쇼군2 토탈워 (NEW PICs) exclusive reveal of Shogun 2's multiplayer

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http://pc.ign.com/articles/113/1137776p1.html

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http://www.pcgames.de/Shogun-2-Total...huellt-802732/

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Total War: Shogun 2 - Big in Japan

Creative Assembly return to their roots as we go hands-on and get first multiplayer details.

Traditionally, a new Total War game means one thing - increased Totality. With each sequel and semi-sequel this series has always inflated dramatically in one area or another, and over the last 10 years its world map, battles, nation management and sheer scale all grew outwards from the comparatively sleek Shogun: Total War to form the awkward, stumbling shapes of Empire and Medieval 2.

Empire wasn't perfect, and Creative Assembly know it. As such, this upgrade of the first game couldn't have come at a better time. Firstly, compared to the huge tracts of history Creative Assembly's been wrestling with recently, Medieval Japan is a comparatively tidy time period. Secondly, Creative Assembly are getting to look at their game in the context of the brand-free smash hit it once was- when all the mechanics worked almost flawlessly. Thirdly, the team are borrowing a bit of Eastern philosophy. Creative Assembly wants the design of Shogun 2 to be 'zen'. Shogun 2, then, isn't going to be a bigger game than previous Total War titles. It's going to be better.

Let's start with the game's tone and visuals. Because Shogun 2 is contained within Japan the team no longer have to provide a generic, rich-looking interface that might suit any number of nations, and can instead play around with their Japanese art, music and imagery. They unveiled the gorgeous world map a few months ago, where fog of war is rendered as flat paper displaying vague symbols, which slips into detailed 3D as you explore it. Of all the upgrades Creative Assembly could have made to Total War, I'm not sure there's a strategy gamer alive who was expecting it to become enchanting. 

Adding an even bigger dose of personality to the game is all the attention being given to your in-game family, generals and agents. Creative Assembly saw all the people on their forums writing after-action reports that read like wonderful stories and decided that they wanted to help craft these narratives. 

Shogun 2 doesn't simply re-instate your leader's family and make agents important again - everyone, from your generals to your geisha assassins, has a skill tree that you'll be able to pick your way through as your subjects level up. Agents will even look different as they increase in power, so you'll be able to watch your ninja evolve or see at a glance how powerful your opponent's monk is. You see, it's not just colour, it serves to make the game more readable. More Zen. 

The interface has improved - now it's almost as pretty from afar as it is up close.

There are a few interface improvements in the battles, too. Hovering the cursor over unit portraits now snaps up a huge box on the side of the screen detailing everything you might want to know (precisely how much of a bonus those naginata samurai will get against cavalry, say), and as units become worn down by a battle their banner will get progressively more ripped and tattered. Between this and Shogun 2's return to a refreshingly simple spread of units, I felt in total control. It was a far cry from steering large blocks of riflemen around, their opaque stats making most of the battle cautious guesswork.

But easily the biggest area of improvement in Shogun 2 is actually the multiplayer. I'm sure that news will flood a lot of you with disappointment, but hang on, because it's you guys specifically that CA are doing this for. They know that plenty of Total War fans play their game without so much as breathing on the multiplayer, so they're adding the gateway drug of all modern multiplayer games - persistent elements. And they're doing it with gusto. 

Every achievement in Shogun 2, single player or otherwise, unlocks a piece of armour for your multiplayer general. Players who then go into the multiplayer to play dress-up will find themselves looking at a simplified paper map of Japan, with their general represented by a token. Hovering the cursor over all the map, they'll see that each conquered province unlocks a unit type, or some other bonus. It's only when you attack a province that the game goes off and finds you an opponent. This is Shogun 2's multiplayer renovation - trying to give the multiplayer battles a lite version of the single player's dramatic context. And that's not all. 

And up close it's as pretty as ever.

As you fight multiplayer battles you'll be unlocking enough persistent content to put a Call of Duty title to shame. To start with, your general will advance down a huge skill tree with three different paths relating to his melee prowess, his archery and his personality (inspiring troops, scaring enemies and so on). Units that distinguish themselves in a battle also may become special veteran units with their own skill trees, with the twist that when veteran units suffer casualties it takes time to find replacements. If you decide to field a few hundred veteran samurai from your collection, chances are you won't be using them for the next few matches. 

