Rise to power: How I learned to stop worrying and love Realm Divide

[Monk]

We've all been there. Getting close to hitting full reputation, you may be ready for that day, or may not, but when it comes. Bam. The shogun has declared you an enemy of the state. Pow! Around 10 clans have stopped fighting and joined him in his war against you. Crash! You're living on borrowed time. Can you complete the game before your allies become more afraid of the shogun's alliance than of you?

I gotta say realm divide is without a doubt one of my favorite features of this game. I've mentioned it in other threads but i'll say it here: It's amazing. In old total war games (mtw) this was already a coded feature. AI factions would become increasingly worried by your power and size, and would eventually simply dog-pile the player in one final attempt to break you down. There however it was an unspoken rule, Diplomacy would simply "break" without any rhyme or reason, leaving you adrift amidst a sea of enemies.

Here though, Realm Divide is the reason behind that madness. It can come when you're not necessarily powerful enough to take on all of japan, sparking a desperate struggle that bogs down for decades if you're not careful.

What about you all? Have you found Realm Divide to be enjoyable? Not so? Share your experiences here!

[GeneralHankerchief]

I've encountered Realm Divide once so far, on my inaugural Shimazu N/N campaign. I was completely unprepared for it, as I had taken most of my 16 provinces through guile and trickery as opposed to actual military strength. With all of Japan against me, I had roughly one and a half usable armies and suddenly no real way to pay for them, as all of my trade income had mysteriously evaporated. If I was anybody but the Shimazu I would have been ripped apart, but since I didn't have a back door to worry about I went back to an old favorite TW strategy of mine: grinding.

I parked those one and a half armies down in the nearest defendable castle and held on for dear life. I'd add regiments to them whenever time and money allowed and eventually weakened my nearest enemies enough to the point where I could move out and take another city. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's a very slow process, but it suits my overall playstyle and is pretty satisfying in a grim way. I forget how much time has passed since Realm Divide started, and I am losing the occasional lightly-defended province thanks to a smart AI not impaling itself on my heavily-defended fortresses (usually), but the march to Kyoto is still making progress.

[Dead Guy]

Nice thread title Monk =)

I was frustrated by it at first, my first campaign was on VH/VH and the full sacks just came pouring out of the mountain passes east of Kyoto. I also knew that I had to reach a few select provinces where I could establish choke points, so I could turn some of my armies around to face the ever more disgruntled Shoni, my long time allies who had almost as many provinces as me. I barely made it, and when war broke out I defeated four of their stacks and quickly struck back hard against undfended castle towns to seize enough regions to make my claim to the Shogunate undisputable.

Now, I've stopped worrying. In part because I've learnt to master the economy, and also to love bombs. Bombs thrown a great distance by wooden contraptions.

At the end of my Shimazu campaign my food surplus was 50+ and my income was increasing by significant amounts every turn.

I think Realm Divide actually fixes the problem of previous TWs where you basically had the game firmly in the bag at 10 regions or so.

[Monk]

My first experienc with realm divide was touched on in the "How's your first campaign going" as the Chokosabe. The resulting clash between East and West was so intense i'm currently working on a story about it. It lasted over ten years (fourty+ turns) of deadlocked back and forth until Kyoto was finally taken. I made so many pushes where i'd get within spitting distance of the city only to be turned away. And that was just taking Kyoto - the campaign had to continue, i was still 10 provinces from victory!

Such a frustratingly fun experience.

I think Realm Divide actually fixes the problem of previous TWs where you basically had the game firmly in the bag at 10 regions or so.

Could not agree more.

[Marshall Louis-Nicolas Davout]

lol,how do you master the encomy,its hard for me,the only I way I do it is by looting provinces.They gain a lot of money,and tis helpful for me

[Monk]

lol,how do you master the encomy,its hard for me,the only I way I do it is by looting provinces.They gain a lot of money,and tis helpful for me

Welcome to the org Takeda Shogunate.

I find lots of level 1 markets is the way to go for a basic economic foundation. When i can, I also make sure to upgrade my farms, since trade won't last forever. I typically dont upgrade my castles until i'm really rolling in terms of conquest, since i find them a serious waste of money inside the first 20 turns or so.

[Marshall Louis-Nicolas Davout]

hmm..what you do is wise.

I bow to you aslo.

[econ21]

I'm teetering on the edge of my first realm divide at the moment and wondering when to take the plunge. What conditions do people wait for before provoking the confrontation?

I've pretty much developed my lands as I would like, but don't have much of an army or bank balance. I suspect the smart thing might be to enjoy the fat years, building up a large war chest (a few hundred thousand?) and at the end, have a modernised army ready to march on Kyoto with defensive forces elsewhere. Is that what others do?

