View Full Version : Pagans' Requiem: Shimazu (Domination, Legendary)
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And here we have our first 6-star missionary with his fancy hat. That 21% bonus on Chi research is not useful anymore - because we need help on Bushido. But at least by the time we hit Realm Divide, we will be able to rush Calligraphy and Neo-Confucianism more quickly.
Let's fast forward a few turns. Takeda's provinces in Kinki has been turned to Rebel. Hattori once controlled Omi province, but was simply idiotic to completely ignore the ongoing unrest in the city and parked their large army just outside the castle town. So the unrest resulted in the revival of the Asai clan!
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But Hattori's army nearby was still strong enough to beat Asai (again). Now if we can get rid off Hatorri, the Kinki area will be all rebels - making our occupation very easy later.
Another child is born... and it is my own child! Now I am seriously in a race with my sons to produce the most children! And I am winning! :laugh4:
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Something must be right in our food. Maybe it is in our seaweed. It tastes weird lately, and whenever I eat seaweed, I get a strong urge to... er... :blush:
Our training with the rebels are quite fun actually. Sometimes we can defeat spear units by charging them in the back and quickly rout them before we suffer heavy casaulties.
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But it is a bad idea to charge a spear unit at the front. In the few seconds before they rout, they can easily kill a row of our bodyguards. I learned that lesson the hard way. :sweatdrop:
Our clan is now having some "significant advances"! Although nothing important has happened for a few years now.
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Now our research rate is bumped up by 50%! But this is only 50% from the base rate. Let's see how much sooner we can learn Gun Mastery...
In the last season we checked, we needed 12 seasons. Now we need 9 seasons.
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So the "significant advance" saved us 2 seasons! That's... not quite significant. :confused:
Note: Research is really slow in unmodded STW2. :book2: There is actually a double research rate mod around. Maybe it is a good idea!
Yamana has been stuck in Hoki since they had no general there. But the rebellion we incited are all too small to beat their full samurai stack.
So we had an idea - if we turn all their provinces to rebel, they will be forced to relocate their capital to Hoki. Then, they should have a new daimyo in Hoki. The new daimyo will then lead the army to attack somewhere! As soon as he leaves, we sabotage their army and...
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Poor Yamana, their greed spells their doom. Amen. :rolleyes:
All the provinces have finished the construction of the best farm - Land Cosolidation. This pushes our food surplus to 61! Our tax income has been steadily increasing due to very fast town growth. Soon our tax income will exceed our trade income.
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From experience, this would be a good time to trigger the Realm Divide, as we will have sufficient funds to cover the loss of our trades. However, we are still waiting for research to catch up to get our planned Heavy Gunner army! Even after research is done, building the Gunsmith takes 5 more seasons! And upgrading that to produce Fire Rocket must takes more than 5 seasons! Training and shipping also takes time!
This drives us insane! How about we make a change of plan - we first produce a mostly samurai army to take over Kyoto to trigger the Realm Divide, occupy Kinki area, and use the Heavy Gunners to fight the remaining clans. This way at least we can still see the guns in action. It is probably better not to use guns to attack Kyoto anyway, as the defenders there had tons of samurai archers.
Let the countdown to Realm Divide start!
That concludes chapter 10 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 11. Ashigaru versus samurai
Welcome back, daimyos. :bow: As we decided to wait no further to start the countdown of Realm Divide, we need to produce a samurai army that is independent of advanced gunpowder weapons. The army in Kyoto is full of Samurai Archers. This leads us to create an army with high armor. We will also make up the army with a small portion of ranged units at any moment to encourage the defenders to camp, instead of to attack.
Stack 1 (13 units or more) - bonus for sword infantry (our best general has +2 melee)
- General
- 6 Naginata Samurai (+5 armor, for a total of 14)
- 4 Katana Samurai (+5 armor)
- 2 Yari Cavalry
Stack 2, 3 (20 units or more) - bonus for bow accuracy (our best general has +15%)
- General
- 19 Bow Ashigaru
Reinforcement brought by stack 2 and 3 will possess the general's accuracy bonus. We hope to lure Kyoto's Bow Samurai one or two at a time to duel with our Bow Ashigaru. We will retire damaged/depleted bow units and replace with fresh ones as the battle goes on. We will have to see the battle to see how this plan plays out.
