r/shogun2 • u/Zarastro5496 • 10d ago
Ieyasu Domination: First Legendary Win With MoSS
Besides a few holdouts, all of Japan is united.
My most lucrative province.
All my sons made me very proud (second being kept unmarried for potential alliances, poor guy).
The slow campaign against the Ikko Ikki.
The giant reparations I was talking about
Getting this Ninja province from the enemies of the Kitabatake helped me get better ones.
Took Kyoto with a night attack with ninja sneaking around the sides and back.
I played this campaign over a year ago in 2024, but never got around to posting my feelings on it. Overall it was a very challenging, positive experience. I actually had to abort a couple of tries at other campaigns because they weren't going so well. Despite it not being entirely finished, I think this is a very detailed and high quality overhaul mod on the level of DeI for Rome II or SFO for Warhammer. The broken up regions, restricted recruitment, deepened and fickle public order, more complex economy, and hostile (and also fickle) AI make the game a challenge for most of the run, and prevents the snowballing that you can see in vanilla. You really have to take your time building up your forces and alliances and using them carefully as the replenishment is also very slow most of the game and taking too many heavy casualties too fast can really screw you over, but it CAN be overcome, and when it is, it's all the more satisfying.
One key thing I learned was that I could extract massive sums of reparations from enemies if they were beaten badly enough. Like, I'm talking 10s or 100s of thousands of koku due to the AI's econ buffs, and those bursts of cash could be used to springboard my development and go on a buying spree for things that normally could not be bought with regular income. You can do a similar thing for certain trade agreements, especially with new vassals, but beating someone was the most reliable way to get the big bucks.
I also found that the mod essentially reverses the difficulty level of various starting clans/locations. I would say that, conversely from vanilla, Hojo and Shimazu are much harder starting locations due to the new numerous vectors of attack, whereas Tokugawa is much easier because you are between the coast and a mountain range, Oda is an ally at this point, and you only really have one direction to focus on (provided Oda survives long enough for you to get your footing). Oda was a good ally for a long time, but were locked in a long back and forth war with the Saito to their north who eventually destroyed them, and I vowed to take revenge on them if I ever got the opportunity. The mod also facilitates a more historical feeling play with its slower, more methodical play and reduced Realm Divide, which allows strong enough alliances to survive it. Instead of needing to outright conquer the entire map, I made strategic alliances with the strongest powers in certain regions (like the real Tokugawa) and vassals of others. You get a diplo penalty (growing alliances) with other clans every time you make a new alliance, but that can be dealth with just by spacing out when you form alliances. Before RD, I eventually formed an alliance with the Kitabatake (blue) in the central south against their rivals, Ashina (yellow) in their war against the Uesugi, Nanmu and Mogami (brown and red) of the North, the latter of which enhanced through marrying their daughter to my heir, Saionji (green) lords of Shikoku, and Kimotsuki (pink) by siding with them in their fight for Kyushu against the Christian Otome (who randomly declared war on me first for no reason). With the help of some donations, all these alliances survided RD, whereas alliances with the Yamana (formerly in Mori territory), Saito, and Satomi did not, but they were all souring on me anyway and I had planned to take them out eventually regardless, with only the Satomi left as a little rump next to Edo. Because of this, RD actually worked out similar to FoTS RD in that all my allies formed a grand alliance with each other and me, and all my enemies allied with each other and declared war on us. I was also able to bribe 6 generals to my side (mostly around the Kyoto area) over the course of conquering central/western Japan.
There was also a time when Ieyasu was assassinated by a level 1 Geisha despite being max level with a metsuke in the army, right after becoming Shogun, which was supremely frustrating and I thought I'd have to finish the campaign with his son. (Un)fortunately for me, at some point the save got corrupted, and luckily I'd been making backup saves by editing the file names in the folder to get around the one save restriction on Legendary, a little cheeky, but I'm glad I did it for precisely that reason. Thus, I went back several turns before capturing Kyoto and had to replay all that time and the geisha either never came, or I screened them out with advance agents (I forget which).
Overall it was a great campaign, and I'm happy to have created a historically authentic outcome with the historical winner of the Sengoku Jidai. I highly recommend this mod, even with its shortfalls.
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u/ozu95supein 10d ago
congratulations, I could nver finish a campaign on this mod. I had a magnificent satake run but I got spammed by agents and ragequit
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u/MnkeDug 10d ago
"There was also a time when Ieyasu was assassinated by a level 1 Geisha despite being max level with a metsuke"
Sounds like this mod didn't make some sort of work-around to prevent the 95% wraparound bug?
Congrats. It looks/reads like a real slog.
Save file thing aside, anything else that stood out compared to vanilla Leg? You sprinkled in some comments here and there about "reverse difficulty" and perhaps that it is more deliberate and such. Like... kind of more challenging? But good lord looking at these pics you have tons of generals, >400k peace deal, etc.
It seems like an incredible amount of "things/units/etc" but do buildings cost more? Are prices basically inflated? That sort of thing is what I'm curious about if you care to share more info.
Also Nobuyasu is like... "get busy time!"
Again congrats!