>>36294

Diplomacy is a viable option, however most of the time practically limited to other factions of your race. If a faction of your race likes you enough and you're more powerful and also trustworthy they will allow confederation, which basically means you get all their territories and armies under direct control. This is also a way to gain access to another legendary lord. I think diplomacy is best visible while playing the High Elves. On their continent of Ulthuan there's like 10 different high elves factions that don't necessarily like each other, and as a high elf you get access to special resource called Influence which you can spend on altering relations between you and others, but also between other factions too. So when I was busy dealing with Dark Elf raid on the north like a good hero of Ulthuan and the faggots from Kingdom of Caledor on the south decided to declare war on me, instead of dividing my armies in two to deal with two problems, I just made 2 other elven kingdoms dislike Caledor. And since the 2 other elven kingdoms will gladly accept the confederation, you can guess who will eventually be an owner of Caledor without firing a single arrow.

When it comes to battle this game is a lot different than previous Total War games. First of all, your lords and heroes are one entity units that are often very powerful and can fight multiple enemy units on their own. Combine that with powerful magic, and you could build an army that's entire purpose is just to hold the line while your wizard gets hundred or thousands of kills. Additionaly you get more unit types. Besides the usual infantry, archers, cavalry, you now also get monsters, flyers, flying cavalry, flying monsters, flying archer monster cavalry... Your lords and heroes gain experience which you then spend on giving them different skills, which can make them even more powerful, give more spells and abilities, boost your units more or boost your economy. They may also gain equipment and followers that do similar things.

Unfortunately, because of all of this new mechanics the AI doesnt handle it very well. I mean it does manage, but in more simpler previous total war games it was doing better tbh. And to offset it the devs just gives AI more cheats, like free armies. I had some absurd situations when some insignificant factions would spam army after army of elite units while I was struggling to get my basic units to full numbers after a battle. All of that on normal difficulty. But I dont know if I can blame the devs, I've been gaming for basically over 2 decades and there was no real development in that time when it comes to AI in games and I have already became very sceptic that it will improve in near future.

BTW Shogun 2 is now free on steam.