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Glazius posted:So where would you have put the garrison ashi to be blockers? I know there'd be one in the gap in the lower concourse, but where would the bows go? Garrison bow ashi should go in the central Tenshu area, as the AI loves to have one or two units climb those walls to try to ambush you and steal the cap point, but the walls are so steep that with even a bow ashi unit up top firing down they won't be able to dislodge the bows. If the AI doesn't attack up those walls (like happened this time), then it's easy to have them in a position that is effective against either lower concourse. You get a fair bit of time to get into position with that fortress design, so you can afford to reposition. If you only had a single bow unit though, I would recommend deploying them halfway between the tenshu and the gate area so that you can run them where they are needed. Jade Star posted:Do you not put yari ashigaru in spear wall formation? It's really amazing how much more powerful yari ashi get if you can stick them in spear wall and let them stand their ground vs an enemy. And that would have been a perfect place and time for it. Spear Wall certainly changes the function of Yari Ashigaru with the -2 melee attack and +2 melee defence stat change in addition to getting more spears on point at the expense of having basically zero flank handling capacity and having tightly clustered troops. With low rank ashigaru it doesn't make them better so much as longer lasting, since the melee attack is actually worth more with respect to killing than the melee defence is with respect to surviving, so they lose overall combat capacity on an individual basis but with more attacks on point they regain some, but not all, of that. The end result is that they kill slower and die slower but it tends to not change the outcome (It's great for eating charges though). The problem is that I wasn't going for a grind fight, I wanted the accelerated casualties on the weaker flank to be responsible for a rout, as well as the fact that I am firing arrows into the melee which has significantly higher friendly casualties when you are fighting in spear wall formation, somewhat unsurprisingly. Of course, high level/blacksmith enhanced Yari Ashigaru *do* get better in spear wall, as the melee attack malus doesn't reduce the killing effectiveness against their enemies as much as the more spears in melee boosts it, which can be quite a nasty surprise for the unwary in multi-player. At what point that crossover is depends entirely on the unit that the yari ashigaru is fighting though, as their defence can change the maths considerably. Basically, Spear Wall works best when you need a flank to hold while you win the fight elsewhere, which wasn't the case here.
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Jan 9, 2015 12:49
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That's uh, a really different depiction of the usefulness of Ashigaru in spear wall than I've ever seen in my experience. I have had Yari Ahsigaru garrisons in spear wall hold off and win against Yari Samurai. Any time I can fight on the defensive and I don't need to worry about mobility then Yari Ashi should be in spearwall because it ups their stopping and killing power dramatically. It turns what might be an even fight or a grind into a fight my side will win.
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Jan 9, 2015 14:22
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Theres only one way to solve this..... FIGHT!
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Jan 9, 2015 14:46
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From watching spear-walled yari in action on the walls, I think the superior reach of their spears effectively gives them free hits as the enemy engages. If they were taking a proper charge from something like a katana samurai unit, this wouldn't amount to much. If you place the spears right up next to the walls, though, units climbing up will take a lot of hits as they reform at the top of the wall, and so get murdered piecemeal.
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Jan 9, 2015 15:17
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Jade Star posted:That's uh, a really different depiction of the usefulness of Ashigaru in spear wall than I've ever seen in my experience. I have had Yari Ahsigaru garrisons in spear wall hold off and win against Yari Samurai. Any time I can fight on the defensive and I don't need to worry about mobility then Yari Ashi should be in spearwall because it ups their stopping and killing power dramatically. It turns what might be an even fight or a grind into a fight my side will win. Fair enough. My experience in Shogun 2 comes primarily from competitive multi-player, where spear wall can and should only be used for pinning purposes and works as I described. Wherever there are gaps and the possibility of being flanked, I don't use spear wall because it's a rookie play that gets punished incredibly hard. Against the AI that obviously won't happen, as it tends to throw their units head-first into whatever line you have set up and won't even offset their troops to catch your line with an envelopment. Spear wall also covers much less frontage than a unit stretched to 2 deep, so you need to factor that in too. I might make a video about it if I have time, who knows, we might all learn something. Besides, such discussion about the game is good for everyone else who might still be learning. It does everyone well to be exposed to differing play-styles.
