Shogun: Total War is the first game in the Creative Assembly's Total War strategy franchise. The player takes control of a Japanese clan during the Sengoku Period attempting to conquer the nation and claim the position of shogun. Despite being quite a rudimentary game from a modern perspective, the unique tactical battles combined with Risk-style map proved to be a game-changer for the entire industry, affecting strategy games ever since.
An Expansion Pack called Mongol Invasion was released in 2001 which allowed players to control either side of the Mongol invasions of Japan. In the US, the expansion pack was bundled as a special edition called "Warlord Edition", which was later released in Europe later the year.. Later, there was another special released called the "Gold Edition", which had the base game and Mongol Invasion but the removal of the Intro Ran movie. In June 25 2015, Shogun Total War "Gold Edition" was released onto Steam with bugfixes to work on modern hardware.
Comes with an equally well-received sequel, Total War: Shogun 2.
Shogun: Total War provides examples of:
- Alternate History: The whole premise of Mongol Invasion is that the storm that destroyed the real-life invasion fleet never happened.
- Anachronism Stew: Some of the weapons the Ninja uses in various assassinations. In one video, the Ninja uses a spring loaded weapon to kill two guards, and what looks like a ballista-like cart against the Emissary.
- Annoying Arrows: Your archers main role isn't about killing units, but to soften them up a bit before reaching your troops. So they by default, deal miniscule damage, further compounded by the fact that they have limited arrows in their quivers. Once armour starts being a factor, arrows go from "sometimes lethal" to "barely scratching".
- Anti-Frustration Features: The AI will never create Geisha houses outside of glitches and bugs. Note the word "House".
- Armor Is Useless: Nope. Armour makes a massive difference when it comes to the survivability of units and certain troops can't even be trained without having the Armourer building.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: The main reason to bother with gunpowder units is the fact that they deal damage regardless of their target’s armour value.
- Artistic License – History: Multiple examples. Many were fixed in the sequel.
- Clans often recruit notable generals they have in history with increased rank, such as Honda Tadakatsu, note who appears for the Imagawa/Tokugawa clan. They sometimes recruit notable generals that they never recruited in history, such as Asakura Yoshikagenote for the Oda clan.
- Oda, Imagawa and Uesugi clans having Toyotomi, Tokugawa and Date in their heir list. Technically their clan was supposed to replace their names, but unfortunately, these strigs cannot load due to missing or bugged triggers.
- The Imagawas must be played in order to technically play as the Tokugawas/'Matsudairas. Apparently Matsudaira Hirotada does not exist in the game. The same issue goes for the Date Clan- Apparently Date Harumune and Date Terumune does not exist either. The Toyotomis, however does have the correct heirs, but can only be played during an Oda clan game.
- Some clans having heirs who isn't related to them in the first place!note
- There are no samurai units with guns (all of them are ashigaru), which is not historically accurate, as there is plenty of samurais who uses guns.
- In the 1530 and base game's scenario, The Takeda clan controls Aki Province and nearby provinces in the latter scenario. While it's a different Takeda branch that has some contact with the Kai Takeda branch, they have little to no relations to the Kai Takeda clan that belongs to Takeda Shingen. This may be a case of giving the Mori some competition other than rebels, Shimazu, and Imagawas. Speaking of the Imagawas...
- The Imagawas/Tokugawas control Hizen Province for some odd reason. This may be another case of giving the Shimazu some competition other than rebels or the Mori clan.
- The Ashikaga Shogunate is nowhere to be seen. Instead, you would see the Hosokawa clan in Kyoto. The only appearance of the Ashikaga clan would be as a rebel clan/force in Mutsu Province.
- Mutsu and Dewa Provinces uses only one castle to control their whole provinces, when in actuality, it's ruled by multiple clans (like the Date Clan)
- Several provincesnote aren't seen. They are instead assimilated into other prominent provinces.
- Several provinces, when under Rebel control, are not historically accurate. Such examples include Noto note and Kaga note provinces.
- Several provinces does not come with castles, which is untrue, since provinces at the time usually comes with a seat of power, like a castle or a fort. This seemed to be implemented for game balance, however.
- In the game's outro, the narrator claims that there was "no longer any need for the foreigners' strange superstitions, or their coward-weapons. And they were not missed when the bamboo curtain descended"
. However, guns continued to be used in Japan even during the isolationist period, although it was often used to scare wild animals away from farms. - Mongol Invasion gives the Japanese army Crossbows- either Shudo or Oyumis. There is little evidence that Japan ever used crossbows for warfare.
