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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Christians? I don't recall that being an option for me. The Shimazu were the only faction that I saw that started on Kyushu.
    He refers to the otomo, who become playable in DLC and who start christian.
    Every other faction but the ikko gets offered Jesus at some point in the game (if they live long enough) though the south west gets it first and staying inland will delay.
    The bad is that your relations with other clans gets worse and you'll need to take more steps for public order. You also lose warrior monks.
    The good is that you get to take more advantage of the game's guns4jesus initiative, you get a wonderfully overpowered naval unit and the nanban quater, and your trade and development increase from special buildings.

    The Shimazu are one of the best clans for it because Kyushu where the AI goes christian anyway, and because you start at one end of the map and are island/trade based the diplomacy penalty is fine and the nanban trade ships are a godsend for controlling the sea. Also the Shimazu have a loyalty bonus which is good because you'll lose some when you switch.

    When you build a nanban port you start conversion, you can choose to let it take you and switch or you can build a temple and whack a monk there so that the conversion is canceled out.
    Last edited by The Jack; 2019-02-04 at 09:01 PM.

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    Well, no refund for me. Oh well, not like I wasn't willing to pay the normal price, just unfortunate timing.

    Quote Originally Posted by The Jack View Post
    He refers to the otomo, who become playable in DLC and who start christian.
    Every other faction but the ikko gets offered Jesus at some point in the game (if they live long enough) though the south west gets it first and staying inland will delay.
    The bad is that your relations with other clans gets worse and you'll need to take more steps for public order. You also lose warrior monks.
    The good is that you get to take more advantage of the game's guns4jesus initiative, you get a wonderfully overpowered naval unit and the nanban quater, and your trade and development increase from special buildings.

    The Shimazu are one of the best clans for it because Kyushu where the AI goes christian anyway, and because you start at one end of the map and are island/trade based the diplomacy penalty is fine and the nanban trade ships are a godsend for controlling the sea. Also the Shimazu have a loyalty bonus which is good because you'll lose some when you switch.

    When you build a nanban port you start conversion, you can choose to let it take you and switch or you can build a temple and whack a monk there so that the conversion is canceled out.
    Ah, the faction that recently got wiped out in my campaign then. I actually just took their former capital (I assume, it was their last city) from the faction that destroyed them - and inherited a Nanban Port they had made in the process. So, guess I need to make a choice on that one quick. Sounds like mechanically it's almost strictly better to take it in the long run, particularly since I'm off on my own island (or will be once I conquer the one faction that's left there besides me), and thus don't need anyone's good will, but I must admit that for flavor reasons I'd kind of prefer not to. Feels weird to play a Total War game set in Japan and not have my faction's religion be Shinto Buddhism.
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  3. - Top - End - #33
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    If you just research the gunpowder techs you don't have to convert for gunpowder units. It just takes longer.

    Converting for matchlocks is really only helpful if you're good at using matchlocks; as you can leverage that early advantage to snap up some huge gains early on.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Eh, I'm less worried about how it'll affect me on defense than how it impacts things on offense. It becomes kind of lame if siege engines are made basically obsolete by it and you can just win by making a bunch of infantry and running right at the enemy.
    It could be just game mechanics following real life as the Japanese never went big on siege engines. Having seen surviving castles in Japan, the cost and difficultly of maintaining such a large stone building in a major earthquake zone required compromises in construction (mainly the quality of fit of the stone blocks in the walls).

    They compensated by making the more easily maintained internal walls unclimbable and designing the castle layout like a maze. Unfortunately that's probably too much detail to be playable for a computer game.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Resileaf View Post
    Have you seen the dev videos for Three kingdoms? The diplomacy and intrigue system is looking to be amazing.
    Battles look turd though.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Well, no refund for me. Oh well, not like I wasn't willing to pay the normal price, just unfortunate timing.


    Ah, the faction that recently got wiped out in my campaign then. I actually just took their former capital (I assume, it was their last city) from the faction that destroyed them - and inherited a Nanban Port they had made in the process. So, guess I need to make a choice on that one quick. Sounds like mechanically it's almost strictly better to take it in the long run, particularly since I'm off on my own island (or will be once I conquer the one faction that's left there besides me), and thus don't need anyone's good will, but I must admit that for flavor reasons I'd kind of prefer not to. Feels weird to play a Total War game set in Japan and not have my faction's religion be Shinto Buddhism.
    You don't really have to go Christianity as Shimazu, its just that if you are planning to do it they're one of the best factions to do it with for several reasons. They're also one of the better factions to just go vanilla Samurai army with due to the fact that they gain a slight bonus to their Katana Samurai and that's probably the best unit to use to form the backbone of your army in the campaign.

