Am I missing something?

[Lizzo Bezos]

Played Rome 1 before this and loved it so I was shocked to find myself struggling to enjoy this game. The little money you get each turn is barely enough to raise one full army, let alone multiple to fight against the several armies owned by other clans. Also, the incredibly slow regeneration of units makes it difficult to jump an army around the map because they take 5+ turns to heal. Furthermore, without an army you have no means of increasing your income because you can't conquer new regions or capture trade nodes without kicking the old owner out. Am I missing something? Should I just pour all of my money into armies and conquer other regions? Is this game just broken? Am I just stupid?

[hagakuremoi]

Same here. I have played, Rome, Medieval 2, Empire and Napoleon, but the biggest change in game mechanics for me was with Shogun 2.

[easytarget]

So many questions, so many answers. Hate to do this, but going to have to ask some questions back at you to solve this.

1. what clan are you playing as?
2. what difficulty are you playing at?
3. are you trading with anyone? have you run any trade ships down to the euro trade nodes?
4. are your taxes set at default?
4. how many provinces do you currently control? income naturally scales off this

[Lizzo Bezos]

1. Shizamu
2. Normal
3. Trading with Hatakeyama with 5 ships on the incense node
4. Taxes are set at default, any higher and they'll revolt
5. 3 provinces, 2 with the metsukes

[easytarget]

Shimazu are a good choice as you've got European trade nodes hanging off the coast right by you just waiting for you to send trade ships to (up to 10 per node), this is a very handy way to make some money. There are like 4 or 5 of them as I recall down at that end of the island, each of which you could plop 10 ships on. That alone should generate thousands per turn in income.

Taxes sound fine at middle of the road, like you said don't want to incite riots.

Provinces are one likely problem, 3 is not enough, to get a scale of operations that will support one full stack you reallly need at least 5. This is why initial expansion is critical to get the scale necessary for the enconomics to work. Starting out it's often wise to recruit mostly ash and expand as quickly as possible to an initial base of 5-7 provinces that you can then turtle for a bit and improve as an initial expansion phase that will then set the basis for the next expansion.

Initial phase of my Shimazu campaigns I typically only spend money improving the port so I can shoot out some trade ships and grab nodes early, all the rest of my income is spent on ash so I can expand and focus on taking over that island they start on. That makes a great starting base of operations to work from and once you've taken it complely over you can work on improving stuff in the provinces that will further aid your economics and improve things to the point where you should be able to easily support a 2nd stack.

Then it's off to the main island.

P.S. In order to avoid spending a lot of money on a navy I often ally with the Chosokabe who typically don't prove too expansionists beyond their starting island and pump out a pretty decent navy that protects the trade routes w/o you being forced to do it (which like every mlitary unit comes with support costs every turn).

[Lizzo Bezos]

Originally posted by easytarget:

Shimazu are a good choice as you've got European trade nodes hanging off the coast right by you just waiting for you to send trade ships to (up to 10 per node), this is a very handy way to make some money. There are like 4 or 5 of them as I recall down at that end of the island, each of which you could plop 10 ships on. That alone should generate thousands per turn in income.

Taxes sound fine at middle of the road, like you said don't want to incite riots.

Provinces are one likely problem, 3 is not enough, to get a scale of operations that will support one full stack you reallly need at least 5. This is why initial expansion is critical to get the scale necessary for the enconomics to work. Starting out it's often wise to recruit mostly ash and expand as quickly as possible to an initial base of 5-7 provinces that you can then turtle for a bit and improve as an initial expansion phase that will then set the basis for the next expansion.

Initial phase of my Shimazu campaigns I typically only spend money improving the port so I can shoot out some trade ships and grab nodes early, all the rest of my income is spent on ash so I can expand and focus on taking over that island they start on. That makes a great starting base of operations to work from and once you've taken it complely over you can work on improving stuff in the provinces that will further aid your economics and improve things to the point where you should be able to easily support a 2nd stack.

Then it's off to the main island.

P.S. In order to avoid spending a lot of money on a navy I often ally with the Chosokabe who typically don't prove too expansionists beyond their starting island and pump out a pretty decent navy that protects the trade routes w/o you being forced to do it (which like every mlitary unit comes with support costs every turn).

