Headscratchers / Total War: Shogun 2

• Why do the Ikko Ikki behave exactly like the other clans? They were not so much a clan as a loosely aligned group of peasants and low nobility which admittedly I have no idea how the game would portray properly but it could have been really interesting.
  • To put it bluntly, Video Game Historical Revisionism. In finer terms, why go through all that trouble to "portray properly" in gameplay terms when they don't exactly get love from fellow clans and typically get wiped out quickly? They already get unique units, including special priests and a lack of metsuke. Throwing an overhauled government system on top of all that would be very frustrating and possibly too much for some players.
  • This period of history is subjected to a lot of Common Knowledge. The Ikko Ikki really weren't all that different in terms of how they operated, equipped, or organized then most small clans. English translations also really like to label nobles as "Samurai" even though, at that time point, "Samurai" wasn't a very well defined term. A lot of the "Peasant" vs "Samurai" vs "Ninja" conflicts were typically against two factions that functioned very similarly and got relabeled a few hundred years later to fit into these class roles.
• Again, how can Ikko-Ikki expand so rapidly, despite being in a constant conflict with nearly every clan in Honshu island? Yes, they are even more hated than the Christian Otomo clan.
  • With the help of peasants and monks who hate their samurai overlords' guts in turn.
• The Date's intro cinematic describes and depicts their ability with the nodachi by showing a large training demonstration of...killing their sparring partners?
• Diseases, desertion can occured at any season in a year, especially among a group of many people like in a military camp. Why attrition only occured in Winter? Was the winter in Japan so deadly and so harsh that everything will combine at once to create attrition?
  • A special mention: summer is also a prime season for plagues and diseases.
• Does Fall of the Samurai actually give you the option to let the samurai, well, fall? You see them trading in their antiquated weapons for modern rifles and artillery, and you see growing discontent from Japan's industrialisation (which in real life was mainly spearheaded by angry low-ranking samurai who were relatively poor and feared losing the little class privilege they had), but do you actually get the choice to abolish the whole social order like the Meiji government did in real life?
  • The game is focused only on the wartime activities. As you mention, in pure gameplay terms, the samurai (traditional units) start off extremely strong but gradually fall out of favor as more advanced firearm units and upgrades become available. One would imagine that if the player wins as Imperial Vanguard (or is defeated as pro-Shogun), the outcome would be relatively true to history. But at that point the war is over and out of the game's scope.
• Given the undeniably obvious fact that all naval units are pulling double-duty as a warship and a troop transport, this just begs the huge question of how it's even possible to carry a full-stack army of at least 2000 men on something so tiny as a Kobaya.
  • I think the Kobaya only serves as "escort ship". The troops, supplies and such will be loaded on transport ships, which is vulnerable against enemy attack and can't defend themselves, perhaps? For the sake of gameplay, they will not be shown during naval battle, but their fate will be decided by the aftermath of said battle. The exception being generals, who would directly command the battle from the flagship.