Campaign Economy and Guidelines (RotS, S2, FotS) **Final version**

Please note this guide is based on my personal playstyle and may not be the best strategy to make money, but for me it works great and to some degree can be usefull on higher difficulties aswell.

Foreword

Lately people seem to get warmed up again for total war thanks to the much anticipated Rome2.
And just like many of you, I aswell was new to the total war series when I first played shogun2 and had much to learn.

So I would like to use this way to thank my "mentors" and also introduce them to new players.
Visit the following link " Guide to the guides[forums.totalwar.com]" and discover a treasure of information.
This is where I learned the mechanics of the game.
Some of these guides are extremely detailed and long, but very much worth your time.

For battle information I would point you to youtube and watch commentary video's.
My suggestion goes to 'Heir of Cartage', because his video's got me into buying this game.
Great commentary and he also explains how and why he uses certain tactics.

I was listing some others here, but that info became obsolete since Kav the Psycho made a handy guide where you can find clans to join, video's to watch and more..
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=161262198

I hope after going through most of them, you still have something to learn from me :)
Anyway, always happy to help people getting to know and love this great game !

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This entire guide is filled with practical tips that are basicly relevant in all campaign modes of shogun2 and it's expansions. This guide grew bit by bit, as people asked questions, or something just popped in my head that I felt was interesting enough to share..
So there are bits and pieces of information everywhere that can be used in RotS, S2 and FotS.
Example: I talk about Ishin Shishi (FotS) inciting unrest to steal land from allies and avoid going to war with them. I could've written the same thing about monks (S2) or Sou (RotS).

In every campaign of the entire shogun2 experience, I like to hold out on building unit recruitement buildings untill I have captured a province that allows for unit upgrades. I always try to get by with the units you can recruit from a basic castle untill I conquer one.
When playing on higher difficulties this may (and probably will) be a problem.

So this is not in any way a recommendation, just a clarification.
I just tought I'd mention it because you will not find much information on those buildings in this guide. This guide is mainly focused on economic buildings and ways to earn koku with a bit about using agents.

For those who are not yet aware, you can set campaign and battle difficulty separately.

• choose a new campaign and pick the desired campaign difficulty
  
• after you start and are on the campaign map, go to options
  
• in 'game settings' menu, you can adjust battle difficulty to anything you want

I like to use this method to have a relaxing campaign game with a little harder battles.
Please note, this does not make the AI smarter in battle, they just gain the bonuses to their stats like they would on higher difficulties.

This does not work for legendary.

Appart from minor updates this guide is now considered "complete". Thanks for the support, tips and questions !! See you in Rome :D

Rise of the Samurai

As promised, here's some guidelines for RotS.

Rise of the samurai has the only campaign in wich you can choose between 2 types of towns.
Since they offer the most garrisoned units and repression, upgrade to a 'town watch' in every province that is not used as a recruitement hub.
I'd suggest the 'muster field' upgrade chain for any province specialized to recruit, because it allows for more recruitment slots aswell as the ability to recruit fire bomb throwers.
As in every other campaign game, assign 1 or 2 provinces for unit recruitment, the rest to make precious koku.

Needless to say when upgrading 'fields' you should go for 'dry field agriculture' for most provinces, only upgrade to 'pastures' in a province where you have build a 'bushi training grounds'.

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To generate income I generaly build:

• barter exchange -> food stores -> ..
  
• clan estate -> shinden -> ..
  
• school / buddhist sanctuary

I do not go for the 'market' upgrade (barter exchange) even if it has higher base income. The main reason is the extra food from 'food stores'. But it's also nice to know 'food stores' will eventally surpass the income a 'market' produces, because of the higher growth rate. (do note that this takes very long)
A mix of food stores and markets is ideal. Just keep an eye on your food surplus.

I never upgrade my castles beyond 'stronghold' (2 building slots), but sometimes you conquer provinces upgraded by the AI. In that case I suggest first building sanctuaries to be able to recruit 'Sou', afterwards start building schools for the research rate bonus.

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You can also use a Shirabyoshi's ability 'seduction' to convince an enemy sou (or monomi !) to join you, if you do not have the required building to recruit them yourself.

