MacLovin Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I just started playing the game, and I don't know what the hell I need to do. Can someone give me some tips on what to do to make my time easier? And a few more tips on how to foster good relations without loosing territory/being totally pacifist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magical CC Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 (edited) Are you familiar with the Total War franchise? If you are then I will skip the basics and only give Shogun 2 tips: _Dont go Christian unless you think you are strong enough. However, switch to Christian as soon as you think you can. Guns, cannons, ton of trading. Money and guns, yo! _Allies will always stab you from behind. Vassals will always stab you from behind. Dont even waste your time taking vassals. Making friends early is great because even if they gonna stab your back, it will take time for them to do so. Dont go out of your way just to please them. _When you are weak, it's best to invoke rebel on your targets first before sending army. Deploy ninja, metsuke and monk, they are great and cheap. _Basic units are not that weak compared to elite units but they are way cheaper and you can get them easier. Use Ashigaru instead of samurai. However, always have at least one elite stack just in case. _Guns are OP. Get them and field them as soon as possible. _Use trade ship. Take trade port. Keep trading. Trading is the key. _Most of the times, it's best to be defensive. Pick your battlefield, let them come for you. In battle, provoke them to attack using cannon. However, if you are not familiar with Total War franchise, you are in trouble since Shogun 2 is slightly tougher than other TW games. In this case, I suggest you to visit "twcenter", it is the best TW site, ever. You will find a lot of guides and active players who will no doubt help you a lot. Edited February 13, 2015 by Magical Amber Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rehab Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 (edited) An abridged asshole's guide to beating the Shogun 2 campaign without trying very hard or being good at video games (for reference, a "stack" means the maximum amount of units who can fit in a single grouping of units on the campaign map.) It has been a couple years since I played, but I personally remember having a Normal campaign as the Oda that pretty much rolled itself, if you're desperately in need of a stable-ish place from which to find your comfort zone. The cheapest unit in the game, better + braver in a fight and even cheaper? IIRC, I rolled up a couple stacks of (not entirely, but a lot of) those Oda Ashigaru, picked fights with ~one clan at a time (minimal allies assumed), and just moved the growing peasant mass forward one province at a time. (give or take some outflanking and general-sniping of the poor hapless combat AI) Katamari'd my way east until I hit the Takeda, then just sat an stack or so there, and west until... I won the Short campaign. Seemed pretty foolproof at the time. Starting out, most (all?) clans start with an army good enough to take out at least some immediate enemy in the vicinity with your hand guiding them, and once you do that you'll probably be at least big enough to take on some other neighbor with at most a couple of red-letter wins (as in battles autoresolve won't look kindly on). After a couple of those, you should at least be bigger and richer than a lot of non-playable clans, which hopefully will allow you to isolate one at a time at subjugate. Regarding the actual fights: my entire first playthroughs involved basically no coherent formation structure earlygame, just ambushing dudes from forests while coming from some direction other than right in front of them did the trick, all the way up to taking out the Ashikaga shogunate. For that, you may want to either actually get an actual, respectable army stack with significant samurai backbone together, or just bring a lot of guys to the party. One fort can only hold so many dudes... And as Amber said, you're going to end up fighting everybody, either once the Shogunate is afraid enough of you or once you take it. Even your very best relations are ultimately stalls, as they hate you more the longer you've claimed the Shogunate. I'd suggest taking on the Ashikaga before they sic everybody else on you (which may mean curbing expansion when you close in on them), taking them down as quick as possible once you start to war them, and have armies prepared to fight off everybody you know on all fronts once you do if you're doing a Long campaign. Other very, very basic/general super-noob stuff: Rushing the heck out of farms, roads and markets (not the kind that eats more food unless you want to foot the surplus for a particular province, of course) in all the provinces you can gets the koku and rice flowing well enough. There may be better strategies out there, but blindly piling on your province fort levels so as to get more buildings per province tends to work alright in the initial difficulties. Koku is love/life etc. Get trading rights with dudes you don't want to kill immediately (and maybe even some you do) for more $$rice money$$, of course. As long as you don't trade with guys who hate each other, (and maybe even sometimes when you do), I remember it being hard to go wrong setting up trade. If you actually want to get legit good at TW, you may want to make at least a token effort to specialize your provinces and build something like a balanced army, but if you have no idea what to do with a province, just putting up markets/other moneymakers rarely hurts much. As long as you continue to spend on building your army at least a bit at the same time, of course. If you do want to go that route, be on the prowl for