I don't understand why everyone loves shogun 2...

[frenchyvinnie]

Hello everyone!

Today I wanted to share with you something that has been bugging me for a while. The vast majority of people on this site seem to be praising Shogun 2 as CA's crown achievement, a game far better than Empire and Rome 2. And I just don't understand this feeling, since so far, I've had far more fun playing those two games (yes, even the hated Rome 2) than Shogun 2.

Now before the thread degenerates into a flame war: I really enjoyed playing Shogun 2. However, after hearing everyone praise it so much, I expected a masterpiece far above Empire and Rome 2. And i just wasn't the case for me, which is why I'm so confused right now.

For instance, unit diversity in Shogun 2 is non-existing, unless of course you mod the game or buy the countless unit DLCs. In Shogun 2, we literally only have 3 different unit skins: samuraïs, ahigarus and monks. That's it. Almost all the units in the game are simply weapon variations of these three skins.
This brings me to my second point: DLC-whoring started with Shogun 2 IMO. It became far, far worse with Rome 2 of course, but CA were already experimenting with it in Shogun 2, with all these different unit packs that were not much different from units already in the core game.
Another of the gripes that I have with the game concerns its naval battle, which are just plain broken. Naval battles in ETW were such a blast that I can't fathom how they could have messed it up so badly with Shogun 2 (enemy AI not moving from its spawn location, impossible to board enemy ships, almost impossible to sink enemy ships with cannons, etc).

The purpose of this thread isn't to rant against Shogun 2 so I'll stop my list here (even though I could list a lot of other problems with the game). The purpose of this thread is to find out what I missed about the game. Because so far, I've had more fun playing Rome 2 than Shogun 2, which confuses me greatly.

By playing Shogun 2, I've also realized that a lot of the things we complained about in Rome 2 were already present in Shogun 2, such as the DLC-whoring, the poor siege and naval AI, the unit diversity, the UI, the encyclopedia, etc. And I believe that some of the responsibility for R2TW's failure lies with us gamers, for if we had voiced those concerns when S2TW came out, then maybe CA wouldn't have made such a mess of Rome 2.

[Diocle]

Just few of the innumerable wonderful aspects of Shogun 2:


The atmosphere in Shogun 2 is awesome.
The lights in Shogun 2 are awesome.
The units in Shogun 2 are perfect, good armors, great details, good textiles and so on.
Buildings and vegetation are almost perfect (even though I wish real towns, instead of castles)
The colors in Shogun 2 are perfect, the colors in Rome 2 are disgusting.
Warscape in Shogun 2 works well (don't ask me why, I don't know!), Warscape in Rome 2 and Attila is a real total crap.
Even the most idiotic feature of ANY TW game, that is, sieges, are better in Shogun 2, where, at least, AI is able to finish a siege.
Recruitment in Shogun 2 is good and working.
Family trees in Shogun 2 is working well and interesting.
The three Campaigns in Shogun 2 are very interesting, challenging and in some way even historically accurate.
The Campaign maps in Shogun 2 are artistic creations built with a great aesthetic good taste and visually pleasing.
The gameplay in Shogun 2 is working well, challenging but realistic, OK, you jump from one town to the nearest, as in Rome 2 and Attila, but this is believable and realistic in the case of Shogun 2, for the peculiar geographic environment of Japan in the different ages of the three Campaigns.
The faces of the soldiers in Shogun 2 are real and interesting in their variety, in Rome 2 they are simply horrid! no words, a shame!
The battles in Shogun 2 are dynamic and fast but also interesting and challenging, while the battles in Rome 2 are motionless, the only thing moving in battle are the idiotic animations which are the real cause of the failure of Rome2.
The animations in Shogun 2 are working well and they don't look like what they are in Rome 2: idiotic meaningless dances just to please the teenagers' tastes educated by Playstation
Agents in Shogun 2 are working well (actually they are annoying as always in any TW game) and they do something, instead in Rome 2, Veterans and agents are simply an idiotic feature of a failed game.
The whole graphics of Shogun 2, from the interface to the loading screens, is far superior than the horrid and disgusting graphics of Rome 2.
All in all Shogun 2 has been the last GREAT GAME produced by CA, probably the love used to depict in such a wonderful way even the smallest details of the weapons and armors is due to a different personnel working on the game, probably who worked on Rome 2 didn't feel the same motivations for the historical environment of the game.


