Legendary difficulty, really worth the try ?

[CrazyHeadGamer]

Hi !

i started trying to do a long legendary campaign as the Shimazu, and unlike the other difficulty levels, it feels like you don't have as many tactical options. It looks like you just have one valid tactical option to pull it off.

what do you guys think about that ?


ps : I'm playing Vanilla

[Cruzz]

As a pretty much purely legendary player, I'll disagree about there only being one valid tactical option. Also I think you wanted to say strategical options, unless you think the legendary AI is some horrible beast on the battle maps.

[CrazyHeadGamer]

i don't have too much problem on the battlefield on legendary.
My main problem is the campaign strategy. The AI Get really big armies really fast and are not really open to diplomatic relations.

[Cruzz]

Effectively legendary diplomacy is just a more extreme version of hard and below, it'll be more aggressive mostly due to extra army size but it'll also give more for various things it values due to higher income. As long as you're not the only clan the AI shares a border with that it's not allied with, you are usually able to keep them from not going to war with you if you play your cards right.

[DeliCiousTZM]

Hi !

i started trying to do a long legendary campaign as the Shimazu, and unlike the other difficulty levels, it feels like you don't have as many tactical options. It looks like you just have one valid tactical option to pull it off.

what do you guys think about that ?


ps : I'm playing Vanilla

If you are struggling on Legendary you can always watch some of my Legendary campaigns. There are plenty of ways to play strategical and tactical. If you are new to it however and you don't have experience with this difficulty in general it will take some time to adapt. As with all things that are frustrating you either break through or give up. Only you can decide if you feel it is worth the effort.

[Altimis]

Really worth to try?

-Of course :p feel the anguish of AI overpowered overwhelming pains in ass and brainless stack another stack and another and another and another stack from nowhere out of the forest..

Yeah.. try it! you will forge the legendary or die trying it, why not?

[CrazyHeadGamer]

I started (for the forty twelve times...) a shimazu legendary. I'm starting to get the grip ! I'm almost the master of Kyushu
but I feel that's thing will go really wrong at some stage. It's like jumping from an airplane, having lots of fun falling. Then realize that your parachute is a napsack !

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I might want to start a legendary campaign, who do you recommend? Date? Chosokabe? I beat really hard with Oda and hard with Takeda. My main issue was just starting the game, getting a large enough army and invading a province is really hard; once I got 2 provinces I found to be pretty easy except for your super strong clans here and there. Is Legendary much harder? I found the main problem to be battles (cause when I autoresolve it became an automatic loss and I'm absolutely horrible at battles in this game/ never been much good at melee) so I pretty much have to send two armies to fight an enemy full stack.

[CosmicContrarian]

I might want to start a legendary campaign, who do you recommend? Date? Chosokabe? I beat really hard with Oda and hard with Takeda. My main issue was just starting the game, getting a large enough army and invading a province is really hard; once I got 2 provinces I found to be pretty easy except for your super strong clans here and there. Is Legendary much harder? I found the main problem to be battles (cause when I autoresolve it became an automatic loss and I'm absolutely horrible at battles in this game/ never been much good at melee) so I pretty much have to send two armies to fight an enemy full stack.

Go the Shimazu and upgrade your blacksmith so you can get gold armour or gold melee attack.

[CrazyHeadGamer]

I just started a series on my channel with a legendary Shimazu campaign !
I'm having a blast doing it, i'm almost at the end game and i'm doing pretty fine for the moment !
The first episode is already live.

One of my main keyword for the early game strategy was : Treason !!

[Toho]

I just did a legendary shimazu campaign and I have to say it is complete and utter ********.

I have completely overpowered everyone that I come across and I have to strategically plan my expansion because of the broken and retarded concept that the AI seems to not be bound to known as Realm Divide (**** you CA for making it).

what destroyed my expansion? agents. from. every. ****ing. faction.

they are like pests and come over and over and over.
rebellion here. rebellion there. whats more my elite agents are picked off one by one, one or two factions I can handle but not freaking 5! and I am only at war with 2 of them.
the AI completely disregards its own expansion while mine gathers an insane amount of negative points and what is more is that AI keeps spamming stack, after stack after stack and after ****ing stack.

this game is broken, you need an insane amount of luck to win it.
I hope CA addresses these points in their next game. I am sick and tired of a million fleets running around and no matter how many I destroy or capture they just keep coming back or sneak behind my lines.
oh and those agents that seem to level up 10 times faster than my own agents and all the factions of the map target my agents and try to incite rebellions in every damn settlement they can.

this is not difficult. it is just stupid, there is no strategy involved.
all you are doing is trying to overcome a retard that has a million more perks than you and is constantly spamming you over and over.

