Genius SEGA gigabrains decided to bury Total war after the peak which was a game about Japan, their country. Truly a masterplan worthy of Nobunaga himself.
@@desserted5446In terms of quality, it's buried deep. Marketing did an amazing job of tricking a lot of people during the months and weeks prior to 3K release.
Shogun 2 really shows how actual accessible games are made rather than as an excuse for corner cutting and cheap aesthetic appeal. The presentation and game mechanics were a carefully chosen and assembled set from previous games with elements all its own such as realm divide. This made a good game that people played a lot of though in differing degrees due to time allowance and if they felt the itch to play it rather than a previous game in the franchise instead. Which in turn created a game of wildly varying skill levels. Also in turn creating probably the most overall skilled community the franchise would ever have since it was the easiest point in the franchise to play an multiplayer or singleplayer battle or campaign without feeling fatigued or bored, ready to play the next. Every game post rome 2 which itself was a bait and switch as many expected it to be the next shogun 2, has been controversial among fans of the games to say the least. Each game only able to appeal to certain aesthetics which alienates anyone else, creating the toxic situation of fans turning on each other for the changes of aesthetics or just giving up on the franchise overall despite having a personal favorite. The symptoms of a dying fan base.
I haven't bought a totalwar game since atilla I simply have no interest in Warhammer or China or Troy or anyone the rest of it really I'm just waiting on medieval 3 or empire 2 till then I play third age total war which I have working better than medieval 2, medieval 2, empire and shogun2. I don't hate the new players but I do hate CA at this point but that has more to do with some of the things they have done that was scummy
@@trickyfoxx6941 Empire 2? Medieval 3? What makes you think these games will be good? Do you think they will remove the idiotic HP bars and all of the other stupid piece of shit additions over the years? Don’t be a god damn fool, the franchise won’t go back to its glory days, NEVER.
@@trickyfoxx6941 yall are huffing some copium if you really think Medieval 3 is somehow going to be good, with these recent years I really doubt its going to be even decent, just because the predecessor was good doesnt mean the newer game is gonna be on the same level.
I am now convinced that Jeff Van Dyck is the only reason for total war's greatness His music is so powerful that it inspires the devs to deliver a masterpiece no matter the hickups.
He is a legend. Rome Total War and Medieval Total War have the best soundtrecks I ever heard in games. Like not even competiotion. They are just too good.
no doubt. He defiantly turned the series up by like 10 degrees at a minumum. Probably way more. I still go back and listen to his music. Cause its just that memorable. Why they never brought him back for Rome 2 and onward will forever confuse me. He is as much total war as the series was to him.
I remember the first time I killed someone in BF1 because I noticed their bayonet sticking out of a corner. There's no need for a debuff to accuracy, mobility or something, the drawback is organic. It's just good design. It's a shame Total War took the opposite direction.
When I was younger, I really hated Realm Divide, but the older I've gotten the more I've come to appreciate it. I think my only gripe at this stage is that vassals take the Realm Divide diplomatic penalty when you've created them prior to Realm Divide, but don't take the Realm Divide penalty if you create them after Realm Divide has hit, creating a really gamey situation. It'd be better if vassals were just exempt from the Realm Divide penalty, I think.
Or your closest allies with like 700-800 + relations lol 🤣 if you're that close it's obvious they aren't a target but so be like "must eliminate threat"
I agree, my main problem with Realm Divide is that it comes out of nowhere for the player, and the AI doesn't suffer from it either. So if you're new, it can be easy to see the "oh I'm becoming more famous, cool!" and not know that it's a countdown to when you hit Realm Divide, so when it does come you are taken aback and it's not fun, like the game just changed to make it so that you lose. However if you're experienced and you know it's coming, then it's a lot more fun as you can prepare for it, usually starting with attacking your allies.
@@TheDirtysouthfan FOTS did the system better, and should have been copied in a more flexible form in the base game (so you can form coalitions). However the vanilla realm divide was actually historical for the Rise of the Samurai DLC since in the Genpei wars allies literally stabbed each other in the back for being too powerful.
Your understanding towards realm divide mechanic is abit lacking. Vassal will take diplomacy penalty regardless of the time you set it up. When you trigger realm divide, all your diplomacy standing with the remaining clans will get deducted. And at every start of each turn afterward, samething will repeat. You creating a vassal after realm divide, the diplomacy is fresh, hence give you the illusion that creating vassal after realm divide is better but since realm divide penalty will get triggered at the start of each turn, few turns later after vassal is created, your newly created vassal will rebel against you. So before and after realm divide doesnt not matter at all.
Shogun 2 plays really well, and I think the gameplay design is at the core of it. Any unit, like ANY single one, can be crazily effective if used right, yet can be dog shit if used wrong, especially in the Avatar Conquest game mode. Just literally any unit, for real. 200 koku katana attendants, with some upgrades/buffs, used right, can kill like 300 archers, ezpz. or they lose to any melee fighters, really. 355 koku yari ashigarus, securing their flanks, with some upgrades/buffs and yari wall, they can push like 500 enemies in melee. or they die to 2 volleys of matchlock fires. 720 katana sam, when minmax right, they can easily kill like 500 attendants or ashigarus. or you can waste them by getting charged by some light cav. .... i mean it goes on and on and on. Even some joker unit like ninjas or bandits (the invisible archers), can still be super effective, if used right. (for example, some bandits on top of a hill in the forest, snipping off opponent's range units). It was so much fun. SO MUCH FUN! I had crazy fun with: Yari Ashigaru, bow ashigaru, matchlock ashigaru, naginata attendants, sword attendants, yari samurai, katana samurai, naginata samurai (oh geez give them 2 atk 2 defence, they are like the iron man in my ranks), and bulletproof samurais, i mean, matchlock monk, naginata monk, nuns, bow monk, they are all so much fun, bandits, wako raiders, bow cav, gun cav, donderbuss, the list goes on Even european cannons, I mean, the joy of a single perfect volley from the forest killing the enemy bow gen and effectively knocking out the opponent's mind with a shocking surprise. I had so much fun in Shogun2. seriously. For this sole reason, shogun 2 is the most fun total war game I played. SHAME ON CA REMOVING CHAT. SHAMEFUL DISPRAY!!!
The y did more than that they removed the mod manager on purpose to and I had to manually put it back by changing to an older version of the game and copying the files they removed then reupdating my game and adding the removed files. They have stated in the past they hate modders and then they pull this crap and they even stuck it in the patch notes so nope not an accidental removal
The siege section of the video is probably provides the best showcase for modern TW players who have not experienced the amazing S2 sieges. If you have access to Troy, load up the Mycenae map and see how far the series has fallen in that respect. Even the more unique Troy maps with interesting features like that elevated position outside the castle in the S2 map in your video seem gutted by design: there is a forested hill near one section of the outer wall that could be used to enfilade the defenders on that section and support a direct attack with siege equipment (ass ladders most likely but whatever)... eeexcept it's just outside bow/sling range, and a taller part of the cliff that would actually overlook the city is simply off limits - part of it arbitrarily impassable terrain and part is simply demarcated by the border of the playable area of the map. There's a bunch of other interesting parts of that same map, and dozens such cases on other siege maps that were simply handwaved by the developer as inaccessible, even though the map modelers put in the work to create all that terrain only for it to get sectioned off for some reason. It cannot be coincidental because it's nearly ubiquitous across the walled city maps. The same thing happens to dockable walls - very rarely do cities get more than the single outer layer of wall, and if they do it's usually just a short stretch that never completely encircles an area or even creates a useful defensive position - again I assume it's because they have trouble coding 'what constitutes inside/outside for any given area of wall' in warscape and/or teaching this concept to the AI. The poster child for this is the actual siege map for the city of Troy, which does kind of have an inner wall defending the acropolis - except only a few narrow unconnected stretches can be manned, and there are no gates, just gaps in the wall that act as choke points. The best defensive feature of the acropolis is the impassable terrain of the mountain/outer wall the acropolis is on, which doesn't let you man the outer facing walls - but that's ok, you don't need to _because the entire outside area of the map is out of bounds_ and the attacker can only come so far to the side before hitting an invisible wall and being forced to attack the nearest section of the outer wall or it's nearest gate. I suspect this was done to force every map into the same 'maze of city blocks' pattern that takes attackers forever to traverse and is relatively easy for the AI to navigate, both "tactically" and in terms of basic pathfinding.
it's not just a siege problem, I noticed that in Warhammer especially the battlefields have really interesting backdrops but the actual playable area is so damn uninspiring.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Warhammer is slightly different because there are like 10x as many field maps as any other TW, so it's extremely hit or miss in the quality department. None of them are terribly complex though, because there's no extremely important features like there are in sieges, so the AI can kind of get away with treating them all like a flat plain. To be fair, the AI was never very good at managing terrain; to this day they will still make suicidal attacks across narrow choke points they have absolutely no business attempting, the same as they did back in S2 when they would stream in their thousands across a long bridge that no more than 5 men wide, face first into a hail of arrows bullets and cannonballs.
Seeing all the good bits of the maps being just out of bounds is really aggravating, I'm giving Troy a second chance since I've heard it was heavily patched and every single battle just makes me mad
I can almost always find myself when bored coming back to Medieval 2 Total War or Shogun 2, but I cant say the same for any modern TW game outside of MAYBE Attila, and that's just because I'm a sucker for the late western Roman Empire. I can't believe that all these years, CA still hasn't fixed some awful changes like the dumbing down of diplomat/agent units, and removing the ability to move units on the map seperate from a general, and don't even get me started on how much worse the blood & gore effect packs have gotten since Shogun 2. In Shogun 2 you see blood spurt from the necks of enemies, and it even covers the screen, in every game since Rome 2 it just seems like soldiers will randomly accumulate red paint on themselves rather than actually bleed on units or cause bloodshed, it is so un-immersive and low production for no reason.
@@adammercer6004 it's new in the sense that it is another close derivative of Rome 2, Rome 2 is the game that set us on our current course and every game since then has been Rome 2 with a different exterior
I like warhammer mainly for the setting. In regards to historical titles I concur. Medieval 2 and shogun 2 are particularly my favorite call backs. Particularly because of the world building and Medieval 2 I would argue is the best still out of the entire series. I wish they make a remake in so far as integrating all the new factions and units on a big mega map since some factions are greatly gimped by some of their initial roster designs. I know mods have done this but I'm not a big fan of relying on mods.
@@robosoldier11 mods its med2, med2 = mods. If you dont understand this, you dont understand med2 If you dont play mods, its like you use med2 on 5% at best
Crucially, Shogun 2 stands as the last "true" Total War game, to me, because there was still focus on making it a simulation game. Shogun 2 is the last game to use a logical and immersive armour and damage calculation method. With Rome 2 and the new engine, along with many other stupid changes, armour and damage was revamped completely to simplify combat. This was done, of course, by increasing the health pools of units and weapons would get a set damage value they would deal each time they strike, continuosly draining hp from these health pools. Don't even get me started on the new armour system with a flat % damage reduction or the god forsaken AP that ignores armour entirely. It's idiotic. This was when their focus shifted from creating authentic Total War games, which were about realistic and immersive simulations of battles, to creating something more like traditional action RTS games. That's when the series died, and calling every title after "Total War" is a joke.
The big problem with the paradigm shift is that TW has not only become an RTS, it's become a shitty one, why the hell should I ever play Warhammer when it's just an inferior Warcraft 3
@Giorgianni Cartamancini I get this lol I have a very stable version of third age totalwar and for me Warhammer just equals "why would I buy this I have lord of the rings at home and it works great" I had never even heard of war hammer and know nothing about its world I'm 39 lol I just want warcraft or lotr or a good historical game not that romance of the 3 kingdoms dynasty warriors wannabe
Attila is the last of the actual historical total wars, or Thrones of Britannia but we don't talk about that so Attila. Like they still went for a historical angle and the battles played strategically with tactics and unit skill was inherent to themselves, not like League of Legends or DOTA fight. I don't think its the armour calculation that can be used as the defining moment, it's when they decided it wasn't to be proper tactical battles but a point and click ability contest. This isn't to say Rome 2 and Attila didn't have huge problems, but they were at the very least games where you could still form a battle line, had to flank, and terrain, movement and tactics felt important. All of that is gone since warhammer, you just mash two blobs together and then click a bunch of abilities over and over.
@@giorgiannicartamancini3917 What a genuinely stupid statement. Warcraft 3 and Warhammer TW have nothing in common beyond being fantasy and being rts games.
Literally my favorite game of all time. Even when storage space starts to get low, Shogun 2 is a must stay. I just wish we had more responsibilities as Shogun and made political decisions but there are other games for that, i can't be too greedy 😋
It's amazing how, even after spending hundreds of hours, I still feel driven to experiment with army organization in Shogun 2. The game excels at presenting dilemmas, where you seldom have a clearly right or wrong choice to make.
Numberwang indeed. I've been reflecting on the illusion of sophistication given by convoluted UI, and the Matrix-grade flood of symbols of obscure meaning, something which is commented on in the first Matrix film itself: the Wachoskis explicitly calling-out the iconic green waterfall of data that represents the system from outside the simulation. What represents the Matrix to those who don't experience it directly, is something purposefully designed to be meaningless but look like it's meaningful and yet obscured. What we have here is a representation of something that common sense says can't be represented: something which Lovecraft and writers inspired by his work call 'horrors beyond comprehension, to the point that to look on them is to go mad'. Combine this with Terry Pratchett's observation that the most common delusion and form of insanity there is, is the belief that you are sane. Anyone who looks on the Numberwang of modern game design splits into two groups: the sane ones who question their sanity because what they see is nonsense, and the insane ones who don't doubt at all what they're seeing, and see a game that is so intricately designed that even the UI 'makes it look complicated'. They're looking at the writhing, wriggling form of the Leviathan, and seeing beauty in what is actually ripping away at their senses.
And then there's the people who actually take a look, spend a minute thinking, get a feeling of the game and realise that the numbers are actually pretty damn easy to understand, and that a lot of just basic, sound tactical advice holds up just fine and the complexity is only a matter of degrees. I guess being one of those people just makes me the equivalent of those guys who remember that Lovecraft in a lot of his writing was effectively just making analogies about those damn dirty foreign people. (Something he did largely come to openly regret later in his life, to give credit where it's due.)
@@magni5648 the problem is that in the case of new total war, once you get past that initial hurdle of understanding the obtuse UI, there is very, very little left to do. You quickly come across the optimal army composition and the game is solved.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498I mean, not any more than with old TWs? I don't count braindead busywork as "something to do", I count it as an active detriment. Also, I'd kinda dispute that there is one optimal army comp? Baring some particular cheeses, a lot of races do need to switch up their army comp depending on the enemy, to say nothing about cost-efficiency also playing an important part and making you want to keep cheaper troops on hand. And then there's of course various types of lords/legendary lords that might buff differnet unit types and encourage you to theme their armies into different directions.
@Dishonorable_Daimyo Code of S2 was basically heavily modded Empire engine. It was supposed to be thrown away after S2, so we had reeeally a lot of freedom to make changes - because everything was supposed to be rewritten for next engine version:) So no one from higher ups cared what is being changed/rewritten. I remember one graphic programmer I worked with - I thing Chu was his name - got a nickname "Ninja" after S2 because he coded/hacked a lot of things into the engine:)
You worked on shogun 2 ? If so im really thankfull man, its my most cherished RTS game and im even playing a Tokugawa campaign rn afterna few years off ;)
My beef with Shogun 2 is the fact that matchlock ashigaru are so late in the tech tree. Also the tech tree in general. It's so damn low to research unless you go on a quest to conquer all the library province. But don't conquer too quickly or the realm divide trigger and now there's only war. And of course by divide it's more everyone vs you...
I'm fine with it, though I did share this sentiment in the past. I changed my mind when I started to understand just how game changing they are; it only makes sense that they take ages to research. Or you could sail to Kyushu like I showed in the video, imported guns are still guns.
@@AnalyticalReckoner or play otomo lol the matchlock ashi are really not that good in field battle imo, between the clunky firing animations, terrain restrictions and shorter effective range, they are god-like in defensive siege tho, easily racking up hundreds of kills.
@@z54964380 matchlocks are amazing in field battles, especially early game where they will so quickly rout Ashigaru armies. You need only a few volleys to make a difference with them.
I love the Uesugi, specifically Kenshin. In the game they have my favourite colour scheme and I like the "traditional" buddhist warrior monk theme. In history he is also ky favourite. He used a Nagamaki (a blend of katana and naginata) and was seen as the reincarnation of the god of war Bishamonten. He was really young in the beginning of his carerr, but not behind in cunning, administrative skills and honour. He even cared for civilians of his enemy (e.g. sending salt to Takeda provinces after the Hojo cut them off of the sea) insisting war is done by soldiers on the battlefield, not by starving civilians. He actually fought Takeda to a standstill at Kawanakajima AND beat the Oda in battle (not Nobunaga tho) at Tedorigawa. Nobunaga was actually afraid of him marching on Kyoto and there is the urban legend of assassination in the uesugi latrine. 😅 Although it was probably a stomach cancer from drinking and stress. Above all that there is even the theory he was in fact a woman. He had no wife, was very handsome (feminine) sent to a monastery early on (to disguise her) and had regular strong stomach cramps every month around the same time. Although once again that is more proven to have been that cancer..