- Also from Mongol Invasion, the Japanese army can field Ashigarus, which is inaccurate. Ashigarus became prominent during the 14th century.
- Anything involving a Ninja, such as some of their weapons and their attire.
- Apparently the only gunpowder weapons during the Sengoku Period are the matchlock guns. There are no signs of fire bombs, Europeon Cannons, or fire arrows.
- Artistic License – Religion: In one geisha assassination cutscene, a Catholic priest seems to be wearing a rosary as a necklace. Even today, most Catholics consider that a very inappropriate use for a rosary, as doing so would give the impression that it is a mere beauty-piece.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Before you get to the buildings that will allow you to recruit Kensais and Geishas, the game might be over. Also, in the case of Geishas, it means sacrificing buildings that could produce units for a late-game assassin agent, when you can simply use ninjas instead.
- Battle in the Rain: The bane of Arquebus Ashigaru units, as it renders their weapon useless. Musketeer Ashigaru units are thankfully immune to this.
- Battle Thralls: The Mongols' basic, cheap infantry units from the Mongol Invasion expansion are Korean captives/vassals pressed into service.
- Boring, but Practical: Yari units, be it Ashigaru, samurai or cavalry. They are nothing fancy, but will easily be the mainstay of your armies regardless of which clan you're playing as. They are cheap, reliable, can fend off cavalry and all you needed to train the infantry variant is the basic Yari Dojo building.
- Bow and Sword in Accord: Archer Samurai, the only bow infantry unit in the game, are pretty capable in melee and can easily fight off against Ashigaru units, assuming they manage to reach them.
- Cannon Fodder: Ashigaru units are fairly capable as far as cannon fodder goes. While weaker than the samurai units and best used in overwhelming numbers, they are still definitely worth recruiting, especially since samurai units tend to be much more expensive and harder to recruit. Good tactics can also allow them to beat samurai units with relatively few casualties.
- Church Militant: The militant Buddhist and later Christian samurais, who would rise up if their upset at your daimyo's religious policy, be it conversion to Christianity or refusal to give up Shintoism if said daimyo conquers a territory that has been converted to Christianity.
- Combat Pragmatist: Winning provinces by simply waiting sieges, in process killing the besieged army without facing it in battle. Holding bridges with token forces against overwhelming odds that would otherwise just stamp all over your units in an open field. Using large numbers of cheap and disposable Arquebus Ashigaru to easily murder the Elite Army your enemy is fielding before it can even get close to yours. Simply letting the clock tick in defensive battles, rather than being proactive, since you win once the timer hits zero.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Various rules that the player is under do not apply to the AI, including such "minor" things like Buddhist monks not losing their edge when facing Christian armies of the human player.
- Crack Defeat: Attacking provinces with rivers can easily turn into this. All the defenders really need is a unit of yari (can be even ashigaru) + bowmen combo for each bridge and simply Hold the Line. Taken into absurdity if a Kensai is deployed in such a battle, since a single guy is going to cut into ribbons hundreds of people charging that bridge.
- Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: There is one such near-future Japan in the game's victory cinematic.
- Decapitated Army: Kill the general and all ashigaru troops will rout instantly, likely followed by samurai infantry if enough of them starts running away. Doesn't work so well against monks, who have far higher morale and can completely ignore the death of their general.
- Disc-One Nuke: Anyone starting with a province with iron in it and thus capable of getting armourer going faster, will gain considerable edge early on.
- Distant Finale:
- After your clan achieves victory, the final cutscene jumps forward into the far future. It shows your daimyo's statue being displayed in a public square in a high-tech, Cyberpunk style Tokyo, with the narrator saying how legends of your courage and cunning still lives on to this very day.
- In the Mongol Invasion expansion pack, if you fail to defeat the Mongol invasion of Japan, the ending skips forward to the future. It shows the same cutscene as mentioned above with modern day Tokyo in the future, seemingly suggesting that history goes on the same as before... except then the narrator reveals that you are looking at the province of Japan, which is now part of Mongolia, with its cultural heritage and legends of samurais having long since forgotten by history. The final shot of the ending is a giant statue of Kublai Khan standing proudly in a public park at the city center.
- The Dreaded: Gunpowder units causes morale drop to units they attack, due to the combination of heavy casualties, armour-piercing attack and most importantly, all the smoke and noise the gunfire makes.
