. I experimented with the other two, much too situational and as long as they're high level, the ones specialized in Assassination can perform those just fine as well - as to campaign map army movement range perks, they're not really a must if you play it well. Assassin > Exotic Weapons > Poisoner > Notorious Killer while reaching for one level of Escape Artist through the one level Spy > one level Master of Disguise road. And that's it really, you get all five up that path and they're simply ripping your opponents appart. Even with the AI's increased capacity to "father" generals, it won't be able to keep up. And that's the thing: it's silly. There's no way for even a level six taisho to survive enough to meet you on the field. You bring in your monks and convert the couple of metsuke overseeing its army, and then you throw your Ninja at him. Two-three attempts per season from level five-six Ninja and the taisho falls in less than six months. Also, historically, you could not deplete a whole clan's retinue by just sending assassins. I'd argue the chances of success should be lower.
- Second of all, Subverting armies has to be toned down or removed completely. I can't know what you imagine that Ninja to be doing, apparently, the developers could not imagine anything at all as they did not include any storyline for those actions, nevermind the small flavor clips. Poison their water, set fire to their food supplies, slaughter their horses? Nothing a Ninja can do (or a group of Ninja for that matter) can prevent an army ten kilometers away from your position to reach you in three months. I kept an AI army "at arms length" so to speak for a year while my taisho was finishing a siege. That army was literally a couple of days walking distance from my besieging troops, and they could not intervene for around four hundred days.
A note on distances: I think the game completely misrepresents the distances between cities and provinces in one's mind. We're talking about 150 kilometers along the Tokaido between Suruga and Owari; when Imagawa's army left Sunpu, it needed five days to reach Owari, and in less than ten days from the moment he left his city, Yoshimoto was dead. That's twenty five thousands soldiers reaching the Owari border in five days, not a lone rider. Distances between neighbouring provinces in Japan are ridiculously small and the game should reflect that better.
Yet that was an aside. The point is, armies should be subverted for an entire season, it tends to ruin it. And while I'd argue it should not exist as an option at all, I would suggest primarily the diminishing of the distance the enemy army can travel by at most 50% and you could throw in there a penalty if they engage combat in that turn, lets say they are deployed as Very Tired.
2.3.2 To talk about Traits alone a bit, I found all talents available interesting enough and yet certain builds are clearly superior to all others and I cannot really see where are the incentives change it up.
I already discussed Ninja available traits, lets take a peak at monks and generals as well. You are well advised to go for Chi and Bushido research enhancing talents for all of them I would think. For Monks, that means you are left with three or so talent points to toy with. Generals only have Poet, yet they have such a clear, clean and solid build in going for Strategist, Infantry leader, Ashigaru Commander and Siege expert, that you will never really choose anything else unless you focus heavily on cavalry; and that will plausibly only happen if you command Takeda.
I was pleasantly surprised by the evolution of feature: at first, I thought Loyalty is a bit irrelevant unless the daimyo died. It is not so at all. Loyalty decreases the more generals you add to your retinue, by 1 for each general. That Upstart generals trait can go as far as -6 from what I have seen until now, and I bet it could've went lower.
2.4 Diplomacy
I'm really writing too much trying to cover everything. Least this one I want to keep brief. It's good and I shall only list a few annoying issues because most of it is a success, not because I do not find the system solid or fine tuned. One issue even, because there's only one for now. Vassals. I read about chaps trying to create vassals for Trade and what not. Personally, I do not see the point of it. When you lose trade, you raid the naval routes of everyone and their grandmother, that's your trade income back again.
You have to be so careful when making a vassal, its not worth the hassle. First of all, it can enter a war without asking you, which is awful when it does it to one of your Allies. The Uesugi have the Yamanouchi as vassals in the beginning. Woe onto thee if you decide to create an alliance with the Ashina, because in my campaign, they went to war. I sided with Ashina, and for the rest of the game, I had a diplomatic penalty of -25 for dishonouring treaties eventhough I had not declared war on Yamanouchi. I would've gotten the same if I would've decided to support my vassal against my ally, of course. There are a plethora of other things that can go wrong when having a vassal, I believe they should work on it. Vassals should not be able to declare war without asking for one's blessing and they should not be attacked without the aggresor placing itself at war with you. Historically, there are no precendents for vassals going to war without permission I believe, unless they were ready to denounce their vassality as well. I.e. can you picture Tokugawa Ieyasu attacking... lets say Kai, without caring about what Imagawa Yoshimoto would think of it?
2.5 Strategic AI
Personally, I don't really find faults with the AI strategically, with the caveat, again, that I only comment on Legendary.
Back in the day, it was innocuous and inept.
Now, if there's one issue which makes the AI look fatuous it comes from the fact that it cannot asses the outcome of its sieges properly. Oh, and the fact that it can be so peevish and cantankerous from time to time!
A mere glance at the forums made me take in the reproach that the AI leaves its provinces undefended. Paradoxically, it's what had me pleasantly surprised. The fact that it can logically muster its most potent army to win each particular war was pretty great. No longer can you see the AI losing province after province because it tries to defend all ten in case even the most secure ones have some invading army drop from the heavens to capture it. At the moment, the AI faces its enemy, if it loses, it retreats, gathers a large force again, tries to stop the enemy a second time with all it can throw at him. Does the AI leave itself open to backstabbing? It does, but then again, it wouldn't have been able to expand in the first place otherwise. And the AI will anyway return with its main army against the backstabber if it can, and then, that one better be ready. It's not as if it loses infrastructure in 90% of the cases. And it is historically accurate, truly. Plus, in most cases, there are alliances holding the borders, and you can trust an alliance in Shogun 2 as long as you're not the only option left for expansion for the allied faction. I did it myself as Uesugi, allied with Ashina and Date, they were my shield and as long as they were engaged in wars with others and Friendly, I knew I can rest easy. Should they have betrayed me, I would've lost a couple of provinces, but trying to secure those borders would have prevented me from gaining five others.
