DarthMod: Shogun II v2.2 Open Beta 6

[alexjs]

I haven't tried the new beta, as I'm actually relatively happy with my version (2.1 I think) right now and I don't want to mess up my campaign, but that said the CAI (CAI means the Computer AI right?) seems pretty cautious to attack with small siege numbers as it is. I remember seeing a rebel army actually superior to a castle garrison/army and they wouldn't attack to my suprise. And the armies are relatively more balanced too. Better than before anyway, but that's not to say I haven't encountered archer spam armies - which are totally useless now. (Again I'm using ver 2.1 still)

I'm not exactly a veteran player compared to some with 200+ hours of gameplay, but overall the diplomacy seems more reliable too. I just had a realm divide event and my allies/vassals have stuck with me, etc. In any event, once I finish this campaign I'll see if I can test the changes you've made. I don't think there's too much I'd change though, except maybe that archer option letting players who like the sniper archers have them, and light cavalry being too strong - which looks like you've addressed. I wish you could add in custom general trait events too - that'd be awesome.

Thanks again for your hard work Darth - I really appreciate it as it's made my game experience way more fun. My favorite addition has to be the naval travel distance enhancement. It was just plain ridiculous before.

[Rome101]

^@Alex:
CAI = Campaign AI, as opposed to BAI (B=Battle).
Thanks for your feedback, +rep!
moving on:

No archer spams for me. The stacks are beautifully mixed.

I think the AI is acting a little too defensive at the moment. Playing Shimazu I just conquered the entire Kyushu island (a great achievement for me ), but the Ouchi has gathered forces in the mainland and it seems they can invade Kyushu any time and capture my completley undefended castles. I've placed two Mangonel units in the castle connecting Kyushu to the mainland as bait, and placed a heavy stack with my Daimyo in it in the woods nearby. Somehow, although I've never been discovered, the Ouchi seems to know I'm there and they refuse to come, although they will obviously conquer me without any troubles.
I've also besieged the Sagara province (the one East to Hizen, where they have Naval Traditions), and the enemy sallied out immediately with about equal number of troops, although I had a stack filled with Samurais while theirs consisted of Ashigarus (they were rebels). At first I destroyed them using a sophisticated ambush on the hills and in the woods (where the BAI performed fantastically, I can upload the replay if you'd like), after that they were reduced to dust. But still, that didn't prevent them from sallying out again against all odds... TWICE. They had no chance to win, but then again they didn't really had a choice (last province). I do think they should have waited until the last minute, because who knows - maybe I would have been distracted by another enemy army, or maybe I would just give up, or needed to redirect my forces, or hell, maybe I'd just like to break the siege during the winter.

I've had a funny bug, in update 5. After I routed the bodyguards of a rebellious general, only he survived and I wanted to watch his death in slow-mo. To my utter surprise, when he switched to "Broken" and started fleeing, he traveled at superspeed while all other forces were acting regularly. I also saved the replay for this, if you want to see it, Darth. Changing game speeds didn't make any difference, he just flew away like he was wearing jet-propulsion sneakers.

Another bug I've encountered, or at least I think it's a bug, is that in foggy weather I'm still able to see my enemy's troops and I am pretty sure he can still see mine. This isn't supposed to happen as of path 1.2, right? I also think the AI can see when I have soldiers hiding behind a hill or very deep down inside a forest, even from miles away (I know they see me because they split their troops accordingly). This kind of shouldn't happen, right?

I think that the General's bodyguards should have better cavalry abilities. My 2 sons were nearly wiped out by a single outnumbered unit of 51 Light Cavalrymen. The light cavalry is perfectly balanced, IMO. It's the heavy cavalry that's not strong enough against lighter cavalry that seems to be the problem. This result is repeating itself every time - Light Cavalry can eradicate supposedly-heavy-cavalry General Bodyguards. This needs changing.



Darth, I cannot stress how wonderful your work is and how much me and everyone else in the community enjoy it. I've never heard of anyone who had tried your mod and reverted back to vanilla. I've convinced anti-modding friends to check the mod out and they fell in love, the same as all of us here in TWC did.

[Rugin84]

Ive been hesitant to start testing too much, as I am a graphics whore, and I really want to use the Clan Retexture mod. The Vanilla colors suck. Hasnt anyone read james Clavel's Sogun Browns vs Greys, I want my brown Tokogawas.

One thing, why can't Yari samurai use spear wall? Would it OP them?

