Total War

Shogun: Total War

I love this game.
If you buy it on Steam, you'll have the most up-to-date version installed (including patches).

What I like

I love the variety you get from hopping back and forth between the Risk-style gameplay and the battles.
The music is fantastic.
I think it looks beautiful, including the menus.
The voice acting is great.
The difficulty is neither too easy nor too difficult.

What I dislike

The battle AI doesn't behave as a human opponent would. :/
- It'd be nice if the AI got smarter as you increased the difficulty in the same way that chess programs get smarter (being able to see further into the future).
- Related: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?739334-Battle-AI-Modding-using-Battle-Script-Documentation
The battles can get repetitive.

Guides

General advice for playing

You need to use the time control to speed up the uneventful parts of battles, because you're going to be fighting a lot of battles.
A big part of the game that isn't immediately obvious from looking at screenshots is balancing your armies across your different borders to prepare yourself as best as possible for an attack on any border.
Shinobi are extremely powerful, it seems even more so when your opponent has switched to Christianity.
Grouping and ungrouping will not be shown immediately on your UI if you have the battle paused. That also goes for formation changes. To ungroup just click on the unit and click the group button again.
Units *can* recover their exhaustion state from 'very tired' to 'quite fresh' if you wait. I suspect the speed of their recovery may depend on how much they've done up to that point. There may be some level of activity after which the unit will never recover.
You almost always want to switch your units to a loose formation once they come under arrow fire while not in combat, and you almost always want to switch your melee units to a tight formation when they're fighting, so a lot of what you're actually doing during a battle is just switching units back and forth from a loose to a tight formation depending on their situation.

Questions I have

Question: what are these different terrain types and how do they affect units? is there a 'mud' terrain that I have to watch out for?

