Shogun, Part II

[Youngsun]

quote: let the flow of the game and my strategic situation dictate my force strucutres. However, I do really love those warrior monks!

same here. Though I like Ashigarus a lot I wouldn't produce them much unless I play as Oda.

quote: As far as tactics, I am a very big proponent of using forest cover. I just love to station a bunch of cav in the forests and let the other player come to me. Since only about half my units are out in the open, I let the opponent slaughter them, but in piecemeal fashion. Essentially I try to get my open units to position first and engage. After the initial skirimish I will pull my open guys back a little and re-engage. The opponent always is ahead at this point because when I turn to run away, he can obviously hurt me badly. So, after about half my (open) guys are gone, the opponent becomes confident of his victory and gets sloppy. That is when I bring out my cav. It's great because usually I have withdrawn my open guys enough so that my cav charges in from behind the opponent.

I'm not that used to defence but if I'm forced to defend I wouldn't divert my troops unless I've got numerical advantage and it is usually the enemy who has it when they attack. I always do "head counting" before I fully engage with main enemy body so if the number shows somewhat less than what I've seen about the total number of the enemy troop I begin searching forest areas.
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited August 10, 2000).]

[Kinjiru]

Urban Ranger: yeah I ususally use the Ashis for scouting however, there is often a better choice. Let's say in one battle you end with a unit of light cav in which most of guys have been killed. Well, from that point on, this severly reduced unit is not going to be much help in a fight, but it would be PERFECT for scouting. So I try to keep such units around for just that purpose; they are very fast and do not usually need to retreat when they do find some hidden units. Instead they can just outrun the newly found bad guys and keep exploring!

Youngsun - good point about counting heads. I am usually to busy trying to get my units arrayed and facing the right direction to do that, but it would be a smart thing for me to start doing!

[Youngsun]

Anyone noticed "legiondary swordman" event can occur even you auto-resolve a battle?

[Urban Ranger]

Youngsun,

I am a big fan of defending. You get to choose your terrain pretty much, and wait for the attackers to arrive tired. If you are careful, you can repel enemies much bigger than you.

[Youngsun]

Well, in tactical sense defending is marvelous but for strategic sense I'm not so sure whether that's so rewarding or not and I certainly would attack whenever chances arise rather than waiting for perfectly planned defence using difficult terrain.

My play style is sort of a man gone bersek to kill everybody. I build many yari dojos to outproduce enemy clans and my endless bloody campaign consumes my warriors'lives like the cookie monster eating cookies. However I do enjoy defending and like using thick forest for large scale ambush.

[Urban Ranger]

Lovely, vivid description of your campaigns, Youngsun

I guess they could go hand in hand. A defensive game wears down your opponents while giving your troops much needed experience. Then you can turn the table by launching attacks spearheaded by these battle hardened veterans.

Which reminds me that troops don't get experiences, just the taishos do. Troops could only get better from strcturesstrctures or their originating geographical locations. This is a flaw IMO.

[Youngsun]

Haha you liked it? Perhaps the WWII German properganda leaflet showing monster mountains of Italy eating up all the allied soldiers would have been better description.

Troops do get higher honour(experience) through battles they fought. I don't know how the system works but they do get better.

[Urban Ranger]

Troops do? Hm, I better check. Too bad the manual is standard EA issue, which means that it tells you nothing important.
[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited August 15, 2000).]

[Youngsun]

I'm really suprised EA made that worthless manual. Maybe they spent too much time on developing better battlefield engine so have forgotten to make a manual more appropriate.

[Urban Ranger]

Nah, standard EA practice. Not that I have many EA games. For a strategy game an incomplete manual is a grave transgression.

At any rate, have you completed your game as ronins? What happened at the end?

[Youngsun]

Not yet. I don't know I just stop playing after my victory get ensured then start another campaigne. Maybe I like initial stages of the game more. There are more than 20 saved files but not a single file had a chance to be played by me again.

[Urban Ranger]

Same here. I just lose interest in a game when the others no longer have a chance to turn the table around. This seems to be an inherent flaw with strategy games. Dunno how this can be fixed...

[Kinjiru]

I think the only way to 'fix' this inherent problem is to program the AI to do the same thing a human player would do when that player has no hope of winning... simply try to take out as much of the 'other' guy as possible.

For example, you know how when a province gets taken over, half the facilities are destroyed? Well, make the AI attack provinces that it can probably take over, but never hold more than a single turn. Let's say you have 3 other clans on the ropes. If each of them concentrate on making constant raids wherever you are weakest, then you will face two problems.
1) You must split your forces to mop up each of the invaders.
2) You will be getting less output from every single province attacked.

This kind of AI would provide a challenge at almost any stage of the game. If you do not deal with the invaders, you will eventually be unable to retain control of your fledgling empire. And if you want to deal with them effectively, you will need a strategy beyond the 'just send a bunch of armies to the current hotspot'.

-Just my 2 cents

[Urban Ranger]

Another way to get around this, I think, is to provide intelligent winning conditions. Say you have taken control of 75% of the land, with only three other warlords opposing you, and they have no hope of winning. The game should declare you the winner at that point and make you Shogun, so you can start a new one.

[PMLF]

Anyone knows Shoguns cheats ?
Do these cheats really works ?


Before anyone talk, I know that cheat is a bad thing, but I want to see these cheats only for fun .