Shogun 2 Total War

Finally downloaded the demo last night, so these are my impressions of it.


There's not much to do in the demo, you get to play a tutorial of the campaign map which is alright I would have rather they gave you only one faction to choose from and only let you play a certain number of turns since I already know how the campaign map works.

The demo's historical battle is nasty and you play on the side that historically lost... You start with the larger force but your allies don't help you they just sit there and wait then one gets involved but has a very small force (Which came in handy for me), then shortly after the other allies join in but... they turn on you and they have a large army. I knew that was going to happen, I've read about the battle and watched a program about it, sucked though.

I got slaughtered the first time I did that battle, even before the allies turned, my enemy rushed me and I wasn't sure what was going on or what units I had were. I just played again today and made a much better go of it, I won but not by much.

Graphics, they aren't a great improvement, the samurai are hard to look at they are very dark and their armour is shiny in an unnatural way. I think the demo is of an early build because in the options not everything is there yet. AA for example isn't there, and there are some texture options that have high but not very high. It's also a bit more of a drain on this PC this time around, I was getting between 30 and 50 fps where as on Napoleon Total War 40 was a low point with AA on full. Again that could be because it's an early build, they might have optimized it for the full release. It's also a different culture and geographical position from the last TW game so I might just need to get used to the difference.

Total War is getting kinda stale. It's almost becoming EA like.
Every so often we get a slightly improved game from the previous, with a different flavour of setting which doesn't seem to make all that much of a difference on gameplay. All with a new game price. No thanks.

I'll stick with Rome. Played medieval 2 and empire and was not impressed at all.

I liked Medieval 2, infact it's one of my favourite games of all time. Empire was horrific.

Shogun 2 doesn't really add much thats new to the series really, a few tweaks really. I never owned the original Shogun, I tried the demo but I don't think I could go back and play it now, too many features missing. Oh they released a patch for the demo the other day which improved the frame rate.

I was just playing Rome TW and you know it still looks good, I mean it lacks a lot of modern features and the background is a bit bare, but everything still looks sharp and it looks great in 1920x1080. I could still play it and not feel like I'm forcing myself to still like it.

It holds up better than PSU has.

On thing that kind of sucked with Rome was that the keyboard controls were a bit sticky, pressing the button didn't always work. No the batteries aren't low. I'm supposing it's because it's an older game and it doesn't work too well with my new pc.

Ordered my game today, no idea when I'm going to get it though, usually games are released on Firday and GAME sends them early to make sure they arrive on time so I usually get them Thursday, but this time the game is being released on Tuesday which means they'll either send them really early or it will only arrive on time or late. Have to wait and see I guess. I mean if it does arrive early I won't be able to play it anyway because of bloody Steam.

Well might get the game early after all, I just checked my e-mail and it says the game has been sent, would be funny if it arrived tomorrow but I expect it will arrive on Monday. Could be painful having a game I can't play for that long, it was bad enough when I got Empire a day before release date, looking through everything in the box, it had a map of all the parts of the world which are in the game and I was like making plans of which areas I was going to conquer, where my landing points were going to be. Of course when I actually started playing the game I did none of that.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! The post came while I was writing that Mafia 2 post and there was no Shogun 2, I'm ruined!!!!!!

Thats a false reaction, I'm not happy about it but it's not like I could play it until 6pm anyway. Bit annoyed because I was expecting to get it today, it's not the end of the world, unless my game was lost in the post in which case AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH THE WORLD IS ENDING NOOOOOOO!!! F**K THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN GET ME OFF THIS BOAT!!!!!!!!!

Lovely, yesterday the post came early, no game. Today the post is no doubt going to be late (It's already later than yesterday) and hopefully the game will be here.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee it arrived, just need to try and stop the bleeding from my nervous scratching while I install the game and I'm good.

The hell? Steam is downloading the game when I'm trying to install it from DVD. Ok there we go there's a bit of faffing around but it's now installing correctly. I'm not the only person thats had this problem.

