General tips at the begining of a game ?

[Noble Ten]

I just wondering if theres some tips and adivce with things I should foucs on when starting a new game. What should be my priotiies ?, What actions should I start taking to get off to agood begining. What should I work towards ?

Pretty much new to the game so not really aware whats the most effecient.

[tommy07robs]

I am playing with max AI intelligence, and max AI aggression with low income, harvest, and troop recovery. The cpu has the same effects. Been a brutal first year so my suggestion would be to not do the same lol.

[itsmeHawkeyeG]

Well Tenshi, it is not often that you see the Nanbu overcome the Date in this game, so well done for picking a hard battle and winning it! The first stage of any war is always the hardest; now that you have RIfu castle and some other territory in the Date lands, your next battle with them will be even easier.

Don't forget to start looking forwards beyond the Date then, and think about who would make a good ally to fight with you against one of the major powers past the Date lands.


As for 'dodging' a charge, you usually can't actually fully dodge it. When it happens, immidiately pause the game and move your troops directly to either side of the direction the charge is coming from. If you see it coming ahead of time and can 'sense' that the enemy is probably going to use it, putting your troops in motion before it happens can allow you to avoid most of it. But even if you don't, as long as you get enough out of the way it won't catch on you for too long, and they can't change direction once they've launched it so you just have to get to one side.

Other than that, you can dodge it if your unit has or uses a speed boost, or if one of your units uses a speed reducing tactic or a trapping tactic on them. This kind of situation is not a guarantee however, so you really won't always be able to dodge a charge, though it is possible. If you can't dodge it the next best thing to do is either launch a melee buff on your own units, or just get enough troops there to outnumber them in melee.


Seems like you are getting the hang of this game though and probably shouldn't need too much more help. One last piece of advice I have is that when you have to start making provinces you should take command over the territory behind the front lines, rather than on the front lines. Let a retainer manage things on the front lines so that you can send in your troops from several regions away to join the fight. Typically, the AI won't move troops any further than 1 or 2 regions away from those troops' home territory. They might send from 3 regions away, especially on defense, but its not really a sure thing on offense. So you are better off allowing the AI to control all the castles that you know they will be able to battle with, and then give them extra momentum by sending your own troops through from further back

[Dancing Dragon Games]

If you get charged, and have 2+ units with muskets, that's a perfect opportunity to dodge, and "release" with every gun you have. Almost a guaranteed confuse, which spells utter doom for the confusee.

[RK47]

Eastern musket access is limited in his scenario, that is the primary disadvantage of eastern clans.

OP, just use this combo for the biggest stack of your army: Nanbu (Pierce) and combo him with two officers that has Enrage and Provoke tactic.

At the start of the battle, wait for a bit till you have 6 control bars generated before moving forward to engage. When the enemy is within range. Enrage them then Provoke. As you move close enough for melee to start, Pierce. You will utterly destroy them.

[Noble Ten]

I was thinking of relocating my Leader to Rifu castle. but he doesnt come up on the apoint lord list. Do leaders stay in the 1 castle all game ?

[Sr.Keitaro]

Thats because the leader is lord of the castle by default, so instead of appoting him/her, just move him/her to the castle.

[Noble Ten]

Anyone able to tell me how to negoiate a truce ?. having a very tough time agains the Hojo, I cant seem to find any aother to raech out to, Nagao seem like a good option, but they refuse to diplmacy, Tekada are allies of hojo. While I want to reach other to Nagao they did randmly assult me a year ago me which I repelled their attack just barely. for some reason things when crazy when somthing about coalitions happened, a few vassles I picked up joined a coalition and the mentioned clans always are in enemy coalitions. I dont really get what happened. I can only think they didnt take kindly to my domination in the north, its not like I been a tryant, picked up a few vassles which are kinda useless. But for immersion.

