GameShark’s Bill Abner joins Troy and Rob to discuss Shogun 2, mortality rates among Japanese generals, and Bill’s enchanted copy of Shogun 2, in which everything awesome that can happen, does.
Rob’s Gamepro series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Bill’s GameShark review
I’m a bit surprised at the complaints about lack of infomation on what’s going on in the regions away from you. I’m constantly getting updates about rebellions, what clan the Shogan wanted everyone to squash (before it was me), what clans have forged/broken alliances or gone to war with each other and the minimap autoupdates to show who owns each region.
Part of it I think is the change away from the map trading of the old games, as soon as you make contact with a clan you get to see which provinces they own on the minimap, even if that’s on the other side of the map to you, and that’s kept updated. So pretty much all I have to do is send a couple of ships out, one up each side of the map, and after that I know what’s happening and which clans are getting big and nasty.
No one else has seen another clan become Shogun? Surely I can’t be the only one.
Or maybe my game IS special…woo hoo!
Closest I’ve seen to another clan getting Shogun is one clan getting quite big and the Shogun giving a quest to go to war with them with the objective being to take a territory away from them.
What happens if an AI clan takes over the Shogun then, they win and it’s game over? Or does it just continue with them being Shogun and handing out the quests and stuff?
It just continues, but with that other clan as Shogun.
How about Total War series set in the Dark Ages (British) Isles, from the withdrawal of Roman legions to the Norman conquest? Putting on another archipelago would give the series the constraint it seems to do the game well, but with a little more variety, with Britons, Gaels, Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen all interacting with each other.
Imagawa became Shogun in my most recent campaign. Annoyingly he was my closest ally and neighbour. My plan to sidestep him had to be abandoned in favour of a pincer attack on Kyoto going through Imagawa’s western territory to draw his main forces away and then Matsuda’s to the south of Kyoto for the final push. I only made it with a year to spare.
Website Suggestions:
Some type of multiplayer matchmaking/friends list sharing, especially for of us who are scared of multiplayer.
I think it would be valuable to host the comments thread on one of the more active forums 3MA is affiliated with: Quarter to 3 or Gamers with Jobs. (Maybe No High Scores, but that’s not as much of a community yet.)
Show ideas:
Interface design. So many strategy and war-games have such terrible interfaces, and it’s a real hinderance to getting into many of the niche titles. I’m not a game designer, but I do web design and data visualization and some of the principles transfer to games. I would be willing to be a guest on a slow week.
Strategy in non-strategy games. Most games have strategic layer, from choosing when to use limited ammo in an FPS to deciding between clearing rows as quickly as possible or setting a slot 4 blocks high in Tetris. Tom Chick is the obvious guest.
That’s very kind of you, R. Simmon. This good-for-nothing podcast had a doubtful future until you declared your willingness to guest.
It’s really concerning that so many overlooked Napoleon. I’ve managed to play all of the TW games and it is easily my favorite. Even un-modded (something I rarely do in the TW series) it is a superb strategy experience. I think the issue is that it followed in the wake of Empire and most people probably thought it was an expansion pack like BI or Kingdoms.
My only suggestion for the 3MA website… a forum? I personally would want one but I don’t know how feasible that is.
@Shaun
I actually like Empire quite a bit (post-patch), especially in multiplayer, but a large part of this is because of its geographic scope. Would you still recommend the more geographically constrained Napoleon?
About the AI cheating, I found an official statement about this here:
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/13637-The-Campaign-AI-does-not-get-free-armies-now-sticky
I must say, the AI is more aggressive than in previous post Rome Total War games. Pleasant surprise.
I really enjoyed this episode – it was great having it on in the background at work – unobtrusive but very informative.
I like how this episode seemed more focused and got more in depth with the game. This convinced me that I need to go buy Shogun 2, despite my checkered history with TW games. This installment sounds like an utterly fascinating labor of love.
If Creative Assembly/Sega are smart, they’ll buy a big banner ad right next to it. Perhaps with the motto Shogun 2: Everything you love about Total War, now with 50% less bullshit.
As far as future installments of the series go, I was thinking along the same lines as Christoper. I remember playing an old Civ III total conversion – The Rood and the Dragon – set entirely in Anglo-Saxon Briton that was loads of fun. Way more unit variety than you’d expect.
I’ve always harbored a secret dream that they’d make a Dixie: Total War. They’d have to be ahistorical on unit sizes to make the battles work, and we all know that Total War doesn’t do gunpowder well, but can you imagine how badass a Civil War TW game would be?!
My vote would also go towards a Total War American Civil War game. “Napoleon” could easly be seen as a “warm-up” for such a game.
Imagine the Monitor-Merrimac sea battles…