Shogun 2

[Bragallot]

How does one win at this game? It's a lot of fun but it has this weird mechanic where the game punishes you for doing too well (read: all of Japan and their dog declares war on you after you get a certain number of territories). It's possible to hold on to what you got after that, but not much else.

[Zupponn]

If we're talking about Shogun Total War 2, then in my experience with the Total War franchise, just crush every battle and you should have no problems.

[Bragallot]

I was actually winning most battles, but the constant attacks were tiresome. It felt like fighting the same battle over and over again. Anyway, I restarted the campaign and did a few things differently, and I finished the Fukujira Taira campaign on hard Giant Monk Army and Domination of the Seas, as well as waiting a bit longer to trigger the 'enemy of the state' thing were my winning strategies, though it was still close in the end (I took the last stronghold I needed with an army that was trapped behind enemy lines and suffering winter attrition, commanded by a disloyal general who was ironically a former member of the Minamoto I was trying to wipe out, as my realm was suffering from near rebellions and attacks). But victory is victory.

This total war is much harder than the previous installments though, except for maybe Empire, but Empire is only more difficult because you spend more time fighting the game than the actual enemy.

[Zupponn]

I dunno. In Empire, I just played as Poland and started crushing everybody. Except the Russians. I paid them money to be my allies as I took over the rest of continental Europe.

[Bragallot]

Well I always played as Prussia, and they're quite difficult. Your territories aren't even connected, and anyone around you is allied to everyone else. I can win by simply sitting at my fortresses and dealing with the enemy there, but the siege battles are so poor that they get really tedious to repeat constantly. I do think the naval combat is amazing, but I rarely get to that stage. Perhaps I should play as France next time.

[Maverick]

In Rome 1 i always say fuck the campaign, and play custom battle. I play as Seleucids and kill people.

[Vami IV]

Just improve farms, make trade deals, keep allies alive, make allies, and build a huge fucking army and smash your foes.

FoTS, Shogun 2, and RoTS in a nutsheel

[Vami IV]

OK, so I had an awesome battle while I was in the chat room (no chat log, sorry) while playing as the Jozai in FOTS.

Summer, 1869, Kai Province
The Jozai Domain (me) and Nagaoka domain and their Aizu allies had waged war for a whole decade. Aizu domain had already been crushed at the Battle of Hitachi (a decisive Jozai victory, although costly for the forces over there and their Fat Fucker of a general) and the main Jozai army under General Vami (I forget the name given to him by the game) was marching for Fukushima. To counter forces in the western front against the Nagaoka, I had my Daimyo start building an army (But Nagoya and Nagaoka fleets were strangling my main income: trade, so the building of this army was slow. Lucky I managed to squeeze some Marines in there )

Cue massive Nagaoka armies marching into Kai to kick ass and eat rice (and pillage my copper ). 3000+ in the first army, and a reinforcing force of about 400 Spear Levy arrived and parked it outside the city after pillaging all my shit. Of course they were unwilling to face my Gatling towers and about 1500 troops (as I knew my main army would take a while to get over there, you fat fucks ), so they began starving my troops. A few turns passed, and I realized that an assault on the castle would never materialize, so I began thinking hard on meeting my foe on the field of battle.

You know the result. I was taking outnumbered 5-to-1 by a absolutely enormous force of peasant (and some professional) infantry and melee units. I deployed my troops in a long, curved line, and placed by Captain (I opted not to send my generals to the border cities for this very reason) in the center of the bowl. Unfortunately, we got open fields and the enemy had cannons (I'll talk about them later in this wall of text), and they got a nice, massive forest to hide in and organize and form a giant fucking line and smash into my Line (and Garrison Levy) Infantry's, err, ummm, Line.

With my troops ready, I had them on Guard and Kneel Fire (to double the firepower and prevent my troops from breaking formation ), I gave the positions names after people present . The left flank was TBD side, the center was Vami side, and the right was Silver side. I named my Captain Colette, and the battle began. My biggest fear, the artillery (A Parrott Gun and 2 Wooden Cannons) did not fire (range), so the Parrotts moved up. They failed to fire even a single shot and walked into my fucking line and were all slaughtered. The Wooden Cannons just chilled in the woods and broke when all their bros died of lead flying through their bodies. On to the battle.

After several ominous minutes of the Nagaoka organizing and reinforcements arriving on field (also possessing no general thanks to my trusty Shinobi killing them all in the field ), they charged. When they finally got into range, the whole field was deafened by musket fire, and a whole sleuth of Peasant soldiers fell to the blood soaked earth. They bolted, and before I knew it, TBD side was swimming in angry Spear Levy. My only melee unit (a Garrison Spear Levy) charged into TBD side, and put the fighting to an end, reducing the TBD side to a sea of corpses and running peasants. The whole body of peasant Spear Levy broke and ran, and the firing began en masse. I had to rearrange all my units to face Silver side (which had been largely reduced by fierce melee combat and troll sharpshooters shredding them from the side). It took a while, but eventually what Peasant soldiers were left broke and ran, and their professional friends soon joined them.

I had lost about 400 when it was all said and done, but the enemy had to have lost at least like 1000 guys. While I didn't shatter the army, I did win one of those awesome statues where I kicked their asses, saved the city, and sent the Nagaoka army reeling with horrible losses. They fled the very next turn for friendly land, and Colette was promoted by the Shogun himself to the rank of General (and then he was made my Comptroller a while afterwards after kicking major Imperial ass). So far, he and the agents assigned to his army in the fight against to his army (which he inherited from my Daimyo, Hayashi Tadakata, after crushing Sado Domain and taking their Gold and making a shitton of money. About 17,000+ by my last turn in that game) have destroyed 3 major armies, Coerced 1000 Tosa into my loving arms, and dealt a major blow to the Tosa in Central Honshu.