Budo and Bushido well depicted in a tech tree

[Cassius Critzer]

I'm extremely stoked to see how people will like the new Jidaigeki mod.

For the first time ever in Civ 2, the concept of the Arts of War (Budo) and the Arts of Chivalry (Bushido) are extremely well laid out. There is a natural progression of practical military science that leads to increasingly professional soldiers to powerful armies. Meanwhile that stimulates Chivalry and results in various infrastructure.

Pre-Sekigahara Japan had samurai who had to both fully understand spirituality, art, culture, military science, managing an economy, subterfuge, agriculture, etc in order to realistically protect their domain as either a baron over a fief or as a feudal lord they reported to. And each baron had knights and men at arms under their dominion as well as farmers and craftsmen and artisans.

After the Tokugawa Shogunate, the system was hopeless ruined by a cruel system of having to live both temprarily in Edo and then returning home. And Tokugawa could on a whim wholesale relocate samurai to a new domain creating on purpose "weakness" and theft by penaltative taxation which benefited the Shogunate but was ruinous to the samurai and made thousands into ronin and bureacrats.

The mod shows the daimyo and samurai rapidly learning from 1448 to 1460 and then warfare changed by very useful defensive armies which in tandem with units of battalions and companies could then start carving up existing clan domains.

That creates the severe antipathy that leads to colossal armies in Central Japan that exceeded any in Western Civilization. Kyushu becomes an impregnable island nation practically on its own. It can become a juggernaut.

In Budo, there are koryu that comprise various types of martial arts. I've never seen that in any turnbased or RTS game before. Despite its age, Civ 2 is both extremely able to depict history...particularly with a narrow focus. If there were a few more slots, then you could depict "schools of iaijutsu and battojutsu" where individual units had slight variances and produced small but meaningfully better units.

The way it's set up, early units are non-professional to semi-professional with a codification leading to a true martial art forming with superior professional and elite units leading to increasingly powerful armies.

While early matchlocks were experimentally being fashioned in China due to the Ming and Mongols and later Joseon, Japanese clans get stuck in tech progression until 1542, then with rapid orginazation, it becomes incorporated and facilitates what they need to take over citadels plus annihilate on the battlefield. And the teppo is being operated at first by farmers and semi-professional soldiers just like the crossbow was a deal changer in Europe. You have genuine armor penetration and fear.

Battles from 1460-1542 are very technical because massive fortification on defensible terrain are full of defenders. The AI maxes out technology and starts building up a giant cash reserve that facilitates a very strong defensive army that can be used offensively. Or they can wait and make their citadels unassailable.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Civ 3 had a samurai mod but there was no logical progression of koryu within Budo. You just learned the tech and automatically made better units. Here you have to produce:
Various kinds of low level archers and pikemen and that leads to a codification of kyujutsu and sojutsu that occurs as equestrian troops begin using them (bajutsu). That leads to yari cavary and cavalry archers and heavy cavalry. That then leads to codification into yabusame for example. That leads to all kinds of koryu and strategy (heiho) which allows armies and specialized naginatajutsu, nagimakijustu, nodachijutsu, jujitsu, iaijutsu, battojutsu, etc. That with western influence spaws hojutsu which are the various teppo units. That leads to the armies as codified martial arts leads to tactical uses...especially in the field. Ultimately this leads to advances in naval warfare and shinobi no jutsu (subterfuge at advanced levels).

There will be a massive amount of soldiers on the field and in citadels but few stack kills due to armies. You definitely will want to use the Civ Unlimited utility.

If you actually studied/study traditional Japanese martial arts, I think you will enjoy this mod.

Someone who understands ToT and ToTTP could take this MGE mod and since there are more unit slots and scripting available, could create a superb mod. If you elected to have generic clan units (though there are specialized clan specific units), then either the Mongol Invasions or the later Imjin War in Joseon territory could happen. You could do a what if the Ming and the Joseon counter-invaded Japan.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

If someone wanted to be an artist on the team, this could be released in a month.

An experienced event coder is needed to do a week of work. Coding should take two days, it's the testing that takes time.

Then the initial scenario is for 1448 AD.