[Mr Kami]

Played 50 turns of legendary Takeda tonight using beta 5 and AUM.
Oda and Shimazu where destroyed pretty early on other then that most major clans expanded nicely though i felt as some of them where a bit to defensive compared to what im used to seeing from certain clans.
Encountered the usual archer spam from Ikko Ikki that i allways get and i got attacked by Uesugi using 10 or so units of Samurai Archers and nothing else,other then that the armies i saw where good with a nice mix of units.
I still feel that the CAI building logic should be less towards tempels,sake dens or markets and more towards military buildings.
On another note if Oda are to survive then Saitos behavior needs to be highly defensive and none expansionist since they play a large part in taking out Oda together with Tokugawa.
If left alone by Saito Oda will destroy Tokugawa every time since they can build Yari Sam and love to abuse them early on and Tokugawa cant.
Either way one or the other will be destroyed early on so its a question of whos prefered to stay in the game Toku or Oda.
Well thats all i got for now gotta get some sleep before i pass out.

[papio]

Just wondering if scripting in more units like this mod (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=446184) does has been considered in place of editing the startpos.esf.
That mod doesn't seem to work with darthmod as is, (only tested if briefly) but I see no reason why a script like this shouldn't work.

[[G-Shock]]

4 hours campaign, beta6, legendary, Shimatzu, large/large.

Usual strategy, build 2 units, then take Osumi which sallies out during the siege and gets whipped as usual. ERGO: CAI still sallies out when it shouldn't (and we know ITO has the daimyo coming from Hyuga to help in any case).
Campaign restarted, same strategy, Osumi falls to instant siege (autoresolve) and I take heavy losses. Ito's Daimyo is nowhere to be seen so I keep recruiting and replenishing until he finally arrives, lays siege, he has 1200 men I have 1700 and, of course, he decides to storm the castle and gets totally annhilated which means Ito clan, is extinguished in the following 2 turns. ERGO: CAI still storms structures when it shouldn't.

In this campaign, as soon as I captured Hyuga I moved against clan Otomo (who I had seen attacking Higo and getting destroyed). Otomo had an army we had a close battle which I won but in the meanwhile Sagara captured Bungo. Immediately afterwards it declared war on me. I fell back to Hyuga to reinforce expecting the blow but it didn't. Sagara left Bungo undefended and I captured it because its 2 armies were headed for Satsuma. Naturally, since they couldn't be anywhere else (I was at the border between Bungo and Higo) I reinforced Satsuma which, luckily had the castle level2.

With a huge advantage in numbers, it made sense for Sagara to storm my castle. Half of my units were garrison but since the 2 armies attacked separately and their generals (which for christ's sake are so many and so useless) only attacked in the end when all other troops had already routed. ERGO while Sagara was destroyed in Satsuma, I captured Higo and this is another clan that gets destroyed silly.
BAI notes: With the AI splitting forces to attack the castle, one side always only has bow ashigaru. You shoot arrows to yari, man the walls and meanwhile send the general and whip the undefended bow units. Simple as that and done twice, both with the 1st and with the 2nd army. BAI should try to use at least the 2nd and 3rd general when it still has a chance. The way it is now the more generals it has in the army the less units it commits to combat... then, ironically, once all units are routed, the generals dismount and come to die at my walls.... great job creative assembly. The BAI strategy is always the same. Bows shoot when ammo is over they storm. Melee storm, cavalry watches, when everyone else is dead they come to suicide.

Next I move to Hizen, Ouchi has been watching what happened in Kyushu without moving a single finger... and he has no troops. Might as well delete this clan from the game and put the rebels there... as usual, 3 turns. In 1 turn falls Hizen, 2nd turn falls Tsukushima, 3rd turn Buzen and Kyushu is mine. Sieges sustained 2 both won (Satsuma and Osumi), Sieges performed 1 per region conquered and NO offensive sieges lost.

So my considerations:

If characters, armies and ships were allowed to move farther (the turn is 4 months eh), the AI could respond from farther away (it took too long both for Ito to help Osumi and for Sagara to strike Satsuma) and lenght of movement for the ships is the pre-requisite for naval invasions I suppose.
The result things being what they are is that both operations failed for the AI.

The inadeguacy of CAI's building logics are quite evident. In this system, differently from STW, you can build one building per castle level. If the CAI chooses to build civil buildings, it's obvious that all it can employ is weak ashigaru units. At the beginning this is a devastating weakness for the AI against the player. Considering so that it takes castle lev2 to build a dojo (of any kind) and that most samurai units 2 turns to recruit + God knows how many to deploy in armies on the field I guess you all understand why the AI is so weak.

