3 Beginner Questions

[Nemphtis]

Hi, I’m a beginner to this game and have some questions I need answered to get the most out of the experience. I hope you guys will be able to help me with these. I actually posted here a while back it seems and my post is still on the first page pf this forum, so I might have to wait a month before I get any replies lol.

How do districts and their facilities work?

I can’t figure out how to prioritise which facilities should be built at which castle, so at the moment I just build whatever increases population growth or gold income if the former isn’t an option. I often see descriptions that say “makes adjacent districts suitable for X”, and I’m not entirely sure what that means or how I can benefit from it.

How should I be playing the combat portions?

I played through the tutorial scenario. All it really taught me about combat is flanking, charging and muskets. I want to make the combat more enjoyable for myself, and to do this I need to understand how it should be played, especially for when I want to play on normal difficult settings later on.

I don’t even have access to muskets yet in my current session, does that mean charging with my horses can’t be countered by enemies and I should just abuse this before the opponent does? All I do thus far in fights is attack head on with one unit, flank with another assuming it’s two on one, and both sides just spam whatever combat ability we have.

If there isn’t much more depth to the battles, I would prefer to just auto resolve them to avoid the disappointment. Just curious if that’s viable in this game, as I know in some strategy games auto resolving favours the AI so sometimes it’s best to take manual control of battles.

Is following the scenario questline worth the trouble?

This is my first Tecmo Koei strategy game and I’m currently playing the first Oda campaign after the tutorial on easy settings. I’m trying to follow the quests it gives me and it’s actually a pretty cool feature I’m enjoying. However, judging by some guides I’ve seen it looks like it’s surprisingly easy for the questline to break, so is it worth it?

[Delacourt '27]

Population > food > gold is my build order, which means Noh building chain, Orchard chain, and Rice market are my first buildings, except for the 3 slots fortress, then I go for the first building chain for 3 types, unless there is a resource building available.

Buildings that boost X are not worth it except, Fishery and Gardens in cities will give you loads of soldiers. Fishery in 3 slots fortress, not worth it.

As for combat, I let it auto fight. If you play on higher then easy dfficulty, you might want change your build order since AI, those damn Hojo, build a lot of combat boosting buildings. Do a search on the forum, there were several people mentioned about combat.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=524769935

Best guild when you want to unlock historical events, pics and movies. But if you just want to play, don't play the main event factions until the very end of the events, or until finished. Also don't turn off random events when you start a new game, or the only way to win is to conquer the whole country.

Also an important suggestion. Stay Neutral, especially 450-550. One policy is very useful.

Do a search of the fourm in general, after the last sale, there was a population boost and several discussion started by new players. Oh, wait, you were one of those boomers. Then check out others started around the same time, there were other questions that might help you.

[Nemphtis]

Regarding tenets and ideals, when is it beneficial to match two officers who have the same tenet or ideals? I'm wondering if it boosts my unit stats if my unit leader and his two adjutants all share the same ideal or tenet. The game guide alludes to officers working better together if they share the same one, but I'm not entirely sure to what extent this applies.

[Gray Riders]

1: The “makes adjacent districts suitable for X” improves the maximum development value for adjacent districts of that type. For instance, the Coin Exchange has that for both gold and food, so adjacent commerce or agricultural districts have a higher development maximum. You can boost your income and harvest quite a bit by building those types of facilities in the right place. Focusing on population growth is generally very useful though I usually do that through castle upgrades and roadbuilding.
(A sidenote; the "Tenshu" upgrades at higher levels state they increase the strength of resupplied soldiers. I've run several tests and have never seen any power increase from my troops after being resupplied by a high level Tenshu, at least in the autobattles).

2: Autoresolve works fine and in fact a number of traits officers come with are used for thoese rather than the battles--I've finished entire campaigns with it, winning by outflanking the enemy on the campaign map, outproducing them, using diplomacy to get other clans to attack them as well, and so on. However, there are some things you can do in battle with the right officers to get ridiculously favourable kill counts. I will note that the cavalry charge and musket fire are actually fairly ineffective and the confusion attempt if you shoot a charging unit (or charge a shooting one) seem inconsistent and not really worth trying. The tactics your officers come with are usually a better use of your tactics bar.

