How is City Management an Improvement to Shogun 2?

[Sgt. Brown]

Rant Post, sorry in Advance.

The building mechanic is swamped with empty choices. There are building chains which split between +200 commerce income / +80% commerce bonus and +250 income / +100% bonus. I can easily get my calculator and tell you which one will be better. Do you want your players to take out their calculators? If not, why ask them to make a decision between two nearly identical buildings anyway?
That's how it is with everything building related. The differences are so minor and the number of building chains so large that it basically forces you to either not bother or optimize the fun out of the game.

Secondary Buildings (settlements outside of your city) also have little impact. Basically, they bring the same advantages as city buildings do. Compared to Shogun 2 where they could easily decide whether or not a settlement will be used for recruting specific units or purely to generate income etc.

I think the biggest issue is that by moving recruitment to the armies, they removed a big part of what made city management interesting; army recruitment. (The other parts are income, hapiness, food) So for example, while in Fall of The Sammurai I can improve settlements to give a huge bonus (+100% or so) to accuracy (both with city buildings and external buildings). So now I have to deal with the fact that I have amazing units I can only recruit in that specific part of the map.

And by removing characters (spies etc), you also remove the necessity to build specific buildings for those.

[jozenone]

You aren't entirely wrong, but what are you even talking about with recruitment? TW3K has no such regional limitation. It has general class limitation. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you and you prefer having das ubermensch pumped out of the master blacksmiths province? Oda long yari ashisamagaru at +4attack+2armour, and +5 ranks. Woohoo.

There is at most 3 or 4 optimal set ups for TW3K settlements. There are not any better in Shogun 2. It may be worse in 3K as you will almost certainly need to build anti-corruption in nearly every city and some method of keeping order. So 2-3 buildings in every city will likely be the same, then you specialize for food, industry, or commerce. Strategically, yes, Shogun makes you work a little harder, like Medieval.

3K does not limit buildings (well 2 relatively high level, but one is a fairly common resource) or troops by resource, but by technology and leader type (i.e. scholars for missiles, vanguards for shock cavalry, guardians for pole infantry) and level (i.e. you need to be level 3 or level 6 to recruit the troop), although after launch they made the Commander a bit more flexible and able to recruit most tier 1 and 2 units. I'm not hugely a fan of this mechanic. Look at it this way; your officers each control their own levies and they answer to you like feudal knights and lords. Sometimes they quit and take their toys (armies) home with them

I kind of agree on the maths, as there are so many %bonuses that it is usually more worthwhile to take base value. It was a bit of a strange decision to separate out silk and spice from normal commerce as there are no buildings that support it, and it detracts from the value of the market chain (i.e. what good is another 100% on an already 300% value if the base was only 120 to begin with). The Yellow Turbans actually feel superior in this aspect, as their buildings seem to fit together better.

Likewise, into mid game, the value of the garrison chain is heavily reduced by the need for supplies (due to presumably having taken some green and red techs, or leader skills and accessories), and the general inadequacy of the defenders. The food storage is all but worthless, and excepting specific cases, so is the school.

3K uses provincial administrators rather than Metsuke overseers. They don't even need to be in town.

3K makes you send your officers as spies rather than hire spies directly. It is still intrigue, just a different sort.

[NerdExtrodinare]

You're not wrong. But also I think you're looking for something different. Try Civ. There's a reason it's called "Total War" Not "Total City Builder."

[Sgt. Brown]

Originally posted by NerdExtrodinare:

You're not wrong. But also I think you're looking for something different. Try Civ. There's a reason it's called "Total War" Not "Total City Builder."

I know / play those games as well from time to time. But I'm a bit frustrated because TW did it better in the past. So this feels like a downgrade in terms of game design. Adding unnecessary (or fake) complexity in terms of additional building options but taking away a core aspect of planning your cities etc.

Originally posted by jozenone:

You aren't entirely wrong, but what are you even talking about with recruitment? TW3K has no such regional limitation. It has general class limitation. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you and you prefer having das ubermensch pumped out of the master blacksmiths province? Oda long yari ashisamagaru at +4attack+2armour, and +5 ranks. Woohoo.