This is the fix if you are interested:

Using Steam launch options to install retail games from disc
1.Log in to Steam and click on Library.
2.Right-click on the game, select Delete local content, and confirm.
3.Insert the first disc into your computer.
4.Close Steam (Steam > Exit).
5.Press Windows Key + R to open Run
6.In the Run window type:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -install E:

Replace E: with the CD/DVD drive you are installing from if is not correct.
Replace C:\Program Files\Steam if your Steam installation is not in the default location.
7.Press OK. Steam will launch and ask you to sign in if you do not have your password saved. Your installation should continue from the disc.

Sooooo good, much better looking than the demo, doesn't have AA and unless you have a graphics card that can use directx 11 you never will, for some completely odd reason. Directx 11 isn't in the game yet for some reason they left it out and are going to add it into a patch which could be a month away. The game does look fine without it so I'm not too concerned about that, the campaign map has a slight lag problem when I move around it, again not a big problem but annoying, I think it will be fixed in a patch. The TW games haven't run all that well when first released in the last few games but they get patched and work better.

The units look great and I have started caring about my generals again. So far other than those few things everything is great, the animations for the dying soldier make the battle field more interesting as when the armies move for example chasing a routing unit there is still activity where they were as men slowly die, in admittedly overly dramatic ways sometimes. Arrows sticking in people and things is good to see as well.


Something is holding it back from becoming my favourite TW game, but it's on it's way there, maybe it just needs time.

Try using Nvidia control panel or ATI traytools to overide the game settings and apply AA.

Yeah someone said that on the TW center forums but they said that it causes graphical bugs like the water not being transparent. I'm quite happy with how the game looks anyway I can wait for a month or so for the patch, of course CA do have a habit of saying they are going to do something and then not.

Ok this game is harder than past TW games, I've had my butt handed to me a few times on easy! Ok not in the actual battles, I'm good with those. The campaign map part of the game is the hard part, the AI factions are volatile and there's a sense that you are only a turn away from all out war. I got lucky just now against the Date, they attacked my castle and though our forces were equally matched, infact I had a slight advantage, the Date had their faction leader with them, I've experience mass routing against good generals before when I completely out numbered the enemy so I wasn't expecting to win. I didn't even have a proper general, I had a message saying my general was unloyal and the game wanted me to decide if I should as him to kill himself or not, I picked yes, which I regretted afterwards.

The lucky part was that the AI was bugged and just kept moving along the edge of the map. I was able to peel a few units off from the pack a slaughter them before the AI started working correctly, cheap win but nothing I could do about that.

AHHHHHHH STEAM BROKE MY GAME!!!!!

There was a patch and Steam messed the install up, can't play the game now till they fix it, everyone how had the patch installed has the problem.

I just got home from work and was looking forward to some war.

Ok fixed phew.

I wanted to give one of the best castles ago so I tried Kyoto. It looks great thought it was going to be really hard because it's surrounded by water with 3 narrow long bridges, thankfully the water is shallow but it does slow you down a fair bit. The sieges are a lot better than Empire and Napoleon which were completely pointless and stupid, they just didn't work at all. Ok the sieges aren't a hugely different in the way they work in this but because of the Japanese castle design and phylosophy of castle defence and attack it's much more suited to the way the game handles sieges. And it helps that the castles look a lot more interesting than the bland boringness of Empire and Napoleon.

Oh it's also harder to defend because you don't know where the enemy will put their troups, I've not done enough siege battles to know how many different ways of attack the AI will use or if they are just told to put troups in set areas and do that all the time.

I'm doing a lot better in the campaign now as well, my mistake was really being too war like without giving myself the resources to back up that aggression, you also need to pay attention to other clans, you can't just think about your own regions and you can't leave any regions as tempting targets, I think the AI will attack weak area's. There are plenty of ways to create alliances in this hostages is a fun one, you exchange children, I think son's and if you go to war with that clan they will kill your son, or you kill there's, I don't know what actually happens when they attack you as that hasn't happened to me yet.

