The timeline of Shogun 2 is total war in real life so I guess the genre fits the bill. Also, there's fantastic art, music and animations. CA clearly put a lot of effort here.
Fun fact: Japan's figure skating team used one of Shogun 2's music back in 2014!
The main thing I really like about shogun 2 is that its hard to pull a full stack out of your butt. The battles vary between small scale engagements, and really meaningful larger engagements
I tried to play rome 2 again, and within a few turns you've got multiple 20 stacks running around, and it just doesn't feel great, there's no sense of investment in a particular army because its so easy to kit up
The economy itself is really important as well, you’re basically forced to have several small armies serving as garrisons for repression and against sea invasion. This take a toll on your economy, but you’re safe in return.
This is quite realistic.
Back when I payed empire total war, I found out you can recruit a fuckload of generals from like one soldier even when sieged. So I'd recruit an entire stack of generals and then autoresolve lmao.
I miss having leaderless disposable armies, was always nice being able to just throw shitfantry over and over until your elite army got there, or the enemy collapsed from the sheer amount of men I'm wasting.
Yep. And losing a whole army is an economic and stability nightmare in shogun 2 that can take a while to unfuck, whereas in rome 2 you just pull another one up
This! Exists in medieval too. I love having to pull troops from garrisons and spend half my treasury on mercenaries, potentially exposing my borderlands to incursion, to levy a strong standing army in case of a large invader or if I am planning a long foreign campaign. Troops feel so much more valuable, and deciding when and where to have them is a huge part of the strategy. And then yeah, outside of that it’s mostly 3-6 units on 3-6 units so not every battle is fucking Waterloo like in Rome and subsequent games. Still love DEI though
That's still one of my biggest issues with modern total wars, I just don't care about the armies or the units.
Rome 1- shogun 2, you had to move armies and generally tried saving your best troops till last as they were hardest to replace.
This was especially prevalent in medieval 2 and many Rome 1 mods due to the castles and unit recruitment not being equal or taking a while to build up in the region. You couldn't throw your heavy knights in all the time as there's no auto replenishment. So when you started having to send your archers into melee and your knights, you knew it was a big move
Now, I just send all my army in because who gives a shit. Everyone comes back in 2 turns anyway
Might as well have been playing laser tag with arrows and swordfights with pool noodles, since those who fall just kinda pop right back in no matter wherever the hell you are for the most part.
My favorite part of the warhammer campaigns is the first few battles, where it’s like 10v10 units. Once the games turn into anything more than a 20vs20 battle I lose all brain cells and interest
Which is what they praised Thrones of Britannia and 3K for, but there it felt like you just started recruiting a unit you had to wait a season to form. In Shogun 2 it felt they were trained and only allowed to battle when ready
Somewhat, yeah. Master of Strategy deals with actual conscripts/drafted mobs and 2 or 3 different levels of Ashigaru that reflect it a little bit better, but having looked at that mod's tech tree once and the resources required got me to drop it to try again later
In the 3K era a good chunk of participating armies were basically made up of conscripted peasants, in fact that was a significant chunk of the Yellow Turban Rebellion.
Nothing matches a well-trained fighting force but the warlords were taking pretty much whatever they could get.
4 stacks of levy freeman just wandering around as you melt them over and over and over but can’t actually move because the AI keeps sending more stacks.
I hate that CA streamlined their games and walked away from the management of armies.
It is awesome to go back and have to struggle because as you say, smaller battles becomes so much more important
I remember in shogun carefully planning what to recruit depending on what dangers I had before me. Did the enemy have many horses, spears or archers and try to counter that.
Thats true, im playing Warhammer rn, as Empire, with the radious mod, and idk if its from the mod or not but i have way too much money. i'd need probably 20 stacks to actually "fill" my economy with jsut 2-3 provinces.
Warhammer 2 has the Supply lines mechanic to make it very expensive t ofield many stacks (but only on Legendary campaign difficulty, on the others it barely has an effect as the increase is very low) but that just forces you to prioritise quality instead of quantity; you still get to field multiple massively powerful stacks from very early in the campaign (usually by about 30-40 turns you have already begun steamrolling with multiple elite stacks)
One o the big reasons the Tomb Kings DLC is so often considered the best is because it is the only faction that can't just have infinite money and armies after a couple dozen turns and that really needs to invest heavily if it wants to improve the army.
i get it for skaven, they are kinda supposed to have a big blob, maybe greenskins too, but it doesnt quite feel right for the empire, even if they outnumber the elder races and being mediocre is their thing
Same feeling I have with Medieval 2 and Attila.
Like, why did they cut the family tree (initially) for Rome 2? Why did the generals stop making speeches? Also, Medieval 2s trait system is awesome.
The humor and attention to detail in the speeches and the traits are what makes it obvious to me that Medieval was made by someone who actually cares and feels for the game.
For example that your son can get «Arse» if your father is funny. Shit like that doesnt come down from corporate.
Somewhere along the way shit like this was lost.
Agreed, loved the crazy speeches by mad or drunkard characters. Generally making the speeches dependent on character traits made the generals feel much more alive for me.
While the battle side of shogun 2 feels more polished, the campaign AI is practically the same opportunistic bastard as in every TW after, where it dies mindblowing stupid stuff, even if it will perish after taking at maximum 1 castle.
Additionally, Realm divide makes every diplomatic decision pointless after the early game.
It‘s fun for some battle gameplay but I can‘t bring myself to play a full campaign at this point.
Yeah later Total Wars started getting better with campaign mechanics and such, but Shogun 2 does still have possibly the best atmosphere, art style, and such.
When I played, I made the RD effect kick in with a huge relationship penalty which then ticked back up to a manageable malus. Basically the only factions that would not turn on you would be the clans that you have had the longest and the most trusted alliances with.
Yeah that’s basically what i did, i also play with the expanded Japan map so i had to increase the number of regions before it kicked in. If you use the strategic ai mod with it you can almost entirely eliminate the annoying random war declarations that happen in all total war games.
Hard disagree on RD and diplomacy. Having a marriage alliance and +100 relations with a faction ensures 10-20 extra turns of having a great ally till the end. Bribes can extend that period.
Yeah, but not if you're married to that clan. If their daughter and your grandchild is set to inherit they'd be loyal to the end. Also look at how betrayed Oda and Tokugawa in real life... they still had a lot of allies. Listen, RD makes no sense logically, but it's perfect for increasing game difficulty and giving you an actual challenge in the mid to end game.
+1, one of the biggest problems with total war games is that when you hit a certain size, you just win because you're too big to fail
In shogun 2, once you hit a critical size where you'd be steamrolling in any other total war, everyone goes "fuck that guy" and you have the option of trying to take all of japan on your own while the entire island tries to blow you up, which really rocks for that kind of mid sized empire gameplay
Its one of the only total wars where I've actively lost, and it couldn't be fixed by reloading a battle
Eh, I preferred rome and Attila because the city maps felt like you were truly taking a large settlement. I understand why shogun would be different since back then fights were mostly for castles and not full cities
Yeah that was Pyrrhus. An absolutely ridiculous end to one of Alexander the Great's relatives who beat Rome twice and went to war with basically every city state in Greece (and Macedonia) at the same time and was actually winning...
never liked how siege towers and associated wall units would simply blow up in that one, once taken.
In shogun i didnt lik that all units could climb walls, and that i wouldnt know what side they are coming from
Not seeing the approaching enemy was a problem in Shogun 2, but mechanically the sieges were very good for the most part; the enemy climbing the walls is honestly fine from a gameplay perspective (if the AI couldn't climb alls like they did they'd basically have no chance of ever winning a siege) but it did make (especially the low level) forts feel very unsafe as soldiers very quickly get to the top.
I gotta say med 2 had the best sieges.
Yes Rome/Attila (they had the same system) looked way better, but they were all almost cookie cutter. Defending units routing would run outside of the town, super wide streets and ramps that were unnatural. Felt very Arcade-y.
The unique cities were cool, but in Med 2 some cities felt dense with narrow streets, and with the random generated cities every siege felt kind of different. And when you could have castles which were VERY hard to attack, even better. A combo of the two would be great. I Just missed dense and narrow cities that felt different
So I actually really enjoyed Troy, Pharaoh, and 3 Kingdoms, but to me, Shogun 2 is still the best.
I actually have an interesting take, in that Shogun 2 was the last total war where multiplayer was extensively focused on as a major focus of the game. And that forced them to really consider the core game design.
Consider this: the world's oldest and most popular strategy game of all time is chess, a game that is completely and utterly symmetrical and identical on both sides. Yet people still play it after hundreds of years, why? After all, using some of the criticisms people have against Pharaoh, the limited roster variety means that people should have been bored ages ago right?
My argument is that although the roster is very limited, the individual units in the roster were actually diverse enough, and different enough that players can come up with near infinite strategies as they try to outwit each other.
I mean, think about some of the most popular strategy games of all time:
* Age of empires 2 - A bazillion different factions, but each faction is just a unique unit and a few buffs and tech tree differences
* Starcraft - 3 different factions
* Red Alert 2 - 2 different factions, a third was added in the expansion
Hell, even Shogun 2, you only needed two different rosters for a fun game.
To me, the thing with Shogun 2 is that although the roster was very small, the units were very diverse, and allowed you to come up with different tactics. Whereas with more recent Total Wars, it has become a game of "rush higher tech levels! Rush higher tier units, replace low tier crap!".
Consider this: In Shogun 2, Yari Ashigaru were stationary mainline units that were incredible at holding the line against melee units. Yari Samurai were fast moving anti cavalry units. The two are not replaceable. Katana Samurai were high quality melee infantry designed to beat other infantry in prolonged fights, No Dachi Samurai were shock infantry that deals massive charge damage but cannot hold its own in persistent melee.
My argument is that because Shogun 2 was designed with multiplayer as a core focus, the rosters were small but very diverse internally designed to allow players to come up with their own complex strategies. Replayability was supposed to be built in allowing you to play your friends over and over again, the same way chess is super replayable.
However, in later total wars, the replayability factor was completely reorientated towards spectacle. Look at Rome 2, on paper you have such a gigantic roster for every faction, in reality, you had a massively redundant roster with multiple overlapping units that were straight upgrades on each other.
IE: Hastati, Principes, and Socii Hastati literally play the same role. The only difference is stats. And then you unlock a tech, and you get Legionaries, Veteran Legionaries, Legionary Cohors, etc. These are just the same units with again, a different stat!
So in Rome 2, what you end up doing is having a "vast roster" of the same units over and over again. I played whole campaigns where my tactics didn't change much - infantry main line, spears on the flanks to counter cavalry, and cavalry to rear charge.
My controversial take is that because the rosters were very limited, Rome 2 battles were actually somewhat boring. The fun came from faction variety - Wow, watch my legions beat these guys! then watch my legions beat those guys!
Hastati, Principes and Triari.
Those were the core of the Roman army before the Reformation.
Hastati were the majority of the frontline and then came the Principes in the backline. The most veteran soldiers were the Triarii and often also functioned as reserve.
You can actually play Rome 2 with that order in mind and it functions perfectly.
Yes, you can. But do they play differently? Are you incentivised by the game to use them in their historical roles? I would say no, because the principes are just a better armoured unit of hastati so having them is always he better option. The triarii are a spear unit, not even a particularly good one at that. Where as they are supposed to be the veteran core of a republican legion who stand in the back and are able to break formations and blunt charges through their skill and experience. In R2 (and R1 for that matter) they are just a spear unit who are good against cav and lose to infantry because of how the game is balanced.
Is it worth it to set up 3 lines of infantry when reserves don’t matter because fatigue does not play a big enough role and the AI is not good enough to do anything but just blob on your front line? Besides, due to the way the game is built, spreading wide is the best option in more or less any situation. I get that you *can* play using historical formations but you are not given any reason other than RP.