I mean its graet that I going to war with Hojo but they are relentless as ♥♥♥♥. I spent almost 3 years on continuous battle trying to protect my Nasu vassels, and when I thought both forces are exhasted and pulled my troops back home to heal, they instanty launch another attack. They dont stop coming, So I just reloaded a earlier save and trying to prepare better. I have conqued a reasonble area in the north, but Hojo look like the no.1 chan in japan.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=688595001
Its not that I am after Hojo yet, is that they are attacking my vassels, so I quickly have to sent troops. The Koga and Sano are both vassels to Hojo which doesnt help. And the Satake always seem to block off sending my armies to attack Hojo from the side, Its been rough trying to figure out how to clear Satake annoyance out while fending off the Rentless Hojo assault. I know they block me on purpose!

and a quick question, if I use long distant diplomancy, if I raise counties with ports, can I get trade income if I raise it to 20 ?

[itsmeHawkeyeG]

i'll try to work my response from the top of your comment, down...

I haven't ever really negotiated a truce, but you either have to build up trust with another clan to do it, or build trust with the Imperial Court and use them. The Imperial Court is actually a pretty good method, nothing that anyone can really do to prevent you from doing that. If i remember right though, the truce via clans has you asking them to make peace with a third clan, so that's more to stop them from attacking your friends.

If you have vassals, they shouldn't be joining any coalition that you aren't in, that's impossible because all their diplomacy is dictated by you.

If you clash with someone, it causes them to 'Refuse' diplomacy with you, for 3-6 months, maybe a year? I haven't honestly paid enough attention to know for sure but it's probably 6 months. After that things are normal. But, sometimes for either historical or quest reasons or some other kind of disagreement, some clans will cut off diplomacy forever. If their status says 'They won't communicate with clans they have cut off" that's how you know its permanent.

So anyways, the Nagao could still be a possibility. And if the Takeda are allies with the Hojo that shouldn't prevent you from using them to cause a truce between you and the Hojo. But, like i said i'm not sure that it works that way, though i could definitely be wrong since i never use it.

I don't know who is forming the coaltions either, who they are for or against, but if you raise your trust with whoever is making these coalitions then they may invite you instead. Unless the coalitions are against you, in which case you should try to get as many nearby allies as you can, even if you can't get them into your coalition they can't join an enemy coalition as long as you are allied.


Stop caring about your vassals so much as well ;) they are just a tool for you to use to aid in battle. They are nice to have on a border against an enemy when you start a war, but especially when it comes to vassals with only a single city to their name they are basically worthless. Don't waste your troops and effort fighting at your vassals castles, focus on building up and defending your own territory.

You should also try to ally yourself with the Satake. They seem to be a big obstacle to you fighting against the Hojo and there's no reason not to ally with them for now. I typically try to remain allies with pretty much everyone near me except for the lone enemy i want to fight, that way nobody interferes.

Don't forget that even if someone's attitude towards you is 'Hostile', you can still change that by giving them a gift. And even if it's not a very good gift and the game warns you that it 'won't have much effect' it will still work for a little while. And that may be all you need.


As for the distant diplomacy question, ports have nothing to do with it. 20 trust gets you diplomatic income. Period. That's different from your mine'port income.



My last piece of advice is to make sure that you have some retainer controlling the territories closest to the Hojo, while you control the rest further back, so that you can bring your troops from all the way back in the north down to the front lines and attack the Hojo with your retainer's troops at the same time. Just make sure to set up your retainer to work to your liking, if you turn off their ability to attack freely you can still directly command them to deploy, AND you can still set a target clan to attack and they will still attack it.Once you get the ball rolling it is safer to allow them to 'attack freely' but even if you don't they'll still ask if they can help take a castle when they know that you have the advantage

[itsmeHawkeyeG]

Alright so I took a look to check... the truce which requires 80 trust with two clans does NOT allow you to call for a cease-fire between an enemy and yourself. You use it when two clans who you have 80 trust each with go to war with each other, to get them to stop fighting. Sometimes, you will get this request from one clan when you are at war with another clan that is allied with them. So, MAYBE if you allied with one of the Hojo's allies, they would ask you two to call off the fight. But the circumstances in which they would do this tend to be different than yours.

[Noble Ten]

Thanks for the advice and information.

