Just finished a campaign and YAWN!

[3asytarg3t]

TotalWarWally,

If hating on this game is what gets you out of bed in the morning, so be it.

Just know that long term, in games, and in life, that motivation isn't likely to have legs and in the end, is just so much wasted energy.

Move on to something you enjoy.

[kanorain]

Wait, lmao what? No agents? No navy? Yeah, that's how EASY is.

[Mr_Eon]

Hillarious. Claiming to be a long time fan of the series whilst:

1. Criticising Siege AI WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN POOR.
2. Complaining that all battles either occur on a road between cities or at a city WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE.
3. Complaining that an Industrial War strategy game comes down to guns and artillery WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE.

I don't know if some of you SERIOUSLY expected to take spears against rifles and win but if you did then I am very confused. With the small battlefield areas and the fast speed of troops S2:FotS does the best it can to make melee troops competetive but REALLY...

[zarker]

He has a point - it is called 'Fall of the Samuri", not 'Empire - the Prequel'.

Have you ever tried playing Empire with Darthmod against native american's? It's amazing what can be achieved with just a charge against rifle units, instead of just hanging around within balistic range to get picked off.

Samurai should stand at least half a chance.

[Slartybart5]

Originally Posted by zarker

He has a point - it is called 'Fall of the Samuri", not 'Empire - the Prequel'.

Technically it's not a prequel. The Boshin War occurred many years after Empire was set.

[TotalWarWally]

Originally Posted by Mr_Eon

Hillarious. Claiming to be a long time fan of the series whilst:

1. Criticising Siege AI WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN POOR.

No, ETW sieges were poor,especially AI, FOTS sieges are better stability & AI wise just so one sided! this could be historically accurate, attacking forts should be expensive (manpower wise) but a larger force (3 x) should eventually succeed? but i suppose many AI armies are madeup mostly of peasants so ...

2. Complaining that all battles either occur on a road between cities or at a city WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE.

no, choke points like rivers, mountain passes, dense forests should all be strategic options, some were in past games (M2TW)

3. Complaining that an Industrial War strategy game comes down to guns and artillery WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE.

Melee troops ambushing and destroying a modern army in forests etc should alway be an option, but i don't see it in FOTS? Ambushes were part of M2TW and worked ok? (could have been alot better). And where are night attacks on camps by Ninjas? night attacks were always an option for underpowered opponents. Another strategic options not being used is false army size, where a small army tries to appear much larger or a large army appearing smaller. The unit bars on an army's flag should be removed, IMO.

I don't know if some of you SERIOUSLY expected to take spears against rifles and win but if you did then I am very confused. With the small battlefield areas and the fast speed of troops S2:FotS does the best it can to make melee troops competetive but REALLY...

Well maybe the maps needed to be bigger, to prevent an army moving from one settlement to another in one turn? I like how they've got seasons per turn, extending time periods but maybe it needs to go further?

I don't expect melee weapons to win a battle against modern projectile weapons .. in the right situation but opponents shouldn't be stupid, they will attack / defend when it suits them.

TWW.

,..and what's this idea of attacking people who just want to see a better game? If game designers have run out of ideas then they should be sacked, if game companies have a policy of just pumping out the minimum for max profits, and labelling anyone who complains as a "TROLL" and banning them, then that won't work because gamers will find out the truth quickly enough. building good games that are fixed will produce continuing sales, ie ETW and M2TW etc

.

[Mr_Eon]

The key to unlocking Japanese style castles is explosives - Field Artillery will destroy walls which also kills defending units, knock down gatehouses and neutralise defensive tower structures. Naval Artillery will wreak bloody havoc on crowded castle courtyards, knocking the enemy's morale to bits.

Field Artillery can also be used with cannister ammo in open field battles, where it will seriously embugger anyone trying to advance without using defilade.

What neutralises artillery? Well, unless the enemy guards it you can sortie with a fast melee unit and cut it to pieces. Cavalry works especially well. Counterbattery fire is possible if you have your own artillery - per definition if the enemy's guns are in range then so are yours. I've noticed that some prime artillery sites are within sniper range from the walls.

