Shogun: Total War 2 Catch All thread

So a friend bought this and is whining that the game is broken because within right turns he is defeated by rebelling forces and there "is absolutely nothing"hat he can do about it because he cannot upgrade his buildings until he gets stone. I tried to tell him that he its probably over looking summer simple thing, but he refuses to believe me. Any ideas what he us probably doing wrong?

Nosferatu wrote:

So a friend bought this and is whining that the game is broken because within right turns he is defeated by rebelling forces and there "is absolutely nothing"hat he can do about it because he cannot upgrade his buildings until he gets stone. I tried to tell him that he its probably over looking summer simple thing, but he refuses to believe me. Any ideas what he us probably doing wrong?

if he cant figure it out, then tell him to get in line with the peasants and let one of us generals lead him to victory (or death).

in all seriousness...he should try consolidating his forces and defending from the rebels...they will come fight him, so just hole up in a fortress and let them break like a wave on his stone walls. Ask him what he has tried and what clan he is...I am sure we can find a solution to his issues...we just need more info.

ZellbrigeN26 wrote:
Nosferatu wrote:

So a friend bought this and is whining that the game is broken because within right turns he is defeated by rebelling forces and there "is absolutely nothing"hat he can do about it because he cannot upgrade his buildings until he gets stone. I tried to tell him that he its probably over looking summer simple thing, but he refuses to believe me. Any ideas what he us probably doing wrong?

if he cant figure it out, then tell him to get in line with the peasants and let one of us generals lead him to victory (or death).

in all seriousness...he should try consolidating his forces and defending from the rebels...they will come fight him, so just hole up in a fortress and let them break like a wave on his stone walls. Ask him what he has tried and what clan he is...I am sure we can find a solution to his issues...we just need more info.

Yeah, there are certain game mechanics that are easy to miss because there are hundreds of them. My guess is that he's not paying attention to the happiness of the region. Either you can garrison more troops in an unhappy region, or you can exempt the region from tax. Mostly, you just need to keep an eye on things so that it doesn't get to the point where rebels arise.

Apparently he threw the game away in frustration do it is nowa moot point. It had sounded like grew had tried lowering taxes, but it did not sound like he tried holing up.instead he sent his troops after then and that smashed his now undefended keep should if was under guarded.

Nosferatu wrote:

Apparently he threw the game away in frustration do it is nowa moot point. It had sounded like grew had tried lowering taxes, but it did not sound like he tried holing up.instead he sent his troops after then and that smashed his now undefended keep should if was under guarded.

The most common reason for populations to become unhappy is upgrading your castles too soon. You have to upgrade the farming before you can do that, otherwise there will be foot shortages, which will force you to garrison too many troops and lower taxes. It's not really a very solvable problem. You mostly have to get the fields upgraded. You really can't play the game this way. It's basically like shooting yourself in the foot and then trying to keep going.

I made this mistake for quite awhile before figuring out what was going on. There may have been an adviser point, but I missed it and had to figure it out on my own. You can let the happiness of a region be -1 for maybe one turn, but any more than that and you are at huge risk of rebellion.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Nosferatu wrote:

Apparently he threw the game away in frustration do it is nowa moot point. It had sounded like grew had tried lowering taxes, but it did not sound like he tried holing up.instead he sent his troops after then and that smashed his now undefended keep should if was under guarded.

The most common reason for populations to become unhappy is upgrading your castles too soon. You have to upgrade the farming before you can do that, otherwise there will be foot shortages, which will force you to garrison too many troops and lower taxes. It's not really a very solvable problem. You mostly have to get the fields upgraded. You really can't play the game this way. It's basically like shooting yourself in the foot and then trying to keep going.

I made this mistake for quite awhile before figuring out what was going on. There may have been an adviser point, but I missed it and had to figure it out on my own. You can let the happiness of a region be -1 for maybe one turn, but any more than that and you are at huge risk of rebellion.

I suspect that this was his issue, but he refused to believe me that he was probably overlooking something simple. Shrug, maybe if he realizes that he can get it again through steam (he bought retail, but had to activate through steam) maybe I'll clue him into the fact that no, the last patch didn't introduce a bug.

