Kurikara

[Magma Dragoon]

How do I beat this?

Best I've done so far is to quickly build two town centers near the forest at my western wall and between the stone and gold, with a castle in front of them to cover my trebs taking down the first Taira encampment. I use a transport to get a villager onto the beach and wall off the gap in the forest so I don't need to worry about my lumberjacks being harassed.

Next I get up two castles in front of one of the next Taira outposts and start pounding them. I make great progress laying into one of these, but as the stream of units from orange and teal ramp up it falls apart. I can't get enough troops up for a two pronged assault into both camps, so I end up getting pincered. Eventually Kyoto's waves start overlapping each other into a continuous stream of cavaliers, halberdiers, crossbows and siege that I cannot stop.

I'm wondering if I was intended to use a kataparuto boosted precision amphibious trebuchet assaults to wear down the western coastal orange camp and then work my way down river with them? Has anyone had success with this? It works in the York scenario, but the player is under far far less pressure there.

Hojo is useless, as far as I can tell they never attack, they soak up a meager portion of the Taira attacks without fighting back. I feel I'm better off keeping the two trebs.

[Yorok]

You have probably already either beaten this scenario or given up, but I just beat it and can give some advice.
I did very similar things as you did in start, by building one town center at forest and one at gold+stone. I also built castle between the last mentioned town center and Taira army camp.

Two main things, which helped me beat this scenario similarly like I have beaten others:

1. I built wall around my base and resources and left one opening in it, which lead to a tunnel. In that tunnel 3-4 cavalry units wait on stand ground and block enemy units from getting through (monk heals them). Near that tunnel are castles, which shoot enemy units. There are also gates, from which cavalry goes out and attacks trebuchets/rams. This strategy creates a "killzone" in front of tunnel+castles, because enemy units will be lead by pathfinding to a tunnel, from which they can't get through due to bottleneck, while at the same time they get shot down by castles. Only trebuchets/rams are problems, but cavalry can attack them through gates and then return to behind the walls. This killzone is very effective because allows to defend entire base from one place at extremely advantageous situation with minimal units.

I had 2-castle killzone between gold+stone and Taira army camp, which eliminated enemy assaults while I built myself to max population, upgrades, etc. Only then did I went out to attack with my maxed army.
Later I built 2-castle (later I added 1 castle, so then 3-castle) killzone between the first and second (south at river) Taira army camp, which allowed me to extend my walls to get all gold+stone in the area in front of original base and between forests. This killzone proved extremely vital for success, because eliminated entire hordes of Taira army and Kyoto units, which tried to assault my base, while my main army was busy eradicating enemy camps.

2. I used cavaliers (2/3 of army), heavy scorpions (1/3 of army), 4 trebuchets, 4 monks and 4 forward builder villagers as my main army. Approximately 100 units in total. 18 cavaliers and 2 monks as defensive army at base.
This is my typical army composition. Cavalry are fast and strong, can quickly eradicate enemy siege/ranged units, etc. Cavalry mostly fights enemy units in front of scorpions, so that scorpions can fire enemy units to death, while they are bunched up. Monks are for healing (especially when units are waiting for siege to destroy buildings), although might sometimes convert.

I have used those "build to max before attacking and abuse killzone" + "cavalry+scorpion army" strategies on many scenarios and they work pretty much every time.

First I destroyed 2 Taira army camps south from my base. Then I went at the other side of the river first to the eastern Taira army camps (because were closer) and then to the western ones (ending at lighthouse). I moved at other side of river, because of more space, although this is maybe not the best idea, because I had to deal with streams of units from Kyoto, which would have otherwise suicided at my killzone. I walled river crossings, when I had secured area on my side of it so my base would be even larger with more resources. Of course I ensured, that my whole base is walled, except killzone tunnel and there are no inner locked areas in it to which enemy might not get through tunnel (this might make them attack walls at other places, instead of trying to get through killzone tunnel).

I gave Hojo 2 trebuchets. They are not extremely useful as allies, but they certainly helped by killing and distracting enemy units. They remained inactive for a while before starting to attack Kyoto though.
I ignored water because did not want to waste population/resources on ships. I used ships gotten at beginning to lure enemy ships from near lighthouse to fire of my keeps though.
When it was time to assault Kyoto base, then I built castles near it for covering my army against their units. I had lots of stone, so I built 11 castles outside and 2 inside of their base. Some cavalry fighting under protection of castles is very deadly.