A multiplayer or single player 1600 scenario version might be made but with input on fortress layout will be needed. It's a simple tast that takes a meticulous amount of time with likely nonmoveable garrison troops preset so the scenario is playable for single players.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

No matter what I do, it seems hard coded for the AI to waste money on future tech ie "general research". The mod begins in 1448 and the AI sets their science research very high to race through the tech tree with most completing that "era of tech" by 1477. Then they start doing "general research" until 1542 as an event unlocks a tech, then progression begins again.

You have two values to modulate how the AI determines "value". The AI has a number and a modifier field. The first one is how "juicy" it is to possess so you can make them fixated on gaining it. When the AI are militaristic, then based on the value in the second field, then that cumulatively affects the total value.

It creates motivation to study Budo and Bushido in the mod.

Regardless then in 1477 on average, if the AI looks and there is nothing else to study, and this is the same for the vanilla Civ 2 or any other mod, then it will keep doing allegedly up to 23 increments of general research. It's a big waste of money (koku in the mod).

For game mechanics, it's a handicap for the richer AI, I guess. Human players would not waste the money.

With the value set at 1.0 and the modifier set at positive 5, then the AI when below a threshhold will not waste money on it. But the Uesugi who have a treasury of 180,000 are wasting 6,000 every four months on it. That's money they could put to constructive use, but apparently a weighted score os assigned for acquision of future tech.

You cannot put a zero in the AI field or it faults out. I tried a value of 9 and 10...the same fault occurs.

With event fired tech, you can set the upper fields to "no" and "no". My guess is that will fault when general research is set that way.

I thought about an event firing whenever the AI recievestechnology that is future tech to add the money back in but it's too much trouble...and it probably will end up having unforseen effects.

After all, on the highest level, the AI can rapidly gain tech or units and has way better combat odds...so maybe it is a balancer.

The Bushido tech fire events so it's not immediately clear to the player what the effects of researching them translates to. They are well worth studying as a way to add some mystery into a very complicated mod.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

During the Sengoku period and even the Edo period, a low ranking samurai might have a stipend of 150 koku with 75 koku being the absolute bare minimum to survive and maintain the required expenses.

300 to 500 koku were decent stipends ie comfortable but not great.

So that means the 6,000 lost by the AI foolishly spending it on general research are the stipends of 40 low ranking samurai ie not much money at all. Since the mod has three seasons, that means it's about the salaries of a single company (which make up battalions) wasted out of currently 900 battalions which pales by comparison to genuine armies (the imperial army is regiment strength).

...
Some mods will not only have special "tech" for every tribe but will actually configure it so a group of several of them can recruit certain units. I can't think of a use right now.

In the future for multiplayer where people wanted to play as fixed allies, then you could use it to recruit units. That would work if say two players wanted to be Mongol Invaders or if two players were Ming and Joseon versus five players wanted to make Japanese samurai units.

This means someone could mod what already I borrowed and modded.

For fun, there are endless "fanboys" who say, "Yeah, the samurai were not so tough. Elite gothic knights could have destroyed them as well as full plate infantry from western civilization". So it would be fun but absurd and have the Portuguese arrival in 1542 be a naval invasion by a few hapless thousand on a fool's errand. They would have an extremely tough time as that would have unified all the clans but the AI breaks alliances easily, so it's possible...just not plausible. European technology and outstanding horses aremore than a match EXCEPT they are badly outnumbered. Say 5,000 Europeans versus 15 million Japanese kind of odds. It worked with the Spanish and the Aztecs.

The Portuguese had limited colonies and no honest chance of conquering Japan as even transporting horses were a major issue. But still, for fun you could have say Nagasaki with several armies and units trying to take Kyushu and then conquer Japan on a crusade. To be fair they would need at least 12 unit slots and their own tech. You could thin out what has been made and remove obsolete units. It's doable.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

I hope what I wrote was understandable. Similarly, such technological aspects of postmodern military science then would be displayed in steps and sections to show various unit types in a logical progression versus acquired skills. That is very different that standard tech trees. You could show the various kinds of things a soldier today would have to know in various subsets and where there was overlap and specialization.

Much of the tech tree is on basic things that often have zero to do with the units that can be made. You could show what weapon proficiencies are needed or SERE training or education in explosives.

Military training in a strategy games with diverse military units should not be dumbed down to just generic Chemistry or Radio. Not if the mod begins in 2019.

I actually think a squad level game on a series of battlefields would be a breath of fresh air versus a standard map. Not thousands of miles but 5 miles with essentially missions. The map would be a famous battlefield as a relief map for example.