Where Have All The Shogun Players Gone To?

[Emperor Aurelius]

I started at Shogun and enjoy Rome actually. Personally despite all the negative hype Rome got it was actually a very well made game. The campaign map was much more challenging, as well as more accurate of the times. The graphics were much better and the interface much easier to use.
In addition tehre were more battlefields. Depending on where two opposing armeis met each other in a province there would be a different battle map to fight on. This was much better than the only one battle map per province of shogun and medieval.

Not to say shogun had its days. I liked the AI and idea of Shogun in general as well as much more. Shogun revolutionized strategy games. It AMAZED me as the only medeival strategy game I ever played was Age of Empires. Shogun (took place in medieval Japan right?) ,with its advanced diplomacy, campaign map, battle maps, massive battles opened my eyes to how awesome the total war series was!

I quickly went into MTW and then later RTW cause of Shogun. Shogun was a good game. But it seems to me that each game CA makes is even better than Shogun. Its not cause Shogun is a crappy game either. Even now I believeit to be very fun game. With each game CA adds on more features and improvements (with some exceptions). It really just depends on your tastes.

As for Shogun II?
NO. I'll tell you why:
I believe in a "Shogun II" so to speak. But not like some people think of it as Shogun with better graphics. I'm thinking of having the campaign map include more of Asia such as Mongolia, China, and Korea. That would make a good game now! Shogun is an awesome game. But why do people play MTW and MTW2 so much? Because of the DIVERSITY. Each faction is different. Very few of their units are the same. Russian war wagons, byzantine varangians, turkic Janissaries, Venetian archers and Venitian Heavy inf...and so on and so forth. There are so much variety in culture, economy, geography, and military.
So I would support shogun II if they add in more countries other than Japan. Several Chinese factions could be added in. If I'm not mistaken weren't there also several Korean kingdoms vying for dominance (sorry my Asian history is somewhat sketchy)?

Put them in with Japan. In my opinion Japan should be limited to only a few factions and the rest of Japan rebel. Then work on mainland Asia. It would be fun, it would have the Japanese factions (for all you die hard Japan fans), and would also appeal to the MTW, MTW2 crowd because of the diversity of hte factions.