Re: Oda guides, hints and tips
Oda: A Guide to Peasant Power
[This guide was based on a play through on N/N long campaign, prior to the Ikko-Ikki DLC.]
INTRODUCTION: ODA ARE NOT HARD
The Oda have a reputation as a hard faction, but this may be a carry-over from the original Shogun Total War. In the original game, they were a hard faction. This was by virtue of their central starting position, which left them exposed on two fronts - to both east and western clans - and because their bonus was for ashigaru, a unit that did not belong on the battlefield. In STW2, they retain that central position, but this is less of a disadvantage in the new game. Furthermore, in STW2, even vanilla ashigaru are respectable troops and will form the mainstay of most clan's early to mid-game armies. If Oda are difficult in STW2, it is because they are embattled at the start and close to extinction – if you play other factions' campaigns, you will often see Oda under AI control fall on turn 1 or 2. However, this critical situation can be resolved within a few turns and thereafter Oda’s difficulty should perhaps be described as “normal”.
Strengths:
1. Cheap, higher quality Ashigaru give a powerful military edge early in the game, when ashigaru will by economic necessity be the mainstay of one’s army. Later in the game, lower costs are still an economic benefit.
2. Central location gives access to a good range of specialist provinces and total freedom over where to expand (they can opportunistically move east or west depending on what weaknesses emerge amongst their neighbours).
Weaknesses:
1. You start the game under threat of extinction: you may have to replay the first few turns several times to survive.
2. Your south-central location means you are the furthest away from trade nodes and will always be exposed on multiple fronts (unlike “corner” factions).
STRATEGIC MOVES: SURVIVE, BLITZ THEN TURTLE
The first few critical turns
This is where Oda earn their reputation as hard in STW2. The opening situation is critical – there is a rebel army to your south; you are at war with the Saito to your north and the Tokugawa to your east , both of whom are marching armies that will arrive at your capital by the end of turn 1 or 2. Make a mistake in the first one or two turns and it is game over.
There are several ways to survive the opening turns. What I did was:
1) Take part one bow ashigaru and two yari ashigaru plus a general to defeat the rebels, then return with them to defend my capital the same turn. Use a larger army and the rebels will retreat, so that you cannot defeat them and get back to defend your capital in one turn.
2) Defeat the Saito army besieging your capital and then the Tokugawa army.
3) Quickly advance on the Saito capital, skirting any remaining army, and capture it to secure the north for a while.
4) Then turn on the Tokugawa, advancing along the southern coast.
Initial expansion
Generally, you want to be very aggressive in the early game. Attack and become large before the other clans do. This may be good advice for all factions, but perhaps particularly for Oda, with its exposed starting position and reliance on large numbers of weak units. When picking targets for conquest, I paid special attention to province specialisms – these are well depicted in this online map:
http://shogun.bitcrumbs.com/
Equally important is an appreciation of the vulnerabilities of each province. While one province may border many others, mountains can make borders inaccessible and create “corridors” of provinces that are more defensible than might at first appear.
I recommend the following two stage approach to initial expansion:
First, take the south-central coastal corridor: Conquering the Tokugawa and their masters, the Imagawa, is recommended. Not only are they your enemies whose forces you have already defeated to survive the opening turns, but also they provide a “safe” channel for expansion. Typically in Total War, conquering one province opens you up to fresh attack from newly adjacent provinces – this is particularly dangerous in the early game, when clans may declare war on any over-stretched neighbour (taking North Shinano, for example, can be a death trap for this reason). However, mountains protect the Mikawa and Totomi from attack from the north, so you can safely advance to capture Suruga and only have to worry about garrisoning that province from land attack. Suruga is an attractive province, as its philosophical tradition specialism will provide a welcome boost to research while Mikawa specialises in horses. (Totomi is destined to be only a backwater market town).
Then take the south central bulge After advancing down the south-central coastal corridor, you now have flexibility over where next to expand. I turned west to take Isa, having been backstabbed by the Kitabatake. I ultimately conquered all of south central bulge: Omi, Iga, Yamamoto and Kii. These formed a fairly defensible cluster of provinces and all had nice ninja or Hallowed ground bonuses. I feared I would be vulnerable to attack from the north, but this did not come in any significant form (this was prior to the Ikko-Ikki DLC). Having Kyoto on your borders is a blessing, as the Ashikaga Shogunate are passive neighbours in the early to mid-game. You are less vulnerable to attacks from the east via Mino or Suruga, as any attacks must be channelled through these two choke points. Again, I was not seriously challenged from that direction– the eastern clans spent most of the game fighting amongst themselves.
You should be able to carry out these two lines of advance sequentially, fighting only on one active front at a time, and advance quite rapidly.
