Unexpected fort on campaign battle map

[markeason]

Following the recent episode of wading metsuke, the latest surprise was the presence of a fort on a campaign battle map.

I have never encountered this before, is it a known bug?


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2441501119

[Smoothhoof]

I have seen that before, an arrow tower popping up in a battlefield. Nice touch I think, a remote watchtower that can become the focus of a fight.

I don't remember where it was, but I think it was a mining province, I remember convincing myself it was part of the mineworks. I have never found another one in +1500 hours of play. Where was yours?

[markeason]

Echizen province, home of the Ikko Ikki. Like yourself I have a couple of thousand hours in this game and never seen it before (mind you, I am a notorious auto-resolver which might explain that).

I ignored the tower as I couldn't see a capture point for it and it was a bit close to the A@I (Hattori position). The Hattori also ignored it, so I have no idea whether it was functional or not.

[Smoothhoof]

The one I found did work, at least the tab turned yellow when I captured it, but unfortunately the battle all happened on the other side of the map. Still I liked it, it was a bit of colour. I wasted hours trying to engineer fights next to mines to find one again to no avail! Echizen? Any landmarks on the campaign map or was it just... there?

[markeason]

Province has a fletcher, but nothing else of note. The battle did yield a landmark on the campaign map because I trounced the Hattori) but nothing prior to the battle.

Thankfully I have a save file from immediately prior to the battle ( I ran out of time to fight it in prior session), so I can load it up and see if it makes a repeat appearance.

[Edit: And it does].

[Smoothhoof]

But no reason to it being there? Hmm. Maybe a very small percentage of the battle maps have features like this and it's chance if you find them. Shogun 2 never stops giving eh?

[markeason]

I guess that's possible. Or it's a corrupted file. Are these things available in the MP / Avtar game? I recall there being bonus buildings in one of the tutorial scenarios.

It would definitely add something to the game if there were features like this for the campaign battles.

[Red Spot]

I've seen it before but did not find it useful in a full army confrontation. Would have been nice to find it early game where you might fight with few units.

[Smoothhoof]

The historical battles have all sorts buildings on the map that do things, like replenishing ammo and stuff. No reason the campaign won't have them, just very few and far between.

Treasure that screen shot, might be the last one we see for a while!

[markeason]

Originally posted by Red Spot:

I've seen it before but did not find it useful in a full army confrontation. Would have been nice to find it early game where you might fight with few units.

This was fairly early game actually, about half stack ashigaru armies with a couple of samurai on the Hattori side. I have the pre-battle turn saved and have shown that the fort is there when I initiate the battle. So I may play it out again and see if I can make use of it - not that it was needed to defeat a Hattori army without a general.

[markeason]

On the other hand, having discovered this thread from 2012, perhaps I won't bother.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?550387-Neutral-Fort-Tower

I am tempted to necro their thread and post the screen shot though :)

I am now thinking it is just an error coding in the Ikko Ikki DLC

[BastardSword]

I've seen things like that a few times.

I've always wondered how they determine which open field map you end up in, I think they must give one to each small sector of the map. Some of the bigger provinces seem to have several maps.

[markeason]

Originally posted by BastardSword:

I've seen things like that a few times.

I've always wondered how they determine which open field map you end up in, I think they must give one to each small sector of the map. Some of the bigger provinces seem to have several maps.

What an interesting thought. I'd never considered that, probably because I auto-resolve so many of the open field battles.

Certainly the only battles I had fought in Echizen prior to finding this 'feature' would likely have been siege defences rather than open field, which would explain why I hadn't seen this before.

Regarding the battle map selection. Bridge battles are straight forward. The first battle of each campaign is always assigned the same map each time that clan is selected, (assuming the battle is fought on turn 1), which suggests that maybe the map is tied to the province. But whether location within the province, proximity of the battle to woods, mountains, coast or infrastructure has any bearing on the map selected and, whether it is always the same map for the province, is an interesting point.

One to watch out for.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by markeason:

Following the recent episode of wading metsuke, the latest surprise was the presence of a fort on a campaign battle map.

I have never encountered this before, is it a known bug?


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2441501119

I've seen those several times. It is rare though. After well over 2K hours I've seen that happen maybe five times.

[Smoothhoof]

Originally posted by markeason:

Regarding the battle map selection. Bridge battles are straight forward. The first battle of each campaign is always assigned the same map each time that clan is selected, (assuming the battle is fought on turn 1), which suggests that maybe the map is tied to the province. But whether location within the province, proximity of the battle to woods, mountains, coast or infrastructure has any bearing on the map selected and, whether it is always the same map for the province, is an interesting point.

One to watch out for.

The battle maps aren't randomly selected, they are tied to the campaign map. If you fight over the same ground repeatedly you fight on the same battle map. The deployment areas move depending on the direction the armies moved onto that ground in the campaign. I don't know how many maps are assigned to each province, but it seems to me that the campaign map is divided into squares with each square assigned a battle map for any battle happening on that square. I'm not saying the battle maps are all unique, faithful reproductions of the terrain in the campaign map but some of them are. With tweaked deployment areas other maps can represent the terrain in multiple locations.