Full Campaign

Sengoku Jidai

Shimazu
- Won (Expert) – Don't fight anyone! I just teched up my 2-3 provinces that are the furthest from enemy territory (including the one that can produce better no-dachi), Imagawa got eliminated and his territories and armies went to me because we were allies, and I just kept teching up. IIRC Imagawa had invaded Oda's territory and then Imagawa was killed in battle, and the result of this was that there were Ronin / Rebels that had Warrior Monks units, and they ended up causing a lot of trouble for the Mori, which kept the Mori from attacking me. I captured the first province on the island to your right when you start, and the remaining province on the bottom of the island kept the Mori busy as well, as it kept producing No-Dachi (and even got 2 Kensai), and the Mori would keep throwing units at it. After I teched up I started swapping out units: I would disband Ashigaru, Yari Samurai, and Archers with lower stats and replace them with Warrior Monks or Archers with higher stats. I did this to keep my expenses low, so that I could tech faster. Once I was totally teched up winning the game was pretty easy. One thing I made sure to do was to use a bunch of Shinobi to keep provinces loyal as my army advanced. Another thing I did was to use Ninjas to assassinate enemy generals as I attacked. I did end up creating a Geisha that destroyed two rival factions (Oda and Hojo IIRC), and it seemed so overpowered that I think I'm going to refrain from using Geisha in my future games. IIRC I went the entire game without fighting a single battle (or if I did fight battles, I don't remember them). I basically won via the campaign map, auto-resolving all battles since they were strategically uninteresting (i.e. I had already won with my macro, and the particular K:D ratio I got in the battle wasn't that important).
Uesugi
- Lost (Expert) – I abandoned the two southernmost provinces (the ones totally surrounded by other factions) because I figured they'd cost me more to defend than they'd bring in revenue (they were highlands). I immediately started building all of the mines and farm upgrades. I created alliances with the Hojo, Tamagawa, Shimazu, etc. The Hojo then backstabbed me and attacked one of my provinces (the north-eastern one), and basically all of my allies abandoned me and sided with the Hojo. I was able to re-attack the next turn and recapture the province, and at that point I stopped building and started creating Yari Samurai to discourage people from attacking me. Once I'd created a bunch of units I kept building the farm improvements and then started teching up. I noticed the island I controlled in the west could build an armory so I figured I'd probably have that as one of my main places for building units, but I ended up teching up all three of the provinces I controlled out of necessity, even though two of them bordered other factions and were liable to get invaded and have my buildings destroyed. At one point I noticed that the Hojo had already teched to Warrior Monks and had like 4-5 units of them, so I immediately stopped building everything else I was building and instead got Buddhist monasteries and started replacing my Yari Samurai with Warrior Monks (disbanding the Yari Samurai units as the Warrior Monks units were created). Once I'd done that I just kept teching up, making sure to keep as many or more Warrior Monks units on my border as I saw the Hojo had. Then I got my lucky break: the Hojo had already destroyed the Takeda in their area, and then allied with the Oda against the Tamagawa. IIRC they at some point asked me if I wanted an alliance and I accepted (and I had actually been seeking out their Daimyo to offer an alliance myself). They then moved basically all of their Warrior Monks to the south to attack the Tamagawa provinces, and they captured a lot of territory. I knew that if I didn't attack now, they'd quickly get extremely powerful. So I attacked the two originally-Hojo provinces to my south that were big moneymakers (a lot of farm / mine revenue), destroyed all their tech buildings, and when I didn't see much resistance coming after me, I kept pushing south-east into the heart of Hojo territory, destroying all of the Hojo's tech buildings and even reaching their Buddhist temple and destroying it. After that it was pretty easy to clear out the rest of the Hojo territory (it was just a matter of time and producing the units to replace my losses). Once I'd taken over all of the territory the Hojo had captured I finished off the Tamagawa, then pushed into Oda territory and eventually finished them off. At one point the Shimazu reappeared (their Daimyo had been killed and their provinces had become rebel territory), and they got 14 provinces when they came back, and so they became the main threat, and forced me to move quickly to finish off the Oda. Once the Oda were finished off the Shimazu had a lot of somewhat-upgraded No-Dachi and they were getting ridiculous victories against me even with regular units, so I started commanding personally rather than autoresolving battles. They were slowly gaining ground (but at a heavy price), and in one battle they managed to get my Daimyo to route and hole up in a castle, and immediately basically all of my provinces rebelled, so I think it was because my Daimyo got holed up in a castle. At that point the game was clearly lost, because the Shimazu had too much of a lead by that point, and I lost all of the territories I used to produce units so I had no way to fend them off.
Imagawa
- Lost (Expert) – Your provinces in central Japan don't actually produce that much income, but they're right in the middle of a bunch of warring factions, so I literally abandoned them and had all my troops move to my provinces in the south (next to the Shimazu), so that the Shimazu couldn't take those provinces from me (those provinces generate MUCH more farm income). I then maxed out the farming, then added ports, then teched straight to Warrior Monks, trained some monks to replace my yari samurai, then maxed out everything. I tried to keep just enough troops to discourage the Shimazu from attacking me, but not so much that I wouldn't have any money left to keep teching. I was literally just hitting "End turn" over and over, waiting for the buildings to finish. Just as I'd finished teching up, Mori died, and his provinces joined my faction. I decided to use them to help me attack the Shimazu. Once I captured the entire southernmost island it was a pretty straightforward process to keep taking over more territory. I ended up losing when I was basically in a winning position because the Hojo sent a geisha after my daimyo and heir, even though they were getting destroyed by the Uesugi and it would've made a lot more sense for them to send the geisha after the Uesugi daimyo. I had a geisha myself but the enemy geisha had much higher honor from having killed generals and so my geisha couldn't get a successful attack. I also think I noticed that the AI factions seemed to be set up so that a rival faction would emerge (in terms of number of provinces controlled) at the same rate that you expanded. So for example I basically "camped" for many years while I teched up, and I didn't see really any change to the strategic map in that entire time, but as soon as I started expanding I noticed other factions getting larger as well. Another thing I learned: naginata cavalry seem to be great for leading an attack across a bridge against enemy arquebusiers. They charged across and kept the enemy busy long enough that my warrior monks could get across without getting fired on.

My AARs of the Historical Battles

I'm honestly kind of surprised at how few historical battles there are (9). It's nothing compared to CMBO, although admittedly CMBO's scenarios are mostly(?) from players.
I was able to beat 6 of the 9 on Expert in a single session. I got sleepy at that point, otherwise I suspect I could have finished the other three.
The battles are just listed in alphabetical order.
One of them has its difficulty as "Medium" while two others are listed as "Moderate". I suspect that was an oversight.
The battles have no time limit, so you can use that to your advantage by taking your time to pick off individual enemy units.