In general though I think FotS is primarily about demonstrating WHY the Samurai fell (although many of them went on to excel in business, politics and the military post-Meiji resto) it is pretty much impossible to succeed through the use of traditional war methods. There aren't even options for traditional Buke ships and the like. If CA tried to make a game balanced between old and new then they failed horribly. Personally I don't think they tried.

Regarding natural feature chokepoints, I think that there might still be a few (strategic map and not tactical map) but I've also noticed that some areas that you could march stacks through off road have had roads laid down in the FotS map. Some of this might be due to the linear nature of Japan herself - it'd be interesting to see what might happen if the terrain were more open. That would open up more circumstances that would favour melee units, as you say. That said, given the turnbased nature of movement it was always frustrating when an enemy stack just waltzed around your army.

Personally I'd like to see more and smaller armies. I really enjoy the opening skirmishes when you can have open field battles with three or four units per side and no artillery. You're right that too much of the game comes down to assembling full stacks and throwing them down the roads at cities. Sun Tzu used to hate sieging cities, claiming that they took too long, ate up supplies and money and wasted troops. I'd prefer having to hold two or three towns, the port, industrial sites and THEN going for the capital city - with the option for smaller armies to maneuver around and snap at the heels of cumbersome full stacks.

I think that Shogun 2 has proven nicely that dividing things down to fortnightly turns work nicely. They experimented with one turn per season and again in RotS with two turns per season, but FotS was best with two turns per month. The idea that it took four months to get hardened samurai to march from Satsuma to Saga province was kind of laughable.

Let me say that the thing that caused me to post so caustically was not so much your opinions on opening the game up or slowing down the tactical battles, or that the AI needs improvement. All of those things are things I agree with. The thing that got my blood up was that you seemed to be suggesting that FotS was somehow a worse offender than previous TW games.

I don't advocate hanging you for suggesting that Total War should be improved post Shogun 2, in any way. I do think that you might be underestimating the difficulties involved in translating good ideas into sound game design. My experience is that the problem with games very seldom lies in a paucity of neat ideas in the design department and almost always in the ability for Producers to secure the necessary funding for risktaking or Programmers to translate those ideas into stable code.

[TotalWarWally]

Adding strategic elements like supplies (realistic), terrain choke points, night attacks of camps etc etc etc might add to programming AI etc but they are ESSENTIAL if you want TW to become a realistic war game and not just a pseudo, abstract game.

TWW.

[3asytarg3t]

I already recommended earlier in this thread a game with realism so real it's not really a game, it's a simulation. So if you equate realism with fun, here's some fun for you alright, check out Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy.

You'll never find what you're looking for if you continue to insist on looking for it in the wrong places.

[TotalWarWally]

Originally Posted by 3asytarg3t

I already recommended earlier in this thread a game with realism so real it's not really a game, it's a simulation. So if you equate realism with fun, here's some fun for you alright, check out Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy.

You'll never find what you're looking for if you continue to insist on looking for it in the wrong places.

That's quite ironic considering the tactical battles are very life like - simulation, and CA put alot of effort in improved graphics and animations to achieve this. And yet you say TW isn't a sim? Having a policy that strategic & politcal aspects should follow the tactical elements would pay big dividends.

TWW.

[Apheirox]

Eh, reviving this thread to take a different kind of stab at FOTS...

I find the limited diplomacy kills off enjoyment for me. The problem is that when half the map is allied to you, the game just stops being challenging. To be fair this seems to only be a problem for the Imperial side since they actually work together and ally whereas the Shogunate factions seem to be much more interested in fighting each other than the Imperial clans - at least, that's been my experience playing as Aizu.

Does anybody else think this 'East vs West' gameplay is a bit shallow and that these big huge power blocks fighting each other aren't as interesting as the myriad of smaller alliances seen in vanilla Shogun 2?

Of course, there's the option of declaring independence - but that's really just increasing the number of power blocks from two to three since the Imperials and Shogunates still retain their alliances.