It means that while I am conquering one region after the other, the AI is building a market first (2 turns) then a castle lev 2 (3 turns) a dojo (2 more turns) and 1 samurai unit (2 more turns) it's almost 2 years time to recruit a samurai class that was born with the sword in hand much earlier than the Sengoku Jidai struck Japan (samurai units should deploy instantly, they don't need as much training as ashigaru unless you are recruiting 1+xp samurai) and this time doesn't include the extra time needed for one of these units to reach an army on the field, depending on its distance from the recruiting center.
Meanwhile that army is dead and buried of course... not once, 20 times in a row. You make 20 campaigns you will win 20 times against this AI.

This building priority the AI has is evident when you conquer AI regions because you find Sake dens, Markets, etc.Ouchi even had a Rice exchange. You are being ALL overrun by Shimatzu and you have Rice exchange but where are your soldiers? Did you know, sir, that this is the age of the country at war?
I also believe the AI spends most of its funds improperly with building huge fleets and the example is Ouchi which loses in 3 turns all its possessions so I am not even interested in killing their fleets. Ouchi is definitely the most disappointing CAI logic in the game. It sits there and does nothing until it's killed.

The efforts from beta5 to 6 might have changed things a bit in regards with the AI storming structures when it doesn't have the manpower... if you consider in beta 5 it lost the same way @ Osumi with 1100 vs 1800 this time it lost 1200 vs 1700 but, ideally, it's not just the men but what kind of men you employ and I suppose you wouldn't strike a castle if you didn't have at least (and I say at least) twice the number of the defenders. To this end, I still believe the garrison is a good idea and it's ok that the bigger the castle the more numerous the units garrisoning it but do mind I have beaten 2 armies at legendary level in defense @ Satsuma and my castle had 5 units + the garrison (numerically being equal to the army inside). I say the unit numbers of bow ashigaru garrison and yari ashigaru garrison should be reduced by 50% and that includes the retainers.

Final note: Hojo declared war on me. Never did anything. I tried to sue for peace offering up to 3000k. I didn't attack any ally it had, we never crossed swords, no point in refusing... no point in even declaring war for that matter... why a "war!" -140 modifier if it's them declaring war on me? No reason and no way to get out of it... seemingly.

[DARTH VADER]

Tonight I will try to find time to finalise this open beta. I am close to perfect this. Thank you all for these 1st reports... I envy you Kami for your playing hours... I want to enjoy my mod and cannot.

[Rome101]

Exams? GF? Work? Family?

Whichever the reasons, I assure you, you'll have great fun playing your mod

[olliehax]

IM revising biology atm so i was just wondering can i just extract in to the shogun directory and install or does it need a clean install of DMS? beta 6 i mean

[[G-Shock]]

I have very limited time too ... woke up at 4 am so I played till time to report and then go to work. Now I am back home, lunch break before going again and I can't play because the game crashes AGAIN at startup just a moment before the intro video launches. I honestly don't feel like waiting 3 hours for the game to be redownloaded and 30 more minutes to reinstall it. You spoke of validation? I entered the game key again but it didn't work this time... Steam really pisses me off... any quick tips, guys? I am quite discouraged... there seem to be dozens of people out there with my same issue on the tech forums...

EDIT: Of course the game has been regularly bought and PAID.

[Mr Kami]

I have very limited time too ... woke up at 4 am so I played till time to report and then go to work. Now I am back home, lunch break before going again and I can't play because the game crashes AGAIN at startup just a moment before the intro video launches. I honestly don't feel like waiting 3 hours for the game to be redownloaded and 30 more minutes to reinstall it. You spoke of validation? I entered the game key again but it didn't work this time... Steam really pisses me off... any quick tips, guys? I am quite discouraged... there seem to be dozens of people out there with my same issue on the tech forums...

EDIT: Of course the game has been regularly bought and PAID.

Right click Shogun in the steam client library go to properties/local files/verify integrity of game cache.
This will take 10-15minutes to do.

Darth,yes i get that alot 470 hours and counting
Its one of the perks of having a gaming rig both at home and at work.

