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Cryptozoology
Jul 12, 2010
Is there any way for me to play Napoleon: Total War without specific campaign goals, like it was a game of Civ? Where I just start in a country and try to kick everyone else out of Europe?

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SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

white quilt posted:

Is there any way for me to play Napoleon: Total War without specific campaign goals, like it was a game of Civ? Where I just start in a country and try to kick everyone else out of Europe?

A Domination campaign is essentially 'just take over 50 provinces to win'.

Xenoborg
Mar 10, 2007

That, and even after you 'win' by getting 50 you can just keep playing.

Rabhadh
Aug 26, 2007
One of the reasons I never played Napoleon as much as the other games was I want to build my own empire, not have one handed to me like "here, fight amongst yourselves."

Agean90
Jun 28, 2008


Rabhadh posted:

One of the reasons I never played Napoleon as much as the other games was I want to build my own empire, not have one handed to me like "here, fight amongst yourselves."

Yes, Im not the only one! Starting out with more than 2 or 3 territories always confuses me on what to do next for some reason.

Also, FOTS has the best sieges because you can just level the whole fort with armstrong guns and bombardment fire. :getin:

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands
On the subject of Shogun 2's naval battles, I actually had some fun with them. Admittedly, they weren't terribly complex, but once you get the basic ideas down I remember it being possible to win fairly handily against any even force, and it's a thrill to more or less gain a second fleet after a major battle.

It's been a long time since I last played Shogun 2 and patches might have changed things (and my memory might be going fuzzy), but here's the basics to winning naval battles in Shogun 2.

For your average fleet, you only really need two basic unit types: The medium bune and the bow kobaya. The bunes should make up the main battle line of the fleet, with their primary purpose being to slug it out with other bunes, while your kobayas should function as "flankers" - you should have 2-4 of them in a full fleet. Most other ship is some kind of variation on the theme of "heavy battleship" and "light escort" and can fit into the basic compositions and tactics described here.

When in actual battle, you'll usually want to keep your bunes in line formation as you square up against the enemy. The idea is pretty simple - match up each bune against an opposing bune (or equivalent) and charge in to board. Hopefully you'll have more bunes than the enemy, in which case you want to use the spares to hang around other skirmishes, chucking arrows into the enemy bunes until they surrender. If the enemy has more bunes, you'll want to try and maneuver the initial clash so that the enemy excess is blocked by skirmishes and unable to properly concentrate their forces in time to make a difference. This is the easy bit which most of you have already figured out.

The battle-winning bit is what you do with your kobayas, however. If possible, you'll want to use them early on to bushwhack and knock out the enemy escorts - if this isn't possible, however, successfully distracting them will do just as well. The key is to keep them alive and in range when the bunes come together. Once they do so, you'll want to slide your kobayas in to launch concentrated swarms of fire arrows at engaged enemy bunes. The threat of fire on top of a boarding action is usually enough to break their morale, causing them to lose the fight and freeing up your bune to go off and support his fellows, leading to a cascade as more and more bunes are freed up. That's really all there is to it as far as standard battles are concerned.

One interesting point of note is the Nihon Maru, which you get when you become Shogun. It's effectively invincible against conventional Japanese warships and can easily solo entire enemy fleets if you're patient. The reason? It is really, really, really tall - if you don't board the enemy, you can basically rain down arrows on enemy decks with impunity, while their counter-arrows pepper the ship's sides without actually harming anyone. It's also big and sturdy enough that fire arrows and such don't really worry it. The result is that you can just sail circles around everyone until they run out of crew and flee.

Captain Beans
Aug 5, 2004

Whar be the beans?
Hair Elf

Rabhadh posted:

One of the reasons I never played Napoleon as much as the other games was I want to build my own empire, not have one handed to me like "here, fight amongst yourselves."

Almost all of the mods open up the minor nations for play if you want to go that way.

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.
Looks like the big long overdue loading performance patch for Shogun 2 is downloading.

Please god let me pick a classic background now.

LGD
Sep 25, 2004

Hrm just had a 1.2gb update to Shogun 2 start up right after 8am. Wonder what it is?

:getin:

shalcar
Oct 21, 2009

At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
Taco Defender

SeanBeansShako posted:

Please god let me pick a classic background now.

Seconded. Also, please don't screw my replays for my LP (or my LP for that matter)!

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.
One things for sure, they'll be compressing our stuff so Shogun 2 won't be eye rollingly massive on our collective HDs anymore.

Unless of course, your a weirdo like me and have all the Total War Games on it.

