Research priorities

[Rothe]

I've recently started investing more towards warrior monks, especially naginata. Throw in a charge+war cry and all you see is routing ashigaru trampling over their fallen comrades...
I'm not very worried about warrior monks lacking armor, because most of the time they're clashing with enemy front lines so fast that half the arrows fired by the enemy are friendly fire. Though it's very lame/funny to hire warrior monks from a holy site province that gives +5 to morale...

You can get +4 to valor too, so why go for morale (or perhaps you meant valor).

I tried to research the diplomacy upgrades this time (H/H) and it seems to be a good idea. It also looks that I could keep the Date as my ally even after the realm divide since I can keep them up even if I get -200 from the divide event eventually. I perhaps have to give them some money, but my treasury can surely handle it.

For the arms race, I don't see much point in going for several types of units. I tend to go for the spears and the bows. Spears are great because they also help with the naginata, which is an ok replacement for swords when you can stack high XP and some attack bonus on them.

[Cecil XIX]

Prioritizing farms and roads seems like the obvious thing to do for me. Maximizing your income, replenishment rate, and campaign map speed are all really important. I also like the techs that decrease your cost of use for agents. On the Bushido side, I think it depends mostly on what your clan specializes in. All my games so far have been with the Chosokabe, so I'd focus on Bow and Naval technology.

I also think it's better to evenly divide your time between the peace and war branches, although given that there are three achievements that require you to research top-tier techs first I'll probably focus on getting those for my first few games.

[Zarky]

You can get +4 to valor too, so why go for morale (or perhaps you meant valor).

What I sort of meant was that I usually make one holy site a pilgrim hostel, but I might as well make it a warrior monk recruiting center because of the +1 exp they get. The morale bonus is just redundant is what I meant.

[econ21]

Research priorities are interesting in this game because there are few "no brainers" and you can't get everything - there is a genuine choice.

This is the research order I am following in my first proper game:

(1) Get your free unit: From my limited experience, it seems like the first mission you get is to research a military tech relevant to your clain (way of sword for Shimazu, way of spear for Oda) so it probably makes sense to do that first.

(2) Heaven and earth: 50% more arrows IS a no-brainer.

(3) Farming: I then went down the farming improvements up to Chonindo for the faster economic growth from food surpluses.

(4) Naval: I started to get embroiled in various naval engagements and found the tendency of the AI to retreat far from battle frustrating. So I worked down the naval tech tree which is fairly self-contained. I am not sure it was necessary, but after I had the 20% more sea movement, things seemed a lot less frustrating. I should have gone for fire arrows before going down that path though.

(5) Agents: I started specialising provinces for better agents, so focussed on the left chi path. Ultimately picking up Ninjutsu mastery to get Japan's first Infamous Mizu Shobai District.

(6) Calligraphy: I belatedly got the Confucian Academy, benefiting from the combined +30 diplomacy and +30% trade tariffs from Calligraphy and Tea Ceremony.

(7) Master and Legendary dojos: I am now working on the bushido techs. Having one turn recruitment of samurai during realm divide sounds very attractive, as does being the first in Japan to build the legendary dojos (to get the bonuses for those feats).

[Seyavash]

Besides going for farms or specific military tech that you decide to prioritize, another criteria you can use for research is to focus on the areas that allow you to work building trees that promote research such as the philosophy and the temple angle.

[jackie_fish]

on other total war game i used to go down the economic side first but in this game i seem to go down milatery i guess because it is a harder game

[Azi Tohak]

Pretty much the same as everyone else. Farming, then get to Heaven and Earth, then back to the right side. I'm really enjoying my ships so I'm glad I have some serious naval techs too (at 90+ turns I have a lot of good stuff!).

[Cecil XIX]

I'm not too sure about Heaven and Earth. Extra ammo is nice, but it seems that 90% of my battles end before archers can expend all their ammunition in the first place. Maybe I need to work commanding archers better.