Need help installing on new comp

[caravel]

Don't worry about that stuff, see how it works for you, and if it doesn't let us know about it and we can have a good go at getting it working.

The Throne room can be turned off as can all of the other videos. The startup intro videos I think can be renamed to skip them.

What type of graphics card is in your system?

[Swiss Halberd Pike Landsknecht]

thanks

hopefully the videos could work anyway

my graphics card is a ATI Radeon X300SE

(running on Win XP Home SP2)

[caravel]

You may need to use older drivers, but try it first. If you already have MTW? And have it working with that card then you should be ok with Shogun as well. If that is the case then the only problem you're likely to encounter is the throne room bug.

[Swiss Halberd Pike Landsknecht]

wow

I came home expecting the game either not to work, or not to work properly, and to my big surprise it not only works, but nearly everything seems fine. It actually runs smoother than MTW / VI.

I bought Shogun Total War Gold Edition (reissued by Sold Out Software), only cost me £4.99 (cheapest TW game I've bought), includes The Mongol Invasion expansion.

Was the only copy I could find in Central London (had to travel after attending a conference this morning).

The only thing that sometimes happens is in the main title menu, where it can flick quickly and you see the trailer behind the mouse. But except for that, everything so far works fine. That includes the videos (which are very good), and the Throne Room. I take it the Throne Room is basically a place to get (general) tips?

I tested custom battles, historical campaign and full campaign and they all work.
(My graphics is Primary's Graphics, set on 1280 resolution).

I actually find (part) of the graphics better than MTW / VI. There is a lot more atmosphere in the battles mainly becuase the scenery looks 'better' and more varied, with some very high mountains and hills. But mainly becuase of the clouds and weather, I Love how that looks, it's beautiful. I prefer the trees, and def think the buildings look better.

As it's an older game, I can see some advantages that MTW / VI has, I think the main campaign has more depth in MTW, as you have the politics of the Pope (crusades, Jihad), and more emphasis on princesses? Although when I briefly played Shogun, I did place a lot of emphasis on Ninjas, and I think you can you use Geishas the same way?

3 big things that I quickly noticed not present in STW / MI, was no artillery, buildings can't be destroyed/damaged (?), and buildings can't defend (i.e arrow towers & gatehouses, in MTW) which means less variation in warfare. Also there's no replay unfortunately. And of course there is less types of units,

however that being said I read that STW is much more balanced the other TW games, and apparently the AI is tougher, in campaign mode I did notice they were more aggressive, trying to capture my provinces more so than in the other TW games.

I really like the exotic feel to the game, and the music, videos and throne room really add to this.

I read that some people have 1.02beta patch, as it was apparently released to help with a reinforcements issue. In one custom battle when defending, I actually managed to call in reinforcements, so it might actually be fine (and I didn't install the patch, also as people complained that the price of some units , buildings and their power changes if you do).

MTW / VI works fine, but less smooth than STW, as sometimes in battle, the screen will 'mildly blink' (very quickly), and often when panning the camera with many units on the field, it can be fairly slow, but except for that it's fine, and has not crashed. RTW (& BI, Alexander & EB) seems fine, it's mainly M2TW when there are many troops, when it really gets laggy.

I can see why they chose this era & Japan for their first TW game, as it really does fit the concept perfectly. Looking forward to playing more, and hopefully should remain fine.

[caravel]

wow

I came home expecting the game either not to work, or not to work properly, and to my big surprise it not only works, but nearly everything seems fine. It actually runs smoother than MTW / VI.

The only thing that sometimes happens is in the main title menu, where it can flick quickly and you see the trailer behind the mouse. But except for that, everything so far works fine. That includes the videos (which are very good), and the Throne Room. I take it the Throne Room is basically a place to get (general) tips?

The video may be flakey at times. The fact that you've got all the videos actually working is a good sign. I take it that you can click on the throne room advisor without it crashing?

I actually find (part) of the graphics better than MTW / VI. There is a lot more atmosphere in the battles mainly becuase the scenery looks 'better' and more varied, with some very high mountains and hills. But mainly becuase of the clouds and weather, I Love how that looks, it's beautiful. I prefer the trees, and def think the buildings look better.

Shogun definitely has much more atmosphere, better weather effects and better soundtrack than MTW or later TW games.

As it's an older game, I can see some advantages that MTW / VI has, I think the main campaign has more depth in MTW, as you have the politics of the Pope (crusades, Jihad), and more emphasis on princesses? Although when I briefly played Shogun, I did place a lot of emphasis on Ninjas, and I think you can you use Geishas the same way?

