Total War's Campaign Map: From Interesting Decisions to Making Numbers Go Up 

For every 1 person who enjoys that aspect of the game, there are 1000 who would rather see numbers go up. Sad but understandable

There’s also a level of relatability when engaging with historical titles. We’re all human, we can imagine how these people would feel in these very real situations, and can sympathize with every soldier that falls as you understand what they put at stake in these fights. It’s just good fun to take set starts and see how you can handle being the general this time around. That was the core design philosophy of Total War from the start. And that’s not to say fantasy completely lacks this, but something like chaos warriors who exist solely to serve an uncaring god or greenskins who desire only to fight or lizardmen who think extremely rigidly within their castes are inherently more distant. This is why the centerpiece of the Warhammer setting is the men of the Empire, they are the posterboys because they serve as a frame of reference to a setting that is utterly bonkers

Not to mention variety is a myth that the WH fantasy has made up, the game has monsters and flying creatures but it lacks a dozen unit types featured in other games...

@@feelthepony like what

How many people are actually able to play historical tabletop wargames though? I would love to, but I live in basically the middle of nowhere.

People love it in mods like Radious or Divide et Impera or others. You got XY regional duplicates of units

Warhammer literally has tanks, cannons, giant bats and giants just to name a few of the many race specific units. I agree that shogun didn't need much more variety than it had, but trying to say that factions in Warhammer are all the same is just cherrypicking and deliberate ignorance

​@@Jacob-ge1py Mr Jacob, i agree that in case of Warhammer every faction needs different units, point is that you don't need 5 spear units with almost identical stats and usage but different names in the same faction. Also i did not said that factions in Warhammer are all the same, i don't know where did you get that from.

@@Jacob-ge1py They *are* the same. None of the units you named are actually exclusive to specific factions. Almost every other faction has access to the same stuff just painted differently. How is a tank different from a doom-wheel or a mamoth? How are giant bats different from harpies or carrion? How are giants different from rogue idols or necrofex colossus or hierotitans? They all function in basically they same way as each other or fill the exact same roles. Just because they have minor stat differences and different models doesn't mean they're unique or interesting.

@@fanis1414 Bro have you even played the game? They are all completely different, and not only in battle. On the campaign side, the choice to recruit a unit of skeletons vs a unit of empire swordsmen is completely different because of the huge differences in the way empire economy and vampire economy work. Saying these are the same is like saying gunpowder units and archers in shogun 2 are the same because they both are missile units. They have completely different effects in battle and have completely different campaign costs.

Shimazu all day

Teppou Republic moment

@@SIX598 Amen.

Starting positions, unit bonuses and religion is what define the variety of Shogun 2 and keeps it interesting to play. The only thing in this video I would disagree with is saying locking you to a religion is restricting. Otomo being christian, and Ikko Ikki having their own religion is a "theme" and playstyle, rather than a restriction I feel. If you play them and don't enjoy their aspects, then there's still plenty of other options in terms of themes and starting positions. This is what gives Shogun 2 such a great quality; you have different options.

@@SIX598 hurray we sail

If we're comparing Shogun 2 to games like RTW and that era, yeah, but compared to newer titles I argue the game actually has better variety in practice. The AI gets absurd bonuses to melee and morale starting with Rome 2 making melee infantry as a whole a terrible investment. In Shogun 2 the vast majority of units had a valid role to play on the field.