Scalding Coffee
Jun 26, 2006

You're already dead
Shogun 2 patch notes:
http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Otomo

The following tweaks have been made to unit balancing based on community feedback.

Armstrong Guns: 1360 > 1300
Gatling Guns: 1700 > 1400
Imperial Guard Cav: 1000 > 1050
Revolver Cav: 1100 > 1000
Mounted Samurai Hero: 1200 > 1000
Yari Ki: 690 > 790
Sabre Cav: +1 melee attack, changed mount to a faster type
Kihetai: 1170 > 1070
Shogunate Guard Infantry: 1260 > 1220
Sharpshooters: 1000 > 900
Tosa Riflemen: Changed animation set to faster firing breech loader animations
Yugekitai: 1500 > 1300
Shinsengumi: +2 morale and melee defence
Red Bear Infantry: 800 > 750
Bow Kachi: + 10 accuracy
Kyoto Police: 750 > 700
Kisho Ninjas: 1090 > 990
All heroes now have auras
Torpedo Boat: 2000 > 1200, cap of 3.
Naginata Monk Cavalry: 800 > 850
Yari Cavalry: 850 > 900
Naginata Attendants: 150 > 220
Naginata Samurai: 800 > 750
Nuns: 850 > 800
Arrow velocity increased by 5 to improve chance of hitting moving targets
Yari Ashigaru: 350 > 370
Yari Samurai: 700 > 650
Fire Bomb Throwers: accuracy set to 30
Nodachi Samurai: 800 > 850
Mounted Gunners: Ammo reduced from 20 > 15
Long Yari: 500 > 520
Wako Raiders: 500 > 550

Additional fixes:

The advisor will no longer refer to allies routing when there are no allies in the battle.

Fixed an issue with the Missionary agent playing a corrupted sound when levelling up.

The correct amount of avatar skill points left to spend should now be correctly shown if more than 5 skills points are saved.

The correct map will now be shown to both players when a match made siege or naval battle is found.

Fixed drop rate on Fall of the Samurai post-battle armour

Optimisation patch upgrades

The optimisation patch for Shogun 2 brings with it a host of key improvements that we’ve made to the core Shogun 2 experience since its release last year. If you own Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai, this patch will reduce the hard-drive footprint of your install by 6.6gb (22.4%). If you just own one, you’ll still see an install size reduction.

A 20-40% reduction in initial load times, dependent on machine spec, graphics settings and OS. This primarily boosts game boot-up time.


A series of bugfixes and other optimisation tweaks.

The patch will deploy for all users, whether they purchase the DLC or not, at the same time the Otomo clan is released.

Scalding Coffee fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Nov 30, 2012

Baron Porkface
Jan 22, 2007


Do the church changes and leased land apply to all clans?

quote:

Revolver Cav: 1100 > 1000

What do these numbers mean?

Blooming Brilliant
Jul 12, 2010

Baron Porkface posted:

What do these numbers mean?

Price of the unit. Tiny bit surprising since Revolver Cav are pretty powerful and can easily take out unaware units by themselves.

Class Warcraft
Apr 27, 2006


Glad to see the ever-popular Revolver Cav horde isn't going away.

Baron Porkface
Jan 22, 2007


Where do the turns-to-profit chart from Sharlcar's Rise LP come from? are they available for the other campaigns?

Blooming Brilliant
Jul 12, 2010

O.K quick field report. Donderbuss Cav, pretty drat good from what I've gotten out of them. Similar style to Revolver Cav, short ranged cav who do a lot of damage because of the shotgun spread.

As for the Tercos they are pretty average, have roughly the same stats as a Katana Samurai but with the added bonus of a matchlock. Unless they have some special stats about them like a different reload animation they're just kind of there, not bad at all and most likely tied with the Heavy Gunner or just behind for best Matchlock unit but they're just uninteresting.

Oh and they actually don't speak Portuguese, they reused audio clips from the Royal Marines.

Blooming Brilliant fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Nov 30, 2012

OpenlyEvilJello
Dec 28, 2009

Baron Porkface posted:

Where do the turns-to-profit chart from Sharlcar's Rise LP come from? are they available for the other campaigns?

They come from Shalcar. All he had to do, really, was divide the cost by the after tax per turn income of each structure. IIRC he largely ignored the effect of increases to the wealth generation rate (because it takes a while for those to matter).

Baron Porkface
Jan 22, 2007


OpenlyEvilJello posted:

IIRC he largely ignored the effect of increases to the wealth generation rate (because it takes a while for those to matter).

