Total War Series, Shogun, Medieval, Rome, Empire, Napoleon, etc... Options

[SubRosa]

Here is a topic for the Total War games by the Creative Assembly. I own Shogun 1, Medieval 1 & 2, and Rome 1. I never played much of Shogun 1. In fact when I first tried the demo for it many years ago when it first came out, I was go creamed by the AI. It wasn't until I tried Rome years later that I was able to get the knack of playing a TW game. I never liked Real Time Strategy games, because you can never control all of your units. But I found that by pausing constantly I was able to make it essentially a turn-based game. After that I got really good. Especially in RTW.

In fact, I created the Amazon Total War mod for RTW. When I finally got burned out on RTW and stopped updating it, other people even picked up the torch and went on with it. It was my first foray into modding games, and was very rewarding. I put Amazon Total War up on Dropbox for anyone who wants to try it out, since I don't think my old versions are still around on the web anymore. This version requires the Barbarian Invasion expansion, as it uses the BI executable to make use of new things added by it, like night battles.


Here is a map of all the regions in Rome Total War

A map of Barbarian Invasion

An Amazon Total War map

A Medieval 2 Total War map


Froggbeastegg has an excellent guide to Rome Total War and Barbarian Invasion here. There is even a link to a pdf version of it on the same page.

Froggbeastegg has another guide for MTW1


In any case, I bought Shogun 2 a few days ago. Which makes it the most recent TW game I own. So far I am liking it. Though some of the changes are taking a while to get used to. I miss having the population of every province clearly listed, and being able to change my tax rate for each individual province, and being able to replace my losses in one turn.

I can see why they got rid of a lot of these old things. By the mid-game of RTW you spend more time administering your empire than actually going around conquering. By the late game it takes forever to get through one turn because of the micro-managing required. Obviously the Creative Assembly worked on finding ways to streamline all the management overhead, which is a good thing in general.

One thing I really miss in Shogun 2 is a proper manual though. The other games all came with an in-depth manual that told you exactly what everything did, what every little symbol on the maps meant, and so forth. The manual for this game is really shallow, and doesn't explain any of the real nuts and bolts of the interface. Some things I have figured out on my own, some I had to do forum searches to find out. Playing the past TW games helps of course. But there are changes with every game, and Shogun 2 is several generations ahead of my last TW experience with M2TW.

On the plus side, the graphics are incredible compared to RTW or M2TW, and it runs flawless even on Ultra settings. It is really nice to finally be able to fight out my sea battles on the tactical map as well. I am having a lot of fun with the Japanese setting too. I stared a Shimazu campaign, but gave up after a day when I got over-extended. I started again two days ago, and have concentrated on my economy first, and conquering second. Now I am the sole ruler of Kyushu. The latter half of the conquest was really difficult because my main rivals - the Otomo - were Christian. That make keeping order in every province I took from them a struggle. I have been knocking down all the Christian buildings, and construction Buddhist temples in their places, recruiting monks, and even a secret policeman (metsuke) to keep a lid on things.

Right now I am taking a breather to rebuild my army's losses and getting my economy back on track after the rebuilding. I have a ninja out scouting my neighbors to see who I should strike next. There is a land bridge to Honshu which I could take next. That would put me into the lands of the Ouchi clan, and the Amako after them. However, my ninja discovered an army of the Chosokabe clan that crossed over from their island of Shikoku into Honshu and took one of the Ouchi's cities. So those two clans are now at war. I am thinking this might be an excellent time to invade Shikoku and go after the Chosokabe homeland, They will have to divide their attention between islands and myself and the Ouchi. The only problem is that the Chosokabe have a powerful fleet. But one of the provinces I took from the Otomo has a pirate lair, which gives a +3 to experience to all ships recruited there. So I think I will be building a pirate fleet...

I even got tempted to fire up Shogun 1 and try it again. But it won't run on my Windows 7 computer. Still, I might try putting it on my old Windows XP box.