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Jan 9, 2015 18:31
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On castle defense, I've always liked putting my Ashigaru into a spear wall and then walking them up to the walls where enemy soldiers are climbing. I'm not sure if it's the best tactic, but nothing says 'welcome rear end in a top hat' like having the guy who just climbed your wall jumping straight into 50 spears 
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Jan 9, 2015 19:01
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shalcar posted:Fair enough. My experience in Shogun 2 comes primarily from competitive multi-player, where spear wall can and should only be used for pinning purposes and works as I described. Wherever there are gaps and the possibility of being flanked, I don't use spear wall because it's a rookie play that gets punished incredibly hard. Against the AI that obviously won't happen, as it tends to throw their units head-first into whatever line you have set up and won't even offset their troops to catch your line with an envelopment. Spear wall also covers much less frontage than a unit stretched to 2 deep, so you need to factor that in too. Is there a lesson to be given on unit depth? I've always wondered about things like: if you have two units to fill an opening (say, between buildings or something) that's like 1.5 units wide, are you better off widening the units and putting them in a column, or squishing them to fit side-by-side?
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Jan 9, 2015 19:16
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dupersaurus posted:Is there a lesson to be given on unit depth? I've always wondered about things like: if you have two units to fill an opening (say, between buildings or something) that's like 1.5 units wide, are you better off widening the units and putting them in a column, or squishing them to fit side-by-side? I'd think you'd be better off squishing them. When the first line gets slaughtered and flees, it'll just go inflict a morale malus on the unit behind it, whereas if you had two units in the initial formation they'd both be sharing casualties and morale damage evenly and so hold together longer. At least in this specific situation. In more open situations reserves might be useful, to exploit gaps in their lines and hit them in the flanks/rear when their forces are committed, or where you don't know which parts of your lines might fall apart first and need a fire-fighting force. But the Total War system seems to penalise withdrawing troops from melees, so you can't really do the thing of cycling troops in to the front lines to let them rest. At least, not in my experience.
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Jan 9, 2015 19:59
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If it works similar to the way it worked in RTW, you're better off placing them one behind the other. The first line will exhaust the enemy, and the second will face them fresh. And the first line might even have a chance to rally and recover later on.
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Jan 9, 2015 20:04
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It very much depends on the situation. If your line is too thin, then enemy units may break through a portion of it and start attacking from behind as well as the front, which gives huge morale penalties to your units due to flanking and will probably set off a chain rout. If your line is too thick, then at worst you risk a rout due to your frontline troops being locally outnumbered, and at best you're letting an enemy you could simply envelop and destroy slowly grind through more of your units, even if the result is still a victory on your end. Troop quality is also a factor: samurai or monks can spread out in a longer, thinner line against ashi because the ashi have a more difficult time punching through. Of course, the kicker is that you usually want to avoid straight up line battles all together. Generally in S2, you don't want to throw blocks of troops into blocks of troops Roman legion style. If you watched the old tournament videos for shalcar's RoTS LP, you'll see me try to do this in my early matches, get punished hard for it, and then start adapting after that. S2 is a lot more about grinding down morale vs grinding down troop count. Baiting a larger force into a small head-on engagement that looks to be in their advantage, bringing in additional troops from the sides to hem the attacking force in, and sending in cav from behind for a morale shock to cause a chain rout will result in much better results then simply throwing all those troops at the enemy in a big line battle, even if you're numerically superior. That said if you have to have a big old line battle to decide the match, standard line tactics apply. You generally want your lines to be as thick as possible without risking envelopment unless, due to having greater numbers or troop quality, you can thin your line enough to envelop the opponent without risk of your line collapsing. And unless you run a solid risk of having the center collapse due to some huge gap in quality/numbers, units are better off on the flanks applying additional pressure than they are sitting behind engaged troops as a second line.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:12
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Tomn posted:It's definitely something of a small slice of hell, but FotS actually has a bit of a "hidden bonus" to the attackers - namely, the fact that kneel fire works for units outside walls while units on walls can't take advantage of that. Throw in the improved power and accuracy of rifles that make a mock of the shielding of the walls, and a rifle unit with kneel fire can sweep an equivalent unit from the walls fairly easily if they just stand and trade fire.
