Positives after a couple playthroughs..

[Silva]

Okay, since we have the thread for problems, I'm opening one for people to cite what they really like in the game. I'll start...


1 - Human Resources (officers): As the most distinctive aspect of this series for me, I think Awakening really got it right here. I REALLY like how officers are so impactful this time around, and how the Council (with Conservator and Overseers) affect your whole clan. I like how they actively make suggestions and interventions on their own, and exibit personality through Direct Talks, where the things they bargain for are related to their backgrounds and interests.

2 - Clan identity through Policies + Officers. Individually those aspects are simple, but they synergize together into a interesting whole about clan identity and style. Do you go for quality or quantity? Muskets or cavalry? Brute force or covert? Diplomacy or warfare? Different combinations of officers and policies open up different styles and courses of play, sometimes even within the same clan. Obviously not Endless Legends levels of asymetry, but for a dedicated wargame it's pretty good.

3 - Diplomacy. Some weirdness aside, the core ideas here are great. Prestige being actually impactul on the politics board AND warfare is nice. And Direct Talks is *chef's kiss*, perfect to give the system some nuance and more character to the different daimyo. It creates a certain "roleplaying factor" that I appreciate.

4 - Authority. Such a great concept that I can't live without anymore. Seeing whole castles defecting to your side, or other daimyo trembling/respecting you, dynamically upon a decisive battle feels realistic and fun.

5 - The AI. What can I say? It's not just competent, but absolutely opportunistic and ruthless. Since Shogun 2 Total War I don't see an AI sending me to the game-over screen so often, and I didn't even start my Ironman playthroughs yet.

How about you?

[Ger]

Love some little details nobody has mentioned.

- Massive number of events. More than half the available clans have historical storyline that relate every important move inside them: Battles, incidents, Daimyo change, inheritance, plots, etc. I guess SOI does not reach this level of detail in the Sengoku chronicle.

- You can choose the colour of your subordinate's province territory.

- The game runs smoothly even in average PC's thanks to the magistral Performance Mode (low graphics).

- The character portraits now enjoy different effects on them:
Pale blue coloured when they are at night time, orangish when they are on a place with lamps or little sunlight. Now they even blink if you wait a few seconds while looking at them. Love it.

- Deserved large updated portraits for important characters like Mitsuhide Akechi's wife, Hiroko Tsumaki. At last 🥰

- Several more landscapes for the event dialogs.

...

That is all i can tell right now 🙂

[Case]

Covert actions and diplomacy are the best they've ever been

[Silva]

Oh yea, forgot about covert. It's great indeed.

[☯ Icy ᚱᛖᛞ ᛊᛟᛞᚨ▲]

Originally posted by Case:

Covert actions and diplomacy are the best they've ever been

Is there a way to improve covert actions like raze ?

[BloodyPork]

Originally posted by Ger:

- The game runs smoothly even in average PC's thanks to the magistral Performance Mode (low graphics).

Game actually get fps drop even with good gpu on high graphic setting during siege, the gpu doesn't even heat that much (so not high usage) so it's just some optimization problem or something. Only during some siege though. Solution? Just set it to simple graphic, really can't tell the difference lol.

The best addition for me in this iteration is the officer suggestion thing. At least they start to act more like retainers (who actually do this a lot irl) rather than just silence robot npcs like in previous game who can't think or do anything without you telling them. It's good now they develop and build their own domain and castle facilities... in previous games you have to do every little thing yourself. Some people don't like this because they can't "minmax" or whatever but those micro get tedious after a while, Taishi moving towards macro is definitely the right direction.

Another thing I really like is how everyone who newly joins need to work from ground up. This is very realistic, it make no sense if let's say, Imagawa defeat Oda and suddenly all the castle lords are Oda's generals (as human we do this because they have better stats, but this is unrealistic irl). Or like Motoyasu come to age and he immediately becomes regent because his stats are good. Fiefs are awarded based on contributions not because magically you know "the new guy who just turn 15 is actually great." Irl we don't know this, they would need to go to battle first and get some honor to get promoted then everyone know they are great and deserving to be like castle lord or regents. This would also justify how historically Nobunaga need to rely on his senior retainers like Hidesada Hayashi, Nobumori Sakuma, etc, in this game you need to utilize them too because they have rank advantage over the younger guys. In previous games it's all like "stats is all that matters" but here the low statted guys have use if they start at higher rank or have useful trait to contribute to the squad that was missing the specific trait. Rtk 14 is an example of where nobody matters except the best military/strategist type which is bad design imo.

People is going to mention direct talks as great addition which it is, but at the same time it makes you seriously wonder why is there no direct talks with allied clan? People wanting to join you ask for stuffs, clans wanting truce or surrender also has negotiation, BUT you asking them to gift you a castle for free and they can't even negotiate/refuse? It's like super weird. Honestly instead of goodwill (paying small amount of negligible money) being used to ally/reinforce, etc they should just replace it altogether with direct talks. If you want bigger clan to ally with you then they would ask for compensation ofc, and it should't be so easy to extend alliance forever.

[RomanLegacy]

Originally posted by Silva:

4 - Authority. Such a great concept that I can't live without anymore. Seeing whole castles defecting to your side, or other daimyo trembling/respecting you, dynamically upon a decisive battle feels realistic and fun.

This is a really great point, and a mechanic that should be considered for the grand strategy genre as a whole. So many grand strategy games turn into a slog once you win a pivotal battle and crush the AI; the rest is cleanup.

Having the weaker castles flip to your side bolsters the officer gameplay of Nobunagas ambition, but it also removes a lot of tedium of having to absorb the remainders of a shattered clan by conquering each castle one by one.

And it makes you the player feel cool as the camera swings to all the differing reactions from the neighboring clans as they discuss the event they just witnessed.

[Vin362]

Originally posted by ☯ Icy ᛁᚾᚲᚨᚱᚾᚨ ▲:

Originally posted by Case:

Covert actions and diplomacy are the best they've ever been

Is there a way to improve covert actions like raze ?

I think you can improve covert actions chances of success when you officer has the covert alias or have purple traits.

[Silva]

The Devious trait raises covert chances, while Plot trait opens up advanced covert options unavailable by default. Then there're Policies and Conservator traits like Ninja Code, Eight Formations, Strategist, etc. that buffs covert chances and/or open up new special options above that (eg: "Misinformation Gambit" and "Supply Raid", REALLY strong). And once you create a "Province" (Autonomous Force controlled by an AI) it will make "mass covert" options that will hit various castles at once: mass Raze, mass Rumor, etc. It costs tenfold though.

Also, consider having a "covert-specialized castle" with a good strategist Lord nearby the frontlines supported by officers who enhances the Lord with covert traits of their own. See the chaos they'll cause.

P.S: same logic applies for other specializations: a diplomatic castle Lord with diplomatic retainers, a Castle Raider lord + Castle Raider retainers, etc. (you can even specialize daimyo with substitutes & attendants). Remember all those traits stack together raising the level of the Lord's trait - which is what matters in the end, since he's the one taking discrete actions both on the big map and battlefields. Game has various "builds" both on macro and micro level, that rewards specializing toward.
.

[XYZEXPIRED]

I like the fact that attacking someone who have higher ranking or title than you will give you less stats to start with in battle. Seem more realistic, as the higher ranking have more justify than you trying to overthrow them :).