Newbie Questions

[rddc98]

Well, I am a pretty experienced strategy gamer, but this game is kicking my butt so far and I need some help. I have read all of the tips on the many sites. I am currently playing STW classic, unpatched. Without further ado:

1) I have read in this forum about re-training units in a province where an armoury/swordsmith/palace have been built to gain the appropriate bonuses. That acrobat doc (I refuse to honor it with the moniker "manual") doesn't say anything about this. Is this only with the expansion or patch? How do you do this?

2) I have also read about choosing what buildings to burn and leave when you conquer a province. Repeat end of last question.

3) Do provinces ever totally flip to your clan when you "Shinobi-bomb" them? I have only ever been able to get them to rebel where a ronin army shows up and either wins or loses in the province. How many Shinobi/turns might it take to get a total flip, if this is possible?

4) How do I get my spent archers to join in on the melee? After they run out of arrows, the attack cursor just remains a bow and arrow with a red "X" beside it. Clicking and double-clicking enemy troops doesn't help, they just stand there. The best I have been able to manage is to move them to the area of melee and hope they defend themselves.

5) The early game appears to be critical. Any clan-specific tactical map strategies for any of the clans would be appreciated. So far Shinano seems to be the key to early-game survival and avoiding a mid-game stale-mate.

6) I am amazed at the posters who claim to beat the campaign within 20 turns on expert. I am having difficulty surviving on normal mode, although I have been known to restart after losing a key province early on. Do you guys routinely win 2:1 battles early on (AI being 2, player being 1) with just yari, archers and the occasional horse?

Just trying to guage where I need to be to succeed on Normal level and maybe move up to Hard.

Thanks a million in advance...

-RDC

[Vanya]

4) How do I get my spent archers to join in on the melee? After they run out of arrows, the attack cursor just remains a bow and arrow with a red "X" beside it. Clicking and double-clicking enemy troops doesn't help, they just stand there. The best I have been able to manage is to move them to the area of melee and hope they defend themselves.
-RDC[/B][/QUOTE]

ALT-CLICK to make missile units attack while they still have ammo. When they run out, the pointer automatically switches to the 'sword'. But while they have ammo left, press ALT then the pointer will switch to the 'sword' and you can order them to kill the wabbit.

[james]

use tactics like i do,eg ambushes which work really well and out flanking the enemy scum.(with powerful units like warrior monks)or be stupid and send in an army of ashigaras lol!

[Puzz3D]

The original STW v1.0 is probably more difficult than STW v1.12, and I think definitely more difficult than WE/MI. The lack of economic restrictions on the ai clans in STW leads to absolutely huge ai armies in the later part of the game.

Answers:

1) Retraining is only possible in WE/MI.

2) Destroying your own buildings is only possible in WE/MI.

3) Provinces never totally flip to your side.

4) Hold the ATL key to get ranged units to switch to their h2h weapon.

5) For Takeda on expert I abandon the three western (southern) provinces and take Musashi on the first or second turn. You can't go for Shinano too early because you'll never hold it. Weakening Hojo is the first priority. You don't have to completely eliminate him, and it might be better not to for a while. I haven't played any other clan.

6) It's possible to win battles against the ai by a 10:1 killl ratio, but 2:1 or 3:1 is more typical on expert. Winning in 20 turns would be 5 years. I've never come close to that. For me, the game always turned into a tedious series of huge defensive battles to bleed the ai armies, and then an offensive push to expand. Then rebuid my army strength and repeat. The early game where the battles are small but crucial is the most interesting part for me.

MizuYuuki ~~~

[james]

how do you retrain units?

[This message has been edited by james (edited 03-28-2002).]

[Yagyu Jubei]

You might want to look for the Prima Strategy guide to the original game if that is what you have......It has lots of good clan specific ideas for the campaign.

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Watashiwa Yagyu Jubei desu! Ganbate!

[rddc98]

Thanks everyone for your straightforward and enlightened answers.

Erratum: I meant 20 years (80 turns) rather than 20 turns. So I guess I should install the patch to avoid the mid/late game stalemate.

I have had some pretty high kill ratios, but mainly when I had a slight numeric advantage and the unit match-ups were good. I am wondering if it is common for good players to consistently win battles where they are out-numbered 1.5 or 2 to 1 without the super-units and little cavalry.

Thanks again.

[james]

i remember i killed countless number of men one time suffering no causulties.

[Puzz3D]

Here we go again. The honor rating of your units is very important. A 2 point honor advantage means your troops are twice as good as the enemy troops. You get +1 honor to every unit in the army for every two ranks of your taisho. Given that you can outplay the ai on expert with evenly balanced units, if your taisho outranks the enemy taisho by 4, then you can easily defeat an ai army twice your size. When you hit the 16 unit limit, the ai can never have more units than you have on the field. If you have an honor advantage then, the win is trivial. As long as you pick your battles carefully and keep winning, your taishos keep gaining rank. Winning battles against 10:1 odds in the later game is very possible. The tactical battles are much more interesting in the beginning before you reach the 16 unit limit.

MizuYuuki ~~~

[Gothmog]

With a high rank general, boosted honor and decent equipment, victory is almost a given.

And even with equal quality troops, a human player can always outsmart the AI and win the day.

