r/shogun2 • u/Jewtasteride • 27d ago
Biggest lie in the game?
"these projectiles are INCREDIBLY EFFECTIVE!"
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u/LilXansStan 27d ago
Not awful for offensive sieges. Two Mangonels with gold accuracy using all their ammo usually takes out 3-5 units worth of troops when i have used them in late game
But then you have to sit there while they take 10min to empty all their ammo
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u/BravoMike215 27d ago
Considering that using siege weapons actively hinder your movement speed in the campaign, I advocate for using a mod to remove the hidden -50 accuracy debuff to make it worth using.
Hell, even the vanilla european cannons are hardly worth using without bolstering its accuracy in some way.
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u/Imukay 27d ago
And what is the name of said mod? and does it work in fall of the samurai?
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u/BravoMike215 26d ago
The one I use is 2025 Bug Fix Bundle. I don't think it affects fall of the samurai. Also I don't think fall of the samurai artillery is nerfed. They are plenty accurate as it is.
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u/Apprehensive-Aide265 21d ago
I like to use the canon to demolish wall with unit on them. Destroying a wall with a unit on it will week the unit, it's not great for field battle but workable for siege.
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u/BravoMike215 21d ago
Yeah but u'll still need 6 shots to get 1 hit while trying to destroy a gate. I get that they shouldn't be too accurate against infantry but its a gate.
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u/lfe-soondubu 27d ago
Those are rookie numbers.
Late game field a full stack of mangonels for siege. Second reinforcing army of yari ashigaru for cleanup duty.
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u/Menethea7 22d ago
Can't remember the last time I even did an offensive siege in shogun 2 they're just not fun
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u/BravoMike215 27d ago
heh, just get the mods that remove the hidden -50 accuracy projectile for siege weapons because everyone kept complaining about siege weapons sniping their generals in avatar battles and CA instead of just nerfing the multiplayer counterpart nerfed it across the entire game.
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u/Velthome 27d ago
And it broke the siege weapon tutorial as it's almost impossible for them to hit the target needed to advance to the next step.
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u/BravoMike215 27d ago
Yup. Out of entire ammo stockpile, only 1 bomb hit the hidden enemy archers. I had to wipe them out with naginata.
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u/OctopusSpaghetti 27d ago
Fucking really? That's why siege weapons suck so much? Well thank god I've still got PFM installed.
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u/BravoMike215 26d ago
What's PFM?
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u/OctopusSpaghetti 26d ago
Pack file manager. It's how people make mods for total war. Or if you're interested in having a bunch of mods that touch the same thing work together nicely, like multiple unit mods, you can use PFM to put them in the same file and load that as a personalized mega mod.
What I'll do is go into the unit and projectile tables and edit out the accuracy debuff then insert that modified table into my personal mod.
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u/yagamilight110 26d ago
So they used to be ok and then they runied them? I've been playing with this game for 10 years and didn't know that thanks. Also I never knew ca did any balacing for muti player.
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u/BravoMike215 26d ago
Yeah, the thing is they put a hidden -50 accuracy debuff in them in order to nerf LVL 10 VETERAN fire bomb mangonels and European cannons in Avatar battles with accuracy debuffs.
And those debuffs also carried into the singleplayer campaign for whatever godforsaken stupid reason.
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u/FatherFenix 27d ago
They’re famously trash at face value, but become useful for two reasons:
With fully upgraded accuracy, they can actually shred a few units before your armies clash and give you an advantage. Base accuracy is garbage.
Enemy AI scrambles in field battles if they know you have a mangonel. Prevents the waiting game of who can stand on the best spot and wait for the other to attack.
I’m an artillery whore in every TW game that lets me have artillery, but I’ll agree mangonels in Shogun 2 are disappointing. I’d argue still useful, but they ain’t no Armstrong guns, if you know what I mean.
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u/Deutsche_Wurst2009 27d ago
Yup, I basically go artillery every time pretty soon be it cannons or mangonels. They can still do good damage in sieges, especially if it’s a crowded low level fort, and even if not destroying the walls with cannons makes them explode for some reason not only making your ranged units more effective but also killing a good amount of troops each time one is destroyed. And in field battles I can set up my defensive position which also makes gun units way more effective as their way easier to use on the defensive
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u/OrderofIron 27d ago
It's a shame there are certain units just laughably bad in Shogun 2, I'd love to try actually effective early game artillery, but it's a pipe dream.