Anyway, you should not feel bad because you don't like Shogun 2, who cares if the 99% of the players here (and also who is writing this post) consider Shogun 2 a better game than Rome 2, what really count are only your feelings, and your feelings must be respected by everyone even if they are exactly the opposite of what 99% of the people here think.

[StringingTerror]

@Diocle You hit the nail on the head.

The vanilla shogun 2 was just more satisfying, more challenging, and frustrating. The last time I played rome 2 vanilla the enemy armies were starving themselves, always at sea with their instant transports. It was enraging watching transports fight on par with naval troops, even more so watching them move through the campaign map using forced march all the time, to their own detriment because they would get caught in a battle. and it wasn't even a difficulty thing the AI did it every time, even on legendary the campaign felt dead and lifeless like the sandbox you were left in had no flair.

There was no interesting event that could change your play style (christianity = gunpowder troops/ships), there was no tangible senate like RTW or competing roman factions vying to increase romes borders while also preparing to go to war with one another. It's like CA didn't learn anything from making their past games. They even took out the family tree arguably one of the most beloved features because it provided some start to caring for your factions generals. In it's place was some bare bones family house/ political system (I really wish they'd flesh it out). The political system put into place was a joke and it felt like a scrapped idea of some mechanic that could've been great. And that feature just taunts you the whole game if you don't know it's broken. My first playthrough I tried really hard to dominate my house influence (being teased with events)
but it doesn't do jack because the civil war will hit regardless. Realm divide isn't amazing but at least it makes sense ( too much power = civil war against remaining clans). The civil war integration was just plain bad, magical elite troops that you've never recruited show up on the frontier states? where do these men come from? I coulda used them in conquering the last 50 turns!

Overall as you can see I'm very biased against this game. But can you blame me? 2 years ago, this beautiful game was being shopped with amazing screen shots and gameplay trailers that looked amazing. And to add to that hype train was some quirky CA employees doing rally point on new features, while interviewing game devs and doing some cool behind the scenes stuff. look at this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWwr1D84VEM tell me you don't want to uninstall rome 2 after comparing those maps (carthage street fighting) and those promises that where never delivered. Instead we got capture points and neutered maps with broken siege ai.

I played emperor edition but I always played it modded (only logged ~40 hours vanilla pre-emperor edition), first impressions are always the strongest.

[Wraithe]

For instance, unit diversity in Shogun 2 is non-existing,

Yeah, what's up with all the units being Japanese soldiers? Where is that one clan, ya know, the Spartan Clan that fields Spartans? /end sarcasm

It's a game with only one country so of course the units are all the same basically. It's not a map of a whole continent plus a little bit of two other continents. IF they mad Total War: American Civil War it would be the same thing, all units being essentially the same. That is a complaint I have seen so many times that it makes me want to smack a person because of how unthought out it is.

Personally as someone who played the first two TW games, Shogun and Medieval, I was really happy when they made Shogun 2 because the first one was the one that made me fall in love with the game and I was really kinda bummed for a while that I couldn't play the new style of game play that began when CA took over and Sega got involved with TW: Rome. (Before that it was an EA game.)

[joeman_0]

The vanilla shogun 2 is very polished, bug free, and fairly balanced, except for siege engines

some people don't like paper rock scissors, but it's perfect for multiplayers.

It's my favorite game of the total war series.

