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Dead Man Posting posted:I enjoyed Empire and found it fulfilling, putting 140 hours into it. 140 hours into Empire without mods? I must admit, you have a greater tolerance for that sort of thing than me. Once I worked out I basically couldn't lose if I did something as advanced as take an island, I lost all interest. Which is sad, I really liked the Age of Sail, but I just couldn't find the game in it, which could very well be me more than the game. e: I feel in the interest of full disclosure I should specify that I got burned so bad on Empire that I swore off the Total War series, one of my most cherished games, forever for screwing me that hard. In fact, it was only the glowing reviews of goons on Shogun 2 that got me to buy it (and I'm so very glad I did, 500 hours and one LP later!)
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Jan 7, 2013 08:01
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Sober posted:Welp, maybe it's been a while since I played a TW or maybe because I thought the Empire AI was "good enough" but I just got thoroughly whooped trying to start a Shimazu campaign that quickly went south. Mostly on the campaign end if anything. Too bad booting a trade boat = war, though I guess it was kind of my fault for losing a general, my starting daimyo and his son pretty quickly then having a 20 stack sit around for about 5 years doing nothing of importance (I think I forgot it was a total war game I was playing). Yeah, you should be looking at a pace of around 4-5 provinces every 5 years (20 turns), as any slower than that will give you real trouble with the time limit for the end game. Don't worry if you start out a little slower, as you can easily pick up pace by eating smaller clans once you are 4 or so provinces big with a decent general. Learn the art of the counter-attack and how to bait the computer into a poor fight and it will really reap dividends. As for Hammer and Anvil, if you outnumber the enemy and you can hold your centre line, you should deploy your army with wings of shock or quality troops to envelop and collapse the enemy flanks and roll up their battle line like so much cheap carpet. If you can't hold the centre line, you will need troops in reserve to replace them when they get worn down. Overcommitting can be as dangerous as under-committing, so always leave a little something extra, but don't be afraid to go for the killing blow if it presents itself. You lose out on the charge bonus by forcing your units to attack through the rear of your own melee, as your men wont make clean impact with the enemy, but other than that there is no downside to you. It's common to order reserves to fight through the rear of your centre line (you don't want you centre line to have broken before you commit your reserves after all!). Cavalry work best for Hammer and Anvil, but any troops attacking the rear has a huge impact on morale. Letting the Ashigaru take the charge is always a good idea, as they are cheap and easy to replace, but remember they can spear-wall to improve their survivability at the expense of their killing power, letting your wings flank for more devastating effect. Be wary of arrows and firebombs (Not to mention matchlocks!) if you do this though.
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Jan 7, 2013 09:24
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Trujillo posted:And I can't remember ever seeing Tokugawa, Mori, Shimazu or Hattori survive in vanilla. I've seen all the other major clans become medium sized before being taken down by someone bigger. Wonder if there's a mod that gives some of the other clans a chance. In my current Legendary game of vanilla, the Mori are monsters with 15 provinces, the Hattori have 8 and the Shimazu 6. The Tokugawa are non-existent though...
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Jan 8, 2013 01:14
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A BIG loving BLUNT posted:Does Total War AI still not know that islands exist and that they should be invaded? Actually, it pretty much adores naval invasions and will quite happily punish you for failing to protect your coasts. The Chosokabe are the easiest due to the extra killing power of their archers, their boost to income from farming which helps prevent food stall out and the fact that they only need to worry about one front until they have got on their feet and can then invade the softest target on Japan without fear of having another clan declare war on them, as the computer very rarely declares war on a non-adjacent clan.
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Jan 9, 2013 03:16
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Doctor Reynolds posted:So I'm playing as England in Medieval 2. I own the entire island, and am working on France. I haven't even "met" Portugal, yet out of the blue they land an army of A Peasant on the shores of Caernarvon and declare war on me. In Medieval 2 the answer is "Because you were there". If the AI can see you, it hates you. It's fun like that!
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Jan 9, 2013 08:32
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MadJackMcJack posted:Immersion be damned, you get Tetsubo Monks. It's clobbering time! If you don't yell "Testuboooooooo" as you charge them home then you are using them wrong. Having said that, I never really liked the everyone getting basically every unit in the name of choice, especially with the DLC units actually adding some flavour to various factions, which gets smeared out when everyone has access to them. On the other hand, Tetsubo.