In the end I had 1773/107 kill ratio, 26000 gold and even more food/wood. That's what you get for playing effectively :)

[Magma Dragoon]

Originally posted by Yorok:

You have probably already either beaten this scenario or given up, but I just beat it and can give some advice.
I did very similar things as you did in start, by building one town center at forest and one at gold+stone. I also built castle between the last mentioned town center and Taira army camp.

Two main things, which helped me beat this scenario similarly like I have beaten others:

1. I built wall around my base and resources and left one opening in it, which lead to a tunnel. In that tunnel 3-4 cavalry units wait on stand ground and block enemy units from getting through (monk heals them). Near that tunnel are castles, which shoot enemy units. There are also gates, from which cavalry goes out and attacks trebuchets/rams. This strategy creates a "killzone" in front of tunnel+castles, because enemy units will be lead by pathfinding to a tunnel, from which they can't get through due to bottleneck, while at the same time they get shot down by castles. Only trebuchets/rams are problems, but cavalry can attack them through gates and then return to behind the walls. This killzone is very effective because allows to defend entire base from one place at extremely advantageous situation with minimal units.

I had 2-castle killzone between gold+stone and Taira army camp, which eliminated enemy assaults while I built myself to max population, upgrades, etc. Only then did I went out to attack with my maxed army.
Later I built 2-castle (later I added 1 castle, so then 3-castle) killzone between the first and second (south at river) Taira army camp, which allowed me to extend my walls to get all gold+stone in the area in front of original base and between forests. This killzone proved extremely vital for success, because eliminated entire hordes of Taira army and Kyoto units, which tried to assault my base, while my main army was busy eradicating enemy camps.

2. I used cavaliers (2/3 of army), heavy scorpions (1/3 of army), 4 trebuchets, 4 monks and 4 forward builder villagers as my main army. Approximately 100 units in total. 18 cavaliers and 2 monks as defensive army at base.
This is my typical army composition. Cavalry are fast and strong, can quickly eradicate enemy siege/ranged units, etc. Cavalry mostly fights enemy units in front of scorpions, so that scorpions can fire enemy units to death, while they are bunched up. Monks are for healing (especially when units are waiting for siege to destroy buildings), although might sometimes convert.

I have used those "build to max before attacking and abuse killzone" + "cavalry+scorpion army" strategies on many scenarios and they work pretty much every time.

First I destroyed 2 Taira army camps south from my base. Then I went at the other side of the river first to the eastern Taira army camps (because were closer) and then to the western ones (ending at lighthouse). I moved at other side of river, because of more space, although this is maybe not the best idea, because I had to deal with streams of units from Kyoto, which would have otherwise suicided at my killzone. I walled river crossings, when I had secured area on my side of it so my base would be even larger with more resources. Of course I ensured, that my whole base is walled, except killzone tunnel and there are no inner locked areas in it to which enemy might not get through tunnel (this might make them attack walls at other places, instead of trying to get through killzone tunnel).

I gave Hojo 2 trebuchets. They are not extremely useful as allies, but they certainly helped by killing and distracting enemy units. They remained inactive for a while before starting to attack Kyoto though.
I ignored water because did not want to waste population/resources on ships. I used ships gotten at beginning to lure enemy ships from near lighthouse to fire of my keeps though.
When it was time to assault Kyoto base, then I built castles near it for covering my army against their units. I had lots of stone, so I built 11 castles outside and 2 inside of their base. Some cavalry fighting under protection of castles is very deadly.

In the end I had 1773/107 kill ratio, 26000 gold and even more food/wood. That's what you get for playing effectively :)

I haven't given up but I have taken a break.

I was thinking of moving against the Taira encampments asap by timing a castle near the forward camp while teching imperial and getting trebs up and pushing south before Kyoto wakes up.

It is easy to cap the lighthouse with starting forces but I find the western camp builds only a token navy. In my best yet take I made inroads in clearly the western camp with just fireships and galleons, but lost the ground battle. Whichever way I push I get flanked on the other. Do you wall off the choke west of the first camp? The cavalry killzone sounds interesting, I'd appreciate screenshots of it if you have any.

[Yorok]

You should prioritise building yourself up to max population and army before going on the offensive, because Kyoto wakes up pretty soon anyway and you need to be as strong as possible in order to fight Taira and Kyoto forces at the same time.
You should ignore lighthouse at beginning because it is not necessary, is far from other camps and nobody attacks you from there.
Don't build ships, because this is mostly land map and you need big land army. Ships waste population space.
Yes, you will get flanked, but killzone will catch most of the forces from the flank. And having big and good land army will help you fight flankers off even if they reach your main army.