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Jan 9, 2015 23:31
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my dad posted:If it works similar to the way it worked in RTW, you're better off placing them one behind the other. The first line will exhaust the enemy, and the second will face them fresh. And the first line might even have a chance to rally and recover later on. It doesn't!  Sydin has covered it pretty well, but as a rule what you want to do will depend entirely on the situation. If you can catch the enemy with a single unit, then you should do so only if you can then use your second unit to flank. If you can't because it's a chokepoint or some other defensive requirement prevents it, you should have both units side by side. The reason for this is that it will split the casualties between the units which means their morale will be higher thanks to lesser casualties and locally superior numbers and enemy morale will be lower due to being outnumbered. If you instead leave it to one unit, while you will get a morale bonus for having secure flanks, the enemy won't get a morale penalty for being outnumbered and when the second unit needs to be committed they will have a large morale penalty from having fleeing allies, which also results in an enemy morale boost. Basically, units should either be pinning, flanking or countering an enemy flank. Having a unit in reserve is a good idea, but only in the context of floating reinforcements where you can commit additional troops when a front gets strained because you were waiting for the enemy to commit or you know one of the flanks is going to go but not which one. If you know for sure that you are going to need that unit there, then side by side is the way to go.
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Jan 10, 2015 13:25
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For those of you who have not seen the Grand Goon Tournament from the last LP, here are two examples of how deep Rome blocks just don't work in Shogun 2. Sydin vs Yukitsu Round 2 Fight 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48IgXZNK2wE Sydin vs Yukitsu Round 2 Fight 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSl22TmHKek Here is the whole tournament for anyone who wants to see some great multi-player Shogun 2 :https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSZySj-gXW0_9FE_JDekkZoxqWartg0ix
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Jan 10, 2015 13:42
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shalcar posted:It doesn't! You were always better off isolating, flanking, and routing the enemy in RTW, too (unless you were fighting in the town square). I thought the question was specifically about a tight space grindfest where you can't do any of these.  But since I've never played Shogun, I'll take your word for it. And anyway, it's not worth a derail.
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Jan 10, 2015 14:32
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my dad posted:You were always better off isolating, flanking, and routing the enemy in RTW, too (unless you were fighting in the town square). I thought the question was specifically about a tight space grindfest where you can't do any of these. Nah, it's cool, I didn't mean to imply that those things didn't work in Rome. Given that the question was dupersaurus posted:I've always wondered about things like: if you have two units to fill an opening (say, between buildings or something) that's like 1.5 units wide, are you better off widening the units and putting them in a column, or squishing them to fit side-by-side? the answer is that it's better to squish them to fit side by side than to go column for the reasons I mentioned. A lot of what I was talking about was really just to specify that it's really only that specific situation that it's the right answer.
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Jan 10, 2015 14:44
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You know, I just realised that while I show the campaign intros, I've not actually shown the introduction movie to the game. I'll capture it and throw it here for anyone who wants to watch it, as well as throw it in the OP. It's really very well done and I can't believe I forgot about it all this time. Next update is coming along nicely, but I'm torn between showing the fury of Yasunaga ready to be unleashed in the next update or if I should show the unstoppable blitz of Taketoshi, since the update isn't big enough for both...
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Jan 13, 2015 16:18
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shalcar posted:You know, I just realised that while I show the campaign intros, I've not actually shown the introduction movie to the game. Taketoshi has had plenty of chances to shine. If we have a say, I vote for seeing what Our Glorious Leader can do when riled up.
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Jan 13, 2015 16:23
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shalcar posted:Next update is coming along nicely, but I'm torn between showing the fury of Yasunaga ready to be unleashed in the next update or if I should show the unstoppable blitz of Taketoshi, since the update isn't big enough for both... I'd be interested in seeing either, if this LP is still going.
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Feb 21, 2015 00:00
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Cythereal posted:I'd be interested in seeing either, if this LP is still going. Eh, it's not the first time Shalcar has had a long delay, but I look forward to new updates greatly as well. I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.