The AI
- understands the terrain; anecdote time yet again: as Uesugi, besieging Inabayama, I moved a reinforcing army in front of the bridge over the Kiso river, between Owari and Mino; that way, it could reinforce the besieging troops if they were attacked by the large army trapped in the castle, and held the bridge while it could be reinforced by the besieging troops. I could've stretched and blocked the bridge with the besieging army, but then Tokugawa, the faction at war, could have moved an army close to that force so as to reinforce a sally out of the castle walls. When Tokugawa arrived with a large force in Owari, it entered Kiyosu and I expected it to engage the Uesugi on the bridge over Kiso. At most, I thought it would just give up on Inabayama. But no, the next season the AI made a left, crossed Kiso through Ise and advanced into Mino along the river upwards as much as it could, refusing the bridge battle; I had to engage it with my secondary army before it could close in on Inabayama and reinforce a counter-attack from the castle. And no, attacking Owari myself while it was trudging through the forest of western Mino would not have been viable, considering the forces left in Kiyosu. All in all, smart move nay? And Tokugawa would've won the battle too if it wouldn't have faced a human opponent, so eventhough it lost, it was not because of doing anything wrong strategically.
- develops its lands properly; indeed, I do not know why chaps seem to argue over the best path to develop economically, when the AI was showing the way from the start; it does specialize provinces and it does use most only for Markets and Sake Dens, it is very clean, very similar to what the players seem to have agreed upon as the best course of action through independent research. Yes the AI goes for Rice Exchanges sometimes, but given the fact that its domains hold around five to six provinces for the most part, it is optimal for it probably because the Food surplus does not apply to enough provinces to count as much.
- proficiently handles its diplomatic relations; with the exception of Trade agreements, which it does not press at all as much as it should. Otherwise though, I've never really seen its alliances not make sense or not bearing fruit somehow.
3. Must-have-patched-in
A few features they got wrong by the by, and they're such simple issues that we should keep lobbying for them to be brought about soon.
a) Bushido and C'hi. The balance is awry at the moment. You cannot have a strong economy without bringing forth a relatively weak army. Isn't that a bit odd? Stands to reason, while a warlike AI will recruit experienced troops by researching Bushido, you will end up with experienced troops by having the koku to build and sustain the high level dojos in your citadels. And here's a catch twenty-two.
You cannot build those dojos you can afford without a well developed Bushido tradition, due to prequisite requirements.
You cannot afford them though without developing C'hi instead of Bushido. I'd suggest three paths:
- allow for Bushido and C'hi to be developed simultaneously, while increasing the times of reasearch of course.
- allow for koku to be proactively diverted towards research; as long as the costs are high enough, this would provide exactly the type of short cut one requires.
- delink military dojo prequisite requirements from Bushido arts. Tie them to C'hi arts part of the natural path towards economic growth. That way, you truly have two options for developing your forces. As it happens now, you want military dojos to enhance your troops with two, three experience levels? You have to take the Bushido arts required. Those give you another two, three experience levels. The chap going for C'hi will end up with wealth and troops hacked to pieces. Of course, you can see why they thought this would be a nice balance but it is rather ahistorical, is it not?
b) Bring in Retrain options. I'm confident other players must have pointed it out already, yet it is quite simply something which greatly frustrates pretty much everyone playing, and so it should be brought forth until adressed. There is no reason for this to be blocked. You have a unit of experienced Yari Ashigaru serving for five years? You may want to give them sharper Yari once you have the smithing technology for that, it's common sense. And garissoning your Katana Samurai unit in a castle where a Legendary Kenjutsu School is established, would they not benefit from that knowledge? I would even go so far as to ask for the posibility to retrain troops from one weapon to the other as long as it is all part of one development tree: allow for Yari Samurai to equip naginatas, for Katana Samurai to be refitted with No-Dachi and back again etc.
c) Exchanging provinces. Historically accurate, would make an actually great feature considering the AI negotiates reasonably in this game. Cannot think of a reason not to.
4. Missed opportunities
I really thought I should open up this subject, because it seems to me they stopped halfway through a few features. Here it goes.
a) Governors. The developers overlook the fact that your own teritorry splits into several vassal fiefs and those have nothing to do (at least in the beginning) with the vassals you create through the force of arms. Is the whole retinue to be limited to a couple family members and half a dozen generals at best? Should we not have these generals assigned provinces of their own, making loyalty even more important? Or should we not have at least separate governors for those provinces, for which we can develop administrative Traits? It really seems they have not thought it through at all here.
b) Fortified points. This part is tied up with c) in fact. The Campaign Map is, as stated, quite astonishing and realistic, yet was it not the time to take a step further? These provinces were actually held from about half a dozen or more fortresses in each, with one or two towns acting as the economic centers. Was it not the time to abolish the conquest of provinces when we have such a wonderful terrain on which fortresses could be placed, each fortress controlling a certain radius around it? The strategy would deepen to such a degree when you'd go to basically district level. The economy can remain the same, it is directed by the one who holds the commercial centers and it remains the sole beneficiary, yet strategically, conquering a province would feel as something you have to put a bit more work into.
c) Seasons are inadequate. I have already talked about Movement and actual distances. Quoting myself:
A note on distances: I think the game completely exagerates the distances between cities and provinces in one's mind. We're talking about 150 kilometers along the Tokaido between Suruga and Owari, when Imagawa's army left Sunpu, it needed five days to reach Owari, and in less than ten days from the moment he left his city, Yoshimoto was dead. That's twenty five thousands soldiers reaching the Owari border in five days, not a lone rider. Distances between neighbouring provinces in Japan are ridiculously small and the game should reflect that better.
Now, leave the system intact economically, one still receives revenue every three months, one still trains in the same amount of time, it just takes three turns of one month to train an ashigaru unit. But break down the military maneuvres into one month turns. It is what the game needs to grow wings, strategically. One should not infer that it would translate into faster conquest, troops and revenue allow you to conquer provinces, not the maneuvres themselves. Not significantly and the amount in which it would, would be close to reality anyway.
5. Control
I would write a massive obloquy here, it would be totally deserved. Yet I will just say that whoever thought of allowing so little posibility for Control customization should be fired or something equally awful, like not being allowed to drink coffee for the next fifty years!
Under what set of rules dating back from 1991 are they operating I wonder; you cannot even assign two mouse buttons properly.
- It was my wish to switch the Zoom in and out to mouse button four (m4) and m5. Dream on lad.
- I wanted to change the function of scroll. No can do.
- Even assigning other keys is a complete pain because once you scroll down the panel and switch the keys you find listed towards the bottom, each time you change a key you are automatically send to the header. Really now!
- I wanted to have my camera switch from Total War Classic camera style, to the so-called Standard one; well, no way, as checking that option does not uncheck the Classic one, while checking the Classic one does uncheck the Standard. And of course, if you go on with both checked, they overlap the zoom function so that you can zoom in and zoom out, but you cannot adjust the camera angle anymore.