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    Shimazu Katana core with Yari Cav to handle enemy cav will chew through anything you point it at. Warrior Monks will give you trouble, but hopefully your Yari Cav will have beat up the enemy cav before the lines meet.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crow View Post
    If you just research the gunpowder techs you don't have to convert for gunpowder units. It just takes longer.

    Converting for matchlocks is really only helpful if you're good at using matchlocks; as you can leverage that early advantage to snap up some huge gains early on.
    More to annoyance;
    Game has matchlocks very rare. The AI never use them, and the tech tree is an extreme investment, since everything beyond mangonels is the last thing you get: Matchlock samurai, rockets, heroes, monks., being able to recruit matchlock ashigaru anywhere... It's all 'gunpowder mastery', which requires attack by fire and the five elements; a significant investment and I'd argue a bad one. Especially since Attack by fire has a matchlock samurai on it; it's actually probably the best place to put at least the matchlock samurai and ashigaru, and I feel they were going to do that, but then screwed up in the last.

    I really, really hate how the game gives you limits to how many of X or Y you can get. It feels extremely cheap and at times malicious. Maybe I was an idiot for trying to get good naval research for the first time in a legendary campaign, but when I got there I just wanted to give up.

    Just stick with bows. They're easier to use, don't ruin your research progress. Stuff's great.
    Last edited by The Jack; 2019-02-06 at 09:55 AM.

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    You definitely need to make use of research traits on characters, and events which offer research bonuses, otherwise it is a long road- yes.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crow View Post
    You definitely need to make use of research traits on characters, and events which offer research bonuses, otherwise it is a long road- yes.
    I do it every time.

    My army core was Yari Ashigaru and Yari Samurai backed up by Ashigaru Bowmen with the occasional Samurai Bowmen. Didn't use cavalry as I didn't like it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crow View Post
    If you just research the gunpowder techs you don't have to convert for gunpowder units. It just takes longer.

    Converting for matchlocks is really only helpful if you're good at using matchlocks; as you can leverage that early advantage to snap up some huge gains early on.
    Quote Originally Posted by Inarius View Post
    You don't really have to go Christianity as Shimazu, its just that if you are planning to do it they're one of the best factions to do it with for several reasons. They're also one of the better factions to just go vanilla Samurai army with due to the fact that they gain a slight bonus to their Katana Samurai and that's probably the best unit to use to form the backbone of your army in the campaign.
    Well, resisting converting is what I'm doing - although it looks like it might be difficult to beat the influence of that Nanban port in the city it's in, since it gives a pretty huge conversion bonus. And somewhat annoyingly it seems like the faction I'm fighting for control of northern Kyushu converted, so the cities I'm taking from them are mostly or entirely Christian already, which is making it harder for me to maintain order in them without keeping big chunks of my army back home or exempting them from taxes. That's making things slow going. I've got a monk going around to help conversions, but that only amounts to so much. Still, I'm already down to only two provinces left to take before I control Kyushu fully.

    In general though, I'm liking the game so far - not necessarily for anything it does significantly differently than past games, but just in a "it's Total War in Japan, and that's fun" way. But I can definitely see what people meant by the factions looking pretty same-y, since my opponents are all fielding the same type of units I can recruit. I suspect that may make me substantially less likely to replay this game as much as I did Rome or Medieval 2 - though just having less free time these days already made that likely, so eh.

    One minor thing that annoys me now though is that the tax rate is set for your entire nation, not on a city-by-city basis, aside from the ability to exempt individual cities from taxes completely. That makes it more difficult to strengthen my economy, since I can't bump taxes up on cities with higher happiness without also pushing those with lower happiness over the edge.

