Post your lessons learned in Rise of the Samurai here!

[Madae]

The influence thing is just the culture thing from Kingdoms - minus the whole unit-recruitment thing. Kind of neat, I guess.

The two biggest surprises I had was that your general is bow cavalry now, and naginata levies are terrible when compared to ashigaru.

I've converted whole provinces/factions with my agents, too. That's kind of a relief - if you know someone likes you enough you can just get them to join you instead of declaring a pointless war to conquer them. I think it makes a lot of sense that if someone agrees with you, they can just become a part of your faction. I actually really like that change, and it kind of places a whole new spin on conquering territory. Conceivably, you could rush someone with those guys, convert their population and then have all of his towns join you. Kind of dirty, and I can see that being really annoying if the AI uses it to its fullest effect.