4th Kawanakajima

Won first attempt on Expert, kill tally was 453 to 86. I sent my cavalry archers out as scouts, saw where the enemy was set up, saw what units they had, then sent the rest of my force to a hill to the south of that army (not as a group at first so they wouldn't march quickly, but switching to a 'skirmish center' formation once they arrived at the hill). I then used my cavalry archers to bait the enemy general's unit (heavy cavalry) into chasing them away from the rest of the AI's army, and had my general's unit (heavy cavalry) charge into them closer to my forces. I then had a yari samurai group charge into the fight as well, and once the heavy cavalry were almost wiped out I sent in my cavalry archers from behind to fight with their swords to block off any escape for the enemy general. Once the enemy general was killed, I had my archers focus on the enemy's No-Dachi, which had started approaching, and cut them to 2/3 or 1/2 their size by the time they got to my army, and had my No-Dachi charge them, and they ran before the fight started. I then had my general (heavy cavalry) pursue them towards the enemy's lines and a general fight broke out. After some brief fighting the enemy forces routed and it was just a matter of chasing them off the map.

Anegawa

Won this first time (Expert), kill tally was 570 to 349. I had my forces rush the three bridges and get across before the enemy reached us, and then it was just a matter of making sure all my units were active (in the fight). I couldn't tell where the enemy general was but apparently he was at the front, and after he died most of the rest of the enemy army routed. I had all of my army pursue them to make sure they couldn't recover, and while some of the enemy army rallied (or didn't route to begin with), they couldn't withstand my heavy cavalry and they were soon routing as well.

Amnok

Won first try on Expert, kill tally was 1420 to 266. I'd never used Mongol troops before, they absolutely destroyed the Korean troops, like a hot knife through butter. Basically all I did was line up my cavalry archers on the banks of the river, noticed that the majority of the enemy was at one bridge, had my heavy cavalry rush the other bridge, was astounded at how fast they were, then just kept pumping my heavy cavalry through that bridge, using my local numerical advantage (as well as apparently my superior units).
I noticed the javelins from the korean skirmishers took out a *bunch* of my heavy cavalry units with one throw. It was like the majority of the damage they did. So it seems like the trick with the skirmishers is to figure out how to let them throw all their javelins.
I was very disappointed to learn that my Mongol advisor that announced the fleeing enemy general had an English accent.

Fukuoka

Won first attempt on Expert, 683 to 232. I started in the middle of the map, and when the battle started it looked like the enemy was within a single wood, so I advanced my troops to surround the wood with the idea that I could cram them into a small space and then use my thunderbombers to do a lot of damage. After surrounding the wood I just focused on doing good micro, pairing units up against enemy units well. I used my korean guardsmen to pair up with their naginata, then sent in my thunderbombers who routed the naginata. I sent in two groups of my spearmen against the enemy's heavy cavalry and the cavalry were destroyed. At that point the enemy forces started moving to my right out of the woods, and the enemy general (a No-Dachi unit) was moving away from my forces so I sent in two groups of heavy cavalry up against him and they absolutely destroyed the No-Dachi, routed the general (and the rest of the army), then killed him. A very easy battle against the AI.

Imjin

Ran out of time on the first attempt (Expert), kill tally was 284-215. I was trying to bait the enemy army into fighting near the bridge, but they weren't falling for it. At one point I sent my heavy cavalry (general) across the bridge to try to kill the enemy general, but the unit got totally wiped out. I think what I was supposed to do was to just rush the bridge, try to get a foothold, and then put my arquebusiers to work.
Won on the second attempt with less than 5 minutes remaining of the 30 allotted, the kill tally was 737 to 253. This has probably been the toughest historical battle I've played. My approach was to have two units of arquebusiers lining the river bank to the left of the bridge and a unit of cavalry archers behind them, and then to advance a unit of foot soldiers the minimum distance across the bridge to get the enemy army to charge them and get within the range of my ranged units. I would set the foot soldiers to use a loose formation while on the bridge so that they wouldn't get totally destroyed by the firebombs. When the unit routed, I would send in a new unit. I even sent in my general (heavy cavalry) and had them lose maybe 2/3 of their men. The cavalry archers would run out of ammo, so I would rotate in a new group of cavalry archers to the same position (I had three units of cavalry archers). I honestly thought I was going to lose at the end because I thought I needed to *route* 50% of the enemy force, but it turns out I could just kill 50% of them instead. So my idea of how I was going to win (route the enemy) was the wrong approach.

