Total War: Shogun 2

[kris]

The AI does actually hide units in the forest terrain pretty well. When the developer mentioned that in defense of seemingly "spawning" units it wasn't just a stupid cop out. In fact I think they have stacks in their forests more often then they have them defending their cities.

I had recently reaseled that country as a vassal from another and more or less seen their stack and moves all the time. But if you don't beleive that, see my previous post of how I saw the AI get 10 divisions out of thin air spread out around their capital. Then I could see these units stack together.

 

[Tigranes]

The AI almost certainly spawns units on a regular basis, both through the various bonuses it gets and, in some cases, either out of thin air or through an extremisation of those bonuses. In any case, once you've seen it a couple of times, you really don't want to have any war where you take it slower than necessary, you want to blitzkrieg.

Really, this boils Shogun 2 wars down into 2 basic situations; (1) the AI faction is already fully decked out, but you present a strong enough force in a good strategic position to keep them from attacking. To the AI's credit it is no longer as foolhardy in attacking - I had a silent stalemate against the Matsuda as Oda in the Harima/Settsu region for several years. Otherwise, there is (2), where you crush their killer stacks in 1-2 decisive battles, and within 2-3 turns destroy their entire domain through carefully planned city-hit squads. This is cool, but you do run into the obvious exploit of htiting their completely undefended cities and never having to fight their stacks.

Anyway, that hasn't hurt my enjoyment of the game so far, second H/H Oda campaign now around 1565 and decided to hit Realm Divide. With the mod I can keep my patchwork vassals who cover the area north of Kyoto, the giant Takeda ally who buffer the East excellently, and then theres a few medium factions in the West that I"ve done my best to castrate beforehand. You still get the huge hit of losing ~10 trading partners, of course, which means if you lose a couple of your killer stacks to the AI alliance you really risk everything spiralling out of control. RD is a fantastic addition, if only they put more thought into it than "bam everyone hates you".

 

[Overweight Manatee]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=440700

This mod makes the AI a bit better. Keeps more units on defense, keeps a better unit variety. I've dropped down to Hard mode with it to take off about half the cheating BS and the AI is still putting up a decent fight. The one thing thats screwed up is that Ashikaga is allowed to expand, which means if you play Hattori have fun with the full stack on your doorstep in the 2nd turn.

 

[kris]

Will be itneresting to see how I will handle the realm divide I was just hit with in legendary as Hojo. I am pretty sure it hits earlier there as I didn't think I had that many territories and it hit while I didn't take any more. But with a royal marriage I will have my most important ally on my side for several more seasons.

By the way, how can you guys play with Hattori?

 

[FatCat]

Darthmod removes AI cheats , while difficulty is not nerfed and battles are more fun. + Unit variety mod + Clan recolor and it's godly.

 

[Santander02]

Does it still has all the stupid things that the version that Trash posted on page 11 does?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Darth mod seems to have too much random shit that just seemed like a good idea at the time. You can check the changelog and half of the time each new version will have "removed x because everyone other than me realized it was a stupid fucking idea". Currently, the things I have the most problems with is intentionally nerfing the minor clans so that they can't become powerful, and massively boosting the garrison sizes as a way to insure the AI doesn't leave undefended cities (if you attack an undefended town you usually face at least half a stack automatically spawned) instead of actually fixing the AI to not leave undefended cities. Also, I can't stand his description of changes as "x is now optimised" (note: optimized is always spelled wrong), because an "optimal" is completely arbitrary.

The one good thing about Darth mod is that archers are handled much better. It might be worth it just for that. Hopefully in a month or so the overall quality will be much better.

 

[poocolator]

Codex has been optimised.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, that's the beauty of all these "optimized" mods out there.
F.e. I think this is the first total war game to satisfy me in terms of archer performance, they may be slightly overpowered, but not by much.

Ridiculous stack spamming doesn't bother me that much, as I simply play on Hard, where it is significantly less retarded.

Personally, I only use a couple of small mods atm, one to speed up unit exp gains (so that I can actually gain some exp in battle), another to increse skill points per level to three (it actually feels "right" this way), and the realm divide mod to make it less ham fisted -200 up your ass. The game feels quite ok atm.