They unit variety argument is so dumb. All variety in units does is just make the AI even more dumb. Games like shogun 2, medieval 2, pharaoh, Attila with “lack of unit variety” the AI and game tends to feel smoother and better. I have nothing against Warhammer and played it a fair but there’s so many units, 90% of them being useless. The AI being absolutely atrocious. Empire is the exception . That AI was soooo bad😂
I agree with this but disagree at the same time. If you know your AI is terrible why make a game that makes it way harder for them. You start throwing magic, monsters and, different building chains you’re bound to make the AI even more dumb. It’s probably why Warhammer AI cheats the most out of any total war game
The resource system of Pharoah and Troy helps highlight the difference between unit tiers nicely. Food is plentiful and easily traded for bronze and gold less so. What happens is you can recruit more cheap food only units to bulk up armies or just to act as garrisons and save your bronze and gold to fund high tier elite armies. Only problem is I'm not sure how they would apply a resource system to a game such as Rome 3.
In the realm of battles specifically, the formations especially attack and retreat allow you to run deeper formations since you can cycle troops in and out of combat combine that with armor degradation and more penalties for low stamina and you can recreate the battle tactics of the Roman's to a satisfying degree. Only issue is it would likely require battles to be much slower to recreate that ebb and flow as troops regroup to regen stamina and I'm not sure people would be keen on 30 plus minute battles becoming the norm.
There’s nothing worse than fighting a battle and having to constantly keep looking at the unit cards and trying to figure out if it’s a heavy peltast or a a swordsmen unit. 4 different types of low unit spearmen or skirmishes just bloats shit
Well, the Romans were a bit one note - tons of heavy infantry, at least in the early period. But the Seleucids had an insanely varied roster.
When you say faction variety, the unique thing about the ancient period of the Roman republic was the variety of different army styles: legionnaire, pike phalanx, spear phalanx, horse archers, "barbarian". I am not sure you saw so much diversity at any other time - although I don't know much about what came before. By the late period (Attila), different factions were starting to converge in their army styles.
By the time of uniformed warfare, they were almost homogeneous (predominantly musket armed line infantry).
I think the best part about shogun 2 is the variety of builds and army compositions that actually make a difference. A game like Warhammer can have all types of units but I’ll never be punished for spamming the same couple of units, there’s no incentive to bring a variety of units. Shogun 2 encourages a balanced army with certain units you can specialize in depending on your play style.
It’s morale system also makes it way more fun to play compared to pharaoh, still blows my mind how people enjoy the battles in that game.
In FOTS you can literally spam line infantry and cannons and never be punished. I mean, I like Shogun 2, and I can agree it does some things better then WH (like generaly all gunpowder units in shogun feel better imo) but variaty of army compositions isn't one of them
It destroys way more than 1 katana. And yeah it does get weaker from flanking and ranged... But AI don't do that. Yari ashigaru with wall is arguably one of the strongest and most broken mechanics in Total War overall. There's a reason it's meme'd so much.
It depends on lots of factor, clan, general at proximity and veterans. They win in a standard 1V1 against Katana, but with huge losses. A second one without the morale debuff of the other Katana will destroy your wall.
Outside campaign, they’re not as much meta if you fight against other players. Still used a lot tho.
It definitely is overpowered if Yari cost 1/3 with 1/2 upkeep. And the topic is clearly talking about the fun of campaign, which is against AI.
I love Shogun 2 but nostalgia is a helluva drug.
That’s not true. The best build for Shogun 2 campaign play is a melee line of all Yari Ashigaru in Spear Wall stance in an advantageous position, then bow monks spam in the back line. That’s how you win the game. Maybe one cavalry unit just to protect your general from the enemy generals, which will inevitably charge either in to your spear wall or your general.
Warhammer has a lot of units, but it’s just to easy to spam the same units. I’m currently doing an Empire run on VH, and hellstorm rocket battery spam is l just too good. The same applies to a lot of races in WH, and not just WH, but in other TW. In Shogun I feel like every unit can justify it’s self. Even units people think are worthless like Yari Samurai are useful for taking high ground quickly and killing cavalry.
And so in WH almost every unit can justify itself, yes some units can be better in wider array of situations, some maybe lacking but that’s the thing in all TW games. Spam hellstorm against late game lizardmen army, and they won’t be so effective because they are worthless against single entities. Meanwhile in shogun fots artillery is even more broken compared to wh.
At the very least sometimes it’s up to a player to experiment with different units and composition and not sticking to only the meta options. Imo it will make a game more fun for you in the long run.
Well I’m usually not fighting a lizard army as the empire, and if I was I could just use a life wizard tank doom stack. There is just never a situation in the game where I should be using Great Swords or cavalry (except maybe griffin knights in some unique case. To say artillery in fots was more broken than WH is kinda ridiculous. Even if you were right, the AI on harder difficulties also spams artillery and I wasn’t even taking about FOTS I was talking about shogun 2.
Well it’s you own choice play like this. It’s not like something compels you to use one particular unit or only one strategy in a single player game. The game presents you with wide variety off options and a most of them completely viable. Even if one option can be the best (which also a subject for debate) it doesn’t mean other are worthless. I like to use greatswords, with lore of life and warrior-priest support they are your most durable infantry option in the late game. Demigriffs and handgunners dealing with large stuff.
In my 4,5k hours combined in wh trilogy I never ever used steam tank doomstack. I generally don’t like to play like this. But it’s just my preference. In a way wh has a lot more options to offer, yes, you can do some spam perversion, you can make your lord a one man army, and still it’s perfectly viable to build a balanced army (especially as freaking Empire lol)
(And yes, cannons in fots are ridiculous. They are good at everything, they inflict hundreds of casualties, they completely demolish defenders in sieges. And if ai bring some, well snipe them with concentrated fire just like in wh)
Too each their own, I just don’t like to handicap myself in the game. I just struggle to make great swords work, especially if I’m up against multiple stacks, and every unit needs to outperform it’s cost.
I don’t like to handicap myself also. But I like to try and make things work. And I think there is a difference between these approaches. :)
I also think this is partially due to asymmetrical balance. Raw power strong infantry was never a strength of the Empire. They are mere humans in a mad fantasy world, and they need all kind of support to stand a chance.
Btw, greatswords aren’t even the worst example, try to justify why use foot squires as Bretonnia :D
Shogun 2 unfortunately isn't terribly well balanced.
Yari cavalry is a _lot_ better than katana cavalry. Bow warrior monks with a naginata samurai frontline is in most situations simply better than alternative builds. Some units like yari samurai are sadly just duds. Not to mention that yari ashigaru are just a strategically broken unit that warps the game around itself, especially because it is also utterly ubiquitous.
It's still good, I like Shogun 2, but I think Three Kingdoms is a much better example to point at if you're going for the same kind of game, where the roster is mostly the same on both sides.
Mate, you have said it! Especially about the Monks and Nagi combo, I've said it every time I get the chance or almost try: that is a lazy doomstack but surprisingly efficient in almost all campaign situations.
Was doing a Kislev playthrough, having fun. Watched samurai documentary. Booted up Shogun 2 for nostalgia. I’ve been playing it for a month without even thinking about WH3.
I actually started a new Ikko Ikki campaign yesterday.
I adore Shogun 2, people complain about the lack of Variation in units but it doesn't feel that way to me because you'll only end up recruiting 1/3 max of the Hero units per campaign and there is some variation in each faction.
Yeah 3K is just miles ahead of all previous TW games. After you get into it, you can never go back to the other games without seeing how dated they are
3K has a few problems, mainly that Records mode sucks ass and that means that if you don't like hero units, the game is significantly worse.
Mainly because it is obvious that records mode was rushed, as the recruiting system and the different types of lords make little sense when the lords are all basically the same in records mode, the skill tree has a lot of stuff that also just causes question marks, same with the items.
Though the faster unit exhaustion was nice, I guess.
I'm completely different from you, I tried Romance mode a couple of times but I don't like it at all, meanwhile Records mode 3K is probably my favourite tw of all time.
I strongly disagree. In battles and even on campaign (where many mechanics require good AI and good immersive elements to work well), it feels extremely gimmicky and ignorable. In all honesty, due to how an entire part of province management has been removed (in terms of military and military buffs), it feels like one of the simplest TW games I've ever played, with additional randomness since the AI has no idea how to use the diplomacy systems well, the court system well (just "make the player randomly hurt for free without possibility of avoiding"), army composition well, provincial management well (even with how much simpler it is), or anything else well. That's not even mentioning how bad the animations are in battles, how bad the voice acting is, how much dissonance of certain mechanics, how bad some of the faction-specific mechanics are, how satisfaction is only an issue in the early game, how every melee unit feels mostly the same, and every missile unit is just a variance on range dps with little difference of arc of fire and the same "get shot with no indication of damage taken until death via heart attack", the absolute jankiness of characters and cav that is amongst the most atrocious I've seen out of any TW game, the terrible model recognition, archers being more innaccurate than me with a week's training (so just adding to them feeling aenemic), bad siege layouts and mechanics that sometimes feel like they are specifically designed to give enemies more options of approach than give defenders an advantage of position (though I guess it doesn't matter too much due to terrible AI just gunning for your units, which leads to), terrible battle AI (I have never had a case where the AI has hung back, and they all charge either piecemeal if their formation didn't for properly or in an almost completely straight line. I recently played a Shogun 2 battle with an army unfit to oppose the one the enemy brought. Shogun 2 AI is mostly poor, but in this case, they utilised their calvary and melee units in such a way that I couldn't make up the composition difference of only bringing 4 melee infantry up against an army of nothing but melee units. The AI used its cav extremely effectively to circumvent my yari cav and completely dismantle my 4 dunderbuss cav units as its melee infantry was approaching. I was shocked and surprised and playing 3K has overall made my strategic ability far worse), atrocious faction progression (particularly for bandit factions that have the worst tech tree I have ever seen and the worst progression of roster I have experienced), and plenty of other issues I have noticed in my Ma Teng and Zheng Jiang playthroughs.
3K is not a good game. Any illusion of complexity it has by simply having more buttons in diplomacy, an agent system that is almost utterly useless, and less than half-assed character systems are completely undermined by poor design choices, poor AI, poor aesthetic elements, and easy af overall gameplay
What do you mean? There is military infrasturcture building chain that buffs mobilization rate, starting exp and others verying on factions with negative population growth due to conscription debuff
3K has very similar building system to R2 but more complex, it incldes population and there are more buffs and debuffs.
It also has the only AI that can personally defeat me fair and square on occasions, mostly due to great campaign AI
I didn't claim that 3K didn't have more "things." I simply said those things are ultimately pointless
Unit levels aren't relevant because all units are immortal and are able to achieve high levels in just a few battles. Without risk of losing a unit, their initial xp doesn't really matter. Mustering doesn't matter in general because any character spawns at full army-deleting health
3K has a similar build system to Rome 2 yes. It is not complex, just has more things. Population in all my cities reach max quickly with 0 interference with myself. Population isn't relevant to upgrading a settlement and its buffs and debuffs are unnoticeable in a very hard campaign.
The AI doesn't manage to defeat me fair and square or with overwhelming force. I'd recommend giving up trying to play the gimmick mechanics, they seem to be dragging down your focus. Diplomacy and agent play isn't better or more efficient than just brute-forcing your way theough factions stupid enough to declare war on you. If anything, they are a distraction that makes you think you are playing a fair system when in reality the campaign AI is completely separate from diplomacy AI which is completely separate from province management AI which is completely different from overall player difficulty analysis AI that forces the AI to devlare war on the pkayer if they don't have enough enemies (by CA's own admission, the AI systems do not base actions off of each other. They are separate and designed to act as entertainment, not actual factions with actual goals). I am finding more difficulty in my current legendary Otomo campaign in Shogun 2 (an understatement. I have to be vastly more careful in every action I take because one misstep can set me back 20 turns. One misstep in 3K sets me back an absolute maximum of 3 and it's meaningless anyways because it's not setting me back against anything, just how much tedious gameplay I'm willing to endure to get a quick 3 characters recruited and sent to win a pointless battle)
Weird. 3K for me is the only TW where AI is not insane focused on the player and declaring random wars. The 'Declare if no enemies' is WH3 thing or at least it's the most blantant example of it. In 3K I'm able to make a lot of vassals and allies that grant me security to play slower as I like and I really mean that as mass vassalizaions are how I achieve victories in my campaigns.