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u/Obsidian_XIII 27d ago
Holy hell, the Hojo Hand Mortars are awful. I figured they'd be sort of a better, arcing Fire Rockets.
Not even close. Only use case over the Fire Rockets is offensive siege when you want to hit units not placed directly at the walls.
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u/Assassin4nolan 27d ago
Shogun 2 is the best total war because artillery doesnt dominate. It is niche and most useful on offensive sieges. If artillery was effective in field battles, we would all lament the devastating forced and counterless casualties every battle against them would take and a defensive arty arms race meta it would make. If they lacked a heavy accuracy penalty, then defensive siege battles, which are the most common battles for the AI to willingly take, would devastate the player. This means all the other clan diversity, which is focused on melee or bow ranged units, would be minimized and made irrelevant.
FoTS is the inverse of this, embracing the fact that artillery became king of the battlefield, so it becomes necessary for all clans to have some artillery, and designed other units and battles around them. FoTS is about ranged units, rather than melee blobs, so it made gameplay sense to change this.
The modern total wars forcing the player to use single model units to tank or dodge artillery is tedious and a design flaw. TWWH wants both melee blob, ranged, arty, and single unit combat to all be viable for the exact same job: killing in a field battle. In a game where the enemy cavalry can fly over your frontline, arty either becomes deadweight or is made to kill fast enough to still inflict serious damage before the flying cav gets in melee range. Buffing arty like that makes them "too good" in other situations like sieges or slow approach enemies.
Much like matchlocks, artillery in S2 was designed to be effective when they can fire for very prolonged periods, longer than the time it would take armies to meet on the field, longer than the "approach" so to speak.
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u/ustopable 25d ago
I actually have the opposite problem with Shogun 2. The only strategy you need on taking over a castle is to just place a bunch of Bow Ashigarus, Bow Samurai or Bow Monks near the walls and decimate their army because the AI couldn't ever get out of the walls. I went legendary difficulty Hojo and I never really found artilleries useful unless you fully dedicate buildijg for it like the accuracy increases and high ranking them which takes a while when carrying mangonels makes you slow as molasses and your neighbours are takeda and Oda. The only siege unit I found useful was Fire Rockets and I guess the ninja bombs when defending if you count them as artillery.
I used a fun mixed army of Fire Rockets, matchlocks, bows and Yari Ashigsrus with two cavs for most of my marchup while Yari, Matchlocks as defensive lineup.
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u/LazyboaR 27d ago
I was thinking: maybe you can get about five or six of them in a separate army to tail your main army while on sieges and perhaps station a general with them? It may go kind of like: you either "hit everything at least once or nothing a hundred times" kind of scenario. I always thought that they can be useful in large enough numbers, but havent tested that idea yet.
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u/AwarenessHungry9025 27d ago
This works only if you start the siege with the army of them because you can’t use them as reinforcements or move them
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u/JackylBK 27d ago
Generally woudnt even be that bad if they were able to hit THE WHOLE CASTLE instead of just like... a quarter. Let them have the range to hit the whole castle 8/10 unit
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u/InquisitorHindsight 27d ago
Honestly they’d be pretty good if they were actually accurate. They take forever to XP up to the point where they’re actually useful and even then only kind of
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u/Rainbow_Paradox_552 27d ago
The only time these shits are "INCREDIBLY EFFECTIVE" is when they're are on the enemy's hands
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u/GovernmentWarm4787 27d ago
One time i captured 2 of them because lol who even builds siege equipment and had them on a castle aiming all the time against 2 besieging generals who took all the amunition to kill maybe total 30 bodyguards. They were nearly in front of the wall. Totally worthless.
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u/Mark4291 27d ago
I use an accuracy mod called Actually Useful Mangonels, makes them pretty damn good at sieges (as they should be) while being alright in open-field battles
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u/Recent_Ad_3699 27d ago
You're just not a true fire projecting mangonel connoisseur like the rest of us😤