Well good news and bad news.

The good news is they just announced a "last samurai" scenario pitting samurai forces against troops armed with gatling guns, rifles and cannons.

http://www.totalwar.com/

The bad news is Creative Assembly just released two DLC packs that make Oblivion's horse armor look like a Black Friday 3 am doorbuster of a deal. First, they're releasing the Hattori clan for $5. If you bought the game in a store, you got that clan for free. Only Steam buyers are now getting royally screwed if they want to play the ninja. What's worse, you can buy a "blood" pack to make combat look realistic for $2. I'm wondering how much hellraising there would be if the same thing was done for say Skyrim or MW3.

Okay, bought this during the Holiday sale and have played about 10 hours and it has really made me remember why I loved Total War back in the Medieval/Rome/Medieval 2 days. I should apologize for not knowing the names of places and provinces at all yet lots of vague references will now follow.

Playing as the Chosokabe (sp?) because as a person who normally plays the Brits, being on an island appeals to me.

I hit the Realm Divide about 20 turn ago, I had got to a point where I had a nice choke point on the main island about 2 provinces to the left of Kyoto. Basically I had 2 provinces with a decent garrison in each. My main stack was out in the island to the far left clearing it out and had just started when Realm Divide happened. Since that time my garrisons have been getting hit with two stacks about every 5 turns. There have been so many epic siege defenses on my side that have been a ton of fun. They are waiting just long enough so that I replenish the casualities from the previous assault. My generals have gained a ton of experience as well as the units themselves, most of which had very little veterancy at the beginning. I now have fully captured the far left island and now my main attack stack is travelling in preparation for the assault on the Ikko Ikki.

One thing I will say is that the siege attack AI is still completely borked. Half the time right at the end there will be 5-6 units of archers who are out of arrows that could easily sweep my guys aside (by this point I am down to units that started with 120 down to <20 for the most part) but just sit outside my walls letting my tower kill them slowly. I end up having to put it on 4x speed and wait for the timer, since I don't have enough guys to actually engage them.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

Okay, bought this during the Holiday sale and have played about 10 hours and it has really made me remember why I loved Total War back in the Medieval/Rome/Medieval 2 days. I should apologize for not knowing the names of places and provinces at all yet lots of vague references will now follow.

Playing as the Chosokabe (sp?) because as a person who normally plays the Brits, being on an island appeals to me.

I hit the Realm Divide about 20 turn ago, I had got to a point where I had a nice choke point on the main island about 2 provinces to the left of Kyoto. Basically I had 2 provinces with a decent garrison in each. My main stack was out in the island to the far left clearing it out and had just started when Realm Divide happened. Since that time my garrisons have been getting hit with two stacks about every 5 turns. There have been so many epic siege defenses on my side that have been a ton of fun. They are waiting just long enough so that I replenish the casualities from the previous assault. My generals have gained a ton of experience as well as the units themselves, most of which had very little veterancy at the beginning. I now have fully captured the far left island and now my main attack stack is travelling in preparation for the assault on the Ikko Ikki.

One thing I will say is that the siege attack AI is still completely borked. Half the time right at the end there will be 5-6 units of archers who are out of arrows that could easily sweep my guys aside (by this point I am down to units that started with 120 down to <20 for the most part) but just sit outside my walls letting my tower kill them slowly. I end up having to put it on 4x speed and wait for the timer, since I don't have enough guys to actually engage them.

Sieges have been borked since Rome. You think CA would fix it after the fourth(!!) release. They are not as bad as they used to be, but still, what you described shouldn't still be happening.

I had purchased this a while ago but just started playing it over the weekend. I'm new to the Total War series and liking it so far but coming from the Civ series I am a bit lost when it comes to economy and happiness. The in game guide is happy to tell me that my people are not happy b/c they aren't the clan religion but it won't give me advice on how to change that. I think its also putting my economy in the tubes where I spend all my funds repairing sabotaged buildings and fighting off riots. I built a couple temples and put some monks in towns but it didn't appear to change anything.

Also, my Metsuke units never seam to prevail even when my odds are close to 50%. They have been a complete fund drainer. Maybe I'm just on an unlucky odds streak but I feel like I'm missing something.