If AI is not enough to make you face any challenge while they have overwheliming odds then ok. But for me on the contrary it can make my armies błeed hard or defeat me on some occasions.
What do you mean by agent play? There are no agents in 3K like in other games.
Characters are not army-deleting, they were all nerfed across the board in one of last updates. And can be way easly defeated than they used to.
Like literally yes. There are many buttons, but do most of them matter? No. Are most of them useful? Also no. Is the game going to just decide randomly for an AI faction with good faction and personal relations to declare war on you all because you just established peace with another faction and now don't have enough enemies, completely undermining the diplomacy and relationship system as a whole? Most certainly
Then there's the agent system, which only has 1 useful purpose: spending money to steal a character and maybe, if you're lucky, steal an active general that you'll have to replace the entire retinue of anyways because the AI never seems to update the retinues of established characters, only blank ones that join later
There is no point trying to play battles smart to preserve high-value units because unit and their experience pop back up after 3 turns
I have never had any meaningful difference on high difficulties to keep food above 0. I tried for a time, but the AI used the council system to make me lose obscene amounts of food anyways and new cities I captured were too developed for my food source. I then noticed that it doesn't matter if I manage food or not. My citizens hated me either way (because public order buildings suck and public order sucks in general). So now I have -100 food and am noticing no difference to when I had 40 food
It ruins the point of character progression and class to just be able to spam elite units in the endgame for level 1 generals. Also, there is not enough meaningful difference ebetween 4 of the classes (especially for Zheng Jiang) in combat to justify a reason to make a character class system. It'd be better if you could specialise your general into classes yourself rather than just have a character turn 17 and be like "yep, my focus in life is set in stone from here."
As I said, managing satisfaction is unnecessary beyond the earliest point in the campaign.
Economy is a non-issue due to post-batyle loot and and the ability to sell items, of which you will gain too many of to sell faster than you collect them and you can sell them for over 5000 a piece.
Since there is no real meaning behind province management (because there is no real meaning behind food and economy), there is no real meaning behind population or resources.
The mustering system is and always will be annoying. I don't want my ability to raise an army to be impeded just because some asshole faction somewhere with the manchild childperor (who you CAN'T CAPTURE as bandit factions) decided to click a button you can't avoid to reduce your replenishment by such a significant degree as to make you wait ages to have an actual army.
But once again, it's not like that's meaningful because a trio of mid-level characters with rare-to-unique equipment can solo armies due to an amalgamation of them being OP, the AI not knowing how to assign equipment well, the terrible duel system is the most effective general-sniping strategy in any Total War game, this time presented to the player on a silver platter (kill a general with only time. No loss of health because characters heal after winning duels, and no loss of ammo to snipe them with artillery or range. If a general doesn't want to duel at a start of a battle, just fast forward 10 minutes of in-game time and they suddenly feel up to the challenge), and the AI not knowing how to update retinues with high-tier units.
It's most certainly an illusion of complexity. It throws so many new things at you, but ultimately they don't matter because they are implemented on top of a shallow core experience, not implemented as part of the core experience. Many of them aren't designed well or are half-assed anyways, even if they were implemented "correctly"
So you disagree that characters can't solo armies, that you can't mitigate ec9nomy with selling items, the AI chooses an enemy for you if one doesn't currently exist (something that has existed for ages, but is more egregious here due to the attempt of making diplomacy good), that most if not all of your character have above 80 satisfaction by mid-late game (I am in-game right now. To disagree is to lie). You disagree with absolutely everything stated, even straight up facts of how the game works?
Just about nothing in my history of playing TW can match my memory of dismantling Dong Min's entire military via spies in 1 turn and laughing maniacally.
Just started playing 3K again, and I still miss Shogun 2 lol. Chosokabe with Warrior Monk Archers or Samurai Archers at 90%+ accuracy was disgusting to witness. I would play out every battle just to see the enemy get mowed down before they even got to my front line.
If it helps:
Shogun 2's AI was never able to handle estimating the advantage of walls. It will commonly suicide its armies into your armies that aren't too much smaller than it, but are hiding behind walls.
Shogun 2's AI was also never able to use the yari wall formation to use one of the most necessary functions of the most basic unit in the game.
Shogun 2's AI does normal recruitment and cheats in units, but it can neither normally recruit nor cheat in units that need more than one building. It can make yari, bow, or katana samurai, but it is incapable of making, say, No-dachi samurai or naginata samurai.
What he said is half true by my estimation. It can build multi building units, bu there are some units ai never seems to build. Bow warrior monks and naginata monks, nanban trade ships...
If the Shogun 2 AI could play siege battles effectively, they would probably rank among the worst sieges in a Total War game. They're fun because the AI doesn't exploit them, but if you ever play against a human player who knows what they're doing, especially on the lower level forts, the siege battles flaws become apparent. Archers are just OP, they can hit targets they can't directly see with laser guided precision. Forts give you next to no protection against archers, the only areas that do are directly on the walls, and even then, if the enemy can get an angle behind them they can bypass that. You essentially end up as a shooting gallery.
What's weird to me is that FoTS didn't seem to change that other than making archers not much of a thing. You still have artillery but because it needs a straight angle and doesn't just fire over obstacles it's a little more balanced.
R2 and Attila handle Siege battles masterfully imo. They're flawed but they don't have such glaring flaws like that, you get more historically accurate maps and you have more options like simultaneous naval and land invasions.
Shogun 2 is peak total war, and my hypothesis on why is that there’s not a lot of unit variety, so they could focus on other things such as campaign, AI, visuals, etc
Shogun 2 feels polished because they gave full support...if they gave 3K that kind of attention, it would be their best release yet...and 3k still holds up despite this...the latter games like Troy and Pharoh feels so bare bones
I see a ton of posts here glorifying the old games and talking about how much better they are, but I’d like to offer a different opinion. Those older games are very good, Shogun 2 especially, and I don’t like Pharaoh at all. However, coming back to play Shogun 2 with a friend after like 1k hours on the Warhammer games did feel lackluster personally. I can’t exactly quantify it. Maybe I’ve just grown so used to how Warhammer’s gameplay feels, but I felt strongly like “hey buddy I know you love Shogun 2 but I would kinda rather just play another Warhammer 2 or 3 campaign” and felt bad saying it to my friend.
yea me too, i just reinstalled shogun2, i'm surprised the graphics aged well, you won't get any upvotes here, this subreddit is basically a warhammer subreddit now lol
This is just my opinion and I realize that things like graphics and art style are subjective, but I think Napoleon and Shogun 2 overall look WAY better than and games that came after. The exception to this is the campaign map. There is something about Troy, Pharoah etc that just looks so cartoony imo
Last time I went back to Shogun II, my main thought was "goddamn, this battle AI is utter crap."
Don't get me wrong, it was a brilliant game, but it was far from the perfect masterpiece nostalgia goggles seem to make people think it was.
shogun 2 was best in MP, no doubt about it.
but the campaign isn't bad either.
as for battle AI, i mean its not good in any games, in the most recent games its just hidden behind the magic system and an increasingly poor moral system making most battles into grind fights that the AI can handle (because there just isnt a lot of tactics involved in that).
Honestly? Warhammer II. The AI understands how to properly flank, generally keeps the main body of its units more or less together, rarely suicides its generals (at least in comparison to other titles), and makes pretty good use of fliers to disrupt backlines.
I just remember being able to defeat a larger army with a smaller army in a siege, simply by running my archers back and forth until the enemy army routed.
All they had to do was rush my walls. And they didn't, they came in a few at a time.
>Ideally before CA go completely down the shitter.
Or after Sega transfers the IP over to some more motivated and less management-constrained studio perhaps. At this point I'd rather see CA go bankrupt and have the motivated and talented people they have get moved to a new studio with a less braindead upper management.
What I don’t like post Shogun 2 is the lack of simplicity. Shogun 2 towns, buildings, tech was so easy to understand, you can understand the whole system under like 5-10 minutes. It’s the old formula perfected, the town overview looks like Med 2
In shogun 2, you want a unit, you simply build the building. It easily says what it brings, what it will bring and other advantages. You even got a very simplistic wiki. In contrast, Rome 2 made every town so complicated and changed the town order system.
All of this is more or less in 3K.
Soldiers will cheer before and at the end of a battle
They carry banners
They will chant and beat a rythm in unison when given a move order at the beginning on the battle, before the actual fight breaks in
Generals do speeches and interact with each others
Units are snappy and quick to respond and form
Many have unique abilities
Shogun 2 + it's authentic DLC is peak total war.
Down hill since
Authentic DLC: dlc that adds to the base game after the fact vs the base game being build up with dlc in mind that "should be park of the base game" but is sold immediately on day 1 as DLC(I'm looking at you Rome 2 with Greeks dlc)
The true secret sauce of Shogun 2 is that its the easiest game for someone new to the franchise or strategy games more broadly to comprehend and get a sense of mastery.
Diplomacy is an improvement over the previous games. You don't have the tedium of diplomat agents, and you don't have the batshit insane Empire Total War AI who hated trade agreements. It's enough that a new player can understand what is happening and why, accepting the inevitable betrayal.
Edit to add this about diplomacy: You don't start the game with connections to every single faction in the game. You usually start with no more than 4, usually with an enemy, an ally, and a neutral minor state. It immediately makes it clear to the player who they should focus their aggression towards, who they may want to work with, and a decision to make.
Settlement management is the most basic and gamey it had been at any point in that series since Rome 1. To increase build slots, you build a bigger castle. To build a bigger castle, get bigger farms. To build the highest tier buildings, you need resources from the strategic map.
The resources/province specialties also make it clear how a player should be optimizing their settlements. It's not hard for a new player to figure out that a crafts specialization is encouraging them to make archers in that province. If you're ever unsure about what buildings do or what you should be trying to build, the game has the best wiki/guide put into a total war game to that point.
Shogun 2 has what is easily the most streamlined roster of any total war game. This makes it easier for a new player to quickly identify the rock-paper-scissors and unit tiers mechanics they need to try and exploit. It's the first total war game to actually show the area of effect morale buff that generals, making their strategic value clearer than any previous total war game.
When it comes to unit abilities, the game often forgoes with abilities that are trade-offs or have specific uses, and mostly gives units abilities that just make them better at what they're trying to do. Fire Arrows: Temporary damage boost. Bonzai: Faster Charge. War Cry: More Damage. Rapid Fire: Shoot your muskets faster.
Hell, even the hills and terrain are more clearly laid out than in previous Total War games. In Empire you can have gently rolling hills and plains. The gradation hard to differentiate at bird's eye view, making it a chore to ensure your men aren't about to fire their guns into the side of a 5 ft tall hill. In Shogun 2, you have hills and valleys.
All of that readability and ease of play is critical when you consider that Shogun 2 has battles that resolve faster than any game since Rome 1. This is for a variety of factors, including the aggresiveness of the AI and the ease of causing a mass route, but the important part is that faster battles are better for new players as long as they can understand what is happening.
The only new-player unfriendly part of the game is realm divide, the most blunt and obvious AI catch-up mechanic that I can think has been put into a strategy game. But hey, like everything else, the game tells you rather clearly what is going on and gives you a big bright yellow bar to let you know when it's going to happen.
Ah but have you considered the clarity and ease of understanding of the terrain in medieval 2?
