Legendary Tips?

[Axius]

I just completed the single player campaign on very hard with the Shimazu clan. Does anyone have any tips for me before I move onto legendary? Or can tell me what to expect?

[rory.b.p]

Legendary for all intensive purposes is just Very Hard Ironman, in other words as long as you weren't save scumming then Legendary will be near identical difficulty to VH.
I suppose the only other warning would be that the Shimazu are quite an easy clan to win any campaign with if not the easiest so I wouldn't go jumping into a Hattori Legendary anytime soon.
May go for a Shimazu Legendary or try a harder clan on Very Hard.

[Axius]

Wait, how often can you save in Legendary?

[Axius]

Never mind that question. Anyone else have tips for legendary?

[Ar373]

In legendary you can't rely on diplomacy at all (everyone will backstab and hate you all the time for no apparent reason), you can't save and the enemy will throw an endless (no exaggeration) wave of full stacks at you. My advise is: pick Chosokabe, mass elite archers and grind the stacks down in defense siege battles with your archers while you build up your economy (you need as much income out of each province as possible because you need strong garrisons and surpluses for an offensive army) and xp for your troops. Then expand slowly after you defeat a wave of stacks and see an opportunity. But never overextend, they keep coming from everywhere all the time.

[Axius]

Really? Even if you stay buddhist, have at least 3 honor, and are relatively peaceful after taking 8 territories?

[Ready. Steady. Fighty.]

My biggest tip is too secure the trade nodes and protect them with a decent navy. This will be a huge chunk of your economy. You also need navy stacks protecting your ports as AI likes to send bow kaboyas and an ocasional stack to blockade your ports. I usually run a stack of 4 Medium Bunes, 2 Sengoku Bunes and 2 bow Kaboyas.

You want to be well prepared for the RD. I usually capture all of Kyushu and concentrate on building my economy and research. I research the technology that allows for the Land Consolidation and the bow upgrades and then the encampment tech. This allows me to build max accuracy Sams at Buzen and Max Armor at Satsuma. With Shimazu, concentrate on building Katana Sams for melee.

While you wait you might want to farm rebellions with your daimyo and general while you wait for research.

[Axius]

I've done the same in all of my Shimazu play throughs. However, in navy, I typically get maybe a medium bune or two and let it snowball. Is that no longer a viable strategy?

[LSD]

Building a navy is insta-mega-cash, but comes with a downside: you have to fight multiple naval battles each turn to maintain that money. I mean at least 3, sometimes as many as 6.
And the naval AI is terrrrrrrrrrrrible. It doesn't even function. You sail out to their stationary ships, get into range, and they retreat to the map boundaries and get stuck. Over and over and over again.
If you don't fight them, they'll just blockade your ports and you won't get that sweet cash.
You can easily strike down their navies with one fleet, especially if you have siege tower bunes and/or a single bomb ship. It's just the tedium of fighting these pointless battles all the time...

As for archers: never played Choso, but with the AI bonuses, archers are completely useless on legendary. You need to hugely outnumber enemy archers to beat them in ranged duels. You're better off having infantry who can rush them in melee.

And yes, everyone will hate you. 3 honour is painfully low, you want max honour. Just spam a few vassals (who'll eventually betray you). The reason being that you'll need the bonus happiness from honour to maintain high happiness.

[Axius]

Alright. I also found in my last game that when my Daimyo died (he had 4 honor, with one of them from the art), his son has 5 honor. Is that typical?

[Ar373]

@LSD: No idea what you are talking about, but I beat the campaign on legendary and my archers killed thousands every siege battle (as attacker and defender) with minimal losses.

[Axius]

What archers were you using? Exceptional accuracy bow samurai?

[Ar373]

They had superior range. I think it was the chosokabe dakyu samurai, it has been a while that I played the campaign.

[Axius]

Wouldn't that be a hero unit?

[LSD]

Originally posted by Kehsct:

Wouldn't that be a hero unit?

They're from the Sengoku Jidai pack. Pretty much buffed standard archers. Their bonus range is what does it for them. They can get a bunch of shots off before AI archers can get into range.

In general though, a max upgraded veteran Bow Sam will lose every time to a standard AI Bow Sam on legendary. You need 3:1 odds to beat them without crippling losses.