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Feb 21, 2015 00:21
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Ho-lee crap, is this thread is still going? I've had TW:Shogun 2 forever, but recently got on a kick and found your Rise LP on the LP archive months ago. I enjoyed it so much, you got me to join SA. Great, great job Shalcar. TW:S2's been around so long, I always assumed this thread must have concluded long before I ever got here,. If it's still running, I have about a billion questions/comments. In no particular order:
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Mar 3, 2015 19:10
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Now seems as good a time as any to apologise for the long delay. Life got pretty E/N for a bit there. Funnily enough, I joined SA to read Spirit Armour's LP, so I guess you could just say I'm emulating him  Time to see if I can't get everything back on track! Abnaxis posted:Ho-lee crap, is this thread is still going? Sure is. Abnaxis posted:What makes fixed siege weapons "boring as hell to watch"? I've never played multiplayer, but it seems like fixed siege presents an interesting dilemma--they cost mucho-koku, but I would think they enable you to wipe a control point off the map, and are worthless for anything else. So you sacrifice army strength for more control over the battlefield, right? Siege weapons tend to not have enough ammunition in vanilla Shogun 2 to do serious damage to enemy forces, especially with their lack of accuracy. They are accurate enough to hit walls and gates or towers and make short work of those, but you can achieve much the same net result with just having more units to swarm over walls and capture gates. The movement speed penalty on the armies is a real killer as well. Abnaxis posted:Speaking of multiplayer, the reason I don't play multiplayer is because I absolutely suck at this game if I can't pause. Judging from your live replays, you don't even pause in single player, and I have no idea how you manage to keep units in formation without stopping time and saying "no, don't move in a blob, keep ranks dumbasses". Any battle I play without judicious pausing always ends in bedlam. I don't pause in single player, mainly because you can't pause in multiplayer and some things just become a habit. It's just practise. Abnaxis posted:I just took Kyoto for my first time (I usually get bored before Realm Divide), and my crafts-province-upgraded canons were handy. By the time I actually marched on the Citadel, they had no archery towers, no samurai archers (they routed when I blew up the wall they were standing on) and no gates. After I wiped out their melee infantry with my superior ranged advantage (six bow ashi) I basically just steamrolled them with an all-ashi army (playing as Oda) Crafts upgraded ranged weapons are completely ludicrous in the most fun ways and Oda ashi are flat out incredible. Abnaxis posted:Every time you let the army standing right next to a city reinforce instead of attacking with a night battle, I flinch. Something I've found works wonders when an army is well inside the influence radius of the castle, is that keeping them from reinforcing (through sabotage/night attack) greatly reduces my losses. This is because the army becomes immobilized once you take the fortifications (since they're now inside your radius) and they will fling themselves at your newly-taken walls since they have no other choice. The only downside is that you have to end your turn in the town. I could night battle every reinforcement fight, you are right. After all, it's one of the key advantages of being Hattori! On the other hand, it's not like I can't handily wipe both armies off the map at the same time and that way we get one more interesting fight instead of 2 rather dull ones. Even if that does mean we are getting half the general experience! Abnaxis posted:In all my games, I have never stayed Shinto. Caravels are too irresistible. Missionaries make play interesting even as you're turtling up before you launch realm divide, you can incite revolts build a buffer of rebel owned provinces to protect your borders. You certainly can, but I personally don't find a rebel filled Japan all that interesting to play against. Abnaxis posted:A little quirk I found by accident--if you don't want the AI to take a province, put some of your own troops in a position to reinforce on an attack. I was marching my army to take a province and juuust barely couldn't make it, so my ally went around me and attacked it. I stood there and watched them ineffectively throw their quality units in the garbage, then withdrew so I could attack the now-weakened garrison next turn. The computer makes its decisions on whether to attack based on the auto-resolve odds, which hilariously underestimate the power of fortifications. Fair enough. It does undervalue fortifications in the actual battle, since it uses the autoresolve numbers to calculate relative strengths. Abnaxis posted:if you put a province neighboring your vassal under rebel control, they will expand to it. That's what inadvertently kicked me into RD, much to my chagrin. Vassals are just like any other clan and will expand wherever possible. While you control who your vassals go to war with, since everyone is always at war with rebels then they can take it without issue. Abnaxis posted:I haven't gotten numbers to back this up, but judging from the damage they cause rebels always loot the province if they win. I think this might permanently lower province value? Looting a province consumes a large portion of the Town Wealth (the portion of the town value that comes from and is added to by growth) and gives you money proportional to the amount of town