Now we have placed our recruitment orders in Satsuma (Naginata, Katana), Bizen (Katana), and Awa (cavalry). They will be delivered to Settsu after just a few seasons.
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Our bored agents pretty much have Kindi under rebel control! The ambitious Ikko-Ikki and Takeda both wanted to fill the void. This is a perfect chance to eliminate Ikko-Ikki. All we need to do is to freeze their stacks from taking any other new province, and incite some tiny rebellions at their defenseless homes...
Ikko-Ikki is eliminated by their greed. Amen.
Let's again fast forward a year (as nothing important happened in between). The Imagawa used to control three provinces (Owari, Mino, and Migawa) with 2.5 powerful stacks. They had a good chance to stand against Takeda and Hojo's weak invasions.
Their front line is at Migawa and Mino. So if they station a full stack there, they should be pretty safe.
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But somehow they decided to MOVE AWAY all their army in Mino and Migawa and let a weak Takeda and Hojo steal those two provinces. They also think it is a good idea to grab the weak rebel provinceIse in their back, leaving just half a stack to protect Owari. From experience, we know they will just keep giving up what they left behind to a lucky scavenger.
What kind of idiot is this?! :furious3: No wonder Takeda and Hojo has such an easy time. It seems that Imagawa will soon be destroyed by their endless stupidity.
Amen. Imagawa has been eliminated by their stupidity - when the rebels appeared in their last province, they did not even bother attacking it. But we had to froze their two full stacks in a rebel province with our ninja. :leer:
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Oh nice. Here is a chance to boost 100% (base rate, not current rate) Bushido research!
Let's see how many turns it saves us to get Gunpowder Mastery...
0 turns. :wall:
Fast forward again - our samurai units have been shipped to Settsu. We are ready to declare war on Ashikaga and trigger Realm Divide! But we should be ready diplomatically as well.
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There are four potential allies. Takeda and Hojo are alies, and they both have terrifying military strength. Takeda is at war with Date and Honma. Hojo is at war with Date, and has pushed back Date to their last two provinces.
If Hojo and Takeda attack us together, we will have big problems after Realm Divide. Honma and Date won't be great helps.
So how do we break up Takeda and Hojo? Well, didn't we plan for this many years ago by marrying Takeda's daughter? In fact, Takeda has asked us to be allies 4 times now.
When we agree to help Takeda in their war with the Ashikaga Shogun, he immediately agreed to break up his alliance and trade with Hojo! We are going to fight Ashikaga anyway, so why not pretending that we are just "helping" our ally?
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And just to make sure Takeda stays as our ally longer, we volunteered a young grand child to go to Takeda for two years. We have so many of them anyway.
Soldiers, to Kyoto! We will resolve this on the field as plaaned.
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The number of units attacking Kyoto is a little tricky. If we use too many units, the field army flees away, and we will end up besieging the Citadel full of Samurai Archers. After some trial and errors, we find the most we can bring to the battle was the above units pus 12 units of Bow Ashigaru.
Can 12 units of Bow Ashigaru defeat 17 units of Bow Samurai, with Shimazu's famous (and brainless) "Bait" tactics?
Note: Strangely, there is only one full stack of defenders. I expected two full stacks, as in my previous Chosokabe campaign, where I attacked Kyoto even a few years earlier.
Only 6 of the 12 Bow Ashigaru could be deployed due to the unit limit.
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The Ashikaga army formed a super long line with their 17 units of Bow Samurai.
We have all the time we need. Let the fishing begin!
We first tried to fish with Cavalry as bait, the the prey easily get away because it is hard to maintain a good distance.
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We then switched to Bow Ashigaru as bait. As they slowly walk back and pause from time to time, we can consistently keep our prey on the hook. We can also freely control the size of the prey. If there are too many hooked, we will reduce pausing until there are only 1 or 2 preys left.
The preys entered our trap one by one, and was eaten alive.
We keep a long distance to Ashikaga's line - about 3-4 arrows' range. Since we have quite mastered the art of baiting, the extra distance does not lower our success rate at all - it provides more cusion for our cavalry to mop up the routed units to conserve our ammo.
