I know MTW + RTW, should I try STW?

[Blacknek]

Hi there,

since I consider myself as an long time Total War-Gamer (MTW since first day it came out-but never tried STW) I thgought about giving STW a serious try.

For the start, I belong the people, that believe MTW is the best TW-Game, at last considering what I expect from a TW-Game. On the other side, I'm not one of the RTW-hater veterans, since it is a fun game and looks great on my rig.
It's just that MTW delivers a greater amount of immersion (the tense battles, the hate you feel against the pope as an katholic faction, etc.).

There are however quite a couple of people (mainly in this forum), who consider STW superior to MTW and RTW.

Now what I expect from a TW-Game:

Campaign-Map: Clear structure, a lot is possible to see at glimps. Eye candy is nice of course (->RTW), but not so important after all. The AI should be aggresive, but not cheating (especially when some games "simulate" a hard to beat AI by making all AI factions concentrate on the human player). I don't care about having dozens of diplomatic possibilitys (especially if they don't play a major role in the later campaign-its a conquestgame anyway).

Battle-Mode: Balance of course, a adequate AI (smart acting, but not unfair since I can make only one order at a time, the AI can manage all units simultanously).

As you can see MTW meets most (if not all) of the points above.

Now why bothering you with this prologue?

I played STW once (maybe 1,5 years ago) at a friends computer. He had the standart low budges version (no manual :-()with the latest patch.

Everything felt different from MTW (some say that for the controls of RTW, but didn't have comparable problems). So it would need somme time for adjusting. Since I felt that STW has nothing more to offer (but had inferior graphics) than MTW I wasn't interested.

Now the only thing I dislike with MTW: Since I don't have time to play regularly, it's always some coming back and looking to tech trees and looting the map to recognize what I planed to build and do next turn when I stopped playing. This is just because of the vast variety of units and buildings spread over the high number of provinces you own in the later part of a campaign.

I read two things about STW:

1.) It's a little bit more basic and has less units. So making it easier to overlook it by still offering a enjoyable amount of complexitiy.

2.) The Mongol Invasion "patches" the vanilla game that much, that it is easier to manage, mostly because it tweaks a lot of issues in the campaign-map. And there is now sole patch to apply this to the vanilly game (and it's similar to the VI-Add on for MTW for sure; some small changes, but would never play without it any more).

Do you think that the two quotes are correct?

Since I've seen a single WE of the game at ebay (it's very rare in Germany, almost impossible to order at a reasonable price and waiting time-theres only a ton of vanilla-low-budgeds), than I'd love to try it out and fire it up from now to then.

So if anyone on this forum whould like to share his own experiences on this subject, it would be very appreciated

Salute,
Blacknek

[viermaaldomi]

1)Yes , STW has fewer units , but I wouldn't say that MTW is a lot more complex because of the wider variety of units. After all , a lot of those units belong to some category (I would say that only the 'skirmish-type' units add to the complexity in MTW).

2)The MI expansion greatly improved the AI , especially on the campaign map , it's much better than the original game.

I would definitely buy it , as it's a classic and there are a lot of cool units in the game and also the strength of the different categories of units (spearmen , archers , cavalry ,...) is not the same as in MTW (e.g. archers are much better in Shogun) so it's a nice change when you've played a lot of MTW. One last thing:the SP campaign is a lot shorter than in MTW , which makes the game much less boring in the ending fase.

[Shambles]

HELLO

Ok heres what i would say.

Shogun has less units,
the MI adds more units and improoves ai But there are no atilary I.e No catapults,

The units are better balanced,
With yari samurai (pike men) being best used against cavalry,

sword men being best used againts pike men,

ranged infantry or cavalry i.e muskets archers or cav archers being best used against sword men

And finaly cavalry being best used against ranged and yari cavalry being best used against cavalry archers,

The campaign mode Isnt as complex as mtw, and things like taxes are less demanding.
By this i mean, You set the tax level for every province at 1ce,
I.e you cant have high taxes 1 place and low taxes in a nother,

Things like rebelions dont happen if you have enough men in a province unlike MTW.
factions do Reappear
And if a good aly of yours dies You may just get the lands he leaves behind,
Although they could also fall in to rebel hands/

there are special events that happen,
I.E one of your generals must become a legendery sword man befor you can build a sword do jo.

and Traders form far off lands must arive for you to be able to Make guns,

The campaign map Is reall similar to MTW.
But substantialy smaller
but you cannot zoom in and out,

then you have cool little cut sceens, during campaign.
I,e
You send an assasin after a enemy general,
you then watch a small cut sceen, there are 3-4 difrent beginings, and 6-8 difrent endings,
So you can watch a assasin scale a castle and then get killed by the enemy general,
but next time the exact same begining may occur and then you kill the general.

