Early TW days

[Martok]

Did anyone rate the Warlord Edition Samurai vs. Mongols campaign much? Or is it all Sengoku Jidai for you guys? I'm a SJ fan only really...

I play just the Sengoku Jidai period as well. The Mongol Invasion campaign is interesting in theory, but in actuality I found it somewhat lacking.

[econ21]

Egad, I hate defending Shinano!

I know but that +1 cavalry bonus is so tempting!

And the Shinano battle map - it is so beautiful! And defensible - there's a convenient little sunken plateau on some heights to the rear east of the map. The enemy can tire themselves marching there. The ridge line is something of a right angle but just right for about 3 archers and accompanying foot. The sunken plateau can hide your cavalry to hopefully surprise the enemy in a counterattack. An excellent position - but the Shinano map still becomes a virtual Verdun as the Hojo horde and others bleed my men to death there.

[Martok]

I know but that +1 cavalry bonus is so tempting!

Eh. Imagawa won't be able to hold onto it long enough to take advantage of it anyway.

And the Shinano battle map - it is so beautiful! And defensible - there's a convenient little sunken plateau on some heights to the rear east of the map. The enemy can tire themselves marching there. The ridge line is something of a right angle but just right for about 3 archers and accompanying foot. The sunken plateau can hide your cavalry to hopefully surprise the enemy in a counterattack. An excellent position - but the Shinano map still becomes a virtual Verdun as the Hojo horde and others bleed my men to death there.

Your last sentence highlights exactly why I'm reluctant to move in and take it. It doesn't matter how defensible Shinano is--unless I'm desperate, I don't conquer that province until I know I can hold it. With Takeda still hanging around my western border, I at least have to eliminate him as a threat first.

[Drisos]

I like having Shinano and being attacked there. I could always kill many hundreds of enemies with very few losses, which made attacking a lot easier. (The Imagawa almost sent their entire armies into death in an attack on shinano.. over and over.. )

[matteus the inbred]

I like having Shinano and being attacked there. I could always kill many hundreds of enemies with very few losses, which made attacking a lot easier. (The Imagawa almost sent their entire armies into death in an attack on shinano.. over and over.. )

I agree, inevitably you can lure the enemy daimyo into battle there and then take his head! I once kept a Shogun 'diary' with the Uesegi for a while, and all it said every year was stuff like -
'Defended Shinano vs. Imagawa/Takeda, took 1,236 heads, lost <100 men, killed enemy Daimyo's latest heir...oh, and ran out of money again'
There's more than one good deployment position to defend that map, I'd say there's three...the obvious one on the left centre, the secondary one on the right that Drisos mentions, and the ridge right at the back if you're desperate, which is where the AI usually deploys when it's defending. I did use to hate attacking Shikoku though, some of the eastern provinces there are nasty to assault.
My worst and most embarrassing battlefield experiences, however, usually happened in Kaga vs. the northern warrior monks...!

[Puzz3D]

I agree, inevitably you can lure the enemy daimyo into battle there and then take his head! I once kept a Shogun 'diary' with the Uesegi for a while, and all it said every year was stuff like -
'Defended Shinano vs. Imagawa/Takeda, took 1,236 heads, lost <100 men, killed enemy Daimyo's latest heir...oh, and ran out of money again'
There's more than one good deployment position to defend that map, I'd say there's three...the obvious one on the left centre, the secondary one on the right that Drisos mentions, and the ridge right at the back if you're desperate, which is where the AI usually deploys when it's defending.

I've been able to incorporate all 60 of the original STW maps into the STWmod campaign for MTW/VI using the original ground textures, and new Japanese model pack developed by Barocca. These maps are virtually identical to the original maps. The weather effects in MTW/VI are not as good as they were in STW, but it's compensated by challenging battles. Although maps are grouped according to border type rather than provinces, I did get battles on Shinano 3 out of 4 times when Shinano was attacked in a test campaign. The attacker/defender positions are apparently determined by the orientation of the border over which the attack is made and in these battles I was at the bottom of the map, but still had a good defensive position on the left side. Since there are many more clans represented in STWmod, two of those three attacks were by two allied enemy armies. Unlike RTW, the two enemy allied armies worked together attacking me simultaneously. I was typically outnumberrd by 2 to 1 and in defending 3 times, I won, but only by about 3 to 1 odds despite a good defensive position. In no case was I able to kill the enemy tashio because he's less suicidal in MTW/VI and the hatamoto is slightly better and not as slow as standard heavy cav.