One thing I'm not too happy about is that in all the other TW games I've played you can pick the difficulty for the campaign and for the battles so you can have easy campaign map and very hard battles, which is the setting I used because I wasn't great of the campaign map, I like to take it easy there, but I could handle myself well enough in battles. I suppose it means I will have to get better at playing on the campaign map but it's not something that I wanted to do.

One thing just because very clear trying to take Kyoto. which is what you need to do to become Shogun, is going to be very hard, had a mock go just then to see what happens, firstly a second full stack army appears which is very bad for me, it didn't show up in the battle to help the guys defending Kyoto but that just means that once I manage to take the castle I'll then have to fight another full fresh army with whatever remains of mine. But thats do able, I just need to bring another stack or two of my own, the hard part is that Kyoto's allies will turn on me, which in my current position means I every territory thats near Kyoto will have masses of enemies on all sides.

I think I'm going to need to build a bigger and better army and try to reduce Kyoto's allies to something manageable, I have a castle right next to Kyoto at the moment and I'm building its defences up, I also have some resources which give my troups a bit more of a punch, and I've got ninja's out there killing everyone and burning things down to get themselves more exp to level and become legendary killers. My clans leader is also battle hardened now, but knowing my luck he'll died. Money is in no way a problem I have a huge amount of it, I have trade agreements with everyone just about and I make 10k a turn, I have something like 100k+ in the bank which is enough to last me a long time if something happens and I start lossing cash.

Kyoto attempt 2 doing it right this time. Kyoto has no allies, I paid them to break ties with them. I have two full armies and one large army, Kyoto had two full armies but! I used a kind of police unit? Can't remember the name to bride one of Kyoto's armies and that reduced it by half. My maxed out awesome assassin opened the doors to the castle for me, which saved many lives. and my monks lowered the moral of the castle's troups, they should route easier I hope. I have many more men but Kyoto has much more experienced men which means they are less likely to break and route.

Each side of the battle can only have 20 units on the field each at a time so when a unit is killed or routes off the field, it gets replaced with another unit.

So the battle, I used my 6 units of good archers, they have better range than the enemies, to kill as many of Kyoto's wall guards. When their ammo ran out I decided to make them leave the battle field, may sound like a bad thing but it means I get fresh troups that can fight at their best, archers aren't much good without ammo. I charge the walls which are now weakly defended however the enemy is bringing up more troups which it had in other parts of the castle to defend against my charge. I took the walls and captured a building which was firing arrows at me and now it's firing arrows at the enemy. I need to work fast and bring up new troups to replace my weakened ones and take the city as fast as I can. I'm taking a break mid battle because my mouse was playing up and I got something to eat, going to continue now.

I don't think I can loss this battle, I just have too many men, but I want to loss as few guys as possible. There's no telling what will happen when I rule over Kyoto, allies might turn on me.

Cool just after I made that post I went back into the battle and not long into it everything started to route, I have no idea why maybe it's because of the moral drop that I gave them before the battle maybe it's because I had defeated a lot of the troups in the city so the new troups coming onto the field were too afraid to join it. That battle was chaos I had very little knowledge of what my troups were doing, I had to keep pausing the game and also having it in slow motion so I could try and work out what was going on and where I need to move troups. I managed to win without lossing any units but a few of them only had 30 men left. I pulled them out of combat and was thinking about sending them off the field to get new troups.

OH GOD!!! I've become Shogun but now everyone that wasn't my ally is at war with me! I only had 2 allies and one was weak, I sent some of my troups off to take land, I need about 24 more regions to win the game, I have 16 (17 now actually sorry) and I need 40, I'm coming to the end of the allowed time to win, I can continue after that but it doesn't count any more. With this war it's going to be hard to keep land some of my regions are weakly defended, they can hold their own against small armies and discourage larger ones but they can't hold out against a full attack, which is what I'm expecting now.

