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Shogun 2 |OT| This is Total War
- Thread starter Veritas_
- Start date
I NEED SCISSORS
Banned
So after investing about 55 hours into this, I decided to dabble in some mods. Here are some really good ones that improve the game quite a bit:
Shogun 2 Realism Mod - i'll start with the biggie. This mod adds too many small changes to list, but which add up to make the game so much more fun to play (ironically for something aiming to make it more realistic). I find that with this mod installed, the game flows a lot more naturally and feels less artificial. I've felt a lot less like I was restricted from doing certain intricate actions just because of some of the vanilla game's silly rules. Other little perks are the greater distance which your army retreats to if attacked, and being able to fight some besieged battles on the field. You need to make sure your PC can handle this mod, as it has a huge benefit of bigger unit sizes, and therefore more epic and long lasting battles.
Realm Divide mod - one of the worst flaws which holds the vanilla game back from perfection is the dreaded 'realm divide' mechanic, when everyone including best pals turn on you because Kyoto gets jelly. This mod mostly corrects it, so that the most people can possibly hate you because of it is -60, which also lowers in each successive turn. So now your very friendly clans will stickwitu. Just.
Shogun 2 Total Music Mod - now don't get me wrong, the Shogun 2 soundtrack is fantastic and arguably the best all year. However, if you're like me, the same tunes over and over can get tiring. This mod exchanges 95% of the music with a mix of tracks from the original Shogun and some surprisingly fitting royalty-free music. Some of it is really quite special and has the benefit of not breaking any copyright laws.
Deployable bamboo stakes - no idea why this was omitted from the game. This allows all bow units and a few other types of foot soldiers to deploy a line of bamboo stakes, which helps tremendously to protect against charging horses. This makes the game a bit more tactical I think, instead of mindless slaughter.
Unit variety mod - if your PC can handle ultra quality units, this mod is perhaps the best aesthetic one available. It ensures that every unit on the battlefield is unique - something like 3.5 million different combinations. It makes zooming in even more of a pleasure.
Rankfire for all bow units - a minor mod. This allows all bow units to use the ranked fire stance that not only looks the part, but also makes volleys more frequent. Provides a useful edge on the battlefield during the very early stages of play.
Retextured Battle UI - a subtle but nice aesthetic improvement over the default battle interface. Tanned parchment > white parchment!
Japanese speech fix - another subtle mod which I doubt people will really care about. This fixes a few errors in the translation of the game's dialogue. While 99% of people won't notice the difference, it's nice to know that what you are playing is totally accurate.
All credit goes to the original authors of these mods. They truly re-invigorated the game.
Also do not forget about the awesome Rise of the Samurai DLC out this week, which promises to add a substantial amount of new gameplay. I can see myself reaching 100 hours of play soon enough.
Shogun 2 Realism Mod - i'll start with the biggie. This mod adds too many small changes to list, but which add up to make the game so much more fun to play (ironically for something aiming to make it more realistic). I find that with this mod installed, the game flows a lot more naturally and feels less artificial. I've felt a lot less like I was restricted from doing certain intricate actions just because of some of the vanilla game's silly rules. Other little perks are the greater distance which your army retreats to if attacked, and being able to fight some besieged battles on the field. You need to make sure your PC can handle this mod, as it has a huge benefit of bigger unit sizes, and therefore more epic and long lasting battles.
Realm Divide mod - one of the worst flaws which holds the vanilla game back from perfection is the dreaded 'realm divide' mechanic, when everyone including best pals turn on you because Kyoto gets jelly. This mod mostly corrects it, so that the most people can possibly hate you because of it is -60, which also lowers in each successive turn. So now your very friendly clans will stickwitu. Just.
Shogun 2 Total Music Mod - now don't get me wrong, the Shogun 2 soundtrack is fantastic and arguably the best all year. However, if you're like me, the same tunes over and over can get tiring. This mod exchanges 95% of the music with a mix of tracks from the original Shogun and some surprisingly fitting royalty-free music. Some of it is really quite special and has the benefit of not breaking any copyright laws.
Deployable bamboo stakes - no idea why this was omitted from the game. This allows all bow units and a few other types of foot soldiers to deploy a line of bamboo stakes, which helps tremendously to protect against charging horses. This makes the game a bit more tactical I think, instead of mindless slaughter.
