@@asherwoodrow7471 Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy.
Probably to avoid misfire while deploying?. Early cannons had some issues where cannonball fire all of a sudden due friction from gunpowder residue left in the barrel.
I think they are too good to a point where it makes Samurai seen like utter fucking garbage. When the whole point of the Shogun 2 main Campaign is Samurai and then they are dying to peasants with long sticks. Where Samurai would slaughter them and also terrify them. Its only good when you are doing a Very Hard/Legendary run or cheesing the game by spamming them. Its also like Fencibles on Napoleon Total War.
@@pablopablo3834one of the main reasons samurai’s fell to the wayside was the pike and shot formations adopted by the generals since in those kinds of battles average morale and numbers beat skill any day
Artillery is notoriously bad in S2. Fire bomb throwers are amazing in defending walls but do way too much friendly fire in field battles. The ashigaru unit that got slaughtered on the right flank was mostly thanks to your own fire bomb throwers I believe.
Big problem with the fire bomb throwers is that ninjas just make them completely obsolete since they got buffed and have the same ammo, but larger unit size and actually not useless in melee.
In Shogun 2, Fire Rockets is the only artillery that does not have Star Wars Stormtrooper syndrome and can reliably kill what they aimed at. They also seems to get bonus damage and/or accuracy if you tell them to attack enemy cavalry too. As they can rout cav in a single volley. The problem is they're literally end game unit that most of the time people like LegendofTotalWar will steamrolled the entire map long before they can be unlocked.
Yeah, artillery in Shogun 2 NEEDS to be recruited with gold accuracy (fletchers plus hunting grounds in a province) for it to be remotely viable. Cannons are great in sieges and can snipe towers and certain sections of the walls to make entire enemy units party hard and fall to their deaths.
I don't know why CA programmed the artillery to have such bad accuracy. I think in the code its a -30 or something along those lines. Not only they can't move in the battle, they slow down units on the campaign map, imo that's enough of a penalty.
If I recall correctly the biggest impact from Artillery in field battles is the massive morale penalties they cause for enemy units. That tends to be a huge impact when you can also take their general out and can let you pull off mass routs much more easily. It's the same sort of effect as matchlocks, and can cause a huge swing in battles where they should have the advantage
@TheOldBearTime Though it's about stacking accuracy(accuracy resource + encampment hunting thing upgrade) without mods they can have good kills inside castles or chokepoint maps with mods that allow to stack a few bit more(as in allows 2 hunting camps) accuracy the mangonels become so deadly they'd easily bag 300-400 kills or twice that depending on situation. What I'm saying is their not actually bad with good upgrade to stats and become nukes with gold level accuracy.
@@datuputi777 While it's true to an extent, fire mangonels are still by themselves not worth the investment or research, nor the slow campaign map movement speed that they have. Rocket soldiers on the other hand, being both generic and as such available to everybody and infantry units, thus having infantry campaign map movement speed, are truly amazing with accuracy stacking. So too are Shimazu heavy gunners, but their problem is obviously being only available to Shimazu.
"It just looks cool but we're not getting kills!" almost 10 years watching this channel and this attitude to the game encapsulates exactly what I love about it lol
For whatever reason Shogun 2 was my favorite total war. There were a lot of things I didn't like about it, but somehow it's still the one I played the most
the only reason i rarely play the vanilla campaign is the realm divide which made all diplomacy irrelevant , and ironicaly the diplomacy on normal is pretty good (i play on normal cause i aint insane)
Hey legend, if you put archers on guard mode they wont bother melee so much and listen more to ur command when you want to retreat them. Also Firebombers tend to cause massive friendly fire on first salve. Cause their short range they start calculating where enemies will be pretty much exactly n the infantery you put infront of you. So as your Yaris there stopped the enemy unit they then were where the enemies were supposed to be for the bombers and just receive all the damage. So its better to turn them on after the infantry clashed
Also get them around a flank so that their misses don't hit your own men as much. They have a tendency to miss forward or back from their target, but not as much side to side.
Just micro them to have their minimal range at the pointy end of Yari Wall. Firebomb throwers don't rack kills by itself but by disrupting enemy formations you can get like 100 more kills on your Yari Ashigaru.
@@Sanvone I once had a tactic with lots of firebombers which I used in multiplayer. It was actually quite effective as I there used versions with blinding grenades. Blinding grenades give one huge advantage. Mor range and they don't kill anything. So you don't have to micro first salve. I had very cheap Yaris in front and tried to buff their morale so the friendly fire wouldn't make them route. This way firebombers could actually get quite some kills. But the better option turned out to be ninjas who have just 2salves of grenades but that's enough and after that they got great melee abilities. So you can make grenades work if you really want but they are still not too powerful.
Been playing a lot of Shogun 2 lately. The Expanded Japan mod is a must for anyone looking to get back into it, even if you just want the vanilla units and balance. Having way more clans on the map allows for much more interesting diplomacy and unique wars with multiple combatants (closer to reality) rather than a few strong clans getting very strong very fast as in vanilla. Edit - though you also want the diplomacy tweaks to go along with it, else you will trigger realm divide extremely quickly.
Interesting, I was thinking about using it, but when firing up a campaign, I found that many provinces and even daimyos don't even have names. Is that normal? It makes the mod feel incomplete.
The artillery in Shogun 2 was hilariously bad. I remember having 3 cannon units attacking a tower, and it was still standing after they all ran out of ammo.. The exception is the firerockets, those things could annihilate armies & settlements!
Hey Legend ! I'm so glad you're doing Shogun 2 vids again, I've been watching your Takeda campaign from 8 years ago and its really entertaining. Please do a Shogun 2 stream at some point in the future 🙏 Maybe Uesagi, Hattori or Ikko Ikki campaign 🙏Thank you for all the historical content ❤
That would be cool if the livestreams didn’t just consist of “thanks for the superchat” and everything not campaign related. Episodes like in the takeda campaign would be better so that they would keep his focus on the campaign, not the chat.
@@aleksimusmaximus Live streaming definitely isn't for everyone, and I also cannot sit through one for long. But it's the nature of the platform that forces people to rely on livestreaming over let's plays.
