Okay, my first time on this rather old thread, but I've been playing S2 a lot since the Otomo DLC came out and feel ready to give the game a balanced review at long last.
- Naval combat less complex and more fun (but less common, it is Japan)
I don't find this (from an early review) at all. Naval combat is short-ranged on overlarge maps; you can play most of it on 4x and it's still too slow. There's very little tactical flexibility, and all in all you'll learn in short order why most dedicated naval wargames start with the Age of Sail or later. Skirmishes and boarding actions between short-ranged coastal patrol ships just aren't very engaging over the long haul. And for starts on Shikoku or Kyushu, you are going to be relying a lot on your navy, due to the proximity and importance of the trade points, having most of your trade via sea, and needing to fight off interminable one- or two-ship AI raids (and auto AI battles still don't work). That's coupled with a truly dreadful naval AI - Sengoku will just shoot until they run out of archers even when they could easily win by boarding. I've had many battles where I'll attack from the flank of the enemy formation, and the AI ships in the centre or the other flank will just sit there waiting to be picked off. I suppose the problem with basing an AI on The Art of War is that Sun Tzu didn't have anything to say about naval warfare...
I like the new siege system, and the capture points that actually mean something (in past TW games 'Your army has captured the walls/a building' was just a pointless notification), but the AI attacks in too-predictable sequence as the attacker, and is easy to distract or outmanoeuvre as the defender, since it struggles with the multi-level aspect of the higher-tier castles that make siege battles a bit dull after a while (but not to the extent of naval battles) but auto-resolving them is a definite no-no, since the AI probability system seems completely perplexed by siege warfare and consistently gives drastically inaccurate estimates.
I don't know about the first shogun (it crashes after ~10 minutes) but Rome, medieval II, Empire and Napoleon are not entirely rock paper scissors, there are some units that use a spear but aren't completely destroyed by the average swordsman unit or whatever. There's a lot more variation in the units and their strengths and weaknesses in previous titles (which added to the complexity and CA said they were reducing that for this game to make it clearer to players what unit should be used against what. In Shogun's case this isn't necessarily a bad thing).
I think the lack of unit variety is at least partially imposed by the period and the fact that, unlike all other TW games, the Shogun games are confined to a single country; they've already had to stretch beyond what existed historically to populate some of the unique units, and even one or two basic ones (kisho ninja, certain warrior monk unit types). The rock-paper-scissors aspect was always there in older TW games (though not so much in the gunpowder age ones), and at least in principle promotes more tactical play - cavalry have to be used to flank or for rear attacks to beat spearmen, spears similarly have to be used carefully and well-supported to beat swords. It's certainly an element that makes at least learning TW tactics more straightforward, and battle replays easier to 'read' as to where certain plays worked and others failed.
EDIT: Although it does tend to promote specific, 'balanced' army mixes with less freedom than older games - if your force is too cavalry-heavy and you encounter a typical AI all-Yari army you're likely to get stuck.
Now that the first impression has worn off and it has probably been patched a couple of times I'd like to know what y'all think about the diplomatic AI.
Cunning ? Reliable ? Erratic ? It's a pretty big dealbreaker for me. I like Rome, but I really hate when Egypt makes a trade agreement, declares war the next turn, sues for peace two turns later and then attacks again.
Really it's pretty much as bad. In my recent campaign I've had the Hojo enter a trade agreement with me and declare war on the same turn, and subsequently accept peace on my turn (while losing) only to declare war on theirs. On the plus side alliances are indeed generally more reliable than in the older games, although allies don't often do a great deal unless they happen to be in the area. It is somewhat easier to control whether someone is going to go to war with you (in MTW2 I tended to experience cascades of war declarations routinely that I could see coming but not prevent), and the fact that you don't need hard-to-level-up diplomat agents is good.
At the same time, the modifier system is too reliant on elements that you have little control over - religion, your daimyo's honour and 'dishonouring treaties' tend to be the big deciding factors, and the system counts you as dishonouring a treaty even if it was the other party that broke it off (and, specific to play as the Tokugawa, there's no way of avoiding breaking a treaty if you want to go to war with anyone after killing the Oda, since you're an Imagawa vassal and can't go to war with anyone except the Imagawa without their say-so). Mostly I find that I tend to have similar relations with every faction as a result, since most modifiers in my favour are blanket ones such as Tea Ceremony or being Tokugawa.