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We have two kinds of enemy corpses on the floor. Those that line up are pinned down by arrows when they entered the trap. Those that scatter around are cut down by Yari cavalry after they rout.
That's a big fish - a threesome! Since we have 6 units of Bow Ashigaru and 3 cavlary units ready to charge from side and back, we should be able to take care of them.
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But they are probably giving their lives away to us... by superimposing their formations on each other?! Is that the opposite of loose formation, a "super tight" formation, the worst possible formation for taking arrows. :dizzy2:
We actually planted a Yari Cavalry unit in Ashikaga's back (hidden in the forest-rich hill) to catch the lucky preys who survived the slaughter.
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No luck for them anymore.
Athough we seem to have a very open battle field, there are a small patch of "forest" just in front of Ashikaga's ine. Units on the hook will inevitably enter that forest and think "we should remain hiding!" and get off the hook.
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So we continue to bait from the other side.
This time two are on the hook! Thanks to their super-tight formation, we have little problem of decimating them even with our reduced numbers. Loss is inevitable.
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So with patience and a little fishin skill, we have reduced Ashikaga's Bow Samurai all the way from 17 units to 4 units! The 6 starting Bow Ashigaru units are all damaged andrunning low on arrow.
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As planned, it is time to retire them. Thanks for your effort - that was 13 Bow Samurai units they destroyed.
We brought 12 Bow Ashigaru units. So here comes the second batch!
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We don't just hire any Bow Ashigaru. They are absolutely the best availble. Tthis batch has 15% bonus accuracy and level 4 experience, and is led by our best Bow general, providing another 15% accuracy, for a total of 65% accuracy! So they are actually "super" Bow Ashigaru, perfectly comparable to Bow Samurai in performance, but much cheaper and comes in greater 33% extra size.
We have a feeling that when we reduece Ashikaga's Bow Samurai any further, they will start charging. So we recalled al hidden units, get a formation ready, and moved up the line.
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We baited and destroyed another Bow Samurai, and here they come! Ashikaga's general attempted to find our weakness, but they did not see any. On both flanks we have 2 units of Katana samurai and 1 Yari Cavalry.
So the Ashikaga Shogun actually pulled back his melee units, and leave their last three units of Bow Samurai to continue shooting at our Naginata Samurai, while they remained out of range of our bows.
Our Naginata Samurai has 14 armor! So their arrows had really limited effect. But since now they become "baits", we gladly pulled them back behind the Bow Ashigaru, so we can take shots at the preys.
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So essentially we have lured all 17 units of Bow Samurai in one battle. That is a new record!
The Ashikaga Shogun attempted their final attack! So we again moved up our Naginata line. But even before he reaches our line, our 65% accurate arrows broke their numbers and morale.
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They all routed! The battle is over!
We killed most of Ahikaga's men losing only 1/8 of our own. Most of our melee actually had no chance to swing their weapons. The damaged Bow Ashigaru units will get their number back in no time.
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And we proceed to assault the Kyoto castle. We wil not bother you with details (auto-resolved) - it was easily over.
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Note: Should have tried to use the 3 units of European Cannons to blast through the walls and towers! But I got lazy.
By taking over Kyoto, we started the first phase of Realm Divide. This phase only incur a small diplomatic penalty. But after we become the new Shogunate a year later (the second phase), all existing clans will suddenly hate us very much.
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So we have to consolidate our diplomacy. First, we can declare war on Hojo by asking for Date's sponsorship. Just a little extra profit. Declaring war on Hojo is important, as we can now lock Takeda on our side. They will not be able to restablish their alliance with Hojo anymore.
But since we have a deep pocket, we may as well give Date's sponsor money right back and get some extra friendship. We also paid 2000 koku to Honma to pre-pay peace.
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We might be still declared war by them a year later when we become Shogun. But since they are small and weak, there is not too much to worry.
As we have trigger Realm Divide, our navy has to patrol the costal lines of our front. Here were were attacked by a damaged Hojo full-stack fleet!
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Let's see how long they last!
Hojo's 10 ships lined up perfectly in our cannon's crossfire. But they were fast enough to reach us before we destroyed a good number of them.
