Shogun: Total War 2 Catch All thread

MoonDragon wrote:
Maq wrote:

- Can't tell archers to stop effing firing without turning off fire at will and then giving them another order, which can be the difference between a win or a loss when it's a siege battle and they're defending the ramparts.

Don't know what's going on in your game, but I just tell my archers to "stop". The white hand icon around their portrait (I think second from the top). That turns off auto-attack automatically and makes them stop firing. I don't think I've ever had any problems with it. Maybe--maybe!--once did it not seem to work, but it could have easily been that I mis-selected something.

That has never, ever, worked for me. They just keep shooting unless I move them a step back and forward again.

Steam tells me I've sunk 46 hours into this game. I'm loving it.

I'm on my third campaign and still have not won. All three campaigns have been played on Hard difficulty. The first I played as the Date clan and simply ran out of time. I had 18 provinces with just one year left and realized there was no way I could win in time.

The second campaign I played as the clan on the far left island. This campaign was going swimmingly until I got the 15 provinces needed for the rest of the clans to consider me a threat and turn their ire upon me. I was too spread out and my economy could not sustain itself without the trade income I lost when everyone declared war upon me. A few naval landings upon my soft underbelly and this one slipped away from me.

I'm on my third campaign and am about to unleash hell by capturing my 15th province. I am trying to plan this one better by establishing a sustainable economy and a navy that can protect my backside. On hard difficulty I am finding this a truly well designed game. Each play through there have been multiple times where I felt my clan was teetering on the edge of destruction and other times where I could afford some breathing room to work on building up and preparing for the next war. Even the short campaign at 15-20 hours playtime is plenty long but not so complicated that you feel overwhelmed with managing everything.

If you have ever enjoyed a TW game and have been wavering on this one, don't. It is the best one yet.

Wow, I just found out this has a co-op campaign. My buddy and I have been jonesing for something good to play co-op..

Well, my third campaign went the way of the first two. After everyone declared war on me following the Realm Divide, I held out a bit longer but eventually was overwhelmed. The good news is my navel strategy worked and sunk several fleets carrying armies before they could reach my shores. The bad news is that one of the other clans got too powerful, took over the Shogunate and steam-rolled me with three full stacks each commanded by a six-star general.

The only things I can think of trying to improve for try #4 is to improve my economy further, have fewer elite forces to reduce cost and increase the size of my armies and, finally, establish a more elite group of Ninja to sabotage and assassinate attacking armies. This game is extremely challenging on hard mode. I would hate to even consider how difficult legendary is.

Still having a ton of fun with it.

Copingsaw wrote:

Well, my third campaign went the way of the first two. After everyone declared war on me following the Realm Divide, I held out a bit longer but eventually was overwhelmed. The good news is my navel strategy worked and sunk several fleets carrying armies before they could reach my shores. The bad news is that one of the other clans got too powerful, took over the Shogunate and steam-rolled me with three full stacks each commanded by a six-star general.

The only things I can think of trying to improve for try #4 is to improve my economy further, have fewer elite forces to reduce cost and increase the size of my armies and, finally, establish a more elite group of Ninja to sabotage and assassinate attacking armies. This game is extremely challenging on hard mode. I would hate to even consider how difficult legendary is.

Still having a ton of fun with it.

I failed at my first attempt on hard, and I didn't even get to the point where the Shogunate declares you an enemy. It's even difficult on normal when that happens. I'm sort of at a loss as to how to tackle the hard mode. It's really really hard to keep allies, and you never have enough money.

I wish you could set the campaign to normal but the real-time battles to hard.

Hard isn't too bad at realm divide if you have a good bank stash. You will get hit with several doomstacks all at once. If you can survive that you should be OK. Keep an army around your home castle, as the computer will invade by sea. Having a top ranked ninja is almost a must to help slow down the doomstacks.

What does demoralizing an army do (monk skill)?

Dezlen wrote:

Hard isn't too bad at realm divide if you have a good bank stash. You will get hit with several doomstacks all at once. If you can survive that you should be OK. Keep an army around your home castle, as the computer will invade by sea. Having a top ranked ninja is almost a must to help slow down the doomstacks.

Yah, the bankstash has been a big part of my problem. I guess I need to read up on economy issues. Any tips would be appreciated.