Going further afield
Having secured a cluster of around ten south central provinces, you are now quite strong and probably the largest clan for the moment (you are supposed to blitz, remember). You can now slow down a little. You will have the economic strength to field a decent military, but your deceptively secure strategic position (your realm is less exposed than it looks) will mean you may not need one. I scrimped on my military and focused on my navy and the infrastructure in my capital and provinces with valuable specialisms.
Where to expand next? You can conquer an additional 8-10 provinces before you become so large that you trigger realm divide. Where to expand is up to you: you could move to the north central areas, surrounding Kyoto: this would reduce your vulnerability to attack from your rather wide northern border but would create new eastern and western frontiers that would need to be garrisoned. Or you could push east, with the gold mine from Izu and the smithing of Sagami being particularly attractive. Ultimately, you could backfill eastern Honshu, so that by realm divide you only faced attack on one front - from the west. I did opportunistically pick up Izu from Hojo just as they were about to be wiped out. However, the rest of my expansion was rather ... eccentric... and while I will describe it in this guide, it is not recommended unless for fun (and what are you doing playing games for fun? this is serious business!).
Go west? The diplomatic situation in my game was such that I decided not to start a war in the east for Sagami’s smithing bonuses. I was content to let the eastern factions fight amongst themselves - they were not bothering me and none was becoming pre-eminent. Instead, I went west - initially targeting the smithy in Bizen. Since Kyoto and a powerful central faction blocked my access to the west by land, I attacked following a naval landing. I then conquered the surrounding strip of coastal land: Bingo – with its valuable naval tradition specialism - Bitchen and Harima. This is not a recommended strategy, as I effectively split my realm, east and west, divided by Kyoto and some adjoining central provinces, ending up resembling Takeda or Imagawa's initial start point in the original STW. However, it was great fun to manage this messy situation and the fact that I could do it with little trouble is testament to how secure Oda should be after it controls around 10 central provinces.
Conquer Kyushu? I got to realm divide by expanding around Bizen and then starting a third isolated part of the realm on Kyushu. Spurred by a mission from the Shogunate to combat Christians, I invaded the former Shimazu homeland of Satsuma. However, I also wanted to secure a naval base near to my valuable western trade nodes (naval battles deplete your crew and so require returns to port to retrain). Again, I would not necessarily recommend this approach – it is more sensible to expand from your central borders and not create a 3rd, 4th and 5th front so far from home. However, moving into Kyushu is not necessarily a bad move, as – being a relatively small island – you can expand without opening up extra vulnerabilities and without encountering the more powerful clans that have emerged in Honshu. One thing I learnt, however, was that the smithing bonuses in Bizen and Shimazu will not help your central homelands around Owari – the distances are too great to be moving troops from one to the other. Naval tradition provinces and Nanban trade centers do provide generalised benefits to your lands, however, as fleets are more mobile than armies.
Realm divide
Realm divide will occur when you have around 18-20 provinces. However, you should be able to manage this by halting your expansion until you are ready. Once RD hits, expect to be at war with all other clans except those you have specially cultivated through diplomacy. Having at least one ally who stays with you through RD is economically valuable, as you will retain a trade partner. I recommend Chosukabe to be the ally to cultivate to stay with you after RD. They are likely to militarily strong, so that expanding into Shikoku is unappetising. But they are confined to that island and so are less of a threat and unlikely to get into conflict with you over border tensions. Use everything in your power to strengthen relations with your special ally (or allies): marriage; regular gifts of koku per turn; fighting their enemies etc. You want to be on the best possible terms with them prior to RD (e.g. +200 relations). In my game, this diplomatic charm offensive was successful and Chosukabe only turned on me right at the end of the game, when it was far too late for them to stop my victory.
To prepare for RD, accumulate a large war chest - anything from 100k to 200k. You can do this by capturing almost all trade nodes and maintaining a small military. Invest in infrastructure prior to RD, maximising farm development and specialising provinces so that you do not have to spend significant money on infrastructure after everything goes to hell.
After RD, you should still able to maintain my control of the trade nodes and pay for your military (say, around 3-4 field armies and 2 naval fleets). Your war chest will shrink due to military recruitment, but should be sufficient. RD inevitably leads to further expansion and some rationalisation of your boundaries, so that your income will probably rise by more than the cost of any extra forces needed to defend your new borders.
Once the shock of being at war with everyone subsumed, the reality of life post-RD can be far less threatening than the sea of red on the mini-map implies. In my game, I faced only minor threats from the north (via Mino) and east (via Suruga/Izu). The stronger eastern clans never got their acts together to mount a serious threat. I suspect they were either too preoccupied with infighting or too weakened by it in the past. The Kyushu and western Honshu clans were already too weak to be a threat following my earlier expansion there prior to RD. That left only a strong north central faction (Asina) in my game with around 4 full stacks in one border province as a significant threat. However, they did not move fast or aggressively enough, so I was able to dismember them stack by stack with a strong field army of mainly Samurai using a night fighting general. The Shogunate also fell apart, venturing its powerful army in a field battle and thus saving me from a costly siege.
