14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most important elements in the Total War series is the fact that the player is not actually the general but the intelligence that guides a clan or a country or a faction, a sort of embodiment of its quest to attain power and glory.
This role for the player allows him to control all the affairs of a faction, as expressed through game mechanics, and opens up a space where generals and other leaders can come into play, adding a sense of immersion to the game and creating an arena where more personal ambitions can be played out.
I played all the Total War games and, ever since Rome, generals have been important for two main reasons:
1) when controlled by the character, especially in the early game, they make excellent shock troops, fast and powerful enough to rout a unit of medium infantry that is already pinned;
2) when controlled by the computer, the general unit has a tendency to quickly ride ahead of the main body of its army and will then indiscriminately charge the first pike unit it sees, getting killed during the process about 80 percent of the time.
Shogun 2 messes with this mechanics in a pretty significant way and it's all for the best.
The bodyguard unit seems less powerful than it was in previous Total War video games and, more important, it replenishes rather slowly even when inside a castle, meaning that putting a general in harm’s way usually means a long-term vacation from combat for him.
The general himself is also much more fragile than before, meaning that he might actually be one of the first ones in his unit to die, taking down the troops morale and almost guaranteeing a defeat.
The changes, along with the pretty important abilities that generals can get as they survive and level up, make Shogun 2 a game where the leaders are much more important and where their safety matters more than the survival of any other unit on the battlefield.