Lastly, the game looks great at 1080p but the interface is microscopic and text is blurry at 720p (on my laptop). Its like the 1080p text and interface is just squished down. I have it set to the correct resolution. Is there some text or interface size toggle hidden somewhere?

Newbie tips would be appreciated.

EvilDead wrote:

I had purchased this a while ago but just started playing it over the weekend. I'm new to the Total War series and liking it so far but coming from the Civ series I am a bit lost when it comes to economy and happiness. The in game guide is happy to tell me that my people are not happy b/c they aren't the clan religion but it won't give me advice on how to change that. I think its also putting my economy in the tubes where I spend all my funds repairing sabotaged buildings and fighting off riots. I built a couple temples and put some monks in towns but it didn't appear to change anything.

Also, my Metsuke units never seam to prevail even when my odds are close to 50%. They have been a complete fund drainer. Maybe I'm just on an unlucky odds streak but I feel like I'm missing something.

Lastly, the game looks great at 1080p but the interface is microscopic and text is blurry at 720p (on my laptop). Its like the 1080p text and interface is just squished down. I have it set to the correct resolution. Is there some text or interface size toggle hidden somewhere?

Newbie tips would be appreciated.

the text thing is something that just is...I have been playing since Medieval and cant figure out how to change it. As for riots, you need to keep a big garrison of troops there while you built the temples and have the priest/monk guys do their thing...if you look at the town stats, you'll notice it goes up a little each turn. Keep it there until the new religion sticks...also, watch out if the Nanban want to build a port and trade with you...you get a slight boost in economy and you get a free unit of riflemen, but the longer that port stays in the region, the more it will turn your people into the dreaded Christians. lol. As for the Metsuke...it really is just a shot in the dark if it pans out...the more you use them, the more the chance goes up. You can also research in the arts and give them little bonuses that help.

As for beefing economy, utilize the traderoutes and build upgrade roads/ports...this will cause more town growth and higher income. Farms are good and make sure to not starve your people by building the castles to quick. build markets in your regions behind the frontlines. Try to keep the armies large enough to be productive, but small enough that you dont blow all your income on upkeep. I hope this helps some...and if someone out there sees something I missed or got wrong, please speak up...

I completely forgot to reply to your post EvilDead. Here's my advice. I had major problems with happiness initially, and I didn't know what was going on. Eventually I figured it out. You need to upgrade your farms before you upgrade your castles. Basically, you need to make sure each region has enough food to sustain an upgrade to a castle. It's hard because you want to upgrade your castles initially, but you always need to make sure the region is producing a surplus of food (+2 is a good bet) before the upgrade. If you upset this balance, it's a long hard fight that ends in the disaster of your clan. I had this problem for a long time before I figured it out.

As to the economy, the easiest solution is capturing the trade ports. From the very first turn, start building ships (you won't have trade ships at first). Send them to each of the 5 or so trade ports to get a boat in place. Unless you're playing it on hard, usually, the AI won't get those for awhile. Also, if you have at least one boat there, the AI usually won't attack you for awhile. Once you capture all the trade ports, you should have upgraded your ports to allow for trade ships. Just start building them like crazy. You can stack 10 trade ships per trade port. Most of the time, depending on how many regions you have and how many alliances you've made, 10 ships will benefit you. Eventually build some protection, but if you do it right, you should be raking in money.

Last point is you need to build trade alliances from the very start. You need to address diplomacy on every turn. Whenever you meet a new nation (if you are sending trade ships and whatnot, you should be seeing new nations every turn), try and form a trade partnership and an alliance if possible (unless you think you're going to attack them soon). This will benefit all those sea trade routes that you have control over.

I had to learn all of that the hard way. Hopefully that advice fixes your economy and rebellion woes.

Edit: There is a mod that enlarges the text size. I tried it out on my tiny screened laptop. It's okay, but I ended up removing it.

It is located here and called the "Bigger Font Mod."

Awesome thanks for the tips guys.