Only thing I'm missing is the ability to retrain units to get all the province equipment bonuses. I'm kinda OCD when it comes to shit like that, so I raged when I couldn't just take a tour with my new recruits, to "catch them all".

 

[Overweight Manatee]

If not being able to retrain bothers your OCD tendencies, just wait until I tell you about how generals spawned in a province with bonuses will get the bonuses. Your Daimyo will never have that juicy +5 armor that a shitty 1 star general will. Unless you kill him off, that is

 

[Serious_Business]

I've bought every TW game, including Empire and Napoleon when their price went down, cause I love the premise of the series and the games are always worth it for the mods. Going to buy Shogun 2 maybe next month or so.

And based on the relatively large fanbase TW has got, I doubt they'll stop producing TW games altogether. S2 probably didn't sell as well because of setting - you know, all these stupid teenagers who claim to know shit about history in the TWC forums, while actually all they want is to play as their own nation. The kind of people who go into arguments with mod creators that "MY NATION EXISTED IN 1100 DESPITE WHAT YOUR SOURCES SAY GO INCLUDE IT", and the kind of people who aren't interested at all in a game set in Japan because lol it's some foreign place that I don't give a shit about haha.

I bet Rome 2 would sell much better.

But there are a lot of weaboos and otakus as well. And I don't think this really has any great influence anyway what countries are there and what not.

Sengoku japan does not have anything to do with weaboos and otakus. If anything it's the entire antithesis of that. Japan then, Japan now. The immense decline. I think JFrank's theory is correct. However, Japan as an asian country is fairly accessible to westerners. If they did a Korea : Total War, I doubt that would work out so well. Japan managed to sell its tradition and aristocratic samurai mystique to the rest of the world. Now nobody gives a shit about their past except non-japanese, it seems

 

[Forest Dweller]

It must be those two bombs we dropped on them. Either that or we didn't drop enough.

 

[Trash]

Had my very first game hardcore crash. Incidently also right after I managed to defeat a fucking larger and more superior enemy force. Fuuuuu.

Mod wise there really is nothing that good out there. Most have some good ideas but the amount of herp derp is staggering. Guy makes a decent CAI mod and soon afterwards removes parts of what makes it good so it can stay compatible with other mods. Why castrate your own efforts? Because he caved in to the morons who told him to. Darthmod is once again feature overload and the rest is just fluff or catered to morons and larpers. Larpers who doubtlessly will provide a zillion shittily written AAR's that will make Potter fanfiction look good.

 

[FatCat]

there are good mods , visually and audio wise at least.
Unit Variety mod and Wako,Retainer and ninja replacer are gorgeous.

 

[spectre]

If not being able to retrain bothers your OCD tendencies, just wait until I tell you about how generals spawned in a province with bonuses will get the bonuses. Your Daimyo will never have that juicy +5 armor that a shitty 1 star general will. Unless you kill him off, that is

Yep, noticed that. Fortunately after I get him the level 3 poet, my Daimyo usually sits on his ass in the capital chasing girls.
Since daimyos an heirs cannot be assigned for administrative stuff, I feel no obligation to level them up.

Mod wise there really is nothing that good out there. Most have some good ideas but the amount of herp derp is staggering. Guy makes a decent CAI mod and soon afterwards removes parts of what makes it good so it can stay compatible with other mods. Why castrate your own efforts? Because he caved in to the morons who told him to. Darthmod is once again feature overload and the rest is just fluff or catered to morons and larpers. Larpers who doubtlessly will provide a zillion shittily written AAR's that will make Potter fanfiction look good.

I don't actually post there, but casual observation reveals a critical mass of newfags have built up there.
I especially lolled at their reaction when CA told them - do not unlock additional clans, because we want to to pay for our dlc,
they simply bent over and took it in the ass like good sheeple.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but when you see every other faggot out there cry out: Lolz, U must mod in Mayamoto Mushashi with dual katanaz asap, zomg do want!!!!!111
Then nothing surprising that the general quality of mods loos the way it looks.

Good thing is, vanilla game seems good enough that only minor gameplay tweaks are needed, imo.