Mikata Ga Hara

Didn't win this on my first or second attempts, but I got it on my third try. The final kill tally was 1038 (me) to 627 losses. The key to winning is to realize that your main body of units are doomed, and your goal with them is to just try to get an OK K:D ratio before they die. You can try to make a break for the woods near your main force, but I was only able to get a single unit of yari samurai into it (but once inside they did a lot of damage to the opposing cavalry before dying). Have your general immediately take off to the smaller body of troops across the map (the reason I failed the first two times was that the first time my general stuck around the main body of troops too long and routed while he was running to the smaller body of troops, and the second time he got trapped in the fighting, lost most of his men, and then routed). Once your general is at the smaller body of troops it's just a typical defensive battle from a wooded hill that I've fought many times in the campaign mode, although you're up against way more troops than what I've seen in the campaign mode. You aren't going to kill all of those forces; your goal is to kill enough to make the rest route. The enemy general attacked (heavy cavalry), so I made sure to surround his unit with three groups of yari samurai and kill him. After that the rest of the troops kept fighting but would route more easily, and after a bunch of back-and-forth (them routing and then coming back), they eventually routed for good.

Nagashima

This is a great battle for learning how to use black powder against warrior monks / no-dachi samurai.
It has off-and-on rain, so you need to engage at the right time.
Lost on my first attempt (Expert), but I succeeded at getting almost the entire army to route. I didn't keep chasing them, though, which may have been what allowed them to come back and win the day.
My strategy on my first attempt was: hold the hill on the left (with the temple) at the beginning, send my cavalry archers across to do as much damage to the enemy no-dachi / warrior monks as possible, then keep them sitting there in a loose formation to drain the enemy archers of their ammo (in hindsight it may have been better to keep them intact to serve as a pursuing force). I then marched my army across the land-bridge in a skirmish-center formation (with arguably too-thick a link of musketeers). The enemy fell back to the forest, I then advanced to the right along the face of the forest to get to a more wide-open spot where I figured I'd have an advantage with my ranged units. The enemy ended up charging and it started raining a bit, and I didn't get to use my musketeers nearly as much as I wanted. One thing that worked well was using my heavy cavalry to bait his general (a warrior monk group) out, and they got the worst of my musketeers. I think one thing I could have done better would have been to retreat my units when it started to rain.
The second time I played it (Expert) I won. At the beginning I was somehow able to peel off two groups of samurai archers and a no-dachi group, I think by baiting them with a group of arquebuisers, and I was able to use my heavy cavalry to almost totally destroy one of those archer groups and kill 2/3 of the other archer group, while IIRC the no-dachi inexplicably didn't do anything (I think I may have hit them with my arquebuisers?). In any case, it was a very stupid move by the AI.
After that I moved my army in skirmish-center formation into the little farm-field thing in front of you when you start, and for some inexplicable reason the AI decided to split his army in two, with all of his warrior monks (including his general) in the woods on my right (where I fought last time) and all of his no-dachi, archers, yari ashigaru, and yari samurai in the woods on my left. I decided to try to kill his general like last time, so I moved my army up onto the land on the far-right like I did last time, kept my cavalry archers on the land-bridge to keep the other half of his army away, gradually got closer to the woods, waited for the rain to clear up, and ordered all of my musketeers to attack the nearest group of warrior monks. All of the warrior monk groups charged out at once, and I had my musketeers run back to my main group. (Side-note: I was definitely surprised at how many groups charged out at me. My musketeers were like less than 50m from the woods and didn't spot a bunch of the groups that were right in front of them. So staying concealed in woods is extremely effective.) At this time I also believe the enemy force from the other side of the map started marching over to this side of the map, and my cavalry archers began to engage them. Anyway, back on my side of the map, I had my heavy cavalry (which was my general) on my left flank (I had swapped my heavy cavalry on the land bridge for my cavalry archers to keep my general close to my army). I had the musketeers get far enough away from the woods that only maybe half of the warrior monk groups fully committed to the attack, and some of the groups stayed away or turned back (another stupid decision by the AI), but one of the groups that stayed attacking was the enemy general's warrior monk group. I wanted my heavy cavalry to attack them in the flank ASAP but they were closer to another warrior monk group on my left flank so I had them attack them first, they were destroyed surprisingly fast, and then I had them run over and surround the enemy general's group, which I now had surrounded by two yari groups and my heavy cavalry, and we killed him. Once he was dead the entire enemy army started running away. I had my heavy cavalry pursue a group of warrior monks and cut them down as they were fleeing, and I had my cavalry archers switch to their swords and cut down a group of enemy yari ashigaru.
Lessons: try to peel off groups from the AI and gang up on them. I would add "try to split your enemy's army in half and gang up on that half", but I can't really say I did that on purpose. At most, I took advantage of the AI having made that decision. Also, don't give up immediately if something bad and unexpected happens! I was honestly very close to restarting the battle after I got surprised by how many warrior monks appeared right at the edge of the woods and had my musketeers getting cut down as they ran away, but from having played chess I had learned to fight as hard as possible until the game was over (in this case, until all my units were routed)
The final kill tally was ~300 (me) to 200 (enemy).

