Help Me! I suck

[MarioCerame]

I disagree with the folks who suggest Oda as a good place to figure stuff out--I think that clan actually takes some know how at the get go to get rolling. Shimazu is good because you have a natural development and clear goals and some great provinces nearby. Most importantly, the trade nodes are near.

A few basics that some folks miss?

• Rushing trade is a big thing in the early game, economy wise. Trae with everyone you possibly can. And then build more trade ports to trade with more people.
• Keep most castles small. Don't build more than a market in most provinces--exception being for your smith province (melee) and to a certain degree your craftworks province (range). Unfortunately, the rice exchanges and so on aren't worth it.
• Key early techs are Way of the Bow (fire arrows) and Heaven and Earth (encampment/armory).
• Be sure to upgrade farms in places with rich soil first for money. Look at resource maps like these.
• When provinces are unhappy, their growth goes severely negative. This is very bad. If a province is unhappy for 5 turns, (consecutive or otherwise) it will lose more than 100 of its value. Over the course of the game, that's a lot. In 5 years, that's 2000 gold (that could have been used to buy two markets, for example--so there's a kind of snowball there). For the same reason, you can't overtax your people--it hurts growth too much and will hurt your economy a lot in the long term. Early on, you might need low or even normal taxes to get things rolling. Most folks advocate shifting to minimal taxes as soon as you can.
• Combat in the game is generally a combination of (1) rock-scissors-paper (spears beat horsies, swords beat spears, etc.) (2) maneuvering to attack with units in the flank or rear and (3) using terrain bonuses. You can also game the AI--it has predictible patterns that can be exploited. For example, you can lure units away from their friends by presenting an easy target.

What else can we tell you?