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Then they started shooting fire arrow at us, and one of our ship immediately caught fire! We had to focus on repair for that ship or the fire will soon burn down the ship! But luckily, ship #2 did not catch fire, and was to successfully reduce Hojo's strength while ship #1 was busy to put down the fire. Hojo's arrows had very limited damage on our crew.
So we still defeated this stack while only losing about a few dozen crew... out of 600. Two Nanban trade ship is just awesome. But to be absolutely safe, maybe we need three.
Quicky a year has past. We have become the new Shogun!
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Right now, we have four ashigaru armies and one samurai army, so we are quickly taking over the rebel controlled Kinki area. We have also called up all our Metsuke to maintain order in more troublesome provinces. We naturally lose a few thousand koku of incomes every season this way. We will soon hit the limit of this wave of expansion, and has to slow down to wait for Christianity to spread and unrest to calm.
By the time we finished resting, we should be able to field an entire line of Heavy Gunners. :smash:
That concludes chapter 11 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 12. Our loyal samurai, Takeda
You know, Samurai does not mean anything really spectacular originally - it only means "servant". But since the Honor culture started gettting popular in Japan and the country was essentially ruled by military warlords, the servants of these warlords become a cool thing, too.
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Well, now we are the Shogun! Let's try to turn Takeda into our clan's personal samurai, which they probably think is an Honor to them! Here, they gladly agreed to declare war on Hojo FOR NOTHING in return. Nice! There are only three terrifying military powers, and our team has two of them. The result of the war is usually determined before the battles even begin.
As we expected, Date and Honma has joined the other side of the Realm Divide. Unwise.
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Having samurai Takeda is a great thing, as they are the only clan we have land border with! So Takeda will be fighting all the battles with our enemies (or rather, do some idiotic chase-around as we have seen with Hattori), while we sit back and take over the rebel lands and convert the provinces. If we feel mean, we can actually eat up Takeda's provinces from behind with missionaries. It just does not get easier than this!
But we want someone to test our Heavy Gunners. So we will behave and reserve some big major battles for them. Our missionaries are better used for province conversion.
Interestingly, Date and Hojo had automatically allied together against us although they have been at war for ages.
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But team Hojo-Date-Honma is no match for team Shimazu-Takeda. Let's look for some chances to prove that on the battlefield, too!
This is the moment we have been waiting for a long time - finally, the Heavy Gunners! They have the strange requirement of armory, so we had to demolish the Hunting Lodge and rebuild the Encampment and its upgrade. We lose 5% of accuracy, but gain 2 points of armor. Since the gunners will form our main line, the extra armor might actually be useful.
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Since upgrading Gunsmith to Arsenal requires another 6 seasons, we can train 9 units of Heavy Gunners before switching to Fire Rockets. Nine units of Heavy Gunners should be good enough to form a adequate line.
Peasant Phill
03-04-2012, 15:29
So far this has been a really good read, especially the diplomacy part.
Just a question, the heavy gunners are those from the dlc?
Here our Nanban Trade Ship fleet #1 (that patrols the southern shore) intercepted a small Hojo fleet!
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They had no chance against the cannons!
Our Nanban Trade Ship fleet #2 (that patrols the nothern shore) intercepted a full-stack Honma fleet, carrying a full-stack of army!
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We have been waiting for this moment forever! :laugh4:
We have three trade ships in this fleet. One of them was quickly set on fire and had to enter repair mode. But the other two ships provided enough fire support to decimate Honma's ships.
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But some of them escaped and entered the open sea.
By giving chance to that fleet and sink that ful-stack army into the water :laugh4:, our Nanban ships also suffered attrition this season. The attrition was the most damage these ships ever took.
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Later on, we learned to use the ships we captured from the 1st battle to give chase to the ships that escaped.
Takeda is a very powerful and aggressive clan. It has been making steady advances on Hojo's provinces, while our missionaries peacefully facilitate the trasition of Takeda's provinces to ours.
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But eventually we have to use our missionaries to convert the population in the newly acquired provinces. So our expansion has to take a long pause, just like before.
Here, Hojo's ninja sabotaged the Confusian Academy under construction, but was quickly arrested and executed by our Metsuke. Hojo's two great casltes are within reach! And we have two 6-star armies nearby!