 

[Quilty]

I can't understand people who write entire NOVELS when making AARs. It's insane. They put all this time and effort into making up the stories, the characters, the huge, unreadable walls of text, and it's almost always pure shit. Just describe your strategy in a couple of sentences or add some lulz, who the fuck wants to read about you larping to be the king of France? :/

 

[Black Bart Charley]

I am waiting a year or two till they fix all the teething troubles and modders fix it

 

[kris]

Japan managed to sell its tradition and aristocratic samurai mystique to the rest of the world. Now nobody gives a shit about their past except non-japanese, it seems

This is not true. Japanese are kind of nationalistic in this way and are keen to keep their culture (even if their modern culture is kind of fucked up). they make popular historic shows and I am not talking anime here. They were also very impressed that I as a foreigner knew so much about their history. (I don't really know that much.)

 

[FatCat]

they simply bent over and took it in the ass like good sheeple.

they are reading spam attack on CA for not dealing with alt+f4 issue.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

A concise summary of what is wrong with Darthmod. Me at turn 45 from a Uesugi start on VH.

My biggest problem is finding a way to spend my money.

 

[Trash]

I don't actually post there, but casual observation reveals a critical mass of newfags have built up there.
I especially lolled at their reaction when CA told them - do not unlock additional clans, because we want to to pay for our dlc,
they simply bent over and took it in the ass like good sheeple.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but when you see every other faggot out there cry out: Lolz, U must mod in Mayamoto Mushashi with dual katanaz asap, zomg do want!!!!!111
Then nothing surprising that the general quality of mods loos the way it looks.

Good thing is, vanilla game seems good enough that only minor gameplay tweaks are needed, imo.

Amen. They always were good little CA cocksuckers though. CA says 'don't mod that' and twcenter falls over itself to make sure all knowledge of it will be buried. Whimps.

 

[FatCat]

I don't actually post there, but casual observation reveals a critical mass of newfags have built up there.
I especially lolled at their reaction when CA told them - do not unlock additional clans, because we want to to pay for our dlc,
they simply bent over and took it in the ass like good sheeple.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but when you see every other faggot out there cry out: Lolz, U must mod in Mayamoto Mushashi with dual katanaz asap, zomg do want!!!!!111
Then nothing surprising that the general quality of mods loos the way it looks.

Good thing is, vanilla game seems good enough that only minor gameplay tweaks are needed, imo.

Amen. They always were good little CA cocksuckers though. CA says 'don't mod that' and twcenter falls over itself to make sure all knowledge of it will be buried. Whimps.

Do you even realized that those things are unmoddable without modtools do you ?
Try yourself if you are so smart.

 

[Trash]

Holy shit, retarded fanboyism on my codex? You do realise that 'do it yourself if you think you're so smart' has both nothing to do with Twcenter rolling over the moment CA whistles and is the oldest, lamest fanboy argument ever?

 

[Tigranes]

Finished H/H Oda long campaign, conquering everything west of Kyoto and a little bit more. Could have destroyed the Takeda who had been my game-long allies and got through all of Japan, but no real point. With the RD nerf mod late game was relatively simple to handle, but that's really a lot more to do with how you can always run rings around the enemy stacks in the campaign map so you only fight battles on your own terms.

Taking Kyoto is a nice late game epic battle though - had to send in a full stack autoresolve to soften them up then go in with my veteran full-XP army taking heavy losses. Eventually finished in 1580 with Oda Nobunaga still as Daimyo.

Very satisfying overall, but S2's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness; focusing on Japan helped them make sure the game wasn't broken for once, but I don't really feel any urge to start a new campaign now, hopefully mod scene can deliver again. A legendary campaign would be cool, too, if someone can mod out AI bonuses to resources - all it does is make you fight more spam stacks.

 

[Trash]

Played around with the CAI mod version 0.55 (same as 0.56 but with RD weakened) and just had my naval invasion of the Chosokabe twarthed. Invaded them with a high tier stack and got wiped out by a slightly lower tier stack that had a better general and experience. Used the remnants of my forces to go after another province. I won but the fight was too costly and soon the enemy kicked my puny survivors into a bloody pulp. Lots of intense manouvring and the enemy made good use of agents to hamper my own espionage efforts. CAI also defends a lot more aggressive with the mod. Also saw some big factions develop and had the AI go after my trade nodes aggressively. Fun and worth a try.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=440700