[Efix]

I just did a legendary shimazu campaign and I have to say it is complete and utter ********.

I have completely overpowered everyone that I come across and I have to strategically plan my expansion because of the broken and retarded concept that the AI seems to not be bound to known as Realm Divide (**** you CA for making it).

what destroyed my expansion? agents. from. every. ****ing. faction.

they are like pests and come over and over and over.
rebellion here. rebellion there. whats more my elite agents are picked off one by one, one or two factions I can handle but not freaking 5! and I am only at war with 2 of them.
the AI completely disregards its own expansion while mine gathers an insane amount of negative points and what is more is that AI keeps spamming stack, after stack after stack and after ****ing stack.

this game is broken, you need an insane amount of luck to win it.
I hope CA addresses these points in their next game. I am sick and tired of a million fleets running around and no matter how many I destroy or capture they just keep coming back or sneak behind my lines.
oh and those agents that seem to level up 10 times faster than my own agents and all the factions of the map target my agents and try to incite rebellions in every damn settlement they can.

this is not difficult. it is just stupid, there is no strategy involved.
all you are doing is trying to overcome a retard that has a million more perks than you and is constantly spamming you over and over.

Thats why i use the no agent mod and no realm divide mod to name only a few vanilla shogun is broken -_-

[Cruzz]

I can't play so I blame the game

Fixed that for you.

Man I wish I saw the AI having these huge agent wars so many people see them engaging in. 15 or so finished legendary campaigns and I honestly can't remember the AI being truly annoying with agents even once.

All the cannon ships seem rather weak now that they have great difficulties actually sinking anything. Probably wouldn't keep the black ship myself because of that, though it's silly powerful in autocalc if you fancy skipping a lot of naval fights.

[Efix]

Fixed that for you.

Man I wish I saw the AI having these huge agent wars so many people see them engaging in. 15 or so finished legendary campaigns and I honestly can't remember the AI being truly annoying with agents even once.

All the cannon ships seem rather weak now that they have great difficulties actually sinking anything. Probably wouldn't keep the black ship myself because of that, though it's silly powerful in autocalc if you fancy skipping a lot of naval fights.

Lol i have beat the game on vanilla legendary twice most boring campaign i have played just not worth the hassle gratz on loving it.

[CrazyHeadGamer]

Fixed that for you.

Man I wish I saw the AI having these huge agent wars so many people see them engaging in. 15 or so finished legendary campaigns and I honestly can't remember the AI being truly annoying with agents even once.

All the cannon ships seem rather weak now that they have great difficulties actually sinking anything. Probably wouldn't keep the black ship myself because of that, though it's silly powerful in autocalc if you fancy skipping a lot of naval fights.

I use to autoresolve them a lot, but now i'm enjoying them a lot. Just got rid of the black ship, too expensive !

[Cruzz]

Why on earth would Realm Divide, a mechanic designed purely for making the post-midgame something more than just the player steamrolling everything on the map, affect the AI?

Either you really are having the weirdest "bad luck" ever with the AI, or you are seriously overstating agent activity by them. Frankly a big reason of why Legendary is not that challenging is that the AI never seems to have much interest in limiting player agent activity or using their own agents actively for any long period of time (the other big reason being bad combat performance as the attacker against castles or bridges).

Anyway, there really is no need for "luck" in Legendary games unless you are trying to do things as fast as possible. Relying on luck for it probably just means you are taking far more risks than you'd need to, and I think it's a good thing the game is trying to punish you for that. Without placing artificial limits on what I can and can't do as a player the only time the AI tends to have a chance of making me "lose" the campaign is around turn 20 when the power difference between the AI and the player tends to be the greatest, a rush with all AI stacks at this point has on occasion caused me to lose so much stuff I've just restarted. Past that point, the difficulty goes down again as the extra recruitment slot and income just can't overcome the AI's bad strategical decisions.

[Toho]

Why on earth would Realm Divide, a mechanic designed purely for making the post-midgame something more than just the player steamrolling everything on the map, affect the AI?

Either you really are having the weirdest "bad luck" ever with the AI, or you are seriously overstating agent activity by them. Frankly a big reason of why Legendary is not that challenging is that the AI never seems to have much interest in limiting player agent activity or using their own agents actively for any long period of time (the other big reason being bad combat performance as the attacker against castles or bridges).