ZellbrigeN26 wrote:

the text thing is something that just is...I have been playing since Medieval and cant figure out how to change it. As for riots, you need to keep a big garrison of troops there while you built the temples and have the priest/monk guys do their thing...if you look at the town stats, you'll notice it goes up a little each turn.

So I just add the monk to the town and forget about him or do I have to tell him do specific tasks?

build markets in your regions behind the frontlines.

Are markets problematic in frontline regions or is it that I should just be spending my money on defense in those zones?

@tuffalobuffalo

From reading your advice I think I may need to start over. I castled up fast b/c I though it had an advantage to reduce rioting. Also in the beginning I didn't know where to find the trade ports and was wondering why I couldn't establish boat routes with other clans. It took a while until I saw the anchor images on the map.

From the hour I played last night I didn't seem to advance much. I'm only making an about $700 - $1200 per turn with 6 towns and 4 of them are on the constant verge of rioting. I think I may be stuck at a stand still b/c I'm forced to spend that money on fixing destroyed properties and replenishing my armies.

I don't really mind starting over I'm just going to miss my bad-ass generals who repelled armies 3 to 4 times their size. I know that's nothing for you veterans but its pretty cool the first few times you do it! Thanks again for the advice guys, I'm sure I will be throwing a few more questions your way in the near future.

It's too bad about the font and interface size. I always enjoyed playing Civ in front of the TV. This is still playable but its just not as enjoyable with a squished interface. It sounds like both the font patches have some problems but I may give them a go if it bothers me enough.

EvilDead wrote:

@tuffalobuffalo

From reading your advice I think I may need to start over. I castled up fast b/c I though it had an advantage to reduce rioting. Also in the beginning I didn't know where to find the trade ports and was wondering why I couldn't establish boat routes with other clans. It took a while until I saw the anchor images on the map.

From the hour I played last night I didn't seem to advance much. I'm only making an about $700 - $1200 per turn with 6 towns and 4 of them are on the constant verge of rioting. I think I may be stuck at a stand still b/c I'm forced to spend that money on fixing destroyed properties and replenishing my armies.

I don't really mind starting over I'm just going to miss my bad-ass generals who repelled armies 3 to 4 times their size. I know that's nothing for you veterans but its pretty cool the first few times you do it! Thanks again for the advice guys, I'm sure I will be throwing a few more questions your way in the near future.

It's too bad about the font and interface size. I always enjoyed playing Civ in front of the TV. This is still playable but its just not as enjoyable with a squished interface. It sounds like both the font patches have some problems but I may give them a go if it bothers me enough.

I would definitely start over. I did the exact same thing building up castles because I assumed they would suppress the provinces. It took me a few tries before I figured out that only armies do that. I spent a lot of time doing it wrong from the beginning. It's a losing battle to stack armies in a province because they are stuck there until you develop the farmland. I forgot to mention that you should prioritize your research towards farming items if you can.

If you are playing it on a TV, by all means use the bigger font mod. It would be impossible to play without it. The reason I uninstalled it was because it's a little bit unappealing aesthetically. It definitely works, though.

Lastly, repelling armies way larger than yours is a blast! It never gets old. Have fun with the game, and I hope my tips save you some time. I've put in 120 hours or so total, and many of those hours were trial and error. If you stick with it past the learning curve, the game is very rewarding.

OK, will definitely start over. I was just IMing with a buddy who bought it during the amazon sale and he did the exact same thing too! We are going to attempt to start a co-op game this weekend if we can find the time. Should be interesting. The tips will definitely be helpful.

Regarding the TV: What I meant was that I have always played Civ on my laptop while watching TV. I'm not the best multitasker so it would usually result in me doing mediocre at both :D. Its the 13" 720p laptop screen that is fine for Civ but blurry and small for Shogun. Its still playable though so I'm going to keep at it.

I was excited to see the Steamcloud option but disappointed it didn't work for saves. Dropbox has been working as a nice alternative (if anyone is interested I will post a link for the directions I found).

EvilDead wrote:

OK, will definitely start over. I was just IMing with a buddy who bought it during the amazon sale and he did the exact same thing too! We are going to attempt to start a co-op game this weekend if we can find the time. Should be interesting. The tips will definitely be helpful.