Nagakute

I was able to "win" this battle on Expert without even fighting. At the start of the battle I noticed the enemy general (yari cavalary) on my right flank, near a hidden group of 1. archers, 2. yari ashigaru, and 3. my yari cavalry. I had my archers move to the edge of the forest to try to bait the general into attacking so that I could flank with my yari cavalry, but after four casualties and having the archers move up the general retreated to the other side of the map with some of his other forces. I next noticed a group of arquebusiers moving from that other side of the map to this side of the map, so my next thought was "let's try to figure out a way to attack them with my yari cavalry". After they advanced into a wood near the corner of the map, I ran my yari cavalry to the edge of the map that the enemy started at, blocking the arquebusiers from running back to where they came from. After maybe 30-60 seconds the forces from the other side of the map started marching over to this side of the map (the 'right' side from the perspective of my starting position), and I had my general fall back to the woods where he started, but then the entire enemy army ran straight off the map for some reason (it gave me the "enemy general is fleeing" notice). The kill tally was 4 (me) to 0.
It labelled the battle as a victory, but the mission briefing said the objective was to "destroy the enemy forces", so I'm not sure if it should really count.

Yamazaki

It's weird because the description makes it sound like you're attacking, but when you start the mission you're right next to the bridges across the river and your opponent is further away from them, which is typical of a mission where you're defending a bridge against an attacking force. So when I started I wasn't sure if the opponent would be trying to attack me across the river (in which case I'd like to stay on my side of the bridge) or stay on his side of the river (in which case I want to run my forces over to the bridge and cross them ASAP).
"Won" on my first attempt, we both lost our generals, IIRC the final kill tally was like 350 (I killed 350) to 450 (he took 450 of my guys), which seems very acceptable to me for attacking across a bridge.
My strategy was this: Although I started closer to both bridges than the other player, the bridge my force was further from (on my right) was even further from my opponent's army, and so I sent most of my force running for that bridge, with my heavy cavalry (general) running full-speed ahead of everyone to seize it. I had another smaller force that started well to my left, and I had them walk to the other bridge (the bridge on my left). I should replay this battle while trying to go for the bridge on the left at first.
For some reason his heavy cavalry seemed to do much better against my heavy cavalry, maybe because they caught them before all of my heavy cavalry were across the bridge.
Lessons: Fight as hard as you can until you can't possibly fight anymore! I would have normally given up after my general died and I had a large portion of my units annihilated (the ones around my general that routed after he died), but from having played blitz chess I'd learned to hang on, and I was able to use my remaining forces that I'd left at the other bridge to kill his general and destroy the rest of his army.
Admittedly, the AI was doing very stupid things. When I marched my remaining army over, the enemy forces didn't engage me all at once, but rather had one group at a time march over to me at a time, which was suicide.