- You cannot even use the option to keep both mouse buttons pressed so as to be able to quickly navigate the camera to that spot by dragging if you're not using the Classic camera.
- Adding insult to injury, ordering your units can fail hilariously. Sending a group of units to attack an enemy unit will have those run to that spot and not pursue the assigned target in most cases if that one already moved. Another example would be ordering units to attack the enemy advancing through terrain allowing for Camouflage. If the enemy stops and camouflages for one second, your unit loses its target and stops. You may think it's minor, but when that unit or group attack was part of a fifteen units advance on the enemy position, it being left behind can cause serious grievances.
The controls overall during battles are anyway cumbersome and received little attention, at least we should be allowed to aleviate that through our own customizations. Lacking Pause and a minimap, you really would like to be able to be limited by your brain and not by improper navigation over the battlefield.
6. Encyclopedia
One had high hopes for this feature, yet it is lackluster in so many respects.
The only part of the game which seems to have failed; aside from Controls!
The first issues appeared when I wished to search for informations on details pertinent to the economy. Buildings such as Rice Exchanges are given, basically, the same description as in game, with a bit more flavor added to it. Any thorough explanation on the way tarrifs and taxes bring about the revenue was equally nonexistant. Of course, it is not exactly difficult to "follow the money" backwards in game, but it is cumbersome.
Consequently, I then wished to find out the cost of a third tier upgrade to a Market. Looked up the building in the Encyclopedia. Alas, the cost was not mentioned at all. Neither was the number of seasons it would take to construct.
You will want to know how Metsuke affect towns. You will be told by the Encyclopedia a Metsuke increases the taxes collected, but not by how much and how can you enhance that feature.
You will want to know if demoralising an army means they will remain demoralised once you press end turn without attacking them, during their own aloted time for actions. If they are demoralised still during that time if they attack a third party. If, once you demoralise them, being attacked by an army, they will keep their morale penalty when attacked a second time (by the same army or another). Nothing to be found out from the Encyclopedia.
And so on and so forth.
I ought to have stopped half a post ago, but I write fast and I had a couple of hours I had to waste I suppose.
Should start with
Hello .Org
Bit of a longer entry than planned, just kept remembering tidbits all over.
I picked up the game a week ago and now I thought I'd want to chat a bit about what I've seen with a few more chaps.
My experience resumes to having played mostly the original Shogun in the first couple of years post its launch, and it seems I was an active member here for quite a while now that I look at my own postcount; I had totally forgotten I spent this amount of time here, and I am pretty sure this was a second account (I believe I had lost the first sometime in 2002). In fact, I had totally forgotten I was ever this active on any forum. A pleasure to be able to recognize a handful of names by the by. Now I am compelled to write I was genuinely saddened to read about TosaInu. I never exchanged more than three PMs with him, gives you an idea about the amount of contact we've had, yet he was what I call a sound character through and through and his conduct as a custodian of this community while I was around was not only irreproachable, but also commanding respect, which is an achievement when your only medium is the internet.
To change from the subject though, yes, picked it up I did (illegaly, yet I just bought it as well so don't frown gentlemen, old high school habbits kick in sometimes, no point battling them) and delved into it. First thing I try in years and I'm chuffed to bits about it. Being the "seasoned" codger that I am - not faking demureness at all - and appreciating the exigencies of the Single Player from memories past, I moved the slider to Legendary from the beginning. And yes, was I given a bloody nose; I so was. My first three choices were Chosokabe, Date and Shimazu, and I was eliminated in three to four years every time through a combination of digging my own grave by trying to do too much with too little (yeah, it is not really possible to defeat seven-eight hundred troops with two-three hundred in the first few turns anymore, har har) losing my daimyo due to using it as just another cavalry squad (some may remember that taking the head of a general, and especially a daimyo, in the initial Shogun, required twenty odd minutes) and not really caring about its radius on the other side, finding out what archers can hit if you infuse some sort of elven markmanship ancestry in them, being taught what three units of fey cavalry riding at break-neck speed all over the place can demolish in the hands of the new AI, learning to keep my head above the water economically and to prevent getting isolated and so on and so forth. And now, my fourth campaign (and of course, my fourth Legendary as well) I finished; as Uesugi, thought I'd try what I read was the more complex option and I did not want to play as the rest of the clans I had not tried yet at that point -- Short Legendary by the by, I do not see the purpose in choosing the rest, since twenty five and Kyoto is enough of a hint as in: well, it does allude you still have one or two more interesting adversaries, yet it also translates in the fact that you cannot bite the dust anymore.
So with this tidbit of experience behind me now, thought I'd give my take on it and read your input if you shall give it.
Attempt at structuring it a bit:
1. Battlefields
2. The Map
3. Must-have-patched-in
4. Missed Opportunities
5. Control
6. Encyclopedia
1. Battlefields
1.1 As to Battlefield mechanics first of all.
I'll write this up in one piece and avoid point by point arguments. It's more of a plea when I think about it. True, I was surprised by the movement speed of the troops, by the rate at which these perish in close quarters combat, surprised by the lethality of the bows also and so on and so forth. Then I only had to glance at the forums and see the community was too. Yet, all these choices made by the developers are justifiable up to a point in my eyes and, most importantly, they function habitualy. The most important contentious point is the newly acquired role of the general actually, and not the former features. And the problem stands thus: you cannot even argue its realism. Yes, especially Sengoku Jidai troops, where every soldier attempted to prove oneself in the eyes of his superior on the field, were truly giving their utmost in front of their taisho. Everything screams that, from their quaint tradition of engaging while presenting themselves to the enemy once hand to hand duels were spreading ulterior to the initial charge, to them giving their defeated opponents the time of day by taking their heads even before the melee was over. This was a feudal system in its core, and proving oneself individually mattered more to these warriors than winning or losing many a time.