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Jan 17, 2013 12:26
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Lord Tywin posted:Honestly the best thing is just staying away from that website, I was a member for a while and the number of retarded nationalists make Balkan youtube videos seem reasonable. The dude is one of the even crazier ones who constantly defends ancient Rome whatever they do, I think that he even defended various Roman cases of mass murder and enslavement. TWC is a total hellhole of crazy shut-ins with persecution complexes matched only by their complete lack of attachment to anything called reality. The obsession they seem to have with minutiae is matched only by their complete inability to see anything remotely like a bigger picture. This holds for the modders, the testers and the history boffins. How the CA public liaison posts there without drinking drain cleaner to make the stupid stop I have no idea. Avoid at all costs.
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Jan 18, 2013 16:14
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Krazyface posted:Okay so I bought RotS as soon as it came out but have only just gotten around to playing it. Is it normal, for your "sister family" to declare war on you? I know it's meant to happen after Realm divide, but in this game (playing as one of the Fujiwaras) it happened on like turn ten. I think the reason may have been that I took two towns and boxed them in (even though we had military access). The diplomacy screen claimed that relations had collapsed due to "past grievances"; over the course of about three turns they cancelled the alliance, ended trade, and declared war. As I mentioned in my RotS LP, your sister clan uses the same AI as anything else and so has certain triggers for war. If you are the neighbour they hate the most and they feel they can take one of your territories, the AI will declare war (It's a little more complicated than this, but this is the general idea). If you have boxed them in, there is only one neighbour that they can compare their military to. Yours. This means that more likely than not, unless you maintain a large force in all your bordering provinces, they will declare war on you. If you want to avoid it, always leave them somewhere to go.
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Jan 27, 2013 02:57
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Tyack posted:DO you have a link to the LP? I would love to read it. You can find it here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3501934 It's ongoing, but fairly close to finished. Hope you enjoy it!
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Jan 27, 2013 03:11
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Azran posted:Oh, that explains my last battle then. Personally, I would stick with vanilla at the moment, it's pretty good and is fairly balanced. You can add the right mod to taste once you know what you do and don't like about the base game. A good starting clan is the Chosokabe, as they have a easy to conquer and defend island, as well as superior farmland and archers, both of which are invaluable. I would avoid the Date, as the tyranny of distance can really mess them up. The Shimazu are another good pick, although trickier than the Chosokabe. The Hojo are also fairly easy, with their access to wealth and rapid expansion capability, although they have many fronts to defend.
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Jan 28, 2013 03:37
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NihilVerumNisiMors posted:Also Food > Economy Buildings, meaning unless it's a city with a goldmine or something similar, upgrading your markets is hardly worth it. Excess food grants growth across ALL provinces. Yeah, I have to agree with Zyla here, Market upgrades are incredibly worth it, but there is a trade-off you have to factor in, unlike the mere opportunity cost of earlier (and later!) titles. Saying to never upgrade them because it's not worth it is incredibly short sighted advice that could do a new player more harm than good, although I suspect it works out in the end because vanilla already has quite a few food pressures on the new player without the additional pressures of the market.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:03
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Zyla posted:Yeah, upgrading them any further in the absence of a metsuke is foolish, I'll completely agree with that. With the notable exception of the Infamous Mizu Shobai District, Famous Temple or Law Court, obviously. e: Not to mention there are certain situations where the short term gain is more useful than the long term wealth, either where the long term is too far in the future to change the outcome of the game or when the short term boost enables you to grab more wealth (ie. Lets you conquer another province since you can now afford the troops). shalcar fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 07:02
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Cynic Jester posted:Which is my point. The short term gameplan(Troops, more provs) goes very well with the late game plan of keeping most provinces pretty much bare bones except for farms. You never actually backed that little bit of information up. Your argument is for never investing in anything as troops are always better, so it would be spend the farm money on troops to take more provinces. It's a long and complex argument with a large number of assumptions which we have no indication that we are even on the same page. Certainly almost every "All farms all the time" maths I have seen makes several insane assumptions about marginal utility of the koku, along with a great many oversimplifications regarding clan size. They also almost always work on the long campaign numbers, despite the game being balanced around the short game-span. Food glut can be quite viable, but it's certainly not anywhere near always the best strategy.