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Since conversion is a big part of RotS, it can be a good idea to build the clan estate first once you are around mid game. At this point money should be less of an issue, and faster conversion means less time wasted for your armies whenever they have to garrison in order to keep the peace in a freshly captured province.

Junsatsushi are the most important agents in RotS in my opinion, not just because they can convert a province to your cause merely by their presence. No, their greatest feat lies in their ability to 'request allegiance'.
Early game this is an incredibly usefull ability. Basically you just buy a province and any (or a part of, depending on succes) it's garrisoned forces.

• The more people in a province loyal to your beliefs, the easier (and cheaper) it becomes to request allegiance. So placing your junsatsushi within the target province's borders for a few turns helps in many cases. (use 2 or 3 agenst to convert faster if needed)
  
• If an army garrisons the province it will be harder and if a Daimyo is present you can not request allegiance.
  
• If you like to keep the peace, note this is best used on 1 province-clans (hence it's power early game when all the small clans are not yet whiped out), as requesting allegiance is a declaration of war in any other case. You can not request allegiance in mayor clan capitals, even if it's their last province.

It is important to realize this is an easy way to overextend yourself (to much land and not enough forces to protect it), so use with care !

This skill is pretty much usefull troughout the entire campaign, not just at the beginning. For instance you could "buy" a province that would otherwise require an army to make a detour and leave a border unprotected. Central provinces like north and south shinano come to mind. You could "buy" those while using an army to conquer the north coast and another in the south.

While at the start of the campaign this ability might seem very expensive, keep in mind you sometimes get some troops + you get a new province to increase your turn by turn income. It is definitely worth it to not building something for a turn in order to be able to pay for an allegiance request the next turn.

When they are not out requesting allegiance or repressing unrest, your junsatsushi should be full-time converting. Always try to use 2-3 permanently on enemy territory, pre-converting provinces you're planning to conquer in the next few turns.

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As for researching the arts.. This depends on what clan you play, some have increased/decreased research rate in a particular research tree.
You can go both ways most of the time in my opinion.
(thanks to the extra food from food stores, the 'iron manufacturing' skill (bunka arts) is less important to research as opposed to 'equal fields' in shogun2)

Shogun 2

First of all, no Daimyo is the same. When considering trade, some clans will have a much harder time forming trade routes or alliances then others.

For instance "Date" is a clan that doesn't make friends easy (because the Date clan was known for their brutality and not because they liked to chat) , while I experienced "Mori" can be a trading superpower without to much effort.

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Here's some hints to create a stable economy:

• Assign one province for unit building, preferably one with a blacksmith/craftworks. When your clan grows bigger you can assign a second or third province for unit building (to lower the travelling distance to your frontline armies).
  
• On every other province you should build at least a market (destroy anything the enemy has build unless it's a market offcourse.. duh :p). If the enemy upgraded the castle you should add a sake den (since it also generates a small amount of income). Mid/late game the sake den becomes more important because it also reduces unrest.
  
• Don't upgrade castles you are not using for unit building because you want your food surplus to be as high as possible. (with the exception of maybe key defence positions should you feel the need)
  
• Upgrade roads and ports to increase growth (more people living on your lands means more people paying taxes !!).
  
• Mid game when you have a decent food surplus, you can upgrade the markets of your most wealthy provinces. Just always keep a food reserve of at least 5 to counter most growth penalties in vulnerable provinces. Or just in case disaster strikes.
  
• Keep in mind that, when upgrading farms, you should always go for the (very) fertile farms first. An upgraded very fertile farm provides vastly more wealth as opposed to an upgraded barren farm.
  
• Place metsuke in your most wealthy provinces and upgrade their ability to "oversee settlement" (this ablity increases the taxes gained from that province by a small amount without making the people angry about it.. -> notice the 58% tax rate in the screenshot below)
  
• Research "Way of Chi" arts first untill you have at least "zen" and "equal fields" (the first art in bushido tree is an exception to this since the morale bonus is very good for your weakling ashigaru at the start of the campaign).
  
• When going into trade with other provinces keep in mind that, should they betray you (or your trade route gets raided), you will lose that part of your income. Always keep an eye on your finance panel!!
  Make sure your tax income alone is enough to pay your upkeep, trade income should never be used for upkeep!!

Using these tips you should be able to keep your head above water.