    And I've had my first naval battles now, and uh, yeah, can see that's still a weak point of the series. The way the ships move in response to your commands feels awkward and strange - which I think I recall being one of my issues with naval combat in Empire too, though it's been so long it's hard to be sure. And the battles seem to move at a snail's pace except when I board enemy ships, which tends to significantly weaken mine even if they succeed. They're honestly kind of boring and just awkward all around. It's ironic, I remember being disappointed that you could only auto-resolve naval battles in the old games, but now that I can actually play them, auto-resolve is all I really want to do with them.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    One minor thing that annoys me now though is that the tax rate is set for your entire nation, not on a city-by-city basis, aside from the ability to exempt individual cities from taxes completely. That makes it more difficult to strengthen my economy, since I can't bump taxes up on cities with higher happiness without also pushing those with lower happiness over the edge.
    It's actually a bad idea to raise taxes for long in this game. City growth is very important, because it directly adds money to your taxes. In the long run, you want to keep taxes at normal so you get more money later on. You should only raise taxes in emergency situations for a single turn or so.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post

    In general though, I'm liking the game so far - not necessarily for anything it does significantly differently than past games, but just in a "it's Total War in Japan, and that's fun" way. But I can definitely see what people meant by the factions looking pretty same-y, since my opponents are all fielding the same type of units I can recruit. I suspect that may make me substantially less likely to replay this game as much as I did Rome or Medieval 2 - though just having less free time these days already made that likely, so eh.
    I'll bring up Fall of the Samurai again, then. It covers the Boshin War, Meiji Restoration and the Satsuma Rebellion. It adds some 40 new units, including machine guns, American and British marines, Ironclads, Artillery... I thought it was quite fun.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Well, resisting converting is what I'm doing - although it looks like it might be difficult to beat the influence of that Nanban port in the city it's in, since it gives a pretty huge conversion bonus. And somewhat annoyingly it seems like the faction I'm fighting for control of northern Kyushu converted, so the cities I'm taking from them are mostly or entirely Christian already, which is making it harder for me to maintain order in them without keeping big chunks of my army back home or exempting them from taxes. That's making things slow going. I've got a monk going around to help conversions, but that only amounts to so much. Still, I'm already down to only two provinces left to take before I control Kyushu fully.
    You know, you could just tear down the Nanban trading port and build the non-Christian version instead. You don't have to trade with filthy foreigners if you don't want to. :)

    One minor thing that annoys me now though is that the tax rate is set for your entire nation, not on a city-by-city basis, aside from the ability to exempt individual cities from taxes completely. That makes it more difficult to strengthen my economy, since I can't bump taxes up on cities with higher happiness without also pushing those with lower happiness over the edge.
    Yep, that's another annoyance shared by every modern Total War game

    And I've had my first naval battles now, and uh, yeah, can see that's still a weak point of the series. The way the ships move in response to your commands feels awkward and strange - which I think I recall being one of my issues with naval combat in Empire too, though it's been so long it's hard to be sure. And the battles seem to move at a snail's pace except when I board enemy ships, which tends to significantly weaken mine even if they succeed. They're honestly kind of boring and just awkward all around. It's ironic, I remember being disappointed that you could only auto-resolve naval battles in the old games, but now that I can actually play them, auto-resolve is all I really want to do with them.
    Shogun 2's naval battles are actually the ones I enjoyed the most, I think. I'm kinda glad they stopped bothering with Warhammer and Three Kingdoms.
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    And Kyushu is now wholly mine. The faction I've been crushing to take it still control one province just across the northeastern straight, but that's all that's left of them. Once I take that I'll start preparing for a bigger war with a faction that's conquered most of the northwestern part of the main island.

    The year at this point is 1556 - not sure whether I'm progressing at a decent pace or not. My economy seems to be getting pretty strong, and I'm definitely one of the strongest factions militarily at this point, but I need to take another 32 total provinces and Kyoto by 1600 to win. Granted, that's a good ~175 turns given each turn is only a quarter of a year, but still, seems like a lot of provinces to take.

    Quote Originally Posted by Resileaf View Post
    It's actually a bad idea to raise taxes for long in this game. City growth is very important, because it directly adds money to your taxes. In the long run, you want to keep taxes at normal so you get more money later on. You should only raise taxes in emergency situations for a single turn or so.
    Well, it looks like normal taxes are basically what I'm going to be stuck with just to keep my cities under control, so I guess that works out.

    Quote Originally Posted by Narkis View Post
    You know, you could just tear down the Nanban trading port and build the non-Christian version instead. You don't have to trade with filthy foreigners if you don't want to. :)
    I suppose I could, but I don't know that the cost of doing that and replacing it with another equal-level port would be worth it in the long run. For now one Christian city isn't that big of a deal - the fact that I'm conquering a bunch of them is more of an issue, but getting rid of the Nanban Port won't help with that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Narkis View Post
    Yep, that's another annoyance shared by every modern Total War game
    Really? That's a pity. I wonder why they did that?