That's what i'm curious about. I'm not sure how 20% of 5bux per turn is supposed to give me a stiffy.

OpenlyEvilJello
Dec 28, 2009

Baron Porkface posted:

That's what i'm curious about. I'm not sure how 20% of 5bux per turn is supposed to give me a stiffy.

You may be interested in some of the threads here.

Mans
Sep 14, 2011

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Rabhadh posted:

One of the reasons I never played Napoleon as much as the other games was I want to build my own empire, not have one handed to me like "here, fight amongst yourselves."

You'd love to play as the Seleucids in Europa Barbaorum!

(It's actually one of the best factions because of the sheer chaos and how you'll lose half of your empire wether you like it or not.)

Glass of Milk
Dec 22, 2004
to forgive is divine
I haven't played Empire in ages, but I still own the drat thing and I now have a computer capable of running it. Is it still a giant clusterfuck? I recall that the AI was entirely poo poo with siege and also in general. Just curious since I already own it and have never really gotten past a couple turns on it.

Olive Branch
May 26, 2010

There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.

OK the koku pricing changes are cool and all, but Azure Dragon Infantry costs 760 koku, while Red Bear Infantry costs 750.

Red Bears have two more attack and defense than Azure Dragons.

GG CA.

Edit: They also increased the price of Shogitai from 950 to 1000 and didn't list it.

Imperial Guard Infantry still costs 1280 but Shogunate Guard Infantry costs 1220. CA, what the hell.

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

Glass of Milk posted:

I haven't played Empire in ages, but I still own the drat thing and I now have a computer capable of running it. Is it still a giant clusterfuck? I recall that the AI was entirely poo poo with siege and also in general. Just curious since I already own it and have never really gotten past a couple turns on it.

Most of the issues with Empire are now fixed, though the AI with sieges is still terrible. Just try to avoid sieges like the plague both attacking and defending and look for a good mod/mini mods to improve the experince.

Blooming Brilliant
Jul 12, 2010

Olive Branch posted:

OK the koku pricing changes are cool and all, but Azure Dragon Infantry costs 760 koku, while Red Bear Infantry costs 750.

Red Bears have two more attack and defense than Azure Dragons.

GG CA.

Edit: They also increased the price of Shogitai from 950 to 1000 and didn't list it.

Imperial Guard Infantry still costs 1280 but Shogunate Guard Infantry costs 1220. CA, what the hell.

Obviously Imperial units and their modern firearms where too dishonourable, and have been nerfed for the glory of the Shogun and his hanzo steel :shepface:

Oh also nice to know that the Bushido tree and their units have generally not been nerfed, good to see them still be secretly overpowered.

Blooming Brilliant fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Nov 30, 2012

Magic
May 18, 2004

Your ass is on my platter, snapperhead!

Glass of Milk posted:

I haven't played Empire in ages, but I still own the drat thing and I now have a computer capable of running it. Is it still a giant clusterfuck? I recall that the AI was entirely poo poo with siege and also in general. Just curious since I already own it and have never really gotten past a couple turns on it.
I'm not the best person to answer that, but I originally disliked the game since watching riflemen units standing still and shooting each other felt boring and turned me off. However, two years later, I've finally came back (Partly inspired after reading a book about the British Empire) and I'm really enjoying it.

I hate the diplomacy aspect where just because I conquer a few territories in America then all of my protestant allies grow to hate me.

The AI is still, well, TW AI. I've never seen it do anything utterly retarded like in previous games, but it's still easy to rip them apart. Again, the siege AI is better than past games, though it tends to just abandon the walls once there's a breach and just wait there. They attack much better, but it's only marginally better.

Olive Branch
May 26, 2010

There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.

Shogunate posted:

Obviously Imperial units and their modern firearms where too dishonourable, and have been nerfed for the glory of the Shogun and his hanzo steel :shepface:

Oh also nice to know that the Bushido tree and their units have generally not been nerfed, good to see them still be secretly overpowered.
Bushido 4 lyfe.

I think every general would benefit from Bushido if only for the cavalry capture and co-operative capture perks. Melee cavalry is so drat good in FOTS and the fact Sabre Cavalry are faster now makes me excited.

Scalding Coffee
Jun 26, 2006

You're already dead
I don't think guns will ever get the break they needed, for balance reasons. Nice to see arrows get that jet engine upgrade. Tough it out, micromanagers.

shalcar
Oct 21, 2009

At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
Taco Defender

OpenlyEvilJello posted:

They come from Shalcar. All he had to do, really, was divide the cost by the after tax per turn income of each structure. IIRC he largely ignored the effect of increases to the wealth generation rate (because it takes a while for those to matter).