Sometimes I can manage to win when I am attacking and the AI outnumbers me 2 :1, and when I am defending and AI outnumbers me 6:1


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Pain is weakness leaving the body.
http://members.fortunecity.com/argus1000eyes/fighter.gif



[This message has been edited by Gothmog (edited 03-28-2002).]

[pdoan8]

1) Only available in WE/MI version. To retrain a unit, you will need a Drill Dojo (need to build Palace before you can build Drill Dojo) and the capability of producing that type of unit in the province. To start, click on the province with the Drill Dojo and the correct Dojo. Click on the Train Unit button (which you normally do when you create unit). This will open the unit training screen. Now click on the unit (or the army) that you wish to retrain. When the unit (or army) info show up at the bottom of the screen, drag and drop the unit you want to retrain into the empty slot in the training screen. After retraining, unit will be at full strength (60 to 120 men depending on your set up) and will optain all upgrades available in that province (it will keep any attribute that is better than the one currently available in the province where you retrain the unit). Advantage: a) Acquire upgrade. b) Refesh those high honor units. c) if you set unit size larger than 60, it only takes one turn to retrain and make the unit fresh again while it will take two turns to train a new unit for replacement.

2) Only available in WE/MI version. To sell a build, click on the building you want to sell. The SELL (building) or DESTROY (unit) button will appear on the bottom left of the screen. For building the button will look like a burning building. For unit, the button will look like a men holding the sword. Click on the button will destroy the unit (can not destroy a unit which commanded by Daimyo or heir) or it will degrade the building one level (if the building is at the first level, it will be gone completely).

3) Can not totally turn a province into yours using shinobi. You can make the peasant to rebel and sometime raise up the eliminated clan again (if the rebel is at the start province of that clan). However, you can use emissary to bribe rebel general into your service or even general of other clan providing that you have the koku to pay.

4) Hold down the ALT (?) key to force missiles unit to do hand combat. I never force the samurai archers, musketeers, aquebusier, crossbowmen to conduct hand to hand combat. They would be wiped out in seconds. However, the cavalry archers can destroy all other missile units in hand to hand conbat.

5) Please forgive me if I mispell any province name or clan name.
Mori hold a good portion of the land. They have less front line provinces make defending easier. Most frovince can build armory. Aki has a mine. Bizen can build port for less. Harima also has mine. Capture the three provinces held by Takeda first then build up the army and may be go for the large island which has four provinces on it. The draw back is that it seems to be imposible to make peace with Shimazu clan.
Shimazu also hold the defendable provinces but most provinces are poor and can not build armory. Capture the Imagawa provinces. Hold on to Nagato. It is the only province you can build armory in the beginning.
Uesugi hold some of the richest provinces. Shinano produces better cavalry than any other and can build armory. Sado is also good place to hold.
Oda start out very close to the capital and the near by provinces are good too.
Takeda start out in two parts, Eastern and Western. It is possible to hold both. On the Western region, it is good idea to hold only Aki and use it later against Mori clan. On Eastern region, make peace with all clans but Hojo. Let them fight each other while you build up your army.
I still prefer Mori above all other clans for two main reasons: a) good and defendable region. b) Cheaper Monks which I use as primary attacking force later. Second will be Takeda since cavalry is my secondary attacking force (as in the quantity I use).

6) 20 turns? Each campaign took me average of 40 years (160 turns).

[This message has been edited by pdoan8 (edited 03-29-2002).]

[MizuKokami]

momentum and shinobi
losing a battle is not a bad thing..as long as you have inflicted large amounts of damage as well...regroup, attack again.
shinobi, can keep an enemy busy...and if you lose a territory you controlled for awhile...shinoba seem to rally the citezens to rebell.(i love free units http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif)

[pdoan8]

To correct myself in the above post:

To optain armor and weapon upgrade, you only need the Drill Dojo. With out the correct Dojo, the unit will not be replenished after retrain but still got all the upgrades.

[This message has been edited by pdoan8 (edited 03-30-2002).]

[Gothmog]

Quote Originally posted by pdoan8:

To optain armor and weapon upgrade, you only need the Drill Dojo. [/QUOTE]

Unfortunately, this is not entirely accurate. The drill dojo thing is a common myth. Please read the following post from the strategy archive about the update.
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Archives/Archive-000001/HTML/20020102-1-002752.html

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Pain is weakness leaving the body.
http://members.fortunecity.com/argus1000eyes/fighter.gif

[This message has been edited by Gothmog (edited 03-30-2002).]

[ShingiOnimushi]

i think u r having problems mainly on the map
take a good look at all the battlefields
and basically force the enemy to retreat away from provinces without having to fight
scare them back by having massive armies aganst smaller armies
they turn out to be faggots mostly
and try pushingthem back to provinces that r mainly flat or that u can do well on

[pdoan8]

Thank for the link, Gothmog.

... and one Dojo which can produce combat unit.

Is this what I missed? Since all of my combat unit Dojos and armor/weapon upgrade are usually at the same province, it is easy for me to missed out the fact that I do need a combat unit dojo to do the upgrade.

Another good tip that I didn't know is that if I retrain a unit at the provice that has a specialty to produce that type of unit (example cavalry at Shinano, monk at Kii,...), I would get the Honor boost too.

Please, spare some time to correct me if you spot any mistake and to teach me what I haven't known since I use the forum to give my knowledge a test and to learn what I don't know.


[This message has been edited by pdoan8 (edited 04-02-2002).]