Maybe if CA didnt kill mod support with a "hardware upgrade" patch that was so bad a bunch of mod devs are straight up considering making their own game.
One of the most popular mod/modder for TW:S2 (Darthmod) actually did end up making his own game. It was after CA pretty much ignored his request to cooperate/work with them (for free btw) on some stuff to help further improve game (CA didnt give a reason as to why they ignored him) and denied his participation to a modding summit which they held, which in turn resulted in him quitting the TW modding scene for good. If your interested in the game he made, it's title is Ultimate General : Gettysburg, it's actually a pretty good game and if you like TW games then your gonna more than likely love this one too. His most recent work 'Ultimate Admiral : Dreadnaught' is also looking looking pretty good, it's a game that let's you design and fight with your own ship/dreadnaught, somewhat similar to sprocket (tank design game) but with a much better single player campaign.
@@sukitron5415 no the patch added some things worth keeping best thing to do is change to the Linux version then take the files from there tht deal with the mod manager then change back to the updated version and drop the files they removed back in and now you got the update and the mod manager back. On a side note they didn't break it they removed it all together and was done on purpose it was in the patch notes. CA has been into it with the modding community for a bit now.
As always, a very thoughtful and persuasive video. In the wake of Total War's collapse, I've started playing a lot of turn-based wargames and what's really intriguing is that a lot of these games also have very deep unit stats with tons of spreadsheets' worth of information to digest if the player so wants to. But all of that is irrelevant because at the end of the day, a tank shooting into the side of another tank is probably going to kill it, and a knight charging into the flank of a line of spearmen will roll up the spears like a freakin' carpet. Numbers in these games aren't supposed to dictate the experience, but rather provide context and incremental advantages and disadvantages to define factions. A unit of Teutonic Baltic Levies in Field of Glory 2: Medieval will lose to more organized, professional spearmen, but still function as a capable meatshield unit while the more elite knights crash through the enemies. And all of this happens even if you don't necessarily understand the Point of Advantage system entirely; it's intuitive that even trash spears will usually win against most other melee units while holding a significant uphill advantage. You don't need the numbers. Total War was supposed to replace games like Field of Glory 2 by marrying deep tactical simulation, engaging action, and stunning presentation in one concise package. Now, Total War is basically just a really pretty version of Warcraft 3, without any of the tightness in design that makes that game engaging, and without any of the actual challenge of fighting other players. It's a complete system failure and we may never see a true successor to Total War ever again, so 30 years from now Total War will just be a blip in gaming's history instead of being a defining series of it. That's a shame. It was nice while it lasted, I guess.
LMAO. "Deep tactical simulation". It was an RTS. It's ALWAYS been an RTS. And Warhammer has if at all made it MORE complex and tactical. And yet it's still as intuitive as ever, and literally all you've described up there holds just as true. Rma heavy cavalry into the flank of a spear infantry unit in TW:W? It's gonna be a bad time for the pointy stick boys. Cheap cannonfodder units that essentially exist to tarpit enemies while getting mulched for it? Absolutely a thing. Height advantage? A thing, even moreso for large calvalry or monstrous units charging downhill. You're wearing rose-tinted glasses thick enough to qualify as bulletproof and/or never actually played any TW:W title. And TW has long since become a defining series of gaming history. Nothing that happens now or 30 years from now is going to ever take that away. It just arrived at that stage not *exactly* the *exact* way of the hyper-romanticized facsimile of the older titles that exists in your head demands. So you're fleeing into this kind of irrational denial and shouting buzzword phrases about how "old" TW wasn't an RTS, it was a "simulation".
@magni5648 yeah so this exact channel did a demonstration where height advantage is so negligible that it can't overcome the difficulty modifiers lmfao TW:W fans as always not substantiating their claims in any way because they don't understand the shallow mechanics of the game they are defending
@@darkfireslideI'll invite you to do a downhill charge with high mass units agaisnt infantry and tell me it doesn't do anything LMAO. PS: I'm a TOTAL WAR fan. Literally been here since Shogun:TW. 500+ hours on Shogun 2. Adn I daresay I understand more about "the shallow mechanics" of the games I love and have hudnreds of hours of playtime on than some random hater whose entire argument is so utterly bereft of any substance at all that it is plainly obvious to be completely farcial to anyone with any kind of playtime at all.
@@darkfireslideAlso, pretty weird for people to think it's weird that their old comments might get some attention randomly in the future. How new to the internet are you even, kiddo?
My first Total War game was Medieval 2, as I was still in school many years ago. I still remember the first time Ive play it and using a spy... I was so surprised, seeing suddenly a little movie popping up, where my spy knocked out a guard and then starts (blindly) wandering around in the former guards armor. And the first battle as I zoomed in, some people where actually fighting each other, not just poking each other with their weapons. This love for details really had me enjoying these game series with Shogun 2 having become my favourite. And some of these details are even from an UI perspective helpfull like you explained: In Medieval and I think Shogun 2 also, you have traffic on the roads and sea routes, which not only make the world more living, but also gives a direct view on how weathly a province/trade is. One thing you missed, are Agents. Shogun and Medieval both managed to have an Ai, that uses Agents, but do not send annoying waves of them. Sure, the pope sending an inquisitor to your realm, who tarts burning all of your merchants, generals and even priests was annoying too, but an actuall threat you could come by. Being reliant on Ninja to harm your oponent and suddenly an enemy army has 1 or 2 Metsuke could really cause trouble for you. Agents where balanced and a reasonable threat. But since Rome2, Agents started coming in waves, again and again. That changed them from a threat to overcome to just an annoyance, that slows you down, without one being able to do something against them. In contarary, the reason why they started to bind armies to generals completely was because of the unit spam. Sure it might gave more strategical dept, but gameplaywise the Ai didnt managed to use split units well or too well, depending how one might see it. Having constantly single unit armies running around, destroying farms, harbors or plundering just became annoying and chasing them (even more in late game, where you have other things to do) just became tedious. And its strange that they didnt even manage to get this feature right even after 10 years... as for quite some time just generals or low unit armies running around plundering the own territory... while being allied with you. Dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with an enemy army raiding, just how it was established was rather annoying. But it seems that the series develops more towards quick arcade games, than slower strategical and tactical advancement with an eye for detail.
Man this was the game that brought me into the total war series and i still play it today, battles actually felt like they were brutal affairs and i loved in FOTS being able to see how intense fights were based off of gun smoke and how rapidly artillery was firing, which actually felt like the king it historically always has been. The warhammer games outside of different playstyles between factions don't offer much because you can just doomstack. I dont think anything really will beat that first campaign as the shimzazu and the fight of my life i had when i discovered realm divide
I used to live and breathe Rome 1 and Medieval 2. Still love M2 unlike any other game out there. Empire soured me so bad on the Total War series that I skipped pretty much every game since then before I finally got back into it and picked up Shogun 2 just for the hell of it. I feel it is the absolute most you can get out of that fucking engine without making it absolutely gimmicky like in the fantasy titles. It has some strengths compared to M2 but also some weaknesses but it absolutely is the last actual accomplishment of CA with the possible exception of Attila. Warhammer games don't really count, those are fun for what they are, but they are pretty much just fanfics and normie bait.
I think highlighting S2's limits was very important in delivering how "tragic" the situation is. The older titles weren't perfect, the franchise has always had the bad habit of dropping beloved features from title to title(settlement view dropping from Rome to Med2, elevation not giving a range increase from Empire onward), the ai was never really good, moddability was reduced to nothing (Med2 still remains the most heavily modded due to its flexibility in that field), ecc... There was so much to improve yet the devs managed to break the very core of the experience instead
Sorry for the 'actually', but the animation times with guard and line infantry are different so that guard infantry can pull and put more bullets down. If you look in the files, they use breech-loading rifles rather than your garden-variety muzzle-loaders, so they can put a lot more bullets down compared to line infantry and have a use for basically stopping Shogitai in their tracks.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 what they are saying is that guard infantry will wipe the floor with a line infantry unit woth the same reload statistic. With good positioning 2-3 elite infantry can smash triple the number of even high exp line infantry. And as the blacksmith buildings provide insane accuracy boosts, recruitment shifts to those provinces. And i find myself not recruiting line infantry from the midgame on, as the vanguard of the enemy faction will field stacks of shogunate/imperial infantry demolishing my "replacement" line infantry.
@dichse2157 i have finished short and long campaigns in FotS with every faction minus Sendia because i havent tried and in the VAST majority of them I never once came across imperial or shogunate infantry let alone the Guard variants. What game are you playing? Because it's not the same one I have. Plus the battle AI in FotS is bad and easily exploitable, it has no idea how to use line infantry and Shogitai are actually a bigger threat.
Light cav is straight up the best unit in Shogun. You can reliably dick around 4-5 enemy units with a single light cavalry, allowing you to create local superiority elsewhere. And they also slaughter back line units like no tomorrow. You could try to do this with heavier cavalry, but it is significantly faster, and they tire faster, giving you much less room for innatention, something you do not have to spare in a chaotic battle. They are also fantastic on the defense. Sallying out is actually a legitimate tactic for once.
A story about Shogun 2's AI being competent (mostly) and how I overcame it. This was YEARS ago, so forgive any lack of details. It was actually my first ever campaign in a Total War. I had a nearly full army consisting of yari ahigaru, bow ashigaru, katana samurai and bow samurai (and my one starting yari samurai who was still with me). We fought and won a battle but took fairly heavy casualties. The enemy sent TWO FULL armies at us, with a THIRD from an ally of theirs. I was FUUUUCKED. This force also held my daimyo. On the map I played, near my spawn, however, was a single hill. At the top it had a small copse of trees, and was surrounded on three sides by rock walls, preventing any flanks. So I set up all my melee at the base, overlapping like crazy, archers behind, and general in the forest. The enemy came, and of course my melee held fast, and against such a wall of swords and spears would break fairly easily, as well as how many arrows they took before even getting in. The first two armies held me down, and the enemy archers began taking their toll on my melee troops, but staying out of range of mine, but I took advantage of something I noticed with the AI. They liked sniping my general. So I moved him forward, and sure enough the enemy archers came forward to shoot him... but he was BEHIND my archers. So running said general back to the safety of the forest (where the archers stopped targeting him) I was able to DESTROY their archers with mine, their concentrated volleys resembling 300. I still needed CONSTANT use of my general's abilities, but time after time enemy samurai, cav, and spearmen came at me and were turned away, even when the third full army arrived at last. Thing was, because of the morale (which I'd never be able to do this in a new TW) being destroyed by the arrow barrages and wall of men and weapons, I barely inflicted any real casualties upon the enemy before they all broke. But ALSO because my men were so bunched up, constantly getting commanded by the commander against retreating, mine held strong. I didn't lose a SINGLE full unit, despite some pretty massive loses on my side, and only inflicted around 5-600 casualties to the THREE full armies (I did kill one or two generals). One of my units of katana samurai had FIVE soldiers remaining, if I recall correctly. They saw our resolve, and knew we would not break, so they did. Of course I got the fuck out of there right after, ran back to my territory, gave up on that offensive for a few seasons. They all chased me into a siege which I destroyed them in, but still has MASSIVE loses from that big battle so couldn't actually give chase as the three armies themselves limped back home. I THINK I was Date?
The biggest Tragedy of Total War these days is how the "Strategy" part of the game has just been completely Dumbed Down or outright removed. "Technology" just being Stat buffs, Generals ALWAYS being required to be in a army, thus reducing the VALUE of generals to next to ZERO. Not to mention all the "little things" you could do by splitting off units from your main army Stacks, and removal of building stuff on the campaign map (namely forts). (Recon, Besieging a settlement, dealing with smaller stacks without moving the entire army, Ambushes, Ectera) Rome 2 and Attilla are PASSABLE, but even then their are clearly things that where LOST. Hmmm, ya know maybe that is just a FLAW in Total War, The Stat Stacking i mean, its kinda just unavoidable after a while. Between units gaining XP and your general gaining Traits/Skills you do eventually create a "doomstack" where your troops just refuse to brake and just murder everything in sight. Heck in Warhammer, rank 9 units can BEAT the "Legendary" Units which start at rank 9 to begin with. Wow Warhammers Sound Design is absolute ASS! I don't care about the epic music, i want to hear my units doing shit!
Well, yes the history games you could say have been dumbed down as they have lost the typical design. Now unlike Warhammer, that from the get go, the devs where trying to make as close to the table top. Thus, those things can't be said to be missing, as the design of Warhammer is different. Also very true to at least the concepts of the table top. Also objectively the most diverse and variable tactically in battles.
Complexity has if at all only INCREASED. And LMAO, generals having no value? Yeah, besides being damn expensive to recruit and the death of an experienced one being a massive setback, you mean? Having a hundred mini-stacks running around was more diffly timewaster than real gamechanger. Being limited to less is if at all more here, forcing you to actually care a lot more about positioning your armies on the campaign map and thinking a turn or two ahead. And "doomstacks" were always a thing, straight back to Shogun:Total War. And, you know, entirely fucking realistic. Concentration of forces is something you'll find in that ol' chinese handbook from ~2500 years ago. You know, The Art of War.
@@magni5648 Care to define that Complexity you speak of? Generals still have value, they just arn't as RARE as they used to be. Now that they grow on trees, having one die is just "eh, time get a new one". Lossing experienced generals is nothing new, but it used to suck alot more when they did die (ether in battle or old age) since you couldn't just get another one. No one is insane enough to run around with dozens of mini stacks, that said you usually have a dozen or so little garrison armies. EVERYONE will argue in favor of Splitting armies, EVEN CA themselves have said so in their Advertising for Rome Remastered, Quote "adds more strategy" IN A STRATEGY GAME NO LESS! Plus their are several LITTLE THINGS you can do with splitting off units that you CAN'T DO NOW. Hell i give you 3: 1. Recon, usually with a unit of cav, since cav used to have superior movement distance. Now you must use agents for Recon instead of them doing something useful. 2. Leaving just enough troops behind so you can continue your advance though enemy territory OR building up a small garrison to defend with. 3. You can Siege a city or fort (which negates its zone of control) then have a small force go drive off any nearby reinforcements. Yes, doomstacks have always existed, TW Warhammer however takes it to the extreme. Since you can just recruit a entire army of ONE UNIT and that will win every battle. Although to be fair by the time you get the point you can afford such an army your playing the game on auto pilot.
@@jaywerner8415Define that complexity? More unit types, more unit functions, actual hitpoint values add another layer to unit interaction etc. Fun fact, older TW titles made it more likely to get generals the less you had. You weren't gonna run out. In fact, used to be that the only "price" to pay was fighting a battle without one to get to promote a captain. You didn't even have to pay anything for it before Shogun 2. And I disagree. Being limited to less armies means you have if at all to think a lot more about what you're doing with 'em. Being able to have garrison and defensive mini-stacks and cheap recon everywhere makes for braindead decision-making and a ton of just dumb chorework with little actual need for planning involved. Meanwhile, split stacks can still be done by bringing two half-stacks or the like. It now just requires you to be thinking ahead. And you could always break the game with single-unit doomstacks. Like holy shit, way back in Shogun:Total War just massing up a giant deathball of Warrior Monks would let you walk all over the AI. Rome was heavy infantry o' clock. Medieval 2? Knights, Knights everywhere. Shogun 2? Yari and Bow Ashigaru could literally win the entire campaign for you, even moreso for Oda. (And then there's Chosokabe archer doomstacks that have enough firepower that you don't even need melee units.)
My main and biggest qualm with the AI, that I rarely seem them use units outside of the samurai or ashigaru tier. Most of the time you only see the yari ashigaru/samurai and the bow ashigaru and samurai, with the occasional Calvary. The AI in tegarda to unit comp has always been lacking in my eyes. I wouldn’t even care if it was just a random mishmash I want something else to fight XD. Aside from that this is one of my favorite games (I also have minor qualms about the sieges but I rectify those using the strongholds of the samurai mod)
The problem is that the AI cannot intelligently build settlements so oftentimes it will not unlock units with multiple recruitment requirements (e.g. monks, high tier cavalry, etc.) even if it unlocks them through the tech tree; i am not sure if the AI ever dismantles any structure in its settlements but it doesn't feel like it.
