Overview
Because I like this game but had a really tough time getting into it at first due to lack of tutorial material available, I thought I would try my hand at writing my own guide and providing as much information as I can about the game. I intend for this guide to be used mainly as reference and learning material to help people understand the game. I will also include a walkthrough or two of my own playthroughs, to show examples of how one might achieve victory in this game.
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my Sengoku Handbook! Like i said in the guide description, this guide is meant to be both a reference material as well as a walkthrough. I will start with some of the basics, going over terminology and then going through the menus of the game to explain what you are looking at as well as where to look for what you want to know. Then, I will go through a successful victory playthrough to try and provide examples of what to do in certain situations as well as how to handle the various decisions you must make in the game, how to deal with your clansmen and and use your military, and so on and so forth.
This is more or less the first formal guide i’ve ever written, so please bear with me if I make spelling errors or if I am being unclear about something. I welcome comments (though I will also exercise my right to ignore some of them) and I appreciate constructive criticism as well as any other help or suggestions that people have for me. Please feel free to share yours!
I also want to say that, due to the lack of information available, I can virtually guarantee that there will be some content in this guide that is inaccurate. The majority of what I know about the game I have learned from the game itself. So some of the information in this guide will be based on my experiences and how I believe some factors affect others. I will do my best to correctly infer the true meaning of the various facets of the game, but it would be foolish to assume that I will get all of it right. I may leave some explanations out if I am unsure of them, but I will try to detail as much of the game as possible without being misleading. Again, please notify me of inconsistencies that you notice, or if you have a better explanation for an event or concept that I was uncertain about.
Glossary
Here I will include several vocabulary words. Sounds kind of silly to say it like that but there are a bunch of terms in this game that you might have no idea what they mean, and the game does not always make them very clear. Some of these are included because they are not English words, and some are in here because they have a meaning specific to the game.
Castle – One of your provincial improvements. Upgrading this increases the size of the levy of the province, the number of troops that can be present in the province on the map, the defensive ability of the province, and the number of troops in the garrison (fort level)
Daimyo – The title given to someone who holds all of the Kori in a Kuni. When you are the clan leader these are obtained even if you individually do not hold all the Kori, but rather have some of them under your clan due to your vassals having taken them, or granting some to your vassals before taking them all yourself. These can also be granted to your vassals, as long as the chosen vassal controls at least one Kori in that Kuni. When a vassal is granted a Daimyo title it allows them to then give some of their Kokujin titles to some of their own vassals. Both Daimyo and Vassals can vote upon who the heir of the clan is.
Demense – The total landholdings of a player. At the top left of your screen your max Demense (landholdings) size is shown, along with how many you currently have. The Demense map mode shows you the landholdings of any one player. This way you can see what territory someone holds without consulting their character panel
Diplomacy – The measure of a character’s ability to negotiate with other characters in the land. The higher your skill the more likely you will be able to convince people to accept your offer or request.
Guild – A series of unique upgrades for your village that deviate from the Castle and Village paths. Each has its own bonus to either the province itself or your clan. You can have up to 4 in each province, but cannot have 2 of the same in a single province.
Intrigue – The measure of a characters ability to deal with deception. The better your intrigue the more likely you are to uncover plots against you, and it also determines the success rate of ninja missions and attempts to damage relationships.
Kokujin – The title given to the owner of a Kori. When you look at a character’s panel, it will tell you what Kokujin titles they have rather than which Kori they control, though these titles are the same as the name of the Kori itself.
Kori – One individual territory. When someone has control of a Kori they receive the ‘Kokujin’ title for that territory.
Kuni – The game defines these as “the historical provinces of Japan” and also points out that if a clan controls all the Kori in a Kuni they will receiive the ‘Daimyo’ title of the Kuni. A Kuni is essentially just a grouping of Kori in one particular area.
Retinue – Your personal retainer of troops. You recruit them separately from raising levies, and they will recruit back to full size automatically over time in friendly territory.
Ronin – A unit available for recruit to your retinue that is lead by an individual person. The army they lead will be composed of several sets of troops, but only counts for 1 point towards your retinue cap.
Vassal – A feudal lord who works for the leader of a clan. A vassal is someone from the court who has been granted land by the lord. Both Daimyo and Vassals can vote upon who the heir of the clan is.
Village – One of your provincial improvements. Upgrading this increases your tax revenue from the province, the maximum number of troops that a province can host, and the maximum size of your retinue.