We still have our Ninjas active on the field! So we took over these two provinces without any significant fight. That full-stack Hojo was sabotaged until we dissolved them with superior forces automatically on the field.
Hm... didn't we just sink one full stack of Honma fleet 2 turns ago... here comes another one!
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This is getting annoying. We have to put a stop to this.
As mentioned, we are not so dumb to use our Nanban Trade Ship to chase the leftover fleets (which still carry the army, so we must destroy it), and suffer attrition on the open sea.
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So we simply used the captured fleet to complete the task, and sink any leftover ships right after.
We have reached the limit of our expansion - "all of our agents are currently busy on the line" - or behind the line. So our army has nothing else to do... so we started taking over Hojo's defenceless provinces and convert them to our vassals so we can trade with them.
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This still counts as "territorial expansion" penalty on diplomacy, though.
I heard a myth that if we liberate a clan that is not in direct connection with us, we can avoid the "past grievance" penalty when we revive them.
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Well, we just busted that myth! The past grievance penalty still applies to Satake, which shares no borders with us.
Finally, we completed the Arsenal! Now we can start training Fire Rockets.https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4422&d=1331012474
Let's see if we get the chance to use them at least one before we unite Japan!
That concludes chapter 11 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 12. Appendages galore
Welcome back, daimyos. The only thing that separate us from uniting Japan is time. For me, it was a torture because I had to sit through every season the same way. But lucky for you, my dear readers, we can fast rewind to the more spectacular sections. Let's begin!
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First, let's take a look at these Legendary gunpowder units. Very good range at 250. Very poor size at 30 men per unit. Also poor is their accuracy at 45 (that's already after Buzen's +20 accuracy bonus). They also carry a miserable number of ammo, 5. This does not receive the bonus from Heaven and Eearth.
Note: Subsequent field testing revealed that their accuracy at 45 is far worse than Bow Ashigaru's accuracy at 25. At the end of the battle, they usually make less kills than Bow Ashigaru. The only use of them is their range - they can hit the enemy without being retaliated. This does not force the enemy to advance to you as in the case of European Cannon, which is good (so you can bait the enemy and weakend them).
Okay, Fire Rocket is a let-down but we did not know that at the time, so we happily shipped them to the front line.
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In order to put an end to Honma's annoying and endless sea invasion attempts (here they are readying the next wave!), we landed a stack on Sado! We actually ejected two Metsuke out of the castle when we took it. But strangely, these two Metsuke morphed into one Ninja and the end turn, who promptly sabotaged the Gold Mine.
How did they manage to do that?
Completing the Arsenal actually gives us a clan trait to boost 10% of gunpowder units' reload rate! That's nice. Now we can't wait to use Heavy Gunners.
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Nine units of Heavy Gunners are still on their way to the frontline.
Note: The Heavy Gunners is a DLC unit unique for Shimazu.
Now this looks like the perfect foe we can test our new toys on! 2.5 stacks of Hojo army marching toward us!
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All we need to do is to keep them on the field (ninja sabotage) until our guns arrive.
After many seasons - finally our missionaries are freed. But we are no longer interested to hold new provinces, as that will again tie up our agents. Vassals count toward our victory condition as well.
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Let us make vassals as much as possible. They do not suffer the Realm Divide penalty as both triggers (23 provinces, taking Kyoto) had happened.
We used the army that took Sado island to launch a surprise attack on Date, which has very little army. Here we dispatched their only visible stack. We did not even have to fight the battle carefully (manually) to score the victory.
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Note: Looks like an interesting fight to play manually, but honestly I just wanted to rush to the gun battle ASAP. :sweatdrop:
Here was a battle that had to be played carefully (manually) to avoid loss of units. We used half a stack to besiege a rebel castle. The rebels had superior numbers, but they are all Ashigaru. We had no good ranged units (guns alone are just miserable - the enemy will parked their archers just out of our range).
So we had to rely on melee! How's that for a change.
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The battle ended soon after the mass charge began.
Here is one more vassal under our belt. The problem with Satomi is that their province has no seaport. And since we do not have a land-route connection to them (we are separated by another vassal), we cannot trade with them!
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Well, at least they are still paying us part of their income.
