The Wargamer

Generals and Governors

Now the general is the bulwark of the State;  if the bulwark is complete at all points; the State will be strong;  if the bulwark is defective, the State will be weak.

Taking care of valuable officers and governors is one of the most important aspects of the game. They bring valuable statistics which a randomly generated general won’t bring, which affects the production of each castles. And as they will learn during battles, veteran generals will be more and more valuable. Some will decide the fate of a battle by themselves (I once lost three divisions against an enemy general almost by himself). It’s even more important to make sure that heirs remain well alive…because if you die without heir, the game is over. So balancing between the need to see your heirs develop good qualities on the battlefield (one of Takeda’s daughters is leading a key cavalry division in my main army) and the need to keep a live successor is very important. It’s fairly unlikely that you will finish a campaign with the same ruler. Every character in the game will get older and die.

Sometimes you will want to check up on a character’s vital statistics. To do this, right-click on the character within any of the character lists you find. This will bring up a small dialogue displaying biographical and statistical information on the character. You can scroll through all your generals by left-clicking on the Scroll Next or Scroll Previous buttons. Red numbers and bars show additional skills or abilities of the selected general that are increased by items that the general is holding.  Most characters in Takeda 3 are actual historical figures from ancient Japan. The generals’ statistics reflect the abilities of the historical figures that they are based on.

Be careful to check the loyalty of generals and even more of governors…because if it falls too low, they may decide to join another clan…and take the entire castle with them. The option to get rid of generals and governors, unlike in Takeda 2, is a good addition. Sometimes it’s important to cut a head in order to have a stable kingdom.

Ambassadors

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

While war is the game’s primary aspect, diplomacy should not be neglected. First it allows players to focus on one opponent at the time. Second, it can also be used to expand territory. Alliances and good relations with small clans may persuade them to join you, thus allowing you to expand without losing any men. You then get all their generals and armies.  Selecting a clan in the Palace Mode, will display details of the different aspects that affect your relations with other clans (crossing border, etc). In the end however, and considering that every clan has the same goal, players will have to keep an eye on their allies as well as they may turn their back on you. Generally however, I’ve experienced a good relation with most of my allies and have been able to count on their support. Betrayals were few so far. Arranging a marriage with a friendly clan can also boost the relation and create an alliance.

The relation is not only based on your relation with the other clan but also on the personnel feelings of each governor (and the charm of your ruler). It’s also very useful sometimes to request an ally to join you to attack a specific enemy of yours. In my campaign, I’ve had some very good support (by signing a contract for “joint attack”) from an ally during the attack of an enemy (far East) as I could only afford to send one army there (my main task forces were on a campaign in the West). 

Ninjas

Be subtle! Be subtle! And use your spies for every kind of business.

The use of Ninjas is also very important. They can be used to ease the conquest of a castle by spreading rumours, sabotage castle doors, or destroying supplies, for example. They can also be used to stop and slow down enemy armies. Now…if you think that’s not enough, you may order them to kill enemy marshals or governors…

The Emperor

About once a year, and if you have enough money, you may visit the emperor. After some gifts he may grant you or one of your generals a special rank or reward in his court. This will boost its statistics.  The better and more positions you obtain, the more likely small clans will look at you with a positive eye. Apart from a ruler, the player gets to choose which of his generals he will assign to available jobs, allowing them to control larger armies for example. In the end, a better position of your ruler increases the chances of small clans joining you without fighting. Who knows, in the end you may become the next Shogun?

Battle Mode

Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.

At the beginning of a battle, players can choose among many formations (defensive, offensive, trap, etc) and deploy their troops. Apart from the main battlefield, players may also place divisions on flanking or delay positions. Divisions on delay positions will attempt to stop enemy divisions in their flanking maneuvers. I usually try to order two divisions of cavalry to flank the enemy army. If they are led by good officers, they can bring the victory fairly quickly with a good charge (destroying the flags of the enemy HQ can break the morale of an entire army) but beware, as the enemy AI will keep a couple of divisions to protect its rear. An interesting aspect is that some formations have some predefined move combinations; during the battle and at the right moment, you may give that special order and your entire army will do that maneuver.  If you started the battle, you may also choose the moment of the day of the battle (dawn, morning, afternoon) which will affect the weather and the probability of chances of fog, rain or snow (depending again on the period of the year). The use of the morale drum at critical moments of the battle will increase the morale of troops and allow them to fight with more courage.

Commanding the troops as a unit is fairly easy. Unlike in Takeda 2, the player can just select and right-click his way through the map and attack an enemy unit. The player may also use the command panel to issue his orders.

At the end of the battle, you are shown your results. This will show how many troops were lost, how many have deserted, how many enemy generals have been killed (heads count!), the usual information a player would want to know. There the player can also reward his best generals (if he won) which will give them some more experience. If defeated and if the player’s force has enough units, his army will remain on the map. Sometimes however, after a heavy defeat, they’ll return to their home castle (at least the officers who survived) which can take some time (depending on how far it is from the battlefield).

A nice touch is the fact that many historical figures have their own flags on the battlefield, making them easy to spot (considering that they also have the better statistics it will allow players to keep a better eye on them).