What army do you use? It is important to use powerful pop-efficient units, which don't die easily and will efficiently kill enemy units. Otherwise you have to constantly replenish your forces from many buildings and this is hard. So don't use halberdiers or other such cheap and weak units. Hard to build such big and strong expensive army? Not if you build it in your base while staying on the defensive till you have built it and only then go on the attack. You still need to sometimes train new units, but because of using powerful units, you need to build less of them, so need to build less military buildings and you stay constantly at higher army size, which helps while fighting.

Here are screenshots of killzones which I built. Notice castles, tunnel between them (with stand ground cavalry and monk), gates, aggressive stance cavalry nearby for attacking trebuchets/rams through gates. Also notice decaying corpses on ground in front of killzone on both cases and how some enemy units are moving to the tunnel in case of second killzone. They die almost immediately due to 3 castles firing at them.
I have walls around my whole base, so that pathfinding leads enemy units to killzone tunnel.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1662572394
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1662572583

You can test that killzone tunnel pathfinding mechanism yourself. Open scenario editor, create walled area with one tunnel in which are stand ground units. Leave some other units scattered at different places outside of wall. Select those other units and right-click inside of walls. Notice how all those units head to the tunnel, where they are blocked by stand ground units. This pathfinding mechanism is also what will lead enemy units to killzone tunnel where they are murdered by castles.

I can't stress enough how powerful killzone can be. I got 101/1 kill ratio in "King of Valencia" defensive scenario of El Cid campaign by building 4-castle killzone. Even though I was in castle age vs imperial age enemy. It is just hopeless for the enemy and really fun to watch too :)

[Magma Dragoon]

Originally posted by Yorok:

You should prioritise building yourself up to max population and army before going on the offensive, because Kyoto wakes up pretty soon anyway and you need to be as strong as possible in order to fight Taira and Kyoto forces at the same time.
You should ignore lighthouse at beginning because it is not necessary, is far from other camps and nobody attacks you from there.

It is not difficult to bait the Taira navy to my tower then kill their docks with just my starting navy, then take the lighthouse with surviving cav archers and cavaliers and wall off the area with palisades. They won't try to break down the wall as long as they have a target in the center to attack. This secures a large amount of low effort food.
Almost all of what hits at 17:00 is units Taira started with, I'd like to try baiting them out and blitzing the first camp down before that and setting up the kill zone on the far side of the stone so I can mine it safely.
edit: the camp palisades make this counter-productive

Originally posted by Yorok:

What army do you use? It is important to use powerful pop-efficient units, which don't die easily and will efficiently kill enemy units. Otherwise you have to constantly replenish your forces from many buildings and this is hard. So don't use halberdiers or other such cheap and weak units. Hard to build such big and strong expensive army? Not if you build it in your base while staying on the defensive till you have built it and only then go on the attack. You still need to sometimes train new units, but because of using powerful units, you need to build less of them, so need to build less military buildings and you stay constantly at higher army size, which helps while fighting.

Ah, mostly I was using halb+skirm and mixed cav with supplemental samurai until I get champs researched, but by that time I am usually managing the decline already. I was thinking I'd eventually mass mangonels but never manage to get enough wood and gold. I will try the cav+scorpion composition.

[Yorok]

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

It is not difficult to bait the Taira navy to my tower then kill their docks with just my starting navy, then take the lighthouse with surviving cav archers and cavaliers and wall off the area with palisades. They won't try to break down the wall as long as they have a target in the center to attack. This secures a large amount of low effort food.

That's smart. I usually don't bother with fishing because fishing ships are hard to protect and I have to build a lot of navy to protect them, which wastes resources and population. Easier and safer to just farm. Though in this map it seems that enemy almost does not build navy (and if builds, then only galleys), so can easily fish.

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

Almost all of what hits at 17:00 is units Taira started with, I'd like to try baiting them out and blitzing the first camp down before that and setting up the kill zone on the far side of the stone so I can mine it safely.
edit: the camp palisades make this counter-productive

You can build killzone between stone near your walls and first Taira camp (like in my first screenshot) without clearing the camp. I also tried to destroy that camp in beginning, because had quite a lot of gifted units and that camp is annoyingly close to my base. I gave up on this mission pretty quickly though because enemy has quite a lot of units and towers, which makes it unreasonable to attack without trebuchets. Also had enough wood, gold and stone in starting area for building to max population and researches without needing to clear the camp. It simply is much easier to wage war at max population and researches with powerful units so I usually don't attack before.