(Hint: During your second turn of a new campaign game, it is always a good idea to promote a general to "commisioner of development". This will lower building cost for your clan by 2% for every rank/star that general has.) **edit: this also applies to RotS**

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Here's a screen: turn 56 normal difficulty, showing finances after using the strategy described in this small guide. I have 8 provinces, 3 full armies (including expensive upkeep monk units) and a small fleet, while still generating steady income.
And as some of you may notice, I did not even bother to claim the sea trading routes..



PS: In this particular screen I only use 5/8 provinces as moneymakers. This island hold 3 provinces that can train what I like to call "speciality units".
By this I mean creating:

• melee units in a province with a blacksmith
  
• ranged units in a province with craftworks
  
• cavalry units in a province with warhorses

Most of the time I combine the bonuses gained in these provinces with an armory (upgraded from an encampment).

Hope it helps !!

Fall of the Samurai

As per request I wrote some pointers here about earning money in FotS.
Ever since after my first few playtroughs of FotS, I always play 'republic', so this might reflect a bit in my building strategy.
I'll even add some tips to help you become your own leader aswell.
The shogun and emperor will bow to you !! ;)

First of all, the general guidelines of the above guide apply here aswell. For example, use just one or two specialized provinces for units and the others you build to make money, upgrade your fertile farms before the barren farms, etc..

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When researching arts, I prefer to start with anything that increase province happiness and I also try and get 'foreign affairs' as soon as possible.
Thats not just because the foreign veteran slowly levels your troops is he is attached to an army. He can also lower recruitment cost of units when placed inside a province with 'supervise recruitement' or even just standing inside a province borders (attached to an army) with 'military administration'.
These are very usefull skills early game when every coin counts.
The happiness arts help reducing unrest wich in turn allows you to grow faster.

And growing fast is something you want to do in FotS. (the pace goes up when you are able to create a secondary army, don't expect to grow very fast during the first few in-game years)
But don't overextend yourself by spreading your armies too thin. The risk of an enemy succefully invading you becomes bigger every time you capture another province..

If you expand quickly, you'll have more provinces to build (cheap) tier 1 buildings on -> this means more modernisation -> and increasing your modernisation level helps you research faster.
Tier 1 buildings don't have a lot of modernisation unrest yet either, wich can be a real pain early game.
Upgrading to soon can also cause modernisation unrest problems. This is why I try to research clan wide happiness increasing arts as soon as possible.

Increasing modernisation level to be able to research at an increased pace as soon as possible is always my main goal.

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• This is also a good time to put your shinsengumi / ishin shishi to good use. Start incing unrest to create rebel armies that are easier to defeat and possibly avoid war with a clan for taking their province. If you are expanding rapidly, the last thing you want is everybody declaring war on you for "no reason".
  
• You can use geisha to increase growth by upgrading their ability to entertain nobles and placing them in a province. But I personally use them together with ninjas to sabotage/distract enemy armies. Agents are a great way to safeguard unprotected provinces.
  
  Make sure don't place them to close to your castle or even garrisoned. Otherwise, especially if you have upgraded roads, an enemy army could appear from the fog of war and attack a province in a single turn. Choose locations where they have a good view of possible attack routes.
  (Some provinces are so big that this doesn't matter, in that case I would garrison a geisha to increase growth. Should an army appear, she still has time to go and try to distract.)

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I always try to get my 10-15 provinces (pre-RD) as fast as possible, so I have more time to try and maximize their financial output before I decide to take 1 more province and hit RD.

During the 'pre-RD' half of the campaign I build:

• Inn -> market -> financial district
  
• Police station -> magistrate (not for money, more on this later)
  
• Cottage industry -> craft workshop

The first and third buildings and their upgrades I chose because they have the best income/growth ratio. And they don't decrease happiness as much as some others.
This is just my opinion, I did not do the math.
Another reason is these are fairly easy to build without much use of late game research into the arts.

Provinces with speciallity buildings are a bit tricky. Try to upgrade to the highest income/growth ratio if happiness allows it. Ussually, how "better" an upgrade, how higher the modernisation unrest penalty. This is not the case every time tough, but that is something you'll have to experiment with.

You can fine-tune upgrades to your personal taste, just make sure you don't get unrest when disaster strikes (-1 happiness because of an earthquake for example).

