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I'd say I am a relatively competent player and I like to have a few playthroughs on easy before I attempt a big challenge on hard. However I simply can't play Shogun for a few simple reasons.

1- You cannot out-tech your enemy in this game. In most total war games it was possible to upgrade your army to higher tier units faster than the AI by micro-managing your economy and give you a huge advantage. Or, you had a racial unit which was strong and could be exploited. For instance Roman legions had their throwing spears and English longbowmen. This does not exist in Shogun. Every AI faction has ready access to full banner armies of elite Samurai and cavalry very early in the game. So all the AI does is blob all of its elite units into a few massive armies and overwhelms you on a berserk charge.

2- Flanking no longer works. The AI is programmed to automatically intercept your flankers regardless of the command rating of the AI general and has an unfair advantage because it searches for your hidden units. In one battle with the Shimazu against an elite army I was relying on my four light cavalry flank charging the enemy. However, the AI immediately detached two samurai cavalry and generals to search the distant forests even though it was saying my units were hidden. The result is that every battle turns into a meatgrinder in which even if you do win it leaves you with no soldiers left.

3- Public order should not be that extreme and full banner armies should not just be handed out to rebel factions. There are a ton of things like food, Daimyo survival and modernization that just make holding public order intolerable. Why does me sacking a wooden castle in the middle of nowhere make the population revolt? Surely wiping your enemy out would cow them into submission? When the game is so tight with the resources (of course the AI has infinite money n no public order troubles at all) you can gain and the armies you can raise its pretty unfair. Also, why do my vassals always betray me? It should be a valid option and if you are on a string of victories the Ai should not be so eager to betray you all the time. If I wanted a civilization game I would play civilization.

So in my recent playthrough on easy as the Chosakbe I took all of that island and part of the southern tip of Honshu with two full banners. All the Shimazu do is tank in with one full army; a pyrhic victory for me. I then invade by sea and they have another full samurai army and another pyrhic victory with my survivers failing to take the castle. I now have no armies left and he no doubt has even more soldiers ready to go. Aside from my fleets I basically lost the campaign. I thought the point of easy is that its meant to be easy... Not like Medieval 2 on hard (which is actually piss).

I tend to find archers in Shogun 2 overpowered. The faction that starts on the island, Chekosabe (I think) , thats has bonuses to farms and archers is easy mode. Stuff just melts before it gets to you, at a rate that I never saw in Rome or Medieval. And the bonuses to farms just easy money.

The faction that has units that all have the "hide" ability is also pretty easy. If you're not outnumbered heavily you can easily surround and swamp them.

I find the warrior monk faction the hardest to play.

In general, its only til Realm Divide or whatever it was called when the Shogunate turns on you that I find the game more troubling then any of the rest of the franchise.

Yeah, Shogun 2 is a bit harder than previous TW's. I've beaten normal long campaigns for the base game & RotS & FotS, so I'm not an expert, but I know a fair bit.

Some things I've learned:

Cavalry is useless until all enemy melee infantry units are engaged - the AI absolutely loves to spam Yari ashigaru / samurai. Wait until they're committed and attack them in the rear.

Keep your taxes low to encourage economic growth and help public order. I've struggled to maintain order sometimes even with a normal tax rate. I've never sacked a settlement before. I suppose I would if I were to abandon it later and want to sabotage it for the enemy (haven't come across this situation yet), but not if I were to keep it.

Do not, i repeat DO NOT attack settlements manually if they've got a reasonably strong garrison. You'll have heavy losses even if you outnumber them 2:1 or even more. Keep them under siege and in one or two turns they'll sally forth and attack you. You've got a much better chance of beating them this way. You should auto resolve sieges if you're confident of your forces and you outnumber the enemy by a lot. Your casualties will be a lot fewer. (Seriously, once I remember I had a full stack and the enemy had 3 units. I auto-resolved and had no casualties. You can't possibly manage that manually)

Have you reached realm divide yet?

I am playing the bow faction but I just find 4 or 6 bow samurai does little effect. The enemy is much faster than in other TW games so they close the distance faster than in med.