    Quote Originally Posted by Narkis View Post
    Shogun 2's naval battles are actually the ones I enjoyed the most, I think. I'm kinda glad they stopped bothering with Warhammer and Three Kingdoms.
    Wow, so they just gave up on making good naval battles for this series? I'm honestly surprised by that - but after seeing the results of their first couple of attempts at it, not nearly as disappointed as I once would have been.
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    I've been playing since Rome and M2. Love S2 and Warhammer but I just can't do R2. I played it a few months ago, again, and it just doesn't hook me. How do I extract the fun out of it like everyone else seems to be able to?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Double A View Post
    I've been playing since Rome and M2. Love S2 and Warhammer but I just can't do R2. I played it a few months ago, again, and it just doesn't hook me. How do I extract the fun out of it like everyone else seems to be able to?
    Play Carthage and just make money, that is my approach. Pay everyone to be your friends, make people who attack you vassals, and slowly build the largest elephant army money can buy.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    Play Carthage and just make money, that is my approach. Pay everyone to be your friends, make people who attack you vassals, and slowly build the largest elephant army money can buy.
    Carthage is actually a really fun faction to play as. They have an unusual mix of units, and they are the best faction for taking full advantage of mercenaries. You end up with these eclectic cores of Carthaginian units supplemented by the best available mercenaries. It's actually quite fun, and you get a real feeling of leading these strange mixed armies; made up of Carthaginian and indigenous troops like those Hannibal commanded.

    Other than that though, I'm also one of those who couldn't really get into Rome 2 beyond a playthrough or two.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Really? That's a pity. I wonder why they did that?
    I would guess either the new engine doesn't support it, or, more likely, they wanted to simplify things to reach a wider audience.

    Wow, so they just gave up on making good naval battles for this series? I'm honestly surprised by that - but after seeing the results of their first couple of attempts at it, not nearly as disappointed as I once would have been.
    Yep, they did. Rome 2 is the last one to have naval battles, at least for now. It's a shame, it was THE feature I wanted the most in the series, and its Empire implementation was flawed but promising. But since they seem incapable of doing it right, it's better if they don't waste resources on it at all.

    QUOTE=Double A;23692936]I've been playing since Rome and M2. Love S2 and Warhammer but I just can't do R2. I played it a few months ago, again, and it just doesn't hook me. How do I extract the fun out of it like everyone else seems to be able to?[/QUOTE]

    I just have to say that certainly not "everyone else" has fun with it. I gave it more than a fair chance. Rome 1 was my favorite, Shogun 2 was good, a return to grace after the disappointment of Empire, and I may ultimately not have liked Warhammer, but it certainly had its charms. But I could never get into Rome 2.
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    One thing I'm very much appreciating is how generals and agents now allow me to select bonuses they'll get as they grow. It's so much nicer than the purely randomized ones from the older games. I can actually intentionally get a ninja who's particularly good at assasinations if I wish (and I do!); or I was able to focus my one Monk so far on being very good at converting the populace of provinces, so that he's speeding up my conversion of conquered Christians that much more. That's a big boon to how helpful those kind of units are. It's a bit less of a big deal with generals, granted, but still appreciated.

    I also like the various random events where I can choose how my Daimyo governs his nation and get bonuses based on those choices. I know they're not exactly unprecedented, they're sort of like the missions from the Senate in Rome or the crusades in Medieval 2, but those felt more like an annoying burden most of the time, where these add to the feel that I'm managing what amounts to my own country while also giving me actual benefits, something its past counterparts were much lighter on.

