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To be fair though, if you have a fleet strong enough to risk transporting your armies it is a lot easier. I'd get the mod that increases the research rate so you can unlock railways mid game instead of late game too.
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Oct 8, 2013 15:42
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Tomn posted:I really like Fall of the Samurai - it's just plain cathartic to watch disciplined lines of riflemen mow down hapless armies of lesser troops and generally leverage technology into a battlewinning force. But you can build a railroad and use it twice before you win the campaign!
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Oct 8, 2013 18:58
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canyoneer posted:But you can build a railroad and use it twice before you win the campaign! I've never actually used the railroad and i've completed that campaign a good 3 or 4 times.
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Oct 9, 2013 01:13
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canyoneer posted:But you can build a railroad and use it twice before you win the campaign! I think the only time I've actually used the railroad before the endgame was when I played FotS co-op with a friend, and we were making it our goal to break the game in half. It's too bad really, because railroads really make travelling across the map less of a chore.
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Oct 9, 2013 06:21
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My problem with the railroad is that unless the AI has been building it(it never does), you are only able to use it at a minimum of 9 turns after conquering your second station, by which time your armies have long since departed to other fronts and any long range movement happens by boat anyway, leaving it to connect two otherwise useless provinces.
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Oct 9, 2013 17:53
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I just had my first ETW binge and man, gunpowder weapons are great for a total war game. The fact that everyone is shooting bullets means you won't have one of those lopsided battles where you kill 3000 guys while only losing 2 or 3. In my road to independence campaign AI loves to roll those demi-cannons in bunches and they are a pain in the rear end to fight against. I've had a few battles that were basically the charge of the light brigade, only with line infantry. They ended the same way as real thing, too. Also mounted native auxiliaries are tough dudes and the AI is pretty good with them. I have a slight technical issue: once in a while my UI/hud on the campaign map flickers and I can't see poo poo. Is there any fixes for this? I read that it's a common issue with ATI cards, but I have an nvidia card. Is it just a drivers thing or something else?
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Oct 10, 2013 00:45
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In Napoleon Total War, in regards to the Imperial Psychopath achievement (War dec everyone first turn, never peace out and win the game), after the first turn war deccing do I have to war dec created nations as soon as they pop up? Austria just made Italy and It starts off as Indifferent to me.
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Oct 10, 2013 19:21
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SkySteak posted:In Napoleon Total War, in regards to the Imperial Psychopath achievement (War dec everyone first turn, never peace out and win the game), after the first turn war deccing do I have to war dec created nations as soon as they pop up? Austria just made Italy and It starts off as Indifferent to me. You're trying to be an Imperial Psychopath and you're asking this kind of question? What kind of warmonger are you, get to work! 
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Oct 10, 2013 19:58
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I just installed Medieval 2 for the first time in forever. Looking for mod suggestions... I use Radious for Shogun and Rome 2; is there anything that similarly improves gameplay and emphasizes realism? (Aside from DarthMod, that is. I really don't like that dude and his dumb pissing-on-aesthetics splash screens and whatnot. Unless there's really nothing else out there comparable in quality.) I'm surfing TWC at the moment and nothing's jumping out at me. edit: Stainless Steel maybe? edit2: Oh wait, nevermind, obviously this is the best mod...  
Trustworthy fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 20:34
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Stainless steel if you just want vanilla+. Broken Crescent is also very good but omits Europe in favour of a much-expanded Islamic world.
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Oct 17, 2013 20:51
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The Last Kingdom. It is all vikings all the time and it is glorious.
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Oct 18, 2013 09:26
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Is there a good mod for the original Rome that just fixes some stupid design decisions like Squalor and the Senate and maybe rebalances pre-Marius Rome and the barbarians? I don't want massive overhauls where there's like 300 new units and buildings.
