Oda Legendary level Campaign guide

[PROMETHEUS]

Ok this is what worked for me :

Play difficulty on Legendary.

1 Wipe out the rebels , same time make couple of ashi more ,
2 stack the army made in the castle and attack the coming force of the north
3 return to castle defeat Tokugawa army
4 never leave the castle ungarrisoned ,leave there at least 1 ashi and 1 bow ashi unless you have armies around in wich case better put all your armyin the castle and wait their assault , of course you need to fight and win the battle without autoresolve.
5 go to conquer the north kingdom with the rest of the army
6 focus now on improving the land and army dont make samurais , they cost too much for now .
When ready collect all of your army and go to wipe out Takeda and keep the castle never sack them .

Oda Campaign Legendary Level.

Unfortunately I didn't take screenshots of the years befoure 1561 but it was a long start of battles till I could finally pacify my kingdom ... to do so the first thing I did is as described for the hard campaign eliminate the rebels , the Saito at north and then tokugawa at south m pretty much with the same tecniques applied befoure apart that you need to fight every battle on field and be very carefll on where you decide to battle , many times I had even to sacrify a city and retire thearmy in order to not loose important troops ...

so also important at this stage is to make alliances, I did ally with the west Kitabatake and also with the Asai on the west , my original plan was to expand all way to the easternmost tip of the island , but at that time Date was becoming more and more powerfull compared to the rest of the clans so I decided to keep him friendly ...

then once I finished to conquer my kingdom I have decided to develop the Way of the Chi instead of the way of the Bushido and especially I focused on commerce and diplomacy bonuses ... this allowed me to have greater bonuses in the diplomacy and manage to befriend all while they kept fighting each other...

So I developed my trade routes with the foreign ports and I built up a solid economy ...

Here are my Oda Campaign screens ...

This is my small kingdom in :


1561



The small kingdom I started with and from now on I controlled every turn the diplomacy to keep all the clans happy some times I even paid for , gived hostages ( very last resource used only at the very end of my campaign to stop the incursions of the westernmost powerfull clan Shoni) or combined usefull marriages.

1562

By the 1562 I started to profit from rebels and other minor wars where I gived a hand to clean up and at the same time get some more valuable terrain without displeasing other clans much ....



1566

At this time I reached my maximum expansion and power in commerce , and was ready to start the quest for shogunate , I decided to ally myself withthe Date to east because their power was terrific , where at war with my allies the Asai and would screen me from attacks from the east ....



1567

Here the total war begins , the Shogunate declares war on me and all the rest of the clans, The allies remain faithfull to me ....



1571

Final battle I left as last province to conquer the one of Kitebatake because I needed for completing the objectives , and had so to betray at the very last , otherwise I would have kept them couse have been faithfull allies since the beginning ...




And here shows that it unlocks all previouse levels as well if you finish at legendary ...

[Royce]

I sure like to know what game you were playing because it sure did not sound like TW2. I played it and no matter how honorable I was in the end before I had 40 regions everyone turned on me even old allies and then the money went and that was it. You must have played on a special super easy mode and only had to take 20 regions...if there is a secret I'd sure love to hear about it. Sorry I'm very frustrated with this Total War game. I've had them all and won them all.

[c_arsenal]

good job

[HopAlongBunny]

Thank you for this PROMETHEUS!

Your opening sequence finally let my Oda campaign get moving

[Jacobin]

Wow - I thought I was good but I can't even survive past 1560 as Oda on Hard...

what really puzzles me is how you kept the rest of the map green - try as I might to make allies, keep the peace and behave honourably I always end up fighting everyone.

[Jacobin]

OK some of my own experiences at legendary.

Firstly the Saito while supposedly hostile can be easily turned into allies and even vassals on turn 1 (both alliances and vassaldom seem to be a bad idea as the Hattori seem programmed to expand into Mino and will always invade it with a huge army (for the early game) so there is no point being dragged into that war too early) - this does give you a few free turns to deal with the Tokugawa and Imagawa.

Secondly it cannot be emphasised how vulnerable Owari castle is and a couple of Ashigaru are not an adequate garrison - so you have to keep your main army very close to it which is a problem when chasing rebels and invaders.

In my first abortive legendary campaign I moved too far away chasing the rebels and it got took by the Tokugawa in turn 2

In my second I beat the rebels and the Tokugawa but again ended too far away to defend it and an Imagawa army snuck in and took it.

Several failed campaigns later the Kitabatake stabbed me in the back and took it the turn after I'd taken Mikawa - and even though I had left my Daimyo and half a dozen part-strength Ashigaru units to hold it they sent a three quarter full stack with a lot of katana samurai who just slaughtered everything in their path - and then they followed me to Mikawa castle and did the same thing there.

So there is a strong argument for only leaving Owari castle behind and going conquering when you can leave a full strength half stack of Ashigaru to hold it.