Anyway, there really is no need for "luck" in Legendary games unless you are trying to do things as fast as possible. Relying on luck for it probably just means you are taking far more risks than you'd need to, and I think it's a good thing the game is trying to punish you for that. Without placing artificial limits on what I can and can't do as a player the only time the AI tends to have a chance of making me "lose" the campaign is around turn 20 when the power difference between the AI and the player tends to be the greatest, a rush with all AI stacks at this point has on occasion caused me to lose so much stuff I've just restarted. Past that point, the difficulty goes down again as the extra recruitment slot and income just can't overcome the AI's bad strategical decisions.

maybe you are playing an old version.
I was fighting the Amako and doing well against them.
then the Imagawa who rule the entire center and declared war on me.

after about 30 or 40 turns of fighting both of them I continue to push ahead when the Hojo and Takeda also declare war on me
and send a navy with an army behind my lines.

meanwhile my nanban fleet is decimating fleet after fleet however there is no end in sight and finally I decide to disband my fleet because it was becoming a useless financial sinkwhole since the entire land of japan hated me.
after this the hojo land their army and start trolling my rear while both of my armies are pre-occupied in the east. by disbanding my fleet I got another army to deal with that threat.

meanwhile the Monks and Metsuke that I had been training in my cities were being picked off by the agents of 3 or 4 factions.
once they were all dead or converted the super ninjas constantly sabotaged my army so I cant move and the priests incited rebellions on 7 regions.

to add insult to injury the chesokabe also declare war on me and that is when I realize that the campaign will be over in less than 50 turns and for the past 50 turns I have made no headway because of the constant super priests that incited rebellions in my domain and super ninjas that constantly stopped my army from moving.


why did I lose? because of priests and ninja that the AI factions constantly sent against me.
meanwhile all AI factions had virtually allied with each other and declared war on me... and it was not even a realm divide.

[DeliCiousTZM]

maybe you are playing an old version.
I was fighting the Amako and doing well against them.
then the Imagawa who rule the entire center and declared war on me.

after about 30 or 40 turns of fighting both of them I continue to push ahead when the Hojo and Takeda also declare war on me
and send a navy with an army behind my lines.

meanwhile my nanban fleet is decimating fleet after fleet however there is no end in sight and finally I decide to disband my fleet because it was becoming a useless financial sinkwhole since the entire land of japan hated me.
after this the hojo land their army and start trolling my rear while both of my armies are pre-occupied in the east. by disbanding my fleet I got another army to deal with that threat.

meanwhile the Monks and Metsuke that I had been training in my cities were being picked off by the agents of 3 or 4 factions.
once they were all dead or converted the super ninjas constantly sabotaged my army so I cant move and the priests incited rebellions on 7 regions.

to add insult to injury the chesokabe also declare war on me and that is when I realize that the campaign will be over in less than 50 turns and for the past 50 turns I have made no headway because of the constant super priests that incited rebellions in my domain and super ninjas that constantly stopped my army from moving.


why did I lose? because of priests and ninja that the AI factions constantly sent against me.
meanwhile all AI factions had virtually allied with each other and declared war on me... and it was not even a realm divide.

He is spot on. But we are hardcore Legendary players so our elitist comments aren't always that relevant to the Normal difficulty majority. Something lost on Cruzz from time to time .

[Toho]

He is spot on. But we are hardcore Legendary players so our elitist comments aren't always that relevant to the Normal difficulty majority. Something lost on Cruzz from time to time .

am I spot on or him? I am not sure if I understand ur post.

[CrazyHeadGamer]

Hi guys !

a little feedback from my legendary campaign(s)

my main campaign (the one I'm recording for youtube) is in good shape !I already recorded 13 ep of 30 minutes, Kyushu is mine and i'm starting to spraid in the east. i'm really proud of me. In the mean time I'm training myself on my week points by trying other clans legendary campaign. I'm much better on castle defense and sea battles now, i was auto resolving them before (the sea battles), now I have a good fun doing them. I'm still very weak at attacking castle, so i alway continue the siege until the attack me on land or auto resolve them if I have a strong advantage.

here's my notes about what I think it's the most important (I'm playing the shimazus):
-upgrading your farm as fast as possible
-get a strong navy and capture the trade nodes
-get as much agent as you can and put them in your cities, they will be very helpfull after realm divide
-try to stay on the limit of realm divide as long as possible so you have time to increase your armies and your economy
-Do not hesitate to loot very rich castle (I did it twice, my honor is still good enough)
-send money to your allies, and always keep an eye on what's going on in the map, because your allies might get crushed by another clan so you might want to change you diplomatic choices

i find the middle game much easier that the beginning, but after realm divide, it's just crazy ! Still trying to figure out how to handle that well.

for the moment, I'm having a good fun playing on legendary !

Tell me if you think my notes above are wrong or could be better

cheers