Fair enough. However, it's a game and that was simply one mechanic that was fun to play. Focus on expert units at the cost of convenience etc.

Originally posted by jozenone:

There is at most 3 or 4 optimal set ups for TW3K settlements. There are not any better in Shogun 2. It may be worse in 3K as you will almost certainly need to build anti-corruption in nearly every city and some method of keeping order. So 2-3 buildings in every city will likely be the same, then you specialize for food, industry, or commerce. Strategically, yes, Shogun makes you work a little harder, like Medieval.

3K does not limit buildings (well 2 relatively high level, but one is a fairly common resource) or troops by resource, but by technology and leader type (i.e. scholars for missiles, vanguards for shock cavalry, guardians for pole infantry) and level (i.e. you need to be level 3 or level 6 to recruit the troop), although after launch they made the Commander a bit more flexible and able to recruit most tier 1 and 2 units. I'm not hugely a fan of this mechanic. Look at it this way; your officers each control their own levies and they answer to you like feudal knights and lords. Sometimes they quit and take their toys (armies) home with them

Again I think we should remember that it's a game. As long as it doesn't completely break suspension of disbelief, I don't think it's game breaking to require specialized buildings either to allow the recruitment of units or improve recruited units. Again that simply was one quite easy to follow game mechanic that allowed to you play in different styles. How much risk do you take in focusing on income-making buildings rather than spamming recruitment places everywhere? Or even take it to an extreme by recruiting pumped up units in places which get additional stats boost. This was a mechanic that simply doesn't exist in TW3K.

I know that they replaced it with the newer generals. But then I'm really questioning why those didn't get more love either. Make it so that you can specialize them in administration of cities or warfare / buffs for units. Some exist but I think the skill tree for generals is again an attempt to reinvent the wheel. They tried that with Rome 2 and had to revert because players simply like to specialize and upgreade through skill trees.

Originally posted by jozenone:

I kind of agree on the maths, as there are so many %bonuses that it is usually more worthwhile to take base value. It was a bit of a strange decision to separate out silk and spice from normal commerce as there are no buildings that support it, and it detracts from the value of the market chain (i.e. what good is another 100% on an already 300% value if the base was only 120 to begin with). The Yellow Turbans actually feel superior in this aspect, as their buildings seem to fit together better.

Likewise, into mid game, the value of the garrison chain is heavily reduced by the need for supplies (due to presumably having taken some green and red techs, or leader skills and accessories), and the general inadequacy of the defenders. The food storage is all but worthless, and excepting specific cases, so is the school.

Well you need buildings to unlock branches of the research tree. For whatever reason.
I liked the tree in Fall of the Samurai, it connects to your general progress because tiers are linked to how developed (both size and modernization) your clan is. That's a neat way of integrating the tree into the rest of the strategy.

Side Rant here.
Compare the research tree in FOTS to that in 3K. I'm tired of unlocks that give me 10% bonus to income.

Originally posted by jozenone:

3K uses provincial administrators rather than Metsuke overseers. They don't even need to be in town.

3K makes you send your officers as spies rather than hire spies directly. It is still intrigue, just a different sort.

In both cases, these are hidden away in info screen instead of playing out on the map. I still partially agree to this. And I also sometimes think that agents wer a bit to much. But different agents also could interact and so on.

And you could distinguish them visually. No chance in 3K.

[Salamarder]

In the first part you mean choose between Tea and Guest house? Tea house is better becasue you need Tea resource for it via trading or owning it. If you don't have tea, you can't go with the better chain.
Yes, many buildings work that way : you have the extra resource? If yes you can go for the different (usually better) chain.
How secondary buildings are useless? They can give you unique resources, or unique bonuses, or simply decides which direction your city will go (industry, food, commerce etc.)
You can build cities devoted as training camps. Now this depends on which faction you play, but generally you build red buildings, send vanguard (1 or 2) on assigment and you can field a stronger army via getting + lvls on recruiment.
Also this game has a redeployment system which useful for the given reason. You train your army in your training camp city (main city building called conscription), then redeploy them anywhere you need. They will keep their bonus levels.
CA decided to drop agents, thats good or bad I won't gonna decide that. We have spying system here, and a more character focused system.

