Total War : Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai announced.

[Intrepid Sidekick]

Sorry if i misunderstand...
but if you are playing with the latest version of TW:S2, you will notice that your men wont shoot through "meat shields" of your own troops, you put between you and the enemy. Not keeping your fields of fire clear just stops your men firing unless they have a clear shot.
Sending expendable troops in to a fight first, to stop your good troops being shot at by the enemy, is a valid tactic, even if it does mean you probably end up dealing with issues of routing.

[Nowake]

Wouldn't worry about misunderstanding, any input you give us is likely to be most helpful.
Hmm, I certainly do have the latest version, yet I’ve been struggling to find the time to finish my second RotS campaign for a month now, so perhaps you chaps sneaked some MP changes past me?


Yet, lets make sure we’re on the same page here; I’ll try to use the most clear terms.
To my knowledge, individual matchlock infantrymen only shoot towards an enemy individual if they have, as you wrote as well, a clear field of fire.
Then, accuracy determines the trajectory of the bullet and, also taking into account the last millisecond changes in positioning, friendly fire is determined.


Are you saying an entire Gatling unit will behave like an individual matchlock infantryman and, when confronted with a close-combat melee, it will basically fire in bursts, at best?
And in this situation, depending on the degree of interpenetration of the battle lines, wouldn’t it still be possible to wreak absolute havoc by using a well spread meatshield?
Though of course, it is a valid tactic. That does not wave off balance problems however. And I hope by writing this I do not seem a Cassandra looking to make some silly ominous prophecy, because I do think all these problems can be solved pre-release, as I wrote previously.

[Intrepid Sidekick]

Hi Nowake

Just an update to our conversation about "meat shields".

I'm sorry but when we work on stuff here at CA towers we often see it months before you do and as a result we get a little confused about when it is released in to the wild.

Just so you know we have implemented some changes, in todays patch, to friendly fire and los that will change tactics a bit, especially for the multiplayer crowd and people defending castles. Try it out. :)

Intrepid Sidekick

[Veho Nex]

Hi Nowake

Just an update to our conversation about "meat shields".

I'm sorry but when we work on stuff here at CA towers we often see it months before you do and as a result we get a little confused about when it is released in to the wild.

Just so you know we have implemented some changes, in todays patch, to friendly fire and los that will change tactics a bit, especially for the multiplayer crowd and people defending castles. Try it out. :)

Intrepid Sidekick

So, if you can answer this \/

Will this be DLC for Shogun2? It sounds like FotS is to Shogun2 what Napoleon is to E:TW.

Is this going to be like a whole new game where we are going to have to drop another $40-$60 (I can't remember how much NTW cost on its release), or is it going to be like RoTS where it was $15-$20 (Again I don't know its release price)

If you can't answer, no worries.

[Hernan Cortles]

Reminds me of the Last Samurai movie, cool move

[Hamata]

i think i might just buy this :D

[Hernan Cortles]

If only credit carts are 100% secure

[Intrepid Sidekick]

So, if you can answer this \/

Is this going to be like a whole new game where we are going to have to drop another $40-$60 (I can't remember how much NTW cost on its release), or is it going to be like RoTS where it was $15-$20 (Again I don't know its release price)

If you can't answer, no worries.

It is going to be a stand-alone expansion, if you own Shogun2 it will add to the original game as well, but you don't have to own "Total War: Shogun 2" to play it. And as far as i am aware it will be priced as an expansion. The price will be announced but I don't have the exact details.
There will be a patch at about the same time for owners of Shogun 2.

Hope that helps

[Veho Nex]

It is going to be a stand-alone expansion, if you own Shogun2 it will add to the original game as well, but you don't have to own "Total War: Shogun 2" to play it. And as far as i am aware it will be priced as an expansion. The price will be announced but I don't have the exact details.
There will be a patch at about the same time for owners of Shogun 2.

Hope that helps

Thanks for the answer.