Its funny irl Hatakeyama clan was a major clan and you can kinda see it by the amount of land they hold, plus its kinda rare for them not to be a pain in the ass of the player at one point or another
mainly because their 3 settlements are all so far from one another, and if the player bias is high they'll just build up at one and send it across the map to take you out from sheer bitterness xD
@@taloscal I believe the actual reason for this is because by the time of the campaign start the Clan had split in to two different sub branches that occupied different regions of Japan. One branch was still relatively important politically around central Japan and the other was based in the east and become a major rival of the Date Clan.
As a new player in Shogun 2, I found that my favourite strategy is to put my melee infantry on the flanks and filling the center with only ranged units. In practice it ends up similiar to Alexander's "False gap" tactic, with enemies charging at center taking heavy losses from missiles and getting encircled the moment they reach center line, or if they focus on flanks my missile troops are free to rain arrows on anybody. The key to victory is engaging with flanks long before enemy can reach your center, preferably they won't reach your missile units at all. Either way, my troops are much more centralised than the enemy. I also always make sure to put 2 yari ashigaru units directly behind archers, to protect them from cavalry charge.
@@sir_vixThat’s likely their huge armor value coming into play. I think it’s one less than the Bulletproof Samurai which means they’re going to negate a ton of hits, even in melee despite their defense stat being pretty trash.
@@Yourmomgoestocollege816 In the old, pre-Warhammer system for hp there were still units with more than 1 hp. General units in Rome 1, for example, had 2 hp, and IIRC you could take stuff in the skill tree for your generals in Shogun 2 to give them more hp.
Was nice to see the cannons in play, I tend to go really heavy into matchlocks and what not but rarely go arty heavy in Shogun, I think it is just the inability to move them once you get into a battle and the campaign map speed reduction that put me off.
I also never really used either of the artillery units much either when I played it. I would say it was mostly a combination of the fact that it was very rare to have such an open flat battle field like the in the video that allowed them to keep shotting at the enemy continuously. Plus even then, in larger engagements they never really inflicted that much damage to the enemy.
Oh! Does remind me though I did used to use the hell out of the Hojo Hand Mortars and the Fire Rockets in multiplayer battles. Those Hand Mortars were awesome for going up against FOS armies, blasting their uber buffed French Marines with mortars and forcing them to go on the offensive was very satisfying.
i barely bother with firearms in shogun 2 (vanilla ofc) because i preffer to skirmish with my enemy rather than rely on ranged units to win my battles , i do preffer the bloody melee
@@mcsmash4905firearms are extremely op in defending cities. 5 matchlock ashigarus are usually enough to defend a city against full stacks, allowing you to focus on forming armies for offensives instead of garrisons
I'm in the same boat as you but I will say, do a Hojo campaign and rush the shit out of unlocking fire rockets. Then just build a bunch of those with a light cav or two and a few yari ashigaru defending them. Is it a good or balanced army? No not at all. Is it one of the most fun and amazing things to do in Shogun 2 Vanilla? YES! My friend was jealous of the battles I had just watching over a dozen of those bad boys fire rockets and devastate the enemy with the range of cannons and killing power of matchlocks. Well I might be overselling it but it was AMAZING!
The last few days of historical uploads i can say that shogun2 is my fav. With the others there's always one thing that was off, Napoleon AI being a bit goofy, rome 2 cav charges being as satisfying as a wet fart. With Shogun 2 it's perfect.
Early warfare(most of Rome) cav charges didn´t have the punch of later cav because they didn´t have stirrups, that is what gives a cavalry charge its "Oompf".
@@Br1chti don t think this was what pushed CA to mess with the cavalry s coding 😅 Even in med2 (with stirups) cav is buggy and can t handle cohesion well. Engine is too blame, not stirups
Hatakeyama might be a minor faction but they can get pretty powerful and annoying as they have starting positions in two places far from each other, their diplomatic stuff, allying with their neighbours can wreck your relationships with many other factions.
Thanks to your videos I got into Shogun 2 again lately. Im having a blast again, thank you CA for fucking up so I could enjoy one of my favorite games anew again!
European cannons are fun and can be very strong. in the field the only get a dozens kills or so but in a siege they can get hundreds and make every siege easy. They do give you 1 major advantage tho and that is the ai will always attack you since you have the range advantage. Mangonels are uselsss i never got them to work outside of mods they specifically buff them.
Straight up had a mangonel unit miss every shot it took during a siege battle, where I let it run out of ammo before moving towards the castle. It might've landed one shot near a general, but that was the last time I recruited mangonels.
I like cannon to try to snipe the ennemy general or ennemy cavalry on field battle, it's far more effective on horse unit than on foot unit thanks to the horse higher height I guess. It works wonder when on siege at destroying wall and ruining unit that guarded them, but I will not expect more on field battle. The mongonels however... doesn't like it at all it can't aim even remotly accuratly on a blob. 90% of the time the cannon will force ennemy defending to attack so it's also a good tactical advantage.
Yup european cannons absolutely ragdoll cavalry ahahab i always play Otomo in s2 and i love when the ai has ton of cavalry because as soon as the battle starts i will nuke them and then flank everything with my blunderbuss cavalry for monstrous damagw
@@DillsyYourDaddy67 By the time you can reasonably recruit Fire rocket you can have cannon in every siege army you need and half the japon captured at least. I like them a lot but they are way to late in the campaign.
I think what makes it feel different when targeting cavalry is they have a knock back effect. While foot soldiers get back up, mounted units die when knocked out.
Shogun 2 is the absolute GOAT and best polished total war there is. No other vanilla tw woks this well overall and is still modern and nice looking. Also 5:47 holy shit hahaha, just yeeted them out of existence :D :D :D
I am really happy you're branching off into Shogun 2 again. It's a really fun game. A protip about cannons and siege artillery in this game is that they'll always target the edges of units. They're not very good in Shogun 2 base because they're more for attacking actual castle-towns. Fall Of The Samurai they're near unstoppable though. It's also important to note that theres more time needed for units to receive orders and to actually move. They're not quite as fast as they are in modern games.
