Win on Easy. Lose on Normal.

[Jackie Daytona]

After years of trying to beat the game on "normal", I decided to try to playthrough on "easy". Within two days, I managed to clear the base campaign with Chosokabe.

Afterwards, i decide to play on "normal" again. I got massacred.

The difference in difficulty is huge. I can't understand it at all.

On easy, nearly every battle was the same. My archers would form a line in front of my troops. On defense, they killed anything that approached. Yari and horsemen would take out anything that managed to get too close. On attack, the archers would slowly advance. Killing everything in range. While the enemy just died helplessly.

On normal, none of that works. The enemy targets my archer units one-by-one. They launch 2-3 volleys, the targeted unit suffers morale break, and then runs away. My archers deal almost no damage compared to my enemies. All run away after a couple minutes.

I reloaded and attempted the same battle differently. This time, I focused on storming the gates. That didn't work either. Units sent were focus-fired, lost morale, and ran. The few that remained were destroyed on entry by tons of mounted units, yaris, and katanas.

Then intended counters do not work. Move up general to keep archers within his influence range? They still break and run. Apply rally ability? They still break and run. Have twice as many archers as opponent? They still break and run.

On easy, everything goes my way. On normal, nothing does. Ever. It's a constantly up-hill climb against impossible odds.

I tried Shimazu. Takes nearly 4 years to defeat the Ito. By this time, the other clan on Kyushu has a max stack of troops. I try to match this. It's impossible. I literally don't have enough income to support that many troops. I try to fight them anyway. I lose big. Nearly all my troops die. On their turn, they chase down my generals and remaining troops. They kill them. Ending my game.

It's the same story for me in other Total War games. Without dumbing down the difficulty, I have no chance at all. Sometimes i'm lucky enough to get the ball rolling. Doesn't matter. Eventually several factions all decide to come at me together. Then my game ends.

[odis]

its because your bad

[BastardSword]

Never attack a castle unless you can auto-resolve with few casualties. Attacking a castle is really tedious and also the troops inside get massive advantages like unbreakable morale and being able to shoot arrows down from the safety of the walls. Instead besiege a castle and wait for the AI to sally out and attack you in an open field battle. All those advantages are gone.

It is always a good idea to fight a castle defense because of those advantages. It can be really useful early on in a campaign to park your main army in a frontier castle and bait the enemy into attacking you with their best army. You can win easily if you know what you're doing and greatly weaken that clan.

As for open-field battles, in general just copy what the AI does. Put bows in front, yari ashigaru in spear wall behind them, then samurai behind the yari ashigaru. (I prefer katana samurai in the early game because of their high attack, and they are also really useful if you need to defend a castle) I put my general in the back and cavalry at the sides ready to flank attack enemy bows or cavalry.

If the AI is charging their army at you, just let your bows pelt the enemy, then pull the bows back behind the yari ashigaru wall. Let the enemy impale themselves on the yari wall, then charge in your samurai to finish them off. Now give your bows a direct fire order to shoot at the enemy general. Kill the general and his troops will crumble.

If the AI is just sitting on the map waiting for you to attack, you need to kill their bows. Put your own bows in loose formation and have them target the enemy bows one by one, then the AI melee units will probably charge in. If you are really strong or if your melee units have a lot of armor, you can send in your yari ashigaru with spear wall on and have them move into and beyond the enemy bows, crushing them to death carpet-style.

[BastardSword]

Those are battle tactics. Now for strategy.

First thing to do is to get a full stack. Second thing to do is to get a second full stack so that you can defend against multiple invasions. Obviously this requires money. Start putting markets in all non-military provinces and putting metsukes with town management skills into your richest towns. Get a horse province so everyone wants to trade with you. Build up farms, roads and trade ports. If you are Shimazu, build an armorsmith early on so your troops have extra defense.

As for research tech, this is what I usually do in the early game:

1 way of chi (to get markets and metsukes)
2 bushido
3 strategy of attack
4 Way of the bow
5 strategy of defense
6 Heaven and Earth (can build useful armories, bows get more ammo and replenishment rate goes up)
7 Zen (+1 happiness, and monks)
8 Todofuken (roads)
9 Equal Fields (upgraded farms)

After this I usually go for Calligraphy so I can build confucian academies for faster research speed and so other clans don't hate me so much. Then I go for Chonindo for maxed out farms and max accuracy bows. After that you'll probably be ready to finish the game and you should be making plenty of money.