Finally there are your retainers - dozens upon dozens of individuals with their own unique woodcarving portraits, ranging from the Sake Peddler to the Master Blacksmith, all of whom give you a tiny benefit in multiplayer battles if you choose to take them along. Cultivating your collection of retainers (and unlocking extra slots for them) is like a simple collectible card game, and yet more of an incentive to get the Total War player base online. 

Overall, Shogun 2 looks like a product built to entertain, rather than just to point a daunting array of features in our direction. I think the series that saw hundreds of thousands of gamers nudging little men around until 3:30am has found its way again. This is going to be one Hell of a homecoming

Hands on: Shogun 2’s siege battles

What is a castle?

Our western sensibilities suggest an establishment for the nobility; a structure that represented the feudal power-base, and a way to keep enemies out.

The medieval Japanese agreed on two out of three of the above principles. Why on earth would you want to keep enemy soldiers out of your castle, when you can lead them in, to fight – and die – on your terms?

This level of combat artistry is something that Total War: Shogun 2 aims to recreate. And no, that’s not a typographical error; in a move to establish brand consistency, Sega recently announced that Creative Assembly’s grand-strategy epics would begin, not end, with Total War. I really hope they apply that retroactively too – it’ll tidy up Steam libraries worldwide.

Japan's best spear delivery company.

But back to the field. I recently got stuck into our first siege battle in Shogun 2, and what became apparent as the troops clashed was that things have changed from previous games in the series, and you need to think of castles in a very different way. You’re not simply aiming to keep enemies out – although that’s a valuable tactic, and there are times when denial of-entry is absolutely key. But the space and configuration of these castles means they work in interesting ways.

Our castle is low, broad, and three-tiered. The base-tier is, well, huge. Quite un-castle-like all round, compared to European designs. It’s like a series of big stages; there are wide-open areas where multiple units can clamour, with elbow-room to spare. Exploiting these spaces properly is a case of tempting a limited number of units in through the ground-level gatehouses, or an unprotected section of wall. By which time, hopefully, you’ll have the perfect configuration of troops ready to rout and ruin.

Pretend you don't see the place holder.

That’s not how it went down at all.

My initial deployment tried to cover every facing of the castle. I had Samurai archers and melee troops stretched thin across the base tier, with an aim to retreating to the second tier if things got dicey. My mounted General was right at the top tier, out of harm’s way.

Zelda fanboys make dangerous soldiers.

The computer bluffed me. He sent in waves of archers, with a blade unit to scale the walls. I was weak of will; I redeployed to meet the threat.

Then what must’ve been the bulk of his army marched out of the eastern mists – a veritable brigade of melee and cavalry units. Panic stations! I pulled everything off guard-duty to meet the threat in the east. And just as I was micro-managing the rampant disorder I’d created for myself on the lower-east tier – spearmen bouncing off swordsmen, archers struggling through the throng to line the walls – the Combat Advisor’s words froze my heart:

“Our General is in grave danger!”

Panning over, I saw the AI’s double-bluff in horrifying execution. Three melee units had scaled the first two tiers on my unwatched western ramparts, and spearmen were engaging my General.

And that was that. The General fell, the soldiers wept, I shat the bed, and the wheels fell off.

Their mums all made them their own banners.

I almost feel sorry for the AI. It can’t revel in this moment of victory, or dole out the kind of conceptual tea-bagging that my martial lollygagging so richly deserves. It can’t even call me a noob.

Round two went a lot more smoothly. Now keenly aware of the AI’s potential to posture and lure, I presented a couple of obviously weak flanks, and didn’t budge my troops. I ignored his ruses. I let his melee troops scale the walls, and closed the net each time, with fire-arrows and whistlers terrifying the attackers, and my fresh, tight-packed blade turning them on their heels. By the end, all he had was a few groups of scattered archers, and a bunch of cavalry cantering around uselessly outside, as I hadn’t let him take a single gatehouse. Fetlocks and hooves? Not so climbey.

The new AI is merciless.

I shudder to think how terrifying this is all going to be in multiplayer. Shogun 2’s battle AI has impressed me so far, and I’ll be interested to see what improvements have been made to its campaign-brain. But this level of jiggery-pokery could make for some very, very tense encounters when it comes to skilled players. It’s also worth noting that multiplayer in Shogun 2 brings a massive shakeup for the series. Check back shortly for the altogether exciting details.