Dish unravelling 200 siege scenarios at 36:00 feels like a Dad that is immensely happy that his children asked him about his favorite game and now he verbalizes 20 years of experience
I love it. When this video ended, I almost drop a tear. I would not describe and review this game I love better than you did. You simply did a great job, thank you! I think there is another strategy game that would interest you, that is Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence. Try it, please
I agree with you about FotS not providing enough benefit for better units; I actually started modding FotS largely because I wanted to add more differentiation between line infantry units instead of it feeling like every unit is "slightly better line infantry"
I'm just finishing one more campaign of total warhammer 3. I have 3k hours in it. Your video made me think of what I did so far in the campaign... It was a campaign with the warriors of chaos. Basically, from start to finish, most of what I did was send my lord to solo the entire enemy army while keeping my army in the back. If the lord started to die, I would send the army to finish off the remaining units. But 90% of the battles was just that.
This was the last great game in the TW franchise. Everything after is just so flaccid and lifeless due to spreadsheeting and shine over function syndrome. PS: I highly recommend The Rights of Man 1 for empire, The Rights of Man 2 for Napoleon, and the Rights of Man 3 for Shogun 2. These mods really do some good work in trimming up and polishing the first generation of warscape games, especially in the AI department whilst adding historical accuracy where they can without sacrificing gameplay. Please note that TROM3 for Shogun does away with the heavy rock paper scissors approach to bring it back towards a medieval 2 sort of unit balance so if you don't like that then don't get the mod. The best part is they managed to implement an Ashigaru Pike and Shot unit as well as an AOR recruitment system. It's very cool. Also I totally agree with you on making things too micromanagy. Unit timed abilities and functions are absolute wank and do not fit the total war genre at all. This series went too hard into trying to be a moba style rts. Attila really annoyed me with this trend where you had to manually put units into brace position otherwise they would get fucked by frontal charges. It was so annoying.
I love how the game never had a Japanese language version cause no one over there actually plays Total War Love that 3 Kingdoms, despite never being 'finished', offered Chinese voice and text (as well as being a pretty sick game)
That part with Europa Universalis 4 resonated with me, as I also have over 1K hours and quit that game a year ago. The game is overwhelming and not in a good way. You have all of these numbers, all of these modifiers for an end goal that isn't even satisfying. The game is essentially carried by those numbers instead of a fun and interesting gameplay loop. There is no political strategy other than expanding. The gameplay consists of either blobbing and playing tall. The best way to describe EU4 isn't a grand strategy game but a map painting simulator. There is no grand strategy other than becoming too big to fail. Contrast that with Shogun 2. You are forced to do diplomacy. You could expand in every direction but that would create too many enemies for you to handle. When you get too big, realm divide happens. There is no realm divide in EU4. Your neighbors don't really care. They will get a threatened diplomatic modifier, but will never make a coalition since that requires 50% aggressive expansion and negative relations. The diplomacy in EU4 sucks and the AI is stupid. Game too stale? Have some more mana, maybe even some +15% Goods Produced. So many numbers, not enough gameplay.
An alternative to exp effecting unit types differently would be an RPG style system where the unit gains experience in the style of combat (or movement) the player is using them for. Would be more complicated to program but not much; there's plenty of games that use this already. A bow unit fighting in melee should get melee experience, if it uses a bow for a battle, it should gain experience in that. If it runs around a lot, it should gain stamina experience... things like that.
I'm curious what do you think about older Total Wars like Medieval 2 or Rome 1 I'm pretty sure Shogun 2 is certainly your favourite game, but I wonder if there is something you appreciate in older games? I personally really miss generals character traits and how they affected campaign map and battlefield. The general could be chivalrous and make his own units harder to break, or he could be dreadful and make enemy units to lose they morale
I have a few hundred hours in Medieval 2 (base game and Crusades campaign), it has the typical problem of general units being far too powerful, and unlike Shogun 2 the supply of generals isn't nearly as limited. Campaign wise it's way too easy to make money, even without looting settlements; and because buildings have to be queued up, unlike Shogun 2 where you can build multiple builds at the same time provided you have the funds, there's very rarely a scenario in Medieval 2 where a shortage of funds hampers your building efforts. The first 20 or so turns is fighting dumb battles against rebels and turtling settlements and the AI is just way too passive. Also the last time I played the game I quit after getting 2 siege defenses in a row where the AI bugged out and refused to attack (and i didn't have enough units or ammo to sally forth and defeat them), was not willing to run down the timer for that crap.
I won't forget constantly getting, "the cruels" or "the wrathfuls" because of my penchant for subconsciously always going with execute or exterminate after battles. Classic TW was just different.
@@buzter8135 I see you like executing order 66! Lol Kill him Anakin! Your honorable generals: I shouldn't ... It's not the honorable way... You: kill him now! "Swords pierce your foes chest" "GENERAL GAINED the Wrathful Trait!" Your general : what have I done!
@ 19:30 Another: Have multiple types of experience per unit. Say a unit has both melee and missile weapons. It gains experience with the latter through shooting enemies up. It gains the former whenever it does well in melee (or at least, survives). The level by which it goes up can depend on specialization (so a missile units gain experience shooting at a faster rate than with melee), but the idea is the same: you can introduce a certain granularity to the units.
I miss the settlement growth from Empire (probably my favorite thing in the game). It lets me manage taxes more often rather than keeping them at normal forever, is it early in the game and I'm playing a poor faction surrounded by enemies? Well maybe I need to keep the taxes normal or even slightly higher so I can upgrade buildings and build an army. Am I playing a strong faction or maybe I'm in a comfortable spot for the next few turns? Well maybe I can lower my taxes so I get more settlement growth and get ready to boom my economy, it's a lot different from the Shogun 2 system where I focus on getting the nearest "recruitment" province and turn every other province into an economic center to fund my armies or a well fortified economic center if it's near a border. FOTS kinda adresses this by giving you more economic growth with lower taxes but making money is so trivial that ideally you always have your taxes as low as possible until it's time to fight the entire map.
The one big problem I have with the systems of Shogun 2 is the fact that everybody pairs off in a melee fight to enter duels. Apparently the developers did that citing bushido or some shit but to think that real standing formation armies followed those rules is laughable. Units ganging up on each other like they did in medieval 2 is more common sense and superior.
Your point about real time micromanagers was spot on. I’ve never knew how to put it into words of what I felt was wrong with the new style of games way, until you fully explained it show going to feels the best and easiest to understand unit roles in army composition
I LOVE SHOGUN 2 I LOVE BEING ABLE TO LOOK AT ANY ARMY REGARDLESS OF FACTION OR DLC AND INSTANTLY HAVE A SOLID IDEA WHAT THEIR UNITS DO AND HOW THEY WILL FUNCTION
Realm divided was always an amazing doing in Shogun 2, i always have had feeling when i see realm divided that everyone considers me a threat, that conquers without reason; what i want to see in Shogun 3 is Realm Divided for the Ai, especially strong clan Tokugawa, as historic play through; and option to disable historic events and get some randomized experience with all sorts of events, while historic one would play according to its history roots. Total War thought me a lot about the history they should implement some sort of mechanic to represent the period like it was, some mini campaigns instead of Sandbox and ofc you get sandbox that is randomized once again to its maximum where everything can and will happen. Each clan their own mini campaign where you can continue onto conquest, or end your playthrough there and go for another historical campaign where you go for accurate historical battles, video introductions, close to exact armies as quests where you get various military and civil buffs, quests like in WH has; this quests would be cool in Sandbox too if you somehow end up making same situation as historical playthrough if that makes sense, some other random quests, etc. it really has a lot that can be done, as i always believed that Japans history is somewhat never told nor told in schools at least in Europe, im not some big fan of Japan nor weeb, but their history is rich it should be brought closer to people (history in general should) who only want to play games and no invest much time into learning some pointless trivia. I expect same thing from Rome 3 and Medieval 3, and every other historic Total War that comes, mythical and romance modes nobody cares much about that, if game is historical give us some sort of experience to be there, in that mark in history and feel it first hand. I always like Historic Battles in all Total Wars, that thing can just be starting point ready for improvement a good foundation to make every historic title so-so much better and immersive.
Those were some good old days, Shogun 2 is one of my favourite Total war, and sometimes I wonder why, thank you for those good memories coming back ! And you didn't event mentioned the combat animation, that we haven't unfortunaly seen since :(
Tokugawa Ieyasu used diplomacy to become Shogun, Oda Nobunaga made a puppet so he would hold all the power, neither faced realm divide historically. I hope they make a 3rd Shogun game and make it the best Total War game to date. I also hope 10 million dollars would appear on my doorstep, both are equally likely, but I'd prefer the former.
Man when I bought it, I bought only the Fall of the Samurai expansion without knowing it was not the base game, I played Fall of the Samurai so much that I only bought the base game about a year later. I have warhammer 2 and tried to play recently but after 15 minutes I said fuck it i'm installing shogun 2 again its just a better game than all the other total wars after and before it...
2012: pay less than half price for a stand alone expansion that is basically another game. Has its own artstyle, music, gameplay... 2022: pay 15 usd for an extra faction that is usually just a reskin of another
There is also a Historical reason for playing ie recreating Nobunga's path or playing as Takeda and trying to take over as a what if. Same with Usegi and Kenshin. Buddhist Japan. Or Otomo for Christian and early modernized Japan likely a different path otl. You can also play as a complete different faction ie Hojo and do a complete 180 on Japanese history. Also there's an anime mod for the game xd so yeah that elevates it.
It's an awesome game, but I just hate the food economy mechanic, there is simply no reason to build up anything except a lvl.2 fort, market, sake den and nothing but ashigaru. You can't 'afford' to build up your own regions more, because the AI factions will build up their castles which you will have to support, because they can't be demolished/downgraded
Its interesting this game had the least varying factions and units but I played this total war the most. And i still have fun coming back to it every now and then.
0:22 - Probably what makes it perplexing to me is how they went from being extremely ambitious (maybe to a detriment) with Empire now to revisiting an old game that inherently doesn't have that ambition. It came out from the list of TW games that the team constantly discusses about, it's how Shogun 2 became that way since they wanted to revisit the first game after quite a while. (Can look into rockpapershotgun's Talking About Total War With Mike Simpson") 0:59 - Which kinda started off with Empire (unit packs) and Shogun 2 (unit + clan and blood packs), I kinda thought the video would be about how Shogun 2 was the start of a very awful trend where one has to buy DLC to stay competitive in multiplayer or have anything interesting to play with. 1:29 - Just Rome 1/Med2 had the weird mouse inputs, Shogun/Medieval for whatever reason have zero input delay 3:41 - Probably because people only see yari ashigaru spam and that's kinda it, the footage at the time and the footage after (and the footage after too) have the unit as being the most common one 3:57 - Kinda why I started to write the comment because the underlying difference is that this is with the mind of having it on very hard battle difficulty, where Warhammer obviously has a lot more bonuses given to the AI. Jack Lusted even told that the bonuses given to the AI are halved that of previous TW games. The Warhammer games still have some decent variety on normal where the units are fighting with the same rules but add percentage modifiers to stats and the balance is completely fucked, making units way less useful. Example being greatswords being pretty nice on normal difficulty where they also are pretty good in multiplayer but on legendary they're fucking useless. Thankfully the same didn't happen to Shogun 2 despite combat modifiers being really bad in Shogun 1 which basically had one spam warrior monks to win the campaign, that could've nearly happened to Shogun 2 as well. All the stuff on "unit differentiation" instantly goes through the window when yari ash cannot hold in yari wall and can only reflect cav charges somewhat, same with loan sword ashigaru that are amazing at killing yari ashigaru by flanking them in yari walls, suddenly becoming worse than the enemy yari ashigaru with their swords. Very under-talked aspect that I think saved the game because it still allowed the player to experiment with the units without feeling like their units are inherently going to lose vs their own unit category so warrior monk/bow/hero spam doesn't become a thing. Especially considering how Shogun 2 has even less terrain modifiers since high ground doesn't give extra damage to units or how fatigue for infantry is just a morale modifier, it would arguably be even worse for those claiming there's no terrain nor fatigue in Warhammer. Really dodged a MASSIVE bullet there, very rarely do I have to thank Jack Lusted for not having the same difficulty modifiers as in Shogun 1 or just the previous TW games in general. 7:25 - Is that why the starting locations of IE got so hyped because all their diversity also comes from the different starting locations? idk but it is more interesting that basically the same people have access to different things because of their circumstances, not because like how in Rome 1/2 the people just happen to have heavily armoured units because of their roster and not because they had access to some mines giving them the materials for their equipment. Very good point there. Somewhere 10:00 I guess - It's probably that the game is deep enough while not being that ambitious, I sometimes wonder if less really is more in TW where the "Zen" of the unit balance carries further than just stacking "campaign mechanics" or unique units. 11:19 - Based 15:08 - Unless you get the tech that just gives +50% ammo, assuming the logic is that the slight morale penalty of being hit by projectiles makes it more worth than trying to get to the same casualty % with a more accurate unit 16:50 - And it's kinda what is necessary in higher difficulties for other TW games, having units with a lot of xp to offset the difficulty modifiers is a must. Can't wait for the comments for people to suggest to use matchlocks to shoot the unit, as if that's worth considering the -6 morale penalty for friendly fire inflicted 17:32 - Something that's untouched but for whatever reason is considered classic TW moment - how is it that some light shit cav are able to get thousands of kills oneshotting routing units even if they're in the middle of blobs? 18:35 - I kinda don't mind veterancy all that much but yea having both morale, combat and range buffs at the same time is a little overkill. I like the approach of what Rome 2 tried to do with army traditions but even then it's like "select bonus", irrespective of what the army actually did. Same with generals who out of nowhere start giving bonuses to units out of nowhere like what the fuck and this includes Shogun 2 where units are magically becoming better at charging for example just because the general is present with that skill. 18:50 - My only assumption is their arms get stronger lol (which even then implies they should be getting xp for firing rather than getting kills like what the fuck) 19:10 - Kinda what happens when difficulty modifiers go really high which Shogun 2 thankfully doesn't have to deal with till there are very experienced units 19:25 - It was experimented with in Arena and while I agree that each unit type could receive different experience benefits, why not just have the unit's actions potentially give extra stats like accuracy for a landed hit from long range, better stamina from firing so much over the battles, melee buffs for having been in melee, morale from also being in melee while maybe still having the same shock factor cripple them when facing cavalry. 22:00 - And the only options there are just ass backwards like bringing precursors to halve the health of each entity hit or spamclicking with elephants/chariots that can score hundreds of kills in a short time. But nah it's still somehow considered "historical" to some people 22:12 - The single entities behave by different rules because they don't have the same formation restrictions as a regular unit so it's both easier to abuse the higher stats and to be harder to deal with vs units that are meant to fight vs other units. Arena had the same issue where units that could target without animations like hoplites or pikemen in phalanx were insanely good vs elephants but stuff like swordsmen were really a hit or miss. But yea it's one way to deal with their buffs. 22:26 - That should've been the main point as to why Shogun 2 had its unit variety, tactical gameplay, no need to avoid using trashy units
24:00 - Yo my favourite quirk where the morale penalty for general routing is when he literally despawns by running well beyond the red line area Section from 25:00 26:40 to - The main argument I've heard is how it makes the player invested into developing a region constantly as the limited build slot system just makes the settlement stop progressing when the max tier building is built so the next one can't be started. Then again I really don't see how it made for thoughtful decisions, the closest thing maybe being how squalor can become a problem by building too many population boosting buildings like farms but other than that it was just too tedious, really don't get the appeal of Rome 1/Med2 system like I'd get if there was any planning ahead of time but there isn't really, same with the recruitment pool system eventually breaking when the settlement is developed enough that allows the player to just recruit all the good units unhindered. As for major/minor settlements "railroading" the progress it's more so about avoiding the shit that comes from culture/corruption from spreading. So fucking stupid. 30:00 - It was a giga cancer that was nearly avoided by having lesser battle AI buffs, while still being very tedious. Holy shit imagine the mess. 33:25 - I'll just quote Jack Lusted I guess ruclips.net/video/BnZ9TmJ8HJY/видео.html 33:50 - That's also how Shogun 1 did it which I think was a very elaborate decision when going into Shogun 2 45:12 - That "almost" at 1:33 really came back lmao 46:40 - Grimdaaark 48:15 - Another note for non gunpowder games is how impossible it is to figure when units are technically charging or routing, there have to be flashing white banners or uuh wait they still have nothing at all for charges besides a morale tooltip that they got extra morale for charging and maybe some screaming that can maybe be heard from 20m 48:50 - At least it's some progress where the sprites wouldn't even render weapons so a unit of pikemen didn't give any indicator that they're in phalanx besides a big green circle above them. 49:00 - Think that should've been the main focus where there's an obvious issue rather than go over "but it sounds/looks shit" when zoomed in closest where Warhammer can still just be fine 51:45 - What the fuck the rare Shogun 1/Medieval 1 style unit cards that are THE unit seen on the field, no abstracted pot art or some weird posing that there are no animations for 55:45 - Wondering what the thoughts are on the old stat sheets of Shogun/Medieval that just literally say "well armoured" if the unit has decent armour, avoiding the numbers altogether (except for the battle info panel that shows all the stats) 57:40 - Had the same thing in Rome 1 where all light and heavy cav kinda just did the same purpose and stats became meaningless. There were some horrible units that had one crippling stat sure like cataphracts having 8 instead of 12 morale but generally it just became intuitive to just face an armoured unit by flanking them, offensive unit by mass charging them and cav by firing missiles at them or having own cav ready for a counter charges
One thing about yari sam that is worth saying from a unit diferentiation point of view is that they are a more offensive/agressive unit compared to yari ashigaru, in fact they are the best infantry flankers in the game. They can use rapid advance to quickly flank enemies engaged in combat, they can go around without being contested or threatend by cavalry,unlike katana and nodachi samurai, they can also avoid bad engagements with rapid advance...
