What do you do with your first moves, and do you use all the character

[Lain]

Hi, I am playing the campaign mode and was wondering what other peopledo, during there first moves.

I usually try to upgrade my land quickly, so that I can get more money. I have tried quick troop build ups and attacks, but those dont seem to work too well. What do you do?

I was also wondering what type of characters you people use? I am talking about the Shinobi, Ninjas, ect... Do yo uhave any special moves you do with them? I usually try to kill an enemy general with a ninja before I attack, doesnt work very often though.

Do forming alliances do anything? Looks like they did not concentrate on this part of the game to well. The computer is super annoying alwasy trying to make alliances with me. Sometimes I accpet and a couple turns later they attack me anyway....

Any comments are appriciated.

[angelofhullfire]

Bear in mind that every autumn harvest, each soldier will eat up one Koku, so I feel an aggressive attack from the start is necessary, since having a large army standing still wastes Koku.

A second point is that casulties are absolutely inevitable. The attacker will gain more casulties than a defender unless the defender makes drastic mistakes (or is the AI!)

Putting this into practice, when playing as Shimazu, attack the blue clan then widthdraw some troops in the province Buzen (the one just before the main island. The Mori will suffer more casulties trying to assualt you while you can invade the rebel island below them at your leisure.

The Ninjas are useful to attack 0-ranked generals to build up their honour. The moral damage to the defending can make all the difference, although they are perhaps too expensive.

Shinobi are an absolute necessity on the higher level. Put 8-10 in an enemy province and it will rebel, eating up their koku and troops. More likely they are useful for keeping your provinces happy when you conquer many at a time. You will find when you defeat a clan's largest army, it is possible to take over his other lightly defended provinces easily, although a liberal sprinkling of shinobi is necessary to keep these provinces happy. Although they cost 100K same as the YA, they only eat up 1K every year as opposed to 60K for a standard unit.

Always accept alliances. If the Daimyo dies, there is a chance you can gain all of his provinces and troops as they find new loyalties! Apparantly if you break an alliance it harms your Daimyo's honour, although I haven't seen this happen.

Hope this helps!!!

[Tone]

What dificulty level? What clan?

Your tactics will be different for each one. Many people have personal preferences that others won't agree with.

I would say concentrate on basic troop building first. There is nothing worse than building an upgrade and seeing an opponent take that province.

Quick attacks early are good if you can get a particularly good province. The harder the dificulty the more aggressive i find i have to be.

Personally i don't use Ninja too much unless i'm Imagawa. Get lots of shinobi to stop your provinces rebelling and you can crank the tax rates up. The AI will always build border forts so be careful using shinobi as spies, emmisaries and priests will often get you the info you want but remember to pull them back before they become ninja targets.

Always accept an alliance cos you can always break it yourself if you want. Some clans will be more faithful to an alliance than others but all will betray you eventually (particularly if you give them the opportunity with a poorly defended province).

Here's a return on investment chart that gives an idea of what is best to build for extra koku

Gold mines 60%
Silver mines 40%
Copper mines 20%
Farming (province>400) 16%
Farming (province>350) 14%
Port 13.3%
Farming (province>300) 12%

And remember the more you upgrade farmland the lower the return on investment. Those percentage increases are all of the original koku not the current koku and they get very expensive and take ages.

[Dark Phoenix]

There are guides on how to start campaigns at Lanzas site.

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DoragonPhoenix of the Clan Doragon

[Lain]

THx for all the answers.

[edRonin]

Lain, the best thing you can do is check out Lanza's site. But unless you are Hojo or Uesegi wholesale land upgrades generally aren't worth it.

A good general rule for early in the game is to attack provinces that will either give you alot of koku, knock out an enemy castle or improve your defensive front line. You don't want to tech up early, you want to conquer.

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All your base are belong to us

[oompapa]

Someone already mentioned using shinobi. I thought I'd expand a little.

If possible you should try creating at least 1 shinobi agent per season. While you are doing that, use your emissary to search for enemy ports. Do this by moving your emissary over a coastal province...then drop your emissary on the province. If there is a port yor emissary will land in the target province...if not your emissary will return to the province he ame from.

When you have (10+) shinobi, move them into enemy ports and start destabilizing your enemies' provinces. Provinces that rebel drain manpower...also buildings get degraded by one level or are destroyed. So even if your enemy does recapture a rebellious province...he has to rebuild whatever he lost. Shinobi get an honor point each time they cause an uprising. This is a good way to increase the level of your shinobi. When my shinobi reach level 4-5 I usually send them home to be counter-spies and ship off new shinobi to enemy provinces.