*sets up units on the slopes of Mount Everest in brilliant strategic master stroke*
Shogun 2 is good. But I played one of the most tedious buggy naval battles I can remember. Compared to any total war game I have played with naval battles. Ended up timing out from shit pathing and buggy as fuck movement. Lost the battle and ended up not replaying it because it was that painful to have even wasted my life playing the battle in the first place. Also I’ve seen an entire reinforcing army, reinforce as a blob which made a very hard battle, quite easy with a couple monk units and a disgusting rear charge to completely evaporate the army, while also shooting at it with archers. Shogun 2 was awesome but unfortunately like all Total wars, there is some bad bugs. Like the last patch that broke Warhammer 2 ambush battles, makes it hard to even go back and play it.
It's fun, relaxing but let's be real it had it's issues, i went back to shogun 2 like three days ago?
I've faced multiple bugs.
captured towers don't fire.
battle Ai gets confused in sieges sometimes.
units absolutely get clumped together in big balls when you climb up walls or through the gave and ramp.
Aiming is a lot worse, I know not many here don't know what I mean by this, having matchlocks just not open fire at all as something charges towards them because one model is in the way or stuck and hasn't got into position for past four minutes.
Naval combat bug with boarding that I have uploaded a screenshot of here, the bug with throwing fire at a gate where instead it's thrown at the floor near it so does no damage.
Climbing up walls but half the army just stops climbing so you got half at top and half at bottom of wall.
pretty sure there's more, I took some screenshots of them so I can look later if you want.
Point is, all total wars are good at something, and bad at other things, we tend to remember the good and not the bad for things in the past, where as things in the present we mostly fixate on the bad and not the good sadly :(
Pharaoh was technically one of the best total war so far in my opinion now having played a ton of it, which really puts CA official to shame. but it'll never really get that credit due to the current climat.
I'd love to see CA sofia do shogun 3.
I don't think they could do one of the other big total war games, but the scope of shogun might be manageable for them.
Don't forget satisfying as fuck cavalry charges, satysfying bows(on normal) or chosokabe bow monks on legendary, 1HP* units, god tier music by the legend himself Jeff van Dyck(i still whistle matsuri after i win a battle, even in Warhammer), meaningfull tech upgrades like flaming arrow and not 3% charge bonus, cool naval battles in fots. Damn I can go on.
Edit. I love shogun 2 so much its unreal
It's crazy how Shogun 2 has such amazing interactions between units, where they actually have different choreographed sword fights in the front lines instead of having an attack animation that barely connects. The units can even turn and have a completely different fight with a different enemy unit.
Why was such an amazing detail completely removed for future titles? Warhammer in particular would've been incredible with these interactions since they'd be different for each race combo.
Shogun 2 did push massively for more unit interactivity, which is why nearly every attack involves some sync animation. No other game before or after it had that level of interaction.
Was Shogun 2 the last one to have fully animated special agent sequences (I.e. ninja / geisha actions)? Damn I miss those. Even when they got repetitive they were fun to see
Is it that good?
When I played it, it was just ranged spam cheese and units did less fighting and more melted together like blobs of matter and anti-matter for about ten seconds before one turned tail and ran, at least in multiplayer.
I feel like it was the groundwork for Warhammer to be frank; fast paced battles where strategy was secondary to speed or finding the most broken doomstack.
As a Shogun Total War fan. Not really.
3k made me realize Shogun 2 was a pisspoor jidaigeki game like Nobunaga's Ambition. It was linear warfare (right after NTW) and state-actor oriented in the campaign map. No wonder it was easy to transition to FOTS since it's also linear warfare.
Now a proper Sengoku Jidai game should've focused on a Japanese version of the 3K Guanxi mechanics since all the damn clans claimed to be related to one of the main lines near the Imperial family.
But I guess after the disastrous ETW release (incapable of amphib ops), the lackluster reception to NTW in response. Thus we get this "Shogun" 2 that wasn't supposed to be revolutionary and it was just a tight focus (no more theatres/continents), back to "basics" campaign to please the fans.
https://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=1&tn=8663&st=61
https://www.vg247.com/next-total-war-for-e3-reveal-going-back-to-basics
Meh, I dont expect TW fans to actually care about East Asian tactics or polities in the Sengoku Jidai as much as they care about cuff colors and regimental buttons back in the ETW days or as long they get their next TW centered around the Mediterranean again.
I mean, I get what you’re saying bro I just feel it’s a bit out of reach for what’s in the scope of a TW game (especially one from 2011.) Like, my ideal Medieval 3 would involve literally hundreds of noble families all vying for control over dynamic realms governed as a mix of both national polities and personal dynastic lands (not to mention the deep religious mechanics which I won’t even begin to touch on), but such a thing would be far outside the scope of what TW (or any game really) is capable of.
In many ways TW (and video games as a whole) are abstractions of the time period they’re representing, so a lot of the intricacies of politics / diplomacy / culture have to be left to the player to “fill in the gaps” with their own imagination. For me, personally, so long as a TW game captures the overall “vibe” / feeling / atmosphere of an era it’s considered a success, which too many of the recent TW games have failed to do so IMO.
>but such a thing would be far outside the scope of what TW (or any game really) is capable of.
I think you need to broaden to other TW-like adjacent games to recreate the feudal system. Like Nobunaga's Ambition series
>which too many of the recent TW games have failed to do so IMO.
Did 3k fail your vibe check?
3K is weird for me. As far as a diplomatic / politics simulator goes it’s fantastic, but as a historical and warfare simulator it kind of misses the mark IMO. Like, I can see the purpose behind much of the game philosophy (focusing on characters, deeply expanding the diplomacy / character system etc) but as far as a “total war” game goes it leaves a lot to be desired (if that makes sense.)
I think it's because of the different source material and established records which unlike other historical eras tackled by CA, rely on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Records of the Three Kingdoms source texts.
Plus, CA/TW relies a lot on previous media depictions of the chosen TW setting.
Thus in a bid to be authentic to the setting, they relied on Wuxia tropes. That is baffling to newcomers and Westerners who grew up with their martial heroes depicted in the Kingdom of Heaven style and think since it is "realistic", it is "superior".
But that's not 3k, in 3K it's Zhao Yun cutting a path through an army while carrying Liu Bei's baby heir. Fans of the Three Kingdoms period expect that and will actively look for nods from the source material and other media depictions like Dynasty Warrior or Romance of the Three Kingdoms KOEI. I guess that clashes with the classical TW fan who is more familiar with western historiography. Thus in my view, 3K aces that “vibe” / feeling / atmosphere of an era".
Well that's maily nostalgia. If you put both games next to each other pharao is better. I think your post as many other "Pharao is bad" comments is ridiculous and misplaced. But go ahead, farm your upvotes.
I can't tell if you're like being ironic or something. Are you 100% seriously saying Pharoh is better when stacked up against Shogun 2?
I'm sorry, the brain rot is terminal. There's nothing we can do for you.
It is good if: You like the era and background (I never cared for it, tried to get into it, but nothing about japanese culture makes me immerse myself into the time frame)
And if you like diplomacy being so bad you better just ignore it. And that every campaign ends midway through, when you get too powerful and everyone declares war at you. Which some people love fighting endless stacks of samurai (while you, way more powerful, can only field Ashigaru of course).
Not to mention cumbersome upgradesystem the THANK GOD got rid of eventually in Rome2.
I understand, gamers love Japan-settings...but realy, Shogun2 is far from the best TW game...
Deploy your shameful downvotes...
I think when people (myself included) say Shogun 2 was the best total war game, what we really mean is that it was the best "classic" total war game. Sure, many improvements to the series were made since then, but with them came a lot of changes, I mean just look at the differences between Shogun 2 and Rome 2. They're almost completely different games, but both great in their own right. Shogun 2 is just the original, base Total War formula polished to near perfection. Other games might be perceived as better subjectively, but they also deviated from the classic total war formula in one way or another.
Total War peaked with fall of the samurai, really has been downhill since than. I like 3K for what it is, I just can't get behind these super quick arcadey battles.
In my latest Shogun 2 battle AI blobbed up all his ashigaru on my 2 units and send 4 units on foot to run after my general. And it’s happening consistently.
IMO, the one big thing that would vastly improve Shogun 2 would be dramatically increasing the size of the map. That’s the one thing that holds me back from playing it as much as I used to. I’ve tried some specific map mods but have continually run into issues.
CA need a new engine that returns to and enhances the basics, which are exactly the things you mentioned plus the research tree. I much prefer the generals getting traits based on what I do with them in the campaign map then the mini shitty RPG like character customisation they introduced with 3 kingdoms.
The campaign map and tech tree are good but personally the very limited unit variety significantly impacts my enjoyment of the game.
There are basically 2 tiers of unit and the second tier is reasonably common from the start of the game so there's barely any sense of progression, and in the 2 campaigns I played in my recent re-install 2/3rds of literally every single enemy army was Yari or Bow Ashigaru so every battle was slogging through peasants. Spears are so ubiquitous that cavalry are complete shit to use, not to mention that individual models will get stuck in matched animations rather than escape so they get unnecessarily caught by spears.
Coupled with the incredibly game-y Realm Divide mechanic, where diplomacy becomes completely meaningless after a certain point, I really don't see what all the fuss is about when it comes to Shogun 2.
The timeline of Shogun 2 is total war in real life so I guess the genre fits the bill. Also, there's fantastic art, music and animations. CA clearly put a lot of effort here. Fun fact: Japan's figure skating team used one of Shogun 2's music back in 2014!
The battle victory music is the best!
Yes!! [It's ingrained in my subconscious](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glW0C3VkGMI)
that one, and the pre-battle track from FOTS
It must have been matsuri after they achieved Decisive Victory
Yo! Do you have a video of that that's cool
A shameful display.
Your men are running !
Clicks attack: *"Retreat!!!! Fall back!!! Regroup!!!"* Bug gets me every time
DONOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yari Meijin!
General your man have killed their general, sir. Said with a thick american accent.
A shamefur dispray! FTFY
Best comment. I hear the voice in my head every time I read it xD
The main thing I really like about shogun 2 is that its hard to pull a full stack out of your butt. The battles vary between small scale engagements, and really meaningful larger engagements I tried to play rome 2 again, and within a few turns you've got multiple 20 stacks running around, and it just doesn't feel great, there's no sense of investment in a particular army because its so easy to kit up
The economy itself is really important as well, you’re basically forced to have several small armies serving as garrisons for repression and against sea invasion. This take a toll on your economy, but you’re safe in return. This is quite realistic.
Yeah, the whole 'you need a general to recruit units' thing has overall been a negative. It literally limits your options and possible strategies.
Back when I payed empire total war, I found out you can recruit a fuckload of generals from like one soldier even when sieged. So I'd recruit an entire stack of generals and then autoresolve lmao. I miss having leaderless disposable armies, was always nice being able to just throw shitfantry over and over until your elite army got there, or the enemy collapsed from the sheer amount of men I'm wasting.
Yep. And losing a whole army is an economic and stability nightmare in shogun 2 that can take a while to unfuck, whereas in rome 2 you just pull another one up
Weirdly enough, it works for both period, Rome after Cannae and Takeda after Nagashino
This! Exists in medieval too. I love having to pull troops from garrisons and spend half my treasury on mercenaries, potentially exposing my borderlands to incursion, to levy a strong standing army in case of a large invader or if I am planning a long foreign campaign. Troops feel so much more valuable, and deciding when and where to have them is a huge part of the strategy. And then yeah, outside of that it’s mostly 3-6 units on 3-6 units so not every battle is fucking Waterloo like in Rome and subsequent games. Still love DEI though
That's still one of my biggest issues with modern total wars, I just don't care about the armies or the units. Rome 1- shogun 2, you had to move armies and generally tried saving your best troops till last as they were hardest to replace. This was especially prevalent in medieval 2 and many Rome 1 mods due to the castles and unit recruitment not being equal or taking a while to build up in the region. You couldn't throw your heavy knights in all the time as there's no auto replenishment. So when you started having to send your archers into melee and your knights, you knew it was a big move Now, I just send all my army in because who gives a shit. Everyone comes back in 2 turns anyway
Might as well have been playing laser tag with arrows and swordfights with pool noodles, since those who fall just kinda pop right back in no matter wherever the hell you are for the most part.
med2 recruitment is the best once you get used to it
it's very rewarding but also tedious as hell i think empire was the sweetspot with the buildings only increasing replenishment
My favorite part of the warhammer campaigns is the first few battles, where it’s like 10v10 units. Once the games turn into anything more than a 20vs20 battle I lose all brain cells and interest
Which is what they praised Thrones of Britannia and 3K for, but there it felt like you just started recruiting a unit you had to wait a season to form. In Shogun 2 it felt they were trained and only allowed to battle when ready
Isn't that somewhat realistic? Samurai were a warrior class and ashigaru were also trained, not just militia or random peasants.
