Total War: Shogun 2 , released on 15th March 2011, brings us back to the Feudal Japan of 16th century. It returns to the Total War series' roots. What could have been a better time to release it than the ten years anniversary of Total War games, beginning from the game which it is based on? Now we can compare how well the Total War games have progressed over these ten years. Every game has introduced new features and made improvements, which open up even more ideas for the future. Total War: Shogun 2 greatly improves battles, especially the sieges, which many have long awaited. Now there can be even five level forts and castles, giving the attacker a hard time to get through. Naval battles have been improved further as well, with coasts and islands in the battles included. While Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War left out general's speeches out of the game, in Total War: Shogun 2 they make a return with 100,000 possibilities based on location, character, etc.... Multiplayer has been improved even further, giving you an opportunity to make your own customizable avatar. And with it you can fight all over Japan with and against fellow Total War fans.
Total War: Shogun 2 has seven downloadable content packs. The Ikko-Ikki Clan is the firs DLC, released on 26th May 2011. It adds Warrior Monk Clan, including new units and new skill trees for it, plus a new historical battle, Nagashima 1574. Sengoku Jidai Unit Pack is the next DLC, which was released on 28th July 2011. It adds a lot of new units, along with ten new elite units. In autumn 2011 Hattori Clan Pack came out. It featured Hattori Clan, as the title suggests. They have the most powerful ninjas and are skilled in guerrilla warfare. The Battle of Nagashino is a new historical scenario, where you can choose to play either as Oda and Tokugawa clans on one side, or choose Takeda clan and change the outcome of this battle! In 27th September 2011 Rise of the Samurai Campaign was released. It goes 400 years back in time to the Genpai War. It was a conflict between six clans of Taira, Minamoto, and Fujiwara families. At that time the first Shogunate was created and Samurais started to gain a lot of influence, which they held for many centuries. In addition, like the rest of the DLCs, it includes many new units related to this time setting. Soon after, Blood Pack followed on 30th November 2011. It included blood, gore and new animations like blood-splatter effect on camera. Next came Saints and Heros Unit Pack on 26th July 2012. It too featured many new units, such as Hanzo's Shadows, Gozen’s Hime Heroines, Katana Cavalry, and more! The latest DLC to be released was The Otomo Clan Pack , which came out on 30th November 2012. It includes Christian clan, new western units, and Christian monks who are more effective than the rest.
A year after Total War: Shogun 2's release, the Creative Assembly released Fall of the Samurai , the only expansion for the game on 23rd March 2012. Unlike the Rise of the Samurai Campaign, this expansion brings us forward to 1864. Western influence has started to grow in the Japanese islands just like in the rest of the world. While most nations have fallen victims to Western imperialism, Japan tries to become one of the players itself and prove that anyone in the world can become as powerful as the westerners. So Japan starts to modernize and industrialize, but the problem is that not everyone supports this, because it threatens the traditional government, which has ruled for many centuries, as well as the unique Japanese culture. These events led to the Boshin War between six clans, Aizu, Nagaoka, and Jozai against Choshu, Satsuma, and Tosa. The former are supporters of the Shogunate, while the latter three are Imperial clans. As for new features, railway networks have been included, which you can build and use to move your units between regions, but be careful because they can also be sabotaged. Naval units now can bombard cities and units close to the shore, while land and naval battles can be fought on the same map. New units like the Gatling gun and Ironclad are included, opening a chance for a large scale 19th Century TW game in near future.
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Additional Units Mod - Shogun or in short, AUM-SHO is a unit mod by Swiss Halberdier which had already been in preparation since 1st March 2011 for Total War: Shogun 2 demo, which is fourteen days before Total War: Shogun 2 actual release. In the coming days unit plans were already added, and new abilities made available for many units, like wedge formation for all generals. After Total War: Shogun 2 's release, the mod saw much popularity, being the main unit mod, and loads of requests were made over the time. Swiss delivered what he could with the best of his abilities, and answered to every question. On 25th March 2011 the first Vanilla units were unlocked, meaning that they became available in custom battles. Unlocking of more units and even ships continued afterwards. Not too long after that, the first custom units were made on 6th April 2011. In total this mod features eleven custom units, while unlocking seven units and seven ships, not to mention a lot of stat and ability changes, which makes this mod so great.
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Realm Divide Mod released on 20th March 2011 is a popular modification by Yarkis de Bodemloze. It simply changes the effects of the realm divide event, or in other words makes it more realistic. It gives an initial diplomatic relation hit penalty of -55 and reduces it by -4 points every turn. Later by popular requests, a version with a smaller penalty became available. In vanilla it gave -5 points every turn until it reached -200, making it almost impossible to conduct diplomacy with anyone. It's also compatible with Fall of the Samurai . This mod gained popularity especially after its release, mostly because many players saw the penalty given by the event too big. Some players have said that they are unable to even play the game without it.
Uesugi Teppo Ashigaru.