Personally I think the Papacy feature in only MTW complicates matters somewhat. It doesn't work as you expect and sometimes I think the game would be better off without it. I find that the Papacy can make many campaigns predictable from the outset because the Pope will always warn and eventually excommunicate those bigger catholic factions that are perceived to be picking on the smaller ones. The Pope doesn't look at wealth or army size, but simply the number of provinces. This can be a big problem for, for example, the HRE if they get into a war with the French. I think that Shogun's lack of this kind of feature and instead the inclusion of the Emperor's province works well and leaves more flexibility for the AI factions.

Crusades and Jihads are another feature I've never liked much in MTW. They are easily spammed by the player and can be topped up by extra units, but in the hands of the AI they usually fail causing a crippling influence drop for the owning faction's leader and quite possibly a civil war. With MTW I get bored with AI crusades coming my way as I know they'll fail miserably and will provide some cheap training for my units.

Geishas are one of the flaws in STW, some would say the biggest flaw. Geishas are basically to STW what Grand Inquisitors were to MTW - very overpowered assassins that can attempt the assassination again if they fail and can only be removed by either a successful Ninja assassination, or by targeting them with another Geisha. In short Geishas are a bit of a joke, and it's best to simply train one or two to take care of enemy Geishas just to nullify the problem and nothing more.

3 big things that I quickly noticed not present in STW / MI, was no artillery, buildings can't be destroyed/damaged (?), and buildings can't defend (i.e arrow towers & gatehouses, in MTW) which means less variation in warfare. Also there's no replay unfortunately. And of course there is less types of units,

Buildings can't be damaged and their are no siege weapons. The castles don't even have gates. The whole siege warfare thing was introduced in MTW. Personally I don't miss it as I enjoy the pitched battles more.

Less types of unit is not always a bad thing. I always found that Shogun had just enough units and no more. A glut of units that are basically the same as each other, but only differ cosmetically is pointless. Having units that become obsolete but are still available to train for no obvious reason is also a sign of weak game design. MTW had plenty of unit types that once you had the ability to train a better units, you would never train the inferior type again. MTW also had stacks of units that took a lot of teching up, were costly to train and support, but were worse stat wise than another cheaper unit that was available earlier (for example Armenian Heavy Cavalry vs Ghulam Cavalry).

however that being said I read that STW is much more balanced the other TW games, and apparently the AI is tougher, in campaign mode I did notice they were more aggressive, trying to capture my provinces more so than in the other TW games.

The AI is definitely more warlike, as the STW campaign depicts a civil war in progress and not the entire of medieval europe (as MTW tried to do). In terms of the battles themselves STW is more balanced than other TW games, but when it comes to the campaign I'd say it was no more or less balanced.

I can see why they chose this era & Japan for their first TW game, as it really does fit the concept perfectly. Looking forward to playing more, and hopefully should remain fine.

The sengoku jidai and Japan were indeed perfect for the TW engine, larger european theatres are not so suited.

[Togakure]

There is a way to save STW replays and play them back, but it's a lot more involved that MTW, because you're doing things outside of the game shell. The process has been described here several times, so it's a matter of finding the posts. I'm at work right now. I'll have a quick look when I get home, and if I find them I'll post a link.

Essentially one replay file is saved after each battle. The next battle will overwrite it unless you move it and rename it. Of course, to view it later you have to move it back, and rename it back to the system-recognized name. The final oddity is you have to create another icon for starting STW and include a command line parameter that will tell STW it is going to be used to view a replay.

[Drisos]

Here you go:

Recording battles

It is possible to vieuw record and playback battles you played, beneath is information how to do so:

- Go to your shogun main folder.
- Rightclick at 'shogun.exe' and leftclick on 'create shortcut'.
- Do the same once again.
- Rightclick on one shortcut, and leftclick on 'change name'.
- Name the first shortcut 'record'.
- Do the same once again with the other shortcut and call it 'playback'.
- Rightclick on the 'record' shortcut and leftclick on 'properties'.
- Leftclick in the 'target' box and move the cursor to the end of the text in the box.
- Add a space and 'ER'.
- Click 'Apply'.
- Rightclick on the 'playback' shortcut and leftclick on 'properties'.
- Leftclick in the 'target' box and move the cursor to the end of the text in the box.
- Add a space and 'mEP'.
- Click 'Apply'.

To record a battle you must run shogun from the 'record' shortcut, the saved battle will be in your 'dumplog' folder. But shogun only saves the last battle in that folder so to save the battle you must cut it and paste it into whichever other folder. To playback the battle which is in your dumplog folder at that moment, run shogun from the 'playback' shortcut. The file in your 'dumplog' folder must be called 'replay', the 'dumplog' folder is in your shogun main folder.