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Jan 29, 2013 07:53
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Mr.Sloth posted:Isn't it about the same. Not speaking from experience as I don't own medieval but hasn't it always been about 20 units per army? The number of dudes in a unit also changes depending on the setting you have in the menu (took me about a month to notice this). Now I roll about with ashigaru units of 200 men and drown my enemies in a tide unwashed plebs. It has always been a maximum of 20 units per land stack, although in Shogun 2 you can have up to 40 units on the field for each side at once, so if anything, you get the biggest battles out of the entire series in it, certainly bigger than anything Medieval 2 threw at you.
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Jan 31, 2013 03:00
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ArchangeI posted:You can actually mod the savegame to allow an unlimited number of units on the field, but your performance tanks rather predictably. Yeah, I was just talking about vanilla, as with mods basically anything is possible.
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Jan 31, 2013 05:37
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Azran posted:I take the multiplayer isn't worth it? I've played 5 matches so far, and though every single one of them has been a Costly Victory for the other guy, I hate the unit limitation they imposed. I just got rocked by 6 FOTS line infantry units because my best cavalry unit were Light Cavalry. Multiplayer is great fun, but the locking out of various units is less than ideal. You can bypass it a bit by buying the DLC unit packs, as they add a veteran unit of the types they provide which tend to fill the gaps of not having a fully unlocked roster (like Fire Cavalry basically being Great Guard or Wako Raiders being like Katana Samurai). It's not ideal, but it doesn't take too long to get done.
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Feb 5, 2013 04:44
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Zyla posted:The one real downside to Shogun 2 is that the cheapest most basic unit also murders cavalry. Although the units that murder them are themselves murdered by cavalry. The basic melee unit also don't really have the morale to stand up to a rear charge, especially if it's already under pressure despite it's decent anti cavalry statistics. It's mainly the expensive and powerful units which are countered by cavalry, which given the cost of cavalry makes them quite cost effective.
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Feb 7, 2013 01:21
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Zyla posted:Just Heroic Victories. If you get a statue on the world map, you messed up, because it gives you fame. It's important to note that you need to win 3 of them before you reduce the number of provinces you can take by 1, so it's pretty hard to be more than 1 province behind the pace (but that means you were doing really well so...).
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Feb 7, 2013 04:28
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Affi posted:Ah goddamnit. Someone please tell me about experience in Shogun 2. Experience is pretty straightforward, but can seem quite arcane if you don't know how it works. It doesn't decay, but it does get diluted based on a few rules. When you combine two units, the combined unit experience is calculated and worked out per soldier to give you the new experience level of the unit. Since it takes more experience to get each level higher than base, you will often find that combining a rank 3 unit with a rank 6 unit gives you a rank 4 unit, rather than a rank 5 like you would expect. Lets just run through a quick example (Numbers are examples only). Unit A has 10 men and 20 xp for an average of 2 xp per man. They are rank 3. Unit B has 10 men and 70 xp for an average of 7 xp per man. They are rank 6. Combined the unit has 20 men and 90 xp for an average of 4.5 xp per man. They are rank 4. The same thing happens with unit replenishment, but the replenished men have no experience and so will drain your elite units very quickly. Let's look at the earlier scenario but unit A is replenishment. Unit A has 10 men and 0 xp for an average of 0 xp per man. They are rank 0. Unit B has 10 men and 70 xp for an average of 7 xp per man. They are rank 6. Combined the unit has 20 men and 70 xp for an average of 3.5 xp per man. They are rank 3. The only way to get very experienced troops is to minimise the casualties you take and maximise the experience gained. The experience you get is based on the value of the soldier the unit has killed, so a peasant kill (cheap and plentiful) is worth very little xp, but a general unit kill (few men, very expensive) is worth a large volume of experience. Killing routed elite units is a great way to get bulk, safe experience. But other than that, the only way to get elite units and keep them is to baby the unit and use them like elites, shock troops for flank or rear attacks or to shatter the weak point in an enemy line, don't get stuck in a grind out fight. Top them up immediately with the highest experience unit so that they don't get diluted by replenishment. The experience is also based on the value of the unit doing the killing, so a peasant killing a general gets more experience than a samurai killing a general. This cuts both ways, so elite units get basically nothing from killing peasants. Once units hit a certain level though, their vastly superior combat stats let them do miracles.
