Ty Harmon - ART blog: February 2013

To start things off, this is a game that I've been playing since first semester.
I've always loved the mechanics of TW games ever since ROME Total War came out in 2004.
I fell in love with the realistic, tactical battles. Commanding not one, but thousands of blood-thirsty soldiers across a vast battlefield. Soldiers that will do your bidding, march, run, change formations, even prepare a spear wall for an unlucky opponent. The choice is yours.
Shields clash, swords thrust, let the corpses pile up.

SHOGUN II is no disappointment, and it's campaign is the hardest I've played yet!

You could say that their are two different types of gameplay in the SHOGUN II campaign (any Total War game, actually). There is the Battlefield, and there is the Faction Map.
Now, the Battlefield is where you'll be spending most of your time, unless your not into bloodshed, which is cool. The game allows players to auto resolve battles. However, your men may not fight as hard as you wished and an auto resolve may not always roll in your favor.
The Battlefield can be split into 3 categories as well. First, you have your typical land battle. This is an open field landscape, usually scattered with hills, forests, villages, and coastlines (dependent on location of battle on Faction Map). Both army's deploy facing against each other, that is unless an army is ambushed. The ambushed army does not get to deploy at all (caught by surprise).

The second category would be a siege battle. This is where a fortress or castle is under attack. Defenders must hold out against the attack. These defenders can be deployed inside the castle, behind its walls, or outside for a swift counter attack. The attacker can deploy in a radius completely surrounding the castle, but not near the castle walls.

The final category is sea battle. Something fresh for TW since they introduced it in Empire Total War. Ships face off against one another similar to the land battles. Islands can serve as influential center points for sea battles.

Each Battlefield category can be effected by fog, snow, rain, or calm weather.
Fog reduces accuracy for ranged units.
Snow causes units to be fatigued more when idle.
Rain effects reload time for archers, disables fire projectiles, and fatigues idle units.
Calm weather is normal weather.

Now for the Faction Map. This map/game type is only accessible through the SHOGUN II campaign. In this campaign, you play a noble Daimyo of a japanese clan. You must raise your factions honor, take settlements, and crush other factions.

The main objective of the game is to become Grand Shogun of all of Japan. Do this by controlling 25 regions as well as Kyoto, the capital city. You choose a faction with a particular set of perks and head off to go conquering. Now this may sound easy. It's not.
The Faction Map is enormous. And the Japanese factions you share the land with are endless!
The progression of time is given through turns. Each turn given, a season passes. This means that on my fourth turn, a full year would have passed. During a players turn you can recruit units, construct new buildings, spy/assassinate targets, move/attack armies and castles, and enter diplomatic conversations with neighboring factions.
I wont go too far into it, but the economy of your faction is what makes the game thrive. To sum things up, the more regions you control, the more cash you collect each turn. But be wary, upkeep for solid army will expend your cash flow, and bribing other clans is almost always a necessity.
Bankruptcy in SHOGUN II is damnation. When this finally happens, and it will happen, many, many of your cities will get angry. And when you have angry cities, you have angry citizen, and when you have angry citizens, you have rebellions, and rebellions are no fun.
Here is a brief summary of my previous failed campaigns...

I started with the Takeda Clan. I thought it would be cool to overwhelm the enemy with horses. I soon learned it was not a good tactic when facing off against hundreds of peasant spearmen.
I spent too much money training more unit for conquest. That, and I made a terrible alliance with a whelp of a faction. A faction that allied me, and started talking crap to the big bad faction next door. My ally was soon crushed, and I was left to pick up the pieces.
Numerous victories against a constantly reinforced enemy was costing me far too much money for one region to uphold. I soon became bankrupt and surrendered the campaign.

The second faction I chose was the Chosokabe Clan, famous for their skilled bowmen.
Now this campaign went great for me. Up until the turn came up that said that I failed to overthrow the Shogun and lost the campaign. Like any other TW campaign, you have a designated time limit to reach your goal. I had forgotten. I guess I was having too much fun camping outside enemy castles with thousands of fire arrows.

My third campaign went very quickly. I played as the Uesugi Clan, and commanded an army of warrior monks. Now, I thought everyone would be cool with the peaceful monks.
But no.
I capture one city and they send two full enemy armies my way.
I was too spread out and far too broke to keep fighting back the enemy. I once again, forfeit my honor.

For my fourth campaign I played as the warrior monks once more. This time, I learned from my mistakes.
I made allies with the meanest, toughest factions, and battered my way towards Kyoto.
Now because I was a nice peaceful monk army, every city I took I peacefully occupied instead of looted. This gave me renown honor throughout Japan. Honor that I believed would benefit me later in the game.
But when the time came when my honor gage maxed out, that was not the case.
I became a threat to the other factions.
The Shogun himself declared war on me, and every other faction followed suite. This even included my most trusted allies.
After several more painful turns. I was surrounded, spread out, and poor once more.

And now, on my fifth campaign. I play as the mighty Oda Clan.
However, the same situation has begun to rear its ugly head.
I had conquered the lands surrounding Kyoto and my armies prepared to strike at the heart of Japan.
I had settled trade routes, honorable allies, safe borders, a steady income, several armies, and a powerful navy. I was ready for that gage to peak once more. Or so I had thought.
Once again my once worthy allies betrayed me and I was assaulted from all sides. I am still holding fast against the tides of treacherous dogs, but I need a plan before my faction crumbles to dust once more...

The thing that I love most about this game is after all that failure, I still haven't felt cheated by the game in any way. It makes me want to retry, with new, better tactics. The realistic difficulty is the defining element to a TW game in my opinion.

Here's a quick in-game trailer I found!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz-x1_GYQIw

I hope this personal analysis helped you grasp the campaign of SHOGUN II Total War.

We've finally finished grey-boxing our racetracks. The obstacles are in place and my triggers are ready for gameplay, but now comes the fun part.
Time to make things pretty.
We are now moving on to the art aspects of our maps. This includes custom textures, props, sounds, lighting, particle effects and much, much more. I'll have to start set-dressing ASAP!
Each student is also starting work on a video intro to their tracks. We had to find a race track introduction from any previous games we played.
This will be our reference for our own track.
I chose Starwars Episode 1: Pod Racer.
The intros to these races are very brief but they easily grab the scope of the map, not only visually, but with sounds and music as well.

This first one I chose was for the booming noise of the crowd. It sounded awesome, and since my race track is more of an arena, I want to hear bystanders cheering in the stands as well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uQCcSSc_Mo

The next one I picked because of its 180 degree shot. The style is more what I'm going for as well in terms of the props in the track. I also liked the several tanks that panned through the foreground, it gives more depth to the race track, making the world seem vast!..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw0fVKwZQUU

And finally, I chose this introduction because of all of its movement. Not only with the camera, but the lava, rain, and god-rays as well. It makes the world seem so much more realistic. A still track is a boring one if you ask me. I want the players to see a lot of movement in my intro, getting them pumped up for the race...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziTgeJox47Q