Sengoku Japan

[statusperfect]

How long does this Conquest take to play??

[MattH]

Some things I've noticed:
-The iron take a long time to get to! Jump on your enemies supplies early, if possible.
-Once you've streched across Japan, dig in and don't let anyone through.

(more to come...)

[MattH]

P.S. Did anyone else get a crash when the first Civ is captured?

[Stuie]

I finally got around to playing one of the Conquests, and first up to bat was Sengoku. I played on Monarch because that's usually the level I use for the epic game. I think I should have bumped it up a level for this Conquest.... I tore through the tech tree maintaining as much as a four or five tech lead through most of the game. This only narrowed late in the game when I wanted some extra cash for a mass upgrade, and sold a few techs to the Mori.

I started as Hojo, and found myself close to some luxuries, but far from any sort of strategic resource. Didn't seem to matter, though, as the really good early game units don't require any resources (Yama's, Sam Archers). I would need Iron for my Shogun upgrade though, so I set my sights west pretty early after REXing mainly north and south.

Long story short, I was able to reduce Tokugawa with my Sam Archers, realizing too late that all his cities would be reduced to rubble when the Shogun fell (I'm not used to playing Elimination ). So I rushed a bunch of settlers, blocked access to the former Tokugawa lands with my Yama's (love that 2-move all-terrain-as-roads) and soon had doubled the size of my empire. Then I moved against the tribes to my north, and finally pushed south for a domination win.

It was fun, if a bit too easy on Monarch. Guess I'll fire up a game on a higher difficulty as Shimazu ( is that his name? ) and try again from the other end of the map.

Two things to note:
1. My directions (north, west, etc.) are probably all wrong because of the map's orientation. Oops. They are relative to the view on screen.
2. I had a tech lead the whole game and no SGL!!!! That makes three Epic games (as a Scientific Civ with tech leads from mid-Middle Era on) and one Conquest and still no SGL's for Stuie.

[Dis]

here are my thoughts. I played a fairly easy level-regent. I'm thinking you have to play this scenario Emporer and higher. The ai was too conservative because of all the barbarians roaming about. I easily out-REX'd them. I had the lead the entire game because of it.

I just built up tons of swordsmen (whatever they are called) and horseman. Took the entire mainland and then went for the islands.

I played the first civ you can choose- Mori I believe. They start in Hiroshima in a great position. The city site is useless until after your borders expand, but it's a good defensive position. I really did not have to worry about defense on my backside. I left a few units behind in case the ai used ships to attack me. But maybe that bug where the ai doesn't use curraghs is coming into play here. I never saw one. And galleys come a bit later in this scenario.

About halfway through the island I relied solely on my armies and horsemen. The terrain was rough, roads were scarce, and my swordsmen were too slow.

The problem a human player has is strategy is really non-existant in this scenario- at least in Single Player. The ai always parked his kings in his capitol. I went straight for the capitol and in almost all cases ignored the rest of his cities. I was going for the conquest victory and got it- my first ever conuest victory in a civ game. This might not apply to higher difficulty levels though. Obviously if the ai can build up a lot of units, they could harrass your borders. One thing I should mention is aside from a couple of cities, I did not backfill the space. So I never had to worry about counterattacks on my cities. My cities were on the bottom of the main island far away from the action.

Actually I should mention I originally started the game as another civ. The yellow guys near the top on the right side of the main island. This was more of an experimental game. I wanted to see how powerful my Daimyo was and immediately attacked the first city I found. I figured I could take out other civs very early. Wasn't going to happen- I lost my king and lost the game . I could have reloaded, but I just decided to restart a new game as a different civ.

this scenario would be excellent choice for multiplayer. In single player the ai doesn't use their kings (daimyos) at all. This is probably a good thing as they would probably lose them and get them killed. But what I'd like to see instead is a mass regicide game to add a little more strategy to the human game. I'm sure there would still be a way to have a daimyo unit even in a mass regicide game.

[Dis]

Originally posted by grappleman
sengoku is one of the harder scenarios IMHO, but if you pop enough barb huts you can get a good early tech lead. oh and killing daimyo's is VERY fun!

strangely, it was my easiest scenario

[Dis]

Originally posted by statusperfect
How long does this Conquest take to play??

this game took me close to 8 hours. but as you can see in my post above I had an easy game. this game could easily take twice as long.

[Dis]

Originally posted by MattH
P.S. Did anyone else get a crash when the first Civ is captured?

nope

and with the horses. I never did see any on my map, yet I was able to build them. I'm thinking there was a horse underneath my city, but I couldn't see it. What's the command to reveal the map (takes away the cities and roads)?