The game does have a crossbow unit that goes away once you can make guns, and it has kensai, battlefield ninja and naginata cavalry. The unit stats are virtually identical to original STW with an adjustment to cavalry charge and archer ammo to compensate for changes in the battle engine between STW and MTW to bring the gameplay closer to original STW. Guns have less, but still adequate ammo. Unfortunately, there are no seasons.

If you want to try this mod, wait for beta 8 which should be out soon. The maps are not right in beta 7.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I know but that +1 cavalry bonus is so tempting!

And the Shinano battle map - it is so beautiful! And defensible - there's a convenient little sunken plateau on some heights to the rear east of the map. The enemy can tire themselves marching there. The ridge line is something of a right angle but just right for about 3 archers and accompanying foot. The sunken plateau can hide your cavalry to hopefully surprise the enemy in a counterattack. An excellent position - but the Shinano map still becomes a virtual Verdun as the Hojo horde and others bleed my men to death there.

Ahhhh, shinano is glorious for defending. I like the steep ridge up front on the left. With archers up there the enemy usually starts with a couple units in range, you can destroy them as the march up the hill. Since you start at such an angle when the AI wheels its army the left flank gets caught on the cliff (mostly archers usually). I like to route the infantry with cavalry sent of to the left, then charge my infantry around so they are between the archers and their route point. My cavalry I've kept in reserve at the back of my map route the archers who get slaughtered by my infantry while trying to flee. It's b e a utiful.

[Cha]

Including the things mentioned before, STW was the first of its kind. Plus I liked the foggy atmosphere and the music. Another thing was that it was about a culture that I wasn't very familiar with, so it was a very new thing for me.

Warlord Edition or Mongol Invasion would've been better if the Mongol side had more variety of army units. The Chinese and Korean military (or maybe most of them) really didn't dress like they did in the game. The Korean uniforms in the game were actually Mongol uniforms.

[Tamur]

This discussion of terrain and Shinano makes me think of yet another general area: connection with the landscape.

At the time I was playing, I was occasionally annoyed with the two-landscapes-per-province phenomenon (if there was a river). However, with discussions like this and hindsight being what it is, that is yet another interesting connection to the game.

I don't think anyone can develop a love for dynamically generated landscape unless the dynamics create exactly the same place reliably. Otherwise we can't all mention the defensible ridge to the left, or the hidden plateau, at specific spots, since each map grid will be slightly or wildly different.

edit: plus, this thread made me dig out my Shogun disk case and realise I'm missing disk 1! Ack, time to hit Amazon.

[max_minimod]

yup I hope the sec. jidai of RTW will bring a bit of the exelence athmosphere of STW back to the game.

The games after STW look all a bit not-ready for me, like EA wanted to save some money, if there would be not so many good mods (pike&muskets, NTW on MTW, a lot more in the making of RTW)I had never bought the MTW and RTW!

Seems to me like the 'new'-standart:, software only finish one good game, after that they come up with half-ready stuff and let the usermods finish it.

[Spongie]

...birds circling over a forest to hint at the presence of an ambush...

I saw the birds, but never put two and two together...

I shall have to bear that in mind as I start playing through for the second time; my first game was Shimazu, and by the time I got to Shinano everything was pretty much sewn up (I'd assassinated all the other daimyo and was busy bribing all the ronin to join me). I spent a lot of time defending the province where the Emperor's palace is located, after sending an emissary to bribe the ronin in charge of that region...

[Shaka_Khan]

My first game was Shimazu too. By the time I reached Shinano, I already outumbered the Hojo. The Hojo was reluctant to attack me after I enflicted heavy losses on them in one battle.

I find Shinano easy to defend. You don't even have to deploy at the way back of the map. You could just make an ambush from the mountains at the left and right at the beginning of the battle. Since the cliffs on both mountains prevent any movement there, you would have to attack parallel to the cliffs. Once your down the mountain, you'd be attacking the enemy on both sides because the AI always starts at the center back. The map is a good place for a defender to rush in.

In my early stages of the campaign, I usually defended my provinces with few armies in order to attack enemy provinces with more armies. My basic defending army was 2 units of archers, 1 ashigaru unit, and 1 cavalry unit. I used the cavalry to flank and then chase the fleeing enemy. Since I was outnumbered by at least 2 to 1 (and this wasn't multi), I camped on a steep slope. It's highly effective when you could kill many with few of your men.

[blahblahblah]

So which areas are MTW better at than STW, other than graphics, they ain't important.

