Play game without battles?

Hi all, it's been years since I've been active in this community (since Empire was announced) and have just noticed S2TW is now out without me having known anything about it.

I like the fact that the game has returned to its more fundamental dynamism as Empire seemed like a different game to me.

I was wondering, as Shogun 2 is pretty overwhelmingly demanding on computer specifications, if there is a way to reduce the memory intensity and graphical requirements as I only have a pretty basic (faaaaiirly new) laptop on which to play it.

Battles are really not important for me as I love the games for the campaign.

I can run Medieval 2 TW on my laptop and I can't see how the campaign map would require much more power to support it.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Should be fine, download the demo and see how it runs.

Thanks for the reply!
I really should have thought of that! Downloading now...

also, I've just checked the spec. on another site and it's telling a completely different story. Seems I might be able to run it without problems after all, but we'll have to see

I run it fine in small to medium battles, but with 3000+ men on the field I put Shader v.3 to LOW in the settings, helps out a lot. Makes the campaign map look lackluster though, so I switch back.
So my advice is to get it and fiddle with the settings.

I have found that the demo for some reason(maybe it wasnt fully optomised)made my laptop run really hot.Its not a top of the range one but has a dual core chip.That said running the full game its far far cooler.I have switched off and reduced a few "unwanted" bits in the options,such as Vignette and reduced the water and a few ither Scenic options(TBH i dont really see the need for these at high,sure it looks nice but it doesnt make battles better)I also have units sizes at medium,in my mind it gives you more room on the battlefield.I am a bit like the OP in that i use autoresolve for minor skirmishes,but i do play the full battles and notice almost zero loss of FPS.It might be a case of tweaking the options in the Demo and see what happens.If you can run the demo fine then i am pretty sure youll have no problems with the full game.

I only autoresolve the battles because I find fighting them tedious in a campaign and the BAI is still not good. If I want a battle I do MP. The campaign is a lot of fun as a strategy game without the battles IMO.