Realm divide is impossible and frustrating

[Paulogbfs]

I mean, seriously, how should i deal with a coalition of 5 clans diarrheaing high-ranked agents everywhere (killing my generals, my agents,etc) and spamming full stacks of armies all over my provinces?

This is my first campaign after the tutorial, and i chose Shimazu , normal difficulty, long campaign which i'm currently on turn 161 (with 23 provinces). I'm afraid i dont have much time left to take kyoto and more 17 provinces.

I have a top army just next to kyoto, but i know that as soon as i attack kyoto 4 stacks of armies from different clans will spam from nowhere to conquer the province which my army just left. This is borderline ridiculous.

HELP, I DO NOT WANNA WASTE 50 HRS OF CAMPAIGN FOR NOTHING! lol

[Lore]

only thing you can do is, start over again and use mods to change somethings:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?519382-Yarkis-Reduced-AI-Cheating-Mod

which reduces the excessive use of super class armies, and finding a mod that reduces or removes the realm divide event which i think you can find in the workshop here.

for the site above you'll need to register an account to get it

as for the agents everwyehre, sadly there the ai doesnt cheat, they probably have buildings like a maxed out sake den on a province with the ninja fortress, and law court with a kabunkana for maxed out metsukes, and so on and so fort.

[easytarget]

You do not have to use mods to defeat realm divide.

And there's no waste in enjoying 50 hours in your campaign, victory or defeat should not change that. This is your first campaign, you've no doubt learned much. Should your current campaign not result in victory, start a new one. This time plan for realm divide. You should anticipate that in your drive to become Shogun you will with every step that brings you closer to your goal meet wtih greater and greater resistance, no one but you and your clan benefits from you becoming Shogun, everyone else loses power as a result. Did you expect they'd gladly hand it to you?

Return to this thread, I and others can help you navigate to a victory, if not in this campaign then in the next.

I don't recall what 161 turns equates to, I've not played S2 in awhile, what year is it?

[Paulogbfs]

If i am not mistaken , more or less 1585

[sarah]

The AI did have agent cheats in the past so I wouldn't be surprised if they have them in Shogun 2 as well. The unit replacing cheat is highly annoying though and tends to give the game more of an arcade feel than anything realistic.

Realm Divide is just one of those things you should be preparing for from the beginning...though they don't exactly warn you about it. Have at least one strong ally, lots of high ranked agents, and castles guarding your borders. Keep track of your fame...and if it hits around 75 percent full then you need to be really careful about land grabbing further, because the Shogunate will get unhappy and decide to have you exterminated.

[.DuKe.]

The trick is to be preperado to Realm Divided, it is inevitable (not without mods).

Some things you must remember about RD:
- your allies WILL betray you, it is just a matter of when, even vassals.
- vassals stablished after RD started will rebel very quickly.
- by end game, there should be at least one big AI faction, and it will be your main threat.
- when RD starts, at least one army loyal to the shogun spawns near Kyoto.

RD is triggered by holding provinces (I don't remember how many), so when your fame bar is almost full, slow down your expantion. Secure your borders and upgrade your markets, if you spend some turns upgrading your economy you'll be able to field extra armies for the final battle. Capture only essential territories (like gold mines or smiths), and you can use your tax manegement to force one of your provinces to rebel and the you can get another more important province without triggering RD (watch out not to allow a new clan to rise, it can become a threat).

You can still do a lot of damage with monks. Use monks to spread rebellions among enemy/neutral provinces to weaken them before the final war. The best part of it is that, since you don't capture anything, RD is not triggered.

When you are about to capture the your last province to start RD, make sure you have your armies placed in strategic positions (don't forget to put navies near your trade ports or the enemy's trade ports). Make sure your ninjas are ready to cripple the enemy's advance.

When you take the last settlement and trigger RD, don't create any other vassal, and don't sack any town. You must make sure your daymio have max honor, so it is easy to control captured cities in a moment when you will not be able to garrison large forces for a long time to subdue the population (you'll have too many battles to fight to spare counter-riot armies).

Last but not least, RD is a all-in bet. Peace treats will never last, so either you destroy an enemy, or it will come back to destroy you. And everybody is your enemy.

[easytarget]

Originally posted by choksquaker:

If i am not mistaken , more or less 1585

It won't be easy in the amount of time you have left. It's not that 15 years isn't a decent amount of time, it's more than you've not prepared for what you are in the midst of now and once in the middle of it there's really no way to prep for what RD throws at you, which effecitvely becomes every clan left in the game coming after you.

The above description outlines how to handle it, basically you capture provinces to form a large enough scaled empire to sustain turtling at the point where your fame is about to trigger RD, so you can collect the funds and army necessary to conquer the rest of Japan (or the number of provinces necesary to win). Not unlike the sort of planning a real Clan leader would take upon themselves if they hoped to pull off securing the Shogunate.