provinces with resources and unique buildings that give bonuses to either certain kinds of units or agents trained there, or to koku output or whatever else etc. And yeah, agents good. Recruit until you hit the limit, you can always find something for them to do- cleaning up enemy agents, boosting your provinces and armies, mucking with your enemy's, they do it all. You may want to train them up on low-risk jobs and emphasize particular strengths on levelling them up before, say, having your metsuke bribe an enemy doomstack+top general, or having your ninja assassinate the Shogun in his fortress, though And it might be a couple years out of date, but regarding org guides: frogbeastegg in particular has spent a laborious amount of words on explaining the game's basics in ways that were friendly enough to me as a beginner. First TW guide I downloaded as a pdf, anyway. Edited February 13, 2015 by Rehab Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monde Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 (edited) Formation is everything in battle. What I normally do is just have weak units form the front to soften the enemy troops, and keep the rest of my troops in reserve to come in and help. I never realized how useful cavalry can be until I started using them in Medieval 2, but I'm not sure their effectiveness in Shogun 2. Just use the cavalry with their pros in mind: their speed, making them useful in quickly attacking the enemies ranged troops or wrecking their morale. Also obviously, have ranged units. The Ashigaru vs Samurai deal is imo just preference. The samurai is objectively better and can take on 2-3 Ashigaru units depending on the situation, but the Ashigaru are cheep and can match in quantity what the samurai have in quality. In the end, it just has to do with how well you use the troops to your advantage. Lastly, be prepared against the Christian clans and the endgame. If against another religion, they (or you) could send monks/priests to create unrest in your provinces. This becomes a big problem at around endgame when your armies may over-extend themselves stopping the rebels created from it. At endgame there is an event where everyone will declare war on you, so I suggest you be prepared for the impending total war. Edited February 13, 2015 by Monde Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IGdood Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Hey there, welcome to the Total War series. You can follow my let's play in case you want a visual reference. The other posts here are otherwise spot-on. http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=25238 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esau of Isaac Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Buy archers. They are OP. Buy a lot of archers and then fight everyone and win and maybe play again and use archers and win again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacLovin Posted February 17, 2015 Author Share Posted February 17, 2015 (edited) Uh, I seem to have a problem now. I have Shogun 2, but only the Fall of the Samurai campaign is available. :/ Edited February 17, 2015 by Howard the Duck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magical CC Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 (edited) Uh, I seem to have a problem now. I have Shogun 2, but only the Fall of the Samurai campaign is available. :/ That's weird. The rise of samurai should be still playable. Uninstall everything and reinstall them? And it's true that archer is good in this game. Cavalry, however, is weaker than in other games. Edited February 17, 2015 by Magical Amber Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rehab Posted February 18, 2015 Share Posted February 18, 2015 Oh yeah, the Chosokabe are also an unambiguously stronk starter clan- aforementioned archers better and cheaper, a starting place just isolated enough to be a good place to become a big fish in a small pond, and also because they get more money throughout the game from farms. Probably makes more sense to recommend them than Oda starting out, who live in a crowded area (if full of opportunity), now that I think of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacLovin Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 ok it turns out that Fall of the Samurai is a stand alone game by itself. :/ So I only have Fall of the Samurai and not the base game. wtf. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rehab Posted February 27, 2015 Share Posted February 27, 2015 I, uh, still need to play that one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IGdood Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 ok it turns out that Fall of the Samurai is a stand alone game by itself. :/ So I only have Fall of the Samurai and not the base game. wtf. What did you buy in the first place? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacLovin Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 It was an impulse buy [All I knew about the Total War series at the time was that it was supposed be a series of good quality strategy games.], and I bought Fall of the Samurai. I THOUGHT I was getting the base game+fall of the samurai, but it turns out that Fall of the Samurai is a stand-alone game. And most of it seems to be naval battles. :? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magical CC Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Try Medieval 2 if you dont mind playing old game. It's easy to get into, has a lot of different units, many lands to conquer and offer a good amount of mods. Shogun 2 is great too but it's not something a first timer should play. If you want to get into TW, at least try the Rise of Samurai first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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