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Feb 14, 2013 09:46
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Affi posted:Thanks! I wish my elite soldiers wouldn't get quite so diluted from replentishing losses though, it really sucks when the AI shows up with rank 8 peasants though and your katana samurai unit that's been with you since the start is only rank 4 :/ Are there any mods that adress this issue? (The AI cheating with experience) (I don't mind if it cheats in other ways but) It's not cheating with experience so much as it's a quirk of the auto-resolve functionality and how it assigns kills/losses. It's easy enough to have rank 3-4 units right off the bat from a developed province and a smattering of tech, if the computer has gone all the way down the yari tree their yari ashigaru will be starting at rank 4-5 easily enough and from there it's not unlikely that they steamrolled a more expensive army with much lower ranks, especially since the auto-resolve will award few or no casualties for an army that has less than a third of the opponents power. Rank 8 (which I can't say I have ever seen from the AI (4-5 is more likely)) ashigaru still only has +4 morale and will still chain rout to arrow fire and flanking. It doesn't improve their armour after all! e: Katana Samurai are not really elite units, they are just core line troops. Although you might have had the unit for a long time, with the fighting they tend to see and the casualty rate, it's unlikely there is anyone alive in there that was in the unit when it was recruited. It feels like it should be more elite because it's been in every damned fight, but it's probably been replaced half a dozen times already. Elite troops like heroes or monks tend to hold their levels better than your line troops due to their much higher defensive stats. Naginata Samurai tend to get fairly elite for the same reasons. shalcar fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Feb 14, 2013 |
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Feb 14, 2013 12:43
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Krinkle posted:WHy is it that none of my horse units are able to outrun charging yari ashigaru? Is there a button I'm not seeing that disables "dancing-clydesdale-trot speed mode" so they loving gallop out of danger, ever? Kind of silly. It's a few things. The first is that charging units get a 50% speed boost once they close into charge range and horses take time to get up to speed, so enemy units can close quicker than you think. The other is that if a single horseman is caught by a spearman, the unit will turn around and engage to defend their comrade. To tell them to leave stragglers to die, turn on "Guard Mode". Remember that unless you order the unit to attack, a unit on guard mode will only engage enemies that are next to the unit, rather than moving in to attack with the whole unit, which means they are much less combat effective.
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Feb 15, 2013 06:20
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Zettace posted:Changing upkeep cost would only affect you the player because the AI doesn't pay upkeep and gets free money. Unless I'm mistaken in Shogun 2 it certainly does. In fact, you can see when a clan runs out of money as all of it's provinces will get the -25 to growth from bankruptcy. It certainly gets enough money boosts on Very Hard/Legendary that it for all intents and purposes doesn't care about money, but on Normal/Hard it does.
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Feb 19, 2013 10:27
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Sober posted:I saw a screencap from some MMO's forums (official or otherwise) about how Steam is the devil as well to MMO players and this one guy, It's basically those without the self-awareness to realise that other people might value things differently to themselves. Which explains TWC perfectly, really.
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Feb 24, 2013 09:09
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'I won't accept people in my guild who have/like Steam because all they do is buy games, spend 10 minutes on then them move onto the next thing and can't hold down a job, much less an MMO career, those undergeared fucks.'
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Yes. Creative Assembly are notoriously lazy when it comes to AI programming and this is their response to having AI that's too dumb to compete with human players. I always feel like I am some sort of Shogun 2 fanboy when I refute this but it's really not the case on Hard. In earlier Total War series, absolutely, but in Shogun 2 the computer plays a remarkably similar game to the human player on Hard. On the hardest possible difficulty Very Hard/Legendary it's true that the computer gets a ludicrous set of bonuses, but I feel that's justifiable if you crank the difficulty right up. Selecting a difficulty called "Legendary" is really asking the computer to break out the baseball bats. On Hard the computer doesn't get any extra koku, but it pays reduced upkeep on it's units (which you can see what they pay by mousing over them, nothing hidden there, while the player pays more). It also gains the ability to recruit units in a single turn rather than 2 or 3 turns, which gives the impression of an spawned army when that is indeed not the case. It used to be able to upgrade ashigaru into samurai, but that was taken out in one of the later patches after player outcry. The reduced upkeep often lets the computer snowball it's economy fairly aggressively compared to normal, so it actually tends to be much harder (or the computer uses it to have an extra stack of samurai running around instead.) The real difficulty of playing on hard is that the computer units get bonus morale in the battle map, which means in an even matchup, your forces will lose unless you play better than the computer. This isn't exactly cripplingly difficult and it's what you would expect on a level called "Hard". The battle AI on hard will also always exploit weaknesses it sees in deployments and do so much faster than on Normal, where the AI isn't operating at full capacity and has a chance to ignore an open flank/exposed unit etc. Normal actually gives the human player bonus morale and reduces your upkeep costs relative to the computer, so it often can feel like a big jump. e: Added some more battle map AI differences.