[DARTH VADER]

Also try this:
How to play :
Just launch the game by the official game shortcut or use the Launcher shortcut for more options.
To use the launcher:
-First Open the Steam Client
-Then press the PLAY button

For more questions & troubleshooting please post here DarthMod: Shogun II Installation & Technical Support

[SplaTt]

About launcher problems with steam - if you can't pass game with launcher, you can always do as I do - just first adjust your changes in launcher, then close launcher and launch game from basic shortcut - all changes do work.

PS: Sorry, but I won't be using proper names below - I just can't remember those damn japanese words.
I've played for awhile, and I can tell about Campaing AI it seems to be very deffensive. I was playing as monks bonused faction. About 10 turns after start of game I tried to atack my starting enemy on the west, but they already had almost full stack of defenders + garrison defences. I was not capable to handle this fight with my army which was based on bow units (samurai/ashi) so I've decided to go back into my castle. Few turns later they gathered full stack of ashigaru spears with few ashigaru archers + 2 generals and they went to besiege me - they lost, but caused me heavy loses and they went back to their provinc with their remaining army, which outnumbered me about 2:1 if they'd attack again.

I tried Normal and Very Hard dif. level, and on both Battle AI seems to work very nice, but there's one thing weird - often AI leaves their cavalry (generals) on back, just riding from left to right, like they were scouting for backstabing attacks.
But when I used my cavalry (also general) to go behind enemy lines and crush fighting units from behind, their generals still didin't take action against my general units. It took them about 30 seconds to react and try charge on my cavalry.

And one thing about diplomacy - it's cool and all, but AI still keeps making funny, not to say riddicolous offers, like : I have taken 3 from 5 of enemy provinces, and then they realize "maybe we make peace with this guy, huh?" and they send me offer, that I pay THEM 3000 coins to make peace with them...
Or in general, when I'm in war with clan, but no real warfare is going on between us (like ally declared war etc), they send me offers to make peace, if I pay THEM 1000 coins...
I consider it's funny, because if I'd want peace, I'd send for it. If they send for peace, it means they want peace, so they should send offer to pay me instead, don't they?

[olliehax]

Beta 6 on VH, playing as Chosokabe, ill give 10 turn updates unless something very interesting happens mid period.

Turn 10 - CAI seems more aggressive when attacking now, much better than beta 5 they arn't as cautious, the kono attacked me with forces equal to my garrison, didnt see my ambush army and boom i have there province, is there a away of making the CAI more likely to use Ambushes instead of hoarding and attacking, i remember saying the AI was based on Sun Tzu .... Sun Tzu loved ambushes. Also the Cai seems more ready to declare war, And they are actually attacking with a reasonable force, 1 more than i have, When i amassed my forces and they were outnumbered and outskilled ( lots of bow samurai) they retreated. So far Darth the CAI seems spot on.

EDIT: i CTD'd so erm no more posts from me, but i must say the CAI is alot better now.

[Rome101]

I for one never ran into a DMS-caused CTD. There is a sort of freeze bug with the vanilla game (it freezes sometimes if during the loading screen a Steam message pops up). But DMS-related? No technical bugs at all.

[olliehax]

well i have never CTD before and it was during the CPU turns, it forze on Amako and then CTD, i doubt DMS will never ever crash under any circumstances.

[olliehax]

Darth youve made Oda invinible, 2nd turn they attack me with a full stack, 3rd turn they attack saito with another nearly full stack...

Also during battle units rout when they still have 340/400 ( in battle i just did) men left, i think this is silly as they could still cause some damage, the enemy routs when it hasn't lost many men, seems a bit stupid.

[DARTH VADER]

olihax
Great!!!! Now I will check the update 6 myself.
Please people test this and focus on the CAI. It is very important.

[olliehax]

GOOD!!! because you will see if what you intended is not what quite happens, or it could be exactly what you intended, but yeah test it!!! its the best version yet.

BTW the ikko ikki are overpowered they have a stack with 6 naginata warrior monks by the 20th turnn now i kn ow why they have 6 provinces

[[G-Shock]]

Validated files, 2 files downloaded. Thanks guys, I had no idea but you saved me because I only use steam when I really really have to (which means, when gamersgate sells steam products without telling the customers lol) and didn't know of this option. Everything all right then. I see no new beta released so I'll head for some more tests with .6.

As of the CTD during the AI turn. It's a consistent issue related to vassals (not necessarily yours but the AI's also included). Be advised: Going back to DX9 solved the problem completely from 100% ctd if having a vassal to 0% CTD. Obviously, it's not DMS related CTDs.