Yet I believe it distorts the purity of the system that existed in the initial title. Troops hold too many times inspite of being outmaneuvred as long as their general's warbanner is near by. It is more and more difficult to rout them and they can withstand charges from behind, nevermind the overturn of a flank. Moreover, you see an AI which uses all its twenty units in minor flanking attacks itself in four-five spots at once, and your own strategy consists in one-two big large scale pivotal moves to cause routs, because you cannot keep the same pace of chipping away all over the place at once without Pause and without even the Battle Map. The issue becomes: the AI can wreak losses in those minor flanking attempts no matter where your general is, but your mass routs are really not happening too easily due to its own Rally. The result is not a superb tactical clash as you may think, it simply forces one to play in an unimaginative fashion on many occasions. You become prudent, you box yourself up, you counter rather than create situations. Sure, you can still afford to stealthily transfer forces from one wing to the other so as to create temporary superiority and break it somewhere, and then you do get to attack from behind and seal the deal, but the fact remains: the battle was won in a pitched fray through brute force on one flank or another, because attempting to cause a rout through large initial encirclements just won't happen anymore due to generals becoming what they've become. Moreover, and quite crucial, the spreading of your own troops to create those encirclements means you lack your taisho's radius for half to two thirds of your troops, and it just won't do for that to happen. Now, surely, the AI rarely gets to have a general anymore in the middle to late game because you murder three to five per season, yet that's another matter. What happens in multiplayer really? It just seems so important to bring your units under the general's umbrella in critical moments, I just can't imagine large movements with five-seven units at once being as viable anymore if it means spreading too thin for Stand and Fight.
1.2 Uf, where to head now. Lets talk about Environment.
a) Overall setting. For one, it is beautiful and the camera glides perfectly during the generals' speeches to show it so that not even the numerous typos in the subtitles detract from it.
b) Heights. I've to decry the lack of importance heights seem to have at this time. If there's any penalty, it certainly is minuscule enough. And to really make a pig's breakfast out of it, it seems they removed the range perks for archers on high ground aswell, which was disappointing. E.g. one of my Bow Warrior Monks was able to outrange a unit of Bow Ashigaru guarding the battlements of a fortress! The infamy of it.
c) Forests. Are all right. The penalty for cavalry units is where it should be. The penalty for volleys? It really is debatable, especially when you put it in context and next to Camouflage as well. Basically, arrows are blocked somewhat by foliage and tree trunks and what not, but because the engine does a splendid job (no sarcasm) in separating objects and trajectories, you really, really have to look for the thickest part of those copses or you may as well be in the open. Camouflage behaves completely inadequate in this context though. You can have a whole cavalry squad hidden in three bushes.
d) Villages. Awful. It is absolutely amazing that they can render three hundred trees worth of forest truthfully and not a wooden house and a haystack. I remember reading an article about Empire where they were advertizing the posibility of garrisoning troops within buildings. I'm not sure if it ever made it in, since I never played Empire, but seeing that Bune crews are animated fairly well when it comes to boarding vessels with higher decks, I do not understand the reasoning as to why some Ashigaru cannot step over one tree trunk in their way, or why, when walking through an alley between a barn and a house, they squeeze in holding hands two-by-two, eventhough there are ten yards left between them and any of the two buildings on either side. Of course, the problem is the object itself is larger than the visible contour, but should they be irritated to botch it up to such a degree when such care was given to a plethora of other details?
e) Castles. Much improved feature. Yet the Fort and Stronghold variations are too small and the inability to render buildings correctly probably motivates their almost total absence inside the walls, which is a considerable let down. There are though tiny variations between versions of the same strongpoint: I remarked it especially when it came to Fortresses. However, design wise, two issues. First, they lack a way to prevent entry through the gates. The AI never uses that path, ever. Probably hard-coded. Yet for a player without enough archers to rain death over every single unit inside, setting fire to the gates is yet another way of trivializing the assault. The fact that one Ashigaru gang can set fire to a gate and permanently destroy it in twenty seconds is silly. Allow the defending troops an ability such as Repair, where they have any sort of silly animation for extinguishing and patching it somehow, just as ships are able to. My second point; towers. A very elegant solution to use demarcation banners for the gates and for the dispute over the main dojo. Yet those should be removed when we speak of towers. Treat towers as battlements, even the most rudimentary ones. Place three to ten bow ashigaru inside, depending on size, and let the assaulting troops target them into silence (with a huge penalty to accuracy of course) or simply escalate the tower and cut them down. The artificial "bunkers" they are now detract from immersion.
1.3 Onto the AI.
With the caveat that I've only experienced engagements on Legendary, I have to write that the AI is brisk, arduous, truculent and overall satisfying in field clashes. The speed of the troops and its ability to control them simultaneously doesn't really let you dominate it fully.
1.3.1 Parts the AI does well:
a) Flanking. It will constantly try it without it being done for the sake of it; it exploits any breach in your line and the amount of times it leaves itself open because of it is quite rare. In fact, it can be said it is a calculated risk, and worth taking in most cases, because its maneuvres do sometimes threaten to break your line before you counter-flank or attack its now vulnerable lines of archers lets say. Due to or simply taking advantage of the speed of the cavalry, it even attempts to bait you, though I am unsure whether it is intentional or not: it charges your spear wall, loses a few riders but then retreats quite orderly, runs circles around your pursuing troops and attacks whatever was behind them. Not bad at all.
b) Setting up the death of your general. It is not something done for "flavour", you do not see an attempt to reach your general so you have a realistic experience, the AI actually attempts it proficiently; no point raving about it, just an anecdote: AI's Yari Cavalry charges towards a spearwall; it's a feigned maneuvre, my general finds itself towards its left, in Stand and Fight; the Yari Cavalry makes a ninety degree turn and aims straight at it now -- to its new left is one of my Yari Ashigaru troops fighting its own Yari Ashigaru, to its new right are my Yari Samurai trying to cut the charge with Rapid Advance; and now comes the raised-eyebrow: the Yari Cavalry was riding in five files, in its usual and a bit silly fairly square formation used by the AI; it switched to three files and barely dodged the Yari through the small gap left between the engaged Ashigaru and the pursuing Samurai, only 3 or so of its riders were caught and it continued to charge towards my general. Would I say most human players would not have been able to pull that off properly, and certainly not while attempting other maneuvres with other six-seven troops over the whole front? Yep. It matters not that the success rate of its attempts is close to zero after it surprises you for "thinking" about it in the first couple of battles, point is, they're as well done as you can wish them to be for the most part and they challenge you to step up your game.
c) Use of archers. Not amazing, yep? However, you have to show appreciation when you see it having a solid priority system: it can only shoot other archers, then it will shoot other archers, you advance some Yari Samurai, it will target them; your Monks charge subsequently? It will again properly switch.