Choose the clan you wish to "destabilize" carefully. Check your map to determine who will be or is your greatest threat. There are many times where I have been at war with one clan only to send my shinobi to "destabilize" an ally who is getting too powerful

In any case, don't underestimate the shinobi.
Yes, he is an excellent counter-spy...but he can also be a great offensive weapon causing a drain on your enemies' manpower and resources.

BTW, your enemies will tend to build look-out forts in provinces bordering their own enemies. Sending your shinobi to enemy ports usually allows you infiltrate your enemies' rear areas avoiding the look-out forts.

Good luck

[Irving]

i didn't know that you could do that with your shinobis. does it work with ninjas also? because i sometimes get a little frustrated that my 5 honour ninja get's "caught and killed" by security.... guess i'll give it a shot

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Chaos is born from order.
Cowardice is born from bravery.
Weakness is born from strength.
-Sun Tzu

[Zen Blade]

Just a reminder about the new patch.

Several campaign issues will be dealt with. I believe the improved alliance system, Hojo horde, and maybe even emissary-bribing will all be included in teh patch. If this is true, it will make a much better strategy game.

For now though... remember that early on, you need to be able to keep numbers equal to your opponents.... thus, it is pertinant to always be attempting to build castles and troop-related buildings in some provinces. (not all and not even right away, but usually).

-Zen Blade

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Zen Blade Asai
Red Devil
Last of the RSG

[CaPeFeAr]

i find that a good eary starting tactic is to try and obtain the best defensible border as soon as its possible. always try and get at least one if not two provinces with an armory and make these your centers of production..any more than three and its a waste of koku...a qiuck offensive attack to secure stragic lands followed by a period of upgrading works best for me.

[Laertes]

Irving>>

Finding enemy ports can be done with any of your strategic units in a port, methinks -- and possibly armies, albeit I generally sent shinobi first. I'm not sure that sending ninjas is as useful as sending shinobi or priests, since the juicy targets are probably the Taishos, Daimyos and heirs, and those tend to hang out at the front (with their own shinobis, border forts, et al).

Incidentally, ISTR (it's been a long time... waiting to see what the next patch does) that if you had a strategic unit in an enemy port province, lifting it up highlighted all *enemy* ports.

You can definitely stage amphibious assaults if you know about the enemy port. One thread discussed the ethics and (lack of, IIRC) realism of doing so a while back.


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He is justly served; It is a poison temper'd by himself.

[henryh]

I think in the early part of the game build a tea house and churn out shinobi, You can then make lots of conquests garrison troubled areas with shinobi, when you have enough shinobi crank up taxes to 125%.

Also I believe that the first season should always start with an offensive, but pick on one enemy at a time make alliances with the rest.

Shimazu should rid themselves of the imagawa
Mori can clean out the Takeda
Oda can chose either the imagawa or the mori as first foe
Hojo should fight the uesigi, then get rid of the takeda.
Takeda should attack the hojo
Uesegi should attack the Hojo
Imagawa should either go for Owari or Shinano or maybe even Kai.

Two attack forms can be used attack and hold or raid, Raid is used simply to destroy production capability, using raid in the early game can weaken your enemies quickly.
With a raid you pull back after you attack.
Recovery time for enemy:
8 turns(2 years) for spear or archer production to start again in which time you can boast an additional 480 men.( which he can't)

[Laertes]

Hrm. Don't forget the downside -- unless you use a horde of shinobi to pacify the now-vacated province, there's a fair chance they'll revolt to their former masters. I don't recall if that can be a Samurai revolt (or whether those are only Buddhist revolts against Xtian Daimyos) but even a fair stack of Ashigaru can massively increase their initially low troop counts. And if it *is* a full-blown Samurai revolt really really early: Ouch.

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He is justly served; It is a poison temper'd by himself.

[henryh]

the assumption with the raid is that the enemy is in a position to retake his province, because it is total vacated.

[Catiline]

I usually play with ramped up taxes from the start, it takes a lot to get your peasants to rebel, and if you're taking other provinces you normally have enough troops to keep them calm anyhow. The extra 25% koku is damn useful early on.

Shinobi I always tend to forget an neglect, I'm too busy turning out troops, then all of a sudden I need spies. Usually at a time when I also need more troops. Oops. They can be useful though to let you take provinces without breaking alliances, send in a load, get the province to rebel and then pinch it off the ronin Afterwards. Easy

When playing Takeda I usually abandon the western provinces as quickly as possible. There's more to be gained using those troops to strike east into Hojos lands before he is too strong to prevent you, and it's difficult to maintain the investment and troop numbers you need to hold the west against mori

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It's not a bug, it's a feature