Quote Originally Posted by Minimoto View Post
Of all the things I've tried, Satsuma was the easiest, delete that police station at the beginning, build a cadet training place (and eventually a cannon factory and a firing range with an upgraded blacksmith-gunnery), and march around the island taking out everyone with line infantry and parrot-or-armstrong guns, replacing all the enemy's stuff with inns and cottage industries (and later on police stations to maintain order versus industrialization).

Steal generals with all the geisha you're gonna have to fill up your roster without making your other generals angry and then plop your geisha in your richest provinces (which are super duper rich).

Make the other little island in the corner a vassal, and kill that little Shogunate island with the goldmine above you (required for Domination), and then take stock of the map while building up three or four big navies (one to defend the top of the map, one for defense on the bottom, and two for troop transport to assault whatever is left of the Shogunate).

In my domination game, the Tsu and Tosa had pretty much cleared the left half of the mainland (and Choshu was long dead), so I left a stack at home and landed at Sagama with two stacks of uber infantry and armstrong guns, fortified and built another uber troop production place with its blacksmith (to build another stack eventually, to cover my backside in case Tsu or Tosa started thinking it looked tasty, although that never happened and I didn't need it), took the nearby goldmine province while I was at it, and then cleared Musashi and the rest of the Shogunate provinces myself (with a ton of years to spare).

If either the Tosa or the Tsu had gone after me it would've taken a bad turn ('cause they were both pretty huge and powerful) but we were old friends and they were busy with a handful of uppity provinces in their midst (the AI doesn't seem to handle converting provinces as well as we do, I've noticed a lot of their recent conquests coming "back to life" with big and painful-to-remove rebel armies, which is something that really slows them down) and I guess that held things together long enough to kick the Shogunate out of Japan.

Anyways I didn't have to use much strategy besides NOT making a lot of deals and getting entangled with all the other tribes (I only had Tsu and Tosa and my two vassals as trading partners, no allies, and I had more money than I felt like taking the time to move the map around and spend by the end of the game).
Thanks for the detailed review!!!