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Oct 21, 2013 02:21
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Cross posting from the Let's Play thread: I recently reinstalled TW:Shogun 2 and I'm loving it. I'm playing on Normal as Oda, and I've carved out 7 or so provinces to the east (South Shimanzu and Sugura are the furthest ones) having taken out Tokugawa and Imagaya without too much trouble. I've got Hattori to the West and am planning on hunkering down, weathering the incoming TakedaStorm. Weirdly, though, the Hattori have become my Ninja BFFs and asked me for a Military alliance and 20 turns of military access, which I granted (because ninjas) - is this something I should have encouraged? They're my next door neighbours after they killed the Kitebagita (or whatever they're called) and have a massive stack just pottering around in Owari to no great purpose. Are they setting me up for the world's least stealthy backstab? Or does the AI take military alliances seriously? At the moment I'm thinking of making really nice with them and expanding NW (i.e. over the top of Hattori), but am I just making my eventual life more difficult? sebmojo fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 03:55
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Shogun TW2 question: What the poo poo is up with attacking castles? Why is it so hard? Is there something I'm missing? Things that suck: - 1: I brought a rad army of katana samurai/matchlocks/european cannons up against a level 1 fort. The cannons blew the walls apart in seconds... and then they couldn't do anything else. Because they could only shoot in a straight line and the 'destroyed wall' is only a slightly punctured 'non-destroyed wall' it wasn't possible to accurately shoot anything inside. Despite the dudes being extremely clustered. - 2: Every motherfucker inside the castle is willing to fight to the death, meaning my elite army of katana samurai got thrown back by a bunch of unbreakable yari ashigru. The "destroyed" walls did nothing to make the assault easier. Am I missing something? Am I just meant to bring even more dudes? Should I just keep starving garrisons out or autoresolving sieges like I always do? Thanqol fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 04:54
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Thanqol posted:Shogun TW2 question: What the poo poo is up with attacking castles? Why is it so hard? Is there something I'm missing? A couple things come to mind... 1) While matchlocks are the gods of castle defense, they are not very useful if you're the attacker. Take bows instead. (If you're defending then 420 matchlock errrday) 2) It's true that destroying a wall doesn't really affect scaling or the fight on top. It does kill everyone manning that section of the wall however. 3) Your katana samurai were not killed by yari ashigaru. I'm sorry but it didn't happen. I'm not denying that katana samurai and yari ashigaru were involved and that the katanas eventually died, but there must have been other factors involved that you were not aware of. 4) Try to keep your general near the boarding party, it's critical to keeping them steady. Parking him at the base of the wall is fine for this, the command aura has unlimited vertical range. 5) Don't bother targeting units with European cannons unless you have an opportunity to snipe a general. Just break occupied wall segments and destroy towers/gates. 6) Try to not climb tall wall sections unless absolutely necessary. The casualties a unit takes during a climb is directly related to the height of the wall. 7) If two human players are involved in a siege, the battle is "fair" when the attackers have approximately twice the koku value of the defender in troops. Use this as a baseline and determine how much is necessary based on your abilities against the AI. It's not at all like a field battle where you can feel comfortable against the AI if you have equal forces. Meme Poker Party fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 05:13
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I agree with most of what Chomp said- and mostly that you need to bring more men, but: 2. pretty certain you take lower casualties for scaling destroyed wall segments, and the defenders get a smaller bonus 3. yari ashigaru absolutely can destroy katana samurai under two circumstances- they're in a spear wall formation, or they're on the top of a wall Sieges are really bloody affairs and you will almost always lose a ton of men when you're assaulting. The best course of action is to just starve the defenders out- then you fight a field battle. If that isn't possible, though, reiterating don't scale walls unless you need to. The attrition you take on the way up hurts but is absolutely nothing compared to the enormous bonus the defenders get, which is something like a 3 or 4 times multiplier. Their lowest tier units will annihilate all but your highest tier units. Target sections where there aren't any enemies and there aren't likely to be, or better yet, break through their gatehouses and swarm in. That's slightly less feasible on a cramped level 1 fort, but you should still send a ton of your guys through that way. sebmojo posted:Cross posting from the Let's Play thread: Are they trustworthy, according to the diplomacy panel? The AI absolutely cares about backstabbing like that- it will have a negative effect on their diplomatic standing with every clan in the game. But they might occasionally do it anyway, if their back is against a wall or something. Check to see who they're at war with; they might just want to pass through your land. Even if they do backstab you, you're lucky in that the region between you and the Hattori is fairly easy to defend, so after you deal with that one stack you shouldn't have to deal with any others behind your lines and you'll be able to stall any others that come. The AI abuses military access treaties on occasion but I've never seen them do it with multiple stacks. And you're probably fine.