d) Use of camouflage. Not bad at all, again; it proactively searches for Camouflage spots before the battle; not so much during, yet the uses of Camouflage at that point in time are debatable (something I will touch upon when I write my take on Controls). Anecdote time, as it is worth recounting: open field, AI taisho and a crew of Samurai Archers, forest one hundred yards behind them (where I thought most of its army was), five-six bushes and half a tree stump or something similar to their right. Now, I am aware of the fact that those can constitute cover, and I did expect one or two units to be there, since I had no cavalry or archers though, I simply advanced cautiously with three units of Yari Ashigaru, ready to charge whatever was there and its general, pinning them down while I'd rush reinforcements. It was beautiful: the AI had amassed all its other six Samurai Archers troops within those few bushes, and you could see it was intentional, the place was so crammed, the archers were not overlapped, yet there was no space between the units. Now, it did not win the fight, but it did begin it with a superb blazing volley; seven units (the one in the open aswell) of Samurai Archers throwing volleys of flaming arrows at once towards unsuspecting troops advancing slowly. I had time to issue an order for an one hundred eighty degrees turn, yet I still lost perhaps thirty men out of each hundred from those three Yari Ashigaru troops. Tip of the hat? Yep.
e) Use of heights. I don't intend to make each paragraph that long, suffice to say, I saw it passing up on a good position maybe only once in ten battles. And it will rush you for king of the hill if the spot is between you. On many occasions it can force you to maneuver for twenty minutes solely to obtain a less dire direction of attack.
f) Army composition. Sure, you get the full Yari and Bow Ashigaru armies sometimes, but truly only from the most poor. Any AI daimyo with four to six provinces will end up fielding large armies with a mix of Katana and Yari Cavalry, Katana Samurai and Samurai Archers, usualy experienced up to a level of three to four. Other troops types are not rare, yet this seems to be the usual focus if it can afford them and, due to the decent maneuvres the AI is able to pull off, you really don't get the sense of fighting an improperly balanced force.
1.3.2 Parts the AI does poorly:
a) React to a castle assault. I think everyone complains about it. It feels as if the original AI of Shogun survived in this small tactical niche. The AI is beyond brain dead, to a point where it can lose entire strategical situations on the campaign map because of it. It is a situation where more players should cry "Shame" for the developers stultifying through carelesness what it can clearly be a capable AI.
b) Introducing it right after, because it is similarly baffling; during Naval battles, the AI will not identify land. Sail behind a rock, so that it finds itself right between you and the advancing enemy fleet, and the AI will sail its ships aground and stay there until the time expires if you so wish it.
c) Those Cavalry charges I was raving about; has to be said they're not always thought through properly, and on about a quarter or so of occasions, they're done prior to the general assault, rendering them useless, no matter how beautifully executed. You can almost smell the "burned circuit" which causes the AI to go ahead and proceed.
d) Loose formation. Never used. I speculate that, because it was too difficult to give the AI parameters to decide - given the multitude of situations when you find yourself under fire and it is a bad idea to order Loose - the developers just took it away from the AI's arsenal.
2. The Map
2.1 The Campaign Map is solid. It is beautiful. It is true to history. It provides a great many variables to take into account before making a decision.
It also is... the same.
Amusing when you think about it, yet the fact remains, the new Campaign Map is not a whole lot different from the old one in terms of where one can establish one's "Maginot line", if one so wills it. You were making a "Do your worst" stand in Owari, Mino and Echigo in Shogun? Worry not, geography agrees with that in an odd way and if in the past you could not advance past a two-three province front because of the way borders touched on the drawn Map, now you cannot because of geographical obstacles. Of course, the irony is, this is realistically depicted. All these armies crossing from east to west and viceversa were confined to using the predecesors of the Gokaido and other major roads and e.g. there was no way to move a large army from Kai to Kyoto without using what would later be known as the Tokaido and Nakasendo.
Fact of the matter is however, you are left with less options now than in the past. Provinces which were open from 7-8 sides back in the day like Hida, nowadays one can only invade from Etchu and northern Shinano. I find that this should be compensated at a provincial level, and while the ability to raid and ambush and what not does it, it does not seem sufficient. But I will speak about that in the Missed Opportunities section.
2.1.1 I'd also want to touch on the issues regarding Movement taking place on the new Map. Those areas of action which you can visualise upon selecting your army are elegant solutions and very posh; yet when it comes to fine tuning your Arny placement, it is in so many cases outright frustrating, and I could give many examples of egregiousness in setting that up. Anecdote: I had the misfortune once to have three divisions which could each reach a town individually, yet after I merged the first with the second, and the new korps with the third, I was quite far away from my target, eventhough none of them had to take any type of detour to acomplish those mergers. I was compelled to make use of the autosave and move them independently to their final destination, and there they of course were merged happily. What a pity I had succesfully initiated a revolt before it, and of course, I had to attempt it again with a 46% chance; unsuccessfully. Second anecdote: a monk spreading the buddhist faith in Echizen can reach Inabayama in Mino with no difficulty and you can clearly see the yellow area spreading through Wakasa, Omi and Mino right up to the castle. Yet when I issued the order, the monk decided it should only travel through my own lands, and so chose a route through Kaga, Hida, northern and southern Shinano and, finally, Mino. Of course it barely reached Hida in that season. Give us a way to preview the exact path and the exact spot armies and agents will be able to reach, it can decide a whole campaign.
Moreover, divisions go around cities by default, eventhough going through increases the distance they can travel. Army korps also go around their own agents, impairing themselves.
And here intervenes yet another issue concerning agents accompanying armies. Should you choose to enter a town, the agent will not follow the army further by default, and there's no way to select both the units and the agent when you wish to leave town, you have to manually reassign it each time. Now, this is just annoying, but here's the question: once you enter the town with your army, the distance you can travel by road increases a bit. Since you cannot know by how much it would've increased beforehand, I am unsure if it takes into account the campaign map movement perks the agent was providing the army prior to entering the town or not.
Another oddity / perk / annoyance. Generals reinforcing your army and who join you on the battlefield receive the same experience as your primary taisho. Not the case for generals that are already included in the primary army. Of course, it's amusing to take advantage of it and walk around with four generals in one division, only to remove three prior to engaging the enemy and place them as Reinforcements, with the real posibility of advancing them all at once. It's odd. It's a perk for the player. It's annoying and unfair doing it.
2.2 The Economy, Technological Advancements and Province Development
The reason I am treating them in one section is explained by the fact that they're intertwined to such a large degree, and also because only as a whole can they add complexity to the game. Fumble any of these three and the other two will become unimportant or easy to disregard. Allow the player to tech too much and one will be able to overlook a very gripping economical system. And viceversa.