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Feb 24, 2013 13:42
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Tomn posted:Isn't AI considered to be probably the single hardest thing to make properly in computer programming? I just assumed the post was sarcastic, because AI programming is by far the most complicated and difficult software to write, especially when you figure in the capacity constraints that the system is under (making choices in a split second). I can not overstate how difficult AI is to program and create due to the unbelievably large phase space and the ingrained problems with fuzzy logic. If you want an idea of the scope of the problem, imagine you had to reduce a situation down to a yes or no question. The starting question is "What do I do with this swordsman unit?" Of course, this ignores the fundamental problem for a game AI, which is not to win, but to be fun to play. This complicates it immensely. It's no fun to fight an opponent who camps all the time, even if camping is the optimum choice. Of course, you want it to camp *sometimes* when an attack would be suicide, or if they are defending. But how often and when? The AI won't have the luxury of a balanced army a lot of the time, so it needs to be able to handle lopsided armies of a myriad of compositions, making any AI streamlining exceptionally difficult. It's a ludicrously difficult task because the scope is too large for perfect accuracy, so you have to make assumptions to simplify the sums, your pathfinding options are too large so you have to simplify the difficulty (climbable castle walls anyone?) and your army composition too variable to cheat on available responses (AI upgrading Ashigaru into Samurai, namely Katana so it has a melee component). If you understand the difficulties of AI programming, you really begin to see all the little changes that were made to make the AI's job easier and so it can spend less time on working out how to get around the castle wall and more time on if now is the best time for that flanking cavalry charge. With respect to the gentleman talking about Starcraft 2, it's got very little to do with the money or quality of the studio and everything to do with how easy it is to the sums. In Starcraft 2, the information available is small enough that the computer can calculate perfectly combat matchups and know if it will win or not (as it only has a dozen or so units to calculate, even the biggest matchups barely break 60) and as the battlefield is also the production arena, it can dynamically reroute production on the fly for what it needs to counter the enemy units. It's orders of magnitude smaller in scope than what the Total War AI has to do, which is why it's able to not cheat. Contrast this with Total War where if you have a cavalry heavy army and the AI has gone archer heavy, it can't just withdraw and produce some spearmen to counter, it has to try to make that army work. A Starcraft 2 AI on the other hand, can just withdraw and regroup unless you can force a matchup (In this case by being faster.).
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Feb 25, 2013 07:26
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Panzeh posted:Explain to me these small amazing studios who were making good diplomatic and strategic AI. Rose Coloured Glass Studios, I think.
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Feb 28, 2013 01:48
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If we are talking about pre Shogun 2 AI in the Total War series than I agree that it has historically been really bad (Although it was decent in Medieval 1). One entertaining thing I note is that all of the games you listed are turn based with manageable grid sizes and raw data calcs, something computers are very good at. You will notice that their requirements and limitations have a lot in similar with Medieval 1 and Shogun 1, both of which had reasonable strategic AI (alright, not so much Shogun 1). It's no coincidence that as game worlds have become more complicated (3D maps/open fields, soft counters instead of hard counters, expected transparency) that AI has become "worse". Although to be honest, most of the old AI's cheat, usually with the ability to see the entire world at once so they make moderately intelligent decisions.