[pauli]

ctrl+shift+m, but you could just look at your resources in either the city or the trade view, and see if you've got trigger staring back at you...

[Snotty]

I played Miyoshi on Monarch and found it all rather easy. I quickly grabbed the iron before my neighbour could have it and then proceeded to have a bunch of ossicilating wars on my 3 borders. Despite one of the AIs having iron I only ever faced stone crossbows so my Bushi and my Daimyo dominated. I got all 7 lux and swiftly lost interest. I got as far as sam archers and started rolling over another neighbour who was defending with yamabushi, so it was more of a challenge, but still

I really enjoyed this scenario early on. Had the AI got its act in gear and connected up its iron things would have been different. I was hoping to face some KAI when they started bumping each other off, but it never happened. Theres some replayability in starting over on one of the smaller islands.

I found the smaller MP map quite interesting, and will definitely have a crack at it MP.

[Aqualung71]

Got a query/possible bug here - please see my second-last paragraph below.

More than half-way through my first try of this scenario...playing emperor level as the Hojo (I think....still not sure after 270 turns? lol!).

A few things I'd like to note for anyone to share their experience:

First - this scenario appears to be epic game length, 540 turns. Is this right or has something screwed up in my setup? If it's right, the tech-tree runs out way way too early....around 150 turns if I remember rightly.

As a result of this, without a forced diplomatic result from the War Council (I was beaten by 1 turn in building it, but 100 turns later there's still been no vote....I think this may be because 2 players need to get to 25% size?), the game becomes a slug-fest between mounted samurai for the rest of the game. I've found the higher powered aquabusiers (spelling?) to be of limited use because of their slowness.

The one unit that the AI really uses well (much to my great annoyance) is the Yaba-daba-doo-ishu (yes, I have trouble with the names too!)....the guy that runs 6 spaces over any terrain with or without roads, then jumps up and down on the spot, looking like he's committing hari-kari! I hate this guy - he just moves in unannounced and picks off my workers every couple of turns - it's a real pain in the arse having to remember to keep them protected well inside your own borders. Also, with all the hills and mountains and his pretty useful defensive score (5), he's a tough bugger to pick off once he infiltrates your territory - the AI uses him to pretty much pillage an entire city's radius in 1 or 2 turns. He's also excellent for blocking civ movement and possibly precipitating wars. I'm thinking when I'm ready for the "final push" I'll build a bunch of them and move through my neighbour's territory (the leader, way out in front, who I've been bribing for years and paying for military alliances every time some puny civ from the west declares war on me), pillaging as I go and destroying his production ability.

The Ninja looks pretty interesting, being hidden nationality. He's good for building a bunch of and roaming through the countryside executing lone infantry who are silly enough to wander around unaccompanied in feudal Japan. Only problems are, he's too slow and his defensive rating sucks.....so all in all he's a pretty epensive unit that often ends up being a one-strike throwaway.

Now to my main reason for writing this post......there do not appear to be any buildings in this scenario that boost production (as in factories, power plants, etc). However, I've noticed some of my cities have 50% production more than the sum of their shields. I've experimented with the WLTKD, but it's not this either. This cost me the war council, since an investigation of the AI city that actually produced it showed at the time that it was receiving a 50% production bonus. At first I though this might be because of the difficulty level (Emperor), but then some of my cities started showing this bonus.

I'd be most grateful to anyone who could shed some light on this.....even if it's just to tell me I'm a stupid clot who's missed something obvious!!!!

Overall, a nice scenario. I'd agree with one of the above posts - strategy is fairly limited here since once the tech race is over, it's all about building mounted warriors and killing thy neighbour....however at the same time, you need to defend your cities well due to the ease of capture by the annoying speedy-gonzalez unit that the AI uses in the hundreds. I've certainly had to change the way I play - no more development of industrial powerhouse civ's with supercities that spit out MA's in one turn and dominate the modern age with combined arms!

Cheers!
Thriller

[Dis]

yamabushi? I think that might be the name. They treat all terrain as roads- so they are a pain in the ai's hands. The ai actually does better when it has fast units vs. slow ones.

I'm in the mood for this scenario again after watching the movie The Last Samurai. Of course that movie takes place after the event this game takes place in, but I still am in the mood.

[Master Marcus]

a great scenario of course, not the easiest nor the hardest,but like most of others, still easier than an epic game at the same difficulty level. I usually play at Monarch, and by the exception of Middle Ages ( very hard to catch on techs even with ''only'' a medium military ), I always manage to take a tech lead and much more sooner than a normal game. The tech breakers and values are specifically adjusted in these scenarios, in a way beneficial for my gameplay style.