And in Shogun 2 they really are quite sound.
a) Everything from Upkeep to Food supplies forcefully guides you to choose to develop identically to a daimyo of the age: all your provinces grow agriculturally and comercially while your power resides centralised only behind the walls of a couple of superb citadels. The half a century that led to the Tokugawa shogunate contained the Azuchi and Momoyama intervals, and those names are the names of the citadels of Oda and Toyotomi after all.
b) The mix of soldiers you bring to the battlefield is also forced upon you very delicately to bring you in a historically accurate position. Yes, you can field a division comprised entirely of monks augmented only by one or two squads of Yari Cavalry to ensure no one shall live to tell the story, yet that division is one of a kind. Attempt to double up on it and your economy will run into the ground. Not with a twenty thousand revenue per season (which is more or less what you reach before crossing from Acclaimed to Legendary) will you be able to sustain more than one of those forces when you need four more to cover the spots where that crack division can't be in, maintain your fleets, rebuild the provinces you conquer as you see fit, pay your agents and shower your allies with large sums of gold. Thus your armies will have Ashigaru in the same proportions the daimyo of old had. There's this amusing quote from Asakura Toshikage, which I managed to find again now to give in full: "Swords of famous warriors ought not to be coveted. A sword worth ten thousand pieces can be overcome by one hundred spears worth only one hundred pieces". It's not only that the economy is designed to not let you afford a full blown elite army even when making the most of your fief, it is the fact that many times, they're really not worth it.
c) The Warchest. Indeed, you need to build up that warchest if you wish to conquer Japan, and you can only be thankful for this touch of realism. You develop everything and amass. I spent 100.000 koku in 21 months after I broke into RD. All the extras necessary for a massive military advance, bribes, payments for revolts and enhancing Kyoto (around 20.000 spent there in one season) meant I required the fortunes gathered in the prior years of peace. Can one execute it without the spending? Yeah, but it would've been a pain. And unreal, truly. You initiate wars when you have the resources. Daimyo of the time themselves initiated wars only when they had some sort of warchest. If the Onin War had taught them something, it was that. And the costs of war were huge, just as they are for the players.
d) Research. Totally hellacious. Any choice you make is not simply good or bad when you review it with hindsight, it subsequently allows you capitalize on opportunities which can lead you very far from your initial plan. I read most prefer the agricultural side of the C'hi, yet I opine that going straight for the arts enhancing Honor and diplomatic relations pays off a lot better in the beginning. Long before you upgrade agriculturally the few provinces you own to the level where you need Chonindo, you benefit tons from having all twenty or so clans "go green" on you and being able to trade with each and everyone without giving them any incentives, not to mention the fact that unexpected wars are avoided to a large degree. They're also a prequisite for Epic Architecture, so you'd want to go through them anyway. Best to research them in the beginning, when they do you the most good, and then focus heavily on the agricultural tech; in this timeline, those should be under research right about the time you finish your conquest of the 12-14 provinces you want to obtain before settling in for pre-RD build up.
I'd emphasize here the importance of temples and generals.
I know the common way of going about provincial development outside the ones designated as training grounds is the building of a Stronghold, allowing for Market and Sake Den. I would suggest going for Temples when possible or appropriate, the bonus to C'hi seems important and even made me think about upgrading.
I would back the development of a numerous general retinue even more. Level three generals are easy to obtain and really great to have due to access to Poet. Actively increasing your retinue by six-seven generals (by attacking without a general present, you have a good chance of being given the opportunity to promote one afterwards) appears a very smart path to boost your Bushido research quickly.
2.3 Agents and Traits
2.3.1 I shall only write about Metsuke, Monks and Ninja (Geisha and Missionaries are Terra incognita for me). And you cannot complain when you do. They allow you to act upon armies, cities and populations exactly as you'd wish to act and I do not feel anything important is missing. Metsuke and Monks in particular are in a good spot right now, without crossing the line. Even with five terrific monks available one will not be able to throw the balance of war in one's favor. The number is good by the by. A tad too many for those "safe" players who make sure to secure the "corner" before hitting RD, yet five is a perfect figure for one who has to spread one's resources on two fronts.
However, Ninja.
- First of all, I am unsure what you chaps make of their Traits, but there's one path that is by far superior to the rest: Assassination. I experimented with the other two, much too situational and as long as they're high level, the ones specialized in Assassination can perform those just fine as well - as to campaign map army movement range perks, they're not really a must if you play it well. Assassin > Exotic Weapons > Poisoner > Notorious Killer while reaching for one level of Escape Artist through the one level Spy > one level Master of Disguise road. And that's it really, you get all five up that path and they're simply ripping your opponents appart. Even with the AI's increased capacity to "father" generals, it won't be able to keep up. And that's the thing: it's silly. There's no way for even a level six taisho to survive enough to meet you on the field. You bring in your monks and convert the couple of metsuke overseeing its army, and then you throw your Ninja at him. Two-three attempts per season from level five-six Ninja and the taisho falls in less than six months. Also, historically, you could not deplete a whole clan's retinue by just sending assassins. I'd argue the chances of success should be lower.
- Second of all, Subverting armies has to be toned down or removed completely. I can't know what you imagine that Ninja to be doing, apparently, the developers could not imagine anything at all as they did not include any storyline for those actions, nevermind the small flavor clips. Poison their water, set fire to their food supplies, slaughter their horses? Nothing a Ninja can do (or a group of Ninja for that matter) can prevent an army ten kilometers away from your position to reach you in three months. I kept an AI army "at arms length" so to speak for a year while my taisho was finishing a siege. That army was literally a couple of days walking distance from my besieging troops, and they could not intervene for around four hundred days.
A note on distances: I think the game completely misrepresents the distances between cities and provinces in one's mind. We're talking about 150 kilometers along the Tokaido between Suruga and Owari; when Imagawa's army left Sunpu, it needed five days to reach Owari, and in less than ten days from the moment he left his city, Yoshimoto was dead. That's twenty five thousands soldiers reaching the Owari border in five days, not a lone rider. Distances between neighbouring provinces in Japan are ridiculously small and the game should reflect that better.
Yet that was an aside. The point is, armies should be subverted for an entire season, it tends to ruin it. And while I'd argue it should not exist as an option at all, I would suggest primarily the diminishing of the distance the enemy army can travel by at most 50% and you could throw in there a penalty if they engage combat in that turn, lets say they are deployed as Very Tired.
