Is Sengoku too war-focused?

[BurningEGO]

The game is even inferior to crusader kings. A player is very limited to what he can do.

And if this was a period of only war, then war should be more complex. As it is now, it is pratically all about numbers. And if you are not the clan leader, you are badly screwed with your tiny retinues.

As someone said, this game is pratically RISK. Disappointment.

 

[ColBlimp]

Well ive just been watching a programme about this period when the new Emperor that came to power defeated the Shogun ruler at the time of the clan Hojo at his castle on the coast near Tokyo called Kamakura in 1333. The Japanese authorities have found two mass graves of over 3000 dead warriors from the battle. It led to the complete wiping out of the city and its population. And caused the biggest mass suicide in history by the Hojo people in the mountains by Seppukku. So i think one can argue as the British pathologist that studied the remains said at the end of the programme. We are dealing with one of the most violent periods in a nations history. The awful fact is that this is a very violent period in any nations history and it really only involves war and political intrigue not much else sadly. So forget EU3 in a way.

 

[Cliff60]

This period in time in japan it was all about power with very little diplomacy involved. The big clans forced the small clans to join them or be wiped out. simple as that. But it would be better if u had some sort of supply function to restrict the size of armies. Its too easy to raise new levies when they get wiped out. Like fighting in enemy koris u destroy an army and another takes it place straight away. Ninjas were used to kill enemy Daimyos to weaken the enemy before a battle. But there is too little do do in the game. The only way to win is attack and destroy every clan u can to make urs stronger. A small clan cant win unless it stays independant and takes out all the other small clans. Which im doing right now. Ive gone from 5 kori to having 12% of japan by conquest and war. I havent even looked at the diplomacy screen yet cause i dont intend on using it. Ive only used the 1st 3 screens so far. I marry as many times as i can to get as many kids as possible cause they have a nasty habbit of dying very young. IE if ur lucky u might get 1 in 10 kids survive to become heir. But its closer to 1 in 20. In my current game ive had 30 kids of which only 2 lived to become adults. Ive got 4 wifes and having new kids every few months. I marry them off as soon as their born. But the game game needs more in the way of buildings and kori improvments.

 

[LeeNTien]

plot

 

[Jak9090]

it might be a game about civil war, but it isn't played out realistically, the second the game start everyone starts to blob, when in real history it took a hundred or so years, and clans would always risk being fractured, this just doesnt happen in sengoku, a clan will just split and eiterh take all the land of their lord, or their lord destroy them.

 

[unmerged(169164)]

If you are finding you have to fight wars too often in this game, you aren't playing it as fully intended.

This game is fully about using war as a last resort. You should be making family alliances/marriages and drawing in vassals to your clan.

I beg to differ here: the game is all about either achieving shogunate and/or uniting Japan under one clan rule.

There is a beat the clock component and the fastest means is by thus imposed. If waging wars is the fastest way, so it must be the used way.

And playing to accomplish the ultimate goals is playing the game as it is fully intended.

 

[unmerged(169164)]

And if you are not the clan leader, you are badly screwed with your tiny retinues.

The game covers a large spectrum of possible starts: you can start as the clan leader of a big clan to start as a simple courtier (if I am right, if not at least a vassal owning one single province) into a smal clan.

You have to beat the clock and the large spectrum covered imposes different approachs. Getting the same experience from both ends of the spectrum would be the disappointing feature. Not that by starting at the bottom, you have to do with bottom means.

 

[Yliardin]

There is not too much war, but there is too little diplomacy. The total amount of combat is fine in my view, however the AI is too biased towards all out warfare rather than diplomatic consideration. If plotting and quick diplomacy were to be improved I think the game would feel far more complete. The issue isn't too much war, but a lack of much other than war.

Fully agreed.

 

[Tass248]

Spent the last few months brushing up my CK skills expecting Sengoku to be "the next step"... Actually I feel (I could be wrong) that Sengoku has been taken a step back from CK, in preparation for CK2. What I mean is that us old horses from CK will buy Sengoku and CK2 but PI needed to make a game like Sengoku to get new players hooked in and prepared for CK2.

then again maybe I'm just talking gibberish.

 

[unmerged(361027)]

I think a big issue is the stability of large clans. Once you're a large clan it's easy to gain honour and optimal to go on a war spree. Also, your vassals and daimyo's never really get there stuff together and rebel or create any sort of instability. And it's not as if there's an enormous number of interactions possible with them anyway. I did once see the biggest clan break up but the vast majority of the time (after 40 years or so) it's your 35%+ clan versus another 100 honour 35%+ clan and a race to the shogunate through war. If vassals were more likely to rebel as you killed off their levies and you handed out land to others (while you could actually tempt opposition vassals if they were too involved in wars) you might find it a more interesting dynamic.

early on, playing as a smaller clan or as a daimyo creating plots the game play feels much better but it doesn't last.