Total War: Shogun 2 Preview

Submitted by Kiran Earwaker on December 3 2010 - 16:50

We go hands on with some siege battles in Shogun 2 and hear from Creative Assembly about a new multiplayer co-op mode...

• Creative Assembly
• SEGA

We've always admired the Total War games here at TVG. With a masterful blend of historical battle simulation and strategic empire building, the series has gone from strength to strength in the ten years since its inception, depicting the warfare of a succession of turbulent periods in human history with obsessive accuracy and ever increasing scale. It's a game series that easily ranks up there amongst the Civlizations and Age of Empires as strategy games that have not only been a partial schooling in history, but a master class in strategy at the same time. We could probably have written a book in the many hours we've spent beavering away at games of this ilk over the years, so imagine our excitement at being invited by SEGA to a hands on session with Total War: Shogun 2...

Sitting down for a siege battle in Shogun 2 we immediately feel that familiar tingle; hands trembling just a little as we click through our rows of bowmen, samurai and cavalry. Japanese castles are more delicate than their hulking European counterparts; a succession of low-walled courtyards lead up to a central keep like a plate of loosely stacked pancakes, each area sealed off by a gate to quarantine it from potential invasion. Rather than the simple brute force required to breach the elephantine constructs of earlier games, intruders must carefully plan their progress through these labyrinthine, lotus-like lairs to avoid falling foul of their complex interior structure.

Spreading bowmen evenly across the outer walls of our lower courtyards, we strike the gong to begin battle.  Our fortress sits astride the crest of a hill, a precipitous impasse guarding its rear. Swathes of forest line either side of the snow-covered slope ahead, a central stripe of frosty woodland delineating the two paths up which the enemy forces now approach. Suddenly, a stream of fire arcs up and crashes into an outer wall, scattering bowmen across the courtyard like broken skittles. Anachronistic 'rocket launcher' samurai pound the walls as enemy archers trudge into range of the castle. Bizarrely, these troops are historically accurate; the Japanese had access to ancient Chinese gunpowder technology during this era, and each soldier is wielding the offensive equivalent of a firework in a drainpipe. 

The enemy forces are focussed on either side of our castle in a pincer movement, but we're spread too thinly across the front, and before long, katana-wielding warriors scale the walls and make mincemeat of our bowmen off to the right. We desperately send in ground troops to save them but it's too late - the enemy have secured the gate, and cavalry pour in and carve a path through our reinforcements. Forces decimated, we retreat the remaining stragglers deep into the compound, setting fire to the gate as the last few enter the inner courtyard. Enemy cavalry can't advance with the gate ablaze, but hostile bowmen already line the castle walls, and nimble samurai climb into the area under a shield of arrows. As our general falls, the last of our bloodied troops panic and flee; it's a massacre. The enemy forces secure the flag in the central keep, winning the game.

Electricity flickers across our skin and we click to restart the match. This time, the AI forces are concentrated mostly on the right, so we move the bulk of our troops there and leave a few bowmen behind to deal with the lonely enemy melee unit off to the left. Wiser for our defeat, we click and drag archers into a tighter formation away from the walls, shielding them from the concussive blast of incoming rocket fire. Enemy samurai are shredded by our arrows, and as the weakened force scales our outer wall, we send out the cavalry to finish them off. With the attack held at bay, we check on the left flank of the castle. Disaster - noting our lopsided defences, the AI concealed a huge army in the forest which is now tearing through the castle. All is lost. We struggle to rebalance our forces and manage to hold off the invaders for a while, but defeat is inevitable.

Perhaps if we were to station all of our troops in the central area and let the enemy come to us...? We scrabble to click restart again, but the PR on guard has started to introduce the multiplayer presentation; there isn't time for another attempt.

"One thing we really wanted to do for Shogun 2 - that our fans have been requesting for a long time - is a full co-operative gameplay mode," lead Multiplayer Designer, Ian Roxburgh says. "Now you can play a co-op game with a friend and play against the AI together." 

In co-op you have shared line of sight and objectives, and can also share units between each other - one person could take care of just the cavalry for example, or a player who loses their units early in the match can be given a few to take care of so they still have something to do. Also new to multiplayer are 'key buildings'. All the maps have one or two buildings that give a buff to your troops if you capture them.

