Thought I'm giving an account of a vantage point

[HopAlongBunny]

A wall of text worth reading :)

Thank you for this excellent summation

[Rothe]

After reading the governors "compaint", I instantly thought about Metsuke. I think they are the closest thing to "governors" in the game, even if the name does not really mean that.

Still, I don't miss governors for each province just for the sake of having them. They should add something important without making the game require too much micromanagement to be justified.

As for having more turns per year, I don't think would make the game more enjoyable for most people. It would just require more "skipping" of turns to get something done and the time scale is already long enough. The AI factions' turns would take time and make the game slower. I would not want a game with 12 turns per year if the full timescale is 50 years (long game).
I still agree that the armies move too slowly. Summer/spring movement should be faster? I prefer a major contrast between summer and winter. Fleets should also move faster, but if you make armies/fleets move faster, they need to have a larger zone-of-control to avoid them charging past each other blindly.

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?

I really don't see this happening in the games I play in. A strong economy means more troops, but not better troops. The dojo's needed for the basic samurai troops are low tier techs that you can grab fast. Sword and Yari dojos are quite easy to build.
During each game a player will research at least the low tier techs from both bushido and chi, which means that the real "decision" is more like choosing between early game land consolidation and going for a legendary dojo fast.

If you go for a strong economy, I think you will anyway have yari/naginata/katana troops available since skipping those techs would be just poor strategy.
Simultaneous research is a bit like researching one chi tech and then one bushido tech and repeating that. The eventual game effect is pretty much the same even if the "mechanic" for it is like it is.

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.

I already compained about this before. "Green" troops are often better than veteran troops out in the field because of the tech advancement and built up smithies, dojos and castles. Also, you lose XP in fights often. It is easy to get from 0 to 2 chevrons, but getting from 2 to 3 or from 3 to 4 is already very slow - in fact it is so slow that casualties cause you to lose XP faster than you gain it by fighting. That means the best troops are those that are fresh out of a dojo, lets say 5 chevron yari ashigaru, and then after a few seasons of fighting they will come down in XP.

At the very least we should have an option to re-equip troops with attack/armor bonus.

[Nowake]

A wall of text worth reading :)
Thank you for this excellent summation

o.O if you perused it all, you're my favorite person today mister!

After reading the governors "compaint", I instantly thought about Metsuke. I think they are the closest thing to "governors" in the game, even if the name does not really mean that.
Still, I don't miss governors for each province just for the sake of having them. They should add something important without making the game require too much micromanagement to be justified.

Ey, I see your point, yet I think I envisaged a lot more through my suggestion.
Basically, Governors would be Vassals.
Features:
- you could replace them.
- check their loyalty; if your own personal fief would be larger than 20% of your entire domain after you take control of 5 provinces, their loyalty would decrease.
- give or take teritorry from their hands.
- upon going to war, they would be mobilized and bring contingents of troops from their respective provinces, a mix of units.
- the proportion of each type of unit you could influence by assigning the respective governor priorities like archers, yari-wielding units, cavalry etc. this would of course determine the building order of structures within their castle.
- also, the structures independent from the castle, such as farms and roads would still fall in your purview.

I really don't see this happening in the games I play in. A strong economy means more troops, but not better troops. The dojo's needed for the basic samurai troops are low tier techs that you can grab fast. Sword and Yari dojos are quite easy to build.
During each game a player will research at least the low tier techs from both bushido and chi, which means that the real "decision" is more like choosing between early game land consolidation and going for a legendary dojo fast.
If you go for a strong economy, I think you will anyway have yari/naginata/katana troops available since skipping those techs would be just poor strategy.
Simultaneous research is a bit like researching one chi tech and then one bushido tech and repeating that. The eventual game effect is pretty much the same even if the "mechanic" for it is like it is.

Mmm, I understand your point of view, and I was acknowledging it from the beginning. It is quite solid in its reasoning really. What I thought was that it would open up the game a lot more for both the player and the AI. The latter always seems to go for Bushido tech, and so is impeded economically -- or must be really, though the size and quality of its armies could argue against that sometimes.
What I experienced in my Uesugi campaign was that, despite a large revenue and a huge research speed advantage (I had Confucian Academies in Kozuke and Suruga by 1561, numerous Temples, eight generals with Poet maxed and five monks with all the Chi research speed increasing talents maxed or at least what was available until level five for two of them) I still obtained Epic Architecture only around 1568 in a short campaign (limit: 1575), while going only for Heaven and Earth in the Bushido tree. I simply thought that obtaining legendary units early on would make the most compelling part of the game a lot more fun, especially if the AI would be able to obtain them fast aswell.
I love the fact that you are not able to have everything and you'd never be able to tech up fully, yet I'd like for one to be able to reach at least one of the "pinnacle" techs before one finds itself entrenched in the pre-RD build up period, when the battles for survival are gone.
Nevertheless, thank you for giving me your thoughts.

[Rothe]

I actually like the long games just because they give more time to research. There is always a mid-phase in the game where you can have a period of calm if you play your diplomacy well - I use that to build and tech up.
I can see the issue of not getting enough techs in a short game, but the game is not called "short" without a reason.

I would not really mind if the research bonuses would be a bit higher for some of the buildings, as it seems like +150% is not really all that much (that is about as much as I would have in mid-game with one academy).

Perhaps a certain kind of boon could apply to techs after most other clans have researched it. For instance, if 3/4 daimyos have a certain tech, the research time would drop by a turn or two.

[Gregoshi]

Welcome back Nowake! That was quite an impressive read. I had to wait a couple of days before having enough time to tackle it. Your battle experiences on Legendary were enjoyable to hear about and your observations about the tech tree have given me something to mull over. Nice analysis!

[econ21]

I agree with Gregoshi - that's a very impressive review, Nowake: quite likely the best one written. I hope CA read it, although I do not agree with every point. (For example, I am so glad not to have the hassle of retraining to get armor/weapon upgrades.)

On a very minor point, it occurs to me that it might be interesting to know more about the effect of terrain in the game. I know that the range advantage for height has gone, but I wonder if elevation gives any benefit for ranged units? I like how the AI jostles with you to get a height advantage, and no doubt that would make sense even if elevation only affects melee, but still I'm curious. Also, about forests and ranged units - I have a suspicion that it weakens ranged fire coming out of woods, just as it weakens that coming into woods. If so, I am not sure that is realistic: I like the idea of archers shooting from the cover of the trees. These comments comes from an episode in which my archers in a woods were outshot by the enemy on a hill. Maybe it was just not their day, but it could be that terrain played a role.

[EDIT: just seen Tamur's test on archer elevation in the Confucian Academy; it appears that archers are NOT more lethal firing from elevation, although there may be a morale penalty from being on the lower ground.]

Another minor observation - I like how if you have two generals in a stack, both have their own blue command circle. I seem to recall in other TW games, a second general was treated just like another cavalry unit (and having a second general in a stack was often a bad idea, as he often died like just another cavalry unit). Now, he may be very useful for setting up the kind of envelopment you say is hard to pull off. General A holds the line; General B leads the flanking movement. I like how generals are fairly scarce now, although that may just be my fault as I dislike adopting due to the "upstart generals" honour loss.

[Azi Tohak]

Terrific review. I'm glad I had the time (working on a very long, very simple, and very mindless final) to read it. Thanks so much for posting Nowake.