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Feb 28, 2013 02:33
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concerned mom posted:Sadly it's not play but install in the first place. I tried ages ago to bring in all the downloaded files from home and put them in my steam folder and it still didn't work. I want to play at work! Not all games are on every steam server, so it may not be able to reach your local steam server with those older files. Try changing your region in the Steam settings so it tries a different content server and hopefully you will reach one that works. Your work may be dropping packets from the local specific steam server and that's causing the issue.
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Feb 28, 2013 11:08
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Jimbot posted:It has been a while since I played Shogun 2 and decided to start a coop campaign of Rise of the Samurai with a friend. Any starter tips? I heard things are more focused on diplomacy than conquest. It's pretty confusing starting off and probably not the best campaign to get back into things. You might want to check out my recently completed LP of Rise of the Samurai here as it has a lot of useful information. Your best bet would be to check out the second post (The Summary Post) for an overview of a significant number of units/buildings and various in-depth information about them. It's going to be enough to get you on the right track at any rate.
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Mar 5, 2013 01:51
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Azran posted:Is there any downside to adopting all your generals - besides Upstart Sons (which I guess Adopted into the Family negates...)? It's like a huge, murderous family. The loyalty penalty isn't just to the adopted general, it's to all your natural children as well, so it will make your kids loathe you. Azran posted:Also, any reason as for why the Loansword Ashigaru are limited? The veteran upgrades gave a flat boost which makes the Loansword overpowered when ranked up to around 4 and spammed. They chose to fix this problem by limiting them.
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Mar 6, 2013 01:09
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Azran posted:Oh, I see. Should I be spending Clan Tokens on them? I've got four Rank 5 Loansword units, and they are worth 700 koku each. I've heard it's best to keep them cheap? (Morale, Defense and Attack upgraded). They maintain the best bang for buck without clan tokens spent on them, keep them at rank 4/5. Most units are the same way, with the notable exception of Yari Ashigaru if you are in a spear clan as Hold Firm is ludicrously good for the cost of a rank 9 Yari Ashi.
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Mar 6, 2013 02:30
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SeanBeansShako posted:It isn't the tactics fault the AI and game engine were prototype pieces of poo poo. You are not playing the tactics though, you are playing the game. With non-existent AI and a prototype game engine, any relation that Empire had with anything remotely tactical to the time period is pure coincidence. Shogun gives meaningful tactical choices and creates an engaging battle element. It's by far the superior game. It's unsurprising that people feel the tactics in Shogun are deeper then in Empire, because they are. This is a different statement to saying Japanese tactics are superior to Age of Sail tactics or anything outside of the two game environments.
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Mar 11, 2013 04:09
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SeanBeansShako posted:Alright still, yeah it might be lacking but it is bad enough it can't be modded to at least not be poo poo so quit bringing it up Relax, it's not a personal attack. I don't think that stating "I like [newest game] for the battles compared to [last game played], It's really nice having [new feature]." is all that controversial in a megathread, especially given that the [latest game] just got a gold release and a whole lot of new people are playing it and this is the place to talk about it. Especially when the older game had large highly visible flaws, which naturally invites comparison. There is no need to get defensive when the statements are generally positive about the series. (Do we want the games to be getting worse so that our personal favourites always stay the best in the series?)
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Mar 11, 2013 04:48
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Lord Tywin posted:In the game before empire the AI was absolutely awful in siege battles but they sure as hell were more fun to play than the climbing siege battles in Empire and Shogun. How does it feel to be so completely wrong (Ok, maybe not about Empire)? The AI in previous games couldn't fight it's way out of a paper bag, let alone threaten a fortification. I understand it was an enormous amount of fun (The first 3 times) to defeat a huge army with a fistful of archers because the enemy got stuck on all the geometry, but I really think nostalgia is clouding your judgement on this one. The old siege battles were terrible.
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Mar 18, 2013 01:09
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Jimbot posted:Are Red Seal trade ships worth using at all? Is there any difference between them and normal trade ships other than Red Seal being a bit more durable and able to travel on the open ocean? IIRC Red Seal trade ships carry more trade goods per ship than the normal Trade Ships, so you can get more out of a single trade node.
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Mar 18, 2013 01:18
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Jimbot posted:Alright, I'll give them a shot. I did a google search and they said there was no difference but those threads were over a year old and since a lot of the game has changed in that time I wasn't sure if those ships did either. Run a test and let us know! If nothing else, it will put the question to bed.