Regarding the TV: What I meant was that I have always played Civ on my laptop while watching TV. I'm not the best multitasker so it would usually result in me doing mediocre at both :D. Its the 13" 720p laptop screen that is fine for Civ but blurry and small for Shogun. Its still playable though so I'm going to keep at it.

I was excited to see the Steamcloud option but disappointed it didn't work for saves. Dropbox has been working as a nice alternative (if anyone is interested I will post a link for the directions I found).

Coop is fun, but I haven't been able to coordinate with anyone to play more than an hour.

I see what you're saying about the TV thing. I did the same thing playing on an M11x R2 and my desktop. It was great to play a few turns on my bus ride into work each day. As you can imagine, an 11" 720p screen is even smaller than yours, so I tried that mod. It makes everything much easier to see and doesn't break anything that I noticed. It just looks a little unnatural. Give it a try because you can always remove it without too much trouble.

Yeah, I wish it would Steamcloud save. I had to manually transfer saves back and forth between my laptop and desktop. I'm guessing the reason it doesn't is that the saves are really large (15 Mb or so IIRC).

I think I'm going to have to play a game this weekend. Talking about it makes me miss it.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Yeah, I wish it would Steamcloud save. I had to manually transfer saves back and forth between my laptop and desktop. I'm guessing the reason it doesn't is that the saves are really large (15 Mb or so IIRC).

These are the directions I used to set up automatic syncing. I'm pretty sure it requires Windows 7 for symbolic links to work.

with the monk, yeah...just place him anywhere in the province and he will start converting that regions people about 2-3% a turn. Any Co-op is fun. a fellow GWJ (Xeknos) and I are playing one right now...we typically play about 8 hours a week of it...whoever is second, can queue things while the first player is taking their turn so it doesnt take quite as long...battles are fun to spectate and whoever is fighting the battle can "gift" units (for that battle only) to the spectator if they want to help. Its best when one player is assulting a castle and the other player has an army withing re-enforce range...so both can lead their own units and just beat the crap out of the AI...I would suggest using skype or vent in the background to coordinate easier than typing via steam. Still...if you both dedicate to it, its awesome...
Xeknos and I started one with him being Shimazu and I was Chosokabe, it was easy and great learning...we put about 30 hours a piece into it, but it bugged up so we lost that save...started again with him as Hojo and I as Date...thats harder politically and in regards to location but still fun.

Word of advise...as funny as it is to send ninjas to assassinate the Shogunate, dont do it....thats what bugged our first campaign....I assassinated his two sons and then him...and as soon as it confirmed him dead, it would freeze/bug the game. Have Fun

I will keep that in mind and save often.

Query: Does anybody else here experience absurdly long initial load times with this game? Starting the game for me takes anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes (as in sitting at the initial Shogun 2 splash screen). Battle loading takes 1 to 2 minutes. If the answer to the question is yes, do you know what can be done about it?

Other Total War games don't take anywhere near this long to load, only Shogun 2, and it's really bugging me. I've found numerous support forum posts about the issue, but none with solutions (someone suggested switching to DX9 from DX11, but that didn't help).

ahrezmendi wrote:

Query: Does anybody else here experience absurdly long initial load times with this game? Starting the game for me takes anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes (as in sitting at the initial Shogun 2 splash screen). Battle loading takes 1 to 2 minutes. If the answer to the question is yes, do you know what can be done about it?

Other Total War games don't take anywhere near this long to load, only Shogun 2, and it's really bugging me. I've found numerous support forum posts about the issue, but none with solutions (someone suggested switching to DX9 from DX11, but that didn't help).

Yeah I have really bad issues as well. Sometimes it won't load until I alt tab out and then back in, it is highly ridiculous

ahrezmendi wrote:

Query: Does anybody else here experience absurdly long initial load times with this game? Starting the game for me takes anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes (as in sitting at the initial Shogun 2 splash screen). Battle loading takes 1 to 2 minutes. If the answer to the question is yes, do you know what can be done about it?

Other Total War games don't take anywhere near this long to load, only Shogun 2, and it's really bugging me. I've found numerous support forum posts about the issue, but none with solutions (someone suggested switching to DX9 from DX11, but that didn't help).