But a lot of players really don't like the older design because of how daunting it can be...if a game is designed to give you as much control, you are responsible for failure, and success, but human nature means the fear of failure is stronger than the allure of success. So will opt for a "safe" experience over a rewarding one. It's a shame the way things have gone and considering everything, it's a miracle we even got good games in the past.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I think you nailed it right there. Choice can be scary, but more importantly, choice isn't convenient for the mass-appeal audiance the studios are aiming for. Choice is good only so far as it keeps people playing the game without any hard moment of thought or hinderance to their continued progress. God forbid a player might backtrack or slow down in their gameplay; they need that constant flow of easily accessible dopamine that "on the rails" design provides. You're doing great work bringing this to the forefront.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I think that it can also be a time thing. You can put hours into a shogun 2 campaign experimenting one way deciding to go gunpowder and Christian heavy and finally get to play with the big guns at the end of the campaign, and then you look at those cool warrior monks and want to try them out. The problem is, that means starting a whole other campaign, grinding through the early game all over again, spending the first third using the same ashigaru units as your last campaign. A lot of people just don't have the time, patience or care to bother with multiple full playthroughs to the late game; to be able to experience all a game has to offer. Where the newer titles differ from this is that as soon as you choose which faction you want to start as, you're already started down your choice of streamlined experience. In Warhammer, if you want gunpowder, you don't have to play a generic early game to slowly research and construct the right necessities, you just choose to start as the Empire and there it is ready to play with. The Ottomo and Ikko Ikki clans you also criticise are very similar to this. The scenario you show at 21:21 seems like a lot of fun, but how fun was setting it up?

Also giants are pretty different to bats and tanks in more than aesthetics but sure let's just focus on the four common unit types.

​​@@Jacob-ge1pyAll flying units are the same, all giant type units are the same, all vehicle units are the same. You're deluding yourself because they LOOK radically different, but it's not actually very different at all in gameplay. Minor stat differences, that's all. A swarm of bats and harpies are the same mechanically, or a Vargheist and a dragon.

That's like saying all the samurai and ashigaru units are the same.@@LordVader1094

Warhammer, based on a tabletop, doesn't even have an army painter.

@@flammableelmo4966 "rent free" = aka. poor attempt to gaslight someone stating a fact to which there is no response.

@@flammableelmo4966 spent the vast majority (90%) of this video talking about Shogun 2, Medieval 2, Three Kingdoms, and the one part about Warhammer is in a well-research video made by a fellow RU-vidr (and actually a Warhammer fan, by the way). I either do something myself and if I cannot I will collaborate to achieve that goal and there is nothing wrong with that. It's really interesting to see how WH fanboys will zero in on a small segment of a video while ignoring all else including the overall thesis of the video. It's almost like any semblance of negativity towards their favorite toy sends them into a frenzy of gaslighting and non-arguments. Also your responses emerged from me stating the simple, obvious fact that Warhammer TW doesn't even have an army painter. Which it doesn't.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 As a Warhammer fan and someone who's long since gained more time in TW:WH2 than in Shogun 2, I can share in your disappointment. The lack of an army painter is rather disappointing, and after rediscovering Shogun 2's Avatar Conquest, I feel absolutely robbed in every other Total War game because of the lack of a custom Avatar Conquest-esque campaign.

@@mortarion9813 Shogun 2 back when it was new filled our minds with possibilities for franchise's future... Anyone who came to Total War for meaningful gameplay feels robbed.

Would love to see it come together.

I specifically addressed the argument later in the video saying it is "technically" correct that Shogun 2 clans lack "variety"; I immediately followed up this by pointing out that this isn't the whole story. There is nothing wrong with factions all having the same or mostly the same units; Age of Empires 2 is one of the most played RTS titles in history with dozens of factions largely sharing the same units/buildings. The interesting gameplay emerges from how these different elements interplay and that can be done without arbitrarily restricting certain elements to certain factions.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Well... that is a good point you put out. I just wish I could see it that way as in my view, most every campaign is the same but repositioned.

Vanilla campaign is okay but 1212 is so good.

Thanks man, plenty of stuff on my channel that can help. You can also check out our Discord and there's loads of discussions there.

But then what's the point of letting you play battles from 200bc to 1500 as Aztecs, Romans and Chinese?

I will admit that in my limited time with the game there isn't as much "flavor" as other historical wargames. Obviously 40k has all their different abilities strategems etc whereas with historical stuff on the more casual side like bolt action you have army abilities. Instead the flavor of armies in DBA are moreso decided by the army composition itself. Examples being spartans not using skirmishers and psiloi whereas athenians have a more balanced army but of course inferior hoplites. That being said once you get to later eras like 100 years war yeah it gets kinda samey

It also had the old army system where you could actually move units independently; so much you could do with that system.

