Ronin Ramblings

[Irinami]

Ever since I read here about how to play as Rebels and Ronin clan, I've enjoyed playing them. They are a powerful force, but also seriously hobbled in some aspects. While some of their benefits may make them too easy to play as for the veteran gamer, for someone like me they are a great joy to play.

There are a couple of Caveats with playing the Ronin. First and foremost is the problem of overstripping your resources. From the start, you will have more forces than you have the koku income to stably maintain. Second ties into the first: Your prefecture are stretched out, some of them not connected (Yamashiro, Ise, and Tajima). Therefore you have to garrison almost every prefecture, which costs some serious koku both invested and in maintenance costs. You cannot afford to make very many improvements at all at first--about one per year is all I could manage, and even then I sit that out for about 4 years.

One strategy is to make a bold drive for Tajima, who produce Shinobi at +1 Honor. You can then use the Shinobi to crowd a prefecture you have owned for a long time (Etchu comes to mind), then retreat from it. Once another daimyo invades, you will gain a small army due to uprising.

BEWARE!!

The turn these armies pop up (at least in vanilla Shogun) you cannot reliably click on them to move them or anything, probably for the same reason that when playing another daimyo, you can't properly view the units in an uprising the first turn they're available. If you do click on them, you run the serious risk of crashing Shogun. Not fun.

But that's fine. After their battle you will have culled the weak.

Rebels and Ronin have no Daimyo. You cannot be asked to ally with anyone (though you can make alliances), and you do not have 10-11 Heavy Cavalry which also provide a serious morale boost on the battlefield. Without a daimyo, there are no heirs and no retainer families (EG the Shimazu have the Iriki-in) to produce higher-honor generals.

That's fine, though, because without a Daimyo you can't be killed off that way. Aaaand there's also that "populist recruiting" I mentioned with the shinobi.

When you kill an enemy Daimyo who has no heir, guess what? You get most of his prefectures, since you're the Rebels and Ronin faction. This can be a mixed blessing, especially if he was preparing for major war. Ever had [b]-[b]2000 koku? Not a fun income report to see in the Autumn, that's for sure.

All in all, Rebels and Ronin is a good faction for the new player. The populist revolts give you armies, but they are mainly made up of Yari Ashigaru and Archers, which force the new player to learn how to use these units (since they are going to have razor-thin profits, most of which will likely go into +1 Honor Warrior monks from Yamashiro and Kaga). Ever beaten an Imagawa force of Yari Samurai, Archers, and a couple Cavalry with just Ashigaru and Archers? I haven't, but I'm getting closer every time.

[Togakure]

Interesting. I've never played the ronin faction using the original STW, only MI. In MI, they cannot produce strategic agents, so using shinobi to foster revolts in order to raise troops is not possible. They must have changed that in MI to make the ronin faction more challenging in the hidden campaign.

My usual strategy is to concentrate rather than attempt to maintain all three primary rebel areas. I raze and abandon Kaga, pulling all forces in that area towards central Japan (in my last campaign, Kaga and the surrounding territories remained rebellious for a long time despite not being garrisoned, yielding much-needed koku and generating additional troops when clans would invade with forces too small to hold the provinces without rebellion). I target the Oda for swift elimination and assume control of all of their provinces, making central Japan my base as a first priority (thus protecting crucial Yamshiro and Ise, and securing high-yield agricultural provinces, most of which also have port potential). Jimbo Naotaka, the four-star general in Etchu when you begin the campaign, is a significant tool in this process, and usually ends up holding the Eastern front in either Mino or Shinano for the early to mid parts of the campaign. I try and take Kawachi, Owari, and Mikawa as early as possible as they are river provinces and thus nice choke points that don't require a large and expensive army to protect effectively. They also have nice koku yields.

My second priority is to secure Shikoku and Tosa from invasion by the Shimazu and Mori (or Takeda, depending on who dominates their clash in the west). Once these two primary goals have been accomplished, I usually have a good bank going, and a nice infrastructure developed in Yamshiro, Tosa, Ise and Owari (just gotta love the Legendary Sword Dojo in Tosa that you control from the get-go --making defense of Tosa/Shikoku a high priority, particularly against the Shumazu ...). I then analyze the overall situation and decide what to concentrate on next--usually the biggest threats (particularly enemy infrastructure, which represent future enemy army potential). "Kamikaze raider" armies are very useful--armies formed specifically for penetrating deep into enemy territory to destroy key clan infrastructures, without necessarily intending to hold territory or make it back alive.

Lack of strategic agents in MI makes port attacks impossible for the ronin, so balancing expansion, agricultural development and trade for income to support the ever-increasing need for military might is crucial. I enjoy ronin faction campaigns when I'm in the mood for a purely military expansionist agenda.

[tool Dude]

Im lookin foward to play as tha Rebels. Seems fun and challenging too...just wondering around what to do as tha campaign goes on.

[Drisos]

How do I play the rebels?

Do I have to change some setting or what?

Do I have to download something?

[Foreign Devil]

Sounds like fun, and it like you have to use very a very different strategy than I'm used to. I think I'll try this as soon as I'm done with my current campaign.

[Togakure]

To play the ronin faction, start a Sengoku Jidai period campaign (the other MI campaigns--1530, 1550, 1580, Mongols--won't work for this). Select any clan you want, as it won't matter. Once the campaign starts (when you get to the strategy map for your first turn), type .conan. (include both dots). You should hear a click, and then you will be in control of the ronin faction instead of the one you originally selected.