- Dungeon Bypass: You can invade any given province with a port in it, provided your own army is in port and you can see the province, too. Enemy clan having all its armies parked right next to border? Just land in their back.
- Early Game Hell:
- The Imagawa clan starts with one of it's provinces in Kyushu and the only way they can access it is via port. They have to split off their forces to maintain their possessions and defend at two different fronts. Neglect either their Kyushu or Honshu holdings and you can end up being booted out entirely.
- Being the Samurai during the Mongol Invasion. You are given almost all of Japan, but with piss poor units, consisting only of basic Yari, ranged Ashigaru, Samurai and the Yari and Bow cavalry units, which do piss poor damage to the Mongol units that isn't their thunder bombers.
- Elite Mooks: Yari Samurai. They are minimally better than their ashigaru variant, but rather than being armed peasants, they represent the samurai social class.
- "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Or close to it, anyway. When a major clan is destroyed (and thus the daimyo dies), he recites a historical "death poem", written by samurai before they either committed seppuku or went off to a Last Stand.
- Faction-Specific Endings: The ending cutscene changes slightly depending on what clan you played as.
- Femme Fatale: Geishas, working as super-assassins.
- Frontline General: At the game start, your general's guard unit will be the best thing in your army and the game openly encourages you to use them in combat, especially against ineffectual rebels.
- Game Mod: It's possible to mod custom positions and setups in the campaign map. It's also possible to modify various text strings to even rename clans too! Want to start with Mongol Units? You can, but you can't earn and replenish them. Want your general to be named "Bob"? You can, just replace a set general spawn's name and "Bob" would spawn out.
- Game-Breaking Bug:
- Until it was patched, The Mongol Invasion expansion caused the original campaign to treat the "Rebels and Ronin" garrisons that control the majority of the map at the beginning of the campaign to act like a full-on hostile faction. The resulting tsunami of rebel armies would quickly overwhelm all the playable sides in the first few turns. Amusingly enough it did not count as a faction for victory conditions, meaning the last side standing wins by default.
- When playing as the Rebels, selecting "Region Zero" will often crash the game. There is no fix, due to rebels not normally playable.
- Gang Up on the Human: The AI is scripted by default to go against the human player, first and foremost. The only thing preventing certain clans from being hostile right from the start is lack of a direct border and/or the presence of rebel provinces.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Unit losses can only be recovered through a manual process which requires the damaged unit to be sent to a province that is capable of training units, has the correct recruitment building (for example: Yari Samurai requires a Yari Dojo) and then put directly into the training queue to be retrained to full strength. Needless to say, this is user-unfriendly and not explained (unlike unit merging).
- Guns Are Useless: If you don't know how to deploy them or it's raining, Arquebus and Musketeer Ashigaru are the worst units in the game, despite them being absolute terror on the battlefield in real life.
- Guns vs. Swords: If you don't have cavalry units, your best bet in dealing with enemy gunpowder units is to charge at them with Nodachi Samurai, who are particularly effective in close quarters against unarmoured units.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Ninja, shinobi and geisha agents are visible on the map to everyone. You can see exactly who and in what quantity someone is sending an agent to destabilise your frontier, but it also means the AI "sees" them when you send an agent to kill them. There is, however, a difference between just moving an agent and being caught red-handed in an assassination attempt.
- Hold the Line: Any battle that involves river crossing will consists of the defending side doing exactly that, with units simply standing and waiting in crucial points, fending off any attackers funneled into them.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Can happen with Arquebus and Musketeer Ashigaru units when they are parked a few feet near the enemy. The AI will never engage melee combat against enemy units outside during siege, so see the accuracy of your gunpowder units!
- Implausible Deniability: Directly related to the Highly-Visible Ninja above. Rebellion going on in a province? No, that's totally not because there were 20 shinobis parked in it. A general or even daimyo being assassinated? Clearly that wasn't the ninja standing in that province. And it's taken up to eleven with geishas, because they can fail their assassination, but they can't be punished for it, meaning you literally can't do anything, even if you catch one red-handed.
- Instrument of Murder: There is a brief cutscene that shows a ninja assassinating his target with a poison dart blown out of a flute. The Geishas also have several fairly brutal instrumental kills. Special mention goes to the assassination scene where a Geisha kills a room full of enemies, armed only with a violin-type instrument.
- Island Base: Done early enough, it is possible to turn both Kyushu and Shikoku into these, as other clans will simply lack ports to even try invading your home.