But I am not sure I can be that patient. And I fear that waiting my allow rivals to consolidate and lead to the natural death of my first daimyo (with a fall in honour negatively impacting on the already dire post-RD diplomacy).

[Monk]

I'd definitely say two things are needed in regards to your economy

The first: I would secure a vassal/alliance by any means necessary (other than hostage). Once you hit realm divide, Japan will hear the call of the shogun. Any trade relations you have going will go right down the drain. If you have a vassal or an ally with some good standing, you can keep trading for a while.

Secondly: You need to be self-reliant. That means farm upgrades. lots of farm upgrades. When i neared RD, i started teching up. I had a level 3 farm in every province, two trade nodes and two vassals, and barely managed to break even (with a two full modernized stacks). As i secured more territory and expanded my trade dominance, this margin quickly increased. But those first years? Don't be surprised if you make -2k a turn. You might find yourself disbanding a lot just to keep yourself afloat.

[Dead Guy]

I think there's a lot going for taking a few years to tech up to land consolidation.

Right before Realm Divide, you'll have 20 or so regions in a long campaign? Build Land consolidation in all of them and that'll be another 20 food surplus, giving an additional +20 taxable income in every region per turn. Just waiting a while letting that town wealth grow might give you enough to pay for another army eventually.

[Leptomeninges]

Is land consolidation really worth it? I thought I read that you won't make back the return on investment -- not counting the opportunity cost of researching the tech. Haven't crunched the numbers myself.

I personally handle it differently than Monk. I turtle at the maximal number of provinces and then pick a few provinces to conquer simultaneously as I trigger realm divide. It's easy to find some that can be liberated and turned into vassals. The problem with having vassals before divide is that they count against your Clan Fame conquest cap that triggers realm divide. I'd rather develop the big infrastructure around the maximal number of provinces (all owned by me) and then create vassals afterwards. I agree on creating at least one strong ally.

I also spend a lot of time looking at my finance screen and deciding if I'm solvent at a given level of military maintenance if I remove trade from the picture.

[Marshall Louis-Nicolas Davout]

I say,just loot.

Its useful when you're bankrupt.

[Monk]

I say,just loot.

Its useful when you're bankrupt.

You know that's actually not bad advice. Once you'd hit RD it's probably the easiest, most secure way to get a lot of income. Especially if you're completely desperate and about to hit bankrupt. Just be careful: Looting will affect your daimyo's honor, if it gets too low, your generals' loyalty may suffer

I personally handle it differently than Monk. I turtle at the maximal number of provinces and then pick a few provinces to conquer simultaneously as I trigger realm divide. It's easy to find some that can be liberated and turned into vassals. The problem with having vassals before divide is that they count against your Clan Fame conquest cap that triggers realm divide. I'd rather develop the big infrastructure around the maximal number of provinces (all owned by me) and then create vassals afterwards. I agree on creating at least one strong ally.

Ah, very good point! I forgot vassals count toward your fame cap.

[Seyavash]

I have played several normal campaigns now. With first one Realm Divide caught me by surprise but I still managed to hold on. Afterward I tried the mod that reduces the effect but that actually made things too easy, now I am back to using the full RD. I find it makes for a much better game. The key is farms, food supply and roads. Low level markets are helpful as well and better than castles as you can always destroy them if your food supply gets too low. Trade is good to build up a war chest but be ready to go without it once RD hits.

The trick to surviving is to create vassals after RD, any from before will betray you eventually. those created after RD are not affected by and will trade with you allowing you to rebuild this aspect of your income. Plus vassals can be surprisingly effective in waging war on your enemies so it becomes a true civil war and not just you against the world. Even if your vassals are not aggressive they will usually provide distracting targets to their neighbors. this gives you all kinds of opportunities to exploit.

[katank]

Definitely build up. Another thing that's very useful is to train up the maximum number of ninjas and monks and keep using them to destabilize neighbors, etc. You can afford lots of agent missions while trade is still good before RD.

Sabotaging enemy armies and assassinating their top ranked generals can give you breathers for the dog piles. It's also much harder for the AI to make war on you effectively when all their farms are in ruins and they're constantly wracked by rebellions.

[Monk]

Sabotaging enemy armies and assassinating their top ranked generals can give you breathers for the dog piles. It's also much harder for the AI to make war on you effectively when all their farms are in ruins and they're constantly wracked by rebellions.