[doc_bean]

So which areas are MTW better at than STW, other than graphics, they ain't important.

Shogun is a very focused game, MTW is a very 'broad' game: it offers (more) different civilizations, more regions, more units, more upgrades and generally just more.

[econ21]

So which areas are MTW better at than STW, other than graphics, they ain't important.

As Doc Bean said, the main advantage of MTW over STW is scale and variety. Plus I find the STW campaign a little too gruelling - it's literally total war, less or no scope for building, turtling, diplomacy, crusading, glorious achievements etc. And I really don't like the STW bridge battles (they are more avoidable in MTW) and the Hojo horde. Kamikaze generals were also more of a problem in STW - it was not uncommon to find you've destroyed all your neighbouring factions due to decapitation - conquering a rebel Japan is just dull. On the plus side you do get nice sad poems when it happens.

Addendum: I originally wrote the following because I thought you asked in which areas STW was better than MTW:

Some multiplayer gamers, e.g. Puzz3D, seem to prefer the STW setting because it is more balanced: there are fewer units so they can be more easily baalnced and all sides have the same unit roster.

In terms of the single player game, STW is better in terms of immerison and chrome. The movies, the voice acting, the feel of it is just more engaging. MTW has less personality and had less work put into these areas - MTW even kept the units shouting a Japanese "hi!" when you pull them out of an army stack.

The SP STW campaign is also much more challenging, IMO. The strategic AI cheats more by anticipating your simultaneous moves. The economy is much tighter. The AI does a better job of teching up than the early MTW AI (you will not face massed peasants - more likely massed upgraded high tech troops when you hit the Hojo horde). The map is much more claustrophobic and so you are more forced into conflict.

[Puzz3D]

Shogun is a very focused game, MTW is a very 'broad' game: it offers (more) different civilizations, more regions, more units, more upgrades and generally just more.

More isn't necessarily better.

[caravel]

As I see it:

STW Pros (vs MTW):

-Atmosphere

-Ambience

-Better definition of the spears/swords/cav system

-More difficult campaigns

-Better balanced battles

Cons:

-No V&Vs for generals

-No statistics apart from command for generals

-Hojo Horde effect (one faction dominates central and/or eastern Japan, leaving you, if you're playing as one of the western factions, facing a huge opponent, or lots of rebels.)

-Geishas

-Suicide Daimyos(sp?)

-Small unit roster


Personally none of the cons for STW really bother me. For me it was and still is the original and best Total War game, that has yet to be entirely surpassed. Sometimes a huge range of hundreds of different units is not needed, and detracts from the gameplay. STW was all about strategy, with the underlying Sun Tzu thing. With MTW there are units that upset the balance. There is also this culture of building up a certain 'uber unit' and just fielding it exclusively using bumrush tactics. STW didn't really allow for this style of play. I've often read threads about MTW MP and seen remarks about not using any spear type troops at all. This indicates a serious inbalance and shouldn't be happening.

I also feel that STW was better before MI. The Kensai and Battlefiled Ninja (complete with cloaking devices, since ressurected as 'hashishin' in MTW {And guess what? it looks likely that something similar may emerge in M2TW in the form of "Battlefield Assassins".}) feel a bit 'kiddy'. The mongol campaign was also lacking. A pity the developers didn't allow the mongols to construct buildings this would have made the campaign at least half worthwhile playing.

[doc_bean]

More isn't necessarily better.

I said STW was more focused, that's a big plus

[Puzz3D]

I said STW was more focused, that's a big plus

I agree, and if the focus had been maintained, the series would have been better. The strategic and tactical importance of the weather system and the seasonal economics was eliminated in MTW so that the game could have a bigger tech tree by covering a longer time period. I think original STW demonstrated that you could successfully impliment a satisfactory tech tree over a shorter timespan. Now, because it's been deemed that 450 turn campaigns are too long, there is the additional distortion of character aging by the decision to go to 225 turns and still cover 450 years. Where does this development path end? Will each turn eventually cover 10 years so the game can have a tech tree spanning 1000 years?

CA had, in the Total War system, the potential to model many specific 80 to 100 year time periods keeping seasonal turns and strategic importance of weather in the game with realistic character aging. Each period could have been a saleable add-on emphasising the weapons, economic and political systems of the period. The potential was immense, but now what they've done is put themselves into a situation where they have to come up with huge expanses of history for each version of the game which means longer development time. That then requires that they capture a massive customer base and all the compromises to gameplay that implies which we now see in the Total War series. I know they made the Alexander add-on to RTW, but the system now no longer fits a short timespan.