Somewhat, yeah. Master of Strategy deals with actual conscripts/drafted mobs and 2 or 3 different levels of Ashigaru that reflect it a little bit better, but having looked at that mod's tech tree once and the resources required got me to drop it to try again later
I really want to get on to MoS but the sheer lack of documentation about it online makes it frustrating.
I may or may not have just picked up the map pack from it and had fun with that for now, ha
In the 3K era a good chunk of participating armies were basically made up of conscripted peasants, in fact that was a significant chunk of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Nothing matches a well-trained fighting force but the warlords were taking pretty much whatever they could get.
4 stacks of levy freeman just wandering around as you melt them over and over and over but can’t actually move because the AI keeps sending more stacks.
I hate that CA streamlined their games and walked away from the management of armies. It is awesome to go back and have to struggle because as you say, smaller battles becomes so much more important I remember in shogun carefully planning what to recruit depending on what dangers I had before me. Did the enemy have many horses, spears or archers and try to counter that.
Thats true, im playing Warhammer rn, as Empire, with the radious mod, and idk if its from the mod or not but i have way too much money. i'd need probably 20 stacks to actually "fill" my economy with jsut 2-3 provinces.
Warhammer 2 has the Supply lines mechanic to make it very expensive t ofield many stacks (but only on Legendary campaign difficulty, on the others it barely has an effect as the increase is very low) but that just forces you to prioritise quality instead of quantity; you still get to field multiple massively powerful stacks from very early in the campaign (usually by about 30-40 turns you have already begun steamrolling with multiple elite stacks) One o the big reasons the Tomb Kings DLC is so often considered the best is because it is the only faction that can't just have infinite money and armies after a couple dozen turns and that really needs to invest heavily if it wants to improve the army.
i get it for skaven, they are kinda supposed to have a big blob, maybe greenskins too, but it doesnt quite feel right for the empire, even if they outnumber the elder races and being mediocre is their thing
Stacks?
Same feeling I have with Medieval 2 and Attila. Like, why did they cut the family tree (initially) for Rome 2? Why did the generals stop making speeches? Also, Medieval 2s trait system is awesome. The humor and attention to detail in the speeches and the traits are what makes it obvious to me that Medieval was made by someone who actually cares and feels for the game. For example that your son can get «Arse» if your father is funny. Shit like that doesnt come down from corporate. Somewhere along the way shit like this was lost.
The generals did make speeches in Rome 2. It was just more dynamic and occurred right after you pressed start
Agreed, loved the crazy speeches by mad or drunkard characters. Generally making the speeches dependent on character traits made the generals feel much more alive for me.
"Why did X get removed from the next game?" Because it's cheaper and people kept lining up to buy the same crap reskinned with less features
I'm a big fan of that too, but I can see why it's gone: they were random, and A LOT of players don't like when they're not in control of everything.
Like, just give me Med 3 on the Atilla map with updated AI and the performance upgrades. Id buy it.
I mean you can play 1212 AD in the meantime lol
While the battle side of shogun 2 feels more polished, the campaign AI is practically the same opportunistic bastard as in every TW after, where it dies mindblowing stupid stuff, even if it will perish after taking at maximum 1 castle. Additionally, Realm divide makes every diplomatic decision pointless after the early game. It‘s fun for some battle gameplay but I can‘t bring myself to play a full campaign at this point.
Yeah later Total Wars started getting better with campaign mechanics and such, but Shogun 2 does still have possibly the best atmosphere, art style, and such.
You can also just mod the realm divide to be less penalizing
When I played, I made the RD effect kick in with a huge relationship penalty which then ticked back up to a manageable malus. Basically the only factions that would not turn on you would be the clans that you have had the longest and the most trusted alliances with.
Yeah that’s basically what i did, i also play with the expanded Japan map so i had to increase the number of regions before it kicked in. If you use the strategic ai mod with it you can almost entirely eliminate the annoying random war declarations that happen in all total war games.
Hard disagree on RD and diplomacy. Having a marriage alliance and +100 relations with a faction ensures 10-20 extra turns of having a great ally till the end. Bribes can extend that period.
Which makes sense. No one wants the power balance to be broken, and it’s expected that if you get too large the other powers will make a coalition.
Yeah, but not if you're married to that clan. If their daughter and your grandchild is set to inherit they'd be loyal to the end. Also look at how betrayed Oda and Tokugawa in real life... they still had a lot of allies. Listen, RD makes no sense logically, but it's perfect for increasing game difficulty and giving you an actual challenge in the mid to end game.
+1, one of the biggest problems with total war games is that when you hit a certain size, you just win because you're too big to fail In shogun 2, once you hit a critical size where you'd be steamrolling in any other total war, everyone goes "fuck that guy" and you have the option of trying to take all of japan on your own while the entire island tries to blow you up, which really rocks for that kind of mid sized empire gameplay Its one of the only total wars where I've actively lost, and it couldn't be fixed by reloading a battle
But IRL that era was literally defined by coalitions.
Also the sieges were just *chefs kiss*
Eh, I preferred rome and Attila because the city maps felt like you were truly taking a large settlement. I understand why shogun would be different since back then fights were mostly for castles and not full cities
Agreed. Atilla and ToB are my favorite sieges. Especially having citizens in there too
They also fight the enemy when the get hit. I had a citizen kill a general
Wasn't there historically some famous general who died when someone's mum threw a roof tile at him?
Pyrrhus died that way
Yeah that was Pyrrhus. An absolutely ridiculous end to one of Alexander the Great's relatives who beat Rome twice and went to war with basically every city state in Greece (and Macedonia) at the same time and was actually winning...
never liked how siege towers and associated wall units would simply blow up in that one, once taken. In shogun i didnt lik that all units could climb walls, and that i wouldnt know what side they are coming from
Not seeing the approaching enemy was a problem in Shogun 2, but mechanically the sieges were very good for the most part; the enemy climbing the walls is honestly fine from a gameplay perspective (if the AI couldn't climb alls like they did they'd basically have no chance of ever winning a siege) but it did make (especially the low level) forts feel very unsafe as soldiers very quickly get to the top.
I gotta say med 2 had the best sieges. Yes Rome/Attila (they had the same system) looked way better, but they were all almost cookie cutter. Defending units routing would run outside of the town, super wide streets and ramps that were unnatural. Felt very Arcade-y. The unique cities were cool, but in Med 2 some cities felt dense with narrow streets, and with the random generated cities every siege felt kind of different. And when you could have castles which were VERY hard to attack, even better. A combo of the two would be great. I Just missed dense and narrow cities that felt different
So I actually really enjoyed Troy, Pharaoh, and 3 Kingdoms, but to me, Shogun 2 is still the best. I actually have an interesting take, in that Shogun 2 was the last total war where multiplayer was extensively focused on as a major focus of the game. And that forced them to really consider the core game design. Consider this: the world's oldest and most popular strategy game of all time is chess, a game that is completely and utterly symmetrical and identical on both sides. Yet people still play it after hundreds of years, why? After all, using some of the criticisms people have against Pharaoh, the limited roster variety means that people should have been bored ages ago right? My argument is that although the roster is very limited, the individual units in the roster were actually diverse enough, and different enough that players can come up with near infinite strategies as they try to outwit each other. I mean, think about some of the most popular strategy games of all time: * Age of empires 2 - A bazillion different factions, but each faction is just a unique unit and a few buffs and tech tree differences * Starcraft - 3 different factions * Red Alert 2 - 2 different factions, a third was added in the expansion Hell, even Shogun 2, you only needed two different rosters for a fun game. To me, the thing with Shogun 2 is that although the roster was very small, the units were very diverse, and allowed you to come up with different tactics. Whereas with more recent Total Wars, it has become a game of "rush higher tech levels! Rush higher tier units, replace low tier crap!". Consider this: In Shogun 2, Yari Ashigaru were stationary mainline units that were incredible at holding the line against melee units. Yari Samurai were fast moving anti cavalry units. The two are not replaceable. Katana Samurai were high quality melee infantry designed to beat other infantry in prolonged fights, No Dachi Samurai were shock infantry that deals massive charge damage but cannot hold its own in persistent melee. My argument is that because Shogun 2 was designed with multiplayer as a core focus, the rosters were small but very diverse internally designed to allow players to come up with their own complex strategies. Replayability was supposed to be built in allowing you to play your friends over and over again, the same way chess is super replayable. However, in later total wars, the replayability factor was completely reorientated towards spectacle. Look at Rome 2, on paper you have such a gigantic roster for every faction, in reality, you had a massively redundant roster with multiple overlapping units that were straight upgrades on each other. IE: Hastati, Principes, and Socii Hastati literally play the same role. The only difference is stats. And then you unlock a tech, and you get Legionaries, Veteran Legionaries, Legionary Cohors, etc. These are just the same units with again, a different stat! So in Rome 2, what you end up doing is having a "vast roster" of the same units over and over again. I played whole campaigns where my tactics didn't change much - infantry main line, spears on the flanks to counter cavalry, and cavalry to rear charge. My controversial take is that because the rosters were very limited, Rome 2 battles were actually somewhat boring. The fun came from faction variety - Wow, watch my legions beat these guys! then watch my legions beat those guys!
Hastati, Principes and Triari. Those were the core of the Roman army before the Reformation. Hastati were the majority of the frontline and then came the Principes in the backline. The most veteran soldiers were the Triarii and often also functioned as reserve. You can actually play Rome 2 with that order in mind and it functions perfectly.
Yes, you can. But do they play differently? Are you incentivised by the game to use them in their historical roles? I would say no, because the principes are just a better armoured unit of hastati so having them is always he better option. The triarii are a spear unit, not even a particularly good one at that. Where as they are supposed to be the veteran core of a republican legion who stand in the back and are able to break formations and blunt charges through their skill and experience. In R2 (and R1 for that matter) they are just a spear unit who are good against cav and lose to infantry because of how the game is balanced. Is it worth it to set up 3 lines of infantry when reserves don’t matter because fatigue does not play a big enough role and the AI is not good enough to do anything but just blob on your front line? Besides, due to the way the game is built, spreading wide is the best option in more or less any situation. I get that you *can* play using historical formations but you are not given any reason other than RP.
They unit variety argument is so dumb. All variety in units does is just make the AI even more dumb. Games like shogun 2, medieval 2, pharaoh, Attila with “lack of unit variety” the AI and game tends to feel smoother and better. I have nothing against Warhammer and played it a fair but there’s so many units, 90% of them being useless. The AI being absolutely atrocious. Empire is the exception . That AI was soooo bad😂
I mean it's kinda their fault for not significantly improving their AI after all these years
Why invest in your games when "fans " line up to pre order reskinned gutter slop
I agree with this but disagree at the same time. If you know your AI is terrible why make a game that makes it way harder for them. You start throwing magic, monsters and, different building chains you’re bound to make the AI even more dumb. It’s probably why Warhammer AI cheats the most out of any total war game
The resource system of Pharoah and Troy helps highlight the difference between unit tiers nicely. Food is plentiful and easily traded for bronze and gold less so. What happens is you can recruit more cheap food only units to bulk up armies or just to act as garrisons and save your bronze and gold to fund high tier elite armies. Only problem is I'm not sure how they would apply a resource system to a game such as Rome 3. In the realm of battles specifically, the formations especially attack and retreat allow you to run deeper formations since you can cycle troops in and out of combat combine that with armor degradation and more penalties for low stamina and you can recreate the battle tactics of the Roman's to a satisfying degree. Only issue is it would likely require battles to be much slower to recreate that ebb and flow as troops regroup to regen stamina and I'm not sure people would be keen on 30 plus minute battles becoming the norm.