It's late right now and I need to go to slee, however I will come back tomorrow and give some more tips on battles if you'd like, and I'd be happy to answer any other questions.

3: Questlines can break easily but you can get some good rewards--traits, officers automatically joining you, and so on. Of course some quests are harmful--things like your Daimyo being assassinated if that happened historically, for instance. I usually follow them unless I know for fact that quest will harm me later, but if the quest line breaks it's not usually a big problem.

4: As near as I can tell, officers don't really receive stat bonuses from having the same tenent or ideal in the same unit with one possible exception--their are castle upgrades that boost the stats of units with officers of a certain tenant. Those are the Buddhist Temple for Conservative officers, the Tea Retreat for Neutral officers, and the Chapel for Progressive officers. I'm not certain but having more officers of that type in the unit may increase the effect.

[Delacourt '27]

Only leader's tenets and ideals is important. It affects the base loyal each officer has. Both same as the leader will get you 15 base loyalty. Neutral get's you -2 to the other 2, while -2/-4 if leader is one of the extremes. Tokugawa likes Profit and Justice, hates Fame officers, a neutral one will only give you 9 default.

[Gray Riders]

Originally posted by Delacourt '27:

Only leader's tenets and ideals is important. It affects the base loyal each officer has. Both same as the leader will get you 15 base loyalty. Neutral get's you -2 to the other 2, while -2/-4 if leader is one of the extremes. Tokugawa likes Profit and Justice, hates Fame officers, a neutral one will only give you 9 default.

Neutral clans get no loyalty penalty from tenant, and Progressive or Conservative clans only get -2 for the other, not -4. It's a pretty nice advantage for Neutral early on before the other two get their +loyalty policies.

[Nemphtis]

@ Gray Riders

EDIT: I'm going to edit this post later today to be more clear about what I'd like to better understand in the game. I did too much rambling and feel like my questions weren't direct enough, sorry about that.

So at the moment my game plan has been to focus on population increase when it comes to the facilities in my districts, and once I reach the maximum district amount (eg. 6/6) I start changing the base's facilities in each district to boost that particular specialisation. So military districts I'll replace Noh Theatre with Cathedrals, is that okay?

Oh and frankly outside of my capitol I haven't bothered with any castle or fortress upgrades yet so I should look into those for the empire wide stat boosts. I keep thinking it's just to increase castle defences which I haven't really had a need for yet due to the ease of my current difficulty setting, but I should think about them more as giving me population increase boosts and such instead of purely for resisting a siege.

For the past day or two I've exclusively used auto resolve because I've realised that I lose less troops if I let the battle play out on its own rather than getting involved manually. I've changed my mindset and am looking at the game almost like a strategy board game, so the focus is on having superior troop counts and statistics for said units, and then letting the dice rolls or whatever do the rest. I've read about certain skills in manual battles being very abusable, but the references are almost always vague during my forum topic searches.

And on another note:

I'm playing the first Oda scenario in the game, the birth of Nobunaga one or something. I just completed the quest where I defeated the Azai and other clan who formed a coalition against the Oda clan. However, things are starting to slip out of my comfort zone in terms of control. It's not difficult, it's just…overwhelming now. My faction has become so large I've had to create a province to my west and another to the north because I can't directly control those castles I captured.

I have so many bases and personnel that I just find it very confusing and slightly annoying managing them because I feel the officer transfer tool (at least on the console version) is cumbersome. Maybe the way I'm using the game's navigation or database features aren't optimal, so I was wondering how you guys deal with this overload of managing a large clan when things start tipping.