Seconding this. I mentioned it in another thread, but I'll say it here: A well diciplined ninja group, sabotaging and assassinating can do incredible things for your campaign. Back in shogun 1, the intro movie used to say: "A man who is invulnerable in battle is as vulnerable as a child while asleep. No one is untouchable" when talking about ninja.

I take this to heart in my games.

[Zim]

I'm slowly closing on the Realm Divide point in my current Hojo game. Getting a bit worried. Right now I'm trading with almost everyone and building up my farms and economy. We'll see how it goes this weekend...

[sassbarman]

Agreed realm divide is a winning solution to the mid-game blue's. My experience with RD in my Mori campaign (legendary) was thankfully much less intense than most I've seen. I was riding on the fence of RD with about 13 or 14 provinces for quite a few turns teching up and trying to improving my economy when I got word from the shogun to aid him in his war against the Aisa(sp) clan, whom had grown quite strong and had made a bid for the shogunate.For this I would recieve a reward of being given the title of "deputy shogun" a unit of katana samurai and more importantly +50 relations with all clans. I readily agreed and promptly landed 2 full stacks in Kii and a neighboring province and easily took 4-5 territories withing a couple of turns. This brought me to the borders of kyoto where I witnessed the aftermath of what must have been a titanic struggle. No less than 5 Aisa tattered stacks stood around the burning capitol victorious over the ashikaga and with only a small garrison left to hold it. The next turn all but 2 of the asia armies moved off to presumably fight elsewhere which allowed me to easily take the city and claim the shogunate.
The major factor however for my easy time with RD was my steadfast alliance with the Hatano(sp) clan whom at the time of my capturing Kyoto probably had 30 provinces of there own. Imagine my heartache when I had to backstab them to capture my last province to win the game.

[Rothe]

Regarding profit from land consolidation, I don't think the added "fixed wealth" is relevant. The relevant part is the added food, which gives you growth equal to number of provinces.

This might not be interesting at 5 provinces, but at 15+ it starts to make a lot of difference - especially since you have to grow your tax pool for the low to no trade period after the divide.

[Daveybaby]

My advice for surviving economically once the realm divide hits: capture a few provinces as quickly as possible and create vassals out of them. Vassals and alliances from before the divide cannot be relied upon, even if they dont defect immediately there is a good chance they will after a while, but vassals created after the realm divide event will stay loyal, giving you somebody to trade with.

[Marshall Louis-Nicolas Davout]

[QUOTE=Monk;2053294233]You know that's actually not bad advice. Once you'd hit RD it's probably the easiest, most secure way to get a lot of income. Especially if you're completely desperate and about to hit bankrupt. Just be careful: Looting will affect your daimyo's honor, if it gets too low, your generals' loyalty may suffer

HM,,Loot Kyoto and other big cites,I rebulid the looted provinces after that.

[Dead Guy]

An important detail about trade-vassals set up after realm divide: The penalty is applied to all factions again when you capture Kyoto. Not a huge problem, but be aware. It will start from 20 or however much it is for those that aren't already affected.

[Leptomeninges]

Regarding profit from land consolidation, I don't think the added "fixed wealth" is relevant. The relevant part is the added food, which gives you growth equal to number of provinces.

This might not be interesting at 5 provinces, but at 15+ it starts to make a lot of difference - especially since you have to grow your tax pool for the low to no trade period after the divide.

Hmm... Still not convinced. As I recall land consolidation upgrades farms by around 100/turn wealth to a barren province versus around 250/turn in a very fertile province. If you are talking about building 15+ I can only assume you're plunking down that 3744 gold price tag everywhere -- not just very fertile soils. Thats around 56,000 you're spending on this investment (assuming only 15 provinces) at a time that I'm trying to get my armies up as fast as possible to push past realm divide. Even assuming this will pay off within the life of your game (haven't done the math but there is obviously a break even point) you're minimally pushing off your future expansion by a ton in building these expensive and marginal yield farms instead of armies. And while you're building these farms, the AI is spending whatever this 56k investment would correspond to as a fraction of their economies on armies, multiplied by the number of opposing AI clans in the game.

Bottom Line: You're trading a ton of wealth now for possible wealth later which I think is probably better used in conquest now.

[Dead Guy]

All I know is I'm making 20k+ per turn with 4 full fleets and 6 full stacks (at least) of Samurai at ~1675 and it's increasing by ridiculous amounts every turn (More than 20 regions by then obviously). That's with all level 1 markets, and +4 food in every province, and as many provinces at fort level as possible.

The wealth produced by the farm itself is insignificant next to the power of the food surplus.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

*psssch-kaah*

[Rothe]

All I know is I'm making 20k+ per turn with 4 full fleets and 6 full stacks (at least) of Samurai at ~1675 and it's increasing by ridiculous amounts every turn (More than 20 regions by then obviously). That's with all level 1 markets, and +4 food in every province, and as many provinces at fort level as possible.