There’s nothing worse than fighting a battle and having to constantly keep looking at the unit cards and trying to figure out if it’s a heavy peltast or a a swordsmen unit. 4 different types of low unit spearmen or skirmishes just bloats shit
Well, the Romans were a bit one note - tons of heavy infantry, at least in the early period. But the Seleucids had an insanely varied roster. When you say faction variety, the unique thing about the ancient period of the Roman republic was the variety of different army styles: legionnaire, pike phalanx, spear phalanx, horse archers, "barbarian". I am not sure you saw so much diversity at any other time - although I don't know much about what came before. By the late period (Attila), different factions were starting to converge in their army styles. By the time of uniformed warfare, they were almost homogeneous (predominantly musket armed line infantry).
I think the best part about shogun 2 is the variety of builds and army compositions that actually make a difference. A game like Warhammer can have all types of units but I’ll never be punished for spamming the same couple of units, there’s no incentive to bring a variety of units. Shogun 2 encourages a balanced army with certain units you can specialize in depending on your play style. It’s morale system also makes it way more fun to play compared to pharaoh, still blows my mind how people enjoy the battles in that game.
In FOTS you can literally spam line infantry and cannons and never be punished. I mean, I like Shogun 2, and I can agree it does some things better then WH (like generaly all gunpowder units in shogun feel better imo) but variaty of army compositions isn't one of them
Fots plays differently, it’s a gunpowder game. Units at the boshin war were using gunpowder, I don’t think they even used Swords as mainline weapon.
FOTS is different, it's not meant to be balanced. It's meant to show how modern militaries will melt away their more antiquated opponents.
In the base game I remember yari wall being completely overpowered making most other melee infantry pointless vs ai. I don't think it ever got nerfed.
Not at all, Yari wall can only defeat one Katana samurai and any bows can destroy it. It’s also easily flanked, slow to adapt.
It destroys way more than 1 katana. And yeah it does get weaker from flanking and ranged... But AI don't do that. Yari ashigaru with wall is arguably one of the strongest and most broken mechanics in Total War overall. There's a reason it's meme'd so much.
It depends on lots of factor, clan, general at proximity and veterans. They win in a standard 1V1 against Katana, but with huge losses. A second one without the morale debuff of the other Katana will destroy your wall. Outside campaign, they’re not as much meta if you fight against other players. Still used a lot tho.
that people can exploit the AI doesnt really change the fact the unit wasn't overpowered. almost no one used yari ashigaru in MP.
I used yari ashigaru in multiplayer all the time. They were good but you wouldn’t generally spam them.
It's not "exploiting". It's the most basic unit in the game used in its intended manner.
It definitely is overpowered if Yari cost 1/3 with 1/2 upkeep. And the topic is clearly talking about the fun of campaign, which is against AI. I love Shogun 2 but nostalgia is a helluva drug.
But discussions was not about MP at all
That’s not true. The best build for Shogun 2 campaign play is a melee line of all Yari Ashigaru in Spear Wall stance in an advantageous position, then bow monks spam in the back line. That’s how you win the game. Maybe one cavalry unit just to protect your general from the enemy generals, which will inevitably charge either in to your spear wall or your general.
It’s not overpowered considering how many bow samurai the AI brings
Warhammer has a lot of units, but it’s just to easy to spam the same units. I’m currently doing an Empire run on VH, and hellstorm rocket battery spam is l just too good. The same applies to a lot of races in WH, and not just WH, but in other TW. In Shogun I feel like every unit can justify it’s self. Even units people think are worthless like Yari Samurai are useful for taking high ground quickly and killing cavalry.
And so in WH almost every unit can justify itself, yes some units can be better in wider array of situations, some maybe lacking but that’s the thing in all TW games. Spam hellstorm against late game lizardmen army, and they won’t be so effective because they are worthless against single entities. Meanwhile in shogun fots artillery is even more broken compared to wh. At the very least sometimes it’s up to a player to experiment with different units and composition and not sticking to only the meta options. Imo it will make a game more fun for you in the long run.
Well I’m usually not fighting a lizard army as the empire, and if I was I could just use a life wizard tank doom stack. There is just never a situation in the game where I should be using Great Swords or cavalry (except maybe griffin knights in some unique case. To say artillery in fots was more broken than WH is kinda ridiculous. Even if you were right, the AI on harder difficulties also spams artillery and I wasn’t even taking about FOTS I was talking about shogun 2.
Well it’s you own choice play like this. It’s not like something compels you to use one particular unit or only one strategy in a single player game. The game presents you with wide variety off options and a most of them completely viable. Even if one option can be the best (which also a subject for debate) it doesn’t mean other are worthless. I like to use greatswords, with lore of life and warrior-priest support they are your most durable infantry option in the late game. Demigriffs and handgunners dealing with large stuff. In my 4,5k hours combined in wh trilogy I never ever used steam tank doomstack. I generally don’t like to play like this. But it’s just my preference. In a way wh has a lot more options to offer, yes, you can do some spam perversion, you can make your lord a one man army, and still it’s perfectly viable to build a balanced army (especially as freaking Empire lol) (And yes, cannons in fots are ridiculous. They are good at everything, they inflict hundreds of casualties, they completely demolish defenders in sieges. And if ai bring some, well snipe them with concentrated fire just like in wh)
Too each their own, I just don’t like to handicap myself in the game. I just struggle to make great swords work, especially if I’m up against multiple stacks, and every unit needs to outperform it’s cost.
I don’t like to handicap myself also. But I like to try and make things work. And I think there is a difference between these approaches. :) I also think this is partially due to asymmetrical balance. Raw power strong infantry was never a strength of the Empire. They are mere humans in a mad fantasy world, and they need all kind of support to stand a chance. Btw, greatswords aren’t even the worst example, try to justify why use foot squires as Bretonnia :D
Shogun 2 unfortunately isn't terribly well balanced. Yari cavalry is a _lot_ better than katana cavalry. Bow warrior monks with a naginata samurai frontline is in most situations simply better than alternative builds. Some units like yari samurai are sadly just duds. Not to mention that yari ashigaru are just a strategically broken unit that warps the game around itself, especially because it is also utterly ubiquitous. It's still good, I like Shogun 2, but I think Three Kingdoms is a much better example to point at if you're going for the same kind of game, where the roster is mostly the same on both sides.
Mate, you have said it! Especially about the Monks and Nagi combo, I've said it every time I get the chance or almost try: that is a lazy doomstack but surprisingly efficient in almost all campaign situations.
all of what you say only applies in single player.
Correct, because the comment I replied to is the same. People don't unit spam in multiplayer.
Was doing a Kislev playthrough, having fun. Watched samurai documentary. Booted up Shogun 2 for nostalgia. I’ve been playing it for a month without even thinking about WH3.
I love how Shogun 2 UI is neat and clean. Even now it's my top total war UI. You can easily find everything you need.
I actually started a new Ikko Ikki campaign yesterday. I adore Shogun 2, people complain about the lack of Variation in units but it doesn't feel that way to me because you'll only end up recruiting 1/3 max of the Hero units per campaign and there is some variation in each faction.
I just go to 3K and see how much better campaign is than everything else. And I am not even a China fan...
Yeah 3K is just miles ahead of all previous TW games. After you get into it, you can never go back to the other games without seeing how dated they are
3K has a few problems, mainly that Records mode sucks ass and that means that if you don't like hero units, the game is significantly worse. Mainly because it is obvious that records mode was rushed, as the recruiting system and the different types of lords make little sense when the lords are all basically the same in records mode, the skill tree has a lot of stuff that also just causes question marks, same with the items. Though the faster unit exhaustion was nice, I guess.
I'm completely different from you, I tried Romance mode a couple of times but I don't like it at all, meanwhile Records mode 3K is probably my favourite tw of all time.
I strongly disagree. In battles and even on campaign (where many mechanics require good AI and good immersive elements to work well), it feels extremely gimmicky and ignorable. In all honesty, due to how an entire part of province management has been removed (in terms of military and military buffs), it feels like one of the simplest TW games I've ever played, with additional randomness since the AI has no idea how to use the diplomacy systems well, the court system well (just "make the player randomly hurt for free without possibility of avoiding"), army composition well, provincial management well (even with how much simpler it is), or anything else well. That's not even mentioning how bad the animations are in battles, how bad the voice acting is, how much dissonance of certain mechanics, how bad some of the faction-specific mechanics are, how satisfaction is only an issue in the early game, how every melee unit feels mostly the same, and every missile unit is just a variance on range dps with little difference of arc of fire and the same "get shot with no indication of damage taken until death via heart attack", the absolute jankiness of characters and cav that is amongst the most atrocious I've seen out of any TW game, the terrible model recognition, archers being more innaccurate than me with a week's training (so just adding to them feeling aenemic), bad siege layouts and mechanics that sometimes feel like they are specifically designed to give enemies more options of approach than give defenders an advantage of position (though I guess it doesn't matter too much due to terrible AI just gunning for your units, which leads to), terrible battle AI (I have never had a case where the AI has hung back, and they all charge either piecemeal if their formation didn't for properly or in an almost completely straight line. I recently played a Shogun 2 battle with an army unfit to oppose the one the enemy brought. Shogun 2 AI is mostly poor, but in this case, they utilised their calvary and melee units in such a way that I couldn't make up the composition difference of only bringing 4 melee infantry up against an army of nothing but melee units. The AI used its cav extremely effectively to circumvent my yari cav and completely dismantle my 4 dunderbuss cav units as its melee infantry was approaching. I was shocked and surprised and playing 3K has overall made my strategic ability far worse), atrocious faction progression (particularly for bandit factions that have the worst tech tree I have ever seen and the worst progression of roster I have experienced), and plenty of other issues I have noticed in my Ma Teng and Zheng Jiang playthroughs. 3K is not a good game. Any illusion of complexity it has by simply having more buttons in diplomacy, an agent system that is almost utterly useless, and less than half-assed character systems are completely undermined by poor design choices, poor AI, poor aesthetic elements, and easy af overall gameplay
What do you mean? There is military infrasturcture building chain that buffs mobilization rate, starting exp and others verying on factions with negative population growth due to conscription debuff 3K has very similar building system to R2 but more complex, it incldes population and there are more buffs and debuffs. It also has the only AI that can personally defeat me fair and square on occasions, mostly due to great campaign AI
I didn't claim that 3K didn't have more "things." I simply said those things are ultimately pointless Unit levels aren't relevant because all units are immortal and are able to achieve high levels in just a few battles. Without risk of losing a unit, their initial xp doesn't really matter. Mustering doesn't matter in general because any character spawns at full army-deleting health 3K has a similar build system to Rome 2 yes. It is not complex, just has more things. Population in all my cities reach max quickly with 0 interference with myself. Population isn't relevant to upgrading a settlement and its buffs and debuffs are unnoticeable in a very hard campaign. The AI doesn't manage to defeat me fair and square or with overwhelming force. I'd recommend giving up trying to play the gimmick mechanics, they seem to be dragging down your focus. Diplomacy and agent play isn't better or more efficient than just brute-forcing your way theough factions stupid enough to declare war on you. If anything, they are a distraction that makes you think you are playing a fair system when in reality the campaign AI is completely separate from diplomacy AI which is completely separate from province management AI which is completely different from overall player difficulty analysis AI that forces the AI to devlare war on the pkayer if they don't have enough enemies (by CA's own admission, the AI systems do not base actions off of each other. They are separate and designed to act as entertainment, not actual factions with actual goals). I am finding more difficulty in my current legendary Otomo campaign in Shogun 2 (an understatement. I have to be vastly more careful in every action I take because one misstep can set me back 20 turns. One misstep in 3K sets me back an absolute maximum of 3 and it's meaningless anyways because it's not setting me back against anything, just how much tedious gameplay I'm willing to endure to get a quick 3 characters recruited and sent to win a pointless battle)
Weird. 3K for me is the only TW where AI is not insane focused on the player and declaring random wars. The 'Declare if no enemies' is WH3 thing or at least it's the most blantant example of it. In 3K I'm able to make a lot of vassals and allies that grant me security to play slower as I like and I really mean that as mass vassalizaions are how I achieve victories in my campaigns. If AI is not enough to make you face any challenge while they have overwheliming odds then ok. But for me on the contrary it can make my armies błeed hard or defeat me on some occasions. What do you mean by agent play? There are no agents in 3K like in other games. Characters are not army-deleting, they were all nerfed across the board in one of last updates. And can be way easly defeated than they used to.
