Tokugawa guides, hints and tips

[Jungle Rhino]

I'm just wrapping up a 40 province legendary campaign with Tokugawa and my experience has been nearly identical to Madae's - Embrace the Metsuke and Ninja's in order to keep dangerous situations under control as you expand Westwards to capture the rich provinces around Kyoto. I never actually broke free of my vassalage with Imagawa until quite late in the piece so was able to enjoy good diplomatic relations with most clans and also kept Imagawa as a solid ally for the entire game allowing me to focus on an Westwards push. Trouble is that you cannnot declare war on people which caused a massive problem for me as I went spears but Honma had nabbed the cotton node and refused to trade with me for love nor money. This left me unable to progress by building Master Yari dojo which was somewhat frustrating!! Other than that I just went slow and steady in the opening phases - by keeping my army quite small initially I was able to goad my immediate neighbours into attacking me before nabbing all their troops with my bribery upgraded Metsuke :) Be careful though always have at least two Metsuke for key bribes in case it fails and remember you can't bribe a Daimyo!!

I never really went for the trade nodes because they were all gone and I couldn't/didn't want to declare war to free them up, so instead I focussed on building a strong tax economy and also monastaries for tech. I also nabbed the Hojo home province with the gold mine which I held all game :) I also made a conscious effort to keep a few thousand koku in the bank at all times as a 'bribery slush fund' for emergencies. I finally broke my vassalage with Imagawa when he declared war on somebody and I refused to support him - this didn't seem to give me any massive diplo penalty. Afte this you become master of your own destiny and you need to build up your military mid game or you will suffer from 'threats to attack' as you are perceived as an easy target (happened to me with Hatekayama and another clan). My expansion pre-realm divide was Westwards to Bizen for the smith there. Northwards to Echizen & Kaga for the crafts/smith there, and into South Shinano to knock up a big Castle as a chokepoint. I then established 3 key Castles in the East (Mikawa, South Shinano, Kaga) with relatively cheap garrisons to keep the Ikko Ikki at bay (who were rampaging) and prevent Imagawa from backstabbing (battling with Hojo/Takeda). I then devastated Ikko Ikki with massed rebeliions fueled by monks before initialising realm divide. During this phase of the game I was also trading with almost everybody (despite having no trade nodes) and was able to save up approx 100k Koku in the bank.

Before realm divide I had outstanding relations with almost everybody on the map except for Honma (I attacked them for Cotton node), Shoni (Christian - they dec war me), Mori (ongoing fighting but they were toasted by Shoni/Hatekayama). To initialise RD I actually launched a naval invasion of Kyushu, trying to gut the Shoni's powerbase but at the same time Chosokabe attacked my ally Hatekayama and I made the terrible mistake of forsaking my alliance (as I was intending to attack Hatekayam at some point) which led to Hat declaring war on me, but then Chos ALSO declared war on me for no good reason the same turn I had refused to go to war agianst them!! So now I was commited to Kyushu with a stack, the seas were all of a sudden swarming with enemy ships and I had Chos & Hat bearing down on my lands around Kyoto with avengence. Pretty much what saved me then was my massive tax income as trade had almost completely dried up, I also reached gunpowder mastery just in time and matchlock ashigaru defending castles beat off the Choskabe & Honma naval invaisions aswell as countless Hat stacks. My uber Naginata Sams out of Bizen/Kaga also helped immensely so I was glad I had developed the smiths in those provinces.

By the time I wrapped the game up (by betraying Imagawa to nab the alst two victory provinces) my 100k slush fund was gone despite having positive income the entire time through RD (yay bribery! :D)

So anyway to summarise I:

> Played a heavy agent game with full complement of Monk/Ninja/Metsuke
> Expanded West/North to access fertile provinces and key resources incl. smiths/ninja's
> Waited quite a long time for the oppurtunity to break my vassalage with minimal diplo penalties
> Teched for spears and gunpowder - armies consisted of 4-8 heavily upg./vetted Nag/Yari Sam, 4-8 heavily upg. Yari Ashi, 1-2 high charge Kat Cav from Miyawa, 2-4 skirmishing ranged units either ashi bow or later matchlock ashigaru
> Focused heavily on maintaining good diplomatic relations - expanded slowly to avoid diplo penalties
> Build up a nice slush fund prior to RD to maintain bribery capabilities before your trade income goes