wealth consumed. In effect the province value is lowered, although you can never drop below the value of the buildings present. This is why looting a province with a Gold Mine can net you far less money (Since the wealth from growth can be quite small even if the province value is quite large) compared with looting a province with ports and markets, even if the gold mine province is worth more. Abnaxis posted:It seems like you get way more vassal opportunities by putting a province under rebel control before you take it. If the province used to belong on of those little 1-province clans, it treats defeating the rebels like taking the last province of a clan, whereas if the province is part of a gigantic blob it doesn't This isn't true. If you take the home province of a faction that has been eliminated (or is eliminated by this attack) then you can create them as a vassal. Who owned the province originally doesn't matter. Abnaxis posted:It's been a three years since RD, and I still haven't been attacked yet. The worst that has happened is a couple metsuke stirring trouble. Maybe my vassal/rebel buffer is paying dividends? If you don't have land access then the AI will attempt to come by sea. If you don't have coastal provinces or the AI doesn't have access to ports then they will wait until they can reach you before they will attack. Abnaxis posted:You always bring significantly fewer archers with you than I would think. You had way more archer-heavy armies in your Rise LP, when the archers themselves seemed way worse accuracy and reload-time wise. My armies are usually at least 35-40% ranged, but you never seem to have more than 20%. Archers were worse in Rise but proportionally stronger, especially Levy. Given that we went archer heavy in Rise, I wanted to show off a more infantry heavy style of game. Abnaxis posted:Something I've found, is that the game plays significantly differently if you change the unit size in your settings. On Ultra, I can hold an entire wall with one ashi unit, whereas with default they wouldn't quite stretch. I haven't played with the lower settings (I like big epic army battles), but I'm willing to be that game is significantly different on the lowest settings. It doesn't change the balance as much as you would think. It takes more units to man the walls, but the enemy units also come up the walls less widely as well. On the lowest settings archers are somewhat more powerful, but that's really only noticeable from the largest scale to the smallest and even then it's not going to change how anyone plays.
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Mar 4, 2015 12:32
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Out of curiosity, what happened to the multiplayer tournament thingie?
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Mar 4, 2015 17:07
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shalcar posted:Vassals are just like any other clan and will expand wherever possible. While you control who your vassals go to war with, since everyone is always at war with rebels then they can take it without issue. Most of the time my vassals ignore neighboring rebel provinces that I set up for them to expand into. Instead they opt to sail halfway across the map to attack a richer province and promptly get their asses beat. *sigh* I just want to get my Mori vassals to be a bit beefier so they can protect my trade lanes.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:17
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Olesh posted:Generally speaking in FotS, if you're trying to clear riflemen off of walls the easiest way is to have a couple units of Sharpshooters (or Tosa Riflemen, if you want a good laugh) and just let them sit right outside gun range and deplete the defenders. Just spread thinly parallel to the wall and watch the numbers go down. Combined with the attacker's ability to effectively use artillery (Parrott and Armstrong guns can't generally shoot out of the fort), there's really very little reason you should lose even a moderately disadvantageous assault in the late game. I'm going to second Olesh's point here. Armstrong and Parrot guns are horrifying death machines that will obliterate enemy troops unless they can find some sort of way to hide in the shadow of a terrain feature. The best thing to do against enemy artillery is to try to take them out as quickly as you can. Bad news: A fortress is pretty much the exact opposite of what it needs to be to make this work. This is why the traditional castle-style fortresses were largely abandoned in Europe in favour of star forts once artillery became popular.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:07
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Alzion posted:Most of the time my vassals ignore neighboring rebel provinces that I set up for them to expand into. Instead they opt to sail halfway across the map to attack a richer province and promptly get their asses beat. *sigh* I just want to get my Mori vassals to be a bit beefier so they can protect my trade lanes. Yeah, once the AI has decided on an enemy it won't change its target until after at least one attack has failed. If it takes it 20 turns to actually get to that target then whelp. You can generally only avoid this by making the rebel province before you make the vassal. It's tricky and probably not worth the hassle. As for the multi player tournament, I quietly shelved it until I have time to do both it and the main updates. It's simply too much work to do both at the moment and I'll likely reboot it after we finish the main LP. Sorry about that.
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Mar 5, 2015 01:37
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