2.3.2 To talk about Traits alone a bit, I found all talents available interesting enough and yet certain builds are clearly superior to all others and I cannot really see where are the incentives change it up.
I already discussed Ninja available traits, lets take a peak at monks and generals as well. You are well advised to go for Chi and Bushido research enhancing talents for all of them I would think. For Monks, that means you are left with three or so talent points to toy with. Generals only have Poet, yet they have such a clear, clean and solid build in going for Strategist, Infantry leader, Ashigaru Commander and Siege expert, that you will never really choose anything else unless you focus heavily on cavalry; and that will plausibly only happen if you command Takeda.
I was pleasantly surprised by the evolution of feature: at first, I thought Loyalty is a bit irrelevant unless the daimyo died. It is not so at all. Loyalty decreases the more generals you add to your retinue, by 1 for each general. That Upstart generals trait can go as far as -6 from what I have seen until now, and I bet it could've went lower.
2.4 Diplomacy
I'm really writing too much trying to cover everything. Least this one I want to keep brief. It's good and I shall only list a few annoying issues because most of it is a success, not because I do not find the system solid or fine tuned. One issue even, because there's only one for now. Vassals. I read about chaps trying to create vassals for Trade and what not. Personally, I do not see the point of it. When you lose trade, you raid the naval routes of everyone and their grandmother, that's your trade income back again.
You have to be so careful when making a vassal, its not worth the hassle. First of all, it can enter a war without asking you, which is awful when it does it to one of your Allies. The Uesugi have the Yamanouchi as vassals in the beginning. Woe onto thee if you decide to create an alliance with the Ashina, because in my campaign, they went to war. I sided with Ashina, and for the rest of the game, I had a diplomatic penalty of -25 for dishonouring treaties eventhough I had not declared war on Yamanouchi. I would've gotten the same if I would've decided to support my vassal against my ally, of course. There are a plethora of other things that can go wrong when having a vassal, I believe they should work on it. Vassals should not be able to declare war without asking for one's blessing and they should not be attacked without the aggresor placing itself at war with you. Historically, there are no precendents for vassals going to war without permission I believe, unless they were ready to denounce their vassality as well. I.e. can you picture Tokugawa Ieyasu attacking... lets say Kai, without caring about what Imagawa Yoshimoto would think of it?
2.5 Strategic AI
Personally, I don't really find faults with the AI strategically, with the caveat, again, that I only comment on Legendary.
Back in the day, it was innocuous and inept.
Now, if there's one issue which makes the AI look fatuous it comes from the fact that it cannot asses the outcome of its sieges properly. Oh, and the fact that it can be so peevish and cantankerous from time to time!
A mere glance at the forums made me take in the reproach that the AI leaves its provinces undefended. Paradoxically, it's what had me pleasantly surprised. The fact that it can logically muster its most potent army to win each particular war was pretty great. No longer can you see the AI losing province after province because it tries to defend all ten in case even the most secure ones have some invading army drop from the heavens to capture it. At the moment, the AI faces its enemy, if it loses, it retreats, gathers a large force again, tries to stop the enemy a second time with all it can throw at him. Does the AI leave itself open to backstabbing? It does, but then again, it wouldn't have been able to expand in the first place otherwise. And the AI will anyway return with its main army against the backstabber if it can, and then, that one better be ready. It's not as if it loses infrastructure in 90% of the cases. And it is historically accurate, truly. Plus, in most cases, there are alliances holding the borders, and you can trust an alliance in Shogun 2 as long as you're not the only option left for expansion for the allied faction. I did it myself as Uesugi, allied with Ashina and Date, they were my shield and as long as they were engaged in wars with others and Friendly, I knew I can rest easy. Should they have betrayed me, I would've lost a couple of provinces, but trying to secure those borders would have prevented me from gaining five others.
The AI
- understands the terrain; anecdote time yet again: as Uesugi, besieging Inabayama, I moved a reinforcing army in front of the bridge over the Kiso river, between Owari and Mino; that way, it could reinforce the besieging troops if they were attacked by the large army trapped in the castle, and held the bridge while it could be reinforced by the besieging troops. I could've stretched and blocked the bridge with the besieging army, but then Tokugawa, the faction at war, could have moved an army close to that force so as to reinforce a sally out of the castle walls. When Tokugawa arrived with a large force in Owari, it entered Kiyosu and I expected it to engage the Uesugi on the bridge over Kiso. At most, I thought it would just give up on Inabayama. But no, the next season the AI made a left, crossed Kiso through Ise and advanced into Mino along the river upwards as much as it could, refusing the bridge battle; I had to engage it with my secondary army before it could close in on Inabayama and reinforce a counter-attack from the castle. And no, attacking Owari myself while it was trudging through the forest of western Mino would not have been viable, considering the forces left in Kiyosu. All in all, smart move nay? And Tokugawa would've won the battle too if it wouldn't have faced a human opponent, so eventhough it lost, it was not because of doing anything wrong strategically.
- develops its lands properly; indeed, I do not know why chaps seem to argue over the best path to develop economically, when the AI was showing the way from the start; it does specialize provinces and it does use most only for Markets and Sake Dens, it is very clean, very similar to what the players seem to have agreed upon as the best course of action through independent research. Yes the AI goes for Rice Exchanges sometimes, but given the fact that its domains hold around five to six provinces for the most part, it is optimal for it probably because the Food surplus does not apply to enough provinces to count as much.
- proficiently handles its diplomatic relations; with the exception of Trade agreements, which it does not press at all as much as it should. Otherwise though, I've never really seen its alliances not make sense or not bearing fruit somehow.
3. Must-have-patched-in
A few features they got wrong by the by, and they're such simple issues that we should keep lobbying for them to be brought about soon.
a) Bushido and C'hi. The balance is awry at the moment. You cannot have a strong economy without bringing forth a relatively weak army. Isn't that a bit odd? Stands to reason, while a warlike AI will recruit experienced troops by researching Bushido, you will end up with experienced troops by having the koku to build and sustain the high level dojos in your citadels. And here's a catch twenty-two.
You cannot build those dojos you can afford without a well developed Bushido tradition, due to prequisite requirements.
You cannot afford them though without developing C'hi instead of Bushido. I'd suggest three paths:
- allow for Bushido and C'hi to be developed simultaneously, while increasing the times of reasearch of course.
