Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai

[Steve]

It's a "blood pack" that adds cartoonish particle effects and dismemberment to Shogun 2 for £1.

Dont forget the blood-spatter on screen effect!

http://www.totalwar.com/shogun2/fall-of-the-samurai

Including modern ranged units - such as the Gatling gun and Armstrong gun - controllable in a new first-person mode.

Might be cool.

Actually, no. All other things about this sound cool (except for the fact it's standalone and therefore won't affect the vanilly game), but this sounds like a stupid gimmick that has no place whatsoever in a strategy game, let alone a Total War game where units gain experience in combat which increases, among other things, their accuracy.

Giving the player first person control about such a unit is pure

Depends of how they implement it, if it gives your dudes magical accuracy so you can snipe everything from the other side of the map then its bullshit.

If its just a glorified camera angle then it might be fun to use a couple of times.

 

[Teepo]

Gunning down samurai

 

[Trash]

Well, Shogun 2 is fun and the ROTS DLC was fun as well so I have good hopes for this. Unfortunately they went the way of releasing a buttload of retailer specific DLC for this DLC so I'll wait for a future christmas sale to get it all in one go or something.

 

[betamin]

Kinda OT but I'm feeling like trying some of these new total war games (I only played shogun and that was like 7 years ago), so I'm wondering, which one has the better AI? I'm a sucker for difficult battles.

 

[JarlFrank]

There's some rebalance mods for Shogun 2 that make battles last longer and overall improve gameplay.

 

[betamin]

Kinda OT but I'm feeling like trying some of these new total war games (I only played shogun and that was like 7 years ago), so I'm wondering, which one has the better AI? I'm a sucker for difficult battles.

Technically speaking, Shogun 2 has the best AI (though on the campaign map, Medeval 1/Shogun 1 Ai is still better at dealing with a Risk-Map than the later games are with a full 3d one). Doesn't necessarily make it the best game though. And the battles last like 3 minutes I personally enjoyed the battles in modded Medieval 2 and vanilla Napoleon more than those of Shogun 2.

What game/mods do you reccomend? I mostly enjoy the battles but the risk phase is cool too.

 

[spectre]

I was fairly unimpressed about Rise of the Samurai, so I'm not too hot about Fall of the Samurai. While the prospect of gunning down row after row of katana wielding faggots is appealing, I grow weary of both the setting and the map itself.

I too thought that Shogun 2 AI was pretty decent, and I think it's because the map was fairly simple - not too many road connections, not too many paths to take. I remember being actually pretty impressed with how playable vanilla S2 was, compared to Medieval 2 and onwards. The only thing that bothered me it was how blatant the AI cheating was. Fortunately, there's was a mod for it (the AI still cheats, but it's less in your face), one of the three minor tweaks I use.

 

[JarlFrank]

THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT TOTAL WAR MODS

I have more than 40 gigs of TW mods on my HDD, so let me recommend some for Medieval 2.

Call of Warhammer: as Ed123 mentioned, it is still rather buggy. Downloading version 1.5 now, the new one, in a torrent (otherwise I'd have to seperately download several parts, ech). I liked 1.4, but it is heavily scripted - you cannot attack your allies, there are scripted battles every few turns depending on which faction you play as, there are scripted enemy invasions (prepare to defend your cities; after a couple of turns you'll be attacked by large enemy armies). Overall it's pretty fun and challenging (read: those scripted invasions will rape you) and I had a good time with it. 1.5 should be less buggy than the previous releases, so you can give it a shot if you don't mind downloading a 5 GB torrent...

Deus Lo Vult: Personally, this is one of my favourites. Adds some new campaign gameplay systems (that are all optional, so you don't have to play with them) like requiring to attain a certain amount of "government points" and "military points" before being able to upgrade your cities and castles. Which I don't like much so I deactivated it, but that's the cool thing about the mod, you can pick features. It's got some very nice "gritty" unit retextures and looks quite gorgeous on the battlemaps, campaign map is sweet too. Americas are open to discover right from the start of the game if you're so inclined. There's also the BB submod (Battlefield Balance, cause originally it only balanced the battles, now it's much more) but read its changelog carefully before using it, it changes a lot of things to be more hardcore and the modder has made some questionable decisions.