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Oct 21, 2013 15:06
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Koramei posted:... Defenders on the wall don't actually get a bonus to any of their combat rolls. Instead, the increased effectiveness of the defender on walls comes from the fact that all units that are within combat range of the enemy model can make an attack roll (unlike earlier non-Warscape Total War games, where they *did* have a combat bonus). As units come over the wall sporadically and all along it, the defenders easily have 4-5 units in range for each soldier that comes over, giving them that many chances to kill the attacking soldier for every chance he has to kill one defender. There is basically a critical mass point at which enough soldiers have come over the wall that this defenders advantage is whittled away (because they can't kill them fast enough) and the units will perform exactly the same as you would expect. Obviously, the greater the quality disparity, the faster this point arrives. Interestingly, this makes defensive units like Naginata Samurai or Naginata Warrior Monks exceptionally good for climbing walls, as units like yari ashigaru won't be able to kill them fast enough to prevent this tipping point. No-Dachi make exceptionally poor wall attackers for the same reason. Koramei and Chomp have covered a lot of it pretty well, but don't be afraid to bring troops over the walls rather than fighting through the gates if you can get them there unopposed. Local numerical superiority is a huge morale boost (or penalty if you are outnumbered, which you tend to be in the castle itself) and castle invasions are as much about managing your morale as they are about killing the enemy forces.
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Oct 21, 2013 17:25
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So wait, is Napoleon: Total War still better than Empire, or have all the patches switched things around? I wanna do a long term world conquest campaign in one of the two, just whichever is more expansive/time-consuming.
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Oct 21, 2013 23:19
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Jefferoo posted:So wait, is Napoleon: Total War still better than Empire, or have all the patches switched things around? I wanna do a long term world conquest campaign in one of the two, just whichever is more expansive/time-consuming. I don't believe the Napoleon map has anything other than Europe.
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Oct 21, 2013 23:34
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Koramei posted:3. yari ashigaru absolutely can destroy katana samurai under two circumstances- they're in a spear wall formation, or they're on the top of a wall I'm don't like nitpicking but this really isn't true. A spear wall is not nearly enough for yari ashigaru to hold their ground against katana samurai. In an open field field with no ability use, a unit of katana samurai will crush a unit of yari ashigaru in less than a minute with very few casualties. If the yari ashigaru use spear wall instead they'll last maybe 2-3 minutes and take some extra samurai with them. That's it. This has even come up more than once in recent Fight Club battles when we had a Shogun 2 day. In several battles katanas went charging into yari ashigaru. Sometimes there was a spear wall, sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes there was there was hill, sometimes there wasn't. No matter the variables the result is always the same, the yari ashigaru are crushed. All that changes is how long they hold out and how many they take with them.