[Kalon]

Having beat the game on very hard difficulty I can assure you that realm divide IS possible.
I dealt with it by having a few badass grand armies of my own, and badass daimyo and by letting the game throw itself piecemeal at me.
I had a rank 6 ninja assassin master that killed any general over 2 stars and the rest were all rank 4 or 5. I could sabatoge every incoming army and send everything I had to dismantel them piecemeal. Or I would allow one grand army to come lay siege to Kyoto so I could crush them entireley then counter strike and steal their province. I also had a geisha but she got imprisoned and executed. Being the first to build the legendary mizu shobai district gives a flat +5% to ninja actions!
I played Date so I mostly used No-Dachi and Katana Samurai, with ashigaru bows, and a sprinkling of Kisho Ninja.
I had concquered most of north japan (mostly stolen territory from Takeda by using monks to incite rebellions then snagging the territory from rebels) but had Hojo and imagawa as allies. When realm divide hit I knew they would betray me soon, so I made sure to fight defensively around Owari/Omi (You can CRUSH many armies many times your side if you are defending a large castle) while one grand army marched along the western shore (taking the Ikko Provinces) and another large army marched along the eastern coast crushing Hojo (backstabbed him first) and then crushing imagawa when his inevitable betrayal came. Then all armies converged on Kyoto and then pushed past Kyoto...but then I won cause I held Kyoto for a year.
My victory was entirely due to ninja and sabatoge, and to a lesser extent forcing the computer to fight uphill battles (ie sieging Kyoto) that always ended in crushing defeats for him.
Bear in mind that I knew I was one province capture away from realm divide (look at your fame bar) so I made peace with everyone and built up my infrastructure so that I had terrifying might and spectacular prosperity. THEN I struck like f*ing tsunami.
Realm divide is the only thing that stopped me from steam rolling the whole game. Its an awesome game mechanic. Seriously, this game would be STUPID easy without it.

[PistolChimp]

Regarding allies, they don't automatically turn on you, your relationship score takes a initial hit and then contines to degrade. If it starts high enough, they may not turn. On normal, I've maintained alliances until the end. However, the only way to get a massive bump in relationship scores is to marry into the clan. If you can do this right before realm divide, it can buy you alot of time.

Time wise, that's gonna be difficult in a long campaign for a first timer, especially if you weren't set up for realm divide. I like to trigger it around 1570-1575.

One last thing: if you can, wait until all of the little factions are gone. It's harder to fight ten clans than two large ones.

[sarah]

I think the degrade rate is 40 a turn...so if you're wealthy you can throw lots of money every turn at allies to keep them from turning. I would rather be putting that money into soldiers and agents though, so I never bother trying keep allies after RD. It's a pretty awful mechanic to put in the game and wasn't very well thought out. While combat is fun, I also like diplomacy, trading, etc....and after RD you can forget about doing pretty much anything but grinding battle after battle.

[Kalon]

Realm divide hits every clan as a steady -5 relationship per turn in my experience. Now normally your allies turn on you because you are conquering territory AND experiencing RD. So it is possible to trigger realm divide and hold your alliances for a long time, but they WILL turn on you given enough time.
RD is actually genius, because the game is easy without it. If you played the original shogun then you know that there comes a threshold where you know you have already won, and it will just be a matter of time before you grind all your opponents into dust. THATS why they put in a time limit, and THATS why they put in realm divide. Basically they ensure every game ends in a climax rather than a slow decent into madness.
Also, RD does NOT invalidate diplomacy or trading. My understanding is that Clans that come back after realm divide do not suffer realm divide. I have had realm divide in full swing and realized that I couldn't hold territory but I COULD ran past the enemy grand army, conquering and creating vassals all the way. They did not have any realm divide negatives.

[Cron]

I have question considering realm divide. I have just lost legendary campaign as Hattori because it has happened at around 45 turn. The problem is I had only 13 provinces at this time. My strong vassal had ~5 (does it count?). I have noticed that after losing province and then taking it back the yellow bar is progressing.
Can anyone tell me what exactly affects fame and by how much? (I mean exact numbers) Certainly it is not only provinces held.

[PistolChimp]

Yes, vassals count.

[Koranis]

I hear you, RD is a real pain. CA craft beautiful games and Shogun 2 in particular is an elegant strategy game, one of their best. But in their every game they put a single feature that ruins the fun for many players. Furthermore they refuse to fix it and transfer it from game to game - most probably because some genius hardcoded it in the first place. In Rome total war it was a spam of rebellious troops, in Medieval the pope going crazy, Empire had.... bugs... and no family tree (but is still my favourite), while Shogun 2 has Realm Divide thing. The good thing is that Shogun 2 is mostly perfect and RD can be modded.

Curiously they kept it up with "awful features" and filled Rome 2 Total War with them. I just hope they stop, for God' sake, before they make Empire 2.

[VoiD]

-Upgrade your farms before RD hits
-Get all the trade nodes you can
-Try to build up relations with a strong clan from the beginning, they will betray you but they might eat most of your enemy's armies before they do that.
-Establish lots of vassals AFTER RD hits, vassals established after RD won't get the penalty and you can use them as trade partners to sell the goods you're getting from the nodes giving you a huge income, plus they can conquer ♥♥♥♥ on their own and help you win directly.
-Have 2 strong fleets, one on each side of the mainland guarding your lands from enemy navies and surprise drops

RD is fairly easy really and I played Darthmod where it's really nerfed (as in allies stick with you) and I ended up giving up on that game, there was no challenge, it's a big stone wall for your first playthrough and it will make you hate the game for a while but after that it's no big deal really.

Besides if you control almost half of japan it's only natural that the other half would try to stop you.

Oh and the capital doesn't follow the same rules as the other clans, which makes sense, they are the bosses, probably take/took a heap of the income of every clan in japan, it's supposed to be the game's "last boss".

[Paulogbfs]

I thank you all whom took your time to post here.

Well, guess what? More problems for my list!
In the beginning of my campaign, due to fact i conquered lots of Otomo provinces, i was forced to convert to christianism as "religion unhappiness' rebels were bothering a LOT.
Now, after i wiped Otomo out and triggered RD, the remaining provinces are all buddhists.
Summing up, each conquer must be carefully considered due to the nasty -5 religion penalty. I must garrison agents and few troops everywhere. Like all my problems weren't enough!

Oh, i forgot to ask: what will happen if i take Kyoto? i am on the verge of take it. I have 2 army stacks - one with 2 european cannons- ready to attack the city. I hope i make it.