Great video on my favorite Total War game! I really liked your comparison of the sound effect difference between Shogun 2 and the more modern Warhammer games. It can be very depressing see Total War go backwards in some areas such as this when they got things so right in Shogun 2 and other games.
I'm coming up on 3800 hours in EU4. I feel as though the way you described the idea group meta was accurate for about the time that it sounds like you quit playing (prior to Emperor DLC in 2020). Quantity + Trade + Economic ideas was by far and away the best set of modifiers for the mana cost, and you were shooting yourself in the foot by choosing any other idea group(s) (especially in a multiplayer setting). Since Paradox Tinto was created (mid-2020) to refine and create content for the game, they have been rethinking and rebalancing many mechanics to the game, taking community feedback all the while, which has yielded many new viable strategies. They have broken up the most OP bonuses and spread them around, while significantly buffing the underutilized idea groups (eg: naval ideas now gives -1 landing penalty and free naval bombardment on coastal forts). They are increasingly utilizing that great depth of options to create meaningful tradeoffs, which plays super nicely into that dynamic of replayability; you would be hard pressed to find a "one size fits all" idea group nowadays, when your marginal utility of one group over another is so based on your RNG, diplomacy, region, threats, government form, etc. I would suggest taking another crack at the game, were it not for the ever-present and abhorrent DLC/monetization strategy. Also, I found your points on Shogun 2 to be highly informative!! I watched to the end; insightful to see what can be done with more experience in the game (I'm still at only ~160 hours, only playing the Otomo :p).
Hey at least they offer a subscription model to get all the dlc then turn it off when are not playing anymore. One thing why I don’t want to get warhammer 3 is because there are so many dlc that completely change your gameplay
There's 2 things where Medieval 2 is better than Shogun 2. 1.Sieges (actually no total war game has better sieges.) 2. Combat pace. (Shogun is too fast, you don't even have the pleasure of enjoying watching them fight. After 2 animations everyone is dead.)
Ever since I got Empire for my 13th birthday, I've played pretty much every Total War game. Generally, I install the game, play a couple campaigns, try out the different units, then after a few dozen hours I get bored and uninstall it. There is only one Total War game that I keep coming back to time after time, the only one that I can play over and over, that I can see the same units and the same factions and still I don't get bored, and that's Shogun 2. It's one of my favorite strategy games and thanks to the modding community there are always new things to explore. I'm just worried that when (if) Shogun 3 comes out, it might not be as great as 2, considering the direction the series has taken over the past few years.
The map system from the original Shogun was superior and actually realistic. The battle speed of Shogun II on release was far too fast and looked like an episode of Keystone Kops.
The biggest problem with battles in Fall of the Samurai is that the AI just doesn't know how to handle artillery. Units will run, or even just walk in the open and lose 30-40% of their numbers before even closing to engage your line. You will then hit the "Please Do Your Best" Button on your general as the AI walks into range of your infantry, permitting them the first volley. At this point, most enemy units will have about 20-30 dudes left. Coupled with the fact that the enemy general probably caught a bullet in the face (since the actual range of guns is much farther than shown) and the entire army will chain rout. Difficulty settings do not affect this at all.
I agree with the clear visual telling, one of the things i dont like in Med 2 is how you cant see where archer are shooting, I always turn on fire arrows so I can see whats going on
This is a great analysis, thank you for putting in the effort here. It articulates everything I love about the game, but couldn't find the words for. Not only that, it covers some negatives I hadn't even considered but I have to agree with upon reflection. I hate to say it, but I don't think we'll ever get a game like this again.
in one of my battles I routed a archer regiment with samurai and my left flank was wavering so I RUSHED that Samurai regiment to the left flank to hold the line . having seen this the archers rallied and began charging my right flank which was now exposed. Behold there was a lone Samurai... he was busy finishing a archer from the last engagement so he fell behind his unit and suddenly he turned around and saw 43 archers rushing to kill him! I swear this must've been samurai jack because HE DID NOT DIE... he was sliced 3x and stabbed 2x leg swept once and each time he got back up and killed archer after archer... by the end of it I think there was 5-15 archers remaining and they routed... not only did he win the fight of his life but he went on to go kill their friends that were still engaged on the left... yes TW Shogun is the best...
Lovely video essay. Everytime I watch these I wonder why I have only 400h in Shogun 2 and 1k hours in Warhammer. The worst part is that new players might not ever taste the greatness of this game. But as long as the legend of the Shogun 2 will echo on the internet, they might pick it up one day. But it might be a shocker for them, game plays very differently. I had 250h in Shogun 2, but didn't play for 8 years. After reinstalling I got my ass kicked by the AI. My battle lines terrible, flanks exposed, units not wanting to fight, but flee instead, everything I did was too late because when you screw up, your units die really fast. But with a bit of experience and trusty Yari wall I was doing quite well even on legendary.
Love your assessment of it. I do disagree about diplomacy somewhat, though. Slight tweaks to the system (e.g., long, dependable/honourable allies remaining with you) could provide additional paths for developing your campaign - including involving them in expansion. Still wouldn't change most of the country siding against you. Same thing with slight polish to economic options or improved campaign AI. Battle and war remains the focus, but you're giving more options. I find that a parallel to the unit experience/linear bonus balance problem...there really are some clear, optimal ways to play, but I think there are good foundations to build upon.
I've always been interested in total war games but as a console player they've never been accessible and I didn't feel like switching platforms away from friends and spending so much money for one franchise. Last year I got a m1 MacBook and I got this game a few months ago because I heard it ran well. Such an amazing investment. Near endless fun especially with the fall of the samurai dlc. It's crazy how well optimized it is too, on a laptop meant for work with no gpu it runs at 1440p 60fps, love it. Games like these have a charm, I don't even have the nostalgia blinds and I see why it's so beloved
Been going over these older comments again and you bring up something I'm noticing more: even people who have no prior experience with the games seem to be turned off by warhammer and rome 2 and yet still find a game like Shogun 2 appealing. It flies in the face of those who claim we just hate newer games because of our nostalgia. Shogun 2 released in 2011, in the coming years there are people who are younger than the game who will be playing it and I wonder how the "nostalgia" argument is gonna fly.
@@pandelik3450 The game is fairly old, new players probably don't want to try multiplayer only to get eviscerated by XxTakeda_ShingenxX with 5,000 hours of multiplayer and a Takeda banner on their wall. It's even worse for completionists who have to do challenges like no spears in this hyper-skilled optimized environment. Most new players just won't be able to cut it in multiplayer, and casual players will never pass the barriers to entry due to being, well, casual players.
What I love to play when I want a 3 hour game. Load up (Benzinten) don't remember the name but it's the one with 3 rings and the center. Yourself invading full units and give the AI 4 AI Teammates. Usually it's Ikki, Oda, Shimazu & Date. And split your force in half and attack through the North & South.. surviving the hordes of enemies and setting up a defense wall while slowly trying to regroup with your main force at the 2nd or 3rd wall, depending how bad the casualties piled. It's always so fun putting up a defense to handle the Katana and watching for Pike vs my Calvary. Ugggh. I'm gonna go for another game now. I use to be virgin Chosokabe.. but I now believe in Uesugi.
Yeah one seemingly simple thing i tried to mod in rtw for years which would apparently benefit all tw games is percentage based balancing. Meaning upgrades like exp, gear, dif modifiers (if applicable) etc would all make for a better experience that way than flat bonuses
For a lot of the non-specific buffs this would indeed be a great improvement; shame it isn't really possible in Shogun 2. For Shogun 2 it really helped to just reduce the experience bonuses; if experience gives less buffs (especially to morale) Samurai retain their innate advantages better; you can also make it so armourer buildings give smaller buffs to Ashigaru than they do to Samurai/monks pretty easily because the game already splits those buffs by unit type.
When he says you beat the game with less ....... I felt that to my core .. from easy campaign to now confidently rocking every legendary campaign to its core .... And with ultimate ummersive mod behind me, it takes shogun 2s replayability 100% sayisfying and with unpredictable clan temparament mod, its always different everytime you play the game
this is such a good articulation of why I have gone back to shogun 2 that I dont know if I will be able to enjoy another tw title again, so thanks for that
I love warhammer, and I love total war warhammer, but I just haven't been able to play it recently. All of the guns are just...wrong. The bullets are too slow and have too much of an arc, and the gunners reload and fire far too quickly. Additionally, they do WAY too little damage for the fucking great equalizer. I remember playing a Reikland campaign and checking the damage values on my ranged units, and I was horrified to discover that the crossbowmen had MORE damage per shot than the fucking handgunners. CA has completely forgotten how to portray guns properly, and until they fix that shit I am basically completely uninterested in any future games. And then if they fix guns, they have to fix the other bullshit before I'm willing to buy their games again. Yarr harr!
shogun 2 is my joint best total war alongside atillla total (dont care what people say about it i love it) i miss being able to freely move units around without a general. Which i think highlights a larger issue with Creative Assembly and how they bottleneck themselves in terms of total war game mechanics.
I remember playing Medieval 2 and getting just sucked in by it. I sank so many hours into it and I got such a good feeling from conquering and warring in Europe. Since then I bought several total war games chasing that feeling and I just never got it again. Rome 2 DEI was ok but too slow, Napoleon was fun but the combat quickly got stale. Then I finally got around to Shogun 2 and oh my god. It's Total War. It's the the Total War I remember. The feeling is back. The funny little spy/assassination animations are back. Pre-battle speeches are back. The units move quickly and are responsive. The AI actually builds big armies and are a problem to deal with. The combat is balanced again, with the rock paper scissors unit battles I always loved. Shogun 2, to me, is the last proper Total War game. And it's ironic, because that makes the Fall of the Samurai also coincide with the fall of Total War games. I don't think anything CA make in the future will ever come close to Medieval 2 and Shogun 2.
my hands down favourite feature of shogun total war2 is defending the castles. I dont much like attacking them but they are so much fun to defend. I wish other TW titles would do similar set ups with earthworks or defended towns etc, not everything needs to be a boring walled city.
What killed Shogun2 for me was that you can not possibly kill the enemy AI by deprieving it economically or shrinking their territory. They turn up with a full stack of everything you want a few turns later even if they on their last 2 provinces.
while that is true, you can instead destroy their infrastructure, even if I a territory has little strategic value to me I will still take it to destroy whatever military buildings they have. I have seen some very visible results where from this where they are forced to replace their initial samurai army with an ashigaru horde. The game is so well-designed that even when a flaw is presented, the gameplay morphs and adapts to it instead of just collapsing.
I was lucky enough to get shogun 2 for free during 2021 and boy I'm glad it was my first total war. Then I got medieval 2 and Rome 2 to get a feeling of classic and modern total war and to say shogun 2 (and by extension FotS) is unique it's about right. I wish for a return to this formula for a historic setting, maybe ad a population mechanic but not make it complicated.
I think the reason the AI gets ranged cheats in (vanilla) Shogun 2 is partially to compensate for the fact that the player will use loose formation for skirmishing while the AI pretty much always stays in tight formation; either that or they just forgot to change difficulty settings coming from ETW/NTW.
The first point about "its not fair to assess a game in any way other than looking at the most efficient playstyle possible" is just false. The proper way to assess a game is to look at what playstyles are viable. If you want to be a sweaty tryhard go ahead just as if someone wants to purely roleplay they can go ahead. As long as its viable for progressing the game to achieve victory in a reasonable amount of time it must be included as a perfectly valid option to play the game. And no, doomstacking isnt the best way to play twwh3. That has been massively improved upon you should check it out. balanced armies are for nearly every faction the best way to play.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Japanese companies are afraid that Steam will dominate the game market in Japan so they force us to buy from them for a ridiculously high price compared to Steam smh…
The fact warhammer series has no line formation option drives me insane more than anything. I remember how amazed and excited i was when i saw the general customizing for shogun.
As I mentioned in another of your videos, I actually completely disagree that your example of guard infantry in empire losing to line infantry because of platoon fire vs fire by rank is a positive thing. Guard infantry should outperform line infantry, they shouldn't lose because they're using an inferior tactic and that you have no control over it. Especially when platoon fire is actually further up the research tree than fire by rank. Don't get me wrong, platoon fire does have its place, as I said in your other video it's a side grade rather than an up/downgrade, without mentioning Empire's numerous bugs that is which make platoon fire even worst as individual soldiers begin to randomly wander off preventing the entire platoon from firing which happens much less under fire by rank. With that said, you brought an interesting point in this specific video about a way to still automate this system. For example if in empire you deploy your guard infantry in a single line they'd default to the default mass fire, if you deploy in 2-3 ranks than they default to fire by rank(as 2-3 rows is the ideal formation for this tactic) whereas if you deploy in 4+ ranks than they will default to platoon fire(as under fire by rank only 3 rows can fire, any more and your soldiers start to excessively rotate around severely slowing your rate of fire). This shouldn't be limited to just guards by the way but any unit that has more than 1 firing tactic available to it which aren't clear upgrades of one another. This way the UI can remain the same minimalistic way while you're not losing flexibility of your army and can actually justify using those expensive guard units rather than default to the regular line infantry or heck simply not advance in your military research tree into platoon fire because unless you specifically plan for it, it will strictly be a worst option.
Genius SEGA gigabrains decided to bury Total war after the peak which was a game about Japan, their country.
Truly a masterplan worthy of Nobunaga himself.
now this is a comment I can like.
"It just works."
‘Bury’ total war? 3K is the best selling game in the history of the franchise.
@@desserted5446 also killed off barely 2 years later after they couldn't sell their DLC
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 yes… but an excellent game notwithstanding
@@desserted5446In terms of quality, it's buried deep. Marketing did an amazing job of tricking a lot of people during the months and weeks prior to 3K release.
Shogun 2 really shows how actual accessible games are made rather than as an excuse for corner cutting and cheap aesthetic appeal. The presentation and game mechanics were a carefully chosen and assembled set from previous games with elements all its own such as realm divide. This made a good game that people played a lot of though in differing degrees due to time allowance and if they felt the itch to play it rather than a previous game in the franchise instead. Which in turn created a game of wildly varying skill levels. Also in turn creating probably the most overall skilled community the franchise would ever have since it was the easiest point in the franchise to play an multiplayer or singleplayer battle or campaign without feeling fatigued or bored, ready to play the next. Every game post rome 2 which itself was a bait and switch as many expected it to be the next shogun 2, has been controversial among fans of the games to say the least. Each game only able to appeal to certain aesthetics which alienates anyone else, creating the toxic situation of fans turning on each other for the changes of aesthetics or just giving up on the franchise overall despite having a personal favorite. The symptoms of a dying fan base.
I haven't bought a totalwar game since atilla I simply have no interest in Warhammer or China or Troy or anyone the rest of it really I'm just waiting on medieval 3 or empire 2 till then I play third age total war which I have working better than medieval 2, medieval 2, empire and shogun2. I don't hate the new players but I do hate CA at this point but that has more to do with some of the things they have done that was scummy
@@trickyfoxx6941 Empire 2? Medieval 3? What makes you think these games will be good? Do you think they will remove the idiotic HP bars and all of the other stupid piece of shit additions over the years? Don’t be a god damn fool, the franchise won’t go back to its glory days, NEVER.
@@trickyfoxx6941 yall are huffing some copium if you really think Medieval 3 is somehow going to be good, with these recent years I really doubt its
going to be even decent, just because the predecessor was good doesnt mean the newer game is gonna be on the same level.
@eoozy to be honest you're probably right I'm just hoping at this point
its the only total war i still play quite often. Fall of the samurai is the truth with darthmod
I am now convinced that Jeff Van Dyck is the only reason for total war's greatness
His music is so powerful that it inspires the devs to deliver a masterpiece no matter the hickups.
He is a legend. Rome Total War and Medieval Total War have the best soundtrecks I ever heard in games. Like not even competiotion. They are just too good.
Yes
often an amazing soundtrack goes hand in hand with an amazing game. But Jeff van Dyck is GOAT for his soundtracks.
Any time I hear the track Good Death, I feel the need to throw the game into slow motion and close up examine the fighting
no doubt. He defiantly turned the series up by like 10 degrees at a minumum. Probably way more. I still go back and listen to his music. Cause its just that memorable. Why they never brought him back for Rome 2 and onward will forever confuse me. He is as much total war as the series was to him.