One of my Kobaya - the smallest ship in the Samurai arsenal

A medium Bune (which is technically a Seki-Bune) probably the workhorse of a Japanese fleet

A trading ship

My Seki Bune grapples a Wako (pirate) trading ship

Great plan!

Banzai!

My Katana Samurai (in green) battle Otomo clan Yari Ashigaru (peasant spearmen)

Slaughtering an Otomo general

Scaling the walls of a fortress

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 30 2017, 12:35 AM

[SubRosa]

I am still continuing on with my Shimazu campaign. After crushing Clan Amako with the help of Clan Chosokabe, I spent a while building up my forces. Then in true Sengoku Jidai fashion I betrayed the Chosokabe and attacked them from all sides. I took half their provinces in one turn.

Turns out doing that wasn't good, because breaking an alliance gives you a big penalty in diplomatic relations with all the other clans. Worse, taking those territories put me close to my victory conditions. I discovered that automatically triggers an event called Realm Divide. The Ashikaga Shogunate - now fearful of your power - goes to war with you, and along with them every other clan. So in one turn I was at war with all of Japan.

The worst part was the impact it had on my finances. I nearly went bankrupt in a few turns, because I had gotten so used to the extra money I had been making on trade with the other clans. Now the only trade partners I have are with outsiders, like the Annamese, Chinese, and Nanban (Portugese). I had to disband a lot of my navy to keep my treasury from running out, and halted all new building projects.

Then came the storm of every other clan attacking me. First it was with fleets. There has been a constant avalanche of enemy fleets coming into my territory and blockading my ports or trade links to the outside world. Thankfully I have gotten pretty good at the naval battles, so I have been able to destroy them all as the come. I often can capture half or more of each enemy fleet. Though I cannot afford the upkeep on so many ships, so I scuttle the ones that are badly damaged.

Next came the armies invading me, and even worse enemy agents. I lost one border province to an invading army, and lost three more to rebellions caused by enemy agents. At the same time enemy ninja have been damaging buildings in all my eastern provinces, and wounded my best general (who was magically whisked away to my capital province, until he healed and was finally made available to me, on the other side of the map!).

But I put all the rebellions down, and retook the lost territories. From my eastern-most province Harima I even made a punitive invasion of the Hojo lands. They had previously sent two armies from Osaka to attack my castle in Harima, and I crushed them both. Afterward I advanced on Osaka, took it, and looted it. Then I destroyed all the buildings, and marched back to Harima. With no troops there, the province rebelled from me and a whole big army of rebels spawned there. Now if the Hojo want to take another crack at me, they will have to go through those rebels first. That is an old trick I learned in RTW to create a buffer state.

There was one down-side. Looting the city caused unrest in all of my cities, as it caused a loss of honor for my daimyo. I had no idea that would happen, so won't be doing it again. I should have just peacefully occupied it, destroyed all the buildings, then abandoned it. Oh well.

Which brings me to another of the differences between Shogun 2 and the previous Total War games I have played. In RTW you had three options when you took a city: Occupy, Enslave, or Sack. Occupying causes no damage and nets you a very tiny amount of loot. Enslaving cuts the city's population in half, as they are sold into slavery (which in turn creates a new trade resource in the province of slaves). Finally Sacking kills about 90% of the population and nets you a ton of money. In RTW it is really good for big cities that are otherwise hard to control. It brings that population down to something you can manage.

But in Shogun 2 you have two options: Occupy and Loot. Occupy is the same as in RTW. Loot gets you more money when you take the province, but you get that hit to your Daimyo's honor, which causes a -1 unrest in all of your other provinces. Which in my opinion is not worth the one time boost of a few thousand koku.

Back to my campaign, I crossed the inland sea to the island of Shikoku, and have destroyed the Chosokabe clan. Now I am on my way to destroying the Miyoshi clan, which rules the last 3 provinces on that island. After that, I think I will be ready to make my final push for Kyoto, and the Shogunate.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: May 4 2016, 07:37 PM