Help with campaign... about to give up!

[zyzz]

Hi all I haven't been to the forums in about a year.

I played the heck out of Empire Total war and it's easily one of my favorite games although I am not so good it. I played Shogun 2 a bit when it came out then took a break until just a few weeks ago.

I am having a very difficult time with the Shogun 2 campaign since returning to the game.

My first attempt, I played as Shimazu. I made it to the realm divide with 1 vassal allied with me. I made it to the Kyoto with 22 provinces and auto resolved winning the battle. I held it for 3 turns and just as that turn ended, my vassal broke our alliance. I ended up holding the Shogun, but he went back and took 2 provinces (he had 4 himself). I had 2 big armies, but had to defend the Shogun because I got attacked by 3 other clans with massive armies! It all went to hell from there. Multiple clans sent boats to my shores in my STARTING area where I had nothing.

This was all against a 'normal' computer on short campaign. I gave up.

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Second campaign I started today as Hojo on normal. Probably should have went with easy...

I tried a different strat this time of saving money and waiting to be attacked. I attacked the first hostile clan and eliminated them, then the second. I had 8 provinces and waited until 1555 to do anything. I saved up 10000 gold and went all the way down the combat tree to matchlock ashigaru. I was hoping guns would be helpful...

Well I built about a stack of matchlock and put quite a few of them with my big army. Biggest mistake ever! I tried defending them with spears and they just shoot my whole line down and the spears route. The matchlock then get hit on the flanks and they route INSTANTLY. Useless unit!

I managed to win a big battle vs Takeda but with heavy casualties. After that battle, Uesugi sends a massive army because I was attacking their ally 'Date.' They attack my fort and again I barely win.

I go back to the offensive with Date and start moving on there last territory. They come through the mountains and go for my undefended town. I intercept them and the battle starts with my massive army reinforcing a pathetic army in the fort. Date then surrounds my fort killing everything, while my reinforcing units are coming up a steep cliff and they get hit on the flanks. It was 2100 me vs 2300 them.

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So in short I suck at the combat. If I even make it to the realm divide I can't recover with the ship invasions.

For a normal computer they are extremely smart.

In Empire, my combat strat was a lot of good quality rifles with upgraded bayonets and fire by rank. 2 horses on each flank and maybe only 2 cannons to make the AI move.

None of my strats in Shogun 2 work. My units end up routing fast or taking very heavy casualties. It's usually bows in the front, move spears when enemy gets close, spear on each flank since I find horses die so fast. General in the middle or moving if he's under fire.

Matchlock, those Hojo siege towers, and fire bombs are useless!

[Altimis]

All right, let's see what I can offer advice.

First, about vassals, there are two types of vassals
-vassals that make before the realms divide
-vassals that make after the realms divide

They acts differently, the one before realms divide, they will revoked against you when time is right (RD event) so if your Daimyo have very high honors points (7+ at least) kill them now as before you about to hit RD because everyone will hate you anyway so don't care about bad reputation and your Daimyo have more than 6 honors points (7+) its will reduced by -1 but its still full 6 honors so its not get any penalty to your clan.

The one after realms divide, they will loved you so much, they will stay very friendly and help you conquered the lands alongside with you sometimes as long as you treat them very nicely by give them some money sometime, marry your daughter with them to make bond very strong etc. and they will be your powerful allies that can be reliable more than the one before realms divide because they will hate you, no matter what.

Second, DO NOT expanding too fast, if you try to act too much aggressively, you will end up go war with everyone and they will try to crushing you into dust in no times. About to hit realms divide? hold on, don't capture any more settlements for now, if you have war with somebody, try to cease fire! or hold defend against them until you ready for everything.

Try to take time to make up your armies to prepare for coming, make sure you have at least 2 stacks of fleet because you will needs it, really needs it. Make sure you create vassals after realms divide because they are your income (Trade + Tribute) however, you needs to manage them too, try to make them happy as I said above about vassals and you will get benefit later.

Try to occupied every mines as much as you can, especially Gold Mine, its big income for you when in dark time, also upgraded mine as soon as you can. If there foreigner came to ask your permission to trade with you, ACCEPTED them because many benefit from it is so many, your income will be boost and black ship will appears sometimes so you have opportunity to captured them, if you successfully captured it, you will pretty dominant the ocean.

The another good ways to make income, DO PIRATE! wehaaaa, yeahh send some ships to pirate the trade route! there solid income from this, especially in realms divide because they make trade together and one ships to raid pirating on them can get your income big boost like 5k+ money :p

Make sure you have Ninja as much as you can hired them and train them by sending them to saboteur and assassin, they can be powerful tools if you use them right especially you have full experience Ninja, you see big super overpowered army march in your territory? one Ninja can help you by saboteur the army and see them sitting in your territory until you have army ready to deal with them, make sure your Ninja assassin their generals first! make things easier to dealt with.

The important things you needs to do is before realms divide happens because if realms divide happened and you not ready for it, of course, you will fact the wraith of old fat Shogunate called crusade upon you....

