Shogun 2 in a new light - Historical Sengoku Jidai (a mod you never thought Shogun 2 needed

[Biggus Splenus]

I had some general ideas for a mod I wanted to create for S2, so I came to to have a look around these parts to see if anyone was already working on something of a similar scope and theme and such. I've always thought the game never got the mod it deserved, of a scale akin to EB, and I wanted to try fix that. I feel like your mod's vision is similar to the one I had envisioned too. But anyway, it's been a while since I last did a big warscape mod, so I'm not exactly sure what's possible and such, but here are some of the general ideas I had:

• area of recruitment; units uniquely individual to each province. I believe in Shogun 2 this also means you need a unique building tree for each region?
• unique skins for the regional units; like you've mentioned before, to simulate the feudal system, mustering your vassals. Maybe some regional variation in the appearance of troops for wherever possible. I'm not very familiar with the period, but I'd assume that different pieces and styles of arms and armour were more popular in different regions (more referring to like eastern vs western Japan, not like Oda area vs Tokugawa area, because nobody wants to get that meticulous with unit research); there wasn't any intention to tie this into stats, just as something aesthetically nice, but maybe?
• some kind of manpower system (or just a more crude system of limiting recruitment of units?), preferably linked to a population system (I've seen population modding in TWR2 I believe, so not sure if it's possible in S2)
• recruitment in general; why do you need dojos, barracks, stables etc to recruit particular ashigaru and samurai? ashigaru and samurai were levied from feudal vassals, and they're going to muster together at their lord's request whether they have a fancy building to assemble in or not. Does anyone else feel me on this, or am I nuts?
• unit diversity; I agree with you. S2 wants a small unit roster, and to really focus in on what makes each of those individual units unique. Maybe a little diversity here and there among the elite units is ok to keep it fresh, but eh I personally wouldn't be phased either way.

I also saw you mentioned the Master of Strategy mod's campaign and holy moly it's impressive. I think those are all the points I had. Let me know what you're thinking. Subbed and repped

[Sara Temer]

area of recruitment; units uniquely individual to each province. I believe in Shogun 2 this also means you need a unique building tree for each region?

Nope, you not need, area where unit will be available you can select in startpos, and in other provinces unit will be not available to recruit even if you will have building for them.

some kind of manpower system (or just a more crude system of limiting recruitment of units?), preferably linked to a population system (I've seen population modding in TWR2 I believe, so not sure if it's possible in S2)

I would give teddy bear for someone who would implement manpower system similar to this from DeI (RII) or MK (Att) to Shogun 2

recruitment in general; why do you need dojos, barracks, stables etc to recruit particular ashigaru and samurai? ashigaru and samurai were levied from feudal vassals, and they're going to muster together at their lord's request whether they have a fancy building to assemble in or not. Does anyone else feel me on this, or am I nuts?

In vanilla Shogun 2 to recruit basic ashigaru units you not need special buildings (you need it for special ashigaru, like bomb throwers). About dojo for samurai - it training place and usually it was in japanese castles - so for me it understandable that we need it to recruit samurai

[Biggus Splenus]

Nope, you not need, area where unit will be available you can select in startpos, and in other provinces unit will be not available to recruit even if you will have building for them.

First of all. Love your work. Also, thank you. I'm not sure what I would have been doing wrong last time.

I would give teddy bear for someone who would implement manpower system similar to this from DeI (RII) or MK (Att) to Shogun 2

Hmmmm damn. I see. Oh well, I guess some other dodgy system will need to be implemented.

In vanilla Shogun 2 to recruit basic ashigaru units you not need special buildings (you need it for special ashigaru, like bomb throwers). About dojo for samurai - it training place and usually it was in japanese castles - so for me it understandable that we need it to recruit samurai

I guess for me it's a combination of 3 things:

• Because samurai are always obliged to serve their lord. Their service is part of the very foundations of feudal society, it's not reliant on the existence of a training ground in their castle.
• Buildings should provide much more interesting things than just units; improve the proficiency of your units (maybe global?), provide more meaningful economic factors (maybe global?), provide other buffs and debuffs to a region (maybe global?). EB2 has a great system I believe, every building feels like it affects the settlement in a dynamic way. I also like Three Kingdom's system.
• You don't want to have to wait to have access to these basic units, every clan on the map should be able to recruit ashigaru, samurai foot, and samurai horse units from the start, because it makes sense to.