Interlude/ Tips and Tricks
There is one major piece of advice I wanted to bring up before getting into the actual guide itself, and that is that the best way to learn more about the game is to read the in-game pop-up windows! A lot of the information that I will be putting into this guide will come from these, as they explain a lot of the game to you depending on what window or menu you have open. However, they do not always explain the meaning of certain terms (hence my Glossary) and they also do not fully explain where or how to find certain information that is supposed to be present on the page. They also can get pretty irritating since they show up anytime you select anything, but when you hide them forever then you may lose a certain piece of information. Be sure to make use of these windows whenever you like, and then use this guide when these windows do not provide adequate information.
I also wanted to save this spot for various tips and tricks that I come up with (or that I learn about from others) that don’t really fit in anywhere else.
For example, hovering over things with your mouse is an essential tool for success in this game. Hovering over the values of opinions between you and someone else gives you a full list of all the contributing factors. And hovering over responses to requests or offers will often give you further details as to why your offer is being accepted or rejected (though not always). Hovering over your income information on the Clan page will tell you where your total expenses are coming from, and where your costs are going to. These are just a few examples.
Another important piece of advice is to save often, and to not be afraid to reload your save when something goes wrong. Sometimes you will join a plot to attack someone who is unstoppable by any other means, only to have the largest contributor to the plot back out far too early. Sometimes your leader will die by surprise, without a proper heir, but then after re-loading a save prior to it they may live an extra 20 years. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you use this method, especially when you are still learning the ropes of the game, as the random events that can occur are not always fair. While that aspect may be enjoyable for some, it is not for everyone.
‘Court’ window
The court window is where you appoint your ministers or your cabinet or whatever you might like to call them. These are the people who allow you to interact with your empire indirectly. You use them to upgrade your provinces as well as to seek fortune or cause trouble in other provinces. There are three ‘Masters’ to appoint, and the abilities of each is determine by their skill level, depending on which part of your Empire they will work with. These three are listed below in the same order they are in-game, and I have described their skills and their uses as well.
When appointing your Court, you want to focus on one stat for each position and fill it with the best person for the job. In some situations, this may mean you take someone with one or two fewer skill points, but far less points into their other skills, to leave yourself a well balanced and powerful vassal.
Master of Ceremonies, whose power is determined by his diplomacy skill, and whose abilities are:
1) Improve Village. Upgrades the ‘Village’ in a Kori you control, which increases the Tax Revenue, Supply Limit, and Retinue Cap values of the province depending on what level it is being upgraded to. As with all ‘Improvement’ skills, it imposes a tax revenue penalty when in effect.
2) Improve Relation. As it says in game, it gives a chance for random events to occur that either cause or give you the chance to increase your relationship with the ruler of a province. Note that you can use this to improve relations with your own vassals as well as both vassals of other territories and leaders of other clans.
3) Collect Taxes. Pretty simple, increases your revenue rate in a province.
With the Master of Ceremonies, you will spend most of your time having him upgrade your provinces. Improving relations is useful if you want to help provoke a rebellion or defection, and collecting taxes is useful to push towers a new build or to help maintain your army, but upgrades take quite some time, and over time increasing your overall tax revenue is more important than taxing a province a little more for as long of a time Improve Relations is best used in tandem with Sow Dissent, and Collect Taxes is best used in tandem with Restore Order.
Next is the Master of Arms, whose power is determined by his Military skill, and whose abilities are:
1) Improve Castle. Upgrades the ‘Castle’ in a Kori you control, which increases the Levy Size, Supply Limit, Fort Level and Defensive [bonus] of the province depending on what level it is being upgraded to. As with all ‘Improvement’ skills, it imposes a tax revenue penalty when in effect.
2) Recruit Ronin. Pretty self-explanatory, this increases the chance that ronin will appear for you to recruit.
3) Restore Order. This reduces the Revolt Risk in a Kori you control.
WIth the Master of Arms, like the Master of Ceremonies, he will spend a lot of time upgrading your castles. Recruit Ronin is useful for the moments you need it, but when not preparing for another military campaign you probably won’t use it much. Restore Order can be helpful in some situations but it’s not often that your Revolt Risk will be an immidiate or lengthy issue. Restore order is, however, useful in tandem with Collect Taxes, as Restore Order more than negates the penalty from Collecting taxes. Ultimately, however, this is more of a short term strategy, and improving your castles will be more effective in the long run.
Lastly you have your Master of the Guard, whose power is determined by his Intruigue skill, and those abilities are:
1) Expand Guilds. This allows you to unlock a new guild slot for a Kori you control. After unlocking the slot, you then have to chose and pay for the guild you want through the province window. In addition, a new guild slot cannot be unlocked until the prior slot is filled. As with all ‘Improvement’ skills, it imposes a tax revenue penalty when in effect.