One thing that does work well is the fact that the AI seems able to determine whether or not to accept a deal based on its own strategic goals, rather than on whether or not it likes you - I can try begging a very friendly AI for military access, but if the AI knows that that will give you access to a province it wants to capture itself, it will refuse to grant it.
We already had Civ5 bashing in this thread, and I'm not inclined to get another strategy game where I'm constantly and ineptly backstapped by weaker allies who have nothing to gain and everything to lose from their betrayal.
It's probably not as extreme as in Civ games or some older TW games, but as with my Hojo experience a clan which has just had its army reduced from 'Mighty' to 'Strong' (while I'm 'Mighty') and lost three or four provinces in quick succession will still sometimes declare war on you, even before realm divide. Partly because of the realm divide mechanic, but I think more generally because TW games have always tended to play and feel this way, the clans feel like the extensions of the AI that they are rather than as players with their own goals and motives - if a weak AI will expose an opportunity for another AI (even one it isn't friendly with) by forcing you to commit troops to wipe out the weaker one, it will commit suicide.
In this Hojo case, the AI seems to have calculated (correctly) that I wanted peace with the Hojo to concentrate on the repeated threats of attack from the Hattori (as the Tokugawa, I was between the two, and the Hattori were both stronger and closer to my goal of Kyoto), so the Hojo declared war because that's what will make my life difficult, not because it's in the interests of the Hojo to do so. For similar apparent reasons, the Takeda have been my game-long ally, and at war with the Hattori for as long, but even though they have armies wandering around Hattori territory, they aren't actually capturing Hattori provinces or engaging Hattori armies (of course the Hattori will take Takeda territory and destroy their armies, because the Takeda are my allies).
Are the DLC worth getting? I'm assuming the two clan things are pointless; is Rise of the Samurai worth $10?
I tend to be a sucker for completeness in terms of the number of factions/units in the game so I pick up the clan DLCs - only played the Otomo one so far, but had the others as rivals and it does mean you'll tend to play campaigns where there's a larger number of relevant, aggressive factions. It also means that you can have the option of playing the campaign starting with any of the game's three religions, which can affect your strategy. I haven't played as the Hattori but don't really see from their traits that they'll add anything much, but the Otomo feel distinct and I suspect the Ikko-Ikki will too.
Rise of the Samurai looks good but somehow I haven't been able to get into it the way I have with the main game and, to a lesser extent, Fall of the Samurai.
In Shogun 2, as opposed to previous Total War games I've played, the units run by default when you move them instead of walk. Is there a way to toggle this? It's kind of annoying.
Going back to the older games I find it annoying that they don't... They only run by default if you drag the formation you want them to adopt at the end point; if you just select them and click on a target area without dragging, they'll walk.
After RD my income dropped drastically, so I started making those minor clans my vassals just so that I could trade with them (and I saw a huge increase in my income). In total, I found out that I could field maximum of about 2-3 full stacks no matter how many provinces I had.
Does the realm divide penalty affect vassals? I never use vassalage much in TW games; I did in Fall of the Samurai, but Realm Divide in that campaign doesn't affect factions with the same allegiance. In vanilla it seems to affect everyone, so I've been wary of obtaining vassals who will turn on me eventually anyway.
Playing Shogun kind of makes me want to try out Empire. How are the diplomacy and economy in Empire? Are they similar to Shogun?
Diplomacy generally seems to work in Empire in the sense that you can rely on alliances, but mostly seems to be there just for tech trading and there is as usual no prospect of meaningful military support from an ally. Economy management is essentially identical to the older TW games rather than Shogun, with the exception that instead of merchant agents there are building chains for trade resources (as in Shogun 2).