I'm not 100% sure it works, I never tried. But people posted this here somewhere some time ago. I think it'll work fine. If you don't get it to work.. Pm 'Sasaki Kojiro'. He has used it before.

good luck

[Swiss Halberd Pike Landsknecht]

thanks for the info,

good points brought up, and I've def. seen similar posts, similar to what Caravel says about why people see Shogun as the best of the series,

I personally prefer to deal with provinces next to each other in the same area, then lands far away separated by Sea, and so that can explain why Viking Invasion appeals to me more.

Once again (although I knew most likely it'd be the case as was with MTW), good to see the realism in weather with gunpowder units. Those troops can only fire if the weather is clear or light drizzle, but anything stronger than that and their missile capabilities are rendered useless and can only fight hand to hand combat. (slowmatches couldn't take much rain & wind, and it was always a problem if gunpowder was exposed to rain as it could become harder / impossible to fire).

This was never the case in M2:TW (I think), that the Handgonners, etc were able to fire in any weather condition, which was just plain unrealistic. So becuase of that (and mainly the atmosphere from the clouds with weather), STW/MI has my favourite 'atmosphere' of the TW series.

It's interesting as well, as except for MTW/VI (which I got a few months ago), the other games I've only bought in the last few weeks, so I am able to compare the different aspects of the games,

regarding the Throne Room & Videos, so far they work, so that's good.

[MihaiMike]

Okay, hey guys, been reading the Forums for a while, also was registered a few years ago...I'm having some serious problems right now...

I have an old copy of Shogun TW, a copy with which i never had problems...Now a few days ago, i decided to install the game and play it, because i was really in the mood for it...So i install it, everything is fine, but when i open it, surprise, a blank screen appears and it stays like that...I try ALT+TAB, i try to push the Windows button and close the game...It gives me the Not Responding screen after which, my computer REBOOTS...

I know, akward, probably i didn't explain it very well either...But i tried many things, i tried the .mpg files thingy, the Compatibility thingy, i don't have that StarForce installed...And nothing works...:(

Got an AMD Athlon, 1.3+ Ghz, 512 RAM, Service Pack 2, NVIDIA GeForce 5200...


I don't want to format my PC, that's the final solution...But any ideas? I'll also try and buy a new version, but i don't understand why it won't work when it always worked on my PC...

[Spongie]

i tried many things, i tried the .mpg files thingy, the Compatibility thingy, i don't have that StarForce installed...And nothing works...:(

Have you tried the graphics card anti-aliasing thing? If memory serves, that was what got STW to work on my machine. You have to set it to x2, I think?

If it crashes before the intro movie plays, it might be that. There's a way of disabling it which is probably mentioned in this thread - if it's the same as for MTW then all you have to do is to put a blank text file in the game directory and rename it skipcredits.txt

[MihaiMike]

Spongie, it doesn't crash before the movie plays, it crashes before anything happens. Just a black screen appears and it stays like that, and when i try to close the game i get the "Not Responding" screen, i click "End Now" and in a few seconds my whole computer reboots...I'll see if i can solve it with the skipcredits.txt thing...

[Puzz3D]

I have an old copy of Shogun TW, a copy with which i never had problems...Now a few days ago, i decided to install the game and play it, because i was really in the mood for it...So i install it, everything is fine, but when i open it, surprise, a blank screen appears and it stays like that...I try ALT+TAB, i try to push the Windows button and close the game...It gives me the Not Responding screen after which, my computer REBOOTS...

Got an AMD Athlon, 1.3+ Ghz, 512 RAM, Service Pack 2, NVIDIA GeForce 5200...

I don't want to format my PC, that's the final solution...But any ideas? I'll also try and buy a new version, but i don't understand why it won't work when it always worked on my PC...

Have you upgraded your video driver? If so, that could be the problem. Check out this thread. It's suggested that for MTW you should not be using anything newer than the 61.77 video driver for the GeForce FX5200. STW is even older than that. Don't bother buying a new version of STW because the game was never updated beyond what you already have.

[Adam99]

Hi all

managed to find this whilst trying to find some help. I reinstalled my old copy of shogun, and it works fine upto a point. Basically any game i start it gets to turn 3 or 4, autumn or einter and freezes when doing the AI's moves. but it works upto that point. Has anyone any ideas?? Any help much appreciated.

[Wilbo]

It sounds like you can play until the first pop-up message (Farming Results) - do you see the message advising of your funds for this year?

[Adam99]

Hi, no i don't think so, pretty sure that didn't pop up.

[Wilbo]

Sounds odd.

You could try reinstalling incase it is a corrupt file?

I'd also try it with the sound off / a different video mode.

[Adam99]

Yeah i'll reinstall it. i've also ordered a copy of warlord edition so when that arrives i'll try that as well. Thanks for the help. hopefully onces it up and running i can be on here a bit more regular.

[jameslima]

I know I am doing a thread necro here...but...


I am running Shogun on my work Win XP SP2 machine AND my home Vista Ultimate box........how?