[Khazar_Dahvos]

I think this will be a great expansion even though the period is not really my interests. The flip side is that i pray that the TW series steers well away in the future from the 20th century........call me old fashion but i prefer archaic weapons over firearms newer than flintlock musketts

[Jungle Rhino]

I'm really looking forward to FotS and it is logical for CA to implement some of the Napoleonic tech as they already have that all polished up ready to slot in.

I don't think this marks a move towards TW:WW1 - simply because that just wouldn't work. Nobody wants to run huge hordes of people at trenches full of machine-guns and watch them get marmalised - it would just be boring. Gatling guns will be powerful indeed, but make them expensive and logistically difficult enough and they will be fine. I really liked the way matchlocks were incorporated in Shogun2 - you either had to go Christianity with all the associated difficulties, or you would have to wait so long to tech up that the game would be nearing it's end. I've actually only just built my first unit of Matchlock Samurai in a Shogun campaign the other day and that is right at the death of a 40 province Tokugawa campaign where I was specifically aiming for gunpowder mastery.

So anyway, in FotS assuming you have to 'sell your soul to the foreign devil' and pay huge amounts of money and lose honour in order to access gatling technology I think it will integrate very well and provide for some genuine interesting options.

@ Intrepid Sidekick - that is interesting regarding FF, I have been taking great pains to not be shooting my own troops in the back lately!! I might be able to let my guard down a bit - would be nice as matchlocks are bluddy hard to manage on legendary when you can't pause the game!!

[Noncommunist]

Other than the western front, there were quite a few theaters of WWI that didn't consist of huge masses of humanity running at the enemy while being gunned down by machine gun fire. In the east, it was much more fluid as well as the mid east and parts of Africa. That said, I doubt any of those theaters would make a good game in and of themselves as diplomacy would be fairly boring. The only exception to that might be the balkans where different countries were getting involved in the war at various points in time. And even then, I think the mechanics of the state would still be too complex for the game.

[Vladimir]

Love the trailer. Makes me proud to be American.

[econ21]

Sending expendable troops in to a fight first, to stop your good troops being shot at by the enemy, is a valid tactic, even if it does mean you probably end up dealing with issues of routing.

A little off topic, but I wonder if anyone ever did this in history? I remember seeing a mini-series about a French landing in Ireland (probably around the Napoleonic period) where the French general got the Irish rabble (with pitchforks etc) to march in front of his musket armed men to soak the redcoat volleys. But I am not sure how accurate it was and, as the TV series showed, would probably not do much to endear the Irish to the French.

Quite aside from the require level of ruthlessness by the commanding general, I don't think this tactic would work so well in reality as it often does in a computer game. I suspect such frontal assaults are often "morale contests" and there's a reluctance to close when the defenders hold and maintain their fire. Plus formations are likely to get over-crowded, risking panic, loss of cohesion and an inability to maneouvre, as well as being wonderfully rich targets for artillery. I think the original STW/MTW had some kind of penalty for formations being too crowded.

[Sp4]

Crowded formations, in all TW games I can remember, would take more casulties from missile fire. Besides that, a tightly packed group of units that takes a strong morale hit spreads a rout very fast.

[Lemur]

I expect it will be very good, but even if it isn't, I'll be buying. I am Creative Assembly's catamite.

[sassbarman]

Again a little off topic, but I just had to chime in on those people here and on the other boards getting really excited about this expansion paving the way for a WW1 based game. I just can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want a totalwar game based on trench warfare. I really hope they don't go that direction; I couldn't imagine anything more disastrous for the series.

[Ituralde]

Again a little off topic, but I just had to chime in on those people here and on the other boards getting really excited about this expansion paving the way for a WW1 based game. I just can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want a totalwar game based on trench warfare. I really hope they don't go that direction; I couldn't imagine anything more disastrous for the series.

While it seems like the next logical step forward from the expansion I am one hundred percent with you here. And that's leaving aside the fact that the announcement of some kind of WW1: Total War would only delay a Rome II Total War. I know which one of those I would want more.

That aside I still look forward to the little excursion towards modern gunpowder units in FotS.