What makes everything worse is the new army system, you can't split off units, and you have an army cap, meaning the world is so bloated yet you have so few resources with which to do anything; expansion feels like a chore rather than a series of interesting decisions.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Exactly. Maybe Creative Assembly needs to detox on some board games for a while to get back to basics

Depending on the context of the game. if it's 100 of almost identical units, even if 30 of them are more defferent then the rest, it adds little while hurts a lot for new and confused players. If it's 8 of almost identical units then it's the same problem but with reduced difficulty for new players but at least 100 is more interesting then 8 even if only by 1% better. Either way 100 or 8 does not matter, what matters is the design and the context.

@@Orendiz Shogun 1 in nutshell good sir

Depend, if that 100 Unit can be recruited in every province then it's bad. But if there's 50 province and each of those Province could have 2 units tied to said province it might work to a certain extend. However it would be super hard to make sure those units are unique enough rather than just a reskin or small changes, the minimal effort is to have said unit having the specialty in their region, one example is when the province is in desert the 2 units tied to said province are immune to desert debuff.

@@ashina2146 It's different when you have many units that are just the upgraded version of the previous ones. Sort of an upgrade like in medieval 1 from peasants to feudal to chivalric and to halberds and guns.

@@rebidiom2578 There's a lot of implication of an upgraded version of the previous ones, but it will seep into a around 10+ unit in the same category, like a faction that have 10+ Melee Infantry unit would have many of those unit just being an upgrade. In Medieval 2 Sergeant Spearman and Armored Sergeant are basically the same unit with the Armored Sergeant having 5 armor which is upgradeable to 7 by Heavy Mail, while Sergeant Spearmen start at 0(cloth) to 4(light mail), but the Medieval 2 Design stops it from making Sergeant Spearmen obsolete when Armored Sergeants are available because Sergeant Spearman actually get a boost in replenishment when Armored Sergeant's building are built. Rome 2 is another example but not in the old 30 Melee Infantry which consist of 14 Local and 16 Auxiliary, and by those 14 Local it's split into Military which is 11 with the other 3 being gladiators and plebs. From those 11, at the start you only have 2 available to you, after the reform you can access the other 4 while the earlier 2 is practically disabled or phased out, and 5 at the last reform. During the Marian and Imperial Reform, the Third Tier Legionary Barrack could start Pumping out Literal Praetorian Guards which are basically mixing the 2 Special Legionary Types into one unit which historically perform horribly when tasked to do legionary duty, to the point that there's no literal point of recruiting Legionaries if you unlocked Praetorians and have the Funds. if CA cannot even balance those 4 units then let alone 100 units.

Also bring back the fucking agent cutscenes dammit

The fact that every non-Warhammer title in the past decade ended up a abandoned mess is more evidence that a lot of the appeal is in the Warhammer IP "being brought to life"and not the merit of the gameplay.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 true that, and you can see most of their focus went to getting a warhammer feel, with a huge roster and map. And not gameplay features, because in most factions some unis are always clearly superior which means many play styles are not even viable. There was a lot of work involved, but more on visual and less in mechanical elements

I have a better idea: how about increasing the depth and intuitiveness of the simulation in these games which would in turn reduce the need for the numbers in the first place.

I think because they wanted it to be more competitive, meaning more streamlined, more generic and much less fun.