EDIT: Interesting exception in my current campaign, actually, post-realm divide (the realm divide came late and I had three allies who were Very Friendly, so they're sticking by me for now). My relevant allies were the Takeda and the Kinatakabe (?); the Takeda had been struggling on three or four provinces throughout the game and never doing much to help in my wars. The Kinatakabe were recently-resurrected, presumably as a vassal for the Hattori who recaptured their territory from the Chosokabe (or vice versa, it changed hands several times).
I eventually went to war with the Hattori; the Takeda who had been struggling against them on and off for most of the game promptly took a Hattori territory adjacent to my northern border, securing it for me. I didn't expect a lot from the Kinatakabe and their one province anyway. Then the Hattori counter-attacked Oni with their main army (I'd taken it with one of mine the previous turn). They won, but with their military strength significantly reduced, so they withdrew. The Kinakatabe promptly moved into Oni, then went on the rampage. A few turns later they had 6 provinces and the formerly mighty Hattori had one (which I then captured to get the achievement). They also destroyed a large Ito army building near Kyoto.
Well, this game commited the mortal sin that instantly kills any semblance of immersion in a strategy game : different standards for human and AI players.
Yes, this is a big bugbear for me as well. That and it's 'gaminess' - it also kills immersion because it has no historical precedent and isn't done for any plausible pseudohistorical reason (no, they don't all hate the guy who wants to be shogun, only the human who wants to be shogun. And realm divide can turn them against you while someone else has usurped the shogunate. And why would they react to the establishment of a new shogunate by going to war against their shogun anyway?), it just feels exactly like what it is: a game mechanic to help the AI against the human. Fall of the Samurai handles it much better, by tying its realm divide mechanic to faction allegiance in the civil war.
EDIT: I found a really annoying example of rule-breaking today. A naval battle between large fleets of bow kobaya that I should easily have won. Except that it was raining (the Hojo AI attacked, so got to choose the weather). My fire arrows were of course greyed out and unusable. I lost the battle because the same rule didn't apply to the Hojo, who kept sending flaming arrows into my ships in the rain.
It didn't escape me that there was no Realm Divide event yet, although Takeda had the Shogunate and 22 provinces.
I raced against the Oda in my first campaign for the same reasons, only to learn that the AI doesn't have a win condition at all. The AI won't win the game if it controls the Shogunate and the appropriate number of provinces.
It happened when I took the last city on Kyushu. I just got over the 'legendary' threshold and two turns later
everyone declared war on
me .
This really sucks. My army on Honshu was cruhed, the Amako betrayal completely derailed my plans when my main fleet was destroyed, and what followed was my angriest rage quit in years.
I've never yet fully beaten the campaign once realm divide has taken place (I came close with the Otomo, but failed to expand to the 40 province mark before the Takeda built up a force to defeat me). The key seems to be (a) expand slowly and build up, so that realm divide takes longer to arrive and you are likely to have fewer factions left to deal with, (b) vary your diplomatic relations so that you can 'stagger' the war declarations - the friendlier they are, the longer it will take for them to go to war, particularly if they're allies, and (c) make use of rebellions. If you incite revolts, the rebels will claim provinces but won't expand, so they can be a good way of denying an opponent provinces without getting you closer to realm divide.
Other thoughts:
Missions: I miss the political feel from Medieval and Rome, that missions were being handed down and their success or failure would have consequences in terms of political influence. There's no equivalent of the pope or senate, and no adverse consequences for failing missions. The rewards also tend not to vary very much.
Tech trees: I'm not a fan of the agent/general tech trees - I'd prefer the organic traits system of the older games. Traits do still occur, but these feel very mechanical and deterministic (a metsuke who's good at apprehending will at some stage become Vicious, say), and variety is limited. Negative traits appear to no longer exist (except in association with positive ones), with the sole exception I've encountered that sometimes a general will develop an 'eye for the ladies' that reduces map movement. I like being able to choose from a random selection of retainers, but again after a very short while you'll have seen all the available options.
Agents overall are handled better than in past TW games - they each have multiple effects, and all have at least two ways of levelling up passively by being embedded in armies or left in provinces, which is slow but low-risk. Because of their multiple roles, they actually get more varied traits and followers than their older-game counterparts (in contrast to generals), but I still prefer organic levelling to the new system.