Our guns are... still on their way. :inquisitive:
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Now our 6-star Metsuke (40% reduced action cost from character skill, 20% further reduced from art) is bored, let's see if we can have some fun with Hojo's army. It turned out that we bribed almost a full stack of samurais with just 6200 gold! That's even cheaper than our gift to Takeda (see note below)!
Suddenly Hojo's powerful invasion falls apart and we took care of it (automatically) with an Ashigaru army... DOH! Now we need to find something else to test the guns on.
Note: Previously we attempted to keep Takeda on our side longer with gift. Every 1000 koku generates +15 relationship. For maximal efficiency, give 6633 koku for a boost of +100 relationship. Please note that one large payment is better than several smaller payments, both in the sense of "pay over X turns", and the sense of multiple diplomatic transactions. The gift effect reduces by 5 per turn.
And we accidentally won! Without the chance to test our guns! :bomb2:
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This is unacceptable. We have to go back and purposely delay our acquisition of Hyuga.
Okay, let's go to this alternative universe... one more season later, Hojo has been destroyed by our force and Takeda's powerful samurai stack led by their daimyo. Date has also been crushed, and as soon as we revive them, they are just as friendly as any other clan we helped revived, and the effect of Realm Divide has been permenantly erased.
By the way, Takeda is a really good ally. It is super aggressive, effective, and does not betray us even if we purposely let our relationship fall to Unfriendly. You would think that any clan would betray us under this condition after Realm Divide.
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So we have accumulated 8 vassals, 1 ally, and 0 enemy! Now were do we find someone to test our guns?
We have built a Mission in every province. That alone is 550% extra Chi research. Plus we have 21% x 6 from missionaries... in total we are operating on 700%+ Chi Research rate! No wonder we finished almost everything on the tree...
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4434&d=1331012487
But the late techs are mostly about population control (sword hunt, etc.), which is made harder by the fact that we are a Christian clan. So in the end, we do not really find the extra Chi Research making any useful bonus.
Okay! So we finally forced Takeda to fight us... of course they don't think it is necessary but for the sake of gun testing - here we go! We field 9 units of Heavy Gunners, 3 units of Fire Rockets, plus Naginata Samurai and one extra Cavalry.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4435&d=1331012487
Takeda's army is not particularly powerful. But that's the only thing we can approach on the field at this point.
As we mentioned, Fire Rockets do not force the enemy to come to us, which is a good thing. Takeda decides to camp on a hill that contains some tree. Let's shower them with rockets, which misses more often than hits.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4436&d=1331012487
Together, three units made slightly more than 300 kills, which is not very much. The poor performance might be due to the fact that Takeda is hiding in the forest. But in the second half of the missle test, we asked them to fire at units out in the open. They still missed a whole lot and failed to make any significant kills.
So Fire Rockets are just NOT powerful enough to worth the wait.
So let's try the Heavy Gunners. We used the bait tactics and got four of Takeda's Bow Samurai. We have 9 units. They have 4. Should be easy right?
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4438&d=1331012487
Actually, it took us quite a while to rout them - much longer than if we have 9 units of Bow Ashigaru! The light and sound effect were great, though. But we are simply not making kills fast enough. And the Samurai were not really scared by the bullets, even though they were not led by a general.
After we finally depleted the number of the Bow Samurai, Takeda's melee units charged toward us. Our bullets failed to kill them fast enough, so they charged directly into our line. Fortunately we had anticipated for the worst, so we charged up our Naginata Samurai to hold the line and routed the Takeda army.
So in the end we lost a good portion of the Heavy Gunners, which only have 60 men per unit, to defeat not a very powerful stack.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4439&d=1331012487
Maybe there are rooms to make improvement to tactics, but I feel that the Heavy Gunners are just NOT good enough:
(1) They perform worse than Bow Ashigaru in archer duels. This is probably due to their shorter range (125, so they have to run up closer to start firing), their smaller numbers (60 vs. Bow Ashigaru's 120!), and their slower reload rate. Their bullets do not scare the enemies, either.
(2) They cannot stop enemies from charging into them. Unfortunately, they simply do not fire/kill fast enough to route anybody who wants to charge into them. So if we want to use them as the main line, we have to prepare something in their back.