Hi all, hi Legend. I started to play SH2 not so long ago, was "hardcore" player (highest difficulties, map paintings, doing legendoftotalwar things without youtube channel lmao) of Rome (first and only ofc), Medivial and all three warhammers. Just want to say that game is great and still feels awesome.
That's another thing I quite like about Shogun 2 as a viewer: The battles are short and sweet. It's not watching 1 general kite for half an hour dropping the occasional bomb
When it comes to siege weapons in shogun 2 they're pretty much all horrible. The only exception are the fire rockets which can basically shred a single unit in one salvo, perfect for high priority targets but they're cery late game.
Besides sieges, cannons are grate at killing cavalry from a distance. Bear in mind this is 15th century artillery as well so its just cannon balls. Vs 18th century exlosive shells from FOTS.
European cannons are best used in landbattles against cavalry. Against infantry they cause minimal casualties as they just knock soldiers to ground but they get up again. Cav however instantly dies so its perfect to snipe gens or big cav forces. Also Mangonels got pretty trash accuracy as they once got nerfed. But using inspire ability on them makes them alot better
@@googleandsusansucks You mean Mangonels? I played a ton of multiplayer and also made a Mangonel veteran and tried to boost it with various skills. So they finally had an ok accuracy. In a landbattle I could kill once around 160 that way. So its far from op. But they were once, as I read a post somewhere, that at release they could get around 300 kills sometimes. If you want to see a battle with Mangonel action look for "1 Player almost deytroys 4 armies" by pixelated apollo. I made there a battle with rules where players had to bring them :)
It’s not really worth but funny:D fire rockets are better, they Annihilate a great guard with one salve. The best moments I had were one shooting bow gens with your hidden fire rockets. The players mostly gave up after they lost their bow gen. In multiplayer I trolled with a lvl9 European cannon and fun fact, sometimes they did decent against cav. Once I managed to shoot a cav in wedge formation and I could see how the canon bullet went from the first guy through the entire cav.
if i remember right, the cannons devastate cavalry (instagib all cavalry it touches), but just knock around infantry for some reason. kind of like the cannonball turns into a soccer ball and smack them in the forehead at an unexpected moment
Both artillery types you got are seige weapons in this game. High damage to basically only direct hit targets, though if i recall there is a tech upgrade to allow scatter shot, which is better on infantry
That’s for Fall of the samurai, shogun 2 vanilla doesn’t have that, just solid shot. Also might be an empire thing but I haven’t played that too much so I wouldn’t know.
Archers randomly killing your own units when the battle is over. A Classic Total War scenario. Throughout every Total War I must have lost thousands of men to that bullshit and even a few Generals lmao.
With mangonels I’ve always had better luck aiming at center of enemy formation as a lot of projectiles fall short. Basically, intentionally aim over what you want to hit
Funnily enough the Firerocket troops are the best artillery unit in Shogun2. Supposedly only meant for anti-cav duty, but they wreck most tight formations pretty badly. And they're also the most mobile of long range artillery, not to mention do well enough against fortifications.
Hojo hand mortars and fire rockets are pretty good in shogun 2, devastating in sieges. And if you focus on that tech you can get it before realm divide if you play a bit slow.
i once rushed my army underneath the enemy walls to absorb arrows so that my bomb throwers dont get harrassed but the ai for once showed some competency and completely ignored everyhting else and utterly demolished my bomb throwers
I used them a lot for sieges on heavily fortified castles with a larger force, it allowed me to attack from a distance and hit the gates to mess with the AI and allowed me a slight advantage. But also cannons seemed to work well for defensive sieges as well in my experience. So maybe they were geared towards sieges, either way I think someone should tested out the cannons because this is interesting.
Shogun 2's battles are so damn good it's insane the newer games didn't learn from them. Terrain and deployment matter, but combat is also swift and decisive, with individual actions, taken at the right moment, causing huge shifts in your odds of victory. I always felt in control of the outcome of any battle in Shogun 2, which is not something I can always say about the later games
the best thing about shogun 2 is that the ai isnt hyper reactive when it comes to ranged advantage , for example in some earlier and in pretty much every game after shogun 2 the ai rushes you if : A) you have the ranged advantage or B) you are on equal terms , while the logic is reasonable the way its executed is beyond ridiculous , in shogun 2 you get genuine skirmishing between the ai and player ranged units , the ai hyper reactivity is the same reason why i dont play range focused factions and why ranged units make up the smallest part of my armies , i preffer bloody head on engagements between opposing armies
i mean it really just depends on your army composition, if the games are in time periods without siege weapons or gunpowder terrain really doesn't make as much a difference as either way you're walking in to stab them in melee or shoot with bows
I really didnt like how alot of shoguns 2 units were killed by dice roll animations in melee combat. This is why yari wall is so powerful in the game because the animation system is sidestepped. I prefer the battles to this day in rome 1 and medieval 2 for its simple but effective combat system.
Hi legend, just looking back to your grombrindal stream. The following purple items give laughable (op) autoresolve and are good in battle starmetal armor, grimir ring, starbreaker.good for not well defended territory.Also if we count all public order bonuses from legendary lords, landmarks and control of karak 8 peaks dwarfs can get more than 16 public order passively ( 4 from belegar set,4 thorgrim set, 1 from ungrim, grombrindal and thorek set, land marks of karaz a karak, 8 peaks, grombrindals starting location, i am certain i forget some) . Also playing as belegar you get Extra 5(+1) control when in control of eight peaks from oath fulfilled.
The only TW game that is banned from Steam Japan. But I managed to get a copy anyways and totally love it. And even more so that Legend is picking it up after 8 years!
i really love Shogun total war! but after a certain amount of turns i hate it when realm divide happens and if you declare war on someone you end up fighting like half the map lol
I like how it provides a challenge in later game. And also, it’s similar to how it was historically (everyone ganging up on Oda once he controlled a large part of Japan).
You have to keep an eye on the bar and be prepared, then it shouldn't be a huge problem. If you trigger it by accident and your armies are not in position that's when problems happen.