Copingsaw wrote:
Dezlen wrote:

Hard isn't too bad at realm divide if you have a good bank stash. You will get hit with several doomstacks all at once. If you can survive that you should be OK. Keep an army around your home castle, as the computer will invade by sea. Having a top ranked ninja is almost a must to help slow down the doomstacks.

Yah, the bankstash has been a big part of my problem. I guess I need to read up on economy issues. Any tips would be appreciated.

I could use tips too. I do my best to control trading ports, make trade agreements, develop stuff in provinces that will help boost the economy, and I still barely make any money. Armies suck up a lot of money, but I never feel like I have nearly enough men.

MoonDragon wrote:

What does demoralizing an army do (monk skill)?

Makes them more susceptible to breaking and running in combat.

But how do you know their morale is lower? There doesn't seem to be any indicator. Extra moral boost upgrade from buildings seems to show up as an icon. But demoralization does not. How long does it last? Does it stack?

I don't know how long demoralize lasts-probably only one turn. I usually bring 2 or 3 monks with my main army to demoralize big stacks before battle. It makes a huge difference on AI doom stacks.

For money, make sure every province has a market in it. If it is not a front line troop generator, don't build anything but money generators. Zerg rush the trade points asap at the beginning of the game. Pay whatever the various factions ask for to build trade agreements. Spending 5-10k for a 900 a turn trade agreement is worth it.

So far, I'm really enjoying this one. I can see a lot of influence from Empire here and I'm glad they've decided to spend the time to focus on the fundamentals of the game rather than continuing the usual TW formula of more and more content (Remember Medieval 2: Kingdoms... 6 campaigns! 6! That was bigger than most full games).

I've seen a couple examples of bad pathfinding, questionable AI and a few bugs but less than expected. I also played the very first fun siege defence in all TW history! The game runs pretty well at mostly max settings on my 5 year old computer, so that's definitely a plus.

More impressions to come when I've had a few more hours with it.

Steam has me up to 78 hours played, more than any other game for the past few years and I am still loving it. Still haven't beat it on hard as Shimazu and am on my seventh or eight try. The challenge has been very motivating and I seem to have finally figured out a strategy ... a combination of strong economy (mostly based upon trade and town growth) and strong espionage (monks and ninja). I'm about to initiate the realm divide and I have around 70k in the bank and 7 or 8 k income. I've assassinated the leaders of the Shogunate and their main ally and turned multiple provinces on our border into rebel wastelands full of religious zealots.

My only complaint about the game so far is that the real time battles suffer from a lack of artillery and unique units. There was something very entertaining about lobbing burning pitch balls and elephants running wild that this game is missing. However, the much improved AI and siege play more than makes up for the repetitive nature of some of the battles in my mind.

Welp, I bought this game and joined the Steam clan. It's been fun so far, excepting when I end up facing people ranked three-plus levels above me, who promptly show me the meaning of the phrase curbstomp. And getting units to veteran is an exercise in frustration when they don't keep experience.

If anyone wants to beat me up in multiplayer, feel free.

Sweet... my new video card purchase from Amazon apparently came with a "complimentary" Steam copy of this... I had no idea when I bought it. This is seriously better than Christmas.

gotta love package add ons like that, only thing that would have been hella frustrating is getting the card because you bought Shogun 2 and wanted prettier graphics.

I really need to hit the multiplayer hard this weekend. I just need to finish The Witcher and then I'll be able to devote some time to this game.

I finally did beat the game on hard as Shimazu. I'm currently in the process of playing as Chokasobe on hard and am still enjoying the game immensely. Best game purchase I have made in a long time. Major props to CA for finally getting a Total War game right.

Well, the dx11 patch is out. I guess they include a new benchmark tool. I'll give it a go tonight and see what happens.

For those curious about the performance after the new patch, here are my results.

Running an i7-920 and 2x5870s:

Ran the default DX11 Graphics High (they don't have everything maxed but probably have some AA turned up) 1080p and got an average of 90 fps. Maxing everything, I drop down to 38.

Turning anti-aliasing off and keeping everything else maxed gives me 92 fps.

Turning on anti-aliasing at 2x and keeping everything else maxed gives me 75 fps.