I can see an argument for teppo units requiring a building, and some of the more specialized units.

I don't want players thinking "I like archers, I'm building the archery range" when choosing their buildings, because then players are essentially given one of four options at the start: bows, spears, swords or horses (in vanilla)...... which honestly doesn't sound so bad lol why am, I complaining so much, but anyway I think it'd be more interesting to use buildings as a way to encourage a more precise playstyle. I'd need a bit more time to mull this concept over, and I'm imagining it'd be hard to create a system like I'm thinking of without making it steamroll-y and too powerful (or on the other hand, bland and insignificant) but I'm starting to get a decent vision of it.

EDIT: sorry, I've edited this post a lot lol, just trying to figure out the best way to put my points across.

[Collateral_dmg]

I had some general ideas for a mod I wanted to create for S2, so I came to to have a look around these parts to see if anyone was already working on something of a similar scope and theme and such. I've always thought the game never got the mod it deserved, of a scale akin to EB, and I wanted to try fix that. I feel like your mod's vision is similar to the one I had envisioned too. But anyway, it's been a while since I last did a big warscape mod, so I'm not exactly sure what's possible and such, but here are some of the general ideas I had:

• area of recruitment; units uniquely individual to each province. I believe in Shogun 2 this also means you need a unique building tree for each region?
• unique skins for the regional units; like you've mentioned before, to simulate the feudal system, mustering your vassals. Maybe some regional variation in the appearance of troops for wherever possible. I'm not very familiar with the period, but I'd assume that different pieces and styles of arms and armour were more popular in different regions (more referring to like eastern vs western Japan, not like Oda area vs Tokugawa area, because nobody wants to get that meticulous with unit research); there wasn't any intention to tie this into stats, just as something aesthetically nice, but maybe?
• some kind of manpower system (or just a more crude system of limiting recruitment of units?), preferably linked to a population system (I've seen population modding in TWR2 I believe, so not sure if it's possible in S2)
• recruitment in general; why do you need dojos, barracks, stables etc to recruit particular ashigaru and samurai? ashigaru and samurai were levied from feudal vassals, and they're going to muster together at their lord's request whether they have a fancy building to assemble in or not. Does anyone else feel me on this, or am I nuts?
• unit diversity; I agree with you. S2 wants a small unit roster, and to really focus in on what makes each of those individual units unique. Maybe a little diversity here and there among the elite units is ok to keep it fresh, but eh I personally wouldn't be phased either way.

I also saw you mentioned the Master of Strategy mod's campaign and holy moly it's impressive. I think those are all the points I had. Let me know what you're thinking. Subbed and repped

Hey man, thanks for your comments

Well let me start with AoR. Like Sara mentioned, nothing special is needed for this, it's a condition in a table where you just designate a region as a unique recruitment place (and yes in startops also, it's literally one row where you type the region name). AoR will definitely be a thing in this mod, like I mentioned in OP. This system basically ties in to the manpower 'system', because the only way for me to simulate that is by putting a cap on units. From new regions you conquer you will be able to recruit a certain number of vassal troops (and your own of course). Like you saw in the pics this is what will give armies more 'variation', be it only really visual. When it comes to my experience of scripting TW games, it's a big fat 0. I would gladly implement a manpower system trust me, but for now unit caps is the only way. I would have to look into the mods that use it and try to reverse engineer it, if possible at all.