Some examples, but I'm going to ramble a lot:

Generally I send 2-5 officers depending on the base. One officer with high POL to become the overseer and help it further develop, another officer with high POL to handle construction at the base, an officer with high LEA and VAL to act as the leader for the base's combat units, a second officer with high LEA and VAL to act as an adjutant and increase the leader's unit stats, alternatively if the base is a castle with a lot of troops, deploy two separate units with each officer leading one of them. Finally, this isn't for all bases but I like to have an officer with high INT in each area for local appeasement and such.

So anyway, I capture a castle to the west and since it's a castle, I appoint some officers with great statistics to that base. It turns out that base isn't under my direct control, so I try to move the officers back to my capitol where I keep all my officers waiting to be given a position, but I can't send some back because the AI castle lord has deployed them as troops, I had to wait five turns or something before he returned to the castle so I could actually transfer him back. I've been sending my officers with crappy stats to these provinces since officers with 50s or less in all areas aren't worth keeping for me, but maybe my governors can get some mileage out of them.

Normally what I do during the game upon capturing a new base is go to my pool of officers at the capital and transfer 2-5 as listed above, capture another base and repeat. But then the commanders of those bases return from battle with prisoners or have kids and they spawn at the relevant base instead of my capital, so now the officers I placed there in the past are mixed with the prisoners and I can't remember who was who except for the overseer and the castle lord.

i'm not entirely sure how these provinces work, for all I know I'm basically giving up on resources those bases would generate for me by giving it to some governor to control. I can seem to request supplies from them, but it's not a repeating process so I'd have to do it manually every month I think?

Remembering base names and officer names is a pain by the way. When the game mentions a name and there's no feature to just go directly to that thing in question, so I have to remember the names. Hell one time I had to literally write the names down because the game told me X base no longer needed an overseer, Y officer was being approached by an enemy clan and Z officer has had a change of heart so I can no longer convert them, but just telling me their name doesn't mean much to me when I'm trying to convert like 4 officers and my primary form of identification is via portraits, not random Japanese names.

[Delacourt '27]

Originally posted by Gray Riders:

Originally posted by Delacourt '27:

Only leader's tenets and ideals is important. It affects the base loyal each officer has. Both same as the leader will get you 15 base loyalty. Neutral get's you -2 to the other 2, while -2/-4 if leader is one of the extremes. Tokugawa likes Profit and Justice, hates Fame officers, a neutral one will only give you 9 default.

Neutral clans get no loyalty penalty from tenant, and Progressive or Conservative clans only get -2 for the other, not -4. It's a pretty nice advantage for Neutral early on before the other two get their +loyalty policies.

You don't see the -4, but it's there. If you look at the Toyotomi in 86', Progressive Clan or Profit has a default 10, and the conservative is 6.

Sorry, by "default" I mean the loyalty after +/- of Tenants and Ideals. The final result is what's important to me, since I execut all disloyal, with some exceptions, and all officers with terriable stats.

[Nemphtis]

A few quick questions guys.

When I have 3 units on a single post is there a way to group order all three to target the same thing? Because right now I'm doing it one by one since I can't figure out a way to order everyone on the post at once. Holding L1 lets me set waypoints but that's about it. I feel like there's a way and I just haven't figured it out.

Oh and I have no idea how, but I suddenly have access to all the policies. I'm PRGS but I can use policies which are CNSV. I think I remember reading about a skill that lets you do this, but I can't seem to find which one it is out of all the abilities my officers have.

Finally, I just want to understand something a bit better. I have an officer deployed and skirmishing, and yet at the same time I have ordered him to entice an enemy officer. He's actually doing both at once, or at least I can't tell if he isn't. The game didn't prompt me that it would cancel his prior orders or recall him back to base, so I'm just curious is this normal?

[Gray Riders]

Originally posted by Delacourt '27:

You don't see the -4, but it's there. If you look at the Toyotomi in 86', Progressive Clan or Profit has a default 10, and the conservative is 6.

I just checked that as you suggested and looked at Yoshikane Shiba, a conservative officer. He has 9 loyalty and his modifiers are -2 for tenant, -2 for ideal, +3 for veteran. The other Conservative officers I checked (including in a different Progressive clan) all added up to only getting a -2 penalty from tenant.