[frenchyvinnie]

Yeah, what's up with all the units being Japanese soldiers? Where is that one clan, ya know, the Spartan Clan that fields Spartans? /end sarcasm

It's a game with only one country so of course the units are all the same basically. It's not a map of a whole continent plus a little bit of two other continents. IF they mad Total War: American Civil War it would be the same thing, all units being essentially the same. That is a complaint I have seen so many times that it makes me want to smack a person because of how unthought out it is.

Oh you want to smack me? Sorry for wanting to play with the dozen of cool and diverse units that were in the saints and heroes DLC. Sorry for wishing that the 50+ units from the darthmod unit packs were actually in the vanilla game.
I've played more than 70 hours of shogun 2 actually thinking about how they could improve these units. The resources were all there for CA to make a plethora of different units. Take a look at the Ikko ikki units for example, mixing up the skins of monks, samurais and ashigarus made for great looking units. Yet every other faction is stuck with the same units. How come Takeda cavalry looks just the same as standard samuraï cavalry, even though it is supposedly a superior unit? Would it be too hard to decorate the faction specific units a bit more to depict their elite status and differentiate them from other units in the game?
Of course I expected to play with nothing but japanese samuraïs and japanese ashigarus and japanese monks. It doesn't mean unit differentiation was impossible.

I'd also like to debate more on the gameplay of the game, especially the battles. To me, they seemed far too short. Soldiers seemed to die in a matter of minutes in one indiscriminate slaughter. The problem I have with that is that it prevents the application of effective strategies. For example, your infantry seems to die so fast that even attempting a flanking maneuver with cavalry is really hard to do before taking crippling losses. No longer could I feel like a badass general routing a superior force with clever tactics, simply because I didn't have the time to put these tactics into place! It could just be a false impression, but it seemed to me that battles in other TW games had a better pacing.

[The Despondent Mind]

Well I can understand your arguments, but you'r going to have to give us a lot more to explain why it's inferior to ETW and RTW2.

[Stincky]

Oh you want to smack me? Sorry for wanting to play wth dozen of cool and diverse units that were in the saints and heroes DLC. Sorry for wishing that the 50+ units from the darthmod unit packs were actually in the vanilla game.
I've played more than 70 hours of shogun 2 actually thinking about how they could improve these units.

if that is what you took from the above posts then do us a favor and smack yourself? maybe diocle can list 40 more reasons because the first 40 weren't enough.....

if they could of added more depth into the family trees then this would be all id play-

[frenchyvinnie]

if that is what you took from the above posts then do us a favor and smack yourself? maybe diocle can list 40 more reasons because the first 40 weren't enough...

If you have nothing to contribute to the discussion than post another mean comment like that from the safety of your screen, please refrain from participating in this thread altogether and go back under your bridge with the other trolls. If you are willing to discuss with us further what makes S2TW an especially great game for you, then I would be more than happy to talk about it with you.
Because I didn't mention Diocle's extremely valid points before doesn't mean I haven't read them, thought about them and is willing to debate about them further. There's only so much I can post in a single response without writing a huge wall of text that no one will read.

Back on topic: I agree with some of Diocle's points, but am in disagreement with others.
I think it is true that on a graphic and artistic point of view, S2TW is miles ahead of R2TW, with better textures, lighting, building models, fire effects (OMG so beautiful I want to burn that entire castle) etc. It really contributed to the overall atmosphere of the game as you said, which itself contributes greatly to the immersion of the player. Also adding to immersion was the family tree. Personally I thought it was the best family tree yet in the TW series (I haven't played ATTila though, I don't how they brought it back in there). I actually liked the fact that all that appeared in your family tree were your faction leader, his brothers and his children. Those of you you who have played Crusader Kings 2 will know what I mean. In that game, a hude extensive family tree is represented, yet all the family members that really matter are your family leader, his siblings, children and to a lesser extent uncles/direct cousins. You tend to forget about all the other, more distant relatives. So I think it was a good thing that the family tree in S2TW removed them.