This feels like a conspiracy :D I just finished Blue eyed samurai and installed shogun 2 and now I am being spoiled like this? Coincidence, I THINK NOT! The universe must be revolving around me or something :D
Unfortunately Siege units in regular Shogun 2 are really bad, European Cannons might be the worst unit in the game possibly. The only reason I ever recruit them is if I am playing Otomo and need enemy to charge into my gun formations to get mowed down (Matchlocks have shorter range than archers so its a pain unless they have highground)
I've found mangonels to be much more accurate if you tell them to aim at a spot on the ground instead of a unit (the old alt + right click trick). As long as they are on the high ground, they are awesome in both offensive and defensive sieges.
i just started playing shogun 2 and just finished my first campaign on hard. even with 0 experience in this game i only lost 3(land) battles in the entire campaign. so the battles are easy... to me. the hardest thing for me was actually making money to support my armies and agents.
Classic Shogun 2 is amazing to see. Artillery was never a great thing in Shogun 2, very inaccurate, unmoving during battle, slow on the campaign, but I still very much like seeing artillery being used in Shogun 2. But what I believe the player here should do is replace the short range friendly fire prone Firebomb Throwers with long range Fire Rockets do deal some more consistent damage from a longer range compared to the Firebomb Throwers.
I feel like a lot of people get confused when they hear that yari ashigaru are the best unit in the game. Particularly I hear mrsmartdonkeyLP's videos get referenced a lot. But people just hear "yari ashigaru best unit" but miss the context of that statement. it is the best unit in the game for cost effectiveness its not straight up better than everything. The advantage is that if you go hard into ashigaru (as in save money and don't bother with early samurai) you can wind up having 3-4 stacks of ashigaru supported by something like bow warrior monks and naginata samurai and still have tons of money because ashigaru are cheap. You can't just have solo 20 stacks of ashigaru core armies and expect to beat legendary AI armies.
Good, mostly clean battle. Those European canon's are kinda lame ducks aren't they? Armstrong canons they're not. Also, I feel your frustration regarding artillery ignoring cease fire orders.
Just some observations here, the canons are amazing against Cav so you could have scored a general snipe pretty early on with no losses. Then your light Cav is free to pull units away and the rest to be shot by your bows. Always walk your Yari walls into fights as well they kill insane amounts of enemies especially downhill
The most impressive thing about european cannons is that despite killing so few enemy troops they still managed to inflict some friendly fire.
The Skaven would be proud.
@@Warmaker01 Skaven? are you crazy? man-sized rats DO NOT EXIST... smh
@@asherwoodrow7471 Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They put me in a room, a rubber room. A rubber room with rats! And rats make me crazy.
@@asherwoodrow7471yes we do they are turks
@@Hroshimababa i’ve never seen a turk, so that MUST mean they don’t exist!
4:03 "Why didn't you load the bloody cannon BEFORE the fight begin?"
My thought exactly since Empire.
Same reason why the cowboy load (5/6) rds exist for revolvers. Negligent discharge is a bitch.
napoleon fixed it.
Probably to avoid misfire while deploying?. Early cannons had some issues where cannonball fire all of a sudden due friction from gunpowder residue left in the barrel.
There's my beautiful Cannons
Shogun 2 is such a classic. My favourite thing about it is that even the lowest tier units are useful throughout the entire game.
Yup forget which faction but they Excell with ashigaru units.
@@justinmangus567 oda?
@@justinmangus567 Oda, kinda the strongest faction due that
I think they are too good to a point where it makes Samurai seen like utter fucking garbage. When the whole point of the Shogun 2 main Campaign is Samurai and then they are dying to peasants with long sticks. Where Samurai would slaughter them and also terrify them. Its only good when you are doing a Very Hard/Legendary run or cheesing the game by spamming them. Its also like Fencibles on Napoleon Total War.
@@pablopablo3834one of the main reasons samurai’s fell to the wayside was the pike and shot formations adopted by the generals since in those kinds of battles average morale and numbers beat skill any day
Artillery is notoriously bad in S2. Fire bomb throwers are amazing in defending walls but do way too much friendly fire in field battles. The ashigaru unit that got slaughtered on the right flank was mostly thanks to your own fire bomb throwers I believe.
Big problem with the fire bomb throwers is that ninjas just make them completely obsolete since they got buffed and have the same ammo, but larger unit size and actually not useless in melee.
As he said, he’s not a shogun 2 expert 😂😂😂
In Shogun 2, Fire Rockets is the only artillery that does not have Star Wars Stormtrooper syndrome and can reliably kill what they aimed at. They also seems to get bonus damage and/or accuracy if you tell them to attack enemy cavalry too. As they can rout cav in a single volley.
The problem is they're literally end game unit that most of the time people like LegendofTotalWar will steamrolled the entire map long before they can be unlocked.
Yeah, artillery in Shogun 2 NEEDS to be recruited with gold accuracy (fletchers plus hunting grounds in a province) for it to be remotely viable. Cannons are great in sieges and can snipe towers and certain sections of the walls to make entire enemy units party hard and fall to their deaths.
I don't know why CA programmed the artillery to have such bad accuracy. I think in the code its a -30 or something along those lines.
Not only they can't move in the battle, they slow down units on the campaign map, imo that's enough of a penalty.
If I recall correctly the biggest impact from Artillery in field battles is the massive morale penalties they cause for enemy units. That tends to be a huge impact when you can also take their general out and can let you pull off mass routs much more easily.
It's the same sort of effect as matchlocks, and can cause a huge swing in battles where they should have the advantage
Though properly used matchlocks do hundreads of kills unlike the artillery :D
The added benefit can also be is that you make the ai guarantee come to you, making every offensive battle a defensive one.
depends on the period.
@TheOldBearTime
Though it's about stacking accuracy(accuracy resource + encampment hunting thing upgrade) without mods they can have good kills inside castles or chokepoint maps with mods that allow to stack a few bit more(as in allows 2 hunting camps) accuracy the mangonels become so deadly they'd easily bag 300-400 kills or twice that depending on situation.