Its not realm divide. The Shimazu have all of their island and are like many factions in that game able to put full samurai armies out. Not much I can do to counter that. Got both my elite armies pasted fighting them, this being in the open.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I am playing the bow faction but I just find 4 or 6 bow samurai does little effect. The enemy is much faster than in other TW games so they close the distance faster than in med.

Its not realm divide. The Shimazu have all of their island and are like many factions in that game able to put full samurai armies out. Not much I can do to counter that. Got both my elite armies pasted fighting them, this being in the open.

I personally like to use a heavyily ashigaru based army in the early-mid game. Spamming bow ashigaru is cheap and their weight of fire makes up for the lesser accuracy. Even late game I have many (by now veteran) ashigaru units in my stacks. I'll usually have a sacrificial line of yari ashigaru take the enemy charge so that my katana samurai, cavalry, and yari samurai can maneuver for the flank charge.The late game sea raids by super stacks are annoying and definitely necessitate strong garrisons or several decent sized fleets.

As far as strategy goes, try to keep your axis of advance in one direction only. It makes for a long game, but you are less likely to get strategically outflanked and hit in your less defended rear. I personally find cavalry underwhelming as I always seem to lose a bunch even with a rear charge... keep a couple of units to help run down panicked units and that's about it.

In short
Ashigaru are your friend
Bow Ashigaru are great in numbers - research flamer arrows
Cavalry is powerful, but not for everybody
Choose who you go to war with and watch your flanks

Personally I don't bother with bow samurai. I think producing them is a waste of time when you could be making some melee samurai. Bow Ashigaru are reasonably good if you have enough of them. I usually try and get at least 5 units in each army.

Another thing which i didn't really consider when i was new to the game - with yari ashigaru, they're much more effective in their spear wall formation. So much so that they can hold their own against a samurai unit provided they're not at a disavantage with terrain.

My normal tactic is to take as many of the trade points as possible, and avoid conflict with other large clans. My last game was as the Shimazu and thus I was able to take four of the trade points. Basically, I took all of Kyushu, allied with the Chosokabe, and sat back trading and building infrastructure until I had about 600,000 in the bank. Built a slew of armies and sailed over past the Chosokabe territories and started taking everything in sight.

Flood the trade posts as quick as possible, send one ship to each quickly, then bolster them with more trade ships, and some ships to protect them if you think enemy fleets will be a problem. As mentioned earlier, Bow Samurai are not really worth it. You should also get a good balance with Bushido and Chi, i find researching more Chi technologies first is better, it helps to build up a better economic base for further campaigning.

The Oda are probably one of the easiest factions, though at the start, they are the hardest to even survive the first few turns, if you can weather the storm of the Tokugawa-Imagawa-Saito clusterfeth, then your improved Ashigaru can give you a pretty nice advantage.

I find Uesegi, Date or Shimazu fairly difficult, Uesegi, because of the position, and Shimazu, you have to deal with the Otomo and those pesky christians.

I actually find the Shimazu to be fairly easy - at least until you get close to realm divide. A strong navy and and the isolated position gives you a good base to build from

Well I carried on with my Chosokabe playthrough and my god the AI cheats so much.

They could pay for and sustain at least two full banner samurai armies with only1-3 provinces that weren't even their heartlands. They never had to stop building units, or raise taxes to pay for them which cause rebellion, or were forced to disband some of them for lack of funds. Instead they kept training soldiers...

Oddly, for once my AI ally, the Besho. which had eight territories was actually really helping me and regularly sending armies to fight the Shimazu (I would have lost if they hadn't done this after those two stacks got mauled it took ages to recover). Of course the Shimazu were still powerful enough to easily fight my ally off...despite being 3 times its size.

I then after using my navy to outmanuever the Shimazu and take 2/3 of Kytushu while they're fighting my ally in the north manage to get them to make peace. I then spend 30 turns building up my army and economy to get four stacks. With what my ally has that gives me a 3:1 advantage over the Shimazu.

So I attack and I can clearly see that he only has one full stack which was how it had been as I watched the whole conflict unfold beforehand. He then attacks two of my armies at a bridge. His cavalry ignore five units of samurai archers shooting at them and swarm over the bridge with my guys getting a single volley off. They then immediatly send cavalry to assasinate my general behind my army whilst throwing everything else at my spear wall. Rather than try to break through they go for my token forces at the other crossings and wipe out a unit of samurai archers. WTF. So I lose my faction heir and far more men than I should have because units move far too fast in that game and what should have been a wipeout by arrow fire turned into a costly victory.