I heard that majority of the original CA team responsible for creating total war games till FOTS left the company after release of the latter, so its quite impossible now

I did point out the example of the Holy Roman Empire not having access to archers regarding Medieval 2; factions did have unique units and/or lack certain units but generally speaking they all had ranged, melee, and cavalry components. Some were better at certain things than others, like Muslim factions being able to field camels that dealt a morale penalty to horseback units, but it was never so drastic that one faction was effectively pigeon-holed into a particular playstyle (aside from maybe Scotland due to them specializing in pikes, not the best unit in Medieval 2). "That's an opinion on game design, not an objective fact." The Otomo and Ikko-Ikki, because of them being restricted to their religions, have OBJECTIVELY fewer options available to them on the strategic layer. Other factions can choose to remain buddhist or convert; the Otomo and Ikko cannot. Meaning they have less depth overall. "It is said in the video that the Hattori were unique and good because they could forward deploy and that was a huge advantage, but did not mention the fact that's also a thing in warhammer as well" I need to clarify: the Hattori are NOT A good faction, if we're talking about game design. They have a major deployment advantage over other factions, in addition to having rich early expansion opportunities and resources nearby, which isn't properly compensated for with a drawback. And unlike the Ikko/Otomo, by default they aren't concerned with religious mechanics, they start out Buddhist and can knock out the Ikko before they get a chance to spread their faith, meaning a very easy mid-late game. They are "good" in the sense that they are powerful, but aren't well-designed. If something similar exists in WH then it's not good either. Not too sure about the details in the WH games (other than they inherit the asinine design elements introduced in Rome 2) but that was not really the main point of the video anyway. My Fall of a Franchise video went into more detail on Rome 2, which is the basis for the design of every game going forward including the WH titles.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I see, well, thank you for taking the time to answer my comment, and yes, both the Otomo and Ikko Ikki are OBJECTIVELY limited, I agree on that, I was getting more at from your opinion regarding the design of the factions, I too also believe the Hattori to not be a great faction, especially that their units almost ALWAYS lose 1v1s due to the smaller unit counts over what many consider a gimmick. Regarding the last thing, I have not seen the decline video, and I am very interested now, I will go watch it. And agreed on Rome 2 forward, TW needs a good historical to redeem itself, but I don't know if CA wants to, or is capable of it.

It's a fortress map mod for custom battles, I shot those scenes several months ago so the name escapes me.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I see yeah the fortress looked pretty cool. I know some mods really change the castle layouts in really unique and surprisingly historically accurate ways.

@@zilikam2nd433 btw I just remembered, its Matsumoto Castle.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I see I'll check it out.

I don't support pausing games as it leads to bad habits and is especially going to get you exposed in a multiplayer match. Furthermore the question of difficulty was answered already a decade ago; the AI in Shogun 2 and its expansions does not receive any bonuses to its melee or morale, its units operate under the same rules and constraints as the player. It received faster recruitment on the campaign map, but that is common across older RTS games where AI units have the same stats and HP, they just get resource bonuses. Only exception in Shogun 2 was the AI getting buffs to reload and accuracy on its ranged units, annoying indeed but manageable with careful usage of terrain and cover. I don't expect my AI to be perfect, but I do expect it to resemble a human, and humans do indeed make errors and the best AI is one that is generally competent but also prone to the same errors as humans. Instead we get a lazy implementation where even the weakest AI units have no issue fighting uphill: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dxL7NV-Uahw.html

Shogun 2 and FotS are sort of a plateau after Empire, that brief time they got their act back together before forever sinking into mediocrity. It's fun to think about how a decent portion of the staff who worked on the original Shogun left after Shogun 2...they had revisited the original setting and after properly realizing it with modern technology they considered it book-ends. The series had come around to where it had started.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I honestly wish CA just collapsed after Shogun 2 series as they soiled the memories of RTW & MTW for me & my brother.