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Oct 21, 2013 23:56
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Chomp8645 posted:I'm don't like nitpicking but this really isn't true. A spear wall is not nearly enough for yari ashigaru to hold their ground against katana samurai. In an open field field with no ability use, a unit of katana samurai will crush a unit of yari ashigaru in less than a minute with very few casualties. If the yari ashigaru use spear wall instead they'll last maybe 2-3 minutes and take some extra samurai with them. That's it. My recollection is that spear wall closes the gap with Yari Samurai to a great degree.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:02
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That's all really helpful, thanks, especially the note about No-Dachi samurai being terrible at walls. My army was heavy on those guys so it stands to reason they got owned so hard.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:12
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Alchenar posted:My recollection is that spear wall closes the gap with Yari Samurai to a great degree. I'm sure it is the case that spear wall will let yari ashigaru beat some units they otherwise couldn't. I just know that katana samurai are not on that list. I'd be suprised if if they could take on yari samurai even with spear wall, but I'd could see it being possible.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:14
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Feel free to nitpick when I'm wrong about balance and whatever. But uh, I'm pretty certain I'm not, in that instance. Maybe a long time ago they wouldn't win, but Olive Branch can testify re: the balance of a month and a half ago.  Spear walled yari ashigaru have absolutely no trouble holding off against katanas. Maybe in your battles they got flanked? Or maybe a significant veterancy disparity, although I'm not sure even that would matter too much.I'm gonna go test it now just to be sure but I'm like 90% on this. edit: okay it wasn't as overwhelming as I thought- 1v1 the yari ashigaru will lose- although they can still inflict a bunch of casualties. But 5v5 and both sides within a general's sphere of influence they come out ahead. I think my memories of winning handily with them are when they have a couple of veterancy levels and the samurai don't- although, that is usually reality in actual battles. Koramei fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 00:23
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Remember that there's a negative modifier to climbing walls during winter sieges. Your dudes fall off and die at a higher rate when climbing icy walls. Also the length of walls matters. On short sections, you can send a unit of 160 up and only lose 4 or 5 unlucky ones to clumsiness. I don't know if it really helps, but I try to cycle the vanguard infantry leading the charge through the gates around so they don't reach Exhausted status. If you've got a dozen units that are going to eventually squeeze through the gates, let them take turns chopping up the defenders (on guard mode). And in my experience, cavalry and no-dachi samurai both don't have much place in a siege army. Whenever they're useful, that usually means you've already won anyway. Their downsides make it such that you'll almost always be better off bringing more of a different flavor of samurai.
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Oct 22, 2013 00:26
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I've found it's a good idea to bring cavalry on multiplayer sieges, since the defenders will actually sally out. But yeah, you don't need them in singleplayer. Although really in singleplayer you don't need anything other than like 8 bow monks 'cause they will destroy full stacks before running out of ammo and never get hit. Koramei fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 00:46
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I just got my beta key for Empire multiplayer. I do believe some of my friends did as well. Time to fuel up a Britain-France mega-campaign game!
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Oct 26, 2013 20:22
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:I just got my beta key for Empire multiplayer. I do believe some of my friends did as well. Time to fuel up a Britain-France mega-campaign game! You mean arena?
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Oct 27, 2013 04:50
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SquadronROE posted:You mean arena? http://www.totalwar.com/en_us/empire-multiplayer/
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Oct 27, 2013 09:58
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Blockade so and so's port for 3 rounds and we'll give you some of the best units available for free! Oh boy thanks council of nobles, I'll get right on that. I sure love getting free units. Three turns later. Boats. Thanks.
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Oct 28, 2013 04:32
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SHISHKABOB posted:Blockade so and so's port for 3 rounds and we'll give you some of the best units available for free! My favorite is saving up all the mailed knights they give me for missions and then running around with a cav doom stack that just runs over everything.
