First Impressions?

[frogbeastegg]

The biggest thing I've seen about the economy is that a simple mission to assassinate some character could result in a 50% boost to your income just like that.

After around 18 hours of play in 3 different campaigns, I haven't seen a single one of those. Hardly seen any missions aside from the set clans get at the beginning.

Your comment on naval battles doesn't seem like a bug to me. When I'm the attacking fleet, almost always the enemy ship will be at the far end of the map with his guns facing me, which is exactly how I would place myself if I was on the defending side. This way I/they can fire as soon as the enemy comes into sight, where the attacking army has to move up and then turn to place the guns into sight.

When I said it did nothing, I was being literal. It did nothing. It didn't fire back, it didn't move, it just sat there.

Naval battles are not my cup of tea. Never have been, doubt I ever will be. My intention was to say that steam-powered ships with torpedos don't manage to change that, as some of the pre-release material made it sound as if it possibly might. As long as I can auto-calc them without being penalised, I'm happy and don't mind them being part of the game if other players enjoy them.

Finally, the unit advancement trees are not 1 point per level.

First impressions At that point I'd only played for a few hours and hadn't gotten an agent past level 2.

Now I've reached high-level agents, I don't know. I look at the ability selection and basically pick whether I go left, right or middle, all the way to the end. Not much of a meaningful choice ... but then, that's always been the case since you have to tailor the skills to the agent's role. Hard to see how CA could improve on this. I'll give them a pass here, same as I did in the other two samurai campaigns.

The tech tree seems kind of lame at first - I was trying to raise specific techs and then I found out I couldn't because I wasn't modernized enough. I'm still kind of up in the air about it too, especially when it comes to pro-shogun armies since I'm not sure how they'll do well in the late game without those techs (unless they have different techs? I didn't notice even though my first, short game was with a pro-shogun clan). Pro-imperial doesn't have any problem at all doing the modernization, though you're right that you definitely need to keep an eye on modernization in towns.

Now I've unlocked the whole thing and reached the middle of a campaign, I've decided I don't like the new system much. Certain techs feel important, most of the rest much less so. Because techs are relatively free from links, it's easy to cherry pick the techs I want instead of needing to commit to a direction. On occasion, I'm forced to research techs I don't want because I don't have enough modernisation, and that does not feel like fun. Overall I find the tree presents few interesting choices, and contains fewer things which I want. I do not need an overall research strategy, I guess that's the main problem for me.

My Shogunate game is the one which has progressed furthest, and I've had no problems reaching max modernisation by 7 provinces. As far as I can see, the tech tree is identical. Modernisation is the only way; remaining traditional is punitive because you can't research much, and won't get many bonuses. That's understandable I suppose, but it does mean that there's no important choice to be made and that games will soon feel samey unless the player chooses to handicap themselves.

Artillery is AWESOME in this game.

I'm settling on "It's too good." The AI can't deal with me using it, and will only field the rare wooden cannon unit itself. Considering that I'm already finding battles too easy and am mostly fighting junk-grade armies, artillery feels like I'm taking advantage of the AI in a cheap way. It's not fun to use in those circumstances.

You're right about zone control and ships sneaking by your ships really easy. This is especially annoying during the realm divide and enemy clans on the other side of the map attempt to land armies behind your lines (yeah, they actually do naval invasions that's 100% more annoying than Shogun 2). Sometimes when you have so much land, it's easy to forget that some dork in a gunboat just drove by your massive fleet, you forgot about it because you did a whole bunch of other stuff that turn, and then he just makes his way across to your biggest trading income port and blockades it. I've had that happen several times, and I regretted not paying attention (or in this case; forgetting about it).

It's the same with land armies. The only time the AI has given me any trouble whatsoever (different subject) was when it happily walked right by the army I had guarding the narrow pass leading to my capital. It squeezed by the zone of control, walked halfway across the province, and laid siege to my province.