It should be no surprise that CA started destroying moddability when they began selling faction and unit packs instead of full expansions.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Yep. Truly dishonorable behavior

And things haven't really gotten better since then...considering the release state of WH3 we have arguably regressed even further.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 the release state of wh3 was a bad joke, yes! That is not what you criticized in your video though. What is criticised there improved quite a lot during the life circle of Warhammer I and then II

@@MrUppa I don't really care about the supposed "improvements" when they have never addressed core design problems that have persisted since Rome 2. WH2 is a game where the stupidly named supply lines mechanic punishes you for attempting to field balanced armies while the combat continues to be a stat-fest where morale (not leadership) is rarely relevant. Just the other day someone in my discord posted unit tests where they had entire units being surrounded and yet that was still not enough to rout them. Then you have so-called "unit variety" where crossbows fire low-velocity projectiles in high arcs akin to archers (which is also dumb) while guns don't even have reload animations and can fire over obstructions at targets they can't see. And again if that isn't enough to damage the experience, in come the supply lines mechanic that will incentivize the doomstacking that is so prevalent in the meta people can rack up thousands of views making videos ranking the best doomstacks. Not to mention the restrictions around having leaderless armies that have been around since Rome 2.

There are even times where people ask for mods that remove units that are never recruited, to reduce UI clutter. Yet they'll still turn around and say the game has great diversity.

that can be said for pretty much every unit ever in total war games , and there is only so much tactics that you can use to make the gameplay diverse , its not ca's fault that most of you morons only use hammer and anvil with barely any change , and lets not get started on how comparatively boring and tacticaly ˝˝shallow˝˝ a lot of real life battles were , especialy in the medieval era

its a combination of everything. They don't know games like Shogun 2 and they don't even know what makes a good game to begin with. To them it's things like clicking buttons and watching bars fill up and numbers go up.

This video was primarily explaining why the older games had a lot more depth to their strategic layers than one might think...it's a direct response to the common argument that has persisted for ages that games like Shogun 2 lack replay value/faction variety. The sections on 3K and WH are supplemental to that point, not the thesis of the video.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Yes I understand, and in fact I fully agree on your thesis. It is practically the same principle with Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3: Fallout New Vegas would give cool abilities while Fallout 3 would just give you +3 to some stat. Good videogames give the player different ways to play while mediocre games just give you more stats and the illusion of choice.

I played rome 2, attila, 3k, wh, and troy. With the exeption of attila (somewhat), All of them play very similarly to the point that i want to just say the same. All of those total war games were designed similarly but with a different twist or a different theme. But overall they all play the same. You really don't have to play a game to critique it's design anyway. If it was about the initial feeling of playing it that's another thing but honestly. When i first started playing WH i was surprised at how much better it was compared to what i initially though but ones my dopamine went down after a week it all came back and my original expectations that disappeared before came back and i got to confirm it. Keep in mind that i also had to spend 5+ hours modding the shit out of the game for me to consistently enjoy it for that 1-2 weeks.

this whole shogun 2 circlejerk is cringe

Don't see how that is the case when WH2 combat is so fundamentally broken: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dxL7NV-Uahw.html And the linked video barely scratches the surface.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Is it a 44 minutes video on how AI has bonuses if you fiddle with the difficulty in order to give them those bonuses, and how charging downslope doesn't give you advantage?

Idk I never really got this feeling when I started playing this game at 13. From the very first Shogun 2 campaign I grasped the simple ideas of needing money to recruit units while units also have an ongoing upkeep cost, and that you can't build everything everywhere and need to prioritize. Sure there's a lot of stuff to figure out through trial and error, such as when to pillage vs occupy peacefully, the best expansion options, best build order, etc. but that's completely fine, I actually don't think you should be able to optimize your gameplay on your first try. Also minecraft was for the longest time a terrible example of what you are describing; I started playing that game in 2010 and the only way to learn crafting recipes was to load up the wiki. If a game forces you to leave the game to understand the most basic mechanics then it has by all accounts failed to teach the player. (I know that they added in a recipe book at some point).