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Oct 30, 2013 18:50
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So what is the proper strategy when you are running ranged heavy in shogun II? I have more total units but the enemy has more melee and what usually happens is that my archers can get a volley and a half off before I'm forced to retreat them and my outnumbered yari ashigaru are forced to fight. I don't want to keep my archers firing when they retreat because that would kill some of my troops which are critical to holding back the mass of Ashigaru. Consider this the situation: I have 3 bow ashi, 2 bow Sam, and 3 yari ash, the enemy has 5 yari ash and 1 bow ash. So Chosokabe early game. I do know that my samurai are accurate enough to where they can keep firing into the melee but I don't think that would be enough to turn the tide.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:03
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Man Whore posted:So what is the proper strategy when you are running ranged heavy in shogun II? I have more total units but the enemy has more melee and what usually happens is that my archers can get a volley and a half off before I'm forced to retreat them and my outnumbered yari ashigaru are forced to fight. I don't want to keep my archers firing when they retreat because that would kill some of my troops which are critical to holding back the mass of Ashigaru. Consider this the situation: I have 3 bow ashi, 2 bow Sam, and 3 yari ash, the enemy has 5 yari ash and 1 bow ash. So Chosokabe early game. I do know that my samurai are accurate enough to where they can keep firing into the melee but I don't think that would be enough to turn the tide. Put your archers behind your yari so you don't need to waste time running them back. That comp is pretty bad though, when army sizes are so low, archers don't kill enough to be worth it. Keep your bow sam and make yari ash instead of bow ash. Hmm, if all you're fighting is ash, you might want just 1 of bow samurai and ashigaru. That is pretty much enough to be "ranged heavy" in the early game. You can always add bow ash later.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:36
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^^^ against 1 bow ashigaru that's probably fine but in general you don't wanna set your archers behind your lines until you have bow monks (which have longer range). it doesn't take very long to run back and reform, and the AI totally will just sit there shooting you just out of range until you're all dead. Even if you wanna go bow heavy, don't do it until you can start getting higher tier bow units- either with the craftgoods resource upgraded to accuracy, or when you can get bow monks (or daikyu, as the Chosokabe, although honestly I found them to be of extremely limited use since you can tech to bow monks just about as quickly and they're better in nearly every way). Bow ashigaru and even samurai just don't have the killing power to be the backbone of your army. That said, in your situation (which isn't gonna be the norm for much longer) where they only outnumber your yari ashigaru by 2 you should have no trouble at all. Spearwall your own ashigaru, brace for a charge, and flank with the bow samurai in melee (they can kill yari ashigaru just fine). If they don't charge you, just whittle them away. And yeah, you're gonna have to shoot into your own dudes. You'll take some casualties but not nearly so many as the enemy will; bow units in general are good about minimizing friendly fire (matchlocks are not). Once you get teched up bow armies can be completely ridiculous, but that won't happen until close to realm divide. Until then, even as the Chosokabe, you're not gonna want more than 6 or 7 at most in your armies.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:37
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The really high bow numbers is mostly because this was my siege army and the first few forts had no ranged defense. I just now ran into my first well defended fort and even the paltry amount of ranged tears mine to shreds so I was wondering if I could take them on a field battle as my forces currently stand. I'll make sure to pack in some more Yari Ash now.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:48
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My favourite pointless end-game thing-to-do is stacking faction bonuses, arts, and improvements to create 105 accuracy Bow Warrior Monks.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:59
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Man Whore posted:The really high bow numbers is mostly because this was my siege army and the first few forts had no ranged defense. I just now ran into my first well defended fort and even the paltry amount of ranged tears mine to shreds so I was wondering if I could take them on a field battle as my forces currently stand. I'll make sure to pack in some more Yari Ash now. Ranged units on a castle have a pretty decisive advantage over the besiegers. I never figured out how to do elegant sieges, so I nearly always wait it out or auto-resolve.
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Oct 31, 2013 21:00
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:My favourite pointless end-game thing-to-do is stacking faction bonuses, arts, and improvements to create 105 accuracy Bow Warrior Monks.
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Oct 31, 2013 22:28
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StashAugustine posted:Is there a good mod for the original Rome that just fixes some stupid design decisions like Squalor and the Senate and maybe rebalances pre-Marius Rome and the barbarians? I don't want massive overhauls where there's like 300 new units and buildings. Like always, look for Lusted's modifications http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?114-Lusted-s-Terrae-Expugnandae
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Nov 1, 2013 05:37
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Asehujiko posted:When I do that with fots marines they all end up killing exactly one guy at the leftmost edge of the group so that's a double edged sword. Everyone aim for Todd.
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Nov 1, 2013 07:06
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