The region I started in was just attacked by a fairly equal force, which was to be expected, well they should have brought a larger force, they thought I was weak HA. I won the battle, it was a real pain in the end, not hard they routed quite fast but they had archers in places which took a long time for me to get to.

The highlight of the battle was in that annoying end bit when 36 female samurai called something like Omni Bushi chased off about 250 male archers all on their own, if the archers had noticed them at distance it would been a blood bath but the ladies got in close and didn't get a single casualty. I read the unit card about them, it says they are house wives trained to fight and protect their homes if need be.

I wish they weren't stuck in the castle I'd like to add them to my army.

Sooooooo much war! It's everywhere! I'm making headway on land but at the moment the sea is a lost cause, there are too many enemy ships and it takes too long to build more. I need to regain control of the sea because I need the trade nodes. I'm winning the battles on land but all the war has taken it's toll on my finances, I'm very nearly completely broke, I can no longer afford to repair castles I take, other than fixing the walls and I doubt I'll be able to do that soon. I've been going through all my cities and disbanding any troups that I can without risking revolt or giving an enemy a chance to attack me. I'm getting closer to controlling the main land mass, I'll be cutting into the last mass of enemy regions very soon, next to Kyoto these will be the most important regions that I have to take, they are for the victory condition, when they are under my control things should get easier, however! One of my allies is getting ready to turn on me, they have been using Ninja's to attack some of my buildings, sooner or later they will strike, this is a real problem because they are in the new heart of my land and were I have had to reduce my forces, having said that I do actually have a large force there, BUT it's defending Kyoto, I don't want to have to move troups out of there to defend a less important region.

I have about 18 years to complete all the victory conditions and each year has 4 turns (I think) so about 72 more turns, Ok yep thats more time to do this than I thought. I play Total War games a lot but it's been years since I actually completed the game, I usually ingore the victory conditions, keep my lands small and try to keep order in the world and go past the games end date, but in this game it just seems right that I should be trying to control everything.

Oh goodness I just looked at how long I've been playing Shogun 2 and it's already 26 hours, I've only had the game 3 days...

Ok tomorrow I'm going to do something else, I did take time off to play the game but thats a little crazy.

I just looked it up and those Samurai ladies were call Onna Bushi, here's a link to their unit if you are interested in knowing more http://www.totalwars.ru/encyclopedia/units/inf_heavy_onna_bushi.html


I think my plan will be to pull back into the middle and yeah I'm sure I'll loss some regions because I can't defend them but I'll gain a solid safe middle so have to defend on fewer sides. I'll take a screenshot of Japan so you can see how surrounded I am.

Took a big moral hit on this game when my favourite Ninja was killed, had him since the start and he was maxed out, saved a lot of lives when I took Kyoto by opening the gates for me. He was a hero and a mass murderer all rolled into one. I'm turning that depression into rage and killing the guys that had my Ninja killed, I took their city killing all the guards and killed the populous (Which gave me a load of cash and well!) going to continue my revenge! The loss of his one live will cause the brutal end to 10's of 1000's mark my words!

My Demon Ninja will have his revenge upon them in the pits of Hell! There will be no peace to their rest!

Just played... and lost my first online battle, I didn't take it very seriously I just wanted to get it over with. I've been wanting to play online but haven't because I didn't think I would do well at it. I didn't bother to setup my army in the setting up phase and I didn't start moving at the start of the battle or look at my enemy. He hide his units and got the high ground, not something I'm that concerned about but it didn't help me. I rushed him too soon and didn't do a good job micro managing, I really didn't because we were playing with tiny armies so microing should have been easy.

Still now that it's done the next battle should be easier, I saved my battle so I can watch it over and over again and learn from my mistakes. I might try and upload it to youtube if I can get it down to a small size, the battle was only like 5 minutes so it shouldn't be too bad.