AI

Hence the saying:  If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

Playing the AI on the hardest level of difficulty I found it to be less challenging than in the previous game I played from Magitech (Takeda 2), at least at the beginning of my expansion on the strategic level. The problem lies probably in the starting resources of the different clans which are lower than in Takeda 2, and to the fact that some of the publishers complained about the games being too difficult. Thing is however that Takeda 2 did not have any difficulty settings to chose from, there was only one setting. In Takeda 3 however there are three difficulty settings so I don’t think it would be misplaced to make the difficult setting really difficult (I did lose a campaign of Takeda 2 in less than 10 turns!). Ming Lee, the producer, has already agreed to think about patching it so this is something I am looking forward too. Don’t feel too confident as the campaign goes along. While I didn’t fear losing my kingdom, I found that it can be really difficult to defend the newly conquered castles on the boarders because defeated armies will go back to their home castle, which may be fairly far away in the centre of your territory. The initial expansion may seem easy (at least in my 1548 campaign) but it gets harder as the enemy clans develop their castles and form stronger armies which they will send to attack you and siege your castles (I had the Oda clan launch a deadly counter-attack in the later period of my campaign).

On the tactical level, the enemy AI is really good and will put up a good fight. On the strategic level, your AI can be safely relied upon to win battles where the marshal has significantly greater experience than an opponent’s marshal. In cases where my marshals had more experience and were facing an opponent with little experience, the friendly AI would not only win, but typically would suffer fewer casualties than I could manage on my own. However, if the odds are fairly even or bad, I have learned that it is still better if I lead armies myself. When attacking enemy castles, the AI will usually lose many men despite good odds. The fact is that some key castles are very well defended. Once, when trying to conquer the Yoita castle, Takeda Shingen, who was leading my major army, faced a terrible defeat despite having good odds. I tried three times myself to conquer it with no success. Generally, and contrary to Takeda 2 (not that it is easy), conquering a castle in Takeda 3 can be a huge challenge. The defending marshal can count on a well placed castle (difficult access on a 3D terrain), his full army, but also on defence towers placed around the castle that will kill many of your men during the attack. Sieging a castle is therefore very important but it really depends on which castle you attack (as I said above, each castle on the map is different).

Graphics

It’s clear that the graphics of Takeda 3 are not the most impressive compared to today’s standards (which are actually insanely good) but they do the job. With the introduction of historical castles however, some maps will now have a huge difference of height between the castle and the deployment zone. This can sometimes make that the camera movement difficult An option to zoom out even more (like in Strength & Honour) would make things easier (maybe this will be patched). Still, the diversity of the castles made me want to fight every siege myself, as they all look really fantastic.

A lot of care has been put also in the drawings and the artwork, showing a lot of attention to details and historical accuracy. 240 Portraits are in the game.

Replay Value

Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; 

whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.

The campaign game allows the player to select one of 25 clans, the biggest difference being the family members and the starting position, and three different starting periods which greatly affect the game. For example, in 1548 there are almost no Teppos while they are very important in 1575. Takeda 3 provides a long and very enjoyable gaming experience (a single campaign on difficult can take up to 50 hours to complete). The ability to play so many factions combined with the dynamic nature of the strategic game makes the replay value of Takeda 3 very long. It is likely to survive on my hard drive for a very long time.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer Mode allows you to fight head-to-head with your friend on the Internet or LAN. It is limited however to battles.  Not being a great multiplayer myself, I haven’t tried it so I can’t really comment it.

Summary

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; 

not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.

Well, my overall impression of Takeda 3 is very positive. It’s one of these secret gems gamers sometimes find when they weren’t thinking about it. The game is very detailed and highly realistic. While I still play Shogun: Total War which I consider one of the best strategy games ever made, I found that Takeda 3, despite the fact that it doesn’t look much better than Shogun (still the soldiers have a lot more details), offers enough new aspects as well as a very challenging AI, which makes a good replacement/alternative to Shogun. I have been waiting for this game ever since hearing about it but got really exited once I had played the excellent Takeda 2 that I had ordered in order to keep me busy until release day. The AI could deserve some work in order to reach Takeda 2’s level (which is unforgiving) but the game is already a good challenge and victory is far from easy. Takeda 3 is a great game and one that is sure to please fans of previous Magitech titles and true wargamers who are interested in ancient Japanese warfare. Players who enjoy turn-based strategy games are likely to be thrilled with it. The details and depth of the characters in the game, at all levels, and the nuances of politics make it one of the best turn-based strategy game available. It has its shortcomings but Magitech should finally be recognised for bringing complex and solid strategy games to the market. Nowadays I don’t find many quality games that combine a strategy map and a deep and rewarding battle engine. May I dare to say that it’s a must-buy for wargamers?

System Requirements

 Minimum Specs
• 100% OpenGL 1.3 compatible 64MB video card
• 2.0 GHz Intel Pentium processor or equivalent
• Microsoft Windows XP with SP2
• 512 MB of RAM
• 3.0 GB uncompressed disk space (+ 200 MB for Windows system file)
• CD-ROM and drivers
• Windows compatible mouse, keyboard and drivers
• DirectX 8.1 compatible 16 bit sound card and drivers

 Reviewer's Specs

  • 1.7 GHz Pentium IV

 • 2,25  GB RAM
 • NVidia GeForce 4 Ti4600 128 MB
 • Windows XP with SP2
 • AMD Sempron (tm) Processor 3000+

 

About the Author

Pascal Giovannini has been playing board games since 1985 and computer wargames since 1993. His first games were Master of Orion, Fields of Glory, Caesar II, Lords of the Realm 2 and Civil War: Robert E. Lee. Since then, he’s been comparing every game to these classics.