Worst. Commander. Ever. (or: How to beat third STW tutorial)

[swolff]

Hi everyone. Short time reader, first time poster.

After overcoming the usual Starforce (may it burn in a nasty place) errors, I managed to get Shogun: Total War running again yesterday.

I've beaten the campaign (several times?) some years ago, but only by letting the computer autofight my battles. Now I want to see what this game is really about, so I've decided to learn how to lead my armies into war.

I'm utter crap at commanding my army on the battlefield, so I hope to get better by training in the tutorial battles.

Having pored through every guide I could find on the subject, I believe I know the strengths and weaknesses of each of the unit types, but alas! I seem to be unable to beat even the third Shogun tutorial ("First Encounter"), in which you control 30 archers defending a hill against 34 spearmen.

I remember giving those spearmen a severe thrashing, but only once, and I have no idea what I did right...

I've attempted to retreat further up the hill, then spreading out in a line formation before letting my arrows rain down on the spearmen below, but the spearmen barely lose a single soldier before they're upon me, kicking my behind in a bad way.

Could one of the mighty warlords frequenting this forum please enlighten this junior (in experience rather than years) officer: How do I (consistently) beat the spearmen in the third tutorial (called "First Encounter") of Shogun: Total War.

/Stefan

[matteus the inbred]

I sympathise...I found that one really tough as well!! IIRC, I spread the archers out into a very thin line for shooting, thus allowing every archer to fire, and then formed up into a wedge to charge downhill and break into the spears' formation, before spreading back into a line for the remainder of the combat...keep at it, I generally thought that one was mainly down to luck.

[phred]

I seem to remember having luck by forming the thin line as matteus the inbred suggested, then letting the archers skirmish up the hill a little bit and finally charging the spearmen to finish them off.

Finding the right time for that final charge is key.
I never tried putting the archers in wedge formation but that sounds like a good idea.

[Slyspy]

Remember that in STW only the first two ranks of archers actually fire, so stretch the unit out for full effectiveness. When the spearmen are close form into a wedge and charge them.

[Ludens]

I don't win this one always either, but I found that the place where the archers start is rather bad. It seems that the incline actually blocks the archer's line-of-sight or something, as I can only take out two yari's at best. I always run my archers to the peak, stretch them out to two ranks and let them fire. When the enemy gets within charge distance (you hear a horn blow to signal they are charging), I counter-charge. I do not use wedge as it reduces defence and a wide, thin formation is usually better at a straightforward melee.

To be honest, this tutorial battle has little to do with skill, more with luck. The next one is ridiculously easy: you have to storm arquebusiers while it rains. They will never move, not even the one lying in ambush. The last one is rather though, but I recommend playing it several times. Once you can beat it consistently, you are well prepared for the campaign.

Welcome to the Org, .

[Just A Girl]

Welcome to the org.

Im sure the helpfull advice already given here is more than i could tell you about the tutorials.

So im simply going to invite you to join us in my servers foyer for MP games when you can :)

You can read the STW MP section. In the sword do jo,
to find out how to manualy configure your game to connect to the foyer.
"Shogun Tw Probs??? Read here 1st" thread should be a good place to start.

Or you can simply download.
ShambleSTW.exe from my web page,
(link is in my sig)
Which will configure your game for my server.

We then arange games In the STW MP section,
in the thread called.
"im in the foyer now"
We also use msn to arange games.

I hope to see you in the foyer some time soon.
People are freindly there and very helpfull.

they will (on avarage) give you helpfull hints and tips.

So like i said.
Hope to see you in the foyer soon.