(3) They provide no further fire support once the melee stage begins. We have to move them. This could be impossible if we did not order them to retreat before they get charged into.
(4) They suffer heavy casaulties, because there are so few of them.
So in all, Shiamzu Heavy Gunners are just like any other gun units - not as good as bows at the same level, or multiple levels below! If we can combine their power with Fire Rockets, we might provide the required extra morale penalty to rout the enemy before they reach us. We can also build defensive structures...
But we almost always fight offensive battles. And in offensive battles, we can use the Bait tactics to cut down losses. Bows are very good for this tactics already.
That's the end of our Shimazu story! Thanks for reading!
At the very end, let's summarize the pros and cons about conversion and its unique units:
Conversion to Christianity - Pros and Cons:
(1) Financially
More foreign trade nodes? same. Less interrupted trade income? Yes. Score: 7/10
Nanban trade ships are invincible on the sea (see note). This allows easily secured trade nodes. But since Bow Kabuya out-run Wako and most other clan's navy anyway, the only thing Nanban Trade Ship does that traditional navy does not is to destroy Wako and AI's fleets as soon as they appear with no effect on trade income (we can put regular trade ships into the trade nodes).
More trade routes? Yes. More trade partners? No. Score: 6/10
Nanban port and its upgrade allows additional trade routes. But on higher difficulty, the number of AI clans reduces quickly. In this campaign, we had MORE open trade ports than the number of AI clans we are able to trade with anyway.
Less markets? Yes. Less income? Somewhat. Score: 4/10
Since we HAVE to build chapels in every province, in most province we cannot build markets. At the "Mission" level, each mission provides +4 town growth, which is only 1 point less than Markets. But of course we need to invest 1400 koku extra in each province, and we also lose the commerce bonus (+200/province) from markets.
From actually looking at income numbers, we do take a financial hit in the Shimazu campaign compared to the Chosokabe campaign at the same time. But that's complicated by the fact that we expand more slowly when we have to wait for the provinces to convert (see below).
(2) Strategically (campaign map)
Diplomatic Hit? Just a little. Score: 4/10
You would think that the extra -40 diplomatic penalty could mean a lot more war. We did notice somewhat more aggression toward the beginning, but as soon as we get more powerful (3 stacks of Ashigaru army), the AIs don't get the wrong idea anymore.
Slower expansion? Yes. More difficult? Yes. Score: 3/10
Conversion takes time (and money, as seen above). The faster we expand, the easier the game is - because we will simply be more powerful if we have more provinces! The final difference is not so much - just 7 more turns to reach the victory condision in the Shimazu campaign than the previous Chosokabe campaign. The work-around is to take LOTS of vassals when we enter the last push to victory condition. Vassals do not require time to convert, and they count toward our victory province count. They will betray us after they get powerful, but we would have won by then.
Better agents? Yes. More efficient agents? Yes/No. Score: 5/10
For a non-Christian province, the missionaries incite rebellions at twice the success rate. If we are not against using exploits to make agents always successful (which is a huge exploit), this bonus can be completely ignored. The worst thing about missionaries is that they have to spend half of their time converting provinces in newly acquired territories. So we see much less of their other actions.
Better navy? Yes. More naval domination? Yes. Score: 7/10
Nanban ships tend to lose in auto-combat, so we need to fight manually. Fortunately, they are very easy to operate - just rotate each one of them to let their cannon face the targets. Three Nanban Trade Ships is enough to destroy any full-stack AI fleet - most of the time two will do the trick. (One is a no-no, because you will be set on fire and get locked down in repair mode).
With Nanban trade fleets, we can kill full stacks of navy one after one even without making repairs in the middle. They are just that powerful. Many people say that the only purpose of conversion is to get Nanban Trade Ships. They are quite right!
But even without Nanban ships, we can still achieve naval domination. The easier but more expensive way - we need to have TWO full stacks functioning as a team, so we can easily win any auto-combat. A time consuming but cheap way - we have to use fast ships like Bow Kabuya more often to avoid fights while we take care of their remaining territories on the land. As soon as their last province disappears, their navy disappears. Another way is to catch the Black Ship as early as possible. We will take a hit by losing many trade ships, but after that we have one super Nanban Fleet.
Or we have to figure out some good naval tactics with traditional units!