[bkkm12]

Use a agent and walk around the map, if you see enemy agent. Kill them.
Go every clan and ask for trade. Meanwhile, if they are willing to trade, ask them money. Try 200, 400, and move up. Until if they are not willing to give you.
In term of Military skills, it is very hard to explain to you. Check out my previous post that talks about tactics. Watch other ppl play online.

Hopefully it helps, good luck.

[Eddie G]

Don't worry about it, just keep playing. It took me a long time to beat the game on hard, and I just kept trying. Normal was difficult for me at first too, now I am beating the game on very hard. I have a ton of hours for this reason, I'm talking years of trying to beat the game on hard. Someone said it's because you are bad, don't listen to him, he is just a little punk ass. Keep at it, listen to what people say that can beat the game, and if you have to watch some video guides. The best teacher for some people is simply trial and error. I think it's hilarious when someone posts a thread like this, and everyone tells you how they do it. I am not going to do that. I don't think it's effective and it makes them sound like a blow hard.

[Sn3z]

I would avoid attacking an AI army with bow ashigaru units, these are just terrible in this scenario, you be looking at high causalities, if you want to do field battle's you either get bow samurai(screened by some bow ashigaru units) or you make a full rushed based army ashigaru(you can use yari wall once your close to the AI),katana's/yari samurai and light cavalry to swarm the AI, this gets you out of the rat race of skirmishing with AI but the disadvanatges to this kind of army its limting when attacking in seiges, you can also ambush with this types of army and its very effective.

*With Shimazu go temples+monk and put taxes to high(the temple and tech goves +2 so you need I think another +2 to cancel out -4 happiness universally(stay on that tax to muster more units on) this should be enough to conquer Kyushu assuming things go your way, once the island is taken you can go to trade, but invest first into actual fleet that can protect your trade port/lane/s and then build a trade fleet.(Its your common n00blington trap)

[Mogross]

i never noticed the battles being any different on higher difficulties

[Red Spot]

Originally posted by Mogorsssssssssssss:

i never noticed the battles being any different on higher difficulties

The AI does not change because of some pre-game setting. The bonus' they receive do. Iirc on normal the player is still the one with a minor bonus applied, easy lot of bonus and from hard and above it is the AI that gets the bonus.
That is basically what OP is experiencing. That his equal units can slaughter the AI on easy, but no longer can pull that off on normal since now you are equal on the battlefield.

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by BastardSword:

Never attack a castle unless you can auto-resolve with few casualties.

I guess you missed the part where I said it was "literally impossible" to build up that many troops as Shimazu in the base campaign.

Originally posted by BastardSword:

Instead besiege a castle and wait for the AI to sally out and attack you in an open field battle. All those advantages are gone.

There's not enough time to conquer all the required provinces and starve out every opponent. At least, not by the time the game ends.

Originally posted by BastardSword:

It can be really useful early on in a campaign to park your main army in a frontier castle and bait the enemy into attacking you with their best army.

What game are you playing? This never happens. They will always hit me where I'm least defended. Never my biggest castle with a ton of troops. Does not happen. Ever.

Originally posted by BastardSword:

As for open-field battles, in general just copy what the AI does. Put bows in front, yari ashigaru in spear wall behind them, then samurai behind the yari ashigaru. (I prefer katana samurai in the early game because of their high attack, and they are also really useful if you need to defend a castle) I put my general in the back and cavalry at the sides ready to flank attack enemy bows or cavalry.

I get the feeling you didn't read my post. Instead, it seems you just copy/pasted advice you give to everyone. You're only telling me things I already know.

Originally posted by BastardSword:

If the AI is just sitting on the map waiting for you to attack, you need to kill their bows. Put your own bows in loose formation and have them target the enemy bows one by one, then the AI melee units will probably charge in. If you are really strong or if your melee units have a lot of armor, you can send in your yari ashigaru with spear wall on and have them move into and beyond the enemy bows, crushing them to death carpet-style.

Not sure how that's supposed to work when the AI seems to deal more damage and take less than the exact same units I have.

Originally posted by BastardSword:

First thing to do is to get a full stack. Second thing to do is to get a second full stack so that you can defend against multiple invasions. Obviously this requires money. Start putting markets in all non-military provinces and putting metsukes with town management skills into your richest towns. Get a horse province so everyone wants to trade with you. Build up farms, roads and trade ports. If you are Shimazu, build an armorsmith early on so your troops have extra defense.