    And on the subject of missions, I was rather amused when my first mission from the Shogun came in, and it was to go to war with the exact faction I was already planning to hit next and conquer any one of their cities, because apparently they'd grown large enough that he wanted them taken down a peg. (Even though they were about the same size as me and several other factions, and there's definitely one that was larger that he didn't issue this mission for...) Just, wow, that was crazy convenient.
    Last edited by Zevox; 2019-02-09 at 01:20 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    And on the subject of missions, I was rather amused when my first mission from the Shogun came in, and it was to go to war with the exact faction I was already planning to hit next and conquer any one of their cities, because apparently they'd grown large enough that he wanted them taken down a peg. (Even though they were about the same size as me and several other factions, and there's definitely one that was larger that he didn't issue this mission for...) Just, wow, that was crazy convenient.
    It's not that much of a surprise. The game knows your objectives, and it knows that you need to keep moving and conquering to accomplish them, so they'll send you a mission where they estimate you are likely to strike next, or where they think you should.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Narkis View Post
    I would guess either the new engine doesn't support it, or, more likely, they wanted to simplify things to reach a wider audience.
    If I remember right it was basically to cut down on the busywork bloat that tends to pile up on the campaign map as your empire gets bigger. That's also why they began bunching cities up into provincial groups in Rome 2 to make it quicker to cycle through all of your cities on each turn.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    One thing I'm very much appreciating is how generals and agents now allow me to select bonuses they'll get as they grow. It's so much nicer than the purely randomized ones from the older games. I can actually intentionally get a ninja who's particularly good at assasinations if I wish (and I do!); or I was able to focus my one Monk so far on being very good at converting the populace of provinces, so that he's speeding up my conversion of conquered Christians that much more. That's a big boon to how helpful those kind of units are. It's a bit less of a big deal with generals, granted, but still appreciated.
    The randomized traits are back sort of in Rome 2. They have the level up system where you pick what traits you want combined with the ability to gain 3 randomized traits. That being said if your general is about to gain a negative trait the game will typically give you a warning about it. A trait saying something along the lines of your general has been spending too much time lazing about in the city, perhaps sending him out on campaign would be a good idea. If you don't take the suggestion of this trait you'll find it eventually replaced with a trait that provides a penalty.

    It basically just adds transparency to the traits system Rome 1 had where you had to guess what was causing your generals to get bad traits. It took me the longest time to realize that if your tax rate isn't high enough to cause the yellow face unrest symbol on towns they're governing your generals usually gain corruption in Rome 1. Of course going beyond yellow tier to purple unrest could cause other negative traits to occur too.

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    One of my favourite factions to play in R2 is Pergamon, but it is DLC.

    You have insanely high charge elite cav generals who don't have the tankiness of Cataphracts. Early game charges are brutal, and it is not hard to gain buckets of experience for your generals and claim the 'Claret' traits to drop enemy morale. However, you still need to be aware of risks to your general in combat.

    Their late game roster has some really nice units, like Picked Peltasts and Agema Spears, which are amazing in their square formation.

    They have a nice challenging early game Galatian roster Iirc, but but have easy access to Merc Rodian Slings and are close to being able to get Syrian Archers, and have challenges on the doorstep like Pontus, Seleucids, Galatia, and Macedon, while being able to Client State recruit from Colchis or Sparta to claim more conventional disgustingly powerful Hoplites if you push for that and economically support them while you head south and east.

    Like all games, it can become a Steamroll and make end game boring, but they are one of the few factions I've been able to enjoy to enjoy through to that stage, and claim the campaign victories in legendary, as well as military and economic victory.

    One thing that also might seem a bit daff, is actually roleplaying along with the missions you are issued or bonuses you receive, and trying to complete even if it seems like more effort, or it is something bad might happen. Or the old chestnut of recruiting a full stack for a campaign, only to then get negative recruitment cost or veterancy modifiers for your elite units the following turn: instead, you only recruit those units when you have the cost modifiers.

    It adds to challenge.

    The other thing I think should be picked up is an agent mod. Rome 2 agent spam is especially bad IMHO.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Inarius View Post
    It basically just adds transparency to the traits system Rome 1 had where you had to guess what was causing your generals to get bad traits. It took me the longest time to realize that if your tax rate isn't high enough to cause the yellow face unrest symbol on towns they're governing your generals usually gain corruption in Rome 1. Of course going beyond yellow tier to purple unrest could cause other negative traits to occur too.
    Actually (and this may only be true of M2), generals would only get good taxation traits when they finished constructing buildings while happiness was blue at the start of your next turn (ie when the building actually finishes constructing).

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    Plus it was good to let all your generals and governors take a trot around the countryside each turn, to keep from getting lazy and depraved.

    Lord help me though, avoiding the dreaded "Chinless Wonder" in Medieval 1 was damn near impossible!
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    Quote Originally Posted by Double A View Post
    Actually (and this may only be true of M2), generals would only get good taxation traits when they finished constructing buildings while happiness was blue at the start of your next turn (ie when the building actually finishes constructing).
    I think in rome 1 thats the administration trait line and can also trigger on recruiting a unit. Honestly its kind of fuzzy I just remember needing high taxes and borderline unrest to get the best traits when governing a city in rome 1.