So I feel thats cool,

In my oppinion the best thing about SHOGUN is the Battles,
They have a timeless qualaty and feel to them And great ambiance,

the music also sets the mood really well,

In custom battles or Multiplayer battles,
things like Honour wepon bonuses and armour bonuses Play a huge part in your armys chances of survival.

For instance even though sword men beat pike men,
if the pike men have more honour than the sword men, the pike men can win!

Then theres the terrain,
Which I beleve is great,
Rolling hills and trees make unit placement a Huge factor in any battle,

And then theres the AI, :) I love the Ai in shogun and I really think its better than the ai in either of the other 2 games, (with WE or MI at least and i liked the ai prior to the WE/MI)

combining this with The wether choices.
any where from fine day or heavy fog through to heavy Snow.
units get affected.
Musketeers or more specificaly there lesser counter parts the arbusquiters cannot shoot in rain,
And also archers have a hard time in the rain.
The weather also looks great,
Heavy fog Really is heavy fog.
I beleve you have a winner of a game

now although there arent that many units, there are Several similar units all with their own advantages and cost difrences.
You have several difrent cavalry units, Several diferent sword infantry units,
and a couple of difrent pole arm units,
The WE or the mongol invasion add on adds quite a few units as well so It really would be a better idea to buy the warlord edition. as this means you dont haft to find MI later on down the line.

To sum up everything .

I would say although The gfx of shogun arent the best They really are more than adequate and comparable to mtw,
The terrains you fight on are a little smaller but Demand a technical aproach.
The Ai is Not moronic and i would even say is the best of all 3 games.
and the ambiance of the battles, just keeps me coming back for more,

If i didnt already own the game i would probably buy it
But you may want to buy the warlord edition if you can. as it already has the mongol invasion installed,

One down side is that EA closed down the multiplayer server,
but having said that there are a few fake servers running,
I have mine running 24/7 and play quite regularly now,
Along with others,
And the comunity seems to be growing slowly but shurley :)

And here are some screen shots of battles,

http://shoguntw.2ya.com/sdump
And you can find a tech tree on my web page.
so you can have a idea of what youd be looking at in a campaign mode,

I hope this helps you decide,
And if you do get the game,
I hope to see you playing MP with us soon :)

ShambleS

[Togakure]

Shogun is so cheap now that it is quite a bargain, as long as your expectations of a much older game are reasonable.

If medieval Japanese martial culture and history interest you, then Shogun will probably entertain you.

Though the graphics are indeed dated, the music, mini-movies that play for assasinations and emissarial events, and background sound fx make the game more ... elegant (to me, at least).

The AI is ok, but don't expect Sun Tzu. Considering it was the first game of it's type (that I know of anyway) that incorporated complex AI behaviors in this genre of games, it does quite well (as previousy mentioned, particularly MI with the patch). When you are new to the game it can be challenging, but once you identify patterns of "behavior," it gets very easy to predict the AI, and hence, exploit it. If you want challenging tactical battles, MP is the answer.

Weather, maps, music and sound fx, a balance between "interest-maintaining" complexity and streamlining to ehance game flow make it a classic game, imo. Tis my fave.

[Blacknek]

Hi there and thx for the detailed answering !

Most of the things you wrote are just the way I hoped they would sound.

Concluding: The WE edition is the only choice for me.^

Hopefully I will get comfortable with the user-interface of the campaign-mode in this version, since I remember beeing this the biggest problem the one time I tried the game (I may not be so bad after all; but having played MTW before I was simply surprised I didn't get along with the interface within a short time - that's quite unusual for a prequel of a well known game).

BTW: I know little about medieval Japan; but if STW will captivate me similar to MTW this will change for sure

But I remember the athmosphere quite dense in STW, the cutscenes and soundtrack were really adding to the samurai-feeling (just like in its sequel...)