After that, the end of my game was relatively anti-climactic. I tended to vassalise clans I conquered – those conquered post-RD do not suffer from the diplomatic penalty of RD and thus provide valuable trade partners. My ally Chosukabe did turn on me – in a rather interesting way: declaring war on my vassals. The first time, I broke my abandoned my vassal to try to save the alliance but soon found out this was a mistake. I suffered a diplomatic penalty for not honouring my obligations, lost a province that counted towards my victory conditions and did nothing to appease the Chosukabe who tried the same trick the next turn. However, the end of the alliance was insignificant, as Chosukabe never broke out of Shikoku.
TACTICAL TIPS: STALIN WAS RIGHT
Given Oda’s bonuses for Ashigaru, one can rely on mainly peasant armies for most of the game prior to RD. Yari ashigaru are good enough to counter enemy cavalry and to be the bulk of your mainline in the early to mid game. Likewise, bow ashigaru are good enough for missile duels. Season your peasant armies with some katana samurai, to cut through enemy yaris and counter their elites, and with a few cavalry, primarily to chase routers and perhaps scatter archers. A typical mid-game stack might be one general, two cavalry, 3-4 katana, 5-6 bow ashigaru, 6+ yari ashigaru. If one is relying heavily on ashigaru, one must rely on quantity: field full stack armies or at least one equal in size to your enemies. And get used to recruiting replacements: you will not be cultivating an experienced core; your peasants will not live long enough. Oda exemplify Stalin’s dictum of war: “quantity has a quality all of its own”.
Using only one or two generals for all your battles will give them the command stars necessary to bolster the morale of your ashigaru. This may be particularly important if your early blitz gives way to a rather long tranquil mid-game (as mine did) as the more warmongering AI generals will be accumulating command stars rapidly from their squabbles. I never found my ashigaru’s morale insufficient or even an issue – they never routed unless the battle was lost. Specialising your generals to be ashigaru commanders is also attractive, although ultimately, I would not recommend it. It precludes getting the combination of night fighter and siege expert traits that I believe are more useful for the end game – to deal with multiple stacks of enemies and to avoid protracted sieges. Infantry general is a highly recommended trait, however: stand and fight works very well with a peasant heavy army. I generally went for the strategist skills - you want to blitz and follow Bedford Forrest's dictum "Get there firstest with the mostest". I eventually came to foresake the bushido research bonuses: you don't need them - ashigaru are not high tech!
Ashigaru armies will generally perform well in siege assaults and defences. In assaults, you can rely on your many bow ashigaru to whittle down the defenders (the game does not give them sufficient protection, imo). Often you can win bloodless victories this way against lightly defended castles. Where the defenders cannot simply be shot to death, you can usually sucker them into defending one wall and sneaking over another (e.g. place your general against the “feint” wall and hide some other units against an opposite one; often the AI will fixate on the feint, allowing you to get in unopposed from the back). In defence, the natural advantages to missiles and the protection of the walls in melee will mean that the enemy samurai cannot cut through your peasants as they would in a field battle.
Where Ashigaru armies will suffer is in attacking very heavily defended castles or in fighting equal numbers of higher quality men in the field. These situations must simply be avoided. Starve out settlements if they have more than half a stack of defenders. Recruit your own samurai if you are facing full stack samurai armies, or fall back on your castle walls. You could sacrifice ashigaru armies in waves (e.g. using autoresolves), but this is taking Stalin's motto to inelegant extremes.
By the end game, your armies will start to resemble those you would field with other factions, becoming more samurai heavy. In my game, I relied on bow ashigaru throughout, but subsequent testing has convinced me that bow samurai and particularly monks would be worthwhile for your late game field armies:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...s-worth-it-etc)
Eventually, naginata samurai should replace yari ashigaru as your frontline. Katana samurai too vulnerable to the massed archers the AI fields in the end game, and to cavalry, to be frontline infantry. They are good in the early game as your shock infantry, but naginata can fulfil this duty almost as well while being better in other roles. Cavalry become more important as the game goes on to limit losses against archer heavy armies (you will be more reluctant to lose samurai to their archers than you were to sacrifice ashigaru) and to induce a quick morale collapse by striking from the rear.
ODA, THE NAVAL SUPERPOWER?