But as I stated in my previous post, I think it's the battles of S2TW that bug me the most. As I said, I think the pacing is wrong. I ran a test yesterday with a huge custom battle with 10k soldiers on the field. The battle was over in less than five minutes (4 min 39 to be exact) and some of that time was spent marching up to the enemy, the actual fight was over insanely fast. I ran a similar battle in M2TW and R2TW, both lasted more or less twice as long. I agree that battles in R2TW are too static, and sure battles in S2TW are dynamic, maybe a bit too much?
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about the battles in S2TW and it's just down to personal preference.

[Akahige]

enemy AI not moving from its spawn location

Only if they are defenders

impossible to board enemy ships

Lies

almost impossible to sink enemy ships with cannons

Straight out lies again.

[frenchyvinnie]

@Akahige:

Once again, the enemy fleet rarely moves from its spawn location, even when attacking. The first enemy maneuver usually occur when I've moved my ships within firing range of their own. It's as if the AI is only waking up when you are in a certain range.

When trying to board enemy ships, what usually happens is this: my ship will grapple its target, then slowly circle around it, never actually boarding it, all the while being shot at by enemy archers. I've never been able to successfully board a ship in S2TW. My ship would just stand there being riddled with arrows and then rout or surrender.

I've also once shot at a heavy bune with 3 canon bunes for 10 min straight (again, enemy AI not moving...). The ship never sank, it just eventually surrendered.

I could easily jump into a custom battle and take screens if you want. But I think looking at those threads with people complaining about the same problems (among others) would be enough:

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...un-2-Total-War
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...aval-AI-broken
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1916878
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1805508

Again, I have to reiterate that I really liked playing S2TW. No one spends 74 hours playing a game he doesn't enjoy. I'm not here to rant against your favorite game and call it rubbish. I'm here to discuss some flaws about the game. I want to understand why, despite these very obvious flaws, some people choose to adore and defend this game no matter what.
What really startles me is that naval battles in S2TW seem just as broken as R2TW was at launch. And since then, R2TW has been patched to the point that naval battles more or less work (still a bit buggy and clunky IMO). Yet 4 years after launch, Shogun's naval battles are still desperately broken, and I've never heard anyone complain about that.

[Destin Faroda]

The vanilla shogun 2 is very polished, bug free, and fairly balanced, except for siege engines

- AI is broken (sometimes totally passive, doesn't recognize fatigue, constantly runs, sucks at sieges, can't properly maintain formations etc.)
- Archers are unable to fire over allies
- Warscape melees without weapon damage and secondary unit stats
- Heavy Bune has no oars
- Battle mechanics are broken
- Random freezes and crashes
- Lots of startup crashes (the Steam forum is filled with people not able to start the game)
- DLC units are overpowered (gun cavalry)
etc.

some people don't like paper rock scissors, but it's perfect for multiplayers.

Many people expect tactics and strategy from a wargame and not simple rock paper scissor mechanics. Besides, MP is broken due to OP units (gun cavalry) and cheat buffs. Mods can fix that though.

But as I stated in my previous post, I think it's the battles of S2TW that bug me the most.

Indeed. S2TW has the worst battle mechanics I've ever seen and it took me quite some time to fix them. Jet-pack horses, high-speed infantry and 5 second long melees actually prevent you from using complex maneuvers and tactics.

Straight out lies again.

If cannons would work, then why did I have to fix them in my mod?

[joeman_0]

- AI is broken (sometimes totally passive, doesn't recognize fatigue, constantly runs, sucks at sieges, can't properly maintain formations etc.)
- Archers are unable to fire over allies

Yeah, this one sucks, but I am not sure if it is a bug though. Some people complained that if the archer cannot see, then archer should not be able to fire. I have read in a post where someone speculated that the LOS was added to nerf the archers. However, it does not seem affect the AI, only human players. I get frustrated with archers that I have learned to live without them.

I never get crashes that you described though. This game at least for me has been very stable.

But if you have managed to fix some of the problems you listed above, I will try out your mod.

[frenchyvinnie]

I never get crashes that you described though. This game at least for me has been very stable.