Originally posted by Nemphtis:

So at the moment my game plan has been to focus on population increase when it comes to the facilities in my districts, and once I reach the maximum district amount (eg. 6/6) I start changing the base's facilities in each district to boost that particular specialisation. So military districts I'll replace Noh Theatre with Cathedrals, is that okay?

It should work fine--personally I usually don't build theatres, going right for troop increases which I find usually pays off a lot faster, as mentioned above I rely on roadwork and castle upgrades (upgrading the Tenshu to a Residence and building a if there's space) for population growth. Having 300+ extra soldiers early on when bases have low population and don't have a ton of militia is very useful and the population growth from a theatre won't pay off in terms of soldiers for a while (militia number--before modifiers from policies and such--is populationXhappiness/600), and smaller bases that can't build extra districts won't get as much from population growth.

I have so many bases and personnel that I just find it very confusing and slightly annoying managing them because I feel the officer transfer tool (at least on the console version) is cumbersome. Maybe the way I'm using the game's navigation or database features aren't optimal, so I was wondering how you guys deal with this overload of managing a large clan when things start tipping.

I always play with the Sphere of Influence off because I'm a micromanaging power-hungry freak, so I don't actually know much about how the AI provinces work (I've read they're quite powerful if you put a great officer in charge of them). Managing everything definitely becomes a pain later on, though, and I rely very heavily on the option to let the governors decide how to develop their bases. Once I get really big I usually just put three officers in every base--the Pol guy is going to be fighting. Some of them gain some decent combat traits.

The quick way to figure out who newly recruited prisoners or kids are is to check their "Serve" stat, which says how many years they've worked for you.

Remembering base names and officer names is a pain by the way. When the game mentions a name and there's no feature to just go directly to that thing in question, so I have to remember the names. Hell one time I had to literally write the names down because the game told me X base no longer needed an overseer, Y officer was being approached by an enemy clan and Z officer has had a change of heart so I can no longer convert them, but just telling me their name doesn't mean much to me when I'm trying to convert like 4 officers and my primary form of identification is via portraits, not random Japanese names.

I've gotten better with remembering the name of famous officers over time, but there are so many bases I can't remember them all.

When I have 3 units on a single post is there a way to group order all three to target the same thing? Because right now I'm doing it one by one since I can't figure out a way to order everyone on the post at once. Holding L1 lets me set waypoints but that's about it. I feel like there's a way and I just haven't figured it out.

I haven't found this either, unfortunately. The controls are not great in this entry.

Oh and I have no idea how, but I suddenly have access to all the policies. I'm PRGS but I can use policies which are CNSV. I think I remember reading about a skill that lets you do this, but I can't seem to find which one it is out of all the abilities my officers have.

That's caused by your Daimyo have the "Progressive" trait. Nobunaga learns it once his stats increase enough and I believe he's the only character that learns it naturally. It makes him the most dangerous AI Daimyo if he gets going since he can stack population growth and combat bonuses.

Finally, I just want to understand something a bit better. I have an officer deployed and skirmishing, and yet at the same time I have ordered him to entice an enemy officer. He's actually doing both at once, or at least I can't tell if he isn't. The game didn't prompt me that it would cancel his prior orders or recall him back to base, so I'm just curious is this normal?

Officers can lead soldiers and carry out a domestic task at the same time. It's weird but convenient.

[Delacourt '27]

I guess I worded wrong. "Sorry, by "default" I mean the loyalty after +/- of Tenants and Ideals" is missing "... only. All other ones are not as important because they are not permenant or can universally applied."

Those are influences from rising/losing power, policy(bonus and penalty), governor, swindler, veterans, and the defeated penalty. Since these can be changed, temporary, temp bugged, or rarely acquired after you started the game, at least in my campaigns.

Every officer has 10 loyalty, after adding the bonus/penalty from only Tenants and Ideals Neutral leaders gets a variation of -2 between Neutral officers and the other 2. The officers under C/P leaders has a loyalty of -4 between C/P officers.