Chivalry 2: The Sicilian Vespers: I like that one because it has a good battlefield balance (it's one of the few mods where cavalry charges don't wipe out an entire unit in one go, which is a thing that always makes me rage in mods where it's so overpowered) and some nice additional governmental buildings that greatly influence the city's economy. It also has an interesting unit system, levies are pretty much useless for anything but cannon fodder while heavy cavalry and infantry have fewer soldiers in their regiments but pack quite a punch. It also offers one of the most challenging factions in its grand campaign with the Regnum Cypri. Worth trying out for the battles and for the town management. Very solid mod.

Bellum Crucis: Version 6.3 of this came out recently and I'm enjoying it (and getting raped). Be sure to read the manual before you play this. Also, it's in Italian, but there's a (shitty and still unfinished) English translation out there if you need it (I'm using the mod to improve my rusty Italian, the translation's just too bad, in some places it's obvious that it's google-translated...). The mod is very hard if you play it on hard because there's several scripts that are intended to fuck over the player. It goes up to the point of being rather unfair but I found it to be interesting, especially since it also adds some very great new innovations. There's now technologies that spread and allow new buildings, but you can also discover techs before others do by buildings academys and hiring a new agent type, the scholar. Spies and assassins have different skills depending on whether you recruit them from castles or cities, there's one spy type for example who can steal holy relics and technologies from enemy cities. I'd suggest you to read the manual and then decide whether to download it, cause all the new features are explained in detail. Very good and ambitious mod, totally recommended.

 

[Steve]

This 9 gig patch better fix the MP campaign.
Any early impressions on FOTS? From what I've heard the battle AI is pretty stupid.

4 max ranked gatling guns wiping out an army of 40 units:

 

[JarlFrank]

Do gatlings have limited ammo at least or do they have this stupid unlimited ammo for artillery thing still going that they introduced in empire?

 

[spectre]

^ From the video I see they have an ammo bar, and it gets depleted.
Generally, all artillery in Shogun 2 has limited ammo, so no reason to suspect it would have been otherwise.

Mowing down samurai with machine gun fire fuck yeah! But damn those blood splatters are inane.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Hey, what happened to Dominion of the Sword? Still being worked on?

 

[spectre]

9 gigs? And there I was thinking that 2 gigs worth of patches for MTW2 wat a bit too much.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it just plain fucking lazy? They replace the game's pack files instead of writing a bit of code to update their contents? Because I honestly don't believe it's in any way justifiable.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Man, this looks shit. I had really hoped they changed direction with Shogun 2, back to the original concepts of STW/MTW.
But: Samurais with gatling guns, great, and more stupid sea battles, who needs this shit ...

 

[poocolator]

Oh, god. First order of business should be to get rid of the retarded kool-aid muzzle flashes and tracers.

 

[MapMan]

I recently bought shogun II (without any dlc and shit) and I'm enjoying it greatly with the darthmod. The game plays much better. This new expansion looks kinda mehish... I might get it some time later when the price drops and I'll have my fun with plain shogun 2 (with mods).

 

[MapMan]

Something wrong about darthmod?

 

[bonescraper]

Here are my impressions:

Chasing routed units with my general and shooting them up like ducks with his revolver feels so... wrong. But it's so fucking fun!

Overall, i'm having fun. I dig the setting and new units, but... the game is too easy. At least on normal. In vanilla S2 i was pleasantly surprised when i lost a couple of times on normal difficulty. In FotS you just need 2 cannons (not those wooden ones though, they're a big, big waste of money) and some riflemen. Get a high ground position, line up your infantry, place your cannons and go make some tea. Come back after 6 minutes and you'll see a "decisive victory" screen. As for the campaign map... The Sinsengumi are OP. They can easily assassinate and bribe everyone. You won't need any other asians agents (ok, you can get a ninja to slow down armies if you really want to). I got more units by bribery than i ever produced. Looks like the whining casuals won yet another fight against the incline.

 

[JarlFrank]

I haven't even tried Shogun 2 yet, prolly gonna wait till the new patch is up on the seven seas and then play it with mods. Going to do the same with FotS - wait for patches, wait for mods, then play it as it's meant to be, cause if it's too easy it definitely requires some rebalancing by skilled modders like the TRoM team.

 

[JarlFrank]

Oh, and if there's anything that pisses me off incredibly, it's the lack of mod tools for TW games from Empire onwards, which aren't as easy to mod as the previous games. Which means we don't get any awesome total conversion mods. Which we could if the devs would actually deliver those fucking mod tools they fucking promised.