- Jidaigeki: Comes naturally from the setting itself, to the point later re-releases used scenes from Ran as intro.
- Losing the Team Spirit: The big, revolutionary change introduced by the game was the extent to which morale mechanics affect battles and how it is possible to win them by other means than simply killing everyone from the other side. It is perfectly normal and even expected to rout army a few times bigger than your own, while only causing minimal casualties to the enemy - but making sure among the casualties is their general and any killing will happen rapidly, rather than gradually.
- Luck-Based Mission:
- Ninja assassinations are purely up to chance; though having a higher rank gives the Ninja better odds.
- Winning the first battle in the Mongol scenario on harder difficulties can lead to this. Your units routing because of the RNG hates you? Good luck winning. Considering this can be true in reality...
- Made of Iron: Almost literally. To even train Naginata samurai, you must have Armoury in that province, which means it has access to iron deposits. Naginata samurai have the highest armour rating of all units in the game and can shrug off anything that isn't a bullet (and sometimes even those aren't enough).
- Magikarp Power: Trying to use Ninjas early on with no rank seems like a waste of Koku as they can die more often than not. And it's only when you've upgraded their recruitment building to the maximum level that they can start to live long enough to enjoy a successful career full of numerous assassinations.
- Master of None: Yari Samurai. For yari troops, either ashigaru or cavalry are better. For direct melee combat, Nodachi Samurai are superior. For defending, you want the heavily armoured Naginata Samurai. For protracted combat, superior morale and combat skills of Warrior Monk units are better. Their main saving grace is how early and easily they can be trained and having slightly better stats than their ashigaru variant.
- Mutual Kill: What happens when two enemy geisha meet. The geisha have a tea ceremony. Then one geisha uses her hair stick to kill the other geisha, who retaliates with a fatal kodachi strike. The strikes are offscreen, but the player sees the really bloody aftermath.
- Ninja: The game notably divides them on two different agent types: shinobi, who simply create unrest in a province (put enough of those in any given place and it will cause a non-stop revolt) and ninja, who are doing all the assassinations. On top of that, there are battlefield ninja, which can hide even in an open terrain, are formidable in combat and can easily close to the enemy general unnoticed. All of those units are wearing costumes that would make them highly visible.
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Nintendo Hard: Being the Samurai faction during the Mongol Scenario, if you're not cheesing it using an exploitnote - You are given all of Japan to fend off the Mongol forces, who has better attack and charge ratings, and will often win on a 1 on 1 fight with their Japanese equilivents.
- You are given Yari units, The Archer unitsnote and the two basic Yari Cavalry and Cavalry Archers. Good luck building your army and hopefully don't get overwhelmed before you can make better units!
- The Warrior Monks are unavailable, except by the rebels.
- The Gun Ashigaru units are obviously unavailable Except if you somehow stall the game into going into the main scenario time.
- You STILL need to trigger the Legendary Swordsman event to build Nodachi Samurai.
- Nonstandard Game Over: Even if you are one province away from taking over all of Japan, if you die childless, it's an instant game-over and your clan cease to exist.
- One-Hit Kill: Each unit that isn't general and his bodyguards has exactly 1 hit point. This means that if they aren't provided with armour upgrades at certain point, your troops will start dying by the dozen when facing higher tier units. On top of that, everyone gets access to attack upgrades, but only handful of provinces provide armour.
- One-Man Army: The Kensai unit, a master swordsman capable of tearing through entire units or holding a choke point all by his lonesome.
- Only in It for the Money: The Portuguese traders instantly set up Christian missions in your domain and will only trade better gear and set up further trade posts if you convert to Christianity. The Dutch traders meanwhile, just want to earn some money and couldn't care less about any religious affairs, allowing you to recruit Musketeer Ashigaru units right from the start and their trading port generates slightly more koku.
- Press Start to Game Over: Possibly in the Mongol Invasion as the Mongols in harder difficulties. You don't have a province to start. You have to win, or lose before you can even move at the campaign map.
- Quantity vs. Quality: Both sides of the axis can be played effectively, even against each other. A handful of high-tier, fully upgraded units can tear apart an army of ashigaru without even slowing down. An endless wave of freshly recruited Yari Ashigaru can simply Zerg Rush some Elite Army due to the size disparity.
- Scary Impractical Armor: This is what your armour without Armourer upgrades really is: a display piece to look fearsome on the battlefield, but it's predominately made of paper, leather straps and lacquer.