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

Ah, mostly I was using halb+skirm and mixed cav with supplemental samurai until I get champs researched, but by that time I am usually managing the decline already. I was thinking I'd eventually mass mangonels but never manage to get enough wood and gold. I will try the cav+scorpion composition.

You like to use low resources army? I have found out that it is easiest and most efficient to use powerful units. Yes, they are costly, but worth it. You can try different army compositions in scenario editor. For example I can beat with 60 cavaliers + 30 scorpions army enemy force consisting of 90 halberdiers by having over 70 units remaining. Seems impossible, because halberdiers are supposed to counter cavalry? We'll, they somewhat counter them, but cavalry is still very strong and scorpion fire simply cuts halberdiers to pieces. In real game scenario it means that now my 70 units can eradicate the whole enemy base, because enemy will not be able to replenish its forces quickly enough. It can maybe quickly build 10-20 halberdiers, but it does not matter because my 70 remaining units will kill them pretty much without losses due to numerical superiority.

This is what pop-efficiency will do. Even if enemy causes you to lose units worth same amount of resources as its own lost units, you will then have remaining forces continuing advance and numerical superiority. Much easier to fight that way. Because units usually have pretty similar training times, it is much easier to replenish 20 cavaliers than 40 halberdiers, even though total cost is similar.
By having 40% of population as economy villagers (forward builders not included) I can easily support 50% of population as attacking (forward builders included) and 10% as defensive (at base) army.
I always turtle (build period) till I am at max population with researches and can then move out with my deathball of powerful units.
I usually train villagers till 50-60% of population is villagers, so I can build, research and train everything I need. Will replace some of villagers with army before going on the offensive, because don't need so many villagers then and bigger army fights more effectively.

You probably already noticed how hard it is do to anything with halbs+skirms. Have to constantly train them in big numbers to replenish forces, so need to build massive amount of forward military buildings, etc. You can only build samurai from castles and they walk slow, so it is hard to get new samurai to the battle quickly. Now imagine cavaliers, who are much sturdier, get quickly to anywhere needed and can kill onagers, trebuchets, archers, villagers, pretty much anything really. They even quickly get to the battle from stables quite some distance away, so don't need to build so many stables every 5 steps. Simply pull them back in front of scorpions if need to fight big or melee army.

Mangonels are pretty costly and are dangerous to your own forces, because you should mostly be fighting enemy units in numerical superiority, which means that mangonel shots will hurt in addition to 2 enemy units also 5 of your own units, etc. Also AI has unreal mangonel shot dodging abilities, so even if you spot a good bunch of enemy units to crush with mangonel, they will all magically instantly move aside. Can't surprise AI at all. Also AI will not bunch its units up so much as humans do, so each shot has less potential. Can't really crush a group of AI archers with mangonel, which is their main purpose in human vs human battles.
Scorpions have no friendly fire and their bolts can't be dodged, so are preferred.

[Magma Dragoon]

Originally posted by Yorok:

60 cavaliers + 30 scorpions army

That worked very well!

A couple times Taira knocked down my extended wall but seemed pleased that the wall was removed it's domain and never actually went into the breach, opting to suicide into my castles. It was close at the end once all the gold ran out but I managed to break into the western side of the city while a sacrificial castle distracted the troops pouring out of the other gates. I lost all my scorpions and half my cav and trebs, the Hojo patrol that followed me in is the only reason that many got out, but Kyoto was neutered. I sold a few thousand stone to get enough gold to rebuild, and moved on the final castle as a surprisingly large teal army came out of the eastern gate, but I had enough scorpions to whittle them down without too many losses. I put up a few towers to contain them since they couldn't build trebs any more and moved in after clearing all the towers and buildings I could from outside. I never would have guessed mass scorpion was the answer.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1666403401

[Yorok]

Glad you made it!

Yes, AI will sometimes attack walls instead of going to the killzone. I like to keep some of my defensive army cavalry at different places near the wall, so they can lure enemy units to killzone. Simply moving them near enemy forces should be enough (sometimes have to exit from the gate and maybe even attack them) in order to catch their attention. Then simply run back inside the gate if went outside and watch how enemy units start moving towards killzone in order to reach my cavalry through killzone tunnel.
Units from the western Taira camp seemed too eager to spend time near my western walls, so I broke down part of their wall on my side of river, so they had shorter path to my killzone. From that moment onward they went to suicide themselves at my killzone like I wanted.