I remember the first time I killed someone in BF1 because I noticed their bayonet sticking out of a corner. There's no need for a debuff to accuracy, mobility or something, the drawback is organic. It's just good design.
It's a shame Total War took the opposite direction.
When I was younger, I really hated Realm Divide, but the older I've gotten the more I've come to appreciate it. I think my only gripe at this stage is that vassals take the Realm Divide diplomatic penalty when you've created them prior to Realm Divide, but don't take the Realm Divide penalty if you create them after Realm Divide has hit, creating a really gamey situation. It'd be better if vassals were just exempt from the Realm Divide penalty, I think.
Or your closest allies with like 700-800 + relations lol 🤣 if you're that close it's obvious they aren't a target but so be like "must eliminate threat"
I agree, my main problem with Realm Divide is that it comes out of nowhere for the player, and the AI doesn't suffer from it either. So if you're new, it can be easy to see the "oh I'm becoming more famous, cool!" and not know that it's a countdown to when you hit Realm Divide, so when it does come you are taken aback and it's not fun, like the game just changed to make it so that you lose. However if you're experienced and you know it's coming, then it's a lot more fun as you can prepare for it, usually starting with attacking your allies.
Yeah it really sucks that taking vassals is essentially worthless because realm divide will make them turn against you
@@TheDirtysouthfan FOTS did the system better, and should have been copied in a more flexible form in the base game (so you can form coalitions). However the vanilla realm divide was actually historical for the Rise of the Samurai DLC since in the Genpei wars allies literally stabbed each other in the back for being too powerful.
Your understanding towards realm divide mechanic is abit lacking. Vassal will take diplomacy penalty regardless of the time you set it up. When you trigger realm divide, all your diplomacy standing with the remaining clans will get deducted. And at every start of each turn afterward, samething will repeat. You creating a vassal after realm divide, the diplomacy is fresh, hence give you the illusion that creating vassal after realm divide is better but since realm divide penalty will get triggered at the start of each turn, few turns later after vassal is created, your newly created vassal will rebel against you. So before and after realm divide doesnt not matter at all.
A realm successfully divided -and united.-
scratch out the 2nd part
Shogun 2 plays really well, and I think the gameplay design is at the core of it. Any unit, like ANY single one, can be crazily effective if used right, yet can be dog shit if used wrong, especially in the Avatar Conquest game mode.
Just literally any unit, for real.
200 koku katana attendants, with some upgrades/buffs, used right, can kill like 300 archers, ezpz. or they lose to any melee fighters, really.
355 koku yari ashigarus, securing their flanks, with some upgrades/buffs and yari wall, they can push like 500 enemies in melee. or they die to 2 volleys of matchlock fires.
720 katana sam, when minmax right, they can easily kill like 500 attendants or ashigarus. or you can waste them by getting charged by some light cav.
....
i mean it goes on and on and on. Even some joker unit like ninjas or bandits (the invisible archers), can still be super effective, if used right. (for example, some bandits on top of a hill in the forest, snipping off opponent's range units). It was so much fun. SO MUCH FUN!
I had crazy fun with:
Yari Ashigaru, bow ashigaru, matchlock ashigaru,
naginata attendants, sword attendants,
yari samurai, katana samurai, naginata samurai (oh geez give them 2 atk 2 defence, they are like the iron man in my ranks), and bulletproof samurais,
i mean, matchlock monk, naginata monk, nuns, bow monk, they are all so much fun,
bandits, wako raiders, bow cav, gun cav, donderbuss, the list goes on
Even european cannons, I mean, the joy of a single perfect volley from the forest killing the enemy bow gen and effectively knocking out the opponent's mind with a shocking surprise.
I had so much fun in Shogun2. seriously.
For this sole reason, shogun 2 is the most fun total war game I played.
SHAME ON CA REMOVING CHAT. SHAMEFUL DISPRAY!!!
The y did more than that they removed the mod manager on purpose to and I had to manually put it back by changing to an older version of the game and copying the files they removed then reupdating my game and adding the removed files. They have stated in the past they hate modders and then they pull this crap and they even stuck it in the patch notes so nope not an accidental removal
@@trickyfoxx6941 such shameful display, for real. for this reason I just don't wanna buy total war games any more. seriously.
I've done well with bandits and nagi attendants especially.
Nuns have slaughtered cav.
The siege section of the video is probably provides the best showcase for modern TW players who have not experienced the amazing S2 sieges. If you have access to Troy, load up the Mycenae map and see how far the series has fallen in that respect. Even the more unique Troy maps with interesting features like that elevated position outside the castle in the S2 map in your video seem gutted by design: there is a forested hill near one section of the outer wall that could be used to enfilade the defenders on that section and support a direct attack with siege equipment (ass ladders most likely but whatever)... eeexcept it's just outside bow/sling range, and a taller part of the cliff that would actually overlook the city is simply off limits - part of it arbitrarily impassable terrain and part is simply demarcated by the border of the playable area of the map. There's a bunch of other interesting parts of that same map, and dozens such cases on other siege maps that were simply handwaved by the developer as inaccessible, even though the map modelers put in the work to create all that terrain only for it to get sectioned off for some reason. It cannot be coincidental because it's nearly ubiquitous across the walled city maps. The same thing happens to dockable walls - very rarely do cities get more than the single outer layer of wall, and if they do it's usually just a short stretch that never completely encircles an area or even creates a useful defensive position - again I assume it's because they have trouble coding 'what constitutes inside/outside for any given area of wall' in warscape and/or teaching this concept to the AI. The poster child for this is the actual siege map for the city of Troy, which does kind of have an inner wall defending the acropolis - except only a few narrow unconnected stretches can be manned, and there are no gates, just gaps in the wall that act as choke points. The best defensive feature of the acropolis is the impassable terrain of the mountain/outer wall the acropolis is on, which doesn't let you man the outer facing walls - but that's ok, you don't need to _because the entire outside area of the map is out of bounds_ and the attacker can only come so far to the side before hitting an invisible wall and being forced to attack the nearest section of the outer wall or it's nearest gate.
I suspect this was done to force every map into the same 'maze of city blocks' pattern that takes attackers forever to traverse and is relatively easy for the AI to navigate, both "tactically" and in terms of basic pathfinding.
it's not just a siege problem, I noticed that in Warhammer especially the battlefields have really interesting backdrops but the actual playable area is so damn uninspiring.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Warhammer is slightly different because there are like 10x as many field maps as any other TW, so it's extremely hit or miss in the quality department. None of them are terribly complex though, because there's no extremely important features like there are in sieges, so the AI can kind of get away with treating them all like a flat plain.
To be fair, the AI was never very good at managing terrain; to this day they will still make suicidal attacks across narrow choke points they have absolutely no business attempting, the same as they did back in S2 when they would stream in their thousands across a long bridge that no more than 5 men wide, face first into a hail of arrows bullets and cannonballs.
@@TheWujuStyle Almost like they wouldn't need field maps if they used map generation like S2 and the other games like Attila.
For me the best sieges where in medieval two total war. With the level three walls for citadels your small garrison has a slim chance of victory.
Seeing all the good bits of the maps being just out of bounds is really aggravating, I'm giving Troy a second chance since I've heard it was heavily patched and every single battle just makes me mad
Can we just mention that the trees in shogun 2 are realistic in size! such a minor thing but I love it.
shogun 2, best trees, nuff said/.
I can almost always find myself when bored coming back to Medieval 2 Total War or Shogun 2, but I cant say the same for any modern TW game outside of MAYBE Attila, and that's just because I'm a sucker for the late western Roman Empire. I can't believe that all these years, CA still hasn't fixed some awful changes like the dumbing down of diplomat/agent units, and removing the ability to move units on the map seperate from a general, and don't even get me started on how much worse the blood & gore effect packs have gotten since Shogun 2. In Shogun 2 you see blood spurt from the necks of enemies, and it even covers the screen, in every game since Rome 2 it just seems like soldiers will randomly accumulate red paint on themselves rather than actually bleed on units or cause bloodshed, it is so un-immersive and low production for no reason.
Can still we still call Attila "new" as it like 8 years to ten years old
@@adammercer6004 it's new in the sense that it is another close derivative of Rome 2, Rome 2 is the game that set us on our current course and every game since then has been Rome 2 with a different exterior
@@adammercer6004 yeap, we can
I like warhammer mainly for the setting. In regards to historical titles I concur. Medieval 2 and shogun 2 are particularly my favorite call backs. Particularly because of the world building and Medieval 2 I would argue is the best still out of the entire series. I wish they make a remake in so far as integrating all the new factions and units on a big mega map since some factions are greatly gimped by some of their initial roster designs. I know mods have done this but I'm not a big fan of relying on mods.
@@robosoldier11 mods its med2, med2 = mods. If you dont understand this, you dont understand med2
If you dont play mods, its like you use med2 on 5% at best
Crucially, Shogun 2 stands as the last "true" Total War game, to me, because there was still focus on making it a simulation game. Shogun 2 is the last game to use a logical and immersive armour and damage calculation method. With Rome 2 and the new engine, along with many other stupid changes, armour and damage was revamped completely to simplify combat.
This was done, of course, by increasing the health pools of units and weapons would get a set damage value they would deal each time they strike, continuosly draining hp from these health pools. Don't even get me started on the new armour system with a flat % damage reduction or the god forsaken AP that ignores armour entirely. It's idiotic.
This was when their focus shifted from creating authentic Total War games, which were about realistic and immersive simulations of battles, to creating something more like traditional action RTS games. That's when the series died, and calling every title after "Total War" is a joke.
The big problem with the paradigm shift is that TW has not only become an RTS, it's become a shitty one, why the hell should I ever play Warhammer when it's just an inferior Warcraft 3
@Giorgianni Cartamancini I get this lol I have a very stable version of third age totalwar and for me Warhammer just equals "why would I buy this I have lord of the rings at home and it works great" I had never even heard of war hammer and know nothing about its world I'm 39 lol I just want warcraft or lotr or a good historical game not that romance of the 3 kingdoms dynasty warriors wannabe
Attila is the last of the actual historical total wars, or Thrones of Britannia but we don't talk about that so Attila. Like they still went for a historical angle and the battles played strategically with tactics and unit skill was inherent to themselves, not like League of Legends or DOTA fight. I don't think its the armour calculation that can be used as the defining moment, it's when they decided it wasn't to be proper tactical battles but a point and click ability contest. This isn't to say Rome 2 and Attila didn't have huge problems, but they were at the very least games where you could still form a battle line, had to flank, and terrain, movement and tactics felt important. All of that is gone since warhammer, you just mash two blobs together and then click a bunch of abilities over and over.
@@ElZilchoYo attila plays like shit in battles. It has the Rome 2 problems of health pools and very poor collision.
@@giorgiannicartamancini3917 What a genuinely stupid statement. Warcraft 3 and Warhammer TW have nothing in common beyond being fantasy and being rts games.
A lot of people don't know about Yari & Shot. It brings Europe, India, north Africa and middle east map to the vanilla campaign
Literally my favorite game of all time. Even when storage space starts to get low, Shogun 2 is a must stay. I just wish we had more responsibilities as Shogun and made political decisions but there are other games for that, i can't be too greedy 😋
What games? A more politically focused game sounds interesting.
It's amazing how, even after spending hundreds of hours, I still feel driven to experiment with army organization in Shogun 2. The game excels at presenting dilemmas, where you seldom have a clearly right or wrong choice to make.
Numberwang indeed. I've been reflecting on the illusion of sophistication given by convoluted UI, and the Matrix-grade flood of symbols of obscure meaning, something which is commented on in the first Matrix film itself: the Wachoskis explicitly calling-out the iconic green waterfall of data that represents the system from outside the simulation. What represents the Matrix to those who don't experience it directly, is something purposefully designed to be meaningless but look like it's meaningful and yet obscured.
What we have here is a representation of something that common sense says can't be represented: something which Lovecraft and writers inspired by his work call 'horrors beyond comprehension, to the point that to look on them is to go mad'. Combine this with Terry Pratchett's observation that the most common delusion and form of insanity there is, is the belief that you are sane.
Anyone who looks on the Numberwang of modern game design splits into two groups: the sane ones who question their sanity because what they see is nonsense, and the insane ones who don't doubt at all what they're seeing, and see a game that is so intricately designed that even the UI 'makes it look complicated'. They're looking at the writhing, wriggling form of the Leviathan, and seeing beauty in what is actually ripping away at their senses.
I will be frank with you: I find your comment touching and poetic.
Beautiful
And then there's the people who actually take a look, spend a minute thinking, get a feeling of the game and realise that the numbers are actually pretty damn easy to understand, and that a lot of just basic, sound tactical advice holds up just fine and the complexity is only a matter of degrees. I guess being one of those people just makes me the equivalent of those guys who remember that Lovecraft in a lot of his writing was effectively just making analogies about those damn dirty foreign people. (Something he did largely come to openly regret later in his life, to give credit where it's due.)
@@magni5648 the problem is that in the case of new total war, once you get past that initial hurdle of understanding the obtuse UI, there is very, very little left to do. You quickly come across the optimal army composition and the game is solved.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498I mean, not any more than with old TWs? I don't count braindead busywork as "something to do", I count it as an active detriment.
Also, I'd kinda dispute that there is one optimal army comp? Baring some particular cheeses, a lot of races do need to switch up their army comp depending on the enemy, to say nothing about cost-efficiency also playing an important part and making you want to keep cheaper troops on hand. And then there's of course various types of lords/legendary lords that might buff differnet unit types and encourage you to theme their armies into different directions.
@Dishonorable_Daimyo Code of S2 was basically heavily modded Empire engine. It was supposed to be thrown away after S2, so we had reeeally a lot of freedom to make changes - because everything was supposed to be rewritten for next engine version:)
So no one from higher ups cared what is being changed/rewritten.
I remember one graphic programmer I worked with - I thing Chu was his name - got a nickname "Ninja" after S2 because he coded/hacked a lot of things into the engine:)
Cool stuff, also according to what people say were the staff replaced/fired after shogun 2? Thus making Rome 2 so bad at launch or something?
You worked on shogun 2 ? If so im really thankfull man, its my most cherished RTS game and im even playing a Tokugawa campaign rn afterna few years off ;)
My beef with Shogun 2 is the fact that matchlock ashigaru are so late in the tech tree. Also the tech tree in general. It's so damn low to research unless you go on a quest to conquer all the library province. But don't conquer too quickly or the realm divide trigger and now there's only war. And of course by divide it's more everyone vs you...
That's what makes the game so fun actually. You need to carefully choose your search tree, you can't research everything.
You could always convert
I'm fine with it, though I did share this sentiment in the past.
I changed my mind when I started to understand just how game changing they are; it only makes sense that they take ages to research.
Or you could sail to Kyushu like I showed in the video, imported guns are still guns.
@@AnalyticalReckoner or play otomo lol the matchlock ashi are really not that good in field battle imo, between the clunky firing animations, terrain restrictions and shorter effective range, they are god-like in defensive siege tho, easily racking up hundreds of kills.
@@z54964380 matchlocks are amazing in field battles, especially early game where they will so quickly rout Ashigaru armies. You need only a few volleys to make a difference with them.
I love the Uesugi, specifically Kenshin. In the game they have my favourite colour scheme and I like the "traditional" buddhist warrior monk theme.
In history he is also ky favourite. He used a Nagamaki (a blend of katana and naginata) and was seen as the reincarnation of the god of war Bishamonten. He was really young in the beginning of his carerr, but not behind in cunning, administrative skills and honour. He even cared for civilians of his enemy (e.g. sending salt to Takeda provinces after the Hojo cut them off of the sea) insisting war is done by soldiers on the battlefield, not by starving civilians.
He actually fought Takeda to a standstill at Kawanakajima AND beat the Oda in battle (not Nobunaga tho) at Tedorigawa. Nobunaga was actually afraid of him marching on Kyoto and there is the urban legend of assassination in the uesugi latrine. 😅
Although it was probably a stomach cancer from drinking and stress.
Above all that there is even the theory he was in fact a woman. He had no wife, was very handsome (feminine) sent to a monastery early on (to disguise her) and had regular strong stomach cramps every month around the same time. Although once again that is more proven to have been that cancer..
Maybe if CA didnt kill mod support with a "hardware upgrade" patch that was so bad a bunch of mod devs are straight up considering making their own game.
One of the most popular mod/modder for TW:S2 (Darthmod) actually did end up making his own game.
It was after CA pretty much ignored his request to cooperate/work with them (for free btw) on some stuff to help further improve game (CA didnt give a reason as to why they ignored him) and denied his participation to a modding summit which they held, which in turn resulted in him quitting the TW modding scene for good.
If your interested in the game he made, it's title is Ultimate General : Gettysburg, it's actually a pretty good game and if you like TW games then your gonna more than likely love this one too.
