Shinobi, Geisha, and Border forts

[Brian_]

Okay, I have a few questions I'd like to ask about some elements of Shogun;

1. With regards to border towers and forts....can I assume that building them will increase the loyalty in all the provinces that are ajacent?

2. What is the best way to safeguard a Geisha? With Shinobi or Ninja? (or both?) The same applies to a daimyo/general. Is he best served by having a Geisha, Ninja, or Shinobi escort?

3. Lastly, will the attack of a ninja or Geisha prompt an otherwise willing ally to declare war on you?
Having played two recent campaigns, that is what I seemed to observe. I thought I could send my Giesha against a few low level generals from an allied clan, for purposes of experience, only to have them break years of peace with me and declare war on me. Yow! I didn't think the AI was that sensitive!

[caravel]

1. Border forts/watch towers only increase loyalty in the provinces they are built.

2. If you want to keep your Geisha safe from rival clan ninja, the best way is to place her in a province with either a border fort or several high honour (4-5 or above) ninja/shinobi. Remember that your Geisha (also applies to emissaries and priests) is completely unprotected when in rival clan provinces, whether your own ninja/shinobi accompany her or not.

Your valued taisho/heirs/daimyo are best protected from by a few high honour ninja/shinobi and/or placed in a province with a border fort. This won't make either invulnerable to assassination, but there is a good chance the rival ninja will be caught as he enters the province. If it's a rival clan Geisha that's targetting your taisho/heir/daimyo/emissary/priest/geisha, then there's no defence. You will have to kill the Geisha with one of your own Ninja/Geisha as soon as possible and hope that the target survives the assassination attempt.

3. I've not seen solid evidence to date that assassination attempts, whether successful or failures directly cause broken alliances. In order to break an alliance the ally must either attack, or ally with his ally's enemy and then choose the new ally when offered the choice. There is no option for the AI to simply end an alliance. It may just be coincidence that the clan attacked you, or it may be that there is some link. Of course my memory is not what it was, so I could be mistaken.

[ReluctantSamurai]

In reference to #3, IIRC, there is some kind of counter that registers transgressions against an ally. When a certain threshold is reached, your ally will break the alliance. In my experience, I could get away with assassinating emissaries from an allied clan. But killing some low-level generals often resulted in a breaking of the alliance. Only stands to reason, no? But I could be wrong about the counter.

The best counter to geisha, as has been mentioned, are mid-high level ninja. Level 4 would be minimum to have a reasonable chance of success, lvl 5 or 6 will almost always succeed (provided the geisha is low level). You can throw a swarm of low-level ninja at her, but your Daimyo/heir/taisho might be dead before you succeed. You can delay a lower level geisha by flooding the province you wish to protect with shinobi (at least 6, but 8-10 is better). She will eventually get her target if you don't kill her, but at least she will have to wait some number of turns until 'a more suitable time.'

As to #1, Asai pretty much said all there is to about that.

[caravel]

You can delay a lower level geisha by flooding the province you wish to protect with shinobi (at least 6, but 8-10 is better). She will eventually get her target if you don't kill her, but at least she will have to wait some number of turns until 'a more suitable time.'

This is something else I've not seen evidence of, but certainly wouldn't discount.

Since a Geisha does not have a "failure" video, I had always assumed that the "waiting for a more suitable time" was equivalent to mission failure and that your Shinobi/Ninja/Border Fort in a province would have no effect on the rival clan Geisha as she's not an invisible agent - and thus cannot be "caught".

[ReluctantSamurai]

I experimented with this before I "banished" the use of geisha. There definitely was an effect of causing the "waiting for a more suitable time" to occur more often by having a certain number of shinobi "in province".

Usually, at least six were required, but sometimes more. You couldn't cause delay indefinitely, but it was usually long enough for one of your ninja to get her in his sights.

[Togakure]

Since a Geisha does not have a "failure" video ...

? But there is one at least, in WE ... it's indoors, she walks to the right in her pretty kimono. Behind her, a ninja whirls a kusarigama and throws it. There's a screech from offscreen and the camera switches to a view of her lying bloody on the tatami. It's an "opposite" of the one where she's blended into the design on the wall when the ninja walks by, and sneaks up behind him with her tanto and stabs him off screen.

When I looked on Youtube I didn'd find it posted. I did see several comments insisting that one does not exist. It does though, because I just watched it on my PC, from my WE install.

...

Heh, I just uploaded my first Youtube video so this could be verified. I think the reason people believe there isn't one is because the filename is ninja10.mpg, and people only check the geisha*.mpg files. Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rOZK7XXXnE

It's my favorite one

[caravel]

Yes I've seen that one, but that's not really a Geisha "failure video" but a Ninja (vs Geisha) "success video". I was referring to Geisha vs emissary/priest/taisho/daimyo failure videos. As the Geisha always keeps trying again there is no failure video as such.

[Togakure]

Ah yes, I see what you mean. This makes sense given the way the files were named too. I just remembered a dead geisha video; dead geisha = fail geisha, etc..

[ReluctantSamurai]

@ Togakure

Ah yes...Loved to see that one! The first time I saw the "geisha win" (or the ninja lose) clip, it was almost scary Very well done to whomever designed it!

@ Asai

I see your point about no "geisha failure". And indeed, you cannot stop her short of killing her. But I do believe she can be delayed by shinobi. That's the point I was trying to make.

[A Nerd]

What about the video where two geisha meet and they both die? That could sorta be considered a geisha failure video, couldn't it?

[ReluctantSamurai]

I saw that video.................................................once. Before I knew better than to send one geisha after another, I sent my lvl 6 lady after a pesky new arrival from another clan. Imagine my surprise when my "shadow lady" succeeded in her mission but met her end, as well

[A Nerd]

Your lvl 6 geisha must have been very busy! When I raised them, it was only to kill other geisha! If I had no geisha, it was ninja spam time!

[drone]

What about the video where two geisha meet and they both die? That could sorta be considered a geisha failure video, couldn't it?

Hot geisha on geisha action starts at 2:43.

[LittleGrizzly]

You can buy yourself sometime at least as I remember, just keep your general (or whatever target it is) on the move, I can't quite remember if you need to move the guy before she arrives or just make sure thier not in the same province when you hit end turn, I think its the latter. Kind of messes up your defences if she's chasing your top general or a good general hier or diaymo around, its a short term solution until you can get rid of her...

[ReluctantSamurai]

Your lvl 6 geisha must have been very busy! When I raised them, it was only to kill other geisha! If I had no geisha, it was ninja spam time!

Yes...very busy! Rather a waste of koku and time to use geisha to assassinate other geisha, though. Better to have ninja, which take only one season to train, do the job. A lvl 5 or 6 ninja will rarely fail.

@ LittleGrizzly

The entire reason I got tired of geisha and now play without them. The game should be won on the battlefield not the bedroom. I play a lot of 1580 campaigns, and clan infrastructure is quite advanced, at the start, so you will see geisha quite early in a campaign especially from Imagawa and Hojo. Better to play without, IMHO.

[caravel]

Yes, Geisha can ruin the game unless you prepare and work around them. I remember reading a thread about changing the building influences to stop the AI building the Geisha House. This effectively eliminates the Geisha from the game if you don't build it yourself. I keep meaning to try this one, but still haven't.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Quite correct. IIRC (and I can look it up if you can't find the info), you edit the 15th entry of the building preferences text to 0. This puts the geisha house at the very bottom of the priority list for building. So long as you don't train any geisha of your own, neither does the AI.