You should not had run out of gold though. I had 26 000 gold left at the end which is enough for 350 cavaliers/heavy scorpions. You should try to keep your army at max size at all times, because bigger army fights more effectively. The smaller the army gets, the easier it will lose even more units, so it is very important to train new units to compensate lost ones. It is easier to do this with powerful units which stay alive longer, like cavaliers/scorpions, because need less forward military buildings.

Why only one castle near the city? I built 11 thanks to having 9000 stone. Even easier to defend that way :D And of course some of Elite Mounted Samurai under these.
I destroyed castles and towers near western entrances to the city, then broke in and swept through the city. I thought that it is easier to advance that way, because enemy only comes from one side and I can destroy all their military buildings from inside.

Scorpions have same plus that all ranged units have that they can more easily attack in massed armies than melee units. Normal scorpions have approximately same combat abilities than FU arbalest, but are more effective against units with high pierce armor, require no upgrades and are available to all civilizations. Heavy scorpion is of course even stronger. They are slower than archer-line units, but this is not a big problem when part of attacking army, because trebuchets and monks are almost as slow anyway.
Did you also found out, that it is good to keep scorpions on stand ground stance? That way they don't move around and obstruct other units. Also in case that melee unit gets up close, it is better for scorpion to stand still and attack other units instead of trying to move away from melee unit, because melee unit is faster anyway and scorpion would not escape.

Elite Mounted Samurai were badass! I let them finish off the emperor because common troops were not appropriate for such task :P

[Magma Dragoon]

Originally posted by Yorok:

You should not had run out of gold though. I had 26 000 gold left at the end which is enough for 350 cavaliers/heavy scorpions. You should try to keep your army at max size at all times, because bigger army fights more effectively. The smaller the army gets, the easier it will lose even more units, so it is very important to train new units to compensate lost ones. It is easier to do this with powerful units which stay alive longer, like cavaliers/scorpions, because need less forward military buildings.

Why only one castle near the city? I built 11 thanks to having 9000 stone. Even easier to defend that way :D And of course some of Elite Mounted Samurai under these.
I destroyed castles and towers near western entrances to the city, then broke in and swept through the city. I thought that it is easier to advance that way, because enemy only comes from one side and I can destroy all their military buildings from inside.

Elite Mounted Samurai were badass! I let them finish off the emperor because common troops were not appropriate for such task :P

Where did you get that much gold? I mined it all except for the stuff right outside Kyoto's southeast gate. I guess you did and that's how you got all that stone? I never made any trade cogs, though I suppose I could have traded with one of the neutral villages with a dock near the bridge by Hojo.

[Yorok]

I received 15750 tribute (12500 of it as gold). Collected 31004 gold and 15401 stone. So total 43504 gold. I mined all gold/stone deposits on map except ones outside Kyoto SE gate (did not find it and its's too hard to get anyway). You can load a savegame and use "marco polo" for seeing all gold/stone deposits.

Trade cogs are generally ineffective and can't do a long direct route between docks on this map, so I did not bother. I wanted to land trade with market in SE locals base, but trade carts were disabled in this scenario :(

I had only 107 deaths, so majority of my gold went unused.

[Magma Dragoon]

I received similar tribute and collected 37K, I guess it was the cost of replacing all my scorpions lost in the breach. I had to attack because the mounted samurai reinforcements put me at 207/200, and I felt an inflated sense of urgency because of the amount of stuff Kyoto was sending through the western crossing having not realized the attacks in the center had stopped. I should have repositioned my navy and built a new kill zone with workshops and stables behind it before pushing out.

Originally posted by Yorok:

but trade carts were disabled in this scenario :(

The tribute carts function like normal trade carts. Not sure if you need to redeem it to start the countdown on the next one however.

Interesting find when reviewing the scoreboard, Kyoto does not receive infinite resources from gaia, the orange and green Taira do and they tribute it to Kyoto. It may be possible to starve Kyoto into submission by taking out all the green towers and patrols and the villagers mining in the south. This would make sense given the history of the battle, the Genpei War stalled for 2 year due to famine. Kurikara marked the resumption of hostilities between the Taira and Minamoto. Sitting back and defending after wiping out orange is extremely easy with a small force of galleons at the river crossing to soften them up and confuse their formations. Kyoto seems to only go over the western crossing after orange resigns.