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Total War: Shogun 2

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Total War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 cover
Developers
Creative Assembly
macOS (OS X) Feral Interactive
Linux Feral Interactive
Publishers
Sega
Engines
Warscape
Release dates
Windows March 15, 2011
macOS (OS X) July 31, 2014
Linux May 23, 2017
Reception
Metacritic 90
IGDB 88
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, DLC
Microtransactions None
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time, Turn-based
Perspectives Bird's-eye view, Free-roaming camera
Controls Menu-based, Multiple select, Point and select
Genres RTS, TBS
Themes Japan, Historical
Series Total War
Total War: Shogun 2 on HowLongToBeat
Total War: Shogun 2 on IGDB
Total War: Shogun 2 on MobyGames
Total War: Shogun 2 on Wikipedia
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Total War: Shogun 2 is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view and free-roaming camera RTS and TBS game in the Total War series.

General information

Official forums
Official support page
Total War Center - A large fan site for the series with an active modding community
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Icon overlay.png
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux
Developer website
Icon overlay.png
Collection bundle including all the DLC.
macOS (OS X)
Linux
Mac App Store
Icon overlay.png
macOS (OS X)
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux
All Windows and Linux versions require Steam DRM.

Version differences

The Mac App Store version is a complete edition with all DLC but does not include multiplayer.[1]

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Otomo Clan Pack
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Saints and Heroes Unit Pack
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Dragon War Battle Pack
Windows
macOS (OS X)
The Ikko Ikki Clan Pack
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Sengoku Jidai Unit Pack
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Rise of the Samurai Campaign
Windows
macOS (OS X)
The Hattori Clan Pack
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Blood Pack
Windows
macOS (OS X)

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Remove intro videos[citation needed]
  1. Download the Package File Manager and extract it anywhere.
  2. Open PackFileManager.exe and select Cancel on the Please point to location of TWH, ATW and R2TW prompts.
  3. On the Please point to location of STW prompt select the game's main installation folder. Select Cancel for NTW and ETW.
  4. Select Yes on the First Start window which says Looking for updated schema files for decoding DB files.
  5. Under Game, check if STW is selected.
  6. Under Options, select CA Packs Are Read Only, then choose I'm not afraid, coward!
  7. Under File, Open CA pack, select movies.pack
  8. Double Click on movies.pack and movies in order to expand the list.
  9. Click on a file to select it, then push Delete once to erase it. Delete the following files.
intel_logo_english.bik
intro.bik
sega_logo_sting_hd.bik

   4. Push Ctrl+S in order to save, then wait for the Package File Manager to unfreeze.

Remove splash screen[citation needed]
  1. Download the Package File Manager and extract it anywhere.
  2. Open PackFileManager.exe and select Cancel on the Please point to location of TWH, ATW and R2TW prompts.
  3. On the Please point to location of STW prompt select the game's main installation folder. Select Cancel for NTW and ETW.
  4. Select Yes on the First Start window which says Looking for updated schema files for decoding DB files.
  5. Under Game, check if STW is selected.
  6. Under Options, select CA Packs Are Read Only, then choose I'm not afraid, coward!
  7. Under File, Open CA pack, select boot.pack
  8. Double Click on boot.pack and navigate to ui\frontend ui\loadingscreen
  9. Select legal.dds, then push Delete once to erase it.
  10. Push Ctrl+S in order to save, then wait for the Package File Manager to unfreeze.
Reset the Pack File Manager settings if something isn't working correctly[citation needed]
  1. Push Win+R and type %LOCALAPPDATA% then push OK.
  2. Find the PackFileManager folder and delete it.
  3. Delete the older Pack File Manager folder that was last downloaded and extracted anywhere.
  4. Download the latest version of the Pack File Manager and extract it anywhere.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %APPDATA%\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\scripts\*.txt
macOS (OS X) $HOME/Library/Application Support/Feral Interactive/Total War SHOGUN 2/AppData/scripts/
Linux $XDG_DATA_HOME/feral-interactive/Total War SHOGUN 2/
It's unknown whether this game follows the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux. Please fill in this information.

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %APPDATA%\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\
macOS (OS X)
Linux $XDG_DATA_HOME/feral-interactive/SaveData

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Steam Cloud

Video

Set the Shader Model setting to Shader Model 5 and check the Soft Shadows setting while in the DX11 mode to use high quality shadows.
Switch to the DX9 mode if loading takes too long. If the shadows are blocky uncheck the Soft Shadows setting. Shadows on this mode are worse than in the DX11 setting.
Video settings.
Video settings.

Borderless fullscreen windowed

Setting Up[citation needed]
  1. Go to the configuration file(s) location.
  2. Open preferences.script.txt.
  3. Find the following lines, and set them to these values.
gfx_fullscreen false;
fix_res false; 
fix_window_pos false;

    3. Launch the game and wait for the main menu to load, then Alt+Tab to the Desktop.
    4. Use the Fullscreen Toggle Script.