[Salamarder]

Originally posted by jozenone:

It was a bit of a strange decision to separate out silk and spice from normal commerce as there are no buildings that support it

You have many buildings and research tree reforms that support those buildings? You can build spice/silk trade harbour you can build silk trade building in your main cities which will boost all of your silk income. You have Ma Teng who gives +100% bonus to silk.

[Salamarder]

I also don't understand the "fake choices and unnecessary complexity" . The only "fake" choices you have is at the commerce tree becasue of the previously mentioned resources sytem which unlocked via "secondary buildings". On industry it's the farest from fake. You can choose between raw industry income, or you can make your own currency via coin makers so you beat back the corruption. On food tree you can decide you want more food, or you wanna sell food and gain more peasant income. I don't understand how city planning is not needed. You can decide in which way you want to deal with corruption for example. You can do it via buildings or via assigment or via tech tree or via ancellaries. You have to decide what playstyle you want to adopt. Peasants? Industry? Traiding? Commerce? Tall? Wide? You can't just spam buildings randomly. Yes I did that on easy/easy when I started the game, but on higher difficulties you won't last long with spamming.

[Sgt. Brown]

Originally posted by Salamarder:

In the first part you mean choose between Tea and Guest house? Tea house is better becasue you need Tea resource for it via trading or owning it. If you don't have tea, you can't go with the better chain.
Yes, many buildings work that way : you have the extra resource? If yes you can go for the different (usually better) chain.
How secondary buildings are useless? They can give you unique resources, or unique bonuses, or simply decides which direction your city will go (industry, food, commerce etc.)
You can build cities devoted as training camps. Now this depends on which faction you play, but generally you build red buildings, send vanguard (1 or 2) on assigment and you can field a stronger army via getting + lvls on recruiment.
Also this game has a redeployment system which useful for the given reason. You train your army in your training camp city (main city building called conscription), then redeploy them anywhere you need. They will keep their bonus levels.
CA decided to drop agents, thats good or bad I won't gonna decide that. We have spying system here, and a more character focused system.

Redeployment sound like a side effect of the new general system rather than a fleshed out feature. Now you can teleport armies from across the map. And thus basically removng the disadvantage of having specialized recruitment cities. So where you previously had to plan, whether or not you want a stronger army that will only arrive in 10ish turns, or a weaker army recruited in cities close to the frontline, you now basically can do both.

Secondary buildings are not as complex as in previous games. Some also give a clan-wide bonus (to cav recruitment for example) wich is nice but it means that the position of that secondary building doesn't matter. The other part I agree. It forces you to go for industry or whatever, depending on the secondaries.

Tea House / Guest House. Did the math. Suceffully optimized the fun out of the game.
Tea house will be a better decision almost always. (Unless you have no commerce boost and an additional 250+ commerce income). Yeah. Cool. Thanks for that decision.
Why not just boost the income of a guest house when I have tee?

[Sgt. Brown]

Originally posted by Salamarder:

I also don't understand the "fake choices and unnecessary complexity" . The only "fake" choices you have is at the commerce tree becasue of the previously mentioned resources sytem which unlocked via "secondary buildings". On industry it's the farest from fake. You can choose between raw industry income, or you can make your own currency via coin makers so you beat back the corruption. On food tree you can decide you want more food, or you wanna sell food and gain more peasant income. I don't understand how city planning is not needed. You can decide in which way you want to deal with corruption for example. You can do it via buildings or via assigment or via tech tree or via ancellaries. You have to decide what playstyle you want to adopt. Peasants? Industry? Traiding? Commerce? Tall? Wide? You can't just spam buildings randomly. Yes I did that on easy/easy when I started the game, but on higher difficulties you won't last long with spamming.

Yeah, had a second look and noticed that some of the odd branches are actually locked by resources. So that's why I was wondering what all the buildings with slightly different attributes are about.
Still they removed the recruiting and characters and mostly replaced them with numbers. 250 more income here, 50% more boost there. It's not really decision making. It's doing math. The building cost reductions are super odd, I guess that's their attempt to force you to play diverse instead of tall?

I guess there is no need to over-analyze as well since in the end, we're talking about TW. The strategy component never was that complex to begin with.