Going to start again since I undetrstand the game a bit more, I also noticed that I had in the settings I had castle regen on low for AI and normal for me. I made it low hoping the big clans wouldnt take out the smaller clans so fast, but wonder why mine was on normal, I thought I set mine to low too, but apparently not. Pierce has been freaking awesome. With the Nanbu leader I could dice up armies really quickly. I am to take it thats Nanbus best weapon. Charge passed turrets and then peirce the enemy behind them. I felt like that strat worked well.

I plan to invade the south alot quicker since I've learned a bit. I cant remember if the tutorial told me, or someone on the forums told me, but fighting manually at castles and hitting the castle walls for a chunk of health actually is pretty nice too if I dont plan to blockcade it.

[Noble Ten]

Originally posted by gamingfr3ak:

My last piece of advice is to make sure that you have some retainer controlling the territories closest to the Hojo, while you control the rest further back, so that you can bring your troops from all the way back in the north down to the front lines and attack the Hojo with your retainer's troops at the same time. Just make sure to set up your retainer to work to your liking, if you turn off their ability to attack freely you can still directly command them to deploy, AND you can still set a target clan to attack and they will still attack it.Once you get the ball rolling it is safer to allow them to 'attack freely' but even if you don't they'll still ask if they can help take a castle when they know that you have the advantage

Still learning a litle how taht auto-pilot works. I still need to fiddle around with it a bit more. But I mostly take control of it so I can build castle structures like the annex and residents asap. Also rice farms too. Which was suggested for more population. Happy to let the AI take over if I get those up. Oh and btw, And am I right to asume residence has a better population bonus than the annex ? its description seems to suggest it. Annex = little more quickly, Residence = more quickly. Just some castles dont have much building space, so I prioritize the residents

[itsmeHawkeyeG]

I'll respond from top to bottom again lol


It seems like you are getting the hang of the manual combat just fine. Charging stockades and then using Pierce is something I haven't though of ;) i'm more of a Release kind of guy myself though and I like to bait people out instead

What i would say is take a look through the officers you have and see what their skills all are. Sometimes even an officer with only good POL level will have a nice skill as well (though not often). But anyway the point is that you should try to set up your armies to have a second and third officer if you can, and between them try to pick either for stats or for skills. They can compensate for the army leader's stat weakness, or you can combo their skills and do something like Pierce with whatever the skill is that increases chance to confuse in melee.

For example, Ginchiyo Tachibana and Muneshige Tachibana (of the Otomo clan) have an amazing combo... Ginchiyo lowers enemy speed and defense, and Muneshige increases melee attack and defense. Easily chase down and destroy people.

Of course, with a clan like the Nanbu, there aren't as many important/popular historical figures and so they don't have as unique of skills. I'm pretty sure you can find Pierce on a number of officers :)


As for going to war early on, I typically don't do so myself though there is no right answer to that really. I would recommend you try to take it a bit slower though, and focus on personal growth instead. Of course, you can take out the weaker clans near you, but if you are going to play as the Nanbu you just have to accept that you will be fighting the Date one way or another lol. You just have to decide how you would prefer to surpass them.

I think it makes more sense to try and play a bit defensively though. The first year or two you should be focusing on building trust with people to form some alliances, even only temporary ones, and then building up your own cities. Since a new game means new castle development, everything about your cities is subpar at the start and so if you work hard on that you can surpass the AI by playing smart. Plus, not going to war means you can sell your supplies for a year or two instead, and have enough money to constantly grow early on when you have LOADS of castle upgrades available.

Speaking of castles, real quick here, I'm pretty sure you are right about the Annex vs Residence thing. I know I have compared the values in game but I can always look again, but i'm pretty sure that's the case. Annex just gives more HP as well, the AI loves to build annexes but i prefer a Residence and Stone Gate. As for blockades, the less health a castle has the faster you will capture it via blockade, so even if you DO plan on blockading a castle you can still benefit from a manual attack at the gates.