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The Rights of Man 3's first version, entitled as Road to Kyoto was already released on 25th March 2011. TROM3's team already had experience in modding for Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War , so a logical decision was to go for the latest Total War game. According to the creator's words, the main goal of the mod was to make the game more interesting. Planned main features included slower battles, harder late game economy, improved CAI, new units with tech and traits and gameplay tweaks. By the time they all were achieved, with even more features added. A significant addition was the extension of the campaign to 1640, giving you extra time to achieve your objectives. But the greatest achievement is all the tweaks and loads of fixes done to the game, what no other mod can offer in such amount and quality. It indeed achieved what was intended, having made the game much more interesting.
This mod also featured many submods focusing on various things. Alternative Clan Colours mod was the first one to be released on 7th August 2011. As you can see from its title, it offers new colors and banners for units, though models and texture remain unchanged. However, Compatible Retexture Project, which was the next release, had changed exactly that! Just after two days Unit Variety project saw the release on 18th August 2011. This mods focus is on unit details. Finally, colored unit cards came out after a month. It simply added improved new unit cards to the game. It's also compatible with Vanilla, so the player who only desires them doesn't need to download all of the mod. These submods were united on 21st August 2011 (They are still available separately). The purpose of this was to provide easier download so you don't have to download them all separately. As a bonus, it also came with a new music submod.
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DarthMod: Shogun II was yet another great modification by Darth Vader and his skillful team, this time for the latest Total War release, Total War: Shogun 2 . It was released on the same day as TROM3, and it didn’t take long until the mod was granted its own subforum in the hosted modifications on 19th May 2011. On the same day the old thread was locked. Over a bit more than two months later it had gained almost 400,000 views and more than 4,300 posts. After the subforums creation, it allowed many new threads to flood in and of course making the mod more popular than it already was. Like always for Darth, one of the biggest focuses has been AI, and of course he had done a great job with it. Battle and campaign AI act more realistically, almost like a human player would. If you think the battles were too easy then you will surely have to rethink after playing DarthMod: Shogun II. Illogical war declarations and invasions are surely a rare sight in this mod. Another thing what Darth Vader likes to do is remove or improve things, which are unrealistic or historically incorrect.
Sadly Darth Vader made an announcement in Autumn 2012 that he's retiring from Total War modding, but first will release the final versions of his mods. By his own words his mods are finished and well balanced, to what most of the fans can agree on. While this is sad news for the modding community, we still have his great modifications and their legacy left. His contributions surely won't be forgotten and will continue to live on. Let's all wish him luck with his future. But maybe one day he will decide to return.
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It seems like the 25th of March has been a big day for Total War: Shogun 2 modding, because yet another great mod, Shogun 2 Realism was released on this date. The aim of this mod was to create the game as historically correct as possible, while still keeping the Vanilla feel to it. Some players thought the battles were too short and action ends too fast. This mod took care of that and made the battles last much longer, simply achieving it by increasing morale, armor, and defense skills. In the result siege battles became an even bigger challenge for the attacker, while more maneuvering is involved and tactics have become more important in regular land battles. Units like samurais, cavalry, generals, and ashigaru are more powerful and more important in the battles. This is a perfect mod for players who seek improvements and small changes, but still want to have the feel of the original game.
Bow Warrior Monks Cavalry.
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While we look at these great releases in March, Radious wasn't lacking behind at all and on 1st April 2011 released the biggest overhaul for Total War: Shogun 2 to date, Radious Total War . This mod is separated into fourteen packs, which all can be downloaded separately. They all were available from the first release till the middle of 2012, but of course they are continuously being updated till this day. April 1st saw the release of the first three packs, Limit and Upkeep mod , Food and Slots mod , and Units Mod . The former one greatly decreases unit upkeep by 40%-60%, all units can be recruited in one turn and elite units no longer have any limit. Much more action can be expected for this mod! While the Food and Slots mod reduces the food cost for castles and markets it also increases farm production, and income of some buildings. The Unit mod adds eleven completely new and three customized units, and unlocks eight land and four naval units already existing ones for all factions.
In the next coming days, even more packs were released, such as Experience mod , Stats mod , AI mod , and Technology mod . While in summer and early 2012 followed packs like Recolour mod , Unit pack 1 , Sound mod , and more, and again each one having its own focus, which can already be guessed by their titles.
As the creator of this mod stated, the reason for it is that you can enhance anything you wish with this mod and want other things to remain as they are. For example if you only desire naval changes, then the Naval mod is just for you, which increases the morale of ships by 50%, improves the ship outlook and improves the naval AI. To date, it's the biggest naval overhaul, despite being part of one huge naval overhaul.
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A very recent breakthrough in the modding of Total War: Shogun 2 and whole Warscape engine was done by spartan warrior on 13th March 2013. He successfully added a new region to the campaign what has never been done before in all of these years. A mod which adds a new region is yet to be released, but you can surely see them in the future. As you can see, even now new things are discovered and made available for Warscape modding. We can only guess what will be achieved in the next ten years!
The new region.
Written by: L-Burna .