After I hit RD, I build:

• Inn -> gambling den -> richi mahjong parlour
  
• Police station -> magistrate -> (*)
  
• Cottage industry -> craft workshop

As you can see, I only changed the upgrade to the 'Inn'. I mainly do this because a gambling den
gives more happiness. This is very helpfull to assist in keeping unrest to a minimum in every province you conquer from now on and it allows you to move on faster.

The only provinces that require a small garrison are ussually my provinces used for unit building.
Upgraded recruitement buildings generally give a -2, -3 modernisation unrest penalty and no happiness. Upgrading your castle as high as possible helps, but it's not enough.

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(*)If you are not planning on playing republic, perhaps you can skip the police stations. I just have no idea what effect this will have on general happiness. This is how I ussually build up, but FotS allows for a LOT of micromanaging happiness/modernisation unrest if you want to..

The main reason I build a police station/magistrate in, at least, every 'pre-RD' province, is because you will have to mass convert when you first become a republic. For more detailed information scroll down to the 'playing as a republic' section of this guide.

Extra's

Waiting to build your main invasion armies means less time paying upkeep. No point in paying for them when you are "skipping turns" while building up provinces.. (before you hit realm divide offcourse)

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I personnally never create military alliances (don't want to be forced to go to war or risk losing honor for dishounoring treaties), long standing trade can make all of japan very friendly if you have decent Daimyo honor or some research wich increases relations.
Do this by trying to trade with everyone everytime (check every turn, they might have changed their mind!)

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Still in desperate need of cash? Try selling military access to neighbouring clans,
Don't worry, it's not as scary as it sounds, they actually barely ever make good use of it.
And they can't declare war on you while walking across your lands without the army being teleported back to their own territory.
Just make sure, as always, to ask as much as possible.
This might actually keep clans from declaring war on you. Because you are no longer blocking their way.

**edit: I remembered not being able to attack a castle while making use of military access (I coulnd't declare war in order to attack). This was a long time ago in vanilla S2.

But.. my last FotS campaign, an AI declared war and attacked me while standing next to my castle.. He did get massive negative diplomacy (Backstabber, Betraying alliances, etc..). The 'backstabber' penalty said it all (tooltip description read: "attacked while making use of military access")..
In FotS apparently you CAN declare war while standing on an enemy province.

So either my info was incorrect, or it is only possible in FotS (and perhaps RotS) to declare war while standing on the target clan's territory.

I'll test it out when I get around to it wether it is possible in S2 or not, and update accordingly.
Sorry for any inconvenience.**
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If a clan asks you for peace, always counter-offer and ask for money in exchange. Just don't forget to check the box so you don't accidentally give them money.
This can happen if you retry a lot trying to maximize the amount they are willing to pay.

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Raising taxes is not recommended. If you need to raise taxes, you are spending to much. When you raise taxes it does not only increase unrest, more importantly it reduces growth!
So you will be gaining money, but losing population..
In the long run raising taxes lowers your turn by turn income.

If anything, lower taxes for a few turns to increase growth. This is quite unnecessary but if you want to play a looooooong game it does make a noticable difference depending on how long you keep your taxes lowered.

However, if you can counter the penalties, I see no reason why you shouldn't raise taxes.

Playing as a republic (FotS)

As I stated before, I generaly prefer playing as a republic. It is definitely more challenging, but it's also a lot of fun being your own nation, defying the shogun and emperor.

So here's how to make the conversion less painfull:

• Having the art 'private academies' at least is higly recommended, the extension on that art might take too long but if you make the effort, you will not regret it !
  
• Before you hit the FotS adaptation of 'realm-divide', upgrade police stations only once. So they are all magistrates.
  When you look at the ingame encyclopaedia, you will notice a magistrate has 3 possible upgrades, depending on your alliance. Police office (shogunate), shikoyoku office (imperialists) and secret society (republic)..
  If you were to upgrade before turning into a republic, you will later have to destroy them.
  This is because the second upgrade is alliance specific and does not automaticly change when you switch alliance (in this case to republic).
  
• So, the first thing to do after turning into a republic is upgrading all those magistrates to secret societies. This way by the time religious unrest begins to reach problematic levels, it will have started to stabilise again.
  