I get the impression that the experience of CTDs in S2TW is very random among players. I've seen people complaining about constant crashes when loading up the game, ending turns, ending a battle, etc. For other people, the game seems perfectly stable.

Personally, I've experienced crashes every now and then but nothing too serious.

[Wraithe]

Oh you want to smack me? Sorry for wanting to play with the dozen of cool and diverse units that were in the saints and heroes DLC. Sorry for wishing that the 50+ units from the darthmod unit packs were actually in the vanilla game.
I've played more than 70 hours of shogun 2 actually thinking about how they could improve these units. The resources were all there for CA to make a plethora of different units.

I don't actually want to smack you but generally when I have seen this complaint it's usually that the units don't have the diversity of games like Rome or Medieval which is just silly because Shogun encompasses one culture as compared to a plethora of cultures. Now sure they could have made the units more diverse looking but they still made a good game and worthy successor to their original title that launched this whole series plus it is easier on the eyes when your guys are in different colour uniforms than the other guys instead of people just wearing what the heck ever colour with only a sashimono to tell the difference like they did in Japan back then.

As far as some of the mods go I don't see a whole lot of diversity in units either. Just putting a monk on horseback isn't really much of a change or giving an ashigaru a naginata. Some of them are just reaching too far to make more units like ninja cavalry, just basically a mounted ninja or they just give ninja other weapons like a spear. Then there are really laughable ones like mounted ashigaru. Ashigaru basically means footsoldier so if you put him on a horse he's no longer a footsoldier. Then to top it off these mods make them available for all clans which removes diversity further. The Sengoku Jidai unit pack and addition of Ikko Ikki and Otomo Clans as playable did give two clans with some diverse units like the different monks and European units as well as each clan getting one unique unit as well. When I think of diversity I consider games like Rome and Medieval as having diversity because of the vast difference between Western European, Eastern European, North African and Middle East cultures and the units they can field.

[frenchyvinnie]

I don't actually want to smack you but generally when I have seen this complaint it's usually that the units don't have the diversity of games like Rome or Medieval which is just silly because Shogun encompasses one culture as compared to a plethora of cultures.

That's a fair point. But to counter this, let's take a look at M2TW for example. To match the inherent limitations of S2TW, let's limit ourselves to one culture (take the Western Europeans fer example) and one century (like the starting years of a campaign). Even with all these limitations, we still have more unit diversity than vanilla S2TW, in a small fraction of a game that was published in 2006. Sure, at the beginning all knights looked the same. but we still had various different serjeant and militia skins to play with. And let's not forget about faction specific units like Genoese crossbowmen or Danish warrior monks or Venetian infantry which all had unique skins which further increased unit diversity. There is no excuse for CA to develop such poor unit diversity in S2TW.

As far as some of the mods go I don't see a whole lot of diversity in units either. Just putting a monk on horseback isn't really much of a change or giving an ashigaru a naginata. Some of them are just reaching too far to make more units like ninja cavalry, just basically a mounted ninja or they just give ninja other weapons like a spear. Then there are really laughable ones like mounted ashigaru. Ashigaru basically means footsoldier so if you put him on a horse he's no longer a footsoldier. Then to top it off these mods make them available for all clans which removes diversity further.

Another good point, some mods lack a bit of inspiration or are a bit silly, especially the Radious unit mod for example. And I did not expect to see mounted ashigarus in the core game, as you said it doesn't make sense. I was more specifically mentioning the Roots of Japan submod for Darthmod or the Hayabusa mod trilogy. These unit mods aren't perfect, with textures not always on par with the quality of the core game for example (but modders do all they can with limited resources, unlike CA). But these mods still prove that it was perfectly possible to introduce good looking and historically accurate units to shogun 2, with a large panel of new textures, armor pieces and helmets that we never saw in the core game.