"They're implemented subtly, because we didn't want to make the battles all about having to run around capturing capture points - it's just really to stop corner camping ... You get enough of a buff that if your opponent was sitting on top of a hill, it would even the odds again," Roxburgh explains.

But these additions are incidental compared to the main new features; the big change is that Shogun 2 completely reframes online competitive multiplayer for the Total War series.

"In Total War you've got this concept of a campaign game, and when you fight a battle, that battle has a meaning in the context of the overall story in the campaign; what we wanted to do is take this idea online - so that when you finish a battle you've got something you're gaining, something you're progressing with. This is really a shell around the concept of battling a person online," says Roxburgh.

This "shell" consists of a map of Japan which depicts all 65 provinces. Your avatar is placed in a province on the map and can fight online battles in adjacent territories to conquer them. Winning a battle in a province unlocks its bonus: such as access to advanced troops, or a new retainer - a sort of perk that you can equip before battle. The idea is that you choose where you want to go based on what you want to unlock next.

In a series first, there are now online leaderboards for multiplayer, with separate boards for land and sea battles, each with its own subdivisions for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 matches. Once you eventually conquer all provinces on the map, you gain a place on the 'Shogun Ladder'; an elite league which takes an aggregate of your positions across all of the leaderboards. The player who reaches the top of the Shogun Ladder gains the title of Shogun, along with various aesthetic markers as bragging rights (a unique helmet for your avatar, a special forum tag etc.)

Tying into all of this is the 'clan competition', which has a two week season. Players can join clans (in the traditional gaming sense of the word) very easily via steam groups - there's no need to go on forums and interact with the community to get involved. Once in a clan, each battle a player wins in a province adds points to their team's total for that territory; the clan with the most points owns a province, and the one with the most provinces wins the clan competition. The top clans get promoted up to the next league, while the worst performers are relegated. Clan leaders and officers can place a sword marker in a territory to encourage their members to attack it, and when players win a battle in one of these provinces they gain a 'clan token' for their troubles. Roxburgh hopes to foster an environment in which active diplomacy occurs between clan leaders, with allied clans making pacts to avoid each other's territories for example. 

As it stands, players won't lose points for their team if defeated in battle - the developers are understandably reticent to penalise clans for taking on new players because they want to keep the system as accessible as possible. Clearly there is a danger that the size of a clan may ultimately be a more important factor than its skill, although Roxburgh says they may address this for the elite tiers of competition.

"At the moment you will be able to have a bigger clan and therefore get more points, but that's something we may cap at the top level."

Customization options are weaved throughout the new gameplay systems; players can choose the colours and emblem of their army and unlock armour for their avatar by completing achievements. Obtaining complete armour sets unlocks new retainers - perks which endow stat bonuses and other effects. There are over seventy retainers in the game of which up to five can be taken into battle at one time. Retainers are also sometimes won as a result of capturing territories, and some armour appears as a random drop.

Fighting battles wins you experience; you can upgrade your avatar and its associated bodyguard unit (which protects it in battle) twice per level, across ten levels. The avatar skill tree has four main branches: Physical, Leadership, Melee, and Bow Mastery, and players are free to specialise their general as they see fit, creating for instance an inspirational character with morale boosting charm, or a formidable warrior that deals damage on the front lines. The online matchmaking system pairs up opponents of similar ranks, and a list of traits (e.g. 'prefers cavalry', 'strong leadership' etc.) gives you a sense of who you're up against and allows you to tailor your troop list accordingly. Players will want to avoid 'rage quitting' in ranked matches, as this will earn them the accolade of 'dishonourable coward' in their traits list (although this can be erased by playing fairly for a few games).

In another series first, normal units that distinguish themselves in battle can be upgraded to Veteran status, at which point they gain access to their own skills tree with a unique set of upgrades for their class. While basic upgrades can be unlocked for any Veteran unit, the very best abilities can only be accessed by contributing clan tokens at higher levels; these include 'sniping' for bowmen, which allows them to remain hidden while attacking from forests; and 'bonzai' for cavalry, which removes the penalty they suffer against spearmen. 