I can't just sit there and build up my economy. The game won't let me do that. Every turn the AI builds more troops. The longer I wait? The more troops there will be.

I'll never take down the Ito if I build up the economy of my first province. Soon or later they'll march in and kill everyone.

All the advice I've read is like yours. It sounds great. Seems logical. None of it actually works in the game, though. All roads lead to losing.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Except people have won very hard and legendary campaigns like that so..... If struggling on normal there's clearly a bigger underlying issue and not wrong advice.
It's easy to beat larger armies even on higher difficulties. You don't need to match 1:1 units.

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by bkkm12:

Use a agent and walk around the map, if you see enemy agent. Kill them.

That is sure to make a good portion of Japan angry at me.

Originally posted by bkkm12:

Go every clan and ask for trade. Meanwhile, if they are willing to trade, ask them money. Try 200, 400, and move up. Until if they are not willing to give you.

Not sure how that really does anything. That's a really small amount.

Originally posted by bkkm12:

In term of Military skills, it is very hard to explain to you. Check out my previous post that talks about tactics.

Looked at your previous post. Doesn't apply to me at all.

Looked through your post history. Can't find what you are talking about.

Originally posted by bkkm12:

Watch other ppl play online.

Every time I have a problem with a game people say this. It never helps.

Watching other people crush the same game is frustrating. I try to do things the exact same way the streamers do them. The results are always different, for me.

Like PUBG. I've watched hours upon hours of pros play. Hasn't made me any better. No matter how much I emulate their behavior, there's no positive result. I do exactly what they do. They win 4/5 games. I lose 99.9% of games.

Also, Twitch has never worked properly on this computer. My internet is really fast. There should be no problem. Yet it constantly stops to buffer. I've changed settings. I've changed browsers. Nothing works.

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by Eddie G:

Don't worry about it, just keep playing. It took me a long time to beat the game on hard, and I just kept trying. Normal was difficult for me at first too, now I am beating the game on very hard. I have a ton of hours for this reason, I'm talking years of trying to beat the game on hard.

I think I'm done playing. I'm applying my maximum ability, a ton of time, all my intelligence, and 30+ years of gaming knowledge. I can't get anywhere.

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Except people have won very hard and legendary campaigns like that so..... If struggling on normal there's clearly a bigger underlying issue and not wrong advice.
It's easy to beat larger armies even on higher difficulties. You don't need to match 1:1 units.

If it was that easy? I'd be winning. Not making forum posts about it.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Well, unless you want to post videos or screenshots of stuff going mysteriously wrong, the advice people gave you is general and applicable in the majority of situations and is the most they can do.

[BastardSword]

OP: why can't I win the game
BS: here's how the game works
OP: that's not how the game works, your advice sucks
BS: yes it is actually how the game works, I've played the game for 10 years. No more advice if you're going to be a jerk.

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by Jackie Daytona:

Originally posted by Eddie G:

Don't worry about it, just keep playing. It took me a long time to beat the game on hard, and I just kept trying. Normal was difficult for me at first too, now I am beating the game on very hard. I have a ton of hours for this reason, I'm talking years of trying to beat the game on hard.

I think I'm done playing. I'm applying my maximum ability, a ton of time, all my intelligence, and 30+ years of gaming knowledge. I can't get anywhere.

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Except people have won very hard and legendary campaigns like that so..... If struggling on normal there's clearly a bigger underlying issue and not wrong advice.
It's easy to beat larger armies even on higher difficulties. You don't need to match 1:1 units.

If it was that easy? I'd be winning. Not making forum posts about it.

Also if a town has 500+ town wealth but say barren/meager or balacned fertility that can be equivalent to producing up to what a fertile/very fertile province does and can be made to eventually be even better a great example would be Musashi which is a great province put a metsuke in these they are deceiving provinces and grow them up, its a prime location for market and rice exhange if your staying on normal or high tax, and venturing into low.

Also another tip I think is to beat Ito and peace out with them and concentrate on Sagara.

Don't upgrade balacksmith +1+1 is better overall

Treat Osumi has expendable(build a market to recruit a mestuke then demolish,build stables for cavalry recruitment then demolish, build sake for ninja then demolish etc...
Make no investment into this provicnes whilst your fighting Ito its garbage.

Recruitment some Katana's at the start, they will tear ashigaru a new one in defensive seiges and in battle oustide of yari wall.

Ito like to make a nice noob camp at the bridge north of Osumi you can catch them out there. Try to get peace and make them give you woman.