@viermaaldomi
STW campaigns a shorter than the MTW. Thats nice, since I need months to complete a campaign in MTW...

Machita !

[ichi]

*rushes in*

sorry I'm late

Buy it, play, enjoy it!

ichi

[Blacknek]

@ ichi
I'll do I'll do,
4 days left on ebay. Hopefully the other guy doesn't want it too badly...

gues my first battle for becoming a shogun will be fought on the vast battlefileds
of an online-marketplace

Greets

[Drisos]

Hello blackneck! Welcome to Sword dojo!

Great to see that you're intrested in STW, I hope you encourage others to play it too.

I see you're already convinced, so good luck with finding your self a copy.

It will be a bit hard in the beginning, but I'm sure you'll improve soon. Post here in Sword dojo about any gameplay question and we will help you.

Hope to see you sometime in MP too.

[Blacknek]

@ shambles & drisos:

I must admit that I NEVER EVER played a game online in multiplayer (with a few exceptions for Starcraft).

Mostly because I'm quite of a "layed back having an hour or two fun after work"-player. Playing against other humans (did some of this in network games-Starcraft most of the times again) is much more a competition in the true sense of the word since acting fast is the key to victory.

Sure, this is definitely more of a challange and this way may be more fun sometimes. But usually you have to play quite often to stay "in training" if you don't want to get kicked all the time.

But since this community doesn't seem to consist mostly from teenaging "I kicked your a*#, dummhead"-online players I think I will give it a try. Maybe on the MTW-online fotum also.

I guess, after get beaten up some time at the beginning, I will be a adequate sparring partner for your online-Vets from time to time.

BTW: are the most of you USA or European. Since I'm German, time for online play is an issue.


Anyawy, thx for the kind invitation,
Blacknek

[Drisos]

to get kicked all the time.

No one gets kicked all the time. Don't worry, after some time of playing I'm sure you'll be a good player.

But since this community doesn't seem to consist mostly from teenaging "I kicked your a*#, dummhead"-online players I think I will give it a try.

Great! And yes, the STW players are very nice.

I guess, after get beaten up some time at the beginning, I will be a adequate sparring partner for your online-Vets from time to time.

Sure thing.

BTW: are the most of you USA or European. Since I'm German, time for online play is an issue.

I'm dutch, and the rest aren't all american. There are some english, and I've seen people from Sweden, spain and germany too. I'm sure you'll find some players. You will find me mostly from 13.30 to 16.15 at Wday. Sometimes Monday and friday at the same time. I don't know if there's a time difference between me and you, but I thought not. Hope to see you soon.

[KSEG]

Hi there,

since I consider myself as an long time Total War-Gamer (MTW since first day it came out-but never tried STW) I thgought about giving STW a serious try.

For the start, I belong the people, that believe MTW is the best TW-Game, at last considering what I expect from a TW-Game. On the other side, I'm not one of the RTW-hater veterans, since it is a fun game and looks great on my rig.
It's just that MTW delivers a greater amount of immersion (the tense battles, the hate you feel against the pope as an katholic faction, etc.).

There are however quite a couple of people (mainly in this forum), who consider STW superior to MTW and RTW.

Now what I expect from a TW-Game:

Campaign-Map: Clear structure, a lot is possible to see at glimps. Eye candy is nice of course (->RTW), but not so important after all. The AI should be aggresive, but not cheating (especially when some games "simulate" a hard to beat AI by making all AI factions concentrate on the human player). I don't care about having dozens of diplomatic possibilitys (especially if they don't play a major role in the later campaign-its a conquestgame anyway).

Battle-Mode: Balance of course, a adequate AI (smart acting, but not unfair since I can make only one order at a time, the AI can manage all units simultanously).

As you can see MTW meets most (if not all) of the points above.

Now why bothering you with this prologue?

I played STW once (maybe 1,5 years ago) at a friends computer. He had the standart low budges version (no manual :-()with the latest patch.

Everything felt different from MTW (some say that for the controls of RTW, but didn't have comparable problems). So it would need somme time for adjusting. Since I felt that STW has nothing more to offer (but had inferior graphics) than MTW I wasn't interested.