[Drisos]

To play the ronin faction, start a Sengoku Jidai period campaign (the other MI campaigns--1530, 1550, 1580, Mongols--won't work for this). Select any clan you want, as it won't matter. Once the campaign starts (when you get to the strategy map for your first turn), type .conan. (include both dots). You should hear a click, and then you will be in control of the ronin faction instead of the one you originally selected.

Thanks, I'll try it right away!

[Irinami]

It's wild. In the first 3 years I crushed Oda by accidentally isolating him in Owari and losing a battle there... because I sent everyone in on his 11 Heavy Cavalry. I lost, but not after killing him... so I got all his lands.

Then, I was just about to repel a Mori invasion by Mori himself which would have left him no place to flee to (he'd withdrawn from a mere punitive expedition I sent out). And...

I crashed it. If you ALT+TAB out a lot, save early and save often!

[Togakure]

Ahhh ... hate it when that happens. I've developed a reflex now so that I always hit CONTROL+S before I hit next turn. That way if it crashes I always have a quicksave which I can reload.

[Thoros of Myr]

Ahhh ... hate it when that happens. I've developed a reflex now so that I always hit CONTROL+S before I hit next turn. That way if it crashes I always have a quicksave which I can reload.

So have I. Shogun has always been unstable on my system but lately it's been running well. 7 years into my campaign and no crashes yet.

[Shambles]

YOUR ALL CHEATS!!!!

Lol im J/k :)
Id join in your ronin faction But i only play custom battles and mp on stw these days,
campaign stoped being a chalange ages ago,

I play MTW for campaign now :(
(pleae dont look at me like that)

ShambleS

[Thoros of Myr]

YOUR ALL CHEATS!!!!

Lol im J/k :)
Id join in your ronin faction But i only play custom battles and mp on stw these days,
campaign stoped being a chalange ages ago,

What about playing the Hojo against the Mongol invasion?

[Lord Hornburg]

Man thats slaughter. The mongols are easy to play as but hojo.

I forsee slaughter.

[Togakure]

The Mongols aren't that tough to beat if you play your cards right. Just have to build ports in the right places (to expediate troop deployment to key strategic choke points) and bottle them up on Kyushu. The hardest part is repelling the second wave from the mainland (Honshu). If you accomplish this and keep them limited to northern Kyushu, they eventually aren't able to expand, which means they don't get very many reinforcements. I think that's the key--limiting their expansion so they don't raise any revenue. Preventing them from winning battles also keeps their generals from gaining honor (you don't want any to reach 4 stars, and you don't want to lose your generals that have 4 or more ...). Once you get your production machine going it's all over for them (Yari Sams from Yamashiro, Yari Cav from Shinano, No Dachi from Satsuma if you can hold onto it, Archers from Totomi, etc.).

[Drisos]

The Mongols aren't that tough to beat if you play your cards right. Just have to build ports in the right places (to expediate troop deployment to key strategic choke points) and bottle them up on Kyushu. The hardest part is repelling the second wave from the mainland (Honshu). If you accomplish this and keep them limited to northern Kyushu, they eventually aren't able to expand, which means they don't get very many reinforcements. I think that's the key--limiting their expansion so they don't raise any revenue. Preventing them from winning battles also keeps their generals from gaining honor (you don't want any to reach 4 stars, and you don't want to lose your generals that have 4 or more ...). Once you get your production machine going it's all over for them (Yari Sams from Yamashiro, Yari Cav from Shinano, No Dachi from Satsuma if you can hold onto it, Archers from Totomi, etc.).

Nice tactiks story for against the mongols, toga.

I've played that campaign once too, I believe it was at normal, that time. I stopped the campaign, but I was winning.(which isn't very hard at normal. )

Just make good men in the right regions, and stop the mongol expading in regions that are easy to defend. Guard your coast line, and make sure your troops are mobile. This way it will be easy to beat them, I might try this one out at expert, in a while. If I got time, I might do a report thread on that one too. (most of you seem to like my takeda campaign, so I'll try to go on with that one first)

[Drisos]

NOTE:

I played R&R once now, but the troops stats for rebels seemed totally different.

My archers were at least 5 times better than normal. They shot down just entire units of 60 in short time.

My yari and warrior monks were at least 5 times weaker then normal. Against other yari sam, they killed about 5 and lost about 45 at plain ground with the same honour.

Other clans had the same stats, I thought.


This is annying, my new 'campaigns' aren't quite fun to play like this, I can only use archers.

[Shambles]

I decided to Cheat along with you,
On my verry 1st turn i did the usual Tax raize
Then started building
I had a region Zero?
With Just toons of stuff i could build.
So seeing as i was cheating any way i decided Il start building here as well.

then I Clicked to go to my next province
And I crashed to desk top
I guess i should not build there huh

EDIT

Its worse than i thoought,


Scrolling past region zero Crashes me to desk top


so thats the end of my R&R campaign

[Irinami]

Oops. Yeah, "Region Zero" is probably the head of some sort of stack/heap/list which isn't supposed to be accessable by the player. It may be "protected" from selection via the same methods used to "protect" the Ronin provinces. So when you nullify one protection, you do the same to the other. Oops. (Just a guess, here, remember.)

Another thing to keep your eye out for: When there's an uprising, then (at least in vanilla STW) you cannot select that army the very next turn. Well, if you're playing Ronin you can BUT.... crash to desktop in almost every case. :(