Unit variety mod - if your PC can handle ultra quality units, this mod is perhaps the best aesthetic one available. It ensures that every unit on the battlefield is unique - something like 3.5 million different combinations. It makes zooming in even more of a pleasure.
Rankfire for all bow units - a minor mod. This allows all bow units to use the ranked fire stance that not only looks the part, but also makes volleys more frequent. Provides a useful edge on the battlefield during the very early stages of play.
Retextured Battle UI - a subtle but nice aesthetic improvement over the default battle interface. Tanned parchment > white parchment!
Japanese speech fix - another subtle mod which I doubt people will really care about. This fixes a few errors in the translation of the game's dialogue. While 99% of people won't notice the difference, it's nice to know that what you are playing is totally accurate.
All credit goes to the original authors of these mods. They truly re-invigorated the game.
Also do not forget about the awesome Rise of the Samurai DLC out this week, which promises to add a substantial amount of new gameplay. I can see myself reaching 100 hours of play soon enough.
I NEED SCISSORS
Banned
Ysiadmihi said:
I don't know, I don't play online. They are really simple to install/uninstall though as they are just .pack files which go in the /data folder.
Ponti
Member
I would say vanilla for the first campaign. Make sure to prepare for a realm divide just before it happens (keep an eye on your clan fame bar). Whichever clan you choose helps too. The Shimazu or Date are the easiest since you'll only ever have one front to defend. Also don't make vassals as they will most likely turn on you at the realm divide (which is imo the most annoying part).FGMPR said:
I NEED SCISSORS said:
Thank you so much for the list. Realm Divide is the one thing that scared me away from really digging into the game. Now that I know there's a mod to make it more manageable (and not break diplomacy) I'm going all in.
The other mods sound fantastic too. Thanks again, it's much appreciated.
Anton Sugar
Member
Ysiadmihi said:
Have you tested online yet with mods?
Ponti
Member
Alot of mods rebalance units and add extremely overpowered abilities to them compared to vanilla. That fire by rank archery mod is a good example, can you imagine using those sorts of mods online?
Yeah, doesn't work
Yeah, doesn't work
Those guys are nuts stats wise. Something fundamentaley wrong when a group of peasants can beat a Katana Samurai unit. And they're cheaper.Ysiadmihi said:
betty swollocks
Banned
Darthmod should be top of that list. Same guy thats been modding Total war since as long as I can remember. The launcher comes with a host of other mods you can switch on / off to your liking and even has a toggle to quickly set everything back to vanilla when you want to do multiplayer.
Amazing mod. Wouldnt play single player without it.
http://mjollnir.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1746
Amazing mod. Wouldnt play single player without it.
http://mjollnir.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1746
Question: should I expect any performance boost in the full game compared to the demo? I'm still running my good ol' E8400/HD4870/4GB RAM, and my rig is clearly struggling with the demo. With everything on medium and all fancy graphic options disabled, it seems as though the game runs just fine, but when I get near a battle my FPS instantly drops down to ~10. I've read some stuff about the demo being very poorly optimized, so that's why I'm asking. Now that the game is 20 on Steam, I'm really tempted to try it out.
Oh god thanks for linking that realm divide mod. I was just fucked over by that which was a little strange to me because I added up all of my lands and I didn't even have half of japan, but I took such good care of my lands and trade routes that I had "terrifying" strength and amazing financial power so Kyoto didn't like that too much.
I was trying to deal with the shimazu and shoni on that far western part so I had just about all of my main force there when this happened and I had about 7 armies marching on my weakest points. Thankfully I have an old save right before that happened.
I was trying to deal with the shimazu and shoni on that far western part so I had just about all of my main force there when this happened and I had about 7 armies marching on my weakest points. Thankfully I have an old save right before that happened.
markot said:
I guess it depends on your computer. It takes probably 2 minutes at most to load really big battles (like 3000 vs 3000) on my computer. If anything starting the game is the problem for me. It takes a few minutes just to get to the logos which are thankfully skippable.
Slackbladder
Member
I think it's only available if you're running DX11 and running Shader model 4.1 or higher (shader model 3 will give you MLAA). Looking at your GPU that shouldn't be a problem. Apart from that I can't say.Pennybags said:
Looking forward to The rise of the Samurai DLC. Hours of play for a mere £5.99. Makes that ridiculous Gears of War 3 stuff even more unbelievable!