One quick thing about city building too, you said you like Rice Dealers and while those can be nice for REAL early on to get the ball rolling, you should replace them with something else later one. Both Crops totals AND Craft totals actually add to your city's population too, so you can get more money and more population from a craft district as opposed to popuplation only. I do like to build the Noh Theater in my conscript districts though, as the number of Conscripts they could produce has a hard cap to it but the Militia they can produce from population does not.

and that is a big part of my strategy, the sooner you get the ball rolling on population the faster you can surpass people with more land than you and better land than you. Even your petty little forts with only 3 districts will start to pass 5k troops after 10 years or less if you have some good policies in action alongside your castle and city upgrades


To the Retainer and Province thing, I would highly recommend you try to learn it a bit. It helps a lot to have your AI manage some of the castles rather than you having to do every upgrade for every one. And I don't know what your Daimyo control range is set to but even on Wide it only goes so far and you will HAVE to create a province there. The AI can be pretty smart about attacking too and even if you leave them to their own judgement they will still join you if you start a fight yourself. And all it really takes is for you to order them to deploy their troops once and as long as they are either targeting that clan or are free to attack at their discretion, they will keep attacking that opponent as long as they still have the advantage. So if you can use their troops with yours to give yourself the advantage then you can focus your efforts elsewhere while your retainer keeps them busy

[Noble Ten]

Well that plan is based on this strat. Feel free to say you dont agree with it and I should change it if you feel. Its just, if I expand early. take some of the smaller clans castle and recruit them as officers, It raises my gold income and I get more labour to spend, Then once I have a solid amount of castles and getting more money, Build a few temples to get my innovative 200 or below, then I can enact the policy Fief assurance. It grants officer loyalty and population increases quickly on all my castles/fortress's. Its about 1000 gold upkeep. So expanding earlier to get more gold and labour to support this policy is one of the ideas. and as Nanbu, theres no real threat until I reach the Date when heading south. Can also pick up some tribes too.

Thats pretty much the idea behind it. Also in my current game (settings are all normal now (both AI and I have low solider regen but) and I just took Rifu Fortress and its surrounding castles, so I am bout to go into stablizating my country mode (build mode) Pierce from teh Nanbu leader is great, and I found a workable combo, with having an adjutant with a defuff that lowers enemy attk strenth in front. So if I have 6 bars, I cant charge, when I hit melee range I can pierce and lower their attk value. Helped me alot in just defeating the Date forces, and it felt liked I annihilated the smaller clan armies this way. thus how I can have a weapon to invade south fairly quickly.

Also I wonder if certain skills can stack.. Say in my leader army, also got the hier as an adjutent to gain exp who also has a strengthning skill called Warcry (raises attk) if I activate both Pierce and War cry one after the other, do they stack ?

[Noble Ten]

In my curent normal game (except low regen on castle troops both sides) I am 11 years in and my leader has green in two of his stats, Intel and Leadership, does that mean its reached the max ?

Caining it, Had an interesting expirence when Nagao made a colalition on me and Sataka joined in on it and launched 4000 troops at Iindojair castle, so I counter attacked and Hojo who had no alliance or truce with Sataka didnt like it and went to their aid trying to stop me sieging Ota Castle. Eventually after a long fight I beat them back and took the 8500hp castle. It be a long story if I type what happened so I will let it pass. Got a message not long ago the Nagao coliation fell apart and now on the diplo map Nagao is in awe with me O_o.

Funny because previously I was trying to work diplo with Takeda, but I attacked Ashikaga because they purposely tried going out of their way blocking me through a mountain path when atacking Sataka, so I attacked one of their castle to force them to pull back troops (no attempt to take it at first, but to draw them away) Later I ordered Vassels Ashino to take one of their castles which which kinda cool. That kinda upset Takeda into hostle status ><. Its kinda funny that Nagao are now in awe after their failed coalition on me, But they probably best option now for an alliance. Funny how that worked out. They did at one stage send 3.5k troops at me while I was fighting Hojo/Sataka, but I had sufiicent amount of troops to force them to retreat.

[Noble Ten]

This is me right now. in the last 6 months, Ashina, Soma and Kakizawa, who were my Vassels, Said something like this "you are so great oh holy one, please let us become part of Nambu, it would honour us to walk and breath the same air as you do!" well something like that. I said somethinkg like "ah ok" and they joined my empire just like that O_O.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=698366946

Just working on upgrading all roads, getting castle upgrades and such.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=698367889
Oh and heres Date, should I just end them ? I felt like it should be fine leaving them there, they are still grayed out in diplo, so might never be at peace :o