Samurai won't be locked behind a certain dojo chain. There will be a building that enables samurai recruitment (or at least the vassal units, and the higher quality ones like hatamoto), but the dojos will be buffing buildings. I'll try to make it as interesting as possible, but not as complicated as MoSS really. Also, I feel like there aren't too many things you can affect in Shogun 2 when it comes to economy, unlike Rome 2 and modern TW games. You only have so many factors you can affect, and cities aren't developed through a province system where they tie into each other, making things more complex and interesting. In S2 end game you end up with almost every city being exactly the same. That won't be the case here though because regions won't have the same amount of building slots (some will have more, some less), so you will have to decide what you want to do. And again, I'll try to make stuff more interesting when it comes to buffs etc.

When it comes to different armour, in japan during that time period the armour fashion was pretty much the same everywhere. Of course you had poorer and richer daimyo, who would equip their soldiers with better or lower quality armour. But I don't feel like editing every single unit (which there will be hundreds of), so almost all of them will have the same type of armour. Ashigaru will however have different mons on the helmets and torsos, sort of representing their houses. But, you will have your elite hatamoto who will be much better equipped than some lowly ronin. This will be represented both visually and in stats of course.

Like you said, unit diversity isn't too huge in Shogun 2 (which is why many people dislike it I guess), but that's just how it is. There will probably be some 'special' units in certain regions, like Red Devils and the like, but don't expect much more than that. In japan there are ashigaru and samurai, and that's basically that as far as diversity goes haha. Although, there is the use of horses. There was a difference here between the north and south. Northern part of Japan is very mountainous, so you couldn't use horses that much (and they didn't have many horses there to begin with), unlike in the Kanto region where clans like Takeda ruled the battlefields and were breeding superior horses. Clans in Kyushu didn't have many horses either.

I hope that answers all of your questions

[Destin Faroda]

Area of recruitment:
Fall of the Samurai has two units tied to a region (Kyouto Police for example) so that is absolutely possible. Some mods have been using this feature for years. You can assign a "region resource" to a unit. Only the owner of the region can hire this regional unit. Changing their colour and equipment is easy.

Manpower:
The feature is called dynamic unit cap. Again, this has been used for years by the Shougun II modding community. You can create recruitment pools and set maximum values. To hire more units, you need to own additional provinces.

Recruitment:
You could add all units to the castle building chain to simulate the mustering your Samurai and their Ashigaru, but depending on the amount of units, this could clutter the castle window with dozens of unit icons when you hover over it. Therefore, it's not a bad idea to have a seperate military building.

Unit diversity:
Actually, the game already has too many fantasy units like Katana Samurai and Ninjas. However, there are some well-known units that deserve to be added as regional special units like the Aka-zonae.

[Collateral_dmg]

Area of recruitment:
Fall of the Samurai has two units tied to a region (Kyouto Police for example) so that is absolutely possible. Some mods have been using this feature for years. You can assign a "region resource" to a unit. Only the owner of the region can hire this regional unit. Changing their colour and equipment is easy.

Manpower:
The feature is called dynamic unit cap. Again, this has been used for years by the Shougun II modding community. You can create recruitment pools and set maximum values. To hire more units, you need to own additional provinces.

Recruitment:
You could add all units to the castle building chain to simulate the mustering your Samurai and their Ashigaru, but depending on the amount of units, this could clutter the castle window with dozens of unit icons when you hover over it. Therefore, it's not a bad idea to have a seperate military building.

Unit diversity:
Actually, the game already has too many fantasy units like Katana Samurai and Ninjas. However, there are some well-known units that deserve to be added as regional special units like the Aka-zonae.

Yes I explained all of that in the comment above. But what I meant about a manpower system is a population system, like the 1212 mod for attila that so brilliantly uses it. I'm not sure if something like that is possible for Shogun. And I definitely have no experience in that type of scripting, but I'm willing to try. If it won't work, I'll simply use the dynamic cap to simulate it.

[Sara Temer]

Manpower:
The feature is called dynamic unit cap. Again, this has been used for years by the Shougun II modding community. You can create recruitment pools and set maximum values. To hire more units, you need to own additional provinces.