Also, some options you have seem clearly more efficient while others redundant. I think I only ever used ninjas for assassinations (if they had a leader with obscene honour) and occasionally for lowering honour (if I could get it below 25). While sow dissent felt somewhat limp wristed, seemingly short term and infrequently triggered. Too often an inferior choice to recruiting ninjas (which themselves didn't seem awfully important).

Edit: the difficulty curve seems to go from challenging to tediously easy as you grow to become one of the biggest clans. In my first win I don't think I had any sort of opposition (after the first few wars) until I reached the uesugi (as kono) by which time I had already claimed the shogunate.

 

[Nefaro]

Hopefully adding Friend & Rival character interactions (like CK) will stoke some of the clan vassals to take on their liege a bit more.

Big part of the clan civil war (non-)problem is that the huge amount of time it takes to use Sow Dissent often takes away the extra -10 (can it go higher or is that a cap?) you can get on someone else's vassal. It is quite difficult to make even unhappy vassals, with negative relations, go down far enough to take a stand against their liege as the values and options are now.

 

[Fungi]

First 3 games i got eaten alive :') finaly manged to win or almost. My Clan leader died and i was not able to set his 10year old son as heir to the clan (i got set other Oda family members that were underage as succesor but not my own son :s) and so my ingame 'uncle' got the shogun title

 

[Nefaro]

First 3 games i got eaten alive :') finaly manged to win or almost. My Clan leader died and i was not able to set his 10year old son as heir to the clan (i got set other Oda family members that were underage as succesor but not my own son :s) and so my ingame 'uncle' got the shogun title

Doah!

Look at it this way, however. If you ever decide to start with a vassal character, now you know how to have a chance at usurping clan leadership, for your lesser clan, via nefarious means.

Learning experience and all that..

 

[mp84]

That's probably one of my other bigger complaints about Sengoku for me, the randomness of heirs, or even your leader dying is just sooo annoying, especially for a game that's meant to be played in a short period of time... Yea.. I don't expect people to live their 80 years old, but at the same time, the majority of them seem to be dying when they are in their 20s which could be historical perhaps, but from a "gameplay" perspective not sure if I enjoy it.

To me, I think CK did that right as you had the weird person who would live till 80, but you also had people die young as well, and overall it's just a good balance and to be frank that's not nostalgia here, as I'm playing CK as we speak .. So i too agree in terms of comparing it to CK, CK is still far the superior game, however, that's the problem or assumption people are trying to make and here lies the fault in that kind of debate. This game is not like CK, the Devs themselves even stated it's not a "Daimyo simulator", it's a game about a "civil war" thus for what Sengoku is trying to portray is the focus purely on war.

However, I too wouldn't mind some more character or event driven action to break up the constant going to "war" focus of this game if this game, but since that's the intended focus of this game I'm not sure how much that will change even with Patches... Your best bet in the end will be Mods will hopefully include those Character Driven Events, etc.. that will at least break up the constant focus of war.

And one last end to my minor rant, heh... If this game is focus on "war" then why in the world would you not include "Battle Sounds"? lol... :angry:

 

[Steelwarrior]

Hi,

for me it is just to easy - had 70% of Japan conqured by 1600 with the Shimazu - just raged war like crazy - many times not even mobilizing my Levy troops ;-)

 

[eRe4s3r]

I agree that its currently like playing Risk with a semi-deep Clan/Noble management.

Now this is my first post in this forum (well, Sengoku Forums) as this is my first Paradox game i bought the others i just tested demo's.. for some reason i accidentally believed that the makers of Victoria and Europe Universalis would know how to do a Sengoku Jidai game.

The reality is, they don't. Or don't yet.. we'll see.

here is a why i think that

1) Theres no Seasons, no Winter, No Food, and no Supply mechanic (which all interlinks together) - which is one of the biggest fails ever to exist in a game about Sengoku Jidai - the age of the country at war - except the war was PRIMARILY guided by the seasons and harvest times. By food supply, supply lines and food stores. The mere notion that developing a CASTLE extends my supply limit is beyond absurd as well. If anything it extends my ability to spread supply, but not my ACTUAL supplies.... in reality a Castle would cost and drain supplies (and a lot) (Shogun 2 abstracts this with its food and attrition, its a simple but effective system to prevent Citadel and Stronghold spam and Attrition means you will stay the heck out of enemy regions during winter unless its a "do or die" attack to seize the region ,p)