Now at least I've defeated the Shimazu. Oh no. You see the AI cheats. On my turn I attack and it turns out that every Shimazu unit is at full strength again and they have another stack appear out of nowhere. So I am stuck fighting the same number of guys. Again, he has one territory with a wooden castle and can still afford all of this.

He then attacks my third army and I win although again the AI sends cavalry to find my hidden lancers. The AI then directs every unit at killing my general and lancer cavalry. Because the enemy never properly charges my line I can't hammer and anvil him. Everything becomes a chaotic disordered mess where I take heavy casualties again and its all over in 2 minutes. My cavlry is wiped out save for one unit.

Only now does the AI decide not to cheat and spawn extra armies and instnatly replenish its units. I siege the remanats and trap half a stack of yari between 2 samurai armies before my other two take the last Shimazu fort. My allies reinforcement armies turned out not to be needed after one was destroyed but I suspect they may turn on me now. Because the AI is non-sensical.

About Rome 2. I really hope they slow the battles down. I know they want a more arcade style game but with forty units moving around its hard to keep track of them all at once. A battle that scale should last more than a few minutes; this isn't starcraft.

Apparently the devs are putting limits on the number of armies you can have and want to emphasise you getting help from allies and protectorates. As in my playthrough, this can work. However, on most of my shogun playthroughs the AI just betrays you for no reason, even if you are winning. Vassals in particular may as well start at war with you and what should be a cool feature just becomes a liability.

 NELS1031 wrote:
I tend to find archers in Shogun 2 overpowered. The faction that starts on the island, Chekosabe (I think) , thats has bonuses to farms and archers is easy mode. Stuff just melts before it gets to you, at a rate that I never saw in Rome or Medieval. And the bonuses to farms just easy money.

The faction that has units that all have the "hide" ability is also pretty easy. If you're not outnumbered heavily you can easily surround and swamp them.

I find the warrior monk faction the hardest to play.

In general, its only til Realm Divide or whatever it was called when the Shogunate turns on you that I find the game more troubling then any of the rest of the franchise.

Realm Divide p*sses me off to no end. One or two enemies (about my strength)? Sure why not. 3 enemies? Not easy but it's probably do-able depending on their strength. Realm divide making everybody left your enemy and having each one attack you as you beat each of their armies? Holy sh*t is this hard. I can't even take all of japan with realm divide and even if you lose the shogunate or lose enough territories everybody is still your enemy. In fact only super, super good allies help and all trade by land becomes worthless since everybody fights you. They all want a piece of your *ss and will each attack several factions at a time. Not to mention when you beat like 2-3 of them and are then depleted you get attacked from another front by another *sshole trying to take advantage of your weakened state. Why does everybody want to kill you esp. when others make a bid for the shogunate after you?

Uesugi are one of the worst and it's sad because i like the monk warriors or at least the monk bowmen and their range (basically allowing you to outrange other bowmen and kill off entire castles with just archers). They have like 3 enemies in the beginning and it's just super hardcore on you.

I'm doing shimazu right now (it's the samurai faction). Anyway i decided to go with christianity. Thought it'd be a nice change of pace. This of course makes all other nations hate you but you make more off trade (mostly from the sea i think). Sadly it may have great benefits but the problem is you'll find rebellions everywhere once you do go with christianity. I recommend doing it when you are currently clear of enemies then again i've only just experienced this in the game. I did it so i could get more and better gunpowder units.

I tried going hojo but sadly in the campaign by the time you try to make rocket guys you tend to be far too busy fending off enemies from the realm divide.

I haven't played any other total war games but honestly Eastern Culture interests me about the least. I'd much prefer revolutionary war, napoleonic war, civil war (U.S.A.) or even possibly one of the rome games. Eastern culture just does not interest me that much at all.

There's a mod for small/nonexistant realm divide - I agree that it really, really sucked. I attacked Kyoto with 2 full armies - one with like 6 archer units and the rest catapault things, then the 2nd army moved in once the first completed their bombardment then suicided. Best battle ever, Kyoto was ruined. Then realm divide started.