It isn't manpower, it just limit of armies. Because no matter how many times you will recruit samurai and lost them in one settlement, always you will have menpower to recruit next unit. Shogun 2 needs manpower system like in P++/DeI in Rome II or like in MK 1212 in Attila

[Collateral_dmg]

It isn't manpower, it just limit of armies. Because no matter how many times you will recruit samurai and lost them in one settlement, always you will have menpower to recruit next unit. Shogun 2 needs manpower system like in P++/DeI in Rome II or like in MK 1212 in Attila

Europe in conflict mod for napoleon uses some sort of manpower and supply system. And since shogun 2 is basically build on top of napoleon, I think something like that should be possible here as well. I'll definitely look into it.

[Biggus Splenus]

Europe in conflict mod for napoleon uses some sort of manpower and supply system. And since shogun 2 is basically build on top of napoleon, I think something like that should be possible here as well. I'll definitely look into it.

YES! I remember being active on here when it was finishing development. Jeez that feels like so long ago now. I'd assume it's possible in Shogun 2 as well then? The community just needs someone with the knowledge and muscle to get through it.

Manpower:
The feature is called dynamic unit cap. Again, this has been used for years by the Shougun II modding community. You can create recruitment pools and set maximum values. To hire more units, you need to own additional provinces.

But that's not what I'm after. Imagine if I wanted a unit of bow samurai recruitable only in the Oda region, how do you think the dynamic unit caps system would handle this? It seems like it'd only work if you have generic units spread across the entire map, not if you want an AoE system, where every region has unique units. Obviously I could just limit the recruitment of these units to a static number, but again that's not what I'm after, and would only make sense as a manpower system at the very beginning of the campaign (before cities start growing, land is conquered and pillaged, warriors die on campaign, etc.).

If it came down to it, I'd rather see a good AoE system with a non-existent manpower system than a crappy manpower system (compared to other TW games) with a crappy AoE system.

Recruitment:
You could add all units to the castle building chain to simulate the mustering your Samurai and their Ashigaru, but depending on the amount of units, this could clutter the castle window with dozens of unit icons when you hover over it. Therefore, it's not a bad idea to have a seperate military building.

I was considering having a new "Government" or "Feudal" building tree (not linked to any actual physical building), where the building's tier level would reflect the province's feudal ties to your realm. This would be to represent the process of integration into your realm, because it doesn't seem likely that you'd be able to call on the full manpower and resources reserves of a freshly conquered territory, the local lords and peasants may be a little grumpy.

Unit diversity:
Actually, the game already has too many fantasy units like Katana Samurai and Ninjas. However, there are some well-known units that deserve to be added as regional special units like the Aka-zonae.

Exactly the point I was trying to make, I must have wrote my point in a confusing manner sorry.

[Razor]

Ok here's a little update finally. As I promised some time ago, the campaign map. It's more or less the same as Nobunaga's Ambition mod on the workshop. There's still stuff to do, like giving the clans as historically accurate flags as possible, some new buildings for vassal units and a couple other things. Like I announced a while ago, I'm working with sorinel who made stronghold of the samurai maps, which you can already see on the workshop. They are quite amazing. What's a bit different about our campaign is that the provinces can't be upgraded. Now I know this might upset some people, and make you wonder why that's so. I'll explain. We are all tired of the siege maps from the vanilla campaign, which are unremarkable at best. All those coastal castles and sameish designs get boring real quick (not really surprising since there's 5 or 6 design for over 60 provinces). Well this has all changed now, as sorinel made over 60 new and unique siege maps. All those maps are spread around the campaign, which has about 210 provinces. And if we want those provinces to have the unique maps, sadly that means the regions cannot be upgraded anymore. I personally don't mind that though, as usually in the end game all of your provinces end up exactly the same, and you are spamming the same armies. We will try to address that issue by making provinces provide different number of units, and maybe different quality units. So all units will be capped, with ashigaru being more available than samurai, like it was in the time period. By taking provinces you will be able to recruit vassal units as well (like you've seen in the previous pics), indicating, in a way, that you have conquered the clan. I am thinking about making the vassal units smaller in size, which then you can maybe increase by upgrading certain buildings. Vassals in armies usually comprised of smaller numbers, with each daimyo commanding their own regiments. So we will try to at least artificially represent that. I think it will work out pretty good.