Veteran units can be customised with their own colour scheme to mark them out as the elite units in your army. To keep the game balanced, their unit cost increases as you upgrade them, so a player with only normal units would have a larger force on the field than a Veteran unit user. Should Veterans take casualties in battle it's necessary to rest them for a few matches until they replenish their numbers, but they're never completely destroyed as a result, even if every soldier is killed.

There's so much more to say about Shogun 2; we could go on for another 2000 words about the improved naval battles and enemy AI, early gunpowder units, geisha assassins, 

and deadly ninjas, without even touching on the stunning environments and traditional brush and ink inspired artwork that adorns the game. 'Depth over breadth' is the phrase the developers are using to describe their approach to Shogun 2; by scaling back the unit count and concentrating on a single geographical region, they've managed to create a far richer and more densely detailed world than the colossal scale of Empire ever permitted. We didn't get to see a naval battle, or witness the improved gunpowder unit AI in play, and so can't confirm‎ whether those issues that irked the previous Total War iteration have been substantially ameliorated, but if the overall improvements and additions are anything to go by then we'll bet Creative Assembly is doing a grand job smoothing everything out.

Total War: Shogun 2 - The most tactical RTS to date?

Format PC

Developer Creative Assembly

Publisher Sega

Genre Sim / Strategy

3-Dec-2010 Casting a eye across the multiplayer battlefield

1 Comments

As an RTS, there's always the temptation to put the Total War series up against the likes of like Command & Conquer or the massive Starcraft series.

Spend ten minutes with a Total War game, however, and you'll realise it's probably the only game of its kind to put the "real" in Real Time Strategy.

With the combination of a RISK style map - where markers are shifted from territory to territory - and a 3D engine that gives players control over hundreds of men across large scale battlefields when it comes to conflict, Total War can go more in-depth than any of its competitors ever dreamed.

With the return of the Shogun era, Creative Assembly has made a conscious decision to hold back in terms of scale in order to pack more detail in than ever.

We were chucked into the deep end of the online multiplayer elements, where the UK dev team is keen to avoid a cheap addition tacked on to the main campaign for the sake of it. 

The aim, then, is to capture the essence of Total War; a campaign based game that puts a context around every battle, pulling the player in and out of the bigger picture all the time. 

This time, that bigger picture - that board game map - is included in multiplayer mode. You're given a context, a reason to fight and a route to progress down rather than just a string of meaningless skirmishes.

It's all about getting players to feel ownership of the army, to identify with their units and the all-important general. Total War campaigns achieve that through deep mechanics and massive scale. The question is, can that be achieved in the realm of multiplayer?

READY FOR BATTLE
After creating your character name, customising your banner colours and polishing your armour to make sure your men look unique and just a little bit spiffing on the battlefield, you're then presented with a map of Japan divided up into 65 land provinces and 12 naval regions. 

Straight away you'll start to see the multiplayer's similarities to the classic single-player system. In fact, this is exactly the same map as you'll get in Shogun 2's campaign, only it works a bit differently online.

As always, your avatar and army is represented by a token which you shove along the map to a particular region. This time, however, when you give the go ahead to attack that area, you're plunged into a multiplayer battle.

It can be any multiplayer battle of your choosing, you can be thrown into a conflict at random or set preferences and be hand-picked by the game's match making system. The important bit is, if you come out victorious, you're awarded the region you encroached upon on the map complete with all the perks it offers.

Different regions of Japan play host to dojos, for example, which in turn house different unit types.

Don't worry, you'll start off with a fully rounded set of units at the beginning. Players are handed cavalry units as well as infantry, archers and other units needed to have a full Total War battle right from the word "attack". Capturing a region with a dojo, however, will upgrade your army by unlocking a new unit on a particular progression line.

All the time, you're capturing more territory, gaining new units and building up XP. Importantly, by choosing different regions to attack and gaining different bits and pieces on your blood-soaked journey, your army will develop in a way that could be completely different to the one your mate is sporting.

Your military might well be set apart from the rest, however, depending on where you spend XP in Shogun 2's progression system. It's a familiar 'branch style' layout with different routes catering for different approaches and tactical preferences.

Spending XP to progress down the Leadership branch, for example, will make your general and his body guard unit better at rallying the troops and generally inspiring them to fight and keep morale high.

The Bow Mastery branch is just as self-explanatory, as it increases the body guard unit's ability to inflict arrow-headed damage or get creative with things like flaming arrows. It culminates with a sniping ability which allows the unit to shoot from woodland without exposing itself making for a much more stealthy approach.