Note: Black Ship - I once tried to fight the Black Ship with 2 Nanban Trade Ship but failed - the Black Ship's health stayed at yellow for an eternity and refuses to waive the flag. The AI does not actively attack the Black Ship in its full health, so we do not have to worry about the Black Ship falls into the AI's hand all of a sudden.
Faster Chi resarch? Yes. More income? No. Score: 4/10
The most profitable Chi tech is Chonindo (for Land Consolidation and insane town growth) which should be rushed as quickly as possible. At this time, the enormous bonus of Chi research has not really kicked in as we are not that big and powerful yet. By the time we receive those insane Chi research rate from our vast territory, we were already busy with less profitable Chi techs, which are mostly about some insignificant town growth (even the best Chi tech only gives +10, while our farm bonus are looking at +100!), happiness bonus that is only required when we go Christian, or diplomatic favors that is only required when we go Christian.
If we don't convert, we can simply ignore those high-level Chi techs and use those turns to reseach Bushido.
(3) Tactically (battlefield)
Cheaper and more Imported Matchlock Ashigaru - not useful. Score: 5/10
They are not as useful as Bow Ashigaru - poor range, limited placement, and poor damage output. So why bother using them? (Neutral score because we can simply ignore them.)
European Cannon - not useful. Score: 5/10
They don't do very good damage on units. Before an enemy charge into them all the way from 500 meters away, they can't make 100 kills - probably 50. They also force the enemies to come to us in a field battle. This is uaully bad news, as we can make some extra kills if we manage to bait a few units before the AI decides to attack.
So that leaves us to castle assaults. In the current game design, there are very few situations that we actually need to fight a manual caslte assault. The AI has a tendency to leave their defenders OUT of the castle. So we either steal an empty castle, or sabotage an army that parks just beside the castle and steal the castle. Even if we do not sabotage the army, the reinforcement can be intercepted before they enter the castle. Even if the enemies are already in the castle, we can wait for them to sally (which usually happens immediately) and fight on the field.
No Monks Score: 2/10
Bow monks (range 175) are the ones we especially miss here. Going Christian means that the ONLY thing we can shoot over 150 meters is Fire Rockets (range 250), which are terribly inaccurate. Bow monks provides great damage/accuracy, can fire when they are directly behind the melee lines, imposes morale penalty (whisling & fire arrows), and are available at least 10 years before Fire Rockets.
Overall score: 52/110.
Conclusion: Conversion does not really make you significantly stronger or weaker. It will take longer to finish the game. Nanban Trade Ship is just great, although there are work-arounds. Imported Matchlok Ashigaru is ineffective. Cannons have little practical use.
That's it! Thanks for reading again. :bow:
HopAlongBunny
03-07-2012, 06:21
Thank you Maltz. An entertaining read and useful analysis.
The story was like reading a guide: This is what you do; this is why you do it; here's how you do it;
see the results :)
Hmm, maybe you could get together with Frogbeastegg for the Compleat Annotated & Illustrated Guide to Shogun2!:bow:
feelotraveller
03-07-2012, 08:46
Very enjoyable. Thank you. :bounce:
Perhaps the only thing that could make it better would be to see some of the 'bloopers'. (Here is my battle from the alternate universe where it all went wrong. :bigcry:) But maybe that didn't happen?
The blooper story is a great idea. :laugh4: Thanks!
Fascinating - particularly impressed by your mastery of STW2 economics and diplomacy - fought several legendary domination campaigns to success but have never had a significant reserve of koku at any point or kept an ally long past Realm Divide.
Starting a new Shimazu at moment so will re-read to see at what point our paths tend to divide.
edbenedict77
08-21-2012, 04:19
Maltz Awesome story still reading it like a :book2: :) :) Great stuff :2thumbsup:
tasanersur
04-04-2022, 11:38
we could convert to Christianity as soon as we have a Vassal and I reach level 2. However, the instant diplomatic penalty might not be worth the risk. We need to establish all the trade relations first. Maybe a more reasonable timing is until I get to level 4, and have a robust economy supported by prosperous trade network. riteaid survey (https://www.surveyzop.com/rite-aid-store-customer-survey/) surveyzop (https://www.surveyzop.com/)
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