Frogbeastegg's Guide to Total War: Shogun II

This guide is amazing. Before I read this guide I was always a bankrupt Daimyo, unloved by all the other clans and with no idea what to build in my provinces. Now I have so much koku I don't know what to do with it, but actually I do know what to do with it, because I have a clear sense of direction when developing my provinces, and I usually maintain 2 or 3 allies right up until the latter stages of realm divide where I have essentially won anyway.
This guide turned me from someone who struggles on hard to someone who does pretty damn fine on very hard and is beginning to consider legendary.
Also I would never have used Naginata without having read this guide.

So thank you so very much Frogbeastegg, your guide is not only an indispensable tool for anyone new to Shogun 2, but also very well written. And 53,000 words? I'm sure I have read books shorter than this guide. This guide is amazing.

That's some serious improvement! Well done, and good luck if you attempt legendary. :bow:

Sorry to be a stick in the mud but how about those edits?

ex. Page #3 "If your Daimyo has low honour it will cause a happiness penalty. If he has 2 honour then there is a -1 penalty, if he has 1 honour then it's -2, and 0 honour gives a nasty -3 penalty."
I purposely ruined Oda Nobuhide's Honour to see the outcome and although his honour was technically -2 it was actually showing as 1, being the minimum Honour your Daimyo can have. So the -3 penalty can't happen because the game won't allow it.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

I hope to implement the few corrections people have brought forward this weekend.

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It's a great guide. It's just been bugging me that a guide with so much time and effort put into it wasn't tweaked after release.

The unhappy fact is, making changes is not a quick and easy job thanks to the size of the work and the unfriendly nature of the manuscript behind it. That minor update would take me half an afternoon to edit into place and make public, including replacing the PDF version. I couldn't find chance then, and I can't manage it now without stealing time from two projects which cannot be delayed. I could only give the guide priority in my life for so long and, after well over 100 hours work, it's had more than its share.

:bow:

Thanks for this amaizing guide!

Before I read it I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to run an empire, but I didnt know how to use agents or the best way to upgrade technology. In the Rise of the Sammurai I went from earning 2000 to earning 4500 in under 5 turns, and then on to earning up to 15000 within maybe 30 turns! Now I've had the Divide event and I'm still earning 10000 per turn, even with two massive armies.

Well done, Leviro2005! That's some serious economic growth. You'll be able to pay your samurai a performance bonus: for every five heads they bring you they get 1 koku. :laugh4:

A great guide and if I'd had it earlier I would have saved many hours of botched and abandoned legendary difficulty campaigns - Sega/CA should pay you to do one of these with each new release.

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Originally Posted by Jacobin

Sega/CA should pay you to do one of these with each new release.

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That would be nice! :laugh4:

Would also like to register thanks for your guide!

As a recent recruit to Shogun 2 (Steam sale, etc) I was respectfully wondering if you had any plans to update it after the big recent (March 2012) patch? I noticed a lot seems to have changed. For example, Nanban Trade Ships seem to have been nerfed quite a bit and the Benny Hill speed of battles has slowed down, morale *seems* to work a bit differentlly, necessitating a change in tactics. There's probably a lot under the covers I haven't spotted. Appreciate you're probably hard at work on FOTS but worth asking...?

Hello, and thanks. :bow:

Unfortunately, I'm not intending to write a FotS guide. I simply do not have time to manage it.

I'll have to play a game to test the Shogun II changes out. That will take a few weeks, since I've also got to play FotS. If there are significant changes I'm not sure what I'll be able to do; the way the guide is structured behind the scenes makes it time consuming and difficult to edit, and I don't have nearly as much time available as I did when writing it. I suppose I could put together an appendix containing updated tips where necessary, and also include the few errata other people have brought forward. Not sure that it would be very helpful, although it would be significantly less time intensive for me. I don't want to make any promises as I know the next couple of months are going to be particularly busy; I'll be starting a new job and will have to go on a lengthy training period.

thanks for the guide!

Superb work. Thank you for talking the time and effort to compile all of this freely.

Thank you, both. :bow:

This is guide is awesome, it helped me a lot, thank you.

Thank you :bow:

Is your signature quote from Planescape: Torment? One of my favourite RPGs.

Yet another "joined this forum to thank Frogbeastegg for making an awesome guide"-case here. So thank you, Frogbeastegg, for making an awesome guide. Doubly so, because I found this forum because of it, so now I have even more Shogun 2 reading to eat through.

@A Moon

Welcome.

Thank you. Hope you enjoy the game. :bow:

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Originally Posted by A Moon

Yet another "joined this forum to thank Frogbeastegg for making an awesome guide"-case here. So thank you, Frogbeastegg, for making an awesome guide. Doubly so, because I found this forum because of it, so now I have even more Shogun 2 reading to eat through.

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I guess this is a common occurance... not surprising considering the guide. Excellent work Frog, even as someone who has been playing the TW games for a long time, the guide show me a few really nice tips.

Thank you :bow:

Still being read 1 year later. My compliments. I intend to delve my teeth into this guide and PWN it. lol.

So after coming back to this thread after not playing for a while, I see that there has been a new patch released.

Now the big question is which parts of the guide are less relevant than before?

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Originally Posted by Hexmage

So after coming back to this thread after not playing for a while, I see that there has been a new patch released.

Now the big question is which parts of the guide are less relevant than before?

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I had to read the guide again, and all of it still applies. The major difference is in character leveling where there was an adjustment to the xp gain. Agents now can level up faster because passive missions give 3xp instead of 1. Generals also gain xp even when they are the same stack, altough battles give a bit less xp now.

The best guide to any game which I have ever read! Brilliant! Bravo!

Thanks for creating such an amazing Guide.

I registered just to say thanks - this is exactly what I needed for this game. Excellent guide.

Also just created an account and wanted to say thanks for this guide. It's a great help. Is there anything similar for Napoleon or Medieval ?

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Originally Posted by the masked jackal

Also just created an account and wanted to say thanks for this guide. It's a great help. Is there anything similar for Napoleon or Medieval ?

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For Medieval Total War, froggy did a Beginner's Guide and a Complete Total War Unit Guide which discusses units from STW and MTW/VI.

If by "Medieval" you mean Medieval 2 Total War, she did write an official guide for Creative Assembly, but it doesn't appear to be available at totalwar.com anymore.

froggy did not do a guide for NTW, but you may find other guides for NTW here: NTW Guides.

Lastly, welcome to the Org. ~:wave:

Just another guy who made an account to say both "thanks" and "SUPER well done"!

Though I've played a lot of Total War games, I've never really *gotten* them. After a bit of searching, I found this guide and man was it an info dump I really needed. So much incredibly useful information I can't wait to put into play. Thanks again!

Also just wanted to drop in and say thanks for a great guide.