FoTS Republic?

[PeonKing]

Anyone else feel kind of let down how they did the Republic in FoTS? It was more or less the same thing as going Shogunate or Imperial, just without an agent, and without the ability to ally with anyone.

I always thought it would be could if they added a couple of new units to Republic, not to make it easier per say, but to allow for a different play style. I thought adding guerrilla style units would be interesting, like having units capable of deploying out of the deployment zone, and with a few with the stealth skill. They would have smaller unit numbers, but perhaps being able to fire while hidden with a higher melee attack, allowing for stealth ambushes? Being that Republic is a single Domain having to fight against the rest of Japan, it would reflect having to change tactics between a smaller force fighting a larger one.

[Ceorl84]

Republic is supposed to be the machoist choice, all the factions against you with fewer options both stragetically and tactically. The problem lies more with how Creative Assembly have handled the endgame. Ya we're moved beyond the days of Rome's steamrollers but the solution has been to unite the world against you, which is only a stop gap. Would it be nice to have diverse options as a Republic? Sure, but conceptually Republic was only intended as a harder version of Realm Divide.

[Cruzz]

I liked republic as the masochist option. I hated the fact that you couldn't annex your vassals to join along for the ride, that you completely lost access to the shinsengumi/ishinshishi without getting any sort of replacement, that you lost all unique units and that you really didn't gain access to anything at all by doing so.

I did enjoy having the option even with the obvious lack of development focused on it. Would've just been nice to have some perk apart from "giving the AI some chance of beating you".

[weirdoascensor]

Republic Is The Choice if you want Harder Challenge.

I Find Very Often that Clans of The Same Allegiance with me already Steamroll the Opposing Allegiance, and Its too late for me to Switch Allegiance, So...

I always loved 3-way fights. Two Polar are boring...Too bad Republic can't vassalize a Clan to enter the Federation...And The Shape Of Japan is not Wide Enough...

[zhiphius]

i'd say republic, despite its lack of "convert loyalty agents" , is a welcome change. I only find it sad that the AI never goes republic if you go shogun or imperial Would be alot more interesting if 2 or 3 major clans attempted to go republic and take control of japan themself leading to a several sided realm divide.

As it is its still fun, shogun clans, imperial clans and you fighting it out =)

[DeliCiousTZM]

Anyone else feel kind of let down how they did the Republic in FoTS? It was more or less the same thing as going Shogunate or Imperial, just without an agent, and without the ability to ally with anyone.

I always thought it would be could if they added a couple of new units to Republic, not to make it easier per say, but to allow for a different play style. I thought adding guerrilla style units would be interesting, like having units capable of deploying out of the deployment zone, and with a few with the stealth skill. They would have smaller unit numbers, but perhaps being able to fire while hidden with a higher melee attack, allowing for stealth ambushes? Being that Republic is a single Domain having to fight against the rest of Japan, it would reflect having to change tactics between a smaller force fighting a larger one.

You're right. They should have added some more for the Republic, at least an agent and the possibility of creating vassals of your Allegiance. Don't know why these people are pretending like its picture perfect, because its not.

[PeonKing]

So are you all saying that you prefer that republic plays the same way as Shogunate or Imperial Vanguard, instead of actually changing how the game play works with Republic? It seems like a cop out to me, it works nearly exactly the same as Realm Divide in vanilla, but with a little bit more of a difficulty ramp up with taking away the agent and the ability to make vassals. I'm not saying that it would make the game any easier to add the units I'm suggesting adding some units so you don't just keep playing the game as if you were a Shogunate/Imperial faction without allies.

Essentially, what I'm trying to point out, is that Republic does something you could easily do yourself. If you wanted to, you could declare war on the rest of the faction, and stop using conversion agents. Now I understand you could say 'Oh, but why would anyone do that?!' well obviously to make it harder on yourself, sort of like how people will play only traditional armies. I think CA should've actually added something NEW to the Republic faction, instead of just making it play just like Shogunate/Imperial factions, but with more armies to fight, and cutting down some of the over overmap strategic ability by taking out your agents/diplomacy.