A Physical chain increases things like speed, stamina and hit point bonus, whereas the Melee branch deals with that up close and personal hand-to-hand malarkey.

The most important bit about the tree of upgrades is that you'll never be able to max out more than one branch, a conscious decision from Creative Assembly to force players to tactically pick an approach and then work towards their strengths.

You can drape your points across the branches and have a well-rounded avatar or you can focus on one chain with the top level ability on each being a pretty powerful tool.

The design of the system means there's all kinds of different combinations of avatar skills that might suit the way you play and the kind of gameplay you want to focus on.

And that's the point; it's clear that multiplayer has been built upon layers and layers of customisation so that players have to study their opponent, look at their approach and counter it effectively. It's all part of making sure that Total War: Shogun 2's multiplayer manages to make as many tactical demands on the player as possible.

TRAITOR
To take it even further, then, Creative Assembly has added Total War's single-player Traits to the multiplayer mix. These are assigned to players by the game depending on their habits (their traits, strangely enough) which will assist in your war room planning.

While Traits won't reveal exactly where your opponents XP points have been spent, they will give a rough indication of the approach he or she is likely to take. 

They don't just revolve around the upgrade tree either; one trait, for example, calculates roughly what kind of make-up a person's army is likely to take (cavalry heavy, for example) while another identifies quitters so that you can pick out the dishonourable cowards among the bunch.

Add Retainers to your men - perks which might give plus one armour to all infantry, for example - and you can weave a pretty nuanced tactical plan before you've even left the barracks. Study your opponent well, get your approach right and winning the fight before the battle's even begun looks entirely possible.

On the battlefield itself, Total War: Shogun 2 is largely the same machine that's drawn such a passionate fanbase to series with more detail and more make-up. 

For us, zooming from the sky to ground level so that you're looking into your soldiers eyes as he gets an arrow in the arm has always been a special moment in the Total War experience and Shogun 2 makes use of all the modern trimmings to make the arena of conflict more attractive from up close and far away.

With access mainly being granted to multiplayer only, we haven't had the chance to put the game's AI through its paces - and that's the area that will be the main sticking point for most. 

As far as the online experience is concerned, though, Creative Assembly has clearly put a lot of effort into making it just as tactical and deep as any other aspect of Total War before it. If the single-player gets this much attention as well, the Shogun name could find itself on the top of the heap once again.

We get hands-on with Shogun 2 and bring you the lowdown on the updates to be expected from the game's multiplayer modes.

The year is 1545, and you are the leader of one of Japan's clans, ready to begin a fight to unify the feudal island under your banner. The Creative Assembly is returning to the land of the rising sun for the first time since the franchise launched there 10 years ago, and how things have changed.

In our brief hands-on, it was immediately apparent in both single- and multiplayer how the team behind the game has moved on from recent innovations introduced in Napoleon: Total War and weaved them into the fabric of a smaller, tighter, and more immersive game. From the multiplayer options we saw that give you a persistent avatar in the form of your online general, to the upgrade paths available for veteran units and the new online clan campaign dynamics, it seems that as much thought has gone into the metagames that pull you into Shogun 2's world as the gameplay itself.

Thankfully, as we saw in our brief hands-on with some of the single-player campaign, this hasn't been to the detriment of the gameplay. Quite the opposite, in fact. Defending our castle in some siege gameplay showed off some of the game's new features quite clearly. For example, you can easily see the state of your defensive units based on the state of their virtual banners, because they get progressively more tattered as your units get depleted. Mouse over the banner, and you immediately get information over to the side of the screen on the state of that unit, complete with morale, losses, and how it's progressing in its current skirmish. See the units nearly destroyed and eventually flashing white, and you know that almost all hope is loss and your troops are in the process of turning tail and fleeing.

However, it's in the multiplayer that the changes to the game seem to have received their most radical overhaul. Shogun 2 will feature full cooperative play throughout the campaign, and unit-sharing will let you give particular units to your co-op partner to micromanage, which is something of a key innovation. However, it's the changes to competitive multiplayer that were the focus of our recent briefing from CA, and it's those changes that are most likely to intrigue and concern veteran Total War players.