It takes a long time for me. It's quicker on my laptop because it has an SSD. IIRC maybe 20-30 seconds to load a battle. On my desktop, it might be more like 45 seconds. I'm not sure what it's doing during the splash screen other than loading stuff into system and video memory.

I might be imagining it, but I thought it loaded a lot faster before the DX11 patch on my desktop computer. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for the long load times except for playing a game on your phone or something.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Query: Does anybody else here experience absurdly long initial load times with this game? Starting the game for me takes anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes (as in sitting at the initial Shogun 2 splash screen). Battle loading takes 1 to 2 minutes. If the answer to the question is yes, do you know what can be done about it?

Other Total War games don't take anywhere near this long to load, only Shogun 2, and it's really bugging me. I've found numerous support forum posts about the issue, but none with solutions (someone suggested switching to DX9 from DX11, but that didn't help).

I had extremely long wait times on DX11 mode, but setting it to DX9 made it much more tolerable. Still around the 40 second to minute mark, but it was close to 3 minutes on DX 11 mode getting back to the campaign map. Try turning your detail to normal, and setting back to DX9 mode and report back

Stylez wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

Query: Does anybody else here experience absurdly long initial load times with this game? Starting the game for me takes anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes (as in sitting at the initial Shogun 2 splash screen). Battle loading takes 1 to 2 minutes. If the answer to the question is yes, do you know what can be done about it?

Other Total War games don't take anywhere near this long to load, only Shogun 2, and it's really bugging me. I've found numerous support forum posts about the issue, but none with solutions (someone suggested switching to DX9 from DX11, but that didn't help).

I had extremely long wait times on DX11 mode, but setting it to DX9 made it much more tolerable. Still around the 40 second to minute mark, but it was close to 3 minutes on DX 11 mode getting back to the campaign map. Try turning your detail to normal, and setting back to DX9 mode and report back

Worth a shot. I tried DX9 already, but I didn't tweak the detail settings at all, so I'll try that.

ahrezmendi wrote:
Stylez wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

Query: Does anybody else here experience absurdly long initial load times with this game? Starting the game for me takes anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes (as in sitting at the initial Shogun 2 splash screen). Battle loading takes 1 to 2 minutes. If the answer to the question is yes, do you know what can be done about it?

Other Total War games don't take anywhere near this long to load, only Shogun 2, and it's really bugging me. I've found numerous support forum posts about the issue, but none with solutions (someone suggested switching to DX9 from DX11, but that didn't help).

I had extremely long wait times on DX11 mode, but setting it to DX9 made it much more tolerable. Still around the 40 second to minute mark, but it was close to 3 minutes on DX 11 mode getting back to the campaign map. Try turning your detail to normal, and setting back to DX9 mode and report back

Worth a shot. I tried DX9 already, but I didn't tweak the detail settings at all, so I'll try that.

I think they added some high res textures when the DX11 patch came out. That might be part of what made the load times longer after the DX11 patch.

I have been getting the same issues...mostly at the start screen. Battles only take a minute or so...

I ran a number of tests, at High and Ultra settings, between both DX9 and DX11. My totally un-scientifically obtained results:

Initial Splash Screen - No difference between the two, both took approximately 2 minutes from splash screen to first logo video.
Map Loading (tested with the Advanced Battle Tutorial) - Approximately 20 second difference, with DX9 being faster. However, even DX9 took nearly a full minute to load, so it's still generally slow.
High vs. Ultra - Inconclusive, even if it did make a difference it wasn't appreciable.

The one that annoys me is the initial splash screen load, I've never seen anything sit at a single splash screen for that long. Since that wasn't changed by any settings, I'm just going to stick with DX11 so I can get access to Shader Model 5 and the tiny niceties that brings.

Yes, the initial splash screen is brutal. The battles take a while but I'm used to it now. I have been running in windowed mode so I can browse the web during load screens.

Can you run it inside a borderless window?

(the load times are really putting me off)

oMonarca wrote:

Can you run it inside a borderless window?

(the load times are really putting me off)

More games need to have this as a feature, if not the default display mode. Developers, take note: People want to browse the web while your games load!