I think that the small zone of control ties into movement speeds to create a result I find problematic. Armies do not move very far, so it's hard to cover much defensive ground with them. That makes the bypass annoying. Then, it's painfully slow to chase down the enemy, and return to position. If armies could move further, I wouldn't mind so much. If they had bigger zones of control, the low movement speed would probably be ok. The combination results in a lot of tiresome walking.

Finally, happiness is not that hard to work around.

Sadly, you're right. I've found it easy to ignore, more a stat to throw money at than a real strategic consideration. Convert loyalty, build up the castle, throw in several levy units to act as a garrison, and add a police station if there's a real problem due to modernisation. Job done. Disappointing, and not enjoyable to deal with.

Police stations are going to be the thing you build when you're conquering settlements and can't think of anything else to build, or don't want to because of low public order. Along with inns, those are usually what I build in provinces I capture that I want to make money (increased public order against modern trade buildings). I really only have a few provinces that I focus building troops with because of certain bonuses the province provides (like Satsuma home province with the blacksmith), and those troop buildings have a heavy penalty. Upgrades to city level you should never be building unless you plan on making that a primary base (such as for income or troop training) as those provide a heavy modern penalty as well. A level 2 city with 2 slots is just fine for making money (inn/police station) or 3 if it has a good craft item (inn/station/workshop), and they also don't need a lot of extra troops to keep happiness above the red. As always, any big money maker needs a trading port as well.

I've been going cottage industry, market, and police station as standard in all of my provinces, in that order as I unlock slots. I let one province handle all military stuff, as each military building family adds an extra recruitment slot. Keeping recruitment centralised lets you raise forces quickly, and spares you the multiple turn wait as individual army components march to a gathering point.

Money is king in FotS. Everything revolves around getting more. Unfortunately, that kind of invalidates a bunch of choices. Difficult; money was too easy to come by in S2 thanks to the trade nodes, and so I appreciate the effort to make the economy tighter. I'm just not sure about the result yet. It feels like it may have gone a bit too far in the other direction, at least on hard.

I haven't noticed clan bonuses at all in my game. In fact, I forgot what Satsuma even provides, and it doesn't matter because I trounce everything I run across anyway.

Satsuma gets an extra province and a vassal, and I decided I didn't like the shape they pulled my game into.

Unfortunately, I agree with the latter part too. The game is very easy. On normal, it's mind-numbing. On hard, it's only difficult because they increased the costs of buildings and units, and that means you can't afford to do much. Also, I've found that the AI goes rather psychotic on hard. Unlike S2 and RotS, I do not feel like I am being legitimately challenged. The AI itself is not very good, not at all. It constantly fields tiny armies of levy units. In 18 hours, the (very rare!) full stacks I have seen comprised of levy infantry and a wooden cannon or three. On the battlefield, it charges its general right at me, and then appears uncertain as to what it should do with the rest of its army.

Overall ... after 20 hours I don't like FotS much, and it truly saddens me to say that. It feels far too easy, the AI is quite weak, and the game fails to present me with a good array of meaningful strategic choices. I do not find the style of warfare engaging, particularly since the AI fails to field decent armies. The new style of difficulty setting is a massive disappointment. Many of the units seem useless, and too many of the buildings offer choices between near-identical results. The pacing feels off too. By nature I'm a slow player, I like to develop and research, and yet I'm finding FotS rather plodding. I spend too much time waiting to be able to do things, whether it's waiting for modernisation to kick up a level so I can research, or waiting for an army to amble into position.

I knew from the day it was announced that FotS would be a harder game for me to like, since I do not like gunpowder era warfare or pre-modern history. All the same, I hoped the design would be good enough to overcome that. I'll continue to play for a while, see if I can at least finish 2 campaigns before giving up. It's possible I've had some freak bad luck, or that something need patching (game is full of glitches for me), and things will improve. If not, I'll be shelving it and drawing my katana once more.