His most recent work 'Ultimate Admiral : Dreadnaught' is also looking looking pretty good, it's a game that let's you design and fight with your own ship/dreadnaught, somewhat similar to sprocket (tank design game) but with a much better single player campaign.
@@jamesFX3 I've played ultimate general civil war that's got the whole war on it if it's death mods they did really well on it
I thought everyone just used the Linux pre 2022 patch now because the patch broke the mod manager?
@@sukitron5415 no the patch added some things worth keeping best thing to do is change to the Linux version then take the files from there tht deal with the mod manager then change back to the updated version and drop the files they removed back in and now you got the update and the mod manager back. On a side note they didn't break it they removed it all together and was done on purpose it was in the patch notes. CA has been into it with the modding community for a bit now.
As always, a very thoughtful and persuasive video.
In the wake of Total War's collapse, I've started playing a lot of turn-based wargames and what's really intriguing is that a lot of these games also have very deep unit stats with tons of spreadsheets' worth of information to digest if the player so wants to. But all of that is irrelevant because at the end of the day, a tank shooting into the side of another tank is probably going to kill it, and a knight charging into the flank of a line of spearmen will roll up the spears like a freakin' carpet. Numbers in these games aren't supposed to dictate the experience, but rather provide context and incremental advantages and disadvantages to define factions. A unit of Teutonic Baltic Levies in Field of Glory 2: Medieval will lose to more organized, professional spearmen, but still function as a capable meatshield unit while the more elite knights crash through the enemies. And all of this happens even if you don't necessarily understand the Point of Advantage system entirely; it's intuitive that even trash spears will usually win against most other melee units while holding a significant uphill advantage. You don't need the numbers.
Total War was supposed to replace games like Field of Glory 2 by marrying deep tactical simulation, engaging action, and stunning presentation in one concise package. Now, Total War is basically just a really pretty version of Warcraft 3, without any of the tightness in design that makes that game engaging, and without any of the actual challenge of fighting other players. It's a complete system failure and we may never see a true successor to Total War ever again, so 30 years from now Total War will just be a blip in gaming's history instead of being a defining series of it.
That's a shame. It was nice while it lasted, I guess.
LMAO.
"Deep tactical simulation". It was an RTS. It's ALWAYS been an RTS. And Warhammer has if at all made it MORE complex and tactical. And yet it's still as intuitive as ever, and literally all you've described up there holds just as true. Rma heavy cavalry into the flank of a spear infantry unit in TW:W? It's gonna be a bad time for the pointy stick boys. Cheap cannonfodder units that essentially exist to tarpit enemies while getting mulched for it? Absolutely a thing. Height advantage? A thing, even moreso for large calvalry or monstrous units charging downhill. You're wearing rose-tinted glasses thick enough to qualify as bulletproof and/or never actually played any TW:W title.
And TW has long since become a defining series of gaming history. Nothing that happens now or 30 years from now is going to ever take that away. It just arrived at that stage not *exactly* the *exact* way of the hyper-romanticized facsimile of the older titles that exists in your head demands. So you're fleeing into this kind of irrational denial and shouting buzzword phrases about how "old" TW wasn't an RTS, it was a "simulation".
@magni5648 yeah so this exact channel did a demonstration where height advantage is so negligible that it can't overcome the difficulty modifiers lmfao TW:W fans as always not substantiating their claims in any way because they don't understand the shallow mechanics of the game they are defending
@magni5648 also pretty weirdchamp replying to a 3 month old comment just to stick it to a random commenter lol
@@darkfireslideI'll invite you to do a downhill charge with high mass units agaisnt infantry and tell me it doesn't do anything LMAO.
PS: I'm a TOTAL WAR fan. Literally been here since Shogun:TW. 500+ hours on Shogun 2.
Adn I daresay I understand more about "the shallow mechanics" of the games I love and have hudnreds of hours of playtime on than some random hater whose entire argument is so utterly bereft of any substance at all that it is plainly obvious to be completely farcial to anyone with any kind of playtime at all.
@@darkfireslideAlso, pretty weird for people to think it's weird that their old comments might get some attention randomly in the future. How new to the internet are you even, kiddo?
My first Total War game was Medieval 2, as I was still in school many years ago.
I still remember the first time Ive play it and using a spy... I was so surprised, seeing suddenly a little movie popping up, where my spy knocked out a guard and then starts (blindly) wandering around in the former guards armor. And the first battle as I zoomed in, some people where actually fighting each other, not just poking each other with their weapons.
This love for details really had me enjoying these game series with Shogun 2 having become my favourite.
And some of these details are even from an UI perspective helpfull like you explained:
In Medieval and I think Shogun 2 also, you have traffic on the roads and sea routes, which not only make the world more living, but also gives a direct view on how weathly a province/trade is.
One thing you missed, are Agents. Shogun and Medieval both managed to have an Ai, that uses Agents, but do not send annoying waves of them.
Sure, the pope sending an inquisitor to your realm, who tarts burning all of your merchants, generals and even priests was annoying too, but an actuall threat you could come by. Being reliant on Ninja to harm your oponent and suddenly an enemy army has 1 or 2 Metsuke could really cause trouble for you.
Agents where balanced and a reasonable threat.
But since Rome2, Agents started coming in waves, again and again. That changed them from a threat to overcome to just an annoyance, that slows you down, without one being able to do something against them.
In contarary, the reason why they started to bind armies to generals completely was because of the unit spam. Sure it might gave more strategical dept, but gameplaywise the Ai didnt managed to use split units well or too well, depending how one might see it.
Having constantly single unit armies running around, destroying farms, harbors or plundering just became annoying and chasing them (even more in late game, where you have other things to do) just became tedious.
And its strange that they didnt even manage to get this feature right even after 10 years... as for quite some time just generals or low unit armies running around plundering the own territory... while being allied with you.
Dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with an enemy army raiding, just how it was established was rather annoying.
But it seems that the series develops more towards quick arcade games, than slower strategical and tactical advancement with an eye for detail.
Man this was the game that brought me into the total war series and i still play it today, battles actually felt like they were brutal affairs and i loved in FOTS being able to see how intense fights were based off of gun smoke and how rapidly artillery was firing, which actually felt like the king it historically always has been. The warhammer games outside of different playstyles between factions don't offer much because you can just doomstack. I dont think anything really will beat that first campaign as the shimzazu and the fight of my life i had when i discovered realm divide
I used to live and breathe Rome 1 and Medieval 2. Still love M2 unlike any other game out there. Empire soured me so bad on the Total War series that I skipped pretty much every game since then before I finally got back into it and picked up Shogun 2 just for the hell of it. I feel it is the absolute most you can get out of that fucking engine without making it absolutely gimmicky like in the fantasy titles. It has some strengths compared to M2 but also some weaknesses but it absolutely is the last actual accomplishment of CA with the possible exception of Attila. Warhammer games don't really count, those are fun for what they are, but they are pretty much just fanfics and normie bait.
I think highlighting S2's limits was very important in delivering how "tragic" the situation is. The older titles weren't perfect, the franchise has always had the bad habit of dropping beloved features from title to title(settlement view dropping from Rome to Med2, elevation not giving a range increase from Empire onward), the ai was never really good, moddability was reduced to nothing (Med2 still remains the most heavily modded due to its flexibility in that field), ecc... There was so much to improve yet the devs managed to break the very core of the experience instead
Sorry for the 'actually', but the animation times with guard and line infantry are different so that guard infantry can pull and put more bullets down. If you look in the files, they use breech-loading rifles rather than your garden-variety muzzle-loaders, so they can put a lot more bullets down compared to line infantry and have a use for basically stopping Shogitai in their tracks.
That's a difference without a distinction, one is simply better than the other minus cost
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 what they are saying is that guard infantry will wipe the floor with a line infantry unit woth the same reload statistic.
With good positioning 2-3 elite infantry can smash triple the number of even high exp line infantry.
And as the blacksmith buildings provide insane accuracy boosts, recruitment shifts to those provinces. And i find myself not recruiting line infantry from the midgame on, as the vanguard of the enemy faction will field stacks of shogunate/imperial infantry demolishing my "replacement" line infantry.
@dichse2157 i have finished short and long campaigns in FotS with every faction minus Sendia because i havent tried and in the VAST majority of them I never once came across imperial or shogunate infantry let alone the Guard variants.
What game are you playing? Because it's not the same one I have.
Plus the battle AI in FotS is bad and easily exploitable, it has no idea how to use line infantry and Shogitai are actually a bigger threat.
Light cav is straight up the best unit in Shogun. You can reliably dick around 4-5 enemy units with a single light cavalry, allowing you to create local superiority elsewhere. And they also slaughter back line units like no tomorrow. You could try to do this with heavier cavalry, but it is significantly faster, and they tire faster, giving you much less room for innatention, something you do not have to spare in a chaotic battle. They are also fantastic on the defense. Sallying out is actually a legitimate tactic for once.
A story about Shogun 2's AI being competent (mostly) and how I overcame it. This was YEARS ago, so forgive any lack of details. It was actually my first ever campaign in a Total War. I had a nearly full army consisting of yari ahigaru, bow ashigaru, katana samurai and bow samurai (and my one starting yari samurai who was still with me). We fought and won a battle but took fairly heavy casualties. The enemy sent TWO FULL armies at us, with a THIRD from an ally of theirs. I was FUUUUCKED. This force also held my daimyo. On the map I played, near my spawn, however, was a single hill. At the top it had a small copse of trees, and was surrounded on three sides by rock walls, preventing any flanks. So I set up all my melee at the base, overlapping like crazy, archers behind, and general in the forest. The enemy came, and of course my melee held fast, and against such a wall of swords and spears would break fairly easily, as well as how many arrows they took before even getting in. The first two armies held me down, and the enemy archers began taking their toll on my melee troops, but staying out of range of mine, but I took advantage of something I noticed with the AI. They liked sniping my general. So I moved him forward, and sure enough the enemy archers came forward to shoot him... but he was BEHIND my archers. So running said general back to the safety of the forest (where the archers stopped targeting him) I was able to DESTROY their archers with mine, their concentrated volleys resembling 300. I still needed CONSTANT use of my general's abilities, but time after time enemy samurai, cav, and spearmen came at me and were turned away, even when the third full army arrived at last. Thing was, because of the morale (which I'd never be able to do this in a new TW) being destroyed by the arrow barrages and wall of men and weapons, I barely inflicted any real casualties upon the enemy before they all broke. But ALSO because my men were so bunched up, constantly getting commanded by the commander against retreating, mine held strong. I didn't lose a SINGLE full unit, despite some pretty massive loses on my side, and only inflicted around 5-600 casualties to the THREE full armies (I did kill one or two generals). One of my units of katana samurai had FIVE soldiers remaining, if I recall correctly.
They saw our resolve, and knew we would not break, so they did.
Of course I got the fuck out of there right after, ran back to my territory, gave up on that offensive for a few seasons. They all chased me into a siege which I destroyed them in, but still has MASSIVE loses from that big battle so couldn't actually give chase as the three armies themselves limped back home. I THINK I was Date?
The biggest Tragedy of Total War these days is how the "Strategy" part of the game has just been completely Dumbed Down or outright removed. "Technology" just being Stat buffs, Generals ALWAYS being required to be in a army, thus reducing the VALUE of generals to next to ZERO. Not to mention all the "little things" you could do by splitting off units from your main army Stacks, and removal of building stuff on the campaign map (namely forts). (Recon, Besieging a settlement, dealing with smaller stacks without moving the entire army, Ambushes, Ectera) Rome 2 and Attilla are PASSABLE, but even then their are clearly things that where LOST.
Hmmm, ya know maybe that is just a FLAW in Total War, The Stat Stacking i mean, its kinda just unavoidable after a while. Between units gaining XP and your general gaining Traits/Skills you do eventually create a "doomstack" where your troops just refuse to brake and just murder everything in sight. Heck in Warhammer, rank 9 units can BEAT the "Legendary" Units which start at rank 9 to begin with.
Wow Warhammers Sound Design is absolute ASS! I don't care about the epic music, i want to hear my units doing shit!
Well, yes the history games you could say have been dumbed down as they have lost the typical design. Now unlike Warhammer, that from the get go, the devs where trying to make as close to the table top. Thus, those things can't be said to be missing, as the design of Warhammer is different. Also very true to at least the concepts of the table top. Also objectively the most diverse and variable tactically in battles.
Lmao the Vermentide Series does a better job at Skaven themed music than whatever the total war versions are
Complexity has if at all only INCREASED. And LMAO, generals having no value? Yeah, besides being damn expensive to recruit and the death of an experienced one being a massive setback, you mean? Having a hundred mini-stacks running around was more diffly timewaster than real gamechanger. Being limited to less is if at all more here, forcing you to actually care a lot more about positioning your armies on the campaign map and thinking a turn or two ahead.
And "doomstacks" were always a thing, straight back to Shogun:Total War. And, you know, entirely fucking realistic. Concentration of forces is something you'll find in that ol' chinese handbook from ~2500 years ago. You know, The Art of War.
@@magni5648 Care to define that Complexity you speak of?
Generals still have value, they just arn't as RARE as they used to be. Now that they grow on trees, having one die is just "eh, time get a new one". Lossing experienced generals is nothing new, but it used to suck alot more when they did die (ether in battle or old age) since you couldn't just get another one.
No one is insane enough to run around with dozens of mini stacks, that said you usually have a dozen or so little garrison armies. EVERYONE will argue in favor of Splitting armies, EVEN CA themselves have said so in their Advertising for Rome Remastered, Quote "adds more strategy" IN A STRATEGY GAME NO LESS! Plus their are several LITTLE THINGS you can do with splitting off units that you CAN'T DO NOW. Hell i give you 3: 1. Recon, usually with a unit of cav, since cav used to have superior movement distance. Now you must use agents for Recon instead of them doing something useful. 2. Leaving just enough troops behind so you can continue your advance though enemy territory OR building up a small garrison to defend with. 3. You can Siege a city or fort (which negates its zone of control) then have a small force go drive off any nearby reinforcements.
Yes, doomstacks have always existed, TW Warhammer however takes it to the extreme. Since you can just recruit a entire army of ONE UNIT and that will win every battle. Although to be fair by the time you get the point you can afford such an army your playing the game on auto pilot.
@@jaywerner8415Define that complexity? More unit types, more unit functions, actual hitpoint values add another layer to unit interaction etc.
Fun fact, older TW titles made it more likely to get generals the less you had. You weren't gonna run out. In fact, used to be that the only "price" to pay was fighting a battle without one to get to promote a captain. You didn't even have to pay anything for it before Shogun 2.
And I disagree. Being limited to less armies means you have if at all to think a lot more about what you're doing with 'em. Being able to have garrison and defensive mini-stacks and cheap recon everywhere makes for braindead decision-making and a ton of just dumb chorework with little actual need for planning involved. Meanwhile, split stacks can still be done by bringing two half-stacks or the like. It now just requires you to be thinking ahead.
And you could always break the game with single-unit doomstacks. Like holy shit, way back in Shogun:Total War just massing up a giant deathball of Warrior Monks would let you walk all over the AI. Rome was heavy infantry o' clock. Medieval 2? Knights, Knights everywhere. Shogun 2? Yari and Bow Ashigaru could literally win the entire campaign for you, even moreso for Oda. (And then there's Chosokabe archer doomstacks that have enough firepower that you don't even need melee units.)
My main and biggest qualm with the AI, that I rarely seem them use units outside of the samurai or ashigaru tier. Most of the time you only see the yari ashigaru/samurai and the bow ashigaru and samurai, with the occasional Calvary. The AI in tegarda to unit comp has always been lacking in my eyes. I wouldn’t even care if it was just a random mishmash I want something else to fight XD.
Aside from that this is one of my favorite games
(I also have minor qualms about the sieges but I rectify those using the strongholds of the samurai mod)
The problem is that the AI cannot intelligently build settlements so oftentimes it will not unlock units with multiple recruitment requirements (e.g. monks, high tier cavalry, etc.) even if it unlocks them through the tech tree; i am not sure if the AI ever dismantles any structure in its settlements but it doesn't feel like it.
I played this game so much that I managed to reach second in the world multiplayer ranking long years ago.
Such a detailed view on the beauty of the game breathtaking i would have included the main menu for the vibes amazing work brother
Dish unravelling 200 siege scenarios at 36:00 feels like a Dad that is immensely happy that his children asked him about his favorite game and now he verbalizes 20 years of experience
Unexpectedly wholesome dare i say
I love it. When this video ended, I almost drop a tear. I would not describe and review this game I love better than you did. You simply did a great job, thank you! I think there is another strategy game that would interest you, that is Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence. Try it, please
I agree with you about FotS not providing enough benefit for better units; I actually started modding FotS largely because I wanted to add more differentiation between line infantry units instead of it feeling like every unit is "slightly better line infantry"
I'm just finishing one more campaign of total warhammer 3. I have 3k hours in it. Your video made me think of what I did so far in the campaign...