• If you do not have the wealth to mass upgrade all magistrates in 1 turn, it's a good idea to start with your province borders. Since the upgrade allows for conversion to spread to neighbouring provinces. This way any enemy province that borders with you will start to pre-convert to your cause, giving you an early advantage when you resume expanding.

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One very important issue is that the first year (at least) you will feel a pretty substantial drop in income, due to the fact you might have to turn off taxes in a few provinces to avoid rebellions.
You can always draft some cheap units to keep unrest down, and disband them again when the province is happy.
Sometimes one option is cheaper then the other, it depends on the province's income.
Turning off taxes in a few provinces or lowering overall taxes is something you have to juggle a bit, it's different every game.

Keep a defensive attitude untill you have converted up to a point that unrest is no longer an issue and income starts rising again.

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Shinsengumi (shogunate) or ishin shishi (imperial) can be placed in a province to speed up conversion to your beliefs 'pre-RD'. But personnaly I feel they are of better use overseeing your armies. Shinsengumi give your troops a bonus to melee defense and ishin shishi give your troops a bonus to charge. They are also an excelent way to steal land from allies by inciting unrest. This will avoid a war and you can harrass an "ally" up to the point he has only his capital left. (playable clan capitals can not be incited without declaring war if I remember correctly)

It is important to keep in mind when you choose to go republic, shinshengumi / ishin shishi will all disappear.
Along with these units:

• Shogunate and imperial infantry (replaced with republican infantry)
  
• Shogunate and imperial guard infantry (replaced with republican ..)
  
• Shogunate and imperial guard cavalry (replaced with .. )
  
• Shogitai and shinsengumi police force units are no longer available from the dojo building chain.

So it is very much recommended to NOT make any of these units before you become a republic.
To avoid confusion, I do not mean you should not recruit shinsengumi or ishin shishi agents, these are valuable pre-RD. I do mean you shouldn't recruit any of the infantry or cavalry units.

Good luck and have fun !

Sidenote

I also made a collection of the mods I use when playing Shogun2:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=324905689

Due to the massive amount of contributions to the community hub, I find it hard to get your screenshots rated (or even viewed for that matter). So this guide feels like the perfect opportunity to promote my "work". These are just a few examples, visit my profile for more. The reason I try making nice screenshots is mainly for use as wallpaper, all are 2560*1440 original size.
I hope you like them.

Disclaimer: Warning, using these awesome images as wallpaper can cause severe Shogun addiction!! ;)

[Mayonnaise Dealer]

ROSES ARE RED
VIOLETS ARE BLUE
I CALL A NAVAL ARTILLERY STRIKE ON YOU

[Animal Mother]

Amazing guide! Thanks for the hard work <3

[Arcadius89pz]

Hi everyone, I bought this game to play on Linux, I have the distro Linux Mint Ulyana the last one, however, the game told me when I opened that It has compability issues, the game open and works for a couple of minutes after that it freezes and it works really slow. could you help me, please?

[treats]

If anyone was wondering the fertile rating does matter for income from farms. The tooltip is wrong, for FOTS you can get the farm wealth fix on the workshop which shows the real wealth values

[maxim]

and what are fots and rots?

[maxim]

i didnt read it, it was really long and im lazy. but it seems like a good guide unlike the other crap ive seen.

[BastardSword]

A good way to make LOTS of money in the long run in FOTS is to research the two tech unlocks that give +2 growth. They are called Merchant Houses which is available at modernization level 2, and Capitalist Production which is available at level 3. Capitalist Production also lets you build upgraded factories. Put the +15 cotton processing plant (you can only build one) in a wealthy province with very fertile farms and you'll end up making massive amounts of money. By going for these techs I can make 10,000 a turn fairly early in the game on Hard, and by the end of the game I'm making 30,000 to 50,000. Another useful tip is to upgrade all your fertile and very fertile farms to max. The game doesn't tell you that more fertile farms make more money than average/meager/barren farms do, but they absolutely do.

[Xenophon]

Great guide, man! Really appreciate it.

[Quarren King of Q]

what does RD mean

[CthuluIsSpy]

Does the fertile rating really matter when it comes to income from farms in FOTS? I noticed there is no change listed between fertile, meagre and barren. It's all the same values.