Actually, the growth rate bonus of all the buildings is factored in, since it's pretty basic calculus to do so. Where total wealth generated by the building is the integral of (a + b.x)*c where a is the building wealth bonus, b is the building growth, c is the tax rate and x is the number of turns since it was built.

That integral works out to a.c.x + ((b.x^2)/2). You know the cost of the building and a, b and c, so solve for x.

The most valid complaint came from Yukitsu where I took the growth bonus on farms to be for 2 provinces as provided by the extra food, but that's for simplicities sake. You can just drop in the new value for b to work out the new calcs (since the growth added globally is dependant on the number of provinces you own).

So it's a little more complicated than straight division. I've also factored in the effect of trade goods (sold/unsold) in addition to growth and wealth factors on all buildings that have them. It's fairly comprehensive. As for the other games having them, I guess you will need to wait until I LP them!

e: The growth rate can matter far faster than you would think!

Baron Porkface posted:

Do the church changes and leased land apply to all clans?

No, only the Otomo clan gets the changed churches and leased land. Everyone else keeps their existing tech tree and buildings.

shalcar fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Dec 1, 2012

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
Question about diplomacy in Shogun 2: Is there a penalty against all your other relations if you suddenly engage in war with a clan you were friendly with? For example, Shimazu starts off with Higo as a trade partner (Which seems to build the relation to friendly, apparently), but Higo is one of the required victory Providences.

At least they take it in stride.

"Sorry, friend of several years, but I need your land, and I am willing to kill you and everyone else to get it."
"gently caress YES LETS GO :black101:"

CharlesDexterWard
Apr 25, 2012
Are there any good tutorials on battle tactics in the Total War games? I've read a bunch of beginner's threads on other forums and articles on some websites but I just can't seem to get anywhere, at least in Medieval 2.

Shogun 2 I have found a bit easier, but Medieval 2 kicks my rear end.

I started playing England and even though I can win fair battles at the beginning, I still take losses which I think are too much.

My beginning army is one line of 4-5 spear militia, a line of 4-5 archers behind them, and two cavalry on a flank.

I try to stay in line but even when the other army is made up of equal units, like other spear militia, my spears seem to get killed in time. I try using my cavalry to flank but sometimes I have trouble manoeuvring my units. I especially have trouble using spearmen to flank at times as they tend to get caught up with other units, or when they do hit they don't seem to attack very effectively and get in a jumble.

Would it be good to have some additional spearmen behind my main spear line so that they can flank?

Red Minjo
Oct 20, 2010

Out of the houses, which is the most blue?

The answer might not be be obvious at first.

Gravy Boat 2k
The UI in these games, or at least Empire and Shogun 2, are hella tiny and barely legible. Like I gotta squint to read anything which is especially bad when looking at unit costs. I've got a 16.5" laptop display at 1600*900 and an external monitor at 22", and no changing around of monitor or resolution seems to keep the UI in check for me.
Also, I sort of suck at defending forts or attacking uphill. And often I can barely tell if my artillery is managing to shoot anything other than the ground in front of it without going into slow-mo, staring at the loading animation, and checking the path manually. If I could figure out if my cannons have proper line-of-sight without babysitting them, I would also like that.

Super fun games, but like with all games with RTS elements I sort of suck. Mainly just going through Empire's campaign mode now to try and get the hang of things.

Sober
Nov 19, 2011

First touch: Life.
Second touch: Dead again. Forever.
Haven't played Shogun 2 but I assume starting since M2, they made cavalry super finicky the manage, especially heavy cav since they need to get a big head start to gain momentum.

You need to spread them out, so like, 2-3 ranks deep only for surface area impact when you flank. You need to stop them and position them in place, preferably facing exactly perpendicular to what you want to hit, let them reform, then you can charge them. Make sure there isn't any terrain oddities besides maybe the occasional bump in the ground.

Honestly when I played M2 as Britain I just used like 4 groups of light cav instead (or 5 or 6 even) because they were faster and just as effective but I never really played the heavy cav-dependent factions like Franks or whoever, so I might be wrong.

Olive Branch
May 26, 2010

There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.

Unlucky7 posted:

Question about diplomacy in Shogun 2: Is there a penalty against all your other relations if you suddenly engage in war with a clan you were friendly with? For example, Shimazu starts off with Higo as a trade partner (Which seems to build the relation to friendly, apparently), but Higo is one of the required victory Providences.

At least they take it in stride.