Thanks so much! Will try this strategy immediately

[Mile pro Libertate]

You can also raise some nice lump sums of koku by selling military access, selling trade deals, selling your daughters, or your son's marriage to other clans' daughters, and such.

Lump sums don't help with upkeep costs, at least not for long.

But what you can do is maintain a fairly small army, then use the lump sum monies to bribe enemy armies. Win the big battle and take a couple provinces, then disband the bribed army before their upkeep starts hitting you.

This approach can help you get that initial sweet spot of a province count Easytarget mentions without incurring the running debt of upkeep.

By maintaining a small army and bribing initially (or using ninja to sabotage enemy armies), you can put the money you save on upkeep into developing ports, resources and farms.

Another strategy is to let the other clans develop their provinces somewhat before you invade. If you let then improve the roads, do a farm upgrade, etc. and then you take the area, you gain then increased income but saved anywhere from 850 to 3,000 koku in construction.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Also, sometimes conquering is not as cost effective as peace.

If a clan is down to 1 province, and you siege it, you can usually get them to make peace for a good sum.

Say a good province has 2400 wealth. At 30% that is 7,200 koku income over 10 turns if you captured it.

But if you siege it and ask for peace, you may get 10 - 20,000 koku for the deal.

Even waiting 10 turns before you attack again (so you don't incur diplomatic penalties), that works out to an effective increase of 2 - 12,000 extra koku in your pocket than you would have got just taking the place right away.

Plus, you get it all at once, so you have 10 turns worth of opportunity cost benefit versus taxing the place yourself.

Then you add the aforesaid thing of the AI developing the province in the intrim, giving you another effective 1,000+ koku worth of value when you do taken the province.

If you combine that with saving some money on upkeep by bribing the enemy stack away, that adds even more. Say even only 10 units of ash go over to you: at 92 koku a turn that's 920 for at least 2 turns, and realistically much more (to get to his castle and fight), so you save thousands more koku.

So you can save literally tens of thousands of koku by bringing a clan to heel, stopping the war, and then waiting a bit to take them compeltey out, versus just rushing in at the first opportunity.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by molithegreat:

jhgfd

I'm an "older Millenial," so do you mind explaining what that means? 😆

[rory.b.p]

As mentioned selling millitary access (although be cautious with this on higher difficulties) is a good way to make a quick buck but you don't actually need to upgrade to a trade port, just build a standard bow koboya from a port and sit one on each node as a place holder, especially as the shimazu or mori because there are ports nearby that are 99 times out of 100 already upgraded to trade port when you capture them in the first 10 or so turns so.

I have a suspicion your issue is army composition and rate of expansion.
It varies massively from clan to clan but as the shimazu just bum rush ashigaru expansion till you hold kyushu, early game this may be tedious as you should manually fight most battles manually to minimise casualties.

Although Shimazu Katana samurai are strong, the upkeep isnt worth it early game, spam ashigaru instead.
Once you control Kyushu you might consider going christian, nanban trade ships will effectively lock down your control of trade nodes even in RD without much need for a large navy and you will now be using Katana samurai in your army comp and they will wreck face everywhere.
Use missionaries to cause christian revolts on the main land, allowing you to expand without having to declare war and just breeze through the rest of the campaign till RD is triggered.

[Centur1on01]

I don't think so. The game has a historical reenactment aspect to it as well. Total War: Attilla has the Western Empire disintegrate for newer players...

[easytarget]

You should consider quoting who you're responding to, I've no idea what you're saying "I don't think so" about.

[Centur1on01]

Originally posted by easytarget:

You should consider quoting who you're responding to, I've no idea what you're saying "I don't think so" about.

OP

[Tarkov WIPE!]

Well son ur weak :D And on normal :DDD Good luck Discovering LEGENDARY Dificulty! "Mommy mommy help meh ;_; they are cheating!" :P Seriously now, research, learn, improve and enjoy. Youtube got some masters to teach you how...

[Tarkov WIPE!]

Back in the days all them games were hardcore... I u like it easy go play LEGO :D They dont fight back!

[eurician]

Very Helpful Skut, cause we never started and were all Pros from the very beginning...