Input

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Dolby Surround, SRS Circle Surround, 4.0, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 8.1 are supported. 8.1 Discrete lower the volume considerably, unknown if it was intentional or a bug.
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Czech
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Japanese release.
Polish
Russian
Spanish

Network

Multiplayer is not cross-platform.[2]
The Mac App Store version does not include multiplayer.[1]

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
Local play
LAN play
2 Versus, Co-op
Online play
2 Versus, Co-op

VR support

Issues fixed

Random Stop Working Error

No proper fix known yet.
Verify Your Game Cache[citation needed]
  1. Find Total War: Shogun 2 in your Steam Library
  2. Right-click the game name
  3. Select Properties
  4. Go to the Local Files tab
  5. Select Verify Integrity of Game Cache...
  6. This may take a while, just wait for it to finish
  7. Once it's done press OK
  8. Launch the game

Notes

If this doesn't fix the problem, you may need to re-install the game
Uncheck Tessellation in Graphics Options[citation needed]

Shogun 2 not starting

If the game doesn't start, try deleting preferences.script.txt:
Delete preferences.script.txt[citation needed]
  1. Go to %APPDATA%\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\scripts
  2. Delete preferences.script.txt
  3. Run the game again.

Mouse Cursor Unrestricted

The game does not restrict the mouse cursor, meaning that on multi-monitor configurations instead of moving the camera, the mouse will go onto the other screen, effectively crippling the ability to effectively move the camera in that direction.
"Cursor Lock" fix[citation needed]
  1. Download Cursor Lock
  2. Open Cursor Lock Setup.
  3. Select "Open Program" and then find the path to the Steam executable (usually %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Steam\Steam.exe)
  4. Select "Open Program Args" and put in -applaunch 34330.
  5. Select "Lock Program" and then find the path to the game's main executable in the installation folder.
  6. Click the "Create Shortcut" button to create a permanent shortcut to the game with Cursor Lock.

Extreme Loading Time

Shogun 2 suffers from rather ridiculous loading times (the first loading splash screen can take over 5 minutes to load. However, these can be partly shortened by switching from DirectX 11 to DirectX 9.
This will restrict the game to use Shader Model 3 and MLAA among other things.

Freezing on 32-bit systems (Windows)

The game freezes because Windows cannot allocate enough memory on x86 systems.
Prepare the OS to be able to use beyond 2GB address space with a userva of 2.5GB[citation needed]
  1. Open Start Menu
  2. Type: cmd or Command Prompt
  3. Right click on the Command Prompt program and select Run as Administrator
  4. In the Command Prompt screen, enter bcdedit /set increaseuserva 2500
  5. Wait for the confirmation message.
  6. Reboot the computer.
  7. Launch the game.

Notes

To undo this change, follow the same instructions but use the bcdedit /deletevalue increaseuserva command

Incorrect VRAM size detection for modern video cards (Windows)

The game is limited by its 32-bit nature and will fail to correctly detect the available VRAM size on cards with more than 4 GB of memory.
Override available video memory size[citation needed]
  1. Go to %APPDATA%\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\scripts
  2. Open preferences.script.txt
  3. Modify gfx_video_memory setting and set it to -1.
  4. Launch the game and confirm the changes: in Settings, at the bottom, it should indicate Video Memory (MB): 4095

Notes

This will effectively set the available VRAM size to 4GB - 1 byte.
To undo this change, follow the same instructions but use the value 0 for auto-detection.

Campaign camera no longer controllable

Mouse and keyboard camera controls no longer function.
EditSF CAMPAIGN_CAMERA_MANAGER[3]
  1. Download EditSF
  2. Open affected savegame
  3. Go to COMPRESSED_DATA > CAMPAIGN ENV > CAMPAIGN_CAMERA_MANAGER
  4. Change System.UInt32 from 0 to 1
  5. Save and reload the savegame from Shotgun 2.
Reload unaffected earlier save game[3]

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9.0c, 11 MSAA is only supported in DX11 mode
Metal support
Added in the 64-bit update.[4]
Shader Model support 3, 4, 4.1, 5 SM 4+ is only available in DX11 mode. SM 3 is present in both Low and High modes.
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
[4]
Linux

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP
Processor (CPU) 2 GHz Dual Core or 2.6 GHz Single Core
System memory (RAM) 1 GB (XP)
2 GB (Vista, 7)
Hard disk drive (HDD) 20 GB
Video card (GPU) 256 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible
Shader model 3.0 support
Other 1024 x 768 screen resolution
macOS (OS X)
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 10.9.5
Processor (CPU) 1.8 GHz
System memory (RAM) 4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 22 GB
Video card (GPU) 256 MB of VRAM
Not supported: ATI Radeon X1000 series, ATI Radeon HD 2000 series, Intel GMA series, Intel HD 3000, Nvidia GeForce 7000/8000 series, Nvidia GeForce 9400 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 300 series.
Intel HD 4000 requires 8 GB of system memory.
Linux
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) SteamOS or Ubuntu 16.04
Processor (CPU) 2 GHz
System memory (RAM) 4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 26 GB
Video card (GPU) Intel Iris Pro
Nvidia GeForce GTX 600 series
AMD Radeon HD 6000 series
1 GB of VRAM
Nvidia cards require driver version 375.26 or better. AMD and Intel cards require MESA version 17.0.4


References