There is nothing out of place. If you're implying it's because Shogun 2 is "historical" and WH2 is "fantasy"" then that is a fallacy. Both of these games are attempting to be RTT's and therefore they can be judged in how well they achieve that goal. Also Warhammer 2 is at its core a rehash of WH1 which is a rehash of Attila which is a rehash of Rome 2. Every game following Rome 2 inherits much of its core design issues. The setting has no bearing on the quality of these games; Rome 1 and Rome 2 are the perfect example of 2 games being radically different in quality despite featuring the same setting.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 aside of setting, warhammer and Shogun II plays very differently... Warhammer is very different from rest of the TW catalog (aside of Troy), not because of fantasy setting, WH has strong RPG elements, general is ofently your main battle unit, there are single entity heroes, flyers, monsters and magic with various effects. And that is just battle part

@@lukaskovac6778 by "various effects" do you mean arbitrary stat buffs that are completely divorced from whatever the models are doing? Yes Shogun 2 and WH2 play very differently , the latter is much worse than the former for a myriad of reasons including horrible balancing (melee units are useless on higher difficulties, generals being forced to lead armies, supply lines destroying balanced army builds).

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 19:32 is good example, all factions have a basic/heavy infantry, but dwarfs do not have cavalry, undead do not have missiles, even in this basic, these factions work different, even if the guy in video ignore it + there are mentioned magic, monsters, flyers

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 is the Rome 2 rehash of Shogun 2 ? Or is Empire rehash of Medieval 2 ?? Warhammer uses province system introduced in Rome 2, otherwise is mechanically different from Attila. I would say maybe like Medieval 2 and Empire

First of all, shogun 2 is based around a long history of civil war that lead to reunification of japan under the shogun that won the civil war. There is no cultural differences or obvious different between them. Its more historical accurate. Actual unit variety is each of the unit shoulds have its own role and distinctive role. Not like later total wars game. You can have so many types of spearmen. They only have slight diff in stats and uniform and those differences wont make any noticeable impact on the outcome. And later total war game starts to cut their slack in term of game mechanics. They just make everything revolve around stats number. Press one button, unit gain missile immune while there is no difference in term of formation or guard stance. Just take a look at the gunpowder and arrow mechanics, there is no mechanic involve. They just act like they are shooting. I do agree on difficulty scaling though, there is huge gap in between. Agent spam, in shogun 2, each of the agent has their own role. Agent spam is player choice and I have not much comment on this. As for faction mechanics, you really need to consider about the starting positions. Each clan has its own small niche, it is good imo. Since it wont force you into one and only way of playing. You can have great success by including clans niche like unit discount, small unit type buff, starting diplomacy/terrain and even unique unit in your gameplay. Each general that you has is unique since you can not just buy them. You will know who is who and who is leading what army since you are watching them grow. Unlike later series, i can just buy a new general whenever i like. Sometimes i even dont remember they exists. And for navy battle, i do agree that they are not well polished. Disclaimer: comments based on shogun 2 vanilla. Fall and rise of samurai are not well polished. Newer total war games feel hollow. Total war games main attraction is historically accurate war simulator. They seems to have make it more and more arcade to suit new generations.

Forget about history and stuff. This isn't a debate between history or fiction. Shogun 2 has indeed some of the best dynamic battles but also very tight knit unit type dynamics. Even within the same unit type, a single unit cannot be substituted for another unit. A Spear Samurai cannot substitute Spear Ashigaru. A longsword samurai cannot substitute katana samurai nor katana ashigaru. Even same unit types have a very different doctrine for being utilized in the best manner for it. So this results in more impactful unit composition decisions which give the variety despite having a similar roster for the most part. Variety comes in Warhammer due to some factions being entirely bow based, some factions being melee based, some factions being gun based and some factions being monster based. Shogun 2 also has gun based clans, katana based clan, longsword based clan, archery based clan etc. Monster based clan is the only thing that's missing although Ikko Ikki could be taken as a monstrous masses horde clan for a monster based clan. As for difficulty, its less cancerous since the enemy infantry doesn't outright get combat buffs. But the enemy bows do so yeah that one is cancerous but its the same in warhammer difficulties. Agents are pretty useful and have a huge dynamic with each other. Ninja for intelligence and killing monks, monks for inciting rebellions or convert religions or stop metsukes, metsukes for stopping ninjas and boosting economy by weeding out administration corruption. Faction mechanics are only present for Otomo and Ikko Ikki granted. Navy spam can still be beat by using strategy. The main problem is that the AI can't handle ship collisions well enough. City building is an important aspect of it. Every single building you build, you have to weigh in advantages and trade offs. And even then some buildings have two paths they can take which is even more weighing of advantages and trade offs. Shogun 2's entire campaign is based around dilemmas where you weigh in various decisions and try to make the better ones. In every single campaign, you can decide to expand in three different directions and you can't expand to all of them at once. Choosing which direction to expand to will create a huge variance in your campaign progression and direction path. Every campaign you play with the same clan choosing to conquer different provinces with different unique province buildings and technology research will create a huge difference. And that's just while using the same clan. This allows for a huge replayability value if you have to trade off getting better economy for getting gunpowder soon or trade off getting better horses in exchange for warrior monks. Since none of these units can completely replace each other in terms of their tactics or useage, it causes a huge difference.