[FalloftheWarrior]

About the campaign

If you have problem with economy:
A good starting thing is to keep all the buildings that the AI already built (except for certain provinces where special agent-buildings are present, like in Omi where a Burakamin Village can be built you should make sure theres a Sake Den there as well), in that case you will have the following benefits:

- no extra coin wasted on constructing buildings
- a good variation of military buildings

Doing this allows you to focus entirely on the military, and at the same time your treasury will increase very fast since you won't be spending much money at all when you have an army up and running. You will also have a huge treasury when Realm Divide comes, so then you just build up a couple of new armies and put them where you will expect enemy invasions.

Before Realm Divide the key is to keep other clans not declare towards you (no **** ), as you might know there isn't any problem at all fighting only one enemy clan. Try make alliances with clans on one border while you fight clans on the other so you can have your back safe.

Naval
It is possible to build an empire without putting a single koku on fleets, but that's not to recommend. Keeping a decent navy is not as much effort as one might think, the upkeep is very low and usually you conquer most of the ships meaning almost none will be spent building them. I usually have about 1 full stack fleet per 3 ports.

Agents
Metsukes are some nice gold diggers for your clan, as soon as you get hold of a market you should create a metsuke and put him in your richest province. (If you play as chosokabe for example you can quickly conquer all 5 provinces on Shikoku and have a metsuke in each province, here on the island they will be safe from enemy agents trying to kill them).

Battles
Since S2 is much faster than ETW the battles might be very difficult to be effective with the units.

One tactic is a spear wall to hold the enemy in position meanwhile you try to get some charges on enemy bows or general with the cavalry. When the spear wall starts to rout, charge in with your katanas into the winded and tired enemy units. Sacrificing some units might work better than one think.

Matchlocks are only useless when there are too many of them, sooner or later they will get into melee combat and that's not good when you face some newly sharpened katanas

[Artorias]

Maybe this guide can be of some use. All credits go to frogbeastegg, I do not own anything in this enormous guide.
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...-War-Shogun-II

[Altimis]

I forget another one suggest

IF you can, captured Kyoto at the last province before realms divide gonna happens

Example, if you captured 22 provinces then its will occur realms divide so you gonna captured Kyoto at #22 province

This way you will not got instantly declare war, this will buy you couple turns (around 20 turns depend how you treat others) before everyone start to notice you already take Kyoto :p

[DeliCiousTZM]

Look bellow watch Otomo campaign. Candy for everyone!

[zyzz]

I learned about the vassal after my first campaign. I won't have another vassal until the realm divide, if I make it there...

I made plenty of ninjas and metsukes. Early on the game they constantly died to the second guy I was at war with. He bribed them, assassinated them, or my attempts failed. Finally I had one good Ninja who was rank 4 and assassinted about 10 generals, 4 daimyos, and a few sons. It was still worthless though because their armies stomped on me?

Metsukes were 100% useless. Bribing an army or settlement cost THOUSANDS of gold which I did not have. The success % was not high at all.

How do I know when realm divide will happen? I don't think I will even make it there as Hojo. Uesugi and Date have pretty much pushed me in.

I don't understand what you mean on your battle tactic.

So a spear wall? So do I surround my bows and katanas with yari ashigaru using spear wall? Then if I have horses, I send them out to harass. If the spear wall is dying I send in katanas? If I have all my guys in a square they will be pelted by arrows badly even if I am firing arrows back at them.

[Altimis]

I learned about the vassal after my first campaign. I won't have another vassal until the realm divide, if I make it there...

I made plenty of ninjas and metsukes. Early on the game they constantly died to the second guy I was at war with. He bribed them, assassinated them, or my attempts failed. Finally I had one good Ninja who was rank 4 and assassinted about 10 generals, 4 daimyos, and a few sons. It was still worthless though because their armies stomped on me?

Metsukes were 100% useless. Bribing an army or settlement cost THOUSANDS of gold which I did not have. The success % was not high at all.

How do I know when realm divide will happen? I don't think I will even make it there as Hojo. Uesugi and Date have pretty much pushed me in.

I don't understand what you mean on your battle tactic.

So a spear wall? So do I surround my bows and katanas with yari ashigaru using spear wall? Then if I have horses, I send them out to harass. If the spear wall is dying I send in katanas? If I have all my guys in a square they will be pelted by arrows badly even if I am firing arrows back at them.

Metsuke make your more income when you put them in the settlement you want to boost "Tax"

Example; Kyoto have a tons of gold coin but tax wasn't enough so you put high level Metsuke in that Kyoto to tax more and you got more income like 40-50% tax depend how your Metsuke's "settlement/town stars"

About when Realms Divide, you can check it in your clan information (hope you know where to check that) you will see something like yellow bar, if its nearly full then RD gonna happens.

And Hojo, Date, Uesugi capture Kyoto, since they was all in Kanto area (far eastern) I don't think you should bother capture Kyoto because its too far, you still needs to capture Kyoto to win the game but not any soon.