[Salamarder]

Originally posted by Sgt. Brown:

Redeployment sound like a side effect of the new general system rather than a fleshed out feature. Now you can teleport armies from across the map. And thus basically removng the disadvantage of having specialized recruitment cities. So where you previously had to plan, whether or not you want a stronger army that will only arrive in 10ish turns, or a weaker army recruited in cities close to the frontline, you now basically can do both.

Whoho, that's not as easy as you think. You can't just teleport armies. If you don't have enough bonuses on redeployment you have to pay a very high price for redeployment, therefore you have to consider to actually moving your armies instead of redeploy them. You also have to plan how you redeploy, becasue they are not instant. If you have slow mustering/replenishment your army will stay for 2-3 turns before its battle ready.

[Salamarder]

Also in late game you have to put bonuses to seasonal redeploy in either way, becasue it can be painful that every turn you can only redeploy 1 army. Training camp buildings will also add to the max number of seasonal redeployment.
Going back on the Tea Guest house. Yeah ok maybe its just useless micro managment, but for example if you build Tea house, and you lose Tea resource, that Tea house will give significantly less commerce income than the inferior guest house chain, becasue even if you have a tea house it can't operate wtihout tea. So you have to convert 'back' into Guest house chain maunally.

[Salamarder]

I understand your points on the special units stuff, and marching stronger armies. But I never thought about it tbh. I loved Shogun 2 when it was not 10+ year old. This game is just different, they removed the feature you talk about special units and province tied units. In this game they focused the special units with faction tie, branch tree tie, faction rank (emperor units) and character LEVEL/TYPE tie. They are not tied to buildings, but reforms (Shogun 2 had these too) and character level and type. Idk if its worse or better, personally I don't miss Shogun 2 stuff, other people probably do.
For the last time on planning and building, I personally love building and managing stuff in this game. Balancing between food and big citites, focusing on different incomes, building mega industry, making trading monopoly. Most of my games now are just Three Kingdoms : Simcity for 100 turns. Earlier when I was hyper agressive I finished my campaigns in 120 turns. Now I just build, spy, and gather characters.

[CastraOil]

well i just thought of one thing that could work. one of the things in shogun fots that was a difference between buildings was base income vs growth. here they sometimes do it with base income vs percent. yet it never really seems to work as percent is always better in any commandery that has a county with that type commerce/peasantry/industry. In FOTS you had to look at it as long term vs short term. Building A's chain would give a bigger base of wealth, and happiness, where as route b would give less money at first, unhappiness, but more money in late game.

They could do that here but they didnt. Instead of having one or two buildings that give massive population boosts. Have it be that route a gives small population boost, but less money. And as we know population gives unhappiness. Route B should just straight up give more money. But it really needs to be a big enough difference to make you think. Like route b gives you enough money to get one or two more units right now. but route a in 20 turns will equal the same amount. and in 40 would effectively double that. So long game or short game. But as mentioned that really isnt a thing here. its literally just more or less money.

One problem with this idea is that people would just switch at some point because of population cap. Ok this building helped max out my population. now time to switch all buildings to just the better income buildings. To counteract that i would just make it you cant just convert buildings. you need to burn them down again and rebuild. Yes now switching to that building might make you 400 more gold a turn. but to rush it youd have to spend whatever it is the usuall 15000 gold to rush one building all the way to max? would that be worth it?

[CastraOil]

another idea ive had that could help. Another thing ive noticed in this game is the early strat of having no armys just armys of generals. This saves you a buttload of money and you still have a strong army. In again shogun 2 for example. you really did have to balance out money and army. you couldnt just disband your whole armies? if you didnt have enough army most of the surrounding AI would immediately declare war on you. But here you can do that just fine because you can win any fight with those generals early game. But at the same time for romance you don't want to take away strength of the generals who are the stars of the show. What they could do is a buff/debuff. A general goes and attacks a city alone? well no guy in their right mind would do that not even in 3k. so have him take a huge morale hit and almost route instantly. But if he is with an army then he is just as is. This can prevent the general spam and force keeping a standing army. So you really do have to worry about your economy. at least early game