From a multiplayer perspective, the large number of units and factions is a disaster. It's not possible to balance the game within the developmental timeframe. From a single player perspective, the game has become too complex for the AI to handle. In STW, the AI could handle most situations because the game was simpler. I remember playing a game called Lords of Conquest. You had to conquer a random map. As I recall, there were three resources: gold, iron and wood you could accumulate to build three things: a weapon, a horse or a boat. The weapon was stronger than the horse, but the horse could move two provinces in a turn while the weapon could only move one province, but you could put a weapon on a horse. You could also put a horse or weapon on a boat and sail to a province. The game was simple, but the interaction between these few elements was complex, and the AI was very good. As a result, the game was very challenging. You had an option to set the amount of uncertainty in the combat in several steps ranging from completely deterministic to highly uncertain.

[Duke John]

That was the good thing about Sengoku Jidai; it all happened on one island, inhabited by one culture. If you move to medieval Europe there would have been plenty of conflicts upon which CA could have remained focus; Wars of the Roses, Hundred Years War, Burgundian Wars, Reconquisita (?), Crusades, etc. Viking Invasion was a good move, but it was suffering from using an engine not tailored for the period.

Countless games cover WW2, a period of just a couple of years. But when a game covers the European medieval times they usually try to cover the whole period with all its conflicts and cultures. CA has gone now even further by also including the discovery of America.

I tried to keep my mods focused on small periods, but there are loads of modders (and of course players) who see more as better and the most as best. The number one modding question for M2:TW is wether the faction limit is higher or gone.


Anyway, this thread was a good read, thanks for the memories

[KukriKhan]

For me, it was that intro video for the old .com site. Some guy giving a speech about how his father had carried the sword in peace and now he carried it in war. Gave me chills. And then there were those nift animations of the No-dachi the CA and the arq.

http://web.archive.org/web/199910030....totalwar.org/

is the Wayback Machine link to tw.org of Sep '99, with many links still functional, including posts on the old Echelon forum - sadly, the link to that intro video didn't make it. I'll keep looking... somebody, somewhere has it.

I too remember with fondness staying up almost all night playing Shogun MP with fans from around the world - then going to work and pleading for a short day so I could return to 'Japan' and my new-found friends. That's the time when I first invested in PC headphones, so as to not wake Mrs. Kukri (again!) with the "...whipped dog!" speech. :)

[Tamur]

Very funny... I just woke up from a half hour of browsing that site. Thanks Kukri, that's amazing to see after a long time gone. I'd be interested to know who is who from those old boards to here.

[Drisos]

More isn't necessarily better.

I fully agree about that. After having played Rome and Shogun. Shogun 'had' enough, and 'having more' doesn't really make Rome 'better'.

Totally ontopic, I can't think of anything that isn't already said. It's just the coolest game I ever played. Nice posts, people.

[Gregoshi]

I agree with the "more isn't necessarily better" as it pertains to the battles in the TW series. I do think that the strategic part of the STW single player campaign needed "more" to make that aspect of the game more exciting. The battles were brilliant but the campaign needed more depth. I think the popularity of STW MP as compared to SP attests to that.

[Quietus]

So which areas are MTW better at than STW, other than graphics, they ain't important.

If you ask me (in terms of single player), just two:

-capture/ransom.
-reinforcement system.

there were some very minor improvements such as:
-ships (more of a detriment to the AI really).
-titles (borderline cosmetic).
-unit variety:
(they just stuck in new weapon unto units....)
peasant with shield = spear
peasant with polearm = urban militia
peasant with sword = gallowglasses
etc. etc....


Never played Glorious Achievement, though. One hundred years on normal pace gets 60 provinces and any province can be teched as high as possible.

Princesses were just free spies really.

Siege engine? Just use spearmen. Charge-halt, charge-halt and gates are broken in a snap. (Although catapults are great in the open-field defense).

[matteus the inbred]

Mostly I agree, Quietus, but princesses can also be married off to disloyal generals, my main use for them...obviously this was not a feature nor a problem in STW, where all generals were loyal until bribed.

I would have liked a basic naval feature in STW, if just to prevent the AI (and particularly Shimazu) from launching silly attacks via the sea routes against (usually) provinces in central Japan, and also because there were significant naval battles in pre-modern Japanese history (although not often during the SJ period, I admit). The chance to command or hire a 'John Blackthorne/William Adams' would be quite good fun!