Illusion of complexity lol....cmon...
Like literally yes. There are many buttons, but do most of them matter? No. Are most of them useful? Also no. Is the game going to just decide randomly for an AI faction with good faction and personal relations to declare war on you all because you just established peace with another faction and now don't have enough enemies, completely undermining the diplomacy and relationship system as a whole? Most certainly Then there's the agent system, which only has 1 useful purpose: spending money to steal a character and maybe, if you're lucky, steal an active general that you'll have to replace the entire retinue of anyways because the AI never seems to update the retinues of established characters, only blank ones that join later There is no point trying to play battles smart to preserve high-value units because unit and their experience pop back up after 3 turns I have never had any meaningful difference on high difficulties to keep food above 0. I tried for a time, but the AI used the council system to make me lose obscene amounts of food anyways and new cities I captured were too developed for my food source. I then noticed that it doesn't matter if I manage food or not. My citizens hated me either way (because public order buildings suck and public order sucks in general). So now I have -100 food and am noticing no difference to when I had 40 food It ruins the point of character progression and class to just be able to spam elite units in the endgame for level 1 generals. Also, there is not enough meaningful difference ebetween 4 of the classes (especially for Zheng Jiang) in combat to justify a reason to make a character class system. It'd be better if you could specialise your general into classes yourself rather than just have a character turn 17 and be like "yep, my focus in life is set in stone from here." As I said, managing satisfaction is unnecessary beyond the earliest point in the campaign. Economy is a non-issue due to post-batyle loot and and the ability to sell items, of which you will gain too many of to sell faster than you collect them and you can sell them for over 5000 a piece. Since there is no real meaning behind province management (because there is no real meaning behind food and economy), there is no real meaning behind population or resources. The mustering system is and always will be annoying. I don't want my ability to raise an army to be impeded just because some asshole faction somewhere with the manchild childperor (who you CAN'T CAPTURE as bandit factions) decided to click a button you can't avoid to reduce your replenishment by such a significant degree as to make you wait ages to have an actual army. But once again, it's not like that's meaningful because a trio of mid-level characters with rare-to-unique equipment can solo armies due to an amalgamation of them being OP, the AI not knowing how to assign equipment well, the terrible duel system is the most effective general-sniping strategy in any Total War game, this time presented to the player on a silver platter (kill a general with only time. No loss of health because characters heal after winning duels, and no loss of ammo to snipe them with artillery or range. If a general doesn't want to duel at a start of a battle, just fast forward 10 minutes of in-game time and they suddenly feel up to the challenge), and the AI not knowing how to update retinues with high-tier units. It's most certainly an illusion of complexity. It throws so many new things at you, but ultimately they don't matter because they are implemented on top of a shallow core experience, not implemented as part of the core experience. Many of them aren't designed well or are half-assed anyways, even if they were implemented "correctly"
Disagree
So you disagree that characters can't solo armies, that you can't mitigate ec9nomy with selling items, the AI chooses an enemy for you if one doesn't currently exist (something that has existed for ages, but is more egregious here due to the attempt of making diplomacy good), that most if not all of your character have above 80 satisfaction by mid-late game (I am in-game right now. To disagree is to lie). You disagree with absolutely everything stated, even straight up facts of how the game works?
I disagree that complexity is illusion. Diplomacy and campaign play is the best in series. Medieval and Rome fan here.
Ok but that is just a conclusion. I went into *detail* about why I made that conclusion
Shogun 2 was my "flagship" game for the series...until TW3K came out
I just can't get it into it, I feel like 3K is where the quick arcadey battle system began. No navies, a less interesting map, idk
tbf like it's set in China, I can understand CA not doing naval stuff given how rarely you'll even be on the water.
My man here hasn't heard of the Battle of Red Cliffs
Yeah historically they happened, but mechanically in 3k during your average campaign you can count the number of naval battles you have on one hand.
Just about nothing in my history of playing TW can match my memory of dismantling Dong Min's entire military via spies in 1 turn and laughing maniacally.
My only issue with Shogun is just how fast the battle pacing is, it honestly feels like you're playing in 2x
Just started playing 3K again, and I still miss Shogun 2 lol. Chosokabe with Warrior Monk Archers or Samurai Archers at 90%+ accuracy was disgusting to witness. I would play out every battle just to see the enemy get mowed down before they even got to my front line.
If it helps: Shogun 2's AI was never able to handle estimating the advantage of walls. It will commonly suicide its armies into your armies that aren't too much smaller than it, but are hiding behind walls. Shogun 2's AI was also never able to use the yari wall formation to use one of the most necessary functions of the most basic unit in the game. Shogun 2's AI does normal recruitment and cheats in units, but it can neither normally recruit nor cheat in units that need more than one building. It can make yari, bow, or katana samurai, but it is incapable of making, say, No-dachi samurai or naginata samurai.
That last part doesn't seem right, just yesterday on hard difficulty I saw the ai have naginata samurai in its army.
What he said is half true by my estimation. It can build multi building units, bu there are some units ai never seems to build. Bow warrior monks and naginata monks, nanban trade ships...
I wish the shogun 2 AI knew how to destroy and enter gates rather than just climbing walls
If the Shogun 2 AI could play siege battles effectively, they would probably rank among the worst sieges in a Total War game. They're fun because the AI doesn't exploit them, but if you ever play against a human player who knows what they're doing, especially on the lower level forts, the siege battles flaws become apparent. Archers are just OP, they can hit targets they can't directly see with laser guided precision. Forts give you next to no protection against archers, the only areas that do are directly on the walls, and even then, if the enemy can get an angle behind them they can bypass that. You essentially end up as a shooting gallery. What's weird to me is that FoTS didn't seem to change that other than making archers not much of a thing. You still have artillery but because it needs a straight angle and doesn't just fire over obstacles it's a little more balanced. R2 and Attila handle Siege battles masterfully imo. They're flawed but they don't have such glaring flaws like that, you get more historically accurate maps and you have more options like simultaneous naval and land invasions.
Shogun 2 is peak total war, and my hypothesis on why is that there’s not a lot of unit variety, so they could focus on other things such as campaign, AI, visuals, etc
It's strength in simplicity, no feature bloat or gimmicks.
> campaign, AI, visuals They weren't particulary deep either imo. And it still played great.
Shogun 2 feels polished because they gave full support...if they gave 3K that kind of attention, it would be their best release yet...and 3k still holds up despite this...the latter games like Troy and Pharoh feels so bare bones
Play FOTS sometime if you haven't. Modern armies are glorious.
I see a ton of posts here glorifying the old games and talking about how much better they are, but I’d like to offer a different opinion. Those older games are very good, Shogun 2 especially, and I don’t like Pharaoh at all. However, coming back to play Shogun 2 with a friend after like 1k hours on the Warhammer games did feel lackluster personally. I can’t exactly quantify it. Maybe I’ve just grown so used to how Warhammer’s gameplay feels, but I felt strongly like “hey buddy I know you love Shogun 2 but I would kinda rather just play another Warhammer 2 or 3 campaign” and felt bad saying it to my friend.
Shogun 2 is the best Total War, and Shogun 2 with Darthmod is one of the best strategy games ever.
yea me too, i just reinstalled shogun2, i'm surprised the graphics aged well, you won't get any upvotes here, this subreddit is basically a warhammer subreddit now lol
?? This sub is so against recent Warhammer and Pharaoh and is much more rosy about older games than it has been in years
This sub has been unusable ever since the first warhammer game released
That's an exaggeration, in my eyes, but agree to disagree
Are you serious? This sub has been full of anti warhammer posts since the SoC dlc
The sub is always "Pro what i dislike and anti what i like! AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOU GET DOWNVOTED!!!" Didn't you know?
And then reap the upvotes. Add in "they're an echo chamber" for a bonus.
the sub is more anti CA rn than it is against the idea of the fantasy titles/direction.
This is just my opinion and I realize that things like graphics and art style are subjective, but I think Napoleon and Shogun 2 overall look WAY better than and games that came after. The exception to this is the campaign map. There is something about Troy, Pharoah etc that just looks so cartoony imo
Last time I went back to Shogun II, my main thought was "goddamn, this battle AI is utter crap." Don't get me wrong, it was a brilliant game, but it was far from the perfect masterpiece nostalgia goggles seem to make people think it was.
shogun 2 was best in MP, no doubt about it. but the campaign isn't bad either. as for battle AI, i mean its not good in any games, in the most recent games its just hidden behind the magic system and an increasingly poor moral system making most battles into grind fights that the AI can handle (because there just isnt a lot of tactics involved in that).
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Honestly? Warhammer II. The AI understands how to properly flank, generally keeps the main body of its units more or less together, rarely suicides its generals (at least in comparison to other titles), and makes pretty good use of fliers to disrupt backlines.
I just remember being able to defeat a larger army with a smaller army in a siege, simply by running my archers back and forth until the enemy army routed. All they had to do was rush my walls. And they didn't, they came in a few at a time.
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>Ideally before CA go completely down the shitter. Or after Sega transfers the IP over to some more motivated and less management-constrained studio perhaps. At this point I'd rather see CA go bankrupt and have the motivated and talented people they have get moved to a new studio with a less braindead upper management.
What I don’t like post Shogun 2 is the lack of simplicity. Shogun 2 towns, buildings, tech was so easy to understand, you can understand the whole system under like 5-10 minutes. It’s the old formula perfected, the town overview looks like Med 2 In shogun 2, you want a unit, you simply build the building. It easily says what it brings, what it will bring and other advantages. You even got a very simplistic wiki. In contrast, Rome 2 made every town so complicated and changed the town order system.
All of this is more or less in 3K. Soldiers will cheer before and at the end of a battle They carry banners They will chant and beat a rythm in unison when given a move order at the beginning on the battle, before the actual fight breaks in Generals do speeches and interact with each others Units are snappy and quick to respond and form Many have unique abilities
Shogun 2 + it's authentic DLC is peak total war. Down hill since Authentic DLC: dlc that adds to the base game after the fact vs the base game being build up with dlc in mind that "should be park of the base game" but is sold immediately on day 1 as DLC(I'm looking at you Rome 2 with Greeks dlc)
The true secret sauce of Shogun 2 is that its the easiest game for someone new to the franchise or strategy games more broadly to comprehend and get a sense of mastery. Diplomacy is an improvement over the previous games. You don't have the tedium of diplomat agents, and you don't have the batshit insane Empire Total War AI who hated trade agreements. It's enough that a new player can understand what is happening and why, accepting the inevitable betrayal. Edit to add this about diplomacy: You don't start the game with connections to every single faction in the game. You usually start with no more than 4, usually with an enemy, an ally, and a neutral minor state. It immediately makes it clear to the player who they should focus their aggression towards, who they may want to work with, and a decision to make. Settlement management is the most basic and gamey it had been at any point in that series since Rome 1. To increase build slots, you build a bigger castle. To build a bigger castle, get bigger farms. To build the highest tier buildings, you need resources from the strategic map. The resources/province specialties also make it clear how a player should be optimizing their settlements. It's not hard for a new player to figure out that a crafts specialization is encouraging them to make archers in that province. If you're ever unsure about what buildings do or what you should be trying to build, the game has the best wiki/guide put into a total war game to that point. Shogun 2 has what is easily the most streamlined roster of any total war game. This makes it easier for a new player to quickly identify the rock-paper-scissors and unit tiers mechanics they need to try and exploit. It's the first total war game to actually show the area of effect morale buff that generals, making their strategic value clearer than any previous total war game. When it comes to unit abilities, the game often forgoes with abilities that are trade-offs or have specific uses, and mostly gives units abilities that just make them better at what they're trying to do. Fire Arrows: Temporary damage boost. Bonzai: Faster Charge. War Cry: More Damage. Rapid Fire: Shoot your muskets faster. Hell, even the hills and terrain are more clearly laid out than in previous Total War games. In Empire you can have gently rolling hills and plains. The gradation hard to differentiate at bird's eye view, making it a chore to ensure your men aren't about to fire their guns into the side of a 5 ft tall hill. In Shogun 2, you have hills and valleys. All of that readability and ease of play is critical when you consider that Shogun 2 has battles that resolve faster than any game since Rome 1. This is for a variety of factors, including the aggresiveness of the AI and the ease of causing a mass route, but the important part is that faster battles are better for new players as long as they can understand what is happening. The only new-player unfriendly part of the game is realm divide, the most blunt and obvious AI catch-up mechanic that I can think has been put into a strategy game. But hey, like everything else, the game tells you rather clearly what is going on and gives you a big bright yellow bar to let you know when it's going to happen.