Regarding Mikawa it is easy enough to take as the Tokugawa tend to leave it ungarrisoned but then very difficult to hold as it will have very negative loyalty and the rebels tend to be a mix of yari samurai and light cavalry which can wreak havoc on your bow and yari ashigaru unless you are very careful.

I actually had no problem beating the rebels but they did infllict a lot of casualties which meant I was easy meat for the Imagawa and Kitabatake who attacked later.

I am wondering now if turtling might work - as long as you stay in Owari castle you can beat any invader for at least the first few turns until they start sending katana or naginata samurai at you (at legendary I've never survived long enough to see any Ikko-Ikki warrior monks) - its only when you send an army away to expand your territory that you become very vulnerable indeed.

Re the tech tree I'm also sticking to the far right hand side and taking all the building and economics ones first - this does seem to have more of an effect than the military ones in the early game as you really won't be able to afford the specialist samurai and cavalry units it opens up for a great many turns anyway.

In fact these turning up very early in enemy stacks long before they should be able to build the required tech is the one thing that does bug me about legendary - I don't mind them having more troops and their being buffed up relative to mine but looking at an enemy stack and seeing units in it that I have no obvious answer to is a real issue for me (rather like the MTW2 English rebels that had longbows and armoured swordsmen long before you could recruit them).

As for trade the AI seems quite unable to use the trade nodes properly (and if it does occupy one if you wait for a few turns they'll either leave it for no reason or be eliminated as a clan and free it up.

So building a trading port and spamming trade ships as soon as possible seems a good idea.

It it is worth building several cheap warships and sending them out first - they can sit on a trade node and deny it to others and as they cruise along you can discover all of the western clans and establish early trade agreements with them all.

So although I marvel that anyone has finished it at least for the Oda (and I'd be willing to bet for the Takeda as well) CA has delivered a campaign that is a real challenge even to the most jaded veterans of TW.

[TinCow]

I am wondering now if turtling might work - as long as you stay in Owari castle you can beat any invader for at least the first few turns until they start sending katana or naginata samurai at you (at legendary I've never survived long enough to see any Ikko-Ikki warrior monks) - its only when you send an army away to expand your territory that you become very vulnerable indeed.

I've failed twice at Oda Legendary, despite winning Legendary with three other clans. Oda is much harder now with the Ikko Ikki DLC. In my experience, the Ikko show up very early and always attack. The produce very large armies, and their bow ronin totally annihilate defending bow ashigaru. Having to fend off the Ikko, the Hattori, and whoever else decides to pile on against you is simply too much for a single stack, but the immediate Oda starting area cannot really support more than two stacks. You absolutely must expand south down the coastal corridor to get your economy going, which means you need a stack down there to defend it. Withdraw that stack, and the Hojo (or whoever else is hostile down there) will take your profit centers. Leave the stack there, and your defending army at Owari will eventually get overwhelmed.

Next time I play, I am going to try relocating Oda a bit. Owari castle is too vulnerable... so I shall abandon it after having secured the coastal corridor. I will then try and do either a naval invasion of Shikoku, or continue expanding towards the Hojo/Satomi corner of the map. Once those areas are secured and bringing in more profits, I will then re-take Owari and push towards Kyoto. Will post again in this thread once I've tried this, but it seems like a solid plan to me. The Owari castle vulnerability is really what makes Oda so hard (particularly with the Ikko DLC), so the easiest solution would be to stop trying to defend Owari.

[Arjos]

I just failed a legendary Oda as I overexpanded too early, got to 24 provinces by 1558 and I didn't have enough money to keep as many armies I needed :D
The Tokugawa vassal was very useful at the beginning, I kept an halfstack to help them and they sized provinces 'til Odawara, but then they were destroyed due to mismanagement XD
I retook those lands as mine, but 7k Date army was too much; to the west a Shoni, Chosokabe, Mori alliance kept on sending stacks and stacks; the Takeda still had few stacks hanging around, but I couldn't move from few Ikko provinces as I had to keep order...
I might have mustered a new army but Nobunaga died and I didn't want to keep going lol
Gonna build a decent economy and expand slowly, the Chosokabe backstabbed me way before RD and we were even married :S

[Jacobin]

Vassalising the Tokugawa does seem a good idea and now that my campaign has just frozen in mid-update (it cycles through the clans and sticks at Shoni - and of course there is no earlier save to go back to) I will try that in my next attempt.

Firstly it forces the Imagawa to invade by sea which loses them the opportunity of suddenly appearing out of the fog of war and taking Owari castle.

Secondly it solves the occupied Mikawa loyalty problem.

And thirdly after a few turns the Tokugawa should take Totomi (which is mostly worthless) and leave the Imagawa with just Suruga which I can then take and vassalise too.

As my current campaign had me occupying the Tokugawa and Imagawa provinces one by one only to end up with the Takeda and Hojo invading Suruga with big armies this might well work better.