Using Microsoft Virtual PC (which is free).




What you need....

Windows 98 Disk...(or ISO, IMG, ect.....).......
Also having an IMG, ISO, or the actual Shogun disk's will help.


After that you can just google the instructions, but trust me, its easy.


What I did was make an ISO image of my Windows 98 disk then mount the image in Daemon Tools. Then I started up Virtual PC and went through the setup.

Then I installed Windows 98 normally on the virtual hard drive.....

[caravel]

I know I am doing a thread necro here...but...


I am running Shogun on my work Win XP SP2 machine AND my home Vista Ultimate box........how?

Using Microsoft Virtual PC (which is free).




What you need....

Windows 98 Disk...(or ISO, IMG, ect.....).......
Also having an IMG, ISO, or the actual Shogun disk's will help.


After that you can just google the instructions, but trust me, its easy.


What I did was make an ISO image of my Windows 98 disk then mount the image in Daemon Tools. Then I started up Virtual PC and went through the setup.

Then I installed Windows 98 normally on the virtual hard drive.....

Does STW run in Direct3D mode under Virtual PC or are you using software mode? I've thought about running it (and MTW) under Linux via VirtualBox but the fact that Direct3D probably won't work at all has always put me off even trying.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?...oblem88ma1.jpg


Me Need Helpy!

[Drisos]

Hi there!

You can try 'Minimum' install. (it probably won't install throne stuff then, so the problem would be gone- that is, if the throne room stuff really is the problem)

Keep in touch!

[caravel]

Try cleaning the disk, if that fails it might be that the disc is scratched so you'll need to get hold of another one.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Thanks guys, I be sure to try this tomarrow and stay in touch :yes!

[Drisos]

Try cleaning the disk, if that fails it might be that the disc is scratched so you'll need to get hold of another one.

In addition:

[ex]CDCheck.
Homepage
OS: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003
Open Source: No
Description: A handy program which helps prevent, detect and recover damaged files (from a CD), with an emphasis on error detection.
Easy to use and can be very helpful if you suspect a CD contains corrupt/damaged files and would like to try and fix it.
For more detailed information, visit the site.
Courtesy of Dutch_guy

(Quote from the Hard- & Software Subform)

I don't know the program but it sounds like something to give a try. I suddenly recalled reading about this when I read Cynewulf's post here.

[Omi-San]

I can hopefully help to resolve the flicker menu issue.
The flickering is generally caused by hardware acceleration available on recent video card.

To solve the issue right-click on the windows background:
- select "Properties" to show the dialogue box "Display Properties."
- select "Settings" tab and then click on "Advanced" button; this bring up another dialogue box.
- select "Troubleshoot" tab and slide the slider next to "Hardware acceleration" to None.

Hopefully this piece of advice will resolve the woes which beset me when I recently purchase
Shogun Total War - Gold Edition.

gannbatte-ne (good luck),

Omi-san.

[patdj]

Konban ha, Omi-san.

Thanks for the advice and welcome to the Org. One question: Does this modification have any drawbacks concerning other graphics applications (e.g. games, videos, normal pc usage...)?

[caravel]

I have tried that option in the past and in my experience it doesn't work. If you drag hardware acceleration to "none" the game will probably crash with a "Direct3D could not be initialised" error or something similar.

[Omi-San]

In response to patdj,

I guess that I can only comment from my experience - that this does resolve the issue and I did not notice any other issues with the game (in comparison to my older computer, which was a win95 install, and the reason I want to solve the annoying issue.)

I can only suggest you try it for yourself and see whether it works on your system.
If you have success or failure, then please share your experince as Asai Nagamasa has done.

Obviously, you will probably need to adjust this for playing other more modern games, for which hardware accelerators will probably be exploited/necessary.

Omi-sama

[Mr.TFD]

Hi guys im a new member and have come to you with a problem :(

I played STW years ago and loved it, since i lost the game and here we are now i bought the game again on ebay and with a new laptop. I tried installing from disc and when ever i click "install game" from the sold out menu it just dosnt open anything. So what i tried to do was explore the disc and try running "ShogunW.exe" and it brings up 3 errors which i later tried to fix manually.

Cannot find "Weachatr.dll"
Cannot find "Wearsr.dll"
Cannot find "Weanewsr.dll"

So i copied all the disc contents to a temp folder on my desktop and downloaded the 3 missing DLLs into the same folder. Then "ShogunW.exe" does actually run, then brings up a new error "Please insert correct CD" when infact the original STW disc is still in the CD drive..

Im quite computer literate but this has got me stumped :( HELP?!!

[caravel]

You are trying to run the actual game .exe which won't work, because you haven't installed the game as yet.

Try running "setup.exe" instead, this should bypass the installer menu that "Sold Out Software" have probably put on the disc.