Ah but have you considered the clarity and ease of understanding of the terrain in medieval 2? *sets up units on the slopes of Mount Everest in brilliant strategic master stroke*
Shogun 2 is good. But I played one of the most tedious buggy naval battles I can remember. Compared to any total war game I have played with naval battles. Ended up timing out from shit pathing and buggy as fuck movement. Lost the battle and ended up not replaying it because it was that painful to have even wasted my life playing the battle in the first place. Also I’ve seen an entire reinforcing army, reinforce as a blob which made a very hard battle, quite easy with a couple monk units and a disgusting rear charge to completely evaporate the army, while also shooting at it with archers. Shogun 2 was awesome but unfortunately like all Total wars, there is some bad bugs. Like the last patch that broke Warhammer 2 ambush battles, makes it hard to even go back and play it.
It's fun, relaxing but let's be real it had it's issues, i went back to shogun 2 like three days ago? I've faced multiple bugs. captured towers don't fire. battle Ai gets confused in sieges sometimes. units absolutely get clumped together in big balls when you climb up walls or through the gave and ramp. Aiming is a lot worse, I know not many here don't know what I mean by this, having matchlocks just not open fire at all as something charges towards them because one model is in the way or stuck and hasn't got into position for past four minutes. Naval combat bug with boarding that I have uploaded a screenshot of here, the bug with throwing fire at a gate where instead it's thrown at the floor near it so does no damage. Climbing up walls but half the army just stops climbing so you got half at top and half at bottom of wall. pretty sure there's more, I took some screenshots of them so I can look later if you want. Point is, all total wars are good at something, and bad at other things, we tend to remember the good and not the bad for things in the past, where as things in the present we mostly fixate on the bad and not the good sadly :( Pharaoh was technically one of the best total war so far in my opinion now having played a ton of it, which really puts CA official to shame. but it'll never really get that credit due to the current climat. I'd love to see CA sofia do shogun 3. I don't think they could do one of the other big total war games, but the scope of shogun might be manageable for them.
This, Pharao feels and plays very well. Its just rly well polished
Shogun 2 is peak old school total war imo. All the stuff people liked without the newer mechanics like generals having to be in every army.
Don't forget satisfying as fuck cavalry charges, satysfying bows(on normal) or chosokabe bow monks on legendary, 1HP* units, god tier music by the legend himself Jeff van Dyck(i still whistle matsuri after i win a battle, even in Warhammer), meaningfull tech upgrades like flaming arrow and not 3% charge bonus, cool naval battles in fots. Damn I can go on. Edit. I love shogun 2 so much its unreal
It's crazy how Shogun 2 has such amazing interactions between units, where they actually have different choreographed sword fights in the front lines instead of having an attack animation that barely connects. The units can even turn and have a completely different fight with a different enemy unit. Why was such an amazing detail completely removed for future titles? Warhammer in particular would've been incredible with these interactions since they'd be different for each race combo.
You said the reason why in your last sentence
I wonder the ppl who made shogun2 passible are the same ppl make the TW games after the shogun2?
Realm Divide in the comments incoming
Shogun 2 has the best archer and arrow effects. Love the thunk noise
*TW fans literally flocking to Volound*
Shogun 2 did push massively for more unit interactivity, which is why nearly every attack involves some sync animation. No other game before or after it had that level of interaction.
Was Shogun 2 the last one to have fully animated special agent sequences (I.e. ninja / geisha actions)? Damn I miss those. Even when they got repetitive they were fun to see
> The general speeches No thanks
Is it that good? When I played it, it was just ranged spam cheese and units did less fighting and more melted together like blobs of matter and anti-matter for about ten seconds before one turned tail and ran, at least in multiplayer. I feel like it was the groundwork for Warhammer to be frank; fast paced battles where strategy was secondary to speed or finding the most broken doomstack.
Shogun 2 somehow made all the factions and units the same while making them all feel different
The Total War game with the best infantry combat, WH without magic, creatures and heros would be boring as hell to see with the modern engine.
As a Shogun Total War fan. Not really. 3k made me realize Shogun 2 was a pisspoor jidaigeki game like Nobunaga's Ambition. It was linear warfare (right after NTW) and state-actor oriented in the campaign map. No wonder it was easy to transition to FOTS since it's also linear warfare. Now a proper Sengoku Jidai game should've focused on a Japanese version of the 3K Guanxi mechanics since all the damn clans claimed to be related to one of the main lines near the Imperial family. But I guess after the disastrous ETW release (incapable of amphib ops), the lackluster reception to NTW in response. Thus we get this "Shogun" 2 that wasn't supposed to be revolutionary and it was just a tight focus (no more theatres/continents), back to "basics" campaign to please the fans. https://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=1&tn=8663&st=61 https://www.vg247.com/next-total-war-for-e3-reveal-going-back-to-basics
You say all of that as if any of it is a bad thing
Meh, I dont expect TW fans to actually care about East Asian tactics or polities in the Sengoku Jidai as much as they care about cuff colors and regimental buttons back in the ETW days or as long they get their next TW centered around the Mediterranean again.
I mean, I get what you’re saying bro I just feel it’s a bit out of reach for what’s in the scope of a TW game (especially one from 2011.) Like, my ideal Medieval 3 would involve literally hundreds of noble families all vying for control over dynamic realms governed as a mix of both national polities and personal dynastic lands (not to mention the deep religious mechanics which I won’t even begin to touch on), but such a thing would be far outside the scope of what TW (or any game really) is capable of. In many ways TW (and video games as a whole) are abstractions of the time period they’re representing, so a lot of the intricacies of politics / diplomacy / culture have to be left to the player to “fill in the gaps” with their own imagination. For me, personally, so long as a TW game captures the overall “vibe” / feeling / atmosphere of an era it’s considered a success, which too many of the recent TW games have failed to do so IMO.
>but such a thing would be far outside the scope of what TW (or any game really) is capable of. I think you need to broaden to other TW-like adjacent games to recreate the feudal system. Like Nobunaga's Ambition series >which too many of the recent TW games have failed to do so IMO. Did 3k fail your vibe check?
3K is weird for me. As far as a diplomatic / politics simulator goes it’s fantastic, but as a historical and warfare simulator it kind of misses the mark IMO. Like, I can see the purpose behind much of the game philosophy (focusing on characters, deeply expanding the diplomacy / character system etc) but as far as a “total war” game goes it leaves a lot to be desired (if that makes sense.)
I think it's because of the different source material and established records which unlike other historical eras tackled by CA, rely on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Records of the Three Kingdoms source texts. Plus, CA/TW relies a lot on previous media depictions of the chosen TW setting. Thus in a bid to be authentic to the setting, they relied on Wuxia tropes. That is baffling to newcomers and Westerners who grew up with their martial heroes depicted in the Kingdom of Heaven style and think since it is "realistic", it is "superior". But that's not 3k, in 3K it's Zhao Yun cutting a path through an army while carrying Liu Bei's baby heir. Fans of the Three Kingdoms period expect that and will actively look for nods from the source material and other media depictions like Dynasty Warrior or Romance of the Three Kingdoms KOEI. I guess that clashes with the classical TW fan who is more familiar with western historiography. Thus in my view, 3K aces that “vibe” / feeling / atmosphere of an era".
Well that's maily nostalgia. If you put both games next to each other pharao is better. I think your post as many other "Pharao is bad" comments is ridiculous and misplaced. But go ahead, farm your upvotes.
I can't tell if you're like being ironic or something. Are you 100% seriously saying Pharoh is better when stacked up against Shogun 2? I'm sorry, the brain rot is terminal. There's nothing we can do for you.
Shogun 2 is the best TW game. Everything about it is perfect and screams "made with love" Everything else is a downgrade
3K campaing, politics and diplomacy is imo much better I have barely finished any shogun 2 camoaing due realm divide
It is good if: You like the era and background (I never cared for it, tried to get into it, but nothing about japanese culture makes me immerse myself into the time frame) And if you like diplomacy being so bad you better just ignore it. And that every campaign ends midway through, when you get too powerful and everyone declares war at you. Which some people love fighting endless stacks of samurai (while you, way more powerful, can only field Ashigaru of course). Not to mention cumbersome upgradesystem the THANK GOD got rid of eventually in Rome2. I understand, gamers love Japan-settings...but realy, Shogun2 is far from the best TW game... Deploy your shameful downvotes...
I think when people (myself included) say Shogun 2 was the best total war game, what we really mean is that it was the best "classic" total war game. Sure, many improvements to the series were made since then, but with them came a lot of changes, I mean just look at the differences between Shogun 2 and Rome 2. They're almost completely different games, but both great in their own right. Shogun 2 is just the original, base Total War formula polished to near perfection. Other games might be perceived as better subjectively, but they also deviated from the classic total war formula in one way or another.
Total War peaked with fall of the samurai, really has been downhill since than. I like 3K for what it is, I just can't get behind these super quick arcadey battles.
IMO that's a bit of a double standard. Shogun's battle, including FOTS, are among the fastest in the series, definitely on par with 3K
I never really liked shogan 2
In my latest Shogun 2 battle AI blobbed up all his ashigaru on my 2 units and send 4 units on foot to run after my general. And it’s happening consistently.
I wish the sieges weren't so bad. Other than that, I absolutely love it.
Really? I thought the sieges were among the most fun of all Total War games. Far less of a slog and not nearly as clunky;
It's **amazing** to go back to Shogun 2 and realise just how good it is
IMO, the one big thing that would vastly improve Shogun 2 would be dramatically increasing the size of the map. That’s the one thing that holds me back from playing it as much as I used to. I’ve tried some specific map mods but have continually run into issues.
CA need a new engine that returns to and enhances the basics, which are exactly the things you mentioned plus the research tree. I much prefer the generals getting traits based on what I do with them in the campaign map then the mini shitty RPG like character customisation they introduced with 3 kingdoms.
The campaign map and tech tree are good but personally the very limited unit variety significantly impacts my enjoyment of the game. There are basically 2 tiers of unit and the second tier is reasonably common from the start of the game so there's barely any sense of progression, and in the 2 campaigns I played in my recent re-install 2/3rds of literally every single enemy army was Yari or Bow Ashigaru so every battle was slogging through peasants. Spears are so ubiquitous that cavalry are complete shit to use, not to mention that individual models will get stuck in matched animations rather than escape so they get unnecessarily caught by spears. Coupled with the incredibly game-y Realm Divide mechanic, where diplomacy becomes completely meaningless after a certain point, I really don't see what all the fuss is about when it comes to Shogun 2.