Starting in the south centre of the map, Oda is the clan furthest from the trade nodes and is also rather far from any provinces with the naval tradition specialism. However, having seen the value of these nodes in my English ETW campaigns, I decided to make a play for them regardless. While the AI moves quickly to secure the trade nodes in ETW, they seem rather lackadaisical in STW2, so Oda can grab the majority peacefully. In the calm mid-game prior to RD, slowly build up your naval forces, to fend off pirates and protect the trade nodes.
Wanting to contest for naval dominance was the reason I chose to play on normal battle difficulty. On higher battle difficulties player navies are very disadvantaged – the slight morale edge the AI gets is enough to reliably rout your ships in even match ups. [By contrast, in field battles, high command generals can avoid premature routs and smart player tactics can still win the day.]
I would recommend building one or two generals up to be admirals, if possible. However, this will have to be done by getting experience via land battles as sea battles do not seem to provide enough XP to sufficiently level up your generals. Given that you will probably want just one or two generals to fight almost all your land battles, it may be hard to groom admirals. Having prospective admirals gain XP by reinforcing your main army is a possible solution. If you do use admirals, keep an eye on your flagship in battle and keep it safe.
Ensuring naval superiority becomes trivial when you are able to recruit cannon bunes. These units devastate traditional Japanese ships in a completely overpowered way. (This is presumably realistic: cannon vs ancient weapons sounds like a no contest.) Watching them in action reminded me of the first ironclads in the American Civil war, tearing apart traditional wooden ships with impunity. You can only recruit two – but one for a west fleet and one for an east fleet, is quite sufficient for dominance. Two in a stack is overkill. One caveat: I never encountered European style ships with cannon. (In the end game, I conquered a nanban centre and built European style trade ships, but never needed them for naval superiority).
If you do go for the trade routes, it makes sense to max out the naval techs. The AI typically retreats prior to disadvantageous naval battles, leaving your fleet too slow to catch them or even spot where they fled to. Getting bonuses to naval movement from tech makes it much less frustrating to hunt down and destroy enemy fleets. Getting fire arrows early from research is also a priority for naval battles – they turn bow ships from being minor annoyances to being extremely potent.
MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR
In the mid-game prior to RD, you are free to concentrate on less warlike areas such as the economy, diplomacy and research. There are relatively few Oda-specific tips I would give on these matters.
In terms of province development, playing as Oda led me to write a short guide to province specialisation in STW2 in general:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...specialisation
Oda specifically is well placed to receive most province bonuses – particularly for ninjas and monks. A notable exception are craft specialist provinces, which are all rather far from Owari. This is unfortunate, as Oda are likely to depend heavily on archers rather than high quality melee units. The ninja provinces allow you quite early access to recruit rank 4 ninjas and geishas, giving you a powerful edge in dealing with rival agents. They can also be developed to provide valuable economic benefits from an Infamous Mizu Shobai District and the sake dens. With access to two Hallowed Ground provinces, one should be used for a Fortified Monastery, supplying devastating long ranged bow monks as well as naginata monks whose war cry makes them useful shock units to break enemy flanks. The other should be the site of Great Shine, giving a large +5 morale boost to ashigaru recruited there. High ranked monks will be especially useful if you wish to conquer Kyushu – the Buddhist rebellions they can easily spark will be extremely difficult for Christian clans to counter.
In my game, my most important provinces were:
1. Owari, as my capital, producing two units a turn
2. Bizen, as a smith province, being my main source of high quality Samurai
3. Suruga for my Confucian academy
4. Izu for its gold mine
5. Kii, a second cash cow after Izu, for its rich farm land and for my Infamous Mizu Shobai district
6. Bingo for my pirate fortress and naval recruitment
Most other provinces, I left relatively undeveloped except for farms and level 1 markets. Mikawa is nice for cavalry recruitment, but I regard the charge bonus as rather underpowered and anyway did not rely heavily on cavalry (often having only a couple in a full stack).
For research, it makes sense for Oda to go down the path of the spear – there are no sword or cavalry ashigaru. Heaven and earth, for more ammunition and encampments, is also priority. I recommend a fairly eclectic approach to research – dabbling in both chi and bushido trees, as explained here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...post2053295224
Various builds for general and agent skills that I explored during my Oda campaign are sketched here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...int-strategies
VERDICT: BEST TW CAMPAIGN EVER
The campaign I based this guide on was the most fun SP campaign I have played in a TW game. Oda provides is a fun starting faction with lots of freedom and possibilities. You are able to expand centre, west or east, as you like. Despite the distances involved, you can even make a play for Kyushu and/or the trade nodes, as I did. Contrary to received wisdom it is not a particularly hard faction to play, at least after the first few turns on normal difficulty as its central position is more defensible than it appears. The Ashigaru specialism is very helpful in the early game but need not prevent you from recruiting the more powerful Samurai units later when you can afford them (and will need them to go toe to toe with the full stacks of developed factions).
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