Shimazu Guide

[ReluctantSamurai]

One day I will get around to playing an Oda 1580 campaign. You make it sound like it's the pinnacle of the Shogun experience and it sounds like quite the challenge! I haven't dabbled yet in any of the Era's campaigns. The 1580 campaign looks remarkable. I'm curious to know how you feel about the 1530 and 1550 campaigns, worth a shot or no?

Any 1580 campaign is a challenge as all clans start with develped infrastructure, and you'll see teppo on the battlefield quite early. Oda 1580 ranks #1 on my list for difficulty (and I've played all of them) for the reasons I stated. I also forgot to mention that that initial epic battle you face will have to be fought mainly with Ashi against Takeda Heavy Cavalry, Cavalry Archers, and Naginata Cavalry---many with armor upgrades. Imagawa (yes you have to fight them both on the same battlefield) brings mostly a standard Samurai army (YS & SA) but he has several units of Battlefield Ninja which are a royal pain to deal with. You might want to disable geisha (I did this for any time period) as in 1580 there will be several running around quite early in the game, and without an Honor 5 or 6 Ninja you'll be forced to spam ninjas to keep throwing at her until one gets lucky...but then you'll have to do it all over again.

If you prefer a quiet start, with lots of time to develop infrastructure, 1530, 1550, or Sengoku Jidai are most certainly worth playing. Depending on faction, you get to take advantage of the Legendary Generals---Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin, Imagawa Yoshimoto, Tokugawa Ieyasu to name a few.

When a province is invaded some buildings are destroyed or damaged automatically.

Again, it's been a very long time since I've played, but isn't it just the castle that gets downgraded?

Oda's campaign to stamp out the Ikko-Ikki monks is particularly challenging...

[Khan of Steppe]

Again, it's been a very long time since I've played, but isn't it just the castle that gets downgraded?

This is another iffy one, when castle garrison's are being sieged out there seems to be a chance that the castle will be downgraded. Which of course gives some incentive to attack the garrison. However the downgrade doesn't seem to be guaranteed. Sometimes when I'm sieging out a tier 1 castle it'll disappear once the garrison falls (therefore is downgraded) and yet other times when I'm sieging out a garrison the tier 1 remains standing. I'm not 100% on this because maybe these were simply tier 2 castles that I didn't notice. I'm recording my campaigns so this would be easy to clarify...

The provinces buildings however seem to be a random army destruction event that the player doesn't have control over. On the turn that a province is conquered even before anything is done about the castle garrison some buildings will be either destroyed or damaged and some will be left standing. Again, this all appears random except in the cases of rebel provinces.

I realize I'm asking a lot from the memory of folks who probably haven't played the game in a while. I'm mostly asking to see if there was a general consensus unknown to me. Also I realize these are minor points in a game where generalized strategy will suffice. My curiosity is mostly driven from the fact that I have started a youtube channel which features this game and I'm simply trying to provide accurate information in my playthroughs. If we can't come to some hard answers it's all good! I'm just happy to be talking about Shogun

[ReluctantSamurai]

The provinces buildings however seem to be a random army destruction event that the player doesn't have control over. On the turn that a province is conquered even before anything is done about the castle garrison some buildings will be either destroyed or damaged and some will be left standing. Again, this all appears random except in the cases of rebel provinces.

It's possible that "random" building destruction isn't really random if the castle gets downgraded. Any buildings that are tied to a certain developed castle tier, should also therefore be rendered inoperable. Does not apply to rebel provinces, as you have noted.

[Khan of Steppe]

It's possible that "random" building destruction isn't really random if the castle gets downgraded. Any buildings that are tied to a certain developed castle tier, should also therefore be rendered inoperable. Does not apply to rebel provinces, as you have noted.

I've just done some double checking and the chance that a castle is downgraded during a siege is in fact random. The building destruction event is also completely random and is not tied in any way to the castle because the buildings are destroyed before the castle garrison is dealt with. I believe this is something CA changed in MTW because in that game the buildings aren't destroyed until the castle garrison is completely dealt with right? This is actually a change I quite like. Losing buildings because you've retreated to the castle in a frontier province can be tedious. Frankly this fact also deters me from building up my frontier provinces at all past the basic castle.