It was a campaign with the warriors of chaos. Basically, from start to finish, most of what I did was send my lord to solo the entire enemy army while keeping my army in the back. If the lord started to die, I would send the army to finish off the remaining units. But 90% of the battles was just that.
This was the last great game in the TW franchise. Everything after is just so flaccid and lifeless due to spreadsheeting and shine over function syndrome.
PS: I highly recommend The Rights of Man 1 for empire, The Rights of Man 2 for Napoleon, and the Rights of Man 3 for Shogun 2. These mods really do some good work in trimming up and polishing the first generation of warscape games, especially in the AI department whilst adding historical accuracy where they can without sacrificing gameplay. Please note that TROM3 for Shogun does away with the heavy rock paper scissors approach to bring it back towards a medieval 2 sort of unit balance so if you don't like that then don't get the mod. The best part is they managed to implement an Ashigaru Pike and Shot unit as well as an AOR recruitment system. It's very cool.
Also I totally agree with you on making things too micromanagy. Unit timed abilities and functions are absolute wank and do not fit the total war genre at all. This series went too hard into trying to be a moba style rts. Attila really annoyed me with this trend where you had to manually put units into brace position otherwise they would get fucked by frontal charges. It was so annoying.
Unfortunately, TROM 1 for Empire seems to have disappeared. I couldn't find a functional download link.
I love how the game never had a Japanese language version cause no one over there actually plays Total War
Love that 3 Kingdoms, despite never being 'finished', offered Chinese voice and text (as well as being a pretty sick game)
This game got me into researching the Sengoku Period.
Really interesting era.
That part with Europa Universalis 4 resonated with me, as I also have over 1K hours and quit that game a year ago. The game is overwhelming and not in a good way. You have all of these numbers, all of these modifiers for an end goal that isn't even satisfying. The game is essentially carried by those numbers instead of a fun and interesting gameplay loop. There is no political strategy other than expanding. The gameplay consists of either blobbing and playing tall. The best way to describe EU4 isn't a grand strategy game but a map painting simulator. There is no grand strategy other than becoming too big to fail.
Contrast that with Shogun 2. You are forced to do diplomacy. You could expand in every direction but that would create too many enemies for you to handle. When you get too big, realm divide happens. There is no realm divide in EU4. Your neighbors don't really care. They will get a threatened diplomatic modifier, but will never make a coalition since that requires 50% aggressive expansion and negative relations. The diplomacy in EU4 sucks and the AI is stupid. Game too stale? Have some more mana, maybe even some +15% Goods Produced. So many numbers, not enough gameplay.
An alternative to exp effecting unit types differently would be an RPG style system where the unit gains experience in the style of combat (or movement) the player is using them for. Would be more complicated to program but not much; there's plenty of games that use this already.
A bow unit fighting in melee should get melee experience, if it uses a bow for a battle, it should gain experience in that. If it runs around a lot, it should gain stamina experience... things like that.
I'm curious what do you think about older Total Wars like Medieval 2 or Rome 1
I'm pretty sure Shogun 2 is certainly your favourite game, but I wonder if there is something you appreciate in older games?
I personally really miss generals character traits and how they affected campaign map and battlefield. The general could be chivalrous and make his own units harder to break, or he could be dreadful and make enemy units to lose they morale
I have a few hundred hours in Medieval 2 (base game and Crusades campaign), it has the typical problem of general units being far too powerful, and unlike Shogun 2 the supply of generals isn't nearly as limited.
Campaign wise it's way too easy to make money, even without looting settlements; and because buildings have to be queued up, unlike Shogun 2 where you can build multiple builds at the same time provided you have the funds, there's very rarely a scenario in Medieval 2 where a shortage of funds hampers your building efforts.
The first 20 or so turns is fighting dumb battles against rebels and turtling settlements and the AI is just way too passive.
Also the last time I played the game I quit after getting 2 siege defenses in a row where the AI bugged out and refused to attack (and i didn't have enough units or ammo to sally forth and defeat them), was not willing to run down the timer for that crap.
I won't forget constantly getting, "the cruels" or "the wrathfuls" because of my penchant for subconsciously always going with execute or exterminate after battles. Classic TW was just different.
@@buzter8135 I see you like executing order 66! Lol
Kill him Anakin!
Your honorable generals: I shouldn't ... It's not the honorable way...
You: kill him now!
"Swords pierce your foes chest"
"GENERAL GAINED the Wrathful Trait!"
Your general : what have I done!
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Medieval 2 total war is a masterpiece and shogun 2 , CA's last great game was Total war Attila
@ 19:30
Another:
Have multiple types of experience per unit.
Say a unit has both melee and missile weapons. It gains experience with the latter through shooting enemies up. It gains the former whenever it does well in melee (or at least, survives). The level by which it goes up can depend on specialization (so a missile units gain experience shooting at a faster rate than with melee), but the idea is the same: you can introduce a certain granularity to the units.
I miss the settlement growth from Empire (probably my favorite thing in the game).
It lets me manage taxes more often rather than keeping them at normal forever, is it early in the game and I'm playing a poor faction surrounded by enemies? Well maybe I need to keep the taxes normal or even slightly higher so I can upgrade buildings and build an army. Am I playing a strong faction or maybe I'm in a comfortable spot for the next few turns? Well maybe I can lower my taxes so I get more settlement growth and get ready to boom my economy, it's a lot different from the Shogun 2 system where I focus on getting the nearest "recruitment" province and turn every other province into an economic center to fund my armies or a well fortified economic center if it's near a border. FOTS kinda adresses this by giving you more economic growth with lower taxes but making money is so trivial that ideally you always have your taxes as low as possible until it's time to fight the entire map.
Shogun II, Med II, and Napoleon are the ones I always go back to and enjoy the most.. Also god bless the modders. We love you !
The one big problem I have with the systems of Shogun 2 is the fact that everybody pairs off in a melee fight to enter duels. Apparently the developers did that citing bushido or some shit but to think that real standing formation armies followed those rules is laughable. Units ganging up on each other like they did in medieval 2 is more common sense and superior.
units ganging up is still being simulated in the engine. Units get debuffs when they get outnumbered in melee making it less likely to block a hit.
@@Orendiz I mean that works, but they could have just, not done that. Just keep the existing system from medieval 2. It worked.
Your point about real time micromanagers was spot on. I’ve never knew how to put it into words of what I felt was wrong with the new style of games way, until you fully explained it show going to feels the best and easiest to understand unit roles in army composition
I LOVE SHOGUN 2
I LOVE BEING ABLE TO LOOK AT ANY ARMY REGARDLESS OF FACTION OR DLC AND INSTANTLY HAVE A SOLID IDEA WHAT THEIR UNITS DO AND HOW THEY WILL FUNCTION
Realm divided was always an amazing doing in Shogun 2, i always have had feeling when i see realm divided that everyone considers me a threat, that conquers without reason; what i want to see in Shogun 3 is Realm Divided for the Ai, especially strong clan Tokugawa, as historic play through; and option to disable historic events and get some randomized experience with all sorts of events, while historic one would play according to its history roots. Total War thought me a lot about the history they should implement some sort of mechanic to represent the period like it was, some mini campaigns instead of Sandbox and ofc you get sandbox that is randomized once again to its maximum where everything can and will happen.
Each clan their own mini campaign where you can continue onto conquest, or end your playthrough there and go for another historical campaign where you go for accurate historical battles, video introductions, close to exact armies as quests where you get various military and civil buffs, quests like in WH has; this quests would be cool in Sandbox too if you somehow end up making same situation as historical playthrough if that makes sense, some other random quests, etc. it really has a lot that can be done, as i always believed that Japans history is somewhat never told nor told in schools at least in Europe, im not some big fan of Japan nor weeb, but their history is rich it should be brought closer to people (history in general should) who only want to play games and no invest much time into learning some pointless trivia.
I expect same thing from Rome 3 and Medieval 3, and every other historic Total War that comes, mythical and romance modes nobody cares much about that, if game is historical give us some sort of experience to be there, in that mark in history and feel it first hand. I always like Historic Battles in all Total Wars, that thing can just be starting point ready for improvement a good foundation to make every historic title so-so much better and immersive.
Those were some good old days, Shogun 2 is one of my favourite Total war, and sometimes I wonder why, thank you for those good memories coming back ! And you didn't event mentioned the combat animation, that we haven't unfortunaly seen since :(
Tokugawa Ieyasu used diplomacy to become Shogun, Oda Nobunaga made a puppet so he would hold all the power, neither faced realm divide historically. I hope they make a 3rd Shogun game and make it the best Total War game to date. I also hope 10 million dollars would appear on my doorstep, both are equally likely, but I'd prefer the former.
Man when I bought it, I bought only the Fall of the Samurai expansion without knowing it was not the base game, I played Fall of the Samurai so much that I only bought the base game about a year later. I have warhammer 2 and tried to play recently but after 15 minutes I said fuck it i'm installing shogun 2 again its just a better game than all the other total wars after and before it...
2012: pay less than half price for a stand alone expansion that is basically another game. Has its own artstyle, music, gameplay...
2022: pay 15 usd for an extra faction that is usually just a reskin of another
There is also a Historical reason for playing ie recreating Nobunga's path or playing as Takeda and trying to take over as a what if. Same with Usegi and Kenshin. Buddhist Japan. Or Otomo for Christian and early modernized Japan likely a different path otl. You can also play as a complete different faction ie Hojo and do a complete 180 on Japanese history.
Also there's an anime mod for the game xd so yeah that elevates it.
It's an awesome game, but I just hate the food economy mechanic, there is simply no reason to build up anything except a lvl.2 fort, market, sake den and nothing but ashigaru. You can't 'afford' to build up your own regions more, because the AI factions will build up their castles which you will have to support, because they can't be demolished/downgraded
that's assuming the rebels aren't insanely easy to put down. Food shortages typically hit in provinces that have upgraded forts.
Man I wish I was good at strategy games
The absolute worst part is I can't buy it on steam because I bought Fall of the Samurai first...
One of my favorite games of all time! I wish they would have kept ocean battles in newer games, i liked navy building
Shogun lied about how modular castles were gunna be ;( But ended up being a timeless, clean, 'zen' (as they were fond of saying at the time) classic.
Its interesting this game had the least varying factions and units but I played this total war the most. And i still have fun coming back to it every now and then.
0:22 - Probably what makes it perplexing to me is how they went from being extremely ambitious (maybe to a detriment) with Empire now to revisiting an old game that inherently doesn't have that ambition. It came out from the list of TW games that the team constantly discusses about, it's how Shogun 2 became that way since they wanted to revisit the first game after quite a while. (Can look into rockpapershotgun's Talking About Total War With Mike Simpson")
0:59 - Which kinda started off with Empire (unit packs) and Shogun 2 (unit + clan and blood packs), I kinda thought the video would be about how Shogun 2 was the start of a very awful trend where one has to buy DLC to stay competitive in multiplayer or have anything interesting to play with.
1:29 - Just Rome 1/Med2 had the weird mouse inputs, Shogun/Medieval for whatever reason have zero input delay
3:41 - Probably because people only see yari ashigaru spam and that's kinda it, the footage at the time and the footage after (and the footage after too) have the unit as being the most common one
3:57 - Kinda why I started to write the comment because the underlying difference is that this is with the mind of having it on very hard battle difficulty, where Warhammer obviously has a lot more bonuses given to the AI. Jack Lusted even told that the bonuses given to the AI are halved that of previous TW games. The Warhammer games still have some decent variety on normal where the units are fighting with the same rules but add percentage modifiers to stats and the balance is completely fucked, making units way less useful. Example being greatswords being pretty nice on normal difficulty where they also are pretty good in multiplayer but on legendary they're fucking useless. Thankfully the same didn't happen to Shogun 2 despite combat modifiers being really bad in Shogun 1 which basically had one spam warrior monks to win the campaign, that could've nearly happened to Shogun 2 as well. All the stuff on "unit differentiation" instantly goes through the window when yari ash cannot hold in yari wall and can only reflect cav charges somewhat, same with loan sword ashigaru that are amazing at killing yari ashigaru by flanking them in yari walls, suddenly becoming worse than the enemy yari ashigaru with their swords. Very under-talked aspect that I think saved the game because it still allowed the player to experiment with the units without feeling like their units are inherently going to lose vs their own unit category so warrior monk/bow/hero spam doesn't become a thing. Especially considering how Shogun 2 has even less terrain modifiers since high ground doesn't give extra damage to units or how fatigue for infantry is just a morale modifier, it would arguably be even worse for those claiming there's no terrain nor fatigue in Warhammer. Really dodged a MASSIVE bullet there, very rarely do I have to thank Jack Lusted for not having the same difficulty modifiers as in Shogun 1 or just the previous TW games in general.
7:25 - Is that why the starting locations of IE got so hyped because all their diversity also comes from the different starting locations? idk but it is more interesting that basically the same people have access to different things because of their circumstances, not because like how in Rome 1/2 the people just happen to have heavily armoured units because of their roster and not because they had access to some mines giving them the materials for their equipment. Very good point there.
Somewhere 10:00 I guess - It's probably that the game is deep enough while not being that ambitious, I sometimes wonder if less really is more in TW where the "Zen" of the unit balance carries further than just stacking "campaign mechanics" or unique units.
11:19 - Based
15:08 - Unless you get the tech that just gives +50% ammo, assuming the logic is that the slight morale penalty of being hit by projectiles makes it more worth than trying to get to the same casualty % with a more accurate unit
16:50 - And it's kinda what is necessary in higher difficulties for other TW games, having units with a lot of xp to offset the difficulty modifiers is a must. Can't wait for the comments for people to suggest to use matchlocks to shoot the unit, as if that's worth considering the -6 morale penalty for friendly fire inflicted
17:32 - Something that's untouched but for whatever reason is considered classic TW moment - how is it that some light shit cav are able to get thousands of kills oneshotting routing units even if they're in the middle of blobs?
18:35 - I kinda don't mind veterancy all that much but yea having both morale, combat and range buffs at the same time is a little overkill. I like the approach of what Rome 2 tried to do with army traditions but even then it's like "select bonus", irrespective of what the army actually did. Same with generals who out of nowhere start giving bonuses to units out of nowhere like what the fuck and this includes Shogun 2 where units are magically becoming better at charging for example just because the general is present with that skill.
18:50 - My only assumption is their arms get stronger lol (which even then implies they should be getting xp for firing rather than getting kills like what the fuck)
19:10 - Kinda what happens when difficulty modifiers go really high which Shogun 2 thankfully doesn't have to deal with till there are very experienced units
19:25 - It was experimented with in Arena and while I agree that each unit type could receive different experience benefits, why not just have the unit's actions potentially give extra stats like accuracy for a landed hit from long range, better stamina from firing so much over the battles, melee buffs for having been in melee, morale from also being in melee while maybe still having the same shock factor cripple them when facing cavalry.
22:00 - And the only options there are just ass backwards like bringing precursors to halve the health of each entity hit or spamclicking with elephants/chariots that can score hundreds of kills in a short time. But nah it's still somehow considered "historical" to some people
22:12 - The single entities behave by different rules because they don't have the same formation restrictions as a regular unit so it's both easier to abuse the higher stats and to be harder to deal with vs units that are meant to fight vs other units. Arena had the same issue where units that could target without animations like hoplites or pikemen in phalanx were insanely good vs elephants but stuff like swordsmen were really a hit or miss. But yea it's one way to deal with their buffs.
22:26 - That should've been the main point as to why Shogun 2 had its unit variety, tactical gameplay, no need to avoid using trashy units
24:00 - Yo my favourite quirk where the morale penalty for general routing is when he literally despawns by running well beyond the red line area
Section from 25:00 26:40 to - The main argument I've heard is how it makes the player invested into developing a region constantly as the limited build slot system just makes the settlement stop progressing when the max tier building is built so the next one can't be started. Then again I really don't see how it made for thoughtful decisions, the closest thing maybe being how squalor can become a problem by building too many population boosting buildings like farms but other than that it was just too tedious, really don't get the appeal of Rome 1/Med2 system like I'd get if there was any planning ahead of time but there isn't really, same with the recruitment pool system eventually breaking when the settlement is developed enough that allows the player to just recruit all the good units unhindered. As for major/minor settlements "railroading" the progress it's more so about avoiding the shit that comes from culture/corruption from spreading. So fucking stupid.
30:00 - It was a giga cancer that was nearly avoided by having lesser battle AI buffs, while still being very tedious. Holy shit imagine the mess.