2) Population isn't calculated properly (maybe Sengoku took this idea from Shogun 2? ;P) - because population isn't calculated war/food/army/levee appear nearly like magic spawns. Again this interlinks with food (a levee raise at harvest season is particularly fun ,p) Shogun 2 had no levees, which i think is for the better. Without Population there is no strategy at all. Particularly as in Japan, the population was low to begin with. And lets not even get me started on Ronin Armies.. randomly finding them because my minister is searching for them is by far the most hilarious thing i ever seen ^^ I can just see how this worked in reality, a rich well known clan member walks through the landscape asking every passerby whether theres a Ronin with an ARMY to hire somewhere... yeah

3) The Diplomacy system with its Honor is.. ehm, lets just say.. bad. Its a meta-limiter on gameplay, Honor by itself is a value here, but putting a number on Honor (and even a price!) means that even DISHONORFUL dastards, can be honorful.. its absurd (and doesn't even make sense in the Sengoku Jidai context). Shogun 2 (again) did it right, you are dishonorful? Well you are rich, but you are also HATED TO THE GUTS and back particularly by your generals (which can have a lot of funny situations, particularly when you use multiple stacks) - again, Sengoku tries to do the same with its Honor penalty, forgetting that this penalty does NOT EXIST for big clans due to how the game plays.

4) No Fog of war, does this really need explanation? I don't even mean just Army positions, i mean Shimazu knowing who is the child, how old it is, and what traits it has of some irrelevant vassal who governs Fukushima province. Thats just absurd. Without a spy in that province and in that court, we should at best know the names and ages of the important people.

5) The sea gameplay was completely forgotten, even though dominance of the sea (and with that, dominance of trade) played a role particularly for the clans on the Islands.

6) The Tech tree - *crickets* - Why not? Researching stuff is FUN, not researching stuff is NOT fun ;/

This game seems incredible complex at first, but once you dig in its totally easy, and even shallow (who'd ever figure that could be said about a PARADOX game?) I Know paradox games had always bad combat but Sengoku really takes the cake, no effort was put into making it interesting, varied and complex.

Lets recap, a game about Sengoku Jidai - and its weakest element is the war. That is some irony

I hope modders can fix all these things via scripting... but for me, and for now, its back to Shogun 2 with Trom3 (mod)

I hope i didn't step on anyones toes, please add a mental note to each my points that this is from someone whos not "greatly" into paradox games at all, I play Shogun 2 mainly so take my points with that in mind.

 

[Nefaro]

Holding up Shogun 2 as the right way to model Levies (i.e. none) and supplies? I don't buy it, sorry.

Researching stuff? I dunno. Sounds like you wanted Shogun TW 2.5. Or Civ5 Japan? There may be some things needed here, but turning it into a Total War game isn't really needed is it?

 

[Adam_Taylor]

I understand that this was a period of great warfare.

The thing is, there seems to be little else.
During this period, there was a lot of technological advancement (true a lot of it had to do with war). There were great plays and poems written.
New alliances were formed. People worked together to build up areas.

But none of that seems to happen in this game. It's just killing and more killing.
I don't mind a heavy war focus... but give us SOMETHING else as well.

 

[eRe4s3r]

Holding up Shogun 2 as the right way to model Levies (i.e. none) and supplies? I don't buy it, sorry.

Researching stuff? I dunno. Sounds like you wanted Shogun TW 2.5. Or Civ5 Japan? There may be some things needed here, but turning it into a Total War game isn't really needed is it?

Well that comparison is insofar a good one as Shogun 2 at least admits it needs some expansion limiters for big clans (which is what food (prevents castle spam) and seasons/supplies (adds strategic element) is for - i am not saying Sengoku needs to do the same thing, but it does NOTHING in that regard, which is too little indeed.

And the reason its better to not touch levies is because its a system that only works if you simulate everything below that, harvest cycles, manpower per province, population growth, supply and food stores, weapon production etc. Shogun 2 didn't want that kind of clout and so they opted to remove that entirely.

The era of Sengoku Jidai was one of total war, but Sengoku seems to be more focused on clan management than war (and its aspects) which is why the war part is so weak.

The Comparision with Shogun 2 is just there because that game does the Sengoku Jidai much better and complexer.. which is hilarious given that thats a mainstream game that has streamlined elements everywhere. But even though they are all simple systems, they work together to allow for great strategic depth. With the building system you are also forced to decide what to do with long-term repercussions. While in Sengoku all i have to decide is ARMY or TAX and for whole clan I can't even decide *that*.

In Sengoku the only strategy is to attack with blobs. You *could* do other things, but nothing in this game is as effective as taking a province and taking more provinces.

I don't want them to clone Shogun 2, because there is already Shogun 2

What i would have wished was simply more depth, more new and clever ideas.

 

[The Disaster]

Heck - I wish I hadn't read these last posts. I hate to say it, but I think that eRe4s3r is right.