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    Literally everything you do in Rome and Medieval 2 will give traits to your generals. Taxes are low? Your governor's ability to gather taxes gets lower because they allow people to pay less and less. General not moving in a city? Gets fat. Recruit lots of units? Discount on unit recruiting because he's doing a lot of it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Inarius View Post
    If I remember right it was basically to cut down on the busywork bloat that tends to pile up on the campaign map as your empire gets bigger. That's also why they began bunching cities up into provincial groups in Rome 2 to make it quicker to cycle through all of your cities on each turn.
    I find it very hard to believe that there's anything about the later games that's designed to reduce micromanagement. Especially by simply removing an option that was there in earlier games.

    I suspect the reason is more historical: post-medieval period, with an increasingly centralised modern bureaucracy, and increasingly connected population and economy, that sort of local variation in tax rates just isn't viable any more.
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    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    I suspect the reason is more historical: post-medieval period, with an increasingly centralised modern bureaucracy, and increasingly connected population and economy, that sort of local variation in tax rates just isn't viable any more.
    Rome 2 is decidedly pre-medieval. And you can wholly exempt provinces from taxes.
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    Played some more today, and a few interesting turns happened in my campaign. The faction I was fighting in the northwestern part of the main island has been wiped out - but only half by me. Seems that while I distracted their two big armies, another faction swooped in and conquered the other half of their territory. Sneaky bastards. Don't recall anything like that happening in the older games.

    Actually, maybe it's just my not having played a Total War in such a long time, but it feels like the AI in general is more proactive in this one than in the older games. The early turns were just a whirlwind of "this faction has been destroyed" messages as early wars all across the map resulted in tons of extinctions, whittling things down already to a single-digit number of factions, which I don't think was the norm when I was playing Rome or Medieval 2. And really, it's mainly two major powers that have emerged at this point - myself in the west, and the Ikko Ikki in the center of the main island. Everybody else is more modestly sized, and I'm pretty sure the three out on the far east are in losing wars with the Ikko Ikki.

    Which meanwhile leaves me with two factions to deal with between me and them - and somewhat surprisingly, I won't be dealing with the one that swooped up half of the territory I was planning to conquer first. The other faction, the Chosokabe, who control the other western island, Shikoku, were in an alliance with me, but all of a sudden decided to call that off and then, not two turns later, declare war on me. With no apparent game plan either since all they did was start harassing my sea trade routes. So yeah, going to conquer myself Shikoku and then turn my attention back to the main island.

    I actually had my first really close fight when I landed my first forces on Shikoku. Quickly grabbed a lightly-defended city, then found out that the Chosokabe's main army was right nearby. Rough battle, with them having a lot more archers than me and the castle in the city being pretty low-ranked. I wound up losing a lot troops and one of my two generals that was with the army - but won the battle and killed both of their generals, one of whom was their Daimyo, so I'd say it worked out for me. I will say that a defensive battle at a city like that is starting to make me dislike the whole ability to just climb walls willy-nilly though. Being on defense behind city walls doesn't feel like the huge advantage that it used to with that. Even though yeah, you can just pull archers back and move up melee troops when the enemies get close, it's still a far cry from being able to line archers across the walls of a city in Rome or Medieval 2 and rain death down upon approaching foes with impunity while they needed to bring siege engines to bear to break in, which was a much more fun dynamic. Also, trying to position troops in a castle battle really made me dislike the weird way Shogun 2 handles formations - those fancy formations that are meant for whole armies might work fine out in the field, but in a castle they're not really the way to go and I want more precise control of where my guys line up than they give, and without simpler formations I don't really have it without commanding each unit individually, which is tedious.

    Quote Originally Posted by Inarius View Post
    The randomized traits are back sort of in Rome 2. They have the level up system where you pick what traits you want combined with the ability to gain 3 randomized traits. That being said if your general is about to gain a negative trait the game will typically give you a warning about it. A trait saying something along the lines of your general has been spending too much time lazing about in the city, perhaps sending him out on campaign would be a good idea. If you don't take the suggestion of this trait you'll find it eventually replaced with a trait that provides a penalty.

    It basically just adds transparency to the traits system Rome 1 had where you had to guess what was causing your generals to get bad traits. It took me the longest time to realize that if your tax rate isn't high enough to cause the yellow face unrest symbol on towns they're governing your generals usually gain corruption in Rome 1. Of course going beyond yellow tier to purple unrest could cause other negative traits to occur too.
    Eh, some random traits while still having the level up system sounds fine to me. Although, I wasn't aware there was anything specific causing some traits to happen in the older games - I never saw much of a pattern to any of it, so I had assumed it was all completely random.
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