The worst thing is that FotS's base mechanics lend themselves perfectly for total conversions of any kind. It has medieval tech meeting modern tech - so it already has working mechanics for any type of unit from ancient to modern times. The possibilities? A world-spanning WW1 mod, a Victorian era mod, heck, with the inclusion of tech trees since Empire, someone could even make a fucking mod that starts in the middle ages and lets you develop your country to the 19th century.

But no, the devs promised mod tools but haven't yet delivered them. Why? Cause they want to sell shitty unit DLCs and fear modders' competition. BUT MODDERS CAN ALREADY MAKE NEW UNITS. They just can't change anything on the campaign map.

I do hope that when, maybe in the next game, they use a new engine (which seems to be their tradition - make 2 games and 2 expansions, then use a new engine), it's either more moddable or they release mod tools for Emp/Nap/S2/FotS.

 

[commie]

I thought the Shogun engine was just a spiced up Empire/Napoleon Engine...It certainly looks more or less the same, unlike M2TW and Empire where you clearly see a generational leap.

 

[Forest Dweller]

All their "even" games are using the same engine with some enhancements of the preceeding "odd" game.

 

[JarlFrank]

I thought the Shogun engine was just a spiced up Empire/Napoleon Engine...It certainly looks more or less the same, unlike M2TW and Empire where you clearly see a generational leap.

Which is what I said. Napoleon and FotS are standalone expansions, not seperate games, so basically it's this:
Shogun + Mongol Invasion, Medieval + Viking invasion = same engine
Rome + Barbarian Invasion, Medieval 2 + Kingdoms = same eninge
Empire + Napoleon, Shogun 2 + FotS = same engine

After this forumula, the next game will probably have a new engine, and they might finally release modding tools for the current one (Empire to FotS).

 

[commie]

I thought the Shogun engine was just a spiced up Empire/Napoleon Engine...It certainly looks more or less the same, unlike M2TW and Empire where you clearly see a generational leap.

Which is what I said. Napoleon and FotS are standalone expansions, not seperate games, so basically it's this:
Shogun + Mongol Invasion, Medieval + Viking invasion = same engine
Rome + Barbarian Invasion, Medieval 2 + Kingdoms = same eninge
Empire + Napoleon, Shogun 2 + FotS = same engine

After this forumula, the next game will probably have a new engine, and they might finally release modding tools for the current one (Empire to FotS).

Aha. I thought you were peddling the CA line of Shogun having a NEW engine as they tried to suggest that Napoleon was a new game that counted as their second one(to keep with their policy of two main games per engine). Fucking shifty bastards.

 

[JarlFrank]

So DarthMod Ultimate Commander 7.0 actually surprised me.

Playing with Causa Belli submod that unlocks many minor nations and gives them unique units like the majors. Picked Bavaria cause of local patriotism. At first I declared war on Saxony, easily took it cause Prussia already whittled down its defenses and laid siege to the city (apparently, in Empire you can attack a city that is already besieged by another faction ). Poland was allied with Saxony, so they help their allies. No problem, I easily conquer a Polish region too cause Poland is at war with Prussia and Russia. Then I conquer - after one unsuccessful attempt, turns out the enemy does not suck THAT bad at fort defense - Warsaw and think to myself: well, the game sure seems to be as easy as it always was.

Then Prussia declares war on me and all goes to shit. Right now I'm trying to survive Prussian doomstacks, pulled out my army from the last Polish territory and brought it to defend Warsaw, just in time it arrived as reinforcements. The enemy also had reinforcements, so it was a rush to arrive at the fortress first. And the AI actually knew what it was doing. Sending cavalry to harry my reinforcements and delay them - when I noticed their infantry kept marching on toward my fort as 3 of my infantry regiments fought off a Prussian cavalry regiment, I knew what they were trying: slow my reinforcements down so they won't reach my lightly garrisoned fort before the enemy does. Then it came to a shootout in front of the walls, and I noticed: well fuck me, they have researched Fire By Rank one turn before me! Usually the AI never researches techs effectively, but here they did, and I had to charge them in melee cause I hadn't stood a chance in a shootout.

Managed to win in the end, but it was a surprise to see an AI that actually acts like it knows what it's doing.

Now, one turn later, Warsaw is besieged again - by the Polish army which had been sitting in its city all this time, only coming out now that I was weakened and easier to pick off. They actually saw a chance and used it.

Oh god I'm getting raped so hard right now.