- allow for koku to be proactively diverted towards research; as long as the costs are high enough, this would provide exactly the type of short cut one requires.
- delink military dojo prequisite requirements from Bushido arts. Tie them to C'hi arts part of the natural path towards economic growth. That way, you truly have two options for developing your forces. As it happens now, you want military dojos to enhance your troops with two, three experience levels? You have to take the Bushido arts required. Those give you another two, three experience levels. The chap going for C'hi will end up with wealth and troops hacked to pieces. Of course, you can see why they thought this would be a nice balance but it is rather ahistorical, is it not?
b) Bring in Retrain options. I'm confident other players must have pointed it out already, yet it is quite simply something which greatly frustrates pretty much everyone playing, and so it should be brought forth until adressed. There is no reason for this to be blocked. You have a unit of experienced Yari Ashigaru serving for five years? You may want to give them sharper Yari once you have the smithing technology for that, it's common sense. And garissoning your Katana Samurai unit in a castle where a Legendary Kenjutsu School is established, would they not benefit from that knowledge? I would even go so far as to ask for the posibility to retrain troops from one weapon to the other as long as it is all part of one development tree: allow for Yari Samurai to equip naginatas, for Katana Samurai to be refitted with No-Dachi and back again etc.
c) Exchanging provinces. Historically accurate, would make an actually great feature considering the AI negotiates reasonably in this game. Cannot think of a reason not to.
4. Missed opportunities
I really thought I should open up this subject, because it seems to me they stopped halfway through a few features. Here it goes.
a) Governors. The developers overlook the fact that your own teritorry splits into several vassal fiefs and those have nothing to do (at least in the beginning) with the vassals you create through the force of arms. Is the whole retinue to be limited to a couple family members and half a dozen generals at best? Should we not have these generals assigned provinces of their own, making loyalty even more important? Or should we not have at least separate governors for those provinces, for which we can develop administrative Traits? It really seems they have not thought it through at all here.
b) Fortified points. This part is tied up with c) in fact. The Campaign Map is, as stated, quite astonishing and realistic, yet was it not the time to take a step further? These provinces were actually held from about half a dozen or more fortresses in each, with one or two towns acting as the economic centers. Was it not the time to abolish the conquest of provinces when we have such a wonderful terrain on which fortresses could be placed, each fortress controlling a certain radius around it? The strategy would deepen to such a degree when you'd go to basically district level. The economy can remain the same, it is directed by the one who holds the commercial centers and it remains the sole beneficiary, yet strategically, conquering a province would feel as something you have to put a bit more work into.
c) Seasons are inadequate. I have already talked about Movement and actual distances. Quoting myself:
A note on distances: I think the game completely exagerates the distances between cities and provinces in one's mind. We're talking about 150 kilometers along the Tokaido between Suruga and Owari, when Imagawa's army left Sunpu, it needed five days to reach Owari, and in less than ten days from the moment he left his city, Yoshimoto was dead. That's twenty five thousands soldiers reaching the Owari border in five days, not a lone rider. Distances between neighbouring provinces in Japan are ridiculously small and the game should reflect that better.
Now, leave the system intact economically, one still receives revenue every three months, one still trains in the same amount of time, it just takes three turns of one month to train an ashigaru unit. But break down the military maneuvres into one month turns. It is what the game needs to grow wings, strategically. One should not infer that it would translate into faster conquest, troops and revenue allow you to conquer provinces, not the maneuvres themselves. Not significantly and the amount in which it would, would be close to reality anyway.
5. Control
I would write a massive obloquy here, it would be totally deserved. Yet I will just say that whoever thought of allowing so little posibility for Control customization should be fired or something equally awful, like not being allowed to drink coffee for the next fifty years!
Under what set of rules dating back from 1991 are they operating I wonder; you cannot even assign two mouse buttons properly.
- It was my wish to switch the Zoom in and out to mouse button four (m4) and m5. Dream on lad.
- I wanted to change the function of scroll. No can do.
- Even assigning other keys is a complete pain because once you scroll down the panel and switch the keys you find listed towards the bottom, each time you change a key you are automatically send to the header. Really now!
- I wanted to have my camera switch from Total War Classic camera style, to the so-called Standard one; well, no way, as checking that option does not uncheck the Classic one, while checking the Classic one does uncheck the Standard. And of course, if you go on with both checked, they overlap the zoom function so that you can zoom in and zoom out, but you cannot adjust the camera angle anymore.
- You cannot even use the option to keep both mouse buttons pressed so as to be able to quickly navigate the camera to that spot by dragging if you're not using the Classic camera.
- Adding insult to injury, ordering your units can fail hilariously. Sending a group of units to attack an enemy unit will have those run to that spot and not pursue the assigned target in most cases if that one already moved. Another example would be ordering units to attack the enemy advancing through terrain allowing for Camouflage. If the enemy stops and camouflages for one second, your unit loses its target and stops. You may think it's minor, but when that unit or group attack was part of a fifteen units advance on the enemy position, it being left behind can cause serious grievances.
The controls overall during battles are anyway cumbersome and received little attention, at least we should be allowed to aleviate that through our own customizations. Lacking Pause and a minimap, you really would like to be able to be limited by your brain and not by improper navigation over the battlefield.
6. Encyclopedia
One had high hopes for this feature, yet it is lackluster in so many respects.
The only part of the game which seems to have failed; aside from Controls!
The first issues appeared when I wished to search for informations on details pertinent to the economy. Buildings such as Rice Exchanges are given, basically, the same description as in game, with a bit more flavor added to it. Any thorough explanation on the way tarrifs and taxes bring about the revenue was equally nonexistant. Of course, it is not exactly difficult to "follow the money" backwards in game, but it is cumbersome.
Consequently, I then wished to find out the cost of a third tier upgrade to a Market. Looked up the building in the Encyclopedia. Alas, the cost was not mentioned at all. Neither was the number of seasons it would take to construct.
You will want to know how Metsuke affect towns. You will be told by the Encyclopedia a Metsuke increases the taxes collected, but not by how much and how can you enhance that feature.
You will want to know if demoralising an army means they will remain demoralised once you press end turn without attacking them, during their own aloted time for actions. If they are demoralised still during that time if they attack a third party. If, once you demoralise them, being attacked by an army, they will keep their morale penalty when attacked a second time (by the same army or another). Nothing to be found out from the Encyclopedia.
And so on and so forth.
I ought to have stopped half a post ago, but I write fast and I had a couple of hours I had to waste I suppose.