As far as units go, I've made most of the textures I want (though I can't seem to stop making new ones ). I still want to extract the unique sashimonos from the hero units DLC so I can use them on hatamoto units, but unfortunately I don't have the uu3d program. So If you have the program or know someone who does, I would be extremely grateful if they could extract the models for me. Thanks for reading, and for being patient

Without further ado, some pics of the campaign map:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Nice map! I recognize a lot.

It's a sensible idea to not allow provinces to be upgraded to keep some kind of variety. What you could try as well is making upgrading settlements really really expensive, though I'm not sure how the AI in S2TW will deal with this. Also, that's quite a number of unique castles there. Really nice! I also like your idea to prevent regions from ending up being identical to one another. I'm struggling with this myself as well for my own M2TW mod, although in M2TW we have a lot more building slots to work with.

[Collateral_dmg]

Nice map! I recognize a lot.

It's a sensible idea to not allow provinces to be upgraded to keep some kind of variety. What you could try as well is making upgrading settlements really really expensive, though I'm not sure how the AI in S2TW will deal with this. Also, that's quite a number of unique castles there. Really nice! I also like your idea to prevent regions from ending up being identical to one another. I'm struggling with this myself as well for my own M2TW mod, although in M2TW we have a lot more building slots to work with.

Yea the map is pretty good, I think it's a guy from japan actually that made it for his own mod, but I could be wrong.

I'm not sure about the AI either, things can get a bit finicky when you start modding stuff and giving values to variables that are originally not even close to yours. But we'll see. And yea having provinces limited in 'size' is cool I think. As far as I understand, it's actually a byproduct of giving the province a unique map, so it's like an extra bonus for making the campaign more varied

[Collateral_dmg]

Here's a little update that some people might find cool.

Since the game came out all that time ago, many were a bit saddened that a particular piece of armour didn't make it, that being the well known tatami-do. Well now that has changed, as tatami do made it's way to the mod (a big thank you to Maloskero who sent his models)!

Here's a couple examples:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Palaiogos]

Will this mod have new scripts?

[Sonatametalera]

I've been watching the development since you started, I'm amazed and happy that this is finally done.If you need monetary help I am willing to support, and if the mod asked to change the language of the game I would like to help make a translation into Spanish. :lengua:
I've been watching the development since you started, I'm amazed and happy that this is finally done.If you need monetary help I am willing to support, and if the mod asked to change the language of the game I would like to help make a translation into Spanish.

[Collateral_dmg]

Will this mod have new scripts?

I have no experience with scripting, so not really. Maybe if I figure some stuff out I can update and release new versions of the mod. We will see.

I've been watching the development since you started, I'm amazed and happy that this is finally done.If you need monetary help I am willing to support, and if the mod asked to change the language of the game I would like to help make a translation into Spanish. :lengua:
I've been watching the development since you started, I'm amazed and happy that this is finally done.If you need monetary help I am willing to support, and if the mod asked to change the language of the game I would like to help make a translation into Spanish.

Tnx I'm glad you like it.

I definitely don't need financial support, but it's kind of you to offer As for translations, it's not really needed as units will have japanese names, we're trying to be as authentic as possible.

[Collateral_dmg]

Hey all, hope you are all safe and healthy

Time for a little update again. A lot of progress was made in terms of designing new textures, weapons, flags etc. Also, Maloskero was so kind to send me his armour models, some of which I showed you already. Now he made the armour for arms to complement the torsos, and they look glorious on the models. So now I am redesigning all the units from scratch really (those old units from the OP are all changing). I leave you with the bread and butter of any japanese army during the Sengoku Jidai, the ashigaru!

[LordKainES]

Looking so good, so authentic!

[Palaiogos]

Are we going to see historical generals too? Like Akechi Mitsuhide and guys like that?

[Lupo]

About the generals would be a great thing ...

[Jake Armitage]

good luck with the project