Bomb for Target:

Will ye be releasing upgrade patches for STW & STW:WE?

The AI and much balancing issues are still unresolved in those games, plus it'd be neat if we could actually use Ninja for something else than losing honor 4 ninja to a -1 honor general when they have 95% of killing him.

Here's something I posted in the other Shogun forums, forgive the length of the rant, but I would really like you to consider this for the future (and besides, I do hope Medieval has its own assassin units too!)

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Its just too bad that the Ninja are almost completely useless in STW. I mean, CMON , whats up with the BS of an honour 4 ninja having a 66% chance of killing an honour 0 general? Or an honour 3 ninja with a 95% chance of killing an honour 0 emissary.. and FAILING more than half the time????????

IMO, ninja's chances should be completely dependant on his skill (honour), size of army in province with a modifier of the buildings in said province and modifier of target's honour with modifier of friendly shinobi bonus with modifier of province loyaly.

example:

Honour 2 ninja vs a 200 man army with honor 1 general on a province with a small castle, port and border forts. There are 2 honour 1 Shinobi on the province which has 100% loyalty.

So, ArmySize * General Honour * total building points / ninja honour * # of Shinobi + added shinobi honour (aka, if 2 shinobi of honour 1 on province, then =2)

(for math purposes, honour 0 = 1 , honour 1 =2 , and so on ; buildings each give its own points.. no castle = 0 small castle =1 , large=2, and so on, having a PORT gives a -1, border forts= 2, church = -1 , cathedral = -2 , budhist temple = -1, temple complex = -2 *note: famous budhist temple counts as a budhist temple*, tea house= -1, fam. tea house= -2, legendary = -3, tranquil garden = +1, palace = -1 , golden palace = -2 , legendary palace = -3, ninja house +1 , inf. ninja house +2 , Geisha House -2,Drill Dojo +2, Batt. Ninja Dojo=+2)

200 (200 man army) * 2 (gen. honour pnts) * 2 (small castle +1, port -1, border forts +2 ) / 2 (honour 2 ninja) * 4 (2 shinobi in region + 2 from their added honour). Divide total by population loyalty in province (make the % loyalty into a number.. aka, 50% loyalty=50).

200(2)(2) / 2(4)
= 800 / 8
=100 /50
=2
=20% chance.

I realize my math will not work 100% of times. Im no programmer, but you get what I mean.

The reasoning is that a Ninja, being an assassin, has to get to his target, kill it and get out. This was usually accomplished by detecting the target's routine and strike taking advantage of it.

The bigger an army with the general, the tougher it is to get to the general (more guards), the higher honour of the general, the more personal guards he has and the more aware he is that he is a ninja target.

The buildings in a province provide an obstacle or a benefit to the assassin.

Work AGAINST your ninja:

Castles for example are very secure vs. ninja, due to the sheer number of people in a closed space.. and the larger the castle the more people are inside it and the more guards it has..not to mention the general dwells and sleeps in rooms deep inside the castle, making it harder for a ninja to get to. If the army was in a province without castles, it would have to camp in the open, and that is VERY good for a Ninja to slip into, as the camps were usually quite large and the generals and daimyios usually were set apart from the rest of the troops (read: easy to locate).

Having ninja houses and tranquil gardens are an obstacle, because that province actively persues the arts of the shadow, and thus the province is more experienced on how to counter or spot a hostile ninja's move.

Population loyalty.. if its higher than 100% it benefits the general.. as the populace would report suspicious characters.

Works in FAVOR of your ninja:

Churches,Temples,Palaces,Ports and Tea Houses translate into places where the general population is allowed into, giving the ninja an excellent chance to slip in. They also provide a great "find the target's routine" scenario.. a budhist or Christian general would always go to religious services. Palaces were constantly visited by the high rankers due to social status (and social pressures), Ports give easy entry and getaway to the ninja, and finally the Tea House, although STW uses it as a training for shinobi, were really used for the Tea Ceremony, where the important people were REQUIRED to leave their weapons outside and the place was lightly guarded (tradition of it being a place of peace did not allow to have armed guards surrounding the place). And that means a ninja could hit the target with relative ease.

Also helping the ninja would be the friendly shinobi you have in place and the population loyalty towards the enemy clan. If the population loyalty is lower than 100%, they are more likely to help the ninja, either by indifference or indirectly giving out vital info to help the ninja plan his strike. Having your own shinobi is a no-brainer. If your spy has infiltrated the place, he'll be able to open the back door for the ninja and assist him in the attack. The more shinobi, the more chances.. the more skilled those shinobi are, even better the chances (kinda like having a spy that has infiltrated the lowest ranks of the soldiers vs. one that was so skilled he managed to infiltrate inside the castle, real close to the high rankers).

Ninja's should also have more options. Instead of just assassinate, they should be able to sabotage (lamely addressed by giving them "OPEN CASTLE DOORS" option when sieged).. sabotage should have 2 categories: ARSON (which would, at random, set fire to any building in the region. If the building is an upgrade, then it would lose the upgrade) or MISINFORMATION (which would let you spread false rumors which you could select who the target of the rumor was. For example, if you're Imagawa and you wanted to increase tensions between the Hojo and the Takeda, you could spread a bad rumor about the Takeda in a Hojo province. Result=hojo MAY send troops to his provinces in the border with Takeda, but not attack.)

When you look at it from a historical point of view, Ninja had a serious impact in those times. When I was in Japan I had the chance to visit the temple where one of their Shoguns was assassinated by a Ninja.. he was killed at the stairs to the main temple buildings, just by a HUGE tree thats said to be almost 1000 years old.

Oda Nobunaga used his Ninja at early stages to overthrow the minor clans that controlled Owari (when he started he only controlled like 1/4th of Owari) by sowing dissension amongst them and killing their men and messangers. Toyotomi Hideyoshi used his Ninja to spy (Oda Nobunaga learned of Takeda Shingen's death because Hideyoshi's (who at the time was a General of the Oda) ninja had overheard a conversation between Takeda Katsuyori and his advisors) and infiltrate enemy castles before a siege began..and then set them afire when his armies had the castle surrounded. Heck, Hideyoshi even got one of his mistresses because of his ninja, the youngest daughter of one of the castles he was sieging was entrusted to Hideyoshi in a gentleman's pact between Hideyoshi and the castle commander, who had listened and believed the rumors hideyoshi's ninja had been spreading and accepted to surrender the castle after he had commited suppukku.

I dont see why STW has the Geisha as a super-assassin. They WERENT. They were SUPERB spies and if required, they were quite adept with poisons which they usually slipped into the target's food. But a geisha (as an entertainer) or courtesan (what we would term today as a whore, but employed for the use of high ranking castle officials) were far too useful as spies to risk losing them by killing someone via poisons.

RANT OFF