~To survive realm divide you must be a master diplomat. I spent most of the game playing the honorable leader, declaring wars, never breaking treaties, constantly sending gifts to the "Top Dog" besides myself that controlled pretty much the other half of japan (I started as Chokusabe, the archers).

Realm divided happened, the "Top Dog" stayed allied to me but our alliance did take a hit. You really, really have to "kiss ass" if you want to remain with allies after that cursed event.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:
~To survive realm divide you must be a master diplomat. I spent most of the game playing the honorable leader, declaring wars, never breaking treaties, constantly sending gifts to the "Top Dog" besides myself that controlled pretty much the other half of japan (I started as Chokusabe, the archers).

Realm divided happened, the "Top Dog" stayed allied to me but our alliance did take a hit. You really, really have to "kiss ass" if you want to remain with allies after that cursed event.

Diplomacy doesn't work in the long term. You take a -5 diplomacy hit with all factions every turn, so it doesn't matter how much another faction likes you, eventually they'll turn against you.

I hate realm divide. Sure, it's historically accurate I suppose, but a little too brutal.

 Skarwael wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:
~To survive realm divide you must be a master diplomat. I spent most of the game playing the honorable leader, declaring wars, never breaking treaties, constantly sending gifts to the "Top Dog" besides myself that controlled pretty much the other half of japan (I started as Chokusabe, the archers).

Realm divided happened, the "Top Dog" stayed allied to me but our alliance did take a hit. You really, really have to "kiss ass" if you want to remain with allies after that cursed event.

Diplomacy doesn't work in the long term. You take a -5 diplomacy hit with all factions every turn, so it doesn't matter how much another faction likes you, eventually they'll turn against you.

I hate realm divide. Sure, it's historically accurate I suppose, but a little too brutal.

No, diplomacy WILLL save you when Realm divided happens. It was just that saved my hindquarters when I played as Mori.

 Trondheim wrote:

 Skarwael wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:
~To survive realm divide you must be a master diplomat. I spent most of the game playing the honorable leader, declaring wars, never breaking treaties, constantly sending gifts to the "Top Dog" besides myself that controlled pretty much the other half of japan (I started as Chokusabe, the archers).

Realm divided happened, the "Top Dog" stayed allied to me but our alliance did take a hit. You really, really have to "kiss ass" if you want to remain with allies after that cursed event.

Diplomacy doesn't work in the long term. You take a -5 diplomacy hit with all factions every turn, so it doesn't matter how much another faction likes you, eventually they'll turn against you.

I hate realm divide. Sure, it's historically accurate I suppose, but a little too brutal.

No, diplomacy WILLL save you when Realm divided happens. It was just that saved my hindquarters when I played as Mori.

I didn't say it wouldn't. You can buy yourself time, but it becomes useless eventually. You can throw money at your allies, but the diplomacy boost that has has a cap. Realm divide doesn't.

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/15573-The-Guide-to-Surviving-Realm-Divide

Oh this is just stupid.

Okay so I start a new Oda campaign. Doing well.

Then the Ikko Ikki take a full banner army, march it overland ignoring rival factions and my own territory to do so without any attrition penalties or anything. My Daimyo and heir are in the castle. Never mind that this is a dick tactic by the AI and shouldn't be able to do ths..

Come the battle its mainly ahsigaru and luckily I had 4 units of katana trained. I wipe out all his army save for 2 units of bow ashigaru and his general. I assume their moral must be wavering at this point so I charge both my generals whilst the rest of my army charges as the battle is almost done and this is easy mode. However, they don't run. It seems the AI is programmed to fight to the last man if it gives them a chance to kill my daimyo and heir which would effectively lose me the game. Two seconds into a fight with bowmen my daimyo gets killed. WTF. Are you really telling me that 3 units who have seen whole army get wiped out are going to fight a full army by themselves for certain death. That is stupid morale mechanics. I don't any advantage iuf I kill their daimyo and heir in battle WTF shouldn't the AI. If I could just march a full banner unit to their capitol and insta win I would. But the AI gets a gak ton of advantages to feth me over.