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Mar 18, 2013 01:24
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Sober posted:I don't do the archer ammo-then retreat trick like some people have suggested, but simply fighting out a siege is rather boring in Shogun 2, or really not worth manually losing a bunch of men over to take over a simple one-tier tenchu. Are the later castle town stages supposed to be more elaborate and even more of a meatgrinder to play? I'm not suggesting it's wrong to auto-resolve siege battles against tier 1 fortifications when they only have the retainers in them or some other fight that's going to be tedious and unfun. You would auto-resolve a field battle that only had 45 opponents as well! Where I do think it's gamey is taking advantage of the fact the auto-resolve doesn't correctly factor in fortifications (It massively undervalues them) and so will let armies win that simply had no chance of taking the fortifications or turns what would be a close battle into a massive victory with minimal attacking casualties. The entire purpose of fortifications is to make the attackers pay for every metre of ground in blood. People are often afraid of taking any losses in a battle, but replenishment often makes those losses irrelevant next turn, two turns later at the absolute most unless it's a properly defended fortification and then why shouldn't it be expensive to take? If the troop cost is too high, you can pay the time cost and siege them out, the level 1 fortifications only last 3 turns. The later castle stages are indeed a more complicated meatgrinder which will cost you more troops, but the extra complexity adds a lot to the actual battle itself which keeps it interesting. The reason the level 1 fortification fights are so uninspiring is that there is no major strategy changes between them and you have to fight a lot of them (It's amplified by the level 2 fortification being the same design but with two towers added) which gets old, I admit. One thing that a lot of people seem to forget when attacking in Shogun 2 sieges is that you are not meant to kill the defenders to the man. Instead, you are meant to push them off the tenchu and hold it for 60 seconds. Tie their units down and use your superior numbers to seize the prize (You did bring more men, right?) and avoid all the tedious grinding.
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Mar 18, 2013 03:20
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Cantorsdust posted:Speak for yourself, I started playing with the original Shogun Chivalric Men-at-Arms for life. Beeline to them, spam them, win everything. Medieval 1 really was a spectacular game. Improved so much over the original Shogun, although I adored both of them. Make Medieval 3 with all the improvements of Shogun 2 and I can die a happy man. Krazyface posted:The game is biased towards historical accuracy, unlike in Shogun 2 where "major clans" would drop like flies. I find in Shogun 2 more often than not the major clans end up as the majority of the remaining large empires (since they do have bonuses that give them advantages over minor clans), although you do still get the odd result where they basically all get wiped out. It's never really bothered me that much, since it's easier to kill minor clans no matter the size (no bonuses!). canyoneer posted:Is the extra content in the Grandmaster pack worth the extra $15? Where should I start playing, being new to the series? Grab the Grand Master pack for sure, it's exceptional value and really gives you the games at their absolute best. Start with Shogun 2 vanilla or Rise of the Samurai. They are the best games in technical terms and certainly the easiest to get to grips with, as well as being absolutely beautiful. I know some people recommend Rome because it's what they started with, but gaming as a whole has moved on and a lot of things that were acceptable practise then will just upset and frustrate you now (The UI is almost incomprehensible without prior experience or a lot of time reading tooltips.) BobTheSpy posted:I'm starting to feel that no one on Total War Center actually likes the Total War games. TWC is a terrible, terrible place and no-one should ever go there. Except for game designers, who should read every post and then do the absolute opposite of what the poster wants. It's a very stark lesson in people not knowing what they want and not being able to explain what they want, because what they say they want is absolutely terrible.
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Mar 22, 2013 03:37
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Which means that I got to play what I still consider the best game in the series, Medieval 1.
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Shorter Than Some posted:Yeah I wish they would't hide stats like that. Speed is another one, it was really counter intuitive to find out that Yari cav are faster than Light Cav. Same speed, I thought? I know they get caught when trying to run away due to the charge speed bonus that all units get, but I'm pretty sure Yari and Light cavalry have the same base speed.