- Shoot the Messenger: If the rival faction you're sending an emissary to really hates your guts, your emissary may come back to you missing everything from the neck down.
- Shown Their Work: Zig-Zagged. While nothing spectacular from modern perspective, when the game came out, it was considerably well-researched and based various gameplay elements on historical outcomes or traditional customs. However, there are multiple discrepancies and errors, see Artistic License – History above.
- The Siege: A generally advisable way of taking down enemy provinces. The alternative is a frontal attack on the fortress, which depending on how advanced it is, may simply rid you of your army without achieving anything.
- So Last Season: Once you have access to guns, archers are completely useless, since Arquebus Ashigaru are far superior and can easily slaughter units that archers can't even dream about scratching. And you can further upgrade them to Musketeer Ashigaru.
- Stealth Expert: Battlefield ninja are for all means and purposes invisible until an unit stumbles on them or they engage in combat. When they are detected, they are usually already within the range of their thrown weapons.
- Stock Footage: Kind of, in that the opening cinematic of the Warlord Edition is an actual scene from Ran.
- Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: Yari Samurai are virtually identical to their Ashigaru variant and playing the same role - the main difference being their morale, which is higher than their Ashigaru counterpart.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Cavalry beats archers, archers beat Ashigaru, Ashigaru can overwhelm cavalry. Swords beat Yari, Yari beat cavalry, cavalry beats swords. Gunpowder units kill melee units at range, melee units slaughter Gunpowder units in close quarters.
- Take It to the Bridge: The easiest province to defend is one that has a river in it, as that means battle over the bridges. A skeleton force of few units can effectively repel and army consisting of three stacks of units, simply by holding out for long enough to make the invasion fail.
- Timed Mission:
- In general, you must conquer Japan before 1600.
- Battles have their timers. Depending if you are attacking or defending, once the clock hits zero, it's an automatic defeat or victory.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: A failed assassination attempt cutscene on a Mongol general in the Mongol Invasion expansion sees the general suddenly throw a large glaive that was on his lap while he was asleep at the ninja after the ninja's dart embeds into his hat. It's so outlandishly Action Hero that it's hilarious.
- Tutorial Failure:
- The optional tutorial has one scenario where you get a unit of archers perched on a hillside and are tasked with taking out a unit of spearmen marching up the hill. Supposedly, this was to demonstrate the importance of high ground... except the spearmen WILL reach your archers with minimal casualties. What you are actually supposed to do, is to retreat to the nearby hilltop, shoot from there until the spearmens get close, then assume wedge formation and counter-charge them.
- Later, the tutorial makes you the attackers and tasks you with driving arquebusiers off a hill. Thing is, the enemy is completely unable to shoot due to the rain, making the whole thing a zero-risk endeavor.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: You can wait out until the last turn without completing your objectives, or have your daimyo with no heir fight a battle with no chance to escape.
- Unwinnable by Design: You can make units have unlimited ammo in the options. Combine this with an AI who uses Cavalry Archers and you having no Yari Cavalry and you will be slowly grinded down, while being virtually unable to kill the horse archersnote .
- Useless Useful Spell:
- Cathedrals. They provide the owner income from all churches, not just yours- but the AI will never make churches enough to make a sizable profit. While it provides the creation of Musketeer Ashigaru, a Gun Factory is much more efficient, but...
- To a lesser extent, Christianity. While they provide gunpowder units earlier than the Dutch, the AI doesn't like anyone who is a Christian, even if the Daimyo in question is a Christian himself. You also have to deal with Buddhist rebellions, which may spawn Warrior Monks.
- Video Game Delegation Penalty: You really don't want to automatically resolve battles. Due to few loops in the script and general issues with evaluating various units (and not evaluating certain ones at all), you can get a total defeat out of something that should be a trivial victory.
- Violence is the Only Option: You can only win the game by being the last clan surviving in Japan and the only way this can happen is either straight-up conquest or deliberately inciting rebellions to other clans.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Ninja being caught on a failed assassination? Instant execution. Geisha being caught? Nothing happens; Geisha don't actually get caught, they just back away after failing to get close enough. And aside from deliberately sending a counter-assassin to deal with one, there is no way to remove a Geisha from the game.
- Zerg Rush: The Yari Ashigaru’s main role after the first 10-15 turns. Simply build large numbers of them and charge directly at enemy lines, occupying the other side with something, while rest of your troops flak them or attack their rear. The Oda clan specializes in Ashigaru, making them particularly suitable for this tactic.