[Mr_Eon]

Originally Posted by Apheirox

I find the limited diplomacy kills off enjoyment for me. The problem is that when half the map is allied to you, the game just stops being challenging. To be fair this seems to only be a problem for the Imperial side since they actually work together and ally whereas the Shogunate factions seem to be much more interested in fighting each other than the Imperial clans - at least, that's been my experience playing as Aizu.

God. This is realistic diplomacy in a Total War game AT LAST and you want them to change it back to "Everybody hates you and you alone because you're the only human in a world of souless bots"?

Originally Posted by Apheirox

Does anybody else think this 'East vs West' gameplay is a bit shallow and that these big huge power blocks fighting each other aren't as interesting as the myriad of smaller alliances seen in vanilla Shogun 2?

I prefer a myriad of smaller alliances resolving into two big power blocs in time. Shogun 2 had a myriad of smaller alliances that resolved instantly into you versus everyone else. I hated that.

FOTS, perhaps, forms the two blocs a little early. Perhaps a period of skirmishing followed by the solidification a little later would be the ideal? However I really want to scream from the rooftops that finally it's a matter of tweaking instead of diplomacy being plain broken and useless.

Originally Posted by Apheirox

Of course, there's the option of declaring independence - but that's really just increasing the number of power blocks from two to three since the Imperials and Shogunates still retain their alliances.

The Ezo Republic was probably the least relevant power bloc in the Boshin War. Mind you, if they'd owned Hokkaido, half of Honshu and all of Shikoku instead of just Hokkaido perhaps some of the other Clans would have joined their faction.

[Apheirox]

It's only somewhat-working diplomacy, to put it in your words - especially if you're playing as a Shogunate faction as I explained. The Shogunates backstab each other mindlessly and, to be fair, even as Imperials you might get the odd unreliable ally.

It can seem absurd to want Shogun 2's broken diplomacy back, true. It doesn't really address the issue, however. The issue is just having one big west block fight one big east block isn't really interesting. I stand by that point - going republic is probably the only way for me to enjoy FOTS. There's little enjoyment in just being completely secure behind a line of allies while you can just launch incursions into opposite faction territory at your leisure. Again, an AI problem since if the AI was more threatening it would be different.

The problem with S2 diplomacy is things like how the AI is apparently programmed to be hateful towards the player, resulting in nonsense like those declarations of war from a clan the other side of Japan for absolutely no reason. The solution, however, would be to fix those problems - not just work around them like FOTS does by simplifying the game into 'East vs West'.

[Mr_Eon]

I think they may have simply gone too 'historically authentic' with the issue you're raising. Japan often seems to have turned into an East versus West competition.

Personally I deal with that by doing some backstabbing of my fellow faction members if I feel I can muster the force to deal with them, cut them loose from their alliances and quickly seize their territory.

Gotta have my 'lebensraum' right?

[Apheirox]

To CA's credit they certainly have listened to the community and provided another option from the usual and much-hated Realm Divide. I'm sure a lot of people are enjoying the 'working' diplomacy as you put it. For me it just makes it even more clear why they put the RD feature in the game in the first place - it just isn't funny when you're all-powerful and aren't truly challenged. Definitely a tough design problem how to handle the problem because vanilla's solution of have-everybody-declare-war-on-the-player-no-matter-what isn't very gratifying, either. Hard to please.

On a side note, a small 'observation' I've made pertaining to this whole 'challenging or not' debacle: If they simply had the AI siege cities instead of almost always attacking head-on, the game would be much, much more difficult. It really doesn't matter how many units of Levy Infantry you try to throw at a fort - guns are absolutely useless in siege attacks! On the open battlefield it would be different. I'd think such a change would be easy to implement while really requiring the human player to step up his campaign map game. I think I'll start handicapping myself by pretending the AI would siege my castles which will require me to garrison a lot more heavily and get away with a lot less shennanigans. On the other hand, the AI completely neglects defending its settlements, as well.