My impression is that with some aspects of S2TW (the chief example being unit diversity), CA lazed out. There is no other words for it, they chose to be lazy on some aspects of the game. And because we were all so busy adoring their game and praising it, they felt they could get away with it in R2TW as well. We all know what the results were with R2TW

[Wraithe]

To match the inherent limitations of S2TW, let's limit ourselves to one culture (take the Western Europeans fer example) and one century (like the starting years of a campaign). Even with all these limitations, we still have more unit diversity than vanilla S2TW, in a small fraction of a game that was published in 2006. Sure, at the beginning all knights looked the same. but we still had various different serjeant and militia skins to play with. And let's not forget about faction specific units like Genoese crossbowmen or Danish warrior monks or Venetian infantry which all had unique skins which further increased unit diversity. There is no excuse for CA to develop such poor unit diversity in S2TW.

Leaving it to just Western Europe isn't even close to matching the inherent limits of S2TW because look at all those different cultures you just mentioned, Danes, Genoese and Venetian plus all the others you didn't specifically mention but are still included: Germanic, French, British, Spanish and so on. To match that limit S2TW would have to include the Chinese, Koreans and the various countries of Southeast Asia. To match S2TW, which is one country you would have to pick just one country, like France and then compare the units.

[frenchyvinnie]

Leaving it to just Western Europe isn't even close to matching the inherent limits of S2TW because look at all those different cultures you just mentioned, Danes, Genoese and Venetian plus all the others you didn't specifically mention but are still included: Germanic, French, British, Spanish and so on. To match that limit S2TW would have to include the Chinese, Koreans and the various countries of Southeast Asia. To match S2TW, which is one country you would have to pick just one country, like France and then compare the units.

Fine, fair enough. Let's limit ourselves to France in M2TW, using only the units you could expect to use during the first century of the game. This is literally the narrowest definition of a country's unit list we could get in the game.

At the start of the game, you could expect to recruit:
-peasants, town militia, spear militia/sergeants, militia crossbowmen (all of which have the same skin) mounted sergeants have a very similar skin, so we'll count them here as well (a simple gambison over the standard tunic)
-archer peasants have their own unique skin
-armored spearmen, crossbowmen mailed knights and voulgiers have the same skin (more or less)
-Merchant militia has a unique skin
-feudal knights/bodyguards have the same skin

We already have five different unit skins for one single faction at the very start of the game. I haven't even mentioned order knights, mercenaries and armor upgrades yet (all of which can be obtained at the start of the game).
By the end of the game, using only late game units (this means discounting chain mails, gambisons and simple tunics like the skins above), France can field 15 different unit skins.

What do we get in S2TW? I've said it before: ashigarus, samuraïs and monks. We could maybe also throw in onna bushi, although you only get them very late in the game and I've never managed to field them in large numbers in my campaigns. so I'm reluctant to count them in. What about great guard and hero samuraïs? Same problem, you only get them for a very limited amount of time in your campaign, besides, they're unique units, you only get one of each, you're still going to be stuck fighting with nothing but ashigarus, samuraïs and monks.

And this is only considering armor skins. We haven't even mentioned weapons yet. In S2TW, we get to see katanas, no-dachis, yaginatas, two types of yaris (ashigaru yari and ksamuraï yari) and nothing else. Where are onos (japanese axe)? How about kusarigamas (chain sickles) kamas (another kind of sickle) or Wakisahis (short-sword katana)? How about simply different shapes of blades within a single yaginata unit???

[gyabo]

I am guessing Shogun 2 time period is quite exotic. That's why people love it.

Also DLC and expansion of this game is well done like playing Ikko Ikki causing my monk cause unrest have an instant army if successful and the Hattori campaign is quite challenging due of high upkeep of my army but using night battles and ninja agent won me a great campaign.

Also w/ Fall of Samurai, CA perfected the musket battle in that expansion but it still got an annoying bug that you cannot kill artillery crew while moving their cannons. Hopefully CA would start support their older products and start updating them. I think people will forgive them with there shady business practice.