@@bravomike4734 @R G you make me want to try to give it another go . i listen to your arguments

@@shibre9543 I agree that agent spam doesn't look very nice but spamming agents is also hard because you essentially have to sacrifice a building slot in order to get the building that allows the recruitment of the agent. So either what I do is create market, get metsuke and delete market to make sake den or I build 5 sake den in around 20-ish turns and with 7 provinces then delete around 2-3 sake dens to create the more important buildings. Also remember, low level agents are really terrible. Ninjas should first be leveled up by sabotaging enemy castle gates or markets or rice farms etc. Whichever option is cheaper or more higher suceeding chance. Priests should be levelled up by demoralizing general-less enemy armies. Metsuke is the hardest to level up because one option is to kill ninjas, which isn't very common to see from AI until mid to late. Other is to bribe enemy armies which is expensive as fuk. The last option is to make them oversee settlement. All agents can oversee settlements and they get some xp at the end of every turn when overseeing settlements but this is worst way to gain xp.

@@shibre9543 You can look for volound youtube channel for his shogun 2 legendary campaign walkthrough. You probably can see the beauty of mechanics from his playthrough. His insight on the game mechanic is amazing. Detail breakdown and analysis. Anyway. All these are just games. Everyone is free to pick the game that they enjoy the most. No right or wrong. Have a nice day.

You can't go wrong with either one :))

I won't rule out that Medieval 2 is a better game in terms of strategic depth, but something about the way it plays always rubs me the wrong way and I can hardly get one battle into it before I'm tired of playing.

Yeah, no. Nostalgia is a helluva drug.

Wow, this other person sure is attacking a straw man regarding faction diversity. Way to address how units can fulfill similar roles despite being different, and not mention how mechanics like crumbling, or the utter lack of certain roles in armies, radically alter the overall play style of the faction.

There is inter-faction diversity in Shogun 2, just not the kind you're thinking about. As I explained in the video, you will almost never have access to all units in the roster due to your inability to research everything, and your limited building slots. Your faction isn't specialized for you, none of them start out specialized, the specialization is decided by your research and building priorities. You might choose to focus on sword-heavy builds while your major rival is fielding a cavalry-heavy build. This is an organic form of interplay that is much more interesting to play with than "X faction has no artillery, Y faction has no good heavy cavalry".

Chess is over a thousand years old and the most accepted way to play it is with both sides not only having the same roster of only six units, but exactly symmetrical army compositions. It's in the way those units work together that tactical depth is created. Shogun 2 having low inter-faction diversity doesn't make it bad, you just have ADHD.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I disagree that that can be considered inter-faction diversity. Every faction has access to the same units. I'll admit that faction buffs make certain factions tend towards certain builds, but to me that's far less interesting than the diversity present in Rome or Medieval 2-- I want my different cultures to feel different. In Shogun, I never feel I get a unit as interesting as low tier Spanish javelins in terms of making me play radically different. That's one of the main reasons I think Warhammer is the best of the new total wars.