Now the only thing I dislike with MTW: Since I don't have time to play regularly, it's always some coming back and looking to tech trees and looting the map to recognize what I planed to build and do next turn when I stopped playing. This is just because of the vast variety of units and buildings spread over the high number of provinces you own in the later part of a campaign.

I read two things about STW:

1.) It's a little bit more basic and has less units. So making it easier to overlook it by still offering a enjoyable amount of complexitiy.

2.) The Mongol Invasion "patches" the vanilla game that much, that it is easier to manage, mostly because it tweaks a lot of issues in the campaign-map. And there is now sole patch to apply this to the vanilly game (and it's similar to the VI-Add on for MTW for sure; some small changes, but would never play without it any more).

Do you think that the two quotes are correct?

Since I've seen a single WE of the game at ebay (it's very rare in Germany, almost impossible to order at a reasonable price and waiting time-theres only a ton of vanilla-low-budgeds), than I'd love to try it out and fire it up from now to then.

So if anyone on this forum whould like to share his own experiences on this subject, it would be very appreciated

Salute,
Blacknek

If you don't care for historical accuracy and immersion, or don't know much about 16th century Japan, buy it.
If not, I won't recommend it for there is very little historical accuracy in STW, and seeing "Geisha" as a assasin and those silly movies ruins the immersion.
And siege battle, unlike in MTW, is purely pathetic.
It is a good game to play, but these flaws kills my motivation to play this game anymore.
I'm now into RTW with RTR 5.4.

[2ddragon]

Orgineel gepost door Blacknek
to get kicked all the time.

KICKED ALL THE TIME? If you want that go and play STARCRAFT some more.... even Trish will win..... eventually

Orgineel gepost door blacknek
teenaging "I kicked your a*#, dummhead"-online players I think I will give it a try.

I can see how you dislike teens, play me at some point and you can see how courteous we are - the most abrasive thing i have ever said was 'what do you mean pwned! find the damn 'o' key loser! and that was when I was playing CS:S

Orgineel gepost door blacknek
I guess, after get beaten up some time at the beginning, I will be a adequate sparring partner for your online-Vets from time to time.

I hope you enjoy you time with us. Training can be tough but it is rewarding.

Orgineel gepost door blacknek
BTW: are the most of you USA or European. Since I'm German, time for online play is an issue.

Im english, i usually on here most of the time, am available most evenings (19-21:00 GMT) and all day saturdays and sundays

[Drisos]

Sorry for this post people. I tried to gain 2ddragon's attention before he would go offline, and I saw in his profile he was looking at this thread.

Sadly it didn't work out, but I might meet R'as in the foyer today.

[GonZ]

Definately worth buying.

I recently re-installed the game and am steadily working my way back through all the factions. Superb immersive imo.

[Blacknek]

At last, got the WE-Edition today. Hopefully I will have time to play it during the weekend...

Btw, is there any "beginners guide" similar the one to MTW (I have egg's Shogun unit guide already), since the printed manual does not really contain any gameplay-related content. I found a guide at gamespot. I'll try that one for the start.

I can see how you dislike teens,

I really do NOT dislike teens. Would love to be one by myself again
I just don't like unfair people. Maybe I was a little unfair to teenagers as a general population by myself. It's perfectly correct to remind me of that.

It's nice to see, that this threat still produces constructive posts

CU,
Blacknek

[Blacknek]

and those silly movies ruins the immersion.
It is a good game to play, but these flaws kills my motivation to play this game anymore.
I'm now into RTW with RTR 5.4.

Interesting, since AFAICS most of the people emphasize, that expecially the movies contribute to the immeriveness of STW.

And siege battle, unlike in MTW, is purely pathetic.

I will pay attention to that for sure during my own gaming. But -while not wanting to sound heretic to a RTR-player- so are sieges in RTW...

Greets,
Blacknek

(P.S.: how do I quote correctly with including the author of the quote ???)

[Drisos]

Hello Blacknek,

I have tried to contact much people to play Saturday evening (in GMT). So I you have time, come join us and have fun with STW.

About the quoting, leave out the spaces:

[ Q U O T E = 'person who you want to quote' ] 'the text you want to quote' [ / Q U O T E ]

leave out all the '

try it out! hope it works!