33:25 - I'll just quote Jack Lusted I guess ruclips.net/video/BnZ9TmJ8HJY/видео.html
33:50 - That's also how Shogun 1 did it which I think was a very elaborate decision when going into Shogun 2
45:12 - That "almost" at 1:33 really came back lmao
46:40 - Grimdaaark
48:15 - Another note for non gunpowder games is how impossible it is to figure when units are technically charging or routing, there have to be flashing white banners or uuh wait they still have nothing at all for charges besides a morale tooltip that they got extra morale for charging and maybe some screaming that can maybe be heard from 20m
48:50 - At least it's some progress where the sprites wouldn't even render weapons so a unit of pikemen didn't give any indicator that they're in phalanx besides a big green circle above them.
49:00 - Think that should've been the main focus where there's an obvious issue rather than go over "but it sounds/looks shit" when zoomed in closest where Warhammer can still just be fine
51:45 - What the fuck the rare Shogun 1/Medieval 1 style unit cards that are THE unit seen on the field, no abstracted pot art or some weird posing that there are no animations for
55:45 - Wondering what the thoughts are on the old stat sheets of Shogun/Medieval that just literally say "well armoured" if the unit has decent armour, avoiding the numbers altogether (except for the battle info panel that shows all the stats)
57:40 - Had the same thing in Rome 1 where all light and heavy cav kinda just did the same purpose and stats became meaningless. There were some horrible units that had one crippling stat sure like cataphracts having 8 instead of 12 morale but generally it just became intuitive to just face an armoured unit by flanking them, offensive unit by mass charging them and cav by firing missiles at them or having own cav ready for a counter charges
The best total war battles ever made. I wish they would have done an empire 2 with this engine
One thing about yari sam that is worth saying from a unit diferentiation point of view is that they are a more offensive/agressive unit compared to yari ashigaru, in fact they are the best infantry flankers in the game.
They can use rapid advance to quickly flank enemies engaged in combat, they can go around without being contested or threatend by cavalry,unlike katana and nodachi samurai, they can also avoid bad engagements with rapid advance...
Great video on my favorite Total War game! I really liked your comparison of the sound effect difference between Shogun 2 and the more modern Warhammer games. It can be very depressing see Total War go backwards in some areas such as this when they got things so right in Shogun 2 and other games.
I'm coming up on 3800 hours in EU4. I feel as though the way you described the idea group meta was accurate for about the time that it sounds like you quit playing (prior to Emperor DLC in 2020).
Quantity + Trade + Economic ideas was by far and away the best set of modifiers for the mana cost, and you were shooting yourself in the foot by choosing any other idea group(s) (especially in a multiplayer setting).
Since Paradox Tinto was created (mid-2020) to refine and create content for the game, they have been rethinking and rebalancing many mechanics to the game, taking community feedback all the while, which has yielded many new viable strategies. They have broken up the most OP bonuses and spread them around, while significantly buffing the underutilized idea groups (eg: naval ideas now gives -1 landing penalty and free naval bombardment on coastal forts). They are increasingly utilizing that great depth of options to create meaningful tradeoffs, which plays super nicely into that dynamic of replayability; you would be hard pressed to find a "one size fits all" idea group nowadays, when your marginal utility of one group over another is so based on your RNG, diplomacy, region, threats, government form, etc.
I would suggest taking another crack at the game, were it not for the ever-present and abhorrent DLC/monetization strategy. Also, I found your points on Shogun 2 to be highly informative!! I watched to the end; insightful to see what can be done with more experience in the game (I'm still at only ~160 hours, only playing the Otomo :p).
Hey at least they offer a subscription model to get all the dlc then turn it off when are not playing anymore.
One thing why I don’t want to get warhammer 3 is because there are so many dlc that completely change your gameplay
There's 2 things where Medieval 2 is better than Shogun 2.
1.Sieges (actually no total war game has better sieges.)
2. Combat pace. (Shogun is too fast, you don't even have the pleasure of enjoying watching them fight. After 2 animations everyone is dead.)
Warhammer sound effects: man uses lips to mimic sounds
Shogun 2: *eargasm*
Ever since I got Empire for my 13th birthday, I've played pretty much every Total War game. Generally, I install the game, play a couple campaigns, try out the different units, then after a few dozen hours I get bored and uninstall it. There is only one Total War game that I keep coming back to time after time, the only one that I can play over and over, that I can see the same units and the same factions and still I don't get bored, and that's Shogun 2. It's one of my favorite strategy games and thanks to the modding community there are always new things to explore. I'm just worried that when (if) Shogun 3 comes out, it might not be as great as 2, considering the direction the series has taken over the past few years.
The map system from the original Shogun was superior and actually realistic. The battle speed of Shogun II on release was far too fast and looked like an episode of Keystone Kops.
The biggest problem with battles in Fall of the Samurai is that the AI just doesn't know how to handle artillery. Units will run, or even just walk in the open and lose 30-40% of their numbers before even closing to engage your line. You will then hit the "Please Do Your Best" Button on your general as the AI walks into range of your infantry, permitting them the first volley. At this point, most enemy units will have about 20-30 dudes left. Coupled with the fact that the enemy general probably caught a bullet in the face (since the actual range of guns is much farther than shown) and the entire army will chain rout. Difficulty settings do not affect this at all.
Also sanurais primary weapon was the bow and naginata/spear. Katana was only used as last resort.
I agree with the clear visual telling, one of the things i dont like in Med 2 is how you cant see where archer are shooting, I always turn on fire arrows so I can see whats going on
This is a great analysis, thank you for putting in the effort here. It articulates everything I love about the game, but couldn't find the words for. Not only that, it covers some negatives I hadn't even considered but I have to agree with upon reflection. I hate to say it, but I don't think we'll ever get a game like this again.
in one of my battles I routed a archer regiment with samurai and my left flank was wavering so I RUSHED that Samurai regiment to the left flank to hold the line . having seen this the archers rallied and began charging my right flank which was now exposed. Behold there was a lone Samurai... he was busy finishing a archer from the last engagement so he fell behind his unit and suddenly he turned around and saw 43 archers rushing to kill him! I swear this must've been samurai jack because HE DID NOT DIE... he was sliced 3x and stabbed 2x leg swept once and each time he got back up and killed archer after archer... by the end of it I think there was 5-15 archers remaining and they routed... not only did he win the fight of his life but he went on to go kill their friends that were still engaged on the left... yes TW Shogun is the best...
I think the 1st Shogun game was the greatest accessible strategy game so far. So many fresh ideas which no-one built on in any meaningful way
Lovely video essay.
Everytime I watch these I wonder why I have only 400h in Shogun 2 and 1k hours in Warhammer.
The worst part is that new players might not ever taste the greatness of this game. But as long as the legend of the Shogun 2 will echo on the internet, they might pick it up one day.
But it might be a shocker for them, game plays very differently. I had 250h in Shogun 2, but didn't play for 8 years. After reinstalling I got my ass kicked by the AI. My battle lines terrible, flanks exposed, units not wanting to fight, but flee instead, everything I did was too late because when you screw up, your units die really fast. But with a bit of experience and trusty Yari wall I was doing quite well even on legendary.
yes, even after playing Warhammer 2 for a few hours I found myself doing so much worse in a game like Shogun 2; bad games lead to bad habits.
I'm actually brand new to the total war franchise, and Shogun 2 is the one I bought
Welcome to the club. Im streaming later today (ikko ikki on legendary)
Love your assessment of it. I do disagree about diplomacy somewhat, though. Slight tweaks to the system (e.g., long, dependable/honourable allies remaining with you) could provide additional paths for developing your campaign - including involving them in expansion. Still wouldn't change most of the country siding against you. Same thing with slight polish to economic options or improved campaign AI. Battle and war remains the focus, but you're giving more options. I find that a parallel to the unit experience/linear bonus balance problem...there really are some clear, optimal ways to play, but I think there are good foundations to build upon.
I've always been interested in total war games but as a console player they've never been accessible and I didn't feel like switching platforms away from friends and spending so much money for one franchise. Last year I got a m1 MacBook and I got this game a few months ago because I heard it ran well. Such an amazing investment. Near endless fun especially with the fall of the samurai dlc. It's crazy how well optimized it is too, on a laptop meant for work with no gpu it runs at 1440p 60fps, love it. Games like these have a charm, I don't even have the nostalgia blinds and I see why it's so beloved
Been going over these older comments again and you bring up something I'm noticing more: even people who have no prior experience with the games seem to be turned off by warhammer and rome 2 and yet still find a game like Shogun 2 appealing.
It flies in the face of those who claim we just hate newer games because of our nostalgia. Shogun 2 released in 2011, in the coming years there are people who are younger than the game who will be playing it and I wonder how the "nostalgia" argument is gonna fly.
The yari ashigaru with their yari wall has won me the vast majority of my battles only losing a direct fight with nodachi samurai
what enrages me is that lots and lots of people are definetly interested in the game judging from the comments, yet the fuckin multiplayer is dead
@@pandelik3450 The game is fairly old, new players probably don't want to try multiplayer only to get eviscerated by XxTakeda_ShingenxX with 5,000 hours of multiplayer and a Takeda banner on their wall. It's even worse for completionists who have to do challenges like no spears in this hyper-skilled optimized environment. Most new players just won't be able to cut it in multiplayer, and casual players will never pass the barriers to entry due to being, well, casual players.
@@Cyrus_T_Laserpunch lol, i said multiplayer is dead. not even takedawhatever is there to beat my ass
long live shogun 2
What I love to play when I want a 3 hour game.
Load up (Benzinten) don't remember the name but it's the one with 3 rings and the center.
Yourself invading full units and give the AI 4 AI Teammates. Usually it's Ikki, Oda, Shimazu & Date.
And split your force in half and attack through the North & South.. surviving the hordes of enemies and setting up a defense wall while slowly trying to regroup with your main force at the 2nd or 3rd wall, depending how bad the casualties piled.
It's always so fun putting up a defense to handle the Katana and watching for Pike vs my Calvary. Ugggh. I'm gonna go for another game now.
I use to be virgin Chosokabe.. but I now believe in Uesugi.
Yeah one seemingly simple thing i tried to mod in rtw for years which would apparently benefit all tw games is percentage based balancing. Meaning upgrades like exp, gear, dif modifiers (if applicable) etc would all make for a better experience that way than flat bonuses
For a lot of the non-specific buffs this would indeed be a great improvement; shame it isn't really possible in Shogun 2.
For Shogun 2 it really helped to just reduce the experience bonuses; if experience gives less buffs (especially to morale) Samurai retain their innate advantages better; you can also make it so armourer buildings give smaller buffs to Ashigaru than they do to Samurai/monks pretty easily because the game already splits those buffs by unit type.
When he says you beat the game with less ....... I felt that to my core .. from easy campaign to now confidently rocking every legendary campaign to its core ....
And with ultimate ummersive mod behind me, it takes shogun 2s replayability 100% sayisfying and with unpredictable clan temparament mod, its always different everytime you play the game
this is such a good articulation of why I have gone back to shogun 2 that I dont know if I will be able to enjoy another tw title again, so thanks for that
I love warhammer, and I love total war warhammer, but I just haven't been able to play it recently. All of the guns are just...wrong. The bullets are too slow and have too much of an arc, and the gunners reload and fire far too quickly. Additionally, they do WAY too little damage for the fucking great equalizer. I remember playing a Reikland campaign and checking the damage values on my ranged units, and I was horrified to discover that the crossbowmen had MORE damage per shot than the fucking handgunners. CA has completely forgotten how to portray guns properly, and until they fix that shit I am basically completely uninterested in any future games. And then if they fix guns, they have to fix the other bullshit before I'm willing to buy their games again. Yarr harr!
shogun 2 is my joint best total war alongside atillla total (dont care what people say about it i love it) i miss being able to freely move units around without a general. Which i think highlights a larger issue with Creative Assembly and how they bottleneck themselves in terms of total war game mechanics.
I remember playing Medieval 2 and getting just sucked in by it. I sank so many hours into it and I got such a good feeling from conquering and warring in Europe. Since then I bought several total war games chasing that feeling and I just never got it again. Rome 2 DEI was ok but too slow, Napoleon was fun but the combat quickly got stale. Then I finally got around to Shogun 2 and oh my god. It's Total War. It's the the Total War I remember. The feeling is back. The funny little spy/assassination animations are back. Pre-battle speeches are back. The units move quickly and are responsive. The AI actually builds big armies and are a problem to deal with. The combat is balanced again, with the rock paper scissors unit battles I always loved. Shogun 2, to me, is the last proper Total War game. And it's ironic, because that makes the Fall of the Samurai also coincide with the fall of Total War games. I don't think anything CA make in the future will ever come close to Medieval 2 and Shogun 2.
my hands down favourite feature of shogun total war2 is defending the castles. I dont much like attacking them but they are so much fun to defend. I wish other TW titles would do similar set ups with earthworks or defended towns etc, not everything needs to be a boring walled city.
What killed Shogun2 for me was that you can not possibly kill the enemy AI by deprieving it economically or shrinking their territory. They turn up with a full stack of everything you want a few turns later even if they on their last 2 provinces.
while that is true, you can instead destroy their infrastructure, even if I a territory has little strategic value to me I will still take it to destroy whatever military buildings they have.
I have seen some very visible results where from this where they are forced to replace their initial samurai army with an ashigaru horde.
The game is so well-designed that even when a flaw is presented, the gameplay morphs and adapts to it instead of just collapsing.
I was lucky enough to get shogun 2 for free during 2021 and boy I'm glad it was my first total war. Then I got medieval 2 and Rome 2 to get a feeling of classic and modern total war and to say shogun 2 (and by extension FotS) is unique it's about right. I wish for a return to this formula for a historic setting, maybe ad a population mechanic but not make it complicated.
I think the reason the AI gets ranged cheats in (vanilla) Shogun 2 is partially to compensate for the fact that the player will use loose formation for skirmishing while the AI pretty much always stays in tight formation; either that or they just forgot to change difficulty settings coming from ETW/NTW.
still sucks, the AI in shogun 1 was capable of using loose formation
The Tragic Tale of the Best Strategy Game Ever Made - Total War: Shogun 2
Wait, but that's medieval 2.
the fact reload animations and guard mode are special is crazy for modern TW....
The first point about "its not fair to assess a game in any way other than looking at the most efficient playstyle possible" is just false. The proper way to assess a game is to look at what playstyles are viable. If you want to be a sweaty tryhard go ahead just as if someone wants to purely roleplay they can go ahead. As long as its viable for progressing the game to achieve victory in a reasonable amount of time it must be included as a perfectly valid option to play the game. And no, doomstacking isnt the best way to play twwh3. That has been massively improved upon you should check it out. balanced armies are for nearly every faction the best way to play.
if roleplaying is your thing then fine, but I'm not going to critique a game based on self-imposed rules that create suboptimal gameplay.
4:05 This is exactly why I like multiplayer. Cost effectiveness matters a lot unlike single player where you mouth breathe spam the best units.
Shogun 2:*is about Japan*
SEGA:"No, you can't play this in Japan."
was this a planned decision or was it a last minute reaction to the 2011 tsunami that happened literally days before the game was set for release?
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Japanese companies are afraid that Steam will dominate the game market in Japan so they force us to buy from them for a ridiculously high price compared to Steam smh…
Now , no more Ashigaru S3x chat ...
The fact warhammer series has no line formation option drives me insane more than anything. I remember how amazed and excited i was when i saw the general customizing for shogun.
As I mentioned in another of your videos, I actually completely disagree that your example of guard infantry in empire losing to line infantry because of platoon fire vs fire by rank is a positive thing. Guard infantry should outperform line infantry, they shouldn't lose because they're using an inferior tactic and that you have no control over it. Especially when platoon fire is actually further up the research tree than fire by rank. Don't get me wrong, platoon fire does have its place, as I said in your other video it's a side grade rather than an up/downgrade, without mentioning Empire's numerous bugs that is which make platoon fire even worst as individual soldiers begin to randomly wander off preventing the entire platoon from firing which happens much less under fire by rank. With that said, you brought an interesting point in this specific video about a way to still automate this system. For example if in empire you deploy your guard infantry in a single line they'd default to the default mass fire, if you deploy in 2-3 ranks than they default to fire by rank(as 2-3 rows is the ideal formation for this tactic) whereas if you deploy in 4+ ranks than they will default to platoon fire(as under fire by rank only 3 rows can fire, any more and your soldiers start to excessively rotate around severely slowing your rate of fire). This shouldn't be limited to just guards by the way but any unit that has more than 1 firing tactic available to it which aren't clear upgrades of one another. This way the UI can remain the same minimalistic way while you're not losing flexibility of your army and can actually justify using those expensive guard units rather than default to the regular line infantry or heck simply not advance in your military research tree into platoon fire because unless you specifically plan for it, it will strictly be a worst option.
And there's no change to the Shogun 2 being the best trend with the initial showing of Pharoh Total War.
Tsu republic legendary and Uesugi legendary campaign almost got me into mental hospital
The scummy DLC policy started in Empire and was present in Shogun 2 with the unit pacts.
I put the word "increasingly" there for a reason
It didn't start in Warhammer, but it was in full gear there