What I'm saying is their not actually bad with good upgrade to stats and become nukes with gold level accuracy.
@@datuputi777 While it's true to an extent, fire mangonels are still by themselves not worth the investment or research, nor the slow campaign map movement speed that they have. Rocket soldiers on the other hand, being both generic and as such available to everybody and infantry units, thus having infantry campaign map movement speed, are truly amazing with accuracy stacking. So too are Shimazu heavy gunners, but their problem is obviously being only available to Shimazu.
The manganels managing to hit the tiny unit of archers like 70 meters off where they were meant to shoot was hillarious..
"It just looks cool but we're not getting kills!"
almost 10 years watching this channel and this attitude to the game encapsulates exactly what I love about it lol
If only WH3 cavalry were this responsive
If only they were HALF as responsive
For whatever reason Shogun 2 was my favorite total war. There were a lot of things I didn't like about it, but somehow it's still the one I played the most
the only reason i rarely play the vanilla campaign is the realm divide which made all diplomacy irrelevant , and ironicaly the diplomacy on normal is pretty good (i play on normal cause i aint insane)
Hey legend, if you put archers on guard mode they wont bother melee so much and listen more to ur command when you want to retreat them. Also Firebombers tend to cause massive friendly fire on first salve. Cause their short range they start calculating where enemies will be pretty much exactly n the infantery you put infront of you. So as your Yaris there stopped the enemy unit they then were where the enemies were supposed to be for the bombers and just receive all the damage. So its better to turn them on after the infantry clashed
Also get them around a flank so that their misses don't hit your own men as much. They have a tendency to miss forward or back from their target, but not as much side to side.
Just micro them to have their minimal range at the pointy end of Yari Wall. Firebomb throwers don't rack kills by itself but by disrupting enemy formations you can get like 100 more kills on your Yari Ashigaru.
@@Sanvone Great advice!
@@Sanvone I once had a tactic with lots of firebombers which I used in multiplayer. It was actually quite effective as I there used versions with blinding grenades. Blinding grenades give one huge advantage. Mor range and they don't kill anything. So you don't have to micro first salve. I had very cheap Yaris in front and tried to buff their morale so the friendly fire wouldn't make them route. This way firebombers could actually get quite some kills. But the better option turned out to be ninjas who have just 2salves of grenades but that's enough and after that they got great melee abilities. So you can make grenades work if you really want but they are still not too powerful.
Been playing a lot of Shogun 2 lately. The Expanded Japan mod is a must for anyone looking to get back into it, even if you just want the vanilla units and balance. Having way more clans on the map allows for much more interesting diplomacy and unique wars with multiple combatants (closer to reality) rather than a few strong clans getting very strong very fast as in vanilla.
Edit - though you also want the diplomacy tweaks to go along with it, else you will trigger realm divide extremely quickly.
It takes way to long to end one turn...
Interesting, I was thinking about using it, but when firing up a campaign, I found that many provinces and even daimyos don't even have names. Is that normal? It makes the mod feel incomplete.
I haven’t even been able to get it to work
That shot at 5:46 was absolutely glorious.
The artillery in Shogun 2 was hilariously bad. I remember having 3 cannon units attacking a tower, and it was still standing after they all ran out of ammo..
The exception is the firerockets, those things could annihilate armies & settlements!
Not fall of the samurai, 3 unit of Parrot gun Can inflict very high cassaulties if used in open terrain
Hey Legend ! I'm so glad you're doing Shogun 2 vids again, I've been watching your Takeda campaign from 8 years ago and its really entertaining. Please do a Shogun 2 stream at some point in the future 🙏 Maybe Uesagi, Hattori or Ikko Ikki campaign 🙏Thank you for all the historical content ❤
That would be cool if the livestreams didn’t just consist of “thanks for the superchat” and everything not campaign related. Episodes like in the takeda campaign would be better so that they would keep his focus on the campaign, not the chat.
@@aleksimusmaximus true I would love to see a let's play series again but legend hasn't done one for a long long time
@@aleksimusmaximus Live streaming definitely isn't for everyone, and I also cannot sit through one for long. But it's the nature of the platform that forces people to rely on livestreaming over let's plays.
I would love to see him a Uesugi campaign
Its funny irl Hatakeyama clan was a major clan and you can kinda see it by the amount of land they hold, plus its kinda rare for them not to be a pain in the ass of the player at one point or another
mainly because their 3 settlements are all so far from one another, and if the player bias is high they'll just build up at one and send it across the map to take you out from sheer bitterness xD
@@taloscal I believe the actual reason for this is because by the time of the campaign start the Clan had split in to two different sub branches that occupied different regions of Japan. One branch was still relatively important politically around central Japan and the other was based in the east and become a major rival of the Date Clan.
"These artillery are just not getting kills"
... And clearly, they took that comment personally.
As a new player in Shogun 2, I found that my favourite strategy is to put my melee infantry on the flanks and filling the center with only ranged units. In practice it ends up similiar to Alexander's "False gap" tactic, with enemies charging at center taking heavy losses from missiles and getting encircled the moment they reach center line, or if they focus on flanks my missile troops are free to rain arrows on anybody.
The key to victory is engaging with flanks long before enemy can reach your center, preferably they won't reach your missile units at all. Either way, my troops are much more centralised than the enemy.
I also always make sure to put 2 yari ashigaru units directly behind archers, to protect them from cavalry charge.
Kind of amazing how quick shogun battles can be
No hp system=unit models die in one hit
Even for advanced units? I feel like my tercos used to be able to survive all manner of punishment
@@sir_vixThat’s likely their huge armor value coming into play. I think it’s one less than the Bulletproof Samurai which means they’re going to negate a ton of hits, even in melee despite their defense stat being pretty trash.
@@Yourmomgoestocollege816 In the old, pre-Warhammer system for hp there were still units with more than 1 hp. General units in Rome 1, for example, had 2 hp, and IIRC you could take stuff in the skill tree for your generals in Shogun 2 to give them more hp.
@@sir_vix Some units have 2 hp
I can't believe it's been six months since these daily shogun 2 uploads. They were the best morning poops of my life.
