Rise of the Samurai: battlefield tactics during campaign?

[VCR]

Recently acquired this, in my opinion a little gem of an addition to Shogun 2, and I'm really enjoying it: the historical period it's set in is a refreshing change of perspective from the warring states period (and the enthusiasm and historical knowledge from the people on here is great to read).

I haven't found too much content or general discussion concerning RotS on here, I just wondered if those veteran players or enthusiasts for RotS have any useful hints/tips for general battle tactics and unit choices etc for the single player campaign. I'm just getting a feel for the game through the mastery of the arts and their effects, the different building/provincial development paths etc, and any pointers would be great!

[easytarget]

I've played this one a number of times and I really like it. It's often overlooked as it's a bit more subtle and requires a bit more patience to handle properly.

Early on you basically recruit whatever you can afford, which isn't much. The early goal is to find a way to expand your province base sufficiently to scale the economy so you can afford to flesh out a stack to put to use.

The basic outline of the campaign is a three way civil war and you'd do well to set your strategy accordingly because simply attacking the map early to paint it your color ignoring this fact will result in fairly quick disaster.

To that end I tend to think in terms of expansion that will be at the expense of the other two sets of clans (i.e. i'm red, then we're tacitly at war or preparing for war with blue and green).

You don't want to start wars though with them too early, you're just not ready early on. So I use Junsatsushi to flip provinces to my allegiance. Make a point of recruiting them early, make a point of recruiting more than one as their allegiance conversion stacks.

This has some decent info in it you might want to look at for reference:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=608745429

Oh, one thing further on units, basically you muddle along with whatever you can patch together and play things a bit cautiously until you can get foot samurai and naginata attendants at which point you can roll over anything you encounter. Or at least that's how I handle things because frankly I'm just not that great at RTS management in TW titles, I get by. So my solution is either superior numbers early with low level recruits or later high level units and fewer of them. If you're good at handling tactical battles you can probably not worry about this as much as I do.

P.S. don't be surprised if you don't get a lot of responses about ROTS, it's not played that much, pity that, it's really rather brilliant.

[VCR]

Cheers man, tbh I've had Shogun 2 since 2011, my most recent TW title being Atilla! I generally rotate through the older titles, esp Empire/Napoleon. My original Shogun 1 CD is lost!

I'm at a loss to explain why Shogun 2 didn't get as much of my attention as I would have liked, but RotS has now got me hooked. I'd looked into both expansions for some time and actually picked it over Fall. As fascinating as the Boshin War era is to learn about, Genpei/Gempei caught my attention.

So thanks a lot for your help, I've been poring over it and the guide recommendation: this should get things rolling!

[easytarget]

Sounds good man, glad you've circled back to take a look. I've always liked this one, it has unique game mechanics, a nice map, an intriguing starting campaign setting of a three way civil war. It's good stuff.

Look forward if you find a moment to hear what you think once you dive in further.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by VCR:

Recently acquired this, in my opinion a little gem of an addition to Shogun 2, and I'm really enjoying it: the historical period it's set in is a refreshing change of perspective from the warring states period (and the enthusiasm and historical knowledge from the people on here is great to read).

I haven't found too much content or general discussion concerning RotS on here, I just wondered if those veteran players or enthusiasts for RotS have any useful hints/tips for general battle tactics and unit choices etc for the single player campaign. I'm just getting a feel for the game through the mastery of the arts and their effects, the different building/provincial development paths etc, and any pointers would be great!

One of the more important things with RotS, imo, is you have to use the junsutsushi agents to acquire provinces.

Even if you take a province by conquest, it's very important to make sure your faction's allegiance has been built up.

As Easy Target warned, if you try to go for early expansion by conquering, you'll very likely end up in a losing situation.

[VCR]

Originally posted by easytarget:

Sounds good man, glad you've circled back to take a look. I've always liked this one, it has unique game mechanics, a nice map, an intriguing starting campaign setting of a three way civil war. It's good stuff.

Look forward if you find a moment to hear what you think once you dive in further.

I'll give it a proper run through, soon as, and post some thoughts! Earlier tries with the campaign in days past (I'm not amazing at RTS either so stop/started new campaigns to learn it etc, etc) saw some satisfying hillside battles with the naginata. Good stuff 👍

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

One of the more important things with RotS, imo, is you have to use the junsutsushi agents to acquire provinces.

Even if you take a province by conquest, it's very important to make sure your faction's allegiance has been built up.

As Easy Target warned, if you try to go for early expansion by conquering, you'll very likely end up in a losing situation.

Duly noted! I've quickly learned how they tear down rival clans' influence, and how unhappy a province gets if your clan has no influence there at all, so thanks!

[BastardSword]

Using a lot of foot samurai worked for me.

[VCR]

Well I've given it a good so far, "normal" mode only (I'll get better over time I'm sure). Absolutely loving it!

The smaller variation of units that I've read that annoyed a lot of people, I'm fine with: I don't feel so much overwhelmed at this stage with deciding what units to pick. I'd also read that some people fielded full stacks of foot samurai because they were normally successful, but eventually the same players would tire of fielding them ALL the time (which I do understand, especially as I presume they are playing on the hardest setting and so need sure-win armies to beat the game).

However I'm quite liking the variation of the armies I'm managing to put together. This different dynamic of how the units function compared with the base game (and samurai being used differently) is refreshing. I'm on the way to losing this campaign (1195 already and nowhere near the 40 province requirement) but I'll give it a run through anyway.

One final thing I did notice, I'm unsure if it's down to difficulty setting, or just hard luck...a levelled up junsatsushi who I tailored to be effective at gaining allegiance failed three successive 95% actions on a single-province only clan...also, playing as the Taira, trying to mop up the surrounding single-province clans around me by this method took far too long, and it put me on the back foot by mid game compared with the bigger AI factions. It would have been quicker to just march an army in and annex the province. Lesson learned.

[easytarget]

Thanks for circling back with a sort of AAR, sounds like you enjoyed the campaign.

It does remind me to mention, the time constraint on this one is pretty tight, so you do need to get about it when it comes to making the deadline.

This for me at least usually meant I started out slow and then mid to late campaign ran to the finish.

[VCR]

Originally posted by easytarget:

Thanks for circling back with a sort of AAR, sounds like you enjoyed the campaign.

It does remind me to mention, the time constraint on this one is pretty tight, so you do need to get about it when it comes to making the deadline.

This for me at least usually meant I started out slow and then mid to late campaign ran to the finish.

I've certainly felt that now, with the shorter time frame. I'll have to develop that skill of building a good economy to support what I can only imagine should be a really aggressive play style to rack up those 40 provinces, plus objective provinces, in that time.

Cheers for your help and advice again earlier, much appreciated!