Siege battle is well done due AI will open different front to attack you compared to Rome 2 and Attila, yes you could torch gates but well AI cannot use this ability. In Rome 2 Ai seems capable of creating two front assault during siege and not capable enough to use siege engine. Personally Rome 2 Ai have some improvement with this due AI can now torch gates aside from the player.

Agreed w/ lack of unit diversity and shady unit packs.

If we are going to compare to Shogun 2 to Medieval 2.

Hands down i am gonna say Medieval 2 is the best due to diplomacy and it features.

Seriously just look at the Crusades feature, black death, mongol invasion, pope diplomacy, discovering America, well done general speeches and etc. That Medieval 2 got a lot of features compared to the new version release by CA w/ Sega. Yes Medieval 2 is not a perfect game due you cannot destroy the freaking vatican but well you can assassinate the pope or trick the pope to use crusades against your enemies.

[Wraithe]

Fine, fair enough. Let's limit ourselves to France in M2TW, using only the units you could expect to use during the first century of the game. This is literally the narrowest definition of a country's unit list we could get in the game.

At the start of the game, you could expect to recruit:
-peasants, town militia, spear militia/sergeants, militia crossbowmen (all of which have the same skin) mounted sergeants have a very similar skin, so we'll count them here as well (a simple gambison over the standard tunic)
-archer peasants have their own unique skin
-armored spearmen, crossbowmen mailed knights and voulgiers have the same skin (more or less)
-Merchant militia has a unique skin
-feudal knights/bodyguards have the same skin

We already have five different unit skins for one single faction at the very start of the game. I haven't even mentioned order knights, mercenaries and armor upgrades yet (all of which can be obtained at the start of the game).
By the end of the game, using only late game units (this means discounting chain mails, gambisons and simple tunics like the skins above), France can field 15 different unit skins.

What do we get in S2TW? I've said it before: ashigarus, samuraïs and monks. We could maybe also throw in onna bushi, although you only get them very late in the game and I've never managed to field them in large numbers in my campaigns. so I'm reluctant to count them in. What about great guard and hero samuraïs? Same problem, you only get them for a very limited amount of time in your campaign, besides, they're unique units, you only get one of each, you're still going to be stuck fighting with nothing but ashigarus, samuraïs and monks.

And this is only considering armor skins. We haven't even mentioned weapons yet. In S2TW, we get to see katanas, no-dachis, yaginatas, two types of yaris (ashigaru yari and ksamuraï yari) and nothing else. Where are onos (japanese axe)? How about kusarigamas (chain sickles) kamas (another kind of sickle) or Wakisahis (short-sword katana)? How about simply different shapes of blades within a single yaginata unit???

You and I have completely different ideas on diversity. I spend the battle with my camera zoomed all the way out so I don't really care how different the skins are for what basically boils down to a poorly trained guy with a spear, which covers pretty much almost all the militia and peasant units. For me diversity is in the types of units each faction gets. Like some had more cavalry but not much as far as missles go. Some had more infantry units and so on. That to me is what I think of when I think of diversity so in your context of diversity you win. That being said, the Japanese pretty much had that type of armor. They didn't have the different kinds of leather and metal armors like Europeans and they wore sashimono (those flags) instead of surcoats with a symbol on them. So what were they supposed to do, give them European armor skins?

For weapons, a lot of those weapons were useless on a battlefield except for maybe the axe which did actually see some use on the battlefield from the sohei (warrior monks). A kama was a farm tool and not something a samurai would spend his time learning to use as this would be something beneath him. They were used by peasants and shinobi because that was what they had around because they couldn't carry a sword. Kusari-gama is just a farm tool with rope or chain added with some kind of weight on the end. Manriki-gusari is a good weapon but it and the kusari-gama run into the same problems on the battlefield, they get tangled up on things you don't mean them to get tangled up on. Plus against a spear or naginata or even a sword it's not going to be a super great weapon. Sure you can tangle up their weapon but that's far easier said then done. Wakizashi (also referred to as the companion sword) was like an indoors back up weapon. You wouldn't use this as your main weapon on a battlefield.