Was nice to see the cannons in play, I tend to go really heavy into matchlocks and what not but rarely go arty heavy in Shogun, I think it is just the inability to move them once you get into a battle and the campaign map speed reduction that put me off.
I also never really used either of the artillery units much either when I played it. I would say it was mostly a combination of the fact that it was very rare to have such an open flat battle field like the in the video that allowed them to keep shotting at the enemy continuously. Plus even then, in larger engagements they never really inflicted that much damage to the enemy.
Oh! Does remind me though I did used to use the hell out of the Hojo Hand Mortars and the Fire Rockets in multiplayer battles. Those Hand Mortars were awesome for going up against FOS armies, blasting their uber buffed French Marines with mortars and forcing them to go on the offensive was very satisfying.
i barely bother with firearms in shogun 2 (vanilla ofc) because i preffer to skirmish with my enemy rather than rely on ranged units to win my battles , i do preffer the bloody melee
@@mcsmash4905firearms are extremely op in defending cities. 5 matchlock ashigarus are usually enough to defend a city against full stacks, allowing you to focus on forming armies for offensives instead of garrisons
I'm in the same boat as you but I will say, do a Hojo campaign and rush the shit out of unlocking fire rockets. Then just build a bunch of those with a light cav or two and a few yari ashigaru defending them.
Is it a good or balanced army? No not at all. Is it one of the most fun and amazing things to do in Shogun 2 Vanilla? YES! My friend was jealous of the battles I had just watching over a dozen of those bad boys fire rockets and devastate the enemy with the range of cannons and killing power of matchlocks. Well I might be overselling it but it was AMAZING!
The last few days of historical uploads i can say that shogun2 is my fav.
With the others there's always one thing that was off, Napoleon AI being a bit goofy, rome 2 cav charges being as satisfying as a wet fart.
With Shogun 2 it's perfect.
i like the ragdoll effect of cannonball hitting inf
Early warfare(most of Rome) cav charges didn´t have the punch of later cav because they didn´t have stirrups, that is what gives a cavalry charge its "Oompf".
@@Br1chtyeah I bet the horses just glitched into the enemies back while charging because "no stirrups" 😂
@@loowick4074 Is that supposed to be English?
@@Br1chti don t think this was what pushed CA to mess with the cavalry s coding 😅
Even in med2 (with stirups) cav is buggy and can t handle cohesion well.
Engine is too blame, not stirups
I love how the game changes once you start pumping out gunpowder units in this game.
Love watching these historical TW fights. S2 was one of my favorite TWs. Thanks for doing these!
Honestly loving the shogun 2 content inspired me to go back and play it some more, thanks legend
Excellent video. You remind me of someone I used to play total war with a long long time ago named Synoptic. Good times.
Iirc, cannons are a long term investment. They need a couple of veterancy levels to truly start to shine.
Love Shogun 2. It’s the reason I got into TTW series. Please stream more of this content!
In sieges, I find that aiming the cannons at the walls the enemy archers are standing on is far more effective than aiming them at enemy units.
His 'army' has been having trouble. Very graceful and kind way to phrase that Legend.
Hatakeyama might be a minor faction but they can get pretty powerful and annoying as they have starting positions in two places far from each other, their diplomatic stuff, allying with their neighbours can wreck your relationships with many other factions.
Thanks to your videos I got into Shogun 2 again lately.
Im having a blast again, thank you CA for fucking up so I could enjoy one of my favorite games anew again!
6:58
> SHAMEFUL DISPLAY!
ah yes, a music to my ears.
I remember downloading a mod that gives cannons the explosive power of cannons in fall of the samurai and that alone made them super effective
European cannons are fun and can be very strong. in the field the only get a dozens kills or so but in a siege they can get hundreds and make every siege easy.
They do give you 1 major advantage tho and that is the ai will always attack you since you have the range advantage.
Mangonels are uselsss i never got them to work outside of mods they specifically buff them.
Yeah I remember there's a mod to balance the mangonels on steam
I preferred the anime girl unit card overhaul lmao
Siege weapons also have a short movement range in a game you don't lose your movement range after occupying a settlement.
Straight up had a mangonel unit miss every shot it took during a siege battle, where I let it run out of ammo before moving towards the castle. It might've landed one shot near a general, but that was the last time I recruited mangonels.
Mangonels were terrifying at launch, I remember them getting 300+ kills in every multiplayer game. They had to be nerfed, but not to that degree
Hey, I just wanted to thank you for showing us more Shogun 2 battles!
I like cannon to try to snipe the ennemy general or ennemy cavalry on field battle, it's far more effective on horse unit than on foot unit thanks to the horse higher height I guess. It works wonder when on siege at destroying wall and ruining unit that guarded them, but I will not expect more on field battle. The mongonels however... doesn't like it at all it can't aim even remotly accuratly on a blob. 90% of the time the cannon will force ennemy defending to attack so it's also a good tactical advantage.
Yup european cannons absolutely ragdoll cavalry ahahab i always play Otomo in s2 and i love when the ai has ton of cavalry because as soon as the battle starts i will nuke them and then flank everything with my blunderbuss cavalry for monstrous damagw
@@DillsyYourDaddy67 By the time you can reasonably recruit Fire rocket you can have cannon in every siege army you need and half the japon captured at least. I like them a lot but they are way to late in the campaign.
I think what makes it feel different when targeting cavalry is they have a knock back effect. While foot soldiers get back up, mounted units die when knocked out.
Your Shogun vids have got me back into that gem, thanks Legends!
I love Shogun so much, I'm so happy to see some of it's gameplay on the channel! 😁
I'd love to see a Fall of the Samurai all out total war live stream!
Yea, some manual aiming of armstrong guns would be fun.
5:45 gaddem that was too close. Artillery is going to get a scolding from the General later on.