[Ceorl84]

No, what we're saying is that CA intended Republic to be harder by creating a faction with fewer features. What you are proposing makes Republic easier to play, because more features means more tactics and greater tactics means easier gameplay. CA was never going to go down that route. If you're not happy with that decision fine, but CA's logic to handling the endgame in Shogun 2 has always been to ramp up the difficulty. While I can't say I'm happy with CA's solution (I'd prefer alternative ending conditions ala Civ V), several of us do prefer a greater challenge as we find the endgame too easy.

[PeonKing]

No, what we're saying is that CA intended Republic to be harder by creating a faction with fewer features. What you are proposing makes Republic easier to play, because more features means more tactics and greater tactics means easier gameplay. CA was never going to go down that route. If you're not happy with that decision fine, but CA's logic to handling the endgame in Shogun 2 has always been to ramp up the difficulty. While I can't say I'm happy with CA's solution (I'd prefer alternative ending conditions ala Civ V), several of us do prefer a greater challenge as we find the endgame too easy.

I disagree, more unit choices does not always mean its easier. What I'm suggesting is to change it so that Republic's would not want to fight head to head in the open field, they would want to maximize ambushes and skirmishing tactics. That doesn't sound like an easier strategy than the current one, which is basically get a bunch of line infantry and some cannons, and you can force any enemy to attack you in SP. The way they made it harder was literally one of the most basic ways, just increase the amount of enemies, they barely even change it up for the player, just took away some tools, not giving them new tools that they would have to learn and require more complex tactics to utilize correctly. That's how they've dealt with making anything harder in this game, this was a chance for them to instead of just making you have more enemies, they should make it so you can't use the same troops that they do. If you want to use the same troops, just go shogunate or imperial, if you want to fight like a force revolting against two established government entities, take independent.

It's a limit in variety that doesn't need to be there. Right now it's like choose to fight from the north with allies, the south from allies, or anywhere without allies, you fight the same way with any of these choices. If you wanted a harder end game, you could literally do exactly what CA did for the republic without modding anything, besides the need to convert populations to the Independent faction. When they had an opportunity to do something different, something that really was pretty loosely historically based, is the odd alternative out of the three, they choose to just make it like vanilla. The endgame lends itself completely to being about fighting with large groups of line units and cannons, do you really think you would be LESS happy with a faction that allowed you to switch up the playstyle by adding more units?

I'm not asking for it to be easier, I had fun playing as republic, but that's because that was the first route I ever went. When I found out it plays just like a harder version of the other two factions, it was a pretty big let down.

[Cruzz]

I'd say that if they had interest in making the allegiances play out differently, they would've made Imperial and Shogunate clans differ more from each other. They are, after all, the "intended" course of gameplay, and thus more deserving of development resources than the republic option.

[PeonKing]

I'd say that if they had interest in making the allegiances play out differently, they would've made Imperial and Shogunate clans differ more from each other. They are, after all, the "intended" course of gameplay, and thus more deserving of development resources than the republic option.

Isn't this just rationalizing a reason to put in less effort? That's like saying the Republic was just an afterthought, instead of putting in additional effort into it. Without a doubt, if they added a way to change the unit roster, it would increase the replay value of the game, I'm just arguing they wasted a fair amount of potential with making Republic more or less the same option as Shogun/Imperial Vanguard, just without diplomacy.

I can understand why Shogunate/Imperial forces played the same way, because having to balance the end game of two different factions with two different play styles would be difficult, and maybe too much effort for a DLC mini-expansion, but that's where the versatility of the Republic option comes in. Instead of having to balance a whole faction of clans including AI control of units, you only have to balance the use of these units as if they were being used by a player. To be honest, even with all the improvements in the AI, they still usually do a shoddy job trying to ambush you, that isn't an issue if these units are only produced by the player, and will only be controlled by the player except in the event of a general betrayal, which is such a rare occurrence that it would be much less of an issue to balance than if you had to get whole AI factions using different tactics all the time. So, my point is, actually it would be a lot more effort to change up the units of the two main AI/player factions than it would be to just change the units of a small player controlled faction.