The wealth produced by the farm itself is insignificant next to the power of the food surplus.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

*psssch-kaah*

Same... My Chosokabe campaign (H/H) ended with me having 27k+ tax income per turn. I had around 4 stacks with 80% samurai that could take any AI stack head on and my border provinces each had garrisons of samurai archers that could hold off any single stack thrown at them. I also had 4 proper navies (Full stacks). I was still getting profits.

No need to hurry for the divide if you plan well. Just get to the limit and build up. My profit was around 12k - 15k on the point before the divide, so in one year I could already build all my land consolidations without any problem. I also had 130k reserve funds before breaking the divide limit.

Defending in this game is so much easier than assault, so I don't mind if the AI makes some pre-divide armies and uses them to assault me. I will just take care I don't get assaulted by multiple stack armies (using ninja) and turtling for 5 years is trivial.

In the end, the 3.7k is a cheap price to pay for the land consolidation IMO.
A quick calc gives 10 years payback at 16 provinces (before divide) but when you also consider that after the divide your number of provinces will grow all the time the total time will drop.

I do admit that game length has an effect. A short campaign might be over before the breakpoint, or before the benefit is high enough (since it means investment early on).

[gauch0]

Am I hearing that making a beeline for Land Consolidation early on is a smart move for ensuring a strong economy?

[al Roumi]

I agree that RD, while effectively in most previous TW games, is most elegantly featured in TWS2. To think that all it takes to avoid the accusations of "broken AI" is a bit of narrative and a short FMV... I think ETW really missed an opportunity to do the same with e.g. a council of nations forming against you (as happened with Napoleon and the 1st French Empire), as you claim the inheritance of classical enlightenment as the "new Rome" (which every western nation did pretty much). MTW2 could have given you the same sort of thing -Holy Roman Emperor (a la charlemagne), Kalif or Basileus.

I admit that my game strategy in TWS2 hangs very much on exploiting pre-RD maximum expansion, then turtling to an acceptable point before sparking RD and launching my final conquest of the rest of the country. Nonetheless, dressing up the REAL total war moment makes much more sense to me and is a much more satisfying game experience, than apparently opaque AI behaviour.

I also think the RD is calibrated pretty well in S2. It hits at a good moment, when you are not supreme, and really makes you work for that supremacy.

In my curernt H/H Mori campaign I started RD with a warchest of 800,000 Koku. As Oda I'd thought 200,000 was overkill (from 80,000 as Chosokabe) but playing as mr money bags is fun.

Being a Christian Daimyo does make RD easier, particulary if you make extensive use of monks to incite rebelions in enemy provinces. Turning Christian does make the earlier game harder though (perhaps sparking a mini you-against-everyone period).

[econ21]

I just hit my first realm divide.

Got a nice video and then went to look at my diplomacy screen. Everyone had a -20 for realm divide, but they all still liked me just as before. "This is not so bad", I thought.

Pressed end turn.

[Azi Tohak]

I just hit my first realm divide.

Got a nice video and then went to look at my diplomacy screen. Everyone had a -20 for realm divide, but they all still liked me just as before. "This is not so bad", I thought.

Pressed end turn.

No kidding. Fun isn't it?

Happily as Shimazu I had a very long term friendship with the Mori, so I was able to keep trading with them. I paid attention to the diplomacy screen and whenver my relationship with them became indifferent or worse, I always paid 1000 koku/turn in tribute to keep them happy. Eventually they attacked one of my vassals, but I have since been able to get my fleets, one field army, and one scrub army (fine for taking undefended cities!) around and I'm currently hammering them.

My key right now is that I am constantly making vassals to trade with. Sure, they might turn on me come Kyoto time, but I have Kyoto totally isolated and I will be fully prepared to be stabbed in the back at that point. Vassals are so much more valuable than owning the provices themselves (especially poor areas like where the Mori establish themselves!), I'm hardly bothing capture and hold. I also like them because I don't need to keep an army doing nothing pacifying, so I can move on and keep on kicking the Mori!

[nafod]

Monk I'd have to whole heartedly agree with you.

(I play N/N)

Originally I hit RD and my campaign went south quickly. I downloaded Yarkis' RD mod and have played several campaigns since, and it seems more like the classic TW....Easy peasy. Once you have a few rounds of the game under your belt and learn the various nuances - there are alot of them, not a ton, but a good deal - I decided to remove the RD limiting mod to bring the challenge back and have found it fits nicely.