Shogun 2 is the absolute GOAT and best polished total war there is. No other vanilla tw woks this well overall and is still modern and nice looking. Also 5:47 holy shit hahaha, just yeeted them out of existence :D :D :D
Except there are typos in unit stats, but otherwise yeah, totally polished
I am really happy you're branching off into Shogun 2 again. It's a really fun game. A protip about cannons and siege artillery in this game is that they'll always target the edges of units. They're not very good in Shogun 2 base because they're more for attacking actual castle-towns. Fall Of The Samurai they're near unstoppable though. It's also important to note that theres more time needed for units to receive orders and to actually move. They're not quite as fast as they are in modern games.
Hi all, hi Legend. I started to play SH2 not so long ago, was "hardcore" player (highest difficulties, map paintings, doing legendoftotalwar things without youtube channel lmao) of Rome (first and only ofc), Medivial and all three warhammers. Just want to say that game is great and still feels awesome.
My lord!! A Glorious Victory Will Soon Be *YOURS*
This video makes me want to purchase the game next time it goes on sale.
That's another thing I quite like about Shogun 2 as a viewer: The battles are short and sweet. It's not watching 1 general kite for half an hour dropping the occasional bomb
IIRC the only benefit having an artillery unit in Shogun 2 is that the AI is forced to attack you even when you're launching the attack.
and they're okay during offensive sieges, though most tend to prefer using 'draw out' methods for offensive siefes.
@@taloscalIsn't it pointless when you can just climb the wall?
@@Uragan00829 enemy units on the walls get absolutley demolished when they're blown up by artillery though, really helps thin the numbers out.
When it comes to siege weapons in shogun 2 they're pretty much all horrible. The only exception are the fire rockets which can basically shred a single unit in one salvo, perfect for high priority targets but they're cery late game.
Nothing like creating the optimal seige defense army only for the enemy to starve you out.
Shogun 2 is so fun this makes me want to play it again
Besides sieges, cannons are grate at killing cavalry from a distance. Bear in mind this is 15th century artillery as well so its just cannon balls. Vs 18th century exlosive shells from FOTS.
European cannons are best used in landbattles against cavalry. Against infantry they cause minimal casualties as they just knock soldiers to ground but they get up again. Cav however instantly dies so its perfect to snipe gens or big cav forces. Also Mangonels got pretty trash accuracy as they once got nerfed. But using inspire ability on them makes them alot better
This makes me wanna try building them in a fletcher province just to see how good they become.
@@googleandsusansucks You mean Mangonels? I played a ton of multiplayer and also made a Mangonel veteran and tried to boost it with various skills. So they finally had an ok accuracy. In a landbattle I could kill once around 160 that way. So its far from op. But they were once, as I read a post somewhere, that at release they could get around 300 kills sometimes. If you want to see a battle with Mangonel action look for "1 Player almost deytroys 4 armies" by pixelated apollo. I made there a battle with rules where players had to bring them :)
It’s not really worth but funny:D fire rockets are better, they Annihilate a great guard with one salve. The best moments I had were one shooting bow gens with your hidden fire rockets. The players mostly gave up after they lost their bow gen.
In multiplayer I trolled with a lvl9 European cannon and fun fact, sometimes they did decent against cav. Once I managed to shoot a cav in wedge formation and I could see how the canon bullet went from the first guy through the entire cav.
if i remember right, the cannons devastate cavalry (instagib all cavalry it touches), but just knock around infantry for some reason. kind of like the cannonball turns into a soccer ball and smack them in the forehead at an unexpected moment
I've been playing so many hours of Shogun 2 recently and looks like I'm not the only one!
5:42 missed the target by like 50 meters but still good job I guess?😂
Both artillery types you got are seige weapons in this game. High damage to basically only direct hit targets, though if i recall there is a tech upgrade to allow scatter shot, which is better on infantry
That’s for Fall of the samurai, shogun 2 vanilla doesn’t have that, just solid shot.
Also might be an empire thing but I haven’t played that too much so I wouldn’t know.
@@jwe2378empire did have explosive shot i think
@@rengarjones1837Howitzers and Mortars did, cannons only round and canister shot.
@@Philipp1500 Shrapnel Shot disagrees.
MrSmartDonkey: *Sees artillery, flips table*
Accurate.
Anyone else suddenly having Legend's Medieval 2 campaigns from 7 years ago show up in their youtube recommendations?
Nice to see another Shogun 2 battle. I am playing a campaign atm and will send a battle if I get one
Archers randomly killing your own units when the battle is over. A Classic Total War scenario. Throughout every Total War I must have lost thousands of men to that bullshit and even a few Generals lmao.
that arty shot was *chefs kiss*
That's some of the saddest artillery that I've ever seen, as Legend says it does look very cool but didn't really do much
With mangonels I’ve always had better luck aiming at center of enemy formation as a lot of projectiles fall short. Basically, intentionally aim over what you want to hit
Funnily enough the Firerocket troops are the best artillery unit in Shogun2. Supposedly only meant for anti-cav duty, but they wreck most tight formations pretty badly.
And they're also the most mobile of long range artillery, not to mention do well enough against fortifications.
Hojo hand mortars and fire rockets are pretty good in shogun 2, devastating in sieges. And if you focus on that tech you can get it before realm divide if you play a bit slow.
Loving the Shogun 2 appreciation. I'm hoping to see more
i once rushed my army underneath the enemy walls to absorb arrows so that my bomb throwers dont get harrassed but the ai for once showed some competency and completely ignored everyhting else and utterly demolished my bomb throwers
Yes!!! More shogun 2, please, or one livestream
That was downright impressive!
Let's go!!! Shogun 2! Now we need a Shogun 2 Fots campaign!
It was probably the bomb throwers that destroyed the right flank, they are professional teamkillers.
Your Japanese word pronunciation is good
The cannons are awesome when shooting walls with archers
Next video: American Nuclear weapon in Shogun 2
Loved this battle dude
I used them a lot for sieges on heavily fortified castles with a larger force, it allowed me to attack from a distance and hit the gates to mess with the AI and allowed me a slight advantage. But also cannons seemed to work well for defensive sieges as well in my experience. So maybe they were geared towards sieges, either way I think someone should tested out the cannons because this is interesting.