Slackbladder
Member
As far as I know that will still happen even with the mod. Normally when Realm Divide happens everyone turns on you, including allies. The mod simply makes allies remain allies.Ysiadmihi said:
Ysiadmihi said:
Yeah the mod is just supposed to reduce the amount of negative points each clan has on you when it hits but it's still enough to make most hate you if you're not super friendly. I did so much territorial expansion that everyone disliked me, even my allies and vassals so all of them turned on me when the realm divide hit. I ended up going with the other realm divide mod, the one that gives no penalty at all.
Slackbladder
Member
I hate Steam. Rise of the Samurai is released today, but not until 5pm UK time. That's closer to tomorrow than today. They may as well release it at 11:59pm and call it released today. Arseholes.
SHOGUN 2 - Rise of the Samurai is Now Available on Steam!
http://store.steampowered.com/news/6367/
Nice. Steam is downloading around 1.8GB now.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/6367/
Nice. Steam is downloading around 1.8GB now.
Slackbladder
Member
Downloaded today. Unfortunately it crashes everytime I try to start a battle on the battle map; both the DLC and the original game. The DLC/patch seems to have half killed the game.
Glad the patch is out. Apparently fixes the co-op campaign desync issues. We played a few rounds (good stuff, really fun battles) and everything was fine, but everything was fine for the first few rounds last time as well before the desyncs broke the game. We'll see how this goes.
Red Blaster
Member
Anyone still playing this?
Just picked it up for $15, sicknasty game. Haven't played Total War since Rome back in 04.
Any tips for relative noobs? I first started off with Hojo and got my tail kicked because I had to fight on dual fronts, restarted as Shimazu and am doing a lot better. Conquered all of Kyushu, but the freaking Mori are assholes of the highest order.
Just picked it up for $15, sicknasty game. Haven't played Total War since Rome back in 04.
Any tips for relative noobs? I first started off with Hojo and got my tail kicked because I had to fight on dual fronts, restarted as Shimazu and am doing a lot better. Conquered all of Kyushu, but the freaking Mori are assholes of the highest order.
Ponti
Member
Yep, though I should probably get the new DLC at some point. One thing worth remembering when it comes time for the realm divide make sure you're ready (keep an eye on the yellow bar in the clan management screen). You'll need at least 4-5 full stacks of land units and at least 2 or 3 fleets defending each side of the coast. Also don't bother making Vassals as they will all backstab you at the divide.
Shimazu are a good choice, them or the Date usually work best as a starter clan. If you have any Ninjas it might be a good idea to go a few turns sabotaging Mori economic or military buildings and assassinating their Daimyo/high rank Generals. Also might be worth sending an army over by boat to the Chosokabe island (forget it's name).
Shimazu are a good choice, them or the Date usually work best as a starter clan. If you have any Ninjas it might be a good idea to go a few turns sabotaging Mori economic or military buildings and assassinating their Daimyo/high rank Generals. Also might be worth sending an army over by boat to the Chosokabe island (forget it's name).
Red Blaster
Member
Ponti said:
Stayed up till 2 AM last night dismantling those bastard Mori. Got 15 provinces under my belt. Allied with the Chosokabe, but they're starting to encroach on my territory from the east. About to take out Bessho, getting worried about the impending realm divide tho. Upgrading my farms in Kyushu and disbanding the random packs of ashigaru scattered across the provinces to make more powerful units in preparation for it.
Red Blaster
Member
Wow, I'm the last post in this thread from almost 2 months ago :|
Was gonna ask how the recently released blood pack dlc was lulz.
Was gonna ask how the recently released blood pack dlc was lulz.
Holy shit, you're not kidding:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/201272/
I hope this generation dies in a fire.
$1.59
http://store.steampowered.com/app/201272/
I hope this generation dies in a fire.
What the hell..
thelurkinghorror
Member
THANK YOU! I almost caved at $15 on the steam sale, but I certainly couldn't pass this up. Snagged it yesterday at that great price
I want to know this too. It looks like DLC the way it should be done - significant amount of content and playtime.
It's 6.99 on amazon right now, does anyone have impressions?
Mr. Luchador
Member
Hmm, this is 'freezing' during end game processing (sometimes when battles are first engaged on world map too).
Hahahaha how did I miss this? I'll definitely buy it
steam sale only
As far as the update goes it's apparently going to be one of the games during the steam sale that gets a special achievement for whatever contest they're doing. I think you can already get it too, seems to be the one where you have to defend a siege during winter.