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Mar 24, 2013 13:24
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canyoneer posted:I chose whatever clan it listed as 'easiest'. I started in Miyagi and Iwate. I've just been sort of building things with no idea what I'm doing. Didn't start at war with anyone. The Soma were just south of me, and they were destroyed within 10 turns by my allies to the north. canyoneer posted:Man, this learning curve Rise of the Samurai is a good place to start for a beginning player, as the units are more multi-role than vanilla and the arts/skill trees are significantly better balanced such that you can always make a decent choice while you are learning without having a crippling impact on your later game. With Cavalry rare and expensive in Rise, a new player can learn how to manage infantry combat and get to grips with it before cavalry finds it's way into the mix. The Fujiwara are difficult to lose with as someone mentioned earlier, due to the fact it will take several turns for an enemy army to get to you, but the reverse makes expansion for your difficult. I would suggest the Kamakura Minamoto, as they start with access to elite units (Foot Samurai), a Blacksmith and a central but not too central position which gives them some good expansion options. While you are starting out, upgrade your Blacksmiths into Weaponsmiths, as the extra melee attack to your Levy units makes them head and shoulders above their unupgraded cousins and will act as a powerful force for the early game. For buildings, you want to make sure you upgrade every farm to Dry Field Agriculture no matter the soil fertility and you will want to get some Markets to increase income as well as allow you to field Junsatsushi. Consider upgrading high value provinces with Strongholds or Forts to enable extra buildings to be placed there, a Clan Estate and Market in a fertile or very fertile province can be a powerful economic engine in it's own right. As for units, you can get away with around 10 units (a half stack) in the early game, roughly 6-7 Naginata Levy and the rest Bow Levy. If you can build Foot Samurai or Sword Attendants, grab one or two of those (not many more, they cost too much for an early economy) and they will carry you through many battles. Slowly bring the stack up to full size of 20 units. Have your Daimyo lead the stack, the extra morale he brings is critical with Levy units. Early arts should be Tax Quota for the additional town growth, but Way of the Bow can be equally valuable with it's additional ranged power for your forces. A quick unit breakdown: Naginata Levy: Naginata troops are versatile, being anti cavalry and anti infantry, but not as good as the specialists (Spear and sword respectively). Levy troops need to be in their generals command aura and must not be allowed to be flanked or attacked from the rear. Bow Levy: Basic ranged unit, of limited use against anything but other Levy (Naginata or Bow). Weak in melee. Don't let them get in a fight. Sword Attendants: Dedicated anti infantry. Devastating charge but poor defence leaves them vulnerable to arrows and being swamped. Can destroy even elite units if conditions are favourable (and cost much less). Naginata Attendants: Both Anti cavalry and Anti infantry, Naginata Attendants are heavily armoured and have high defence. Will hold the line well against most enemy forces. A good choice if your army is ranged heavy. Bow Attendants: Ranged unit of moderate skill. Unlike Bow Levy, Bow Attendants can do good damage to all units (although less well against Naginata Attendants and Foot Samurai) and can even hold their own in melee combat against Naginata Levy. Cost effective, but vulnerable to most melee troops. Foot Samurai: Combination super archer/ super melee fighter. Expensive and few in number but exceptionally powerful. Has the deadly Whistling Arrows ability. A few units of these will make a devastating fighting core for your army. Are not a cost effective match-up against their specialist counters (Bow Attendants, Sword Attendants). Mounted Samurai: Elite cavalry. Good in melee and ranged combat. Very few in number, useful for tactical strikes. Mounted Naginata: Anti cavalry/ Anti infantry cavalry. High armour, good against arrows but very few in number. Naginata Warrior Monks: Elite Naginata Troop. Able to obliterate infantry and cavalry with ease. Has the devestating warcry. Once in melee combat, these guys are unmatched. Unlike in vanilla, they have decent armour. Bow Warrior Monks: Best ranged unit in the game, can hold their own in melee. Each man is not as good an archer as Foot Samurai, but there are almost 50% more of them, which results in more arrows on target. Lacks Whistling Arrows. Tetsubo Warrior Monk Hero: Hero unit. Sword Attendants turned up to 11. Naginata Warrior Monk Hero: Hero unit. Naginata Warrior Monks turned up to 11. Mounted Samurai Hero: Hero unit. Mounted Samurai turned up to 11. Ludicrous range. Onna Bushi Heroine: Hero unit. Mounted Naginata turned up to 11. Lots more information and a good example of how to play Rise of the Samurai can be found at my LP here.
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Mar 26, 2013 04:24
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