Ilosar said:
IIRC, Hard is where the computer nor the player gets no bonuses, but the computer gets free units, especially during Realm Divide. It's not uncommon to see minor Clans with a full stack inside of their cities by turn 3 or 4. I eventually made it with the Hojo, mostly because 1. the Takeda were dead set on being my friends, hell even Realm Divide barely made a dent into our alliance and they really helped me weather the storm, they eventually broke our alliance but by that time I was Shogun and lacked 4 provinces to win. Which i took from them. And 2. Hojo start with an improved Fire Projecting Mangonel. These babies can easily kill 200 or 300 enemies per battle, and are especially useful for softening up all those Katana Samurai during sieges. I once won a battle against a general fielding double my numbers, but only Ashigaru, and I had a max level General with the Fear skill. Well, the Mangonels hit the General and killed him, and two cavalry charges later the entire army routs. It was beautiful.
Shogun 2 is my favourite Total War, but I would change 2 things; the naval battles are a clusterfuck, and make the Realm Divide penalties waver once you become Shogun. I mean, the whole point is that the previous Shogun declared you enemy of the Sate, right? Well now I am the State, the Emperor chose me. So why am i still losing brownie points with everyone, even my allies?
I also once tried Legendary, for kicks. Didn't last past turn 15. By that I mean I was getting owned by armies my size, or even slightly lower in numbers, while I can easily take on 1.5 times my numbers on Hard and win with thrice less casualties than my opponents. It's wickedly tough.
I'm finally succeeding with my Uesigi game on hard. After a while I got used to seeing full stacks, especially because I found out that it meant the enemy usually had empty cities after they got their stack wiped against my walls (Takeda was an exception I found). To bait an enemy into attacking a city is pretty much one of the best tactics yet I think. I took out armies twice my size from the walls. After that, move onto their city, and then wait again for retaliation, and move over to the next city. The Takeda problem I solved mainly trough diplomacy. I had all his alliances dissolved, every one of his trade partners boycot him, and had a few of them declare war on him. Cost me a pretty penny but it's so damn satisfying to totally isolate the bastard who just had to attack you no matter what.
Takeda has only got one province left now, and I'm an ally to Date and Hatakeyama, who jointly own the north and are each others allies. I absolutely love the diplomacy part of the game. Without working hard at diplomacy I would've lost stupendously in my first hard game. It's something no Total War game did this well; especially not the first Shogun, however much I loved it. And I like how pretty much everything matters. Whereas I used to have an army of 10-20 ninjas/priests/whatever in previous games, now I got just a few and they are valued possessions. A good marriage buffered alliance actually means something and I can leave my rear unguarded while concentrating everything on the front. Most of the game fits neatly together and just works.
Naval battles on the other hand...well I've tried the tutorial, then I've tried them a few times in the campaign, and now I just crank out a fleet and auto-resolve. It's just too bloody slow and annoying. I can't imagine how they always sink ships in auto-resolve because when I try that with bow ships or a medium bune nothing happens, at all. Perhaps flaming arrows help, but I'd rather go for stuff that matters in the tech screen. So far I hadn't bothered with siege weapons because they seemed to be completely rubbish in the tutorial. I'll give them a try soon.
Realm divide I found to be quite fun and even doable as long as I kept paying my allies to stay with me. But that was on normal difficulty, short campaign. I agree that it's nonsense for you to get more and more hated even after becoming shogun. It's not as if that happened to the previous shogun. And -5 relations each turn for a total of -200 is just too much. They should've capped it at -100 or so. And, a minor annoyance, I don't like that my military alliances degrade down to +40. After that there's no way to 'refresh' your alliance. Unless there's a marriage opportunity, sometimes all you can do to keep an alliance is shower the other guy with gold, repeatedly. That's not much of a healthy relationship.
And the pacing is a bit odd, but perhaps that's just me. In my first normal game, up until the end I was using ashigaru armies, sometimes with a few katana samurai or bow samurai thrown in. In my current long, hard, game, I'm in 20-25 turns or so and I'm still relying mainly on ashigaru. There's nothing that can beat popping out units each a turn, with low upkeep, and so far pretty decent stats. Investing first in the military facilities and then in the units themselves is just amazingly costly compared to just sticking with ashigaru. Only just now I start to notice a drawback when going up against Ikko-Ikki warrior monks and loanswords. Still, as long as I defend a castle they aren't getting in.