Turning on anti-aliasing at 4x and keeping everything else maxed gives me 57 fps.

Turning on anti-aliasing at 2x, tesselation off, keeping everything else maxed gives me 75 fps (oddly, that is the same as with tesselation on).

I'm going to keep my settings at anti-aliasing 2x, everything else maxed. 75 is a nice average and should keep everything running okay during big battles.

One odd thing that I noticed is that the loading screens seem to take much longer. Other than that, DX11 seems to help the performance quite a bit actually.

Hopefully, this helps people with which settings (anti-aliasing) kills your frame rate. Usually, tesselation tends to kill the frame rate, but I'm guessing they didn't implement it too much.

Good to know i've felt the game was running poorly for a bit i'll check the settings there.

I put 12 hours into this game on Sunday. I'm doing a Hojo domination campaign on hard and am sort of chilling right before a realm divide should occur. I want to max out all of the Mastery of the Arts stuff, ninjas, metsukes, etc., so I'm taking my time.

I finally figured out how to actually play the campaign map. I did not understand how much castles affect food, so I now keep an eye on the food in provinces before upgrading castles. That was the single biggest mistake I was making in earlier games. Having to fight food shortages ruins you.

Second big mistake I was making: Not making enough trade ships. You need to take over every single trading post asap and then stock each trade post with 10 trade ships each. When you do that, you get an insane amount of income.

I think I was making those mistakes mostly because I was trying to play the game like Shogun 1 where you didn't exactly have to deal with those issues.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I'm doing a Hojo domination campaign on hard

IMAGE(http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/cityofate/Howard%20Johnson%27s%20Restaurant.jpg)

Mmmm. Hojo ice cream.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Second big mistake I was making: Not making enough trade ships. You need to take over every single trading post asap and then stock each trade post with 10 trade ships each. When you do that, you get an insane amount of income.

Holy. crap. Why didn't I think of that? I thought you only needed one on each post. Oh this changes everything.

Budo wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Second big mistake I was making: Not making enough trade ships. You need to take over every single trading post asap and then stock each trade post with 10 trade ships each. When you do that, you get an insane amount of income.

Holy. crap. Why didn't I think of that? I thought you only needed one on each post. Oh this changes everything.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think 10 trade ships is correct. You need to watch how much your income goes up with every trade ship you add. I usually stop at four or five because the income no longer goes up by much more than the cost of maintaining the ships. Maybe over time this changes or something and I have been under-staffing the trade posts.

Copingsaw wrote:
Budo wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Second big mistake I was making: Not making enough trade ships. You need to take over every single trading post asap and then stock each trade post with 10 trade ships each. When you do that, you get an insane amount of income.

Holy. crap. Why didn't I think of that? I thought you only needed one on each post. Oh this changes everything.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think 10 trade ships is correct. You need to watch how much your income goes up with every trade ship you add. I usually stop at four or five because the income no longer goes up by much more than the cost of maintaining the ships. Maybe over time this changes or something and I have been under-staffing the trade posts.

I was keeping an eye on that. I thought it was going up at least 100 per ship (more at first), and ship upkeep is only 50 per trade ship., but I wasn't checking every time. I'll try taking a couple ships off and see what happens.

Edit: Took one ship off of a 10 trade ship stack and it took my predicted income down 74. So, with an upkeep of 50, I should be making a little money. It may depend on how many trade posts you own and what trade agreements you have with other clans. In this case, it seems like I'm making money with 10 trade ship stacks.

Got a "Pyrrhic victory" when I finally decided to attack Kyoto. It was pretty satisfying.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I was keeping an eye on that. I thought it was going up at least 100 per ship (more at first), and ship upkeep is only 50 per trade ship., but I wasn't checking every time. I'll try taking a couple ships off and see what happens.

Edit: Took one ship off of a 10 trade ship stack and it took my predicted income down 74. So, with an upkeep of 50, I should be making a little money. It may depend on how many trade posts you own and what trade agreements you have with other clans. In this case, it seems like I'm making money with 10 trade ship stacks.

Okay, Looks like I need to add more trade ships. I admit I was going off of what I had read and, doing the math as I added ships, it seemed like four or five would be the limit of profitability. I guess it tails off and you can still be marginally productive as you add more ships.