@@jerrycan1756 Chess and Total war aren't similar games, and their appeal exists for different reasons. Chess is specifically supposed to be as symmetrical as possible. Other total wars aren't aiming for similar design. I would argue that Shogun 2, even if it's a good game, is a mediocre total war. To be clear, that still hasn't stopped me from sinking over a hundred hours into it-- but that's true of everything except Napoleon, Thrones, and Troy-- two of which I don't own. Edit: I forgot Shogun 1 and Medieval 1, which I also haven't played.

yup, ive long since come to the conclusion that this is a simple case of a kid wanting his toy and wanting it NOW and not having to work for any of it and yea I've had my fair share of perplexing comments in favor of this "variety" despite going to great lengths to explain the problems with that view which leaves me thinking many of them comment on the video based on the title or after skipping through a few segments number go up, line go up brrrr

"but the game industry has kind of progressed to releasing crap games on day 1 and fixing them later." Yea no sorry man. Just because that's the reality doesn't mean I should accommodate it. We should be pushing developers to not do this, instead of just putting our hands up and saying "well I guess that's just how it is." I will maintain that a game's release state is the most important in critiquing it till the day I die. Because the only alternative is to lower my standards which would in turn only incentivize only more corner cutting. If Nintendo can develop two of the best open world games and release a FULL game on day 1 on antiquated mobile hardware, then the largest game dev in the UK should have no issue delivering when they are unconstrained by console power limitations. If From Software can release Elden Ring, a full game, on day 1, then the largest UK dev should have no problem doing so, especially when CA has the ability to reuse assets from not one but two previous Warhammer games. The industry has not "progressed" it has REGRESSED. As a gamer you should feel positively insulted that a game dev has figured that you will buy their broken, incomplete game on day 1 based on vague, shoddy promises that they will be fixed and expanded on later, not bend over backwards. And the point about "faction variety" is largely false, almost every faction will be funneled into spamming armies made of single entities and ranged; there is an entire RU-vid genre of ranking Warhammer doomstacks in tier lists. That is not the product of a well-designed game. For more, the broken combat of this series: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qavY___5U4s.html Warhammer 2 combat tests: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dxL7NV-Uahw.html Warhammer 2 campaign gameplay: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lODDXDB5ES0.html And if you're wondering why I used warhammer 2 as the basis for this and not 3, that's specifically to insulate it from the counter-argument that you brought up that patches and updates fixed the game. There you have Warhammer 2 footage from late 2022 and early 2023 long after the game gave way to its sequel.

TWO WHOLE UNIQUE WAYS of playing lol.

@@arthurkingsley4846 hahahaha

@@arthurkingsley4846 how many ways is enough, it’s a fact you can only posture army’s defensively or aggressively, combined arms factions can play into both but that will look different, due to unit makeup other factions are purely rushed based but have different ways to deliver rush play style, it’s the same story for heavy defensive factions, Warhammers buildings and recruitment are the best in the franchise for accessibility, your army’s undergo some evolution though the buildings and recruitment so there is also depth, other total wars like shogun which have narrow rosters can’t compete in any way.

"how many ways is enough" according to whom? there is no such thing as "enough" or good enough, games are supposed to get better with each and every entry--that's supposed to be the point in sequels--and we, the customers, should be expecting more from our sequels. What diversity in playstyles is there if melee infantry get destroyed on higher difficulties thanks to modifiers, and ranged units aren't properly differentiated (guns are glorified crossbows, they fire in arcs and through each other and don't even have reloading animations). Shogun 2 manages to have properly differentiated unit classes--almost all of them are VIABLE and that is what counts, if a unit exists but is not worth recruiting than it may as well be removed from the game, which can be said about large portions of the unit rosters not just in Warhammer TW but in Rome 2, Three Kingdoms. It's funny that you suggest that Shogun 2 has a narrow roster when I spend a good chunk of that explaining this misconception away. Ironically it's Warhammer TW that can't compete with the depth of battles in Shogun 2 or even the original Shogun.