Key buildings are probably the single most controversial feature to be introduced. These are key points placed on a map with the idea being that they will have the potential to negate terrain-related advantages that can turn online games into rather one-sided affairs once players know the maps in question. The idea behind them is that a player camped on a hill would have his advantage negated by a player who managed to capture such a building, as the buildings would confer advantages on the holder's troops, such as increased armor, damage, and the like, making an assault on a heavily fortified position significantly easier. While we didn't get to see these key buildings in action, the theory behind them seems sound; stalemates are all too common in much of Total War's multiplayer, but we'll have to wait and see how these pan out.

Some less controversial changes are the attempts to replicate Total War's single-player success into the multiplayer arena. This includes taking some elements of the single-player experience and introducing them to multiplayer and tying single-player success into the online game. In Shogun 2, the hub of online multiplayer will be a map very similar to that seen in single-player; every area of Japan where battles can be fought online and on the seas will be shown on the map, and winning in each zone will enhance your abilities on the battlefield.

Taking control of some zones will reward you with unit upgrades, while others will reward you with retainers, which act to modify your army's abilities. There will be 70 of these in total, with a maximum of five being in play at any one time once you reach the top experience level. These will range from simple things such as reducing fatigue for your troops, to subtler effects such as the ability to see what your opponent is doing in the setup stage before battles begin. You will be able to obtain some of these in single-player too, as many of the game's Steam achievements will reward retainers, so it should be relatively easy to pick up the ones you particularly want to suit your style of play.

In a similar vein is the upgrade path for your general. Winning battles will reward you with experience points that you can use to then move down a skill tree for your glorious leader--this will further allow you to strengthen your army to suit your playing style. This may involve making your general more inspiring to strengthen the resolve of your entire army or beefing up your personal bodyguard to allow you to tear through carelessly positioned enemy units yourself.

Customising your armies to suit your style of play isn't possible just through retainers and your general. Fight with certain units for long enough, and they'll be upgraded to veteran status, which will unlock an upgrade path for them. Once they're in this state, you will be able to soup up their abilities as well as customise the way they look. The top-level upgrades for veteran units will require clan tokens, another new feature CA is introducing to spice up online multiplayer.

Clans will be easy-to-join groupings for multiplayer, based around Steam groups. Any Steam group can be a clan in-game and will be pitted in each two-week season against nine other clans in a mini-league. Each victory in multiplayer for a member of your clan will count towards your clan's control of the map region in which your battle was fought, with the clan that holds the most territory at the end of the season winning and moving up to a higher league. At the lower levels, most of this inter-clan competition will be through sheer force of numbers; you won't lose points if you lose battles, and there are no concrete plans for limiting the number of members. The idea, CA says, is to make getting into a clan as easy as possible so that anyone who wants to take part in this level of multiplayer can do so.

Finally, there will be built-in rankings for individuals for all the competitive multiplayer match types--one versus one, two versus two, three versus three, and four versus four--as well as an overall ranking that will be open only to those players who have won on every single multiplayer map and gained control of Japan. The leader of the Shogun ladder will earn the right to use the in-game title Shogun for his avatar and dress said avatar in unique gold armor. This title will operate on a global basis--there will never be more than one Shogun at a time, so this should provide something for the most dedicated of fans to strive for.

Overall, the changes to Shogun 2 look very interesting, and we're going to watch them with interest over the months leading up to launch to see how the theory plays out in practice.

[Royal Eyelander]

조금 일찍 나왔으면 좋겠네요... 3월이라니...

[tweinsen]

그만큼...완벽히 나오겠죠? 아...3월이면 학기 시작하는데...ㅜ

[VOCARLOID 時代]

저 붉은색은 분명..다케다 가문이였지 아마...다케다 가문의 먼치킨 기병들이 더 보고프군..

[막쉬무스]

E딱 다케다 문양이네요 ㅋㅋ 워낙 신장의야망을 잼잇게 플레이했던 시절이 잇던지라... 뭐니뭐니해도 노부나가가 진리..

[CSman]

난 의를숭상하는 우에스기로 해야지!!

[신윤영]

호조家가 다케다家 공성하는 군요...저도 빨리 하고 싶군요

[쿄쿄쿵]

대에박~!

[멍군 멍게]

그래픽 대박~ㅠ

[양갱이]

저정도면 그래픽 카드는 어느 정도 되어야 할지...ㅎ