"Sorry, friend of several years, but I need your land, and I am willing to kill you and everyone else to get it."
"gently caress YES LETS GO :black101:"
You do take a diplomacy hit if you have a trade agreement (or worse, an alliance) with a neighboring clan and declare war while the agreement stands. To avoid a diplomacy hit, cancel the agreement and declare war on the next turn, not the same turn.

the JJ
Mar 31, 2011

CharlesDexterWard posted:

Are there any good tutorials on battle tactics in the Total War games? I've read a bunch of beginner's threads on other forums and articles on some websites but I just can't seem to get anywhere, at least in Medieval 2.

Shogun 2 I have found a bit easier, but Medieval 2 kicks my rear end.

I started playing England and even though I can win fair battles at the beginning, I still take losses which I think are too much.

My beginning army is one line of 4-5 spear militia, a line of 4-5 archers behind them, and two cavalry on a flank.

I try to stay in line but even when the other army is made up of equal units, like other spear militia, my spears seem to get killed in time. I try using my cavalry to flank but sometimes I have trouble manoeuvring my units. I especially have trouble using spearmen to flank at times as they tend to get caught up with other units, or when they do hit they don't seem to attack very effectively and get in a jumble.

Would it be good to have some additional spearmen behind my main spear line so that they can flank?


Spear militia can be real poo poo. They're pretty much stopgap anti-cavalry and you can drop them in guard more around breaches in wall, they're okay at that. If you're British you don't want to just keep a line with the enemy but actually work to keep your archer distance as long as possible. Also, you don't necessarily want to work for that one on one. Better is a two on one while the other guy's one is off somewhere else. Going cav heavy can help with this, especially in MTW2.

In short:

Work on better line infantry.
Work on forcing local superiority.
Use specialists (archer's, cav) in their roles.

Friendly Fire
Dec 29, 2004
All my friends got me for my birthday was this stupid custom title. Fuck my friends.

CharlesDexterWard posted:

Are there any good tutorials on battle tactics in the Total War games? I've read a bunch of beginner's threads on other forums and articles on some websites but I just can't seem to get anywhere, at least in Medieval 2.

Shogun 2 I have found a bit easier, but Medieval 2 kicks my rear end.

I started playing England and even though I can win fair battles at the beginning, I still take losses which I think are too much.

My beginning army is one line of 4-5 spear militia, a line of 4-5 archers behind them, and two cavalry on a flank.

I try to stay in line but even when the other army is made up of equal units, like other spear militia, my spears seem to get killed in time. I try using my cavalry to flank but sometimes I have trouble manoeuvring my units. I especially have trouble using spearmen to flank at times as they tend to get caught up with other units, or when they do hit they don't seem to attack very effectively and get in a jumble.

Would it be good to have some additional spearmen behind my main spear line so that they can flank?

Take less archers, replace them with more spears. You will be able to make your battle line longer which makes it easier to flank, or you can hold the extras back as reserves to replace your front line troops when they get ground up.

Joink
Jan 8, 2004

What if I told you cod is no longer a fish :coolfish:
Are the new otomo clan units available in avatar mode?

Olive Branch
May 26, 2010

There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.

Joink posted:

Are the new otomo clan units available in avatar mode?
Yeah, they're hero units, so if you decide to make veterans out of them, don't mess up the point spread!

Zettace
Nov 30, 2009

Red Minjo posted:

The UI in these games, or at least Empire and Shogun 2, are hella tiny and barely legible. Like I gotta squint to read anything which is especially bad when looking at unit costs. I've got a 16.5" laptop display at 1600*900 and an external monitor at 22", and no changing around of monitor or resolution seems to keep the UI in check for me.
Also, I sort of suck at defending forts or attacking uphill. And often I can barely tell if my artillery is managing to shoot anything other than the ground in front of it without going into slow-mo, staring at the loading animation, and checking the path manually. If I could figure out if my cannons have proper line-of-sight without babysitting them, I would also like that.

Super fun games, but like with all games with RTS elements I sort of suck. Mainly just going through Empire's campaign mode now to try and get the hang of things.
Try changing the resolution into something else. For some reason, Total War games hate certain resolutions. I used to run a resolution of 1440x900 on my old monitor and the game's UI was terrible and had the same problems as you have. Now, I have a larger monitor and I run the game at 1920x1080 and the UI is way better.

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Tercio
Jan 30, 2003

Is there a halfway decent mod for Napoleon that improves Great Britain's AI in the Coalition Campaign? They're the missing piece in the puzzle, as they just tend to sit there all game, doing next to nothing.

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