Shogun 2's battles are so damn good it's insane the newer games didn't learn from them. Terrain and deployment matter, but combat is also swift and decisive, with individual actions, taken at the right moment, causing huge shifts in your odds of victory. I always felt in control of the outcome of any battle in Shogun 2, which is not something I can always say about the later games
the best thing about shogun 2 is that the ai isnt hyper reactive when it comes to ranged advantage , for example in some earlier and in pretty much every game after shogun 2 the ai rushes you if : A) you have the ranged advantage or B) you are on equal terms , while the logic is reasonable the way its executed is beyond ridiculous , in shogun 2 you get genuine skirmishing between the ai and player ranged units , the ai hyper reactivity is the same reason why i dont play range focused factions and why ranged units make up the smallest part of my armies , i preffer bloody head on engagements between opposing armies
This, and especially in FotS. One volley can change an entire battle.
i mean it really just depends on your army composition, if the games are in time periods without siege weapons or gunpowder terrain really doesn't make as much a difference as either way you're walking in to stab them in melee or shoot with bows
I really didnt like how alot of shoguns 2 units were killed by dice roll animations in melee combat. This is why yari wall is so powerful in the game because the animation system is sidestepped.
I prefer the battles to this day in rome 1 and medieval 2 for its simple but effective combat system.
@@sup1602 med2 had arguably the most realistic melee combat of them all and also the slowest
Hi legend, just looking back to your grombrindal stream. The following purple items give laughable (op) autoresolve and are good in battle starmetal armor, grimir ring, starbreaker.good for not well defended territory.Also if we count all public order bonuses from legendary lords, landmarks and control of karak 8 peaks dwarfs can get more than 16 public order passively ( 4 from belegar set,4 thorgrim set, 1 from ungrim, grombrindal and thorek set, land marks of karaz a karak, 8 peaks, grombrindals starting location, i am certain i forget some) . Also playing as belegar you get Extra 5(+1) control when in control of eight peaks from oath fulfilled.
Also rune of spite cannot be lost after defeat so don't worry giving it to under 20 level characters.
the lethality issue is why i like the Rocket Troop dudes more that the fixed arty units
You know someone is a S2 noob when they keep the magonel as Hojo lol
And the bomb throwers 😭😭
The only TW game that is banned from Steam Japan.
But I managed to get a copy anyways and totally love it.
And even more so that Legend is picking it up after 8 years!
I still always am expecting Legend to call us fuckers at the end.
i really love Shogun total war! but after a certain amount of turns i hate it when realm divide happens and if you declare war on someone you end up fighting like half the map lol
I like how it provides a challenge in later game. And also, it’s similar to how it was historically (everyone ganging up on Oda once he controlled a large part of Japan).
You have to keep an eye on the bar and be prepared, then it shouldn't be a huge problem. If you trigger it by accident and your armies are not in position that's when problems happen.
@@mikloskoszegi Yup. The main problem with realm divide is some random 1-province clan sending a stack by boat and invades. Just annoying.
@@awonoto youre right tbh im a very casual total war player and i end up quitting campaigns early but im going to try and do it properly this time
It's always a good taste to see a master in such a non-shameful dispray.
The cannons are probably good for lowering enemy moral. May it be?
From terrible artillery in Shogun 2 to the best artillery in the series for Fall of the Samurai.
This feels like a conspiracy :D I just finished Blue eyed samurai and installed shogun 2 and now I am being spoiled like this? Coincidence, I THINK NOT! The universe must be revolving around me or something :D
Unfortunately Siege units in regular Shogun 2 are really bad, European Cannons might be the worst unit in the game possibly. The only reason I ever recruit them is if I am playing Otomo and need enemy to charge into my gun formations to get mowed down (Matchlocks have shorter range than archers so its a pain unless they have highground)
Watching these older games makes me want to redownload lol
Should have renamed this to "Preventing the Fukushima disaster"
I've found mangonels to be much more accurate if you tell them to aim at a spot on the ground instead of a unit (the old alt + right click trick). As long as they are on the high ground, they are awesome in both offensive and defensive sieges.
i just started playing shogun 2 and just finished my first campaign on hard. even with 0 experience in this game i only lost 3(land) battles in the entire campaign. so the battles are easy... to me. the hardest thing for me was actually making money to support my armies and agents.
Classic Shogun 2 is amazing to see. Artillery was never a great thing in Shogun 2, very inaccurate, unmoving during battle, slow on the campaign, but I still very much like seeing artillery being used in Shogun 2. But what I believe the player here should do is replace the short range friendly fire prone Firebomb Throwers with long range Fire Rockets do deal some more consistent damage from a longer range compared to the Firebomb Throwers.
Artillery on release was fine. It was nerfed later to oblivion thanks to community complaining about general sniping.
The only thing I actively use European cannons for are sieges to get hundreds of kills on the archer units by breaking the castle.
I feel like a lot of people get confused when they hear that yari ashigaru are the best unit in the game. Particularly I hear mrsmartdonkeyLP's videos get referenced a lot.
But people just hear "yari ashigaru best unit" but miss the context of that statement. it is the best unit in the game for cost effectiveness its not straight up better than everything. The advantage is that if you go hard into ashigaru (as in save money and don't bother with early samurai) you can wind up having 3-4 stacks of ashigaru supported by something like bow warrior monks and naginata samurai and still have tons of money because ashigaru are cheap. You can't just have solo 20 stacks of ashigaru core armies and expect to beat legendary AI armies.
That mass route as your light cav and general hit their melee line from behind was just so sweet.
5:45 this is a great clip and should be clipped
European Cannons only have an incredibly small niche that makes them useful: Smashing walls and sniping generals.
The best yari wall counter is flanking which the ai struggles with
Good, mostly clean battle.
Those European canon's are kinda lame ducks aren't they? Armstrong canons they're not.
Also, I feel your frustration regarding artillery ignoring cease fire orders.
Just some observations here, the canons are amazing against Cav so you could have scored a general snipe pretty early on with no losses. Then your light Cav is free to pull units away and the rest to be shot by your bows. Always walk your Yari walls into fights as well they kill insane amounts of enemies especially downhill