2) Sow Dissent. Like it says in the game, it enables random events that damage relations between the Kokujin of a province and whoever his liege may be (Daimyo or Clan Leader).
3) Hire Ninja. Much like “Recruit Ronin” it is pretty self-explanatory as well. It increases your chance to have ninja appear for you to hire.
The Master of the Guard is a little different from the other two, in that it won’t take as long to unlock guild slots as it does to upgrade Castles or Villages as well as actually acquiring the money to fill those slots. Depending on your playstyle you may lean towards Sow Dissent if you are the Diplomatic type, or towards Hire Ninja if you want someone else to do your dirty work for you. Ninja are also useful for defense, to protect yourself from other people’s nefarious attempts on your life. In general if you have any enemies, even if they are within your own clan, you want to have active ninja protection. However, even without searching for them they will still appear to you occasionally. As for Sow Dissent, it can be used in tandem with Improve Relation if you are trying to lure an enemy’s vassal or Daimyo to your side, but it still is effective on its own. A big difference between Sow Dissent and Hire Ninja is that Sow Dissent does not cause you any trouble, while your relationship with others will decrease if your ninja are caught in the act.
‘Clan’ window
This tab has got to have one of the least informative pop-up explanations of them all. There is a lot to see here and not all of it is made clear anywhere else.Much of it is straightforward but why things may appear a certain way is not always as clear.
To start, at the top we have the display of the heritage of the clan. It shows the current leader, as well as who the heir is. Typically, the heir of the clan will be the heir of the clan leader. However, there are plenty of times when this will not be the case. Unhappy vassals will often work together to vote in a different leader by supporting a relative of the leader, or a rival. The current heir is shown in the ‘Heir’ box, and the other competitors are shown as Pretenders. Hovering over these portraits will show you who all supports each of the candidates. If your heir is not the heir to your clan, be sure to nominate them if they are not already, and even if they are it doesn’t hurt to do it again. Vassals will change their mind about a candidate upon nomination, even if they are already on this list. This may be because the nominee was too young before, or did not hold enough land, or because the vassal did not have as good of an opinion of the nominator earlier.
The Provinces section simply lists the provinces currently held by the clan leader.
The Budget section is one that is easily overlooked and misunderstood. It took me too long to see it there after finding out that hovering over your total Wealth (on the map screen) does not tell your your income and costs. Provinces tell your your tax revenue, but the military tab does not say anywhere what the actual cost of your army is. However, this section of the clan tab does. Hovering over the values for your income or expenses gives you a detailed list of where they are coming from, so you know if you have to halt construction in a wealthy province or if you can afford to recruit more units to your retinue.
The next section shows your Courtiers, the people who currently reside in territory you control, but also people who work for your as vassals or Daimyo. When it comes to vassals, you are given the option to ‘expand’ their list, which shows your the courtiers working in their territory. You can select from the people in your court for things like granting land titles, or appointed positions in your ‘Court’ window. These are also the people used in prisoner exchanges.
Lastly you have the Decisions section, another important part of your arsenal that the game does not bring particularly much attention to. Most of these have to do with increasing your honor, except for the option to “Invite random courtier” which does exactly what it says. If you want to know more details about what each option requres, and what effect they have, hover over the question mark or the sword symbol respectively. The first two options, the Gift and the Ceremony, are a direct wealth-for-honor trade. Sending the Emperor a gift is costs 30 wealth in exchange for 2 honor, and Subsidizing an Imperial Ceremony has double the cost and reward. Subsidizing the Imperial Court however, works differently. This option grants you a bonus to your monthly honor generation for one full year. The last two options, Court Rank (for you or your son) work the same as Subsidizing the Imperial Court but with a small variation. The honor reward per month is smaller, but it lasts until the end of the game.
The two things I use this window for most are the Budget and Decisions sections. Obviously keeping your heir the heir of the clan is important, but the game will actively notify you when there is an issue with this. So I use the budget to see how much money I am making and where it is coming from, as well as my expenses, to decide where to build next or to decide how much larger my army could be. When you have all three types of expenses, you can see that your Retinue is more expensive per unit than a levy, but both are less expensive than Ronin groups.
‘Military’ window
While this particular window may not be your bread and butter, the Military aspect of this game will be your primary means of advancing your clan towards claiming the Shogunate. The Military window is partly an informational tool, but of course is used for parts of managing your military. The rest of your military handling is done via the map screen, where you select your armies and direct them from there.
At the top center of the window it tells you what your ability levels are for your army. The melee and ranged ability of each of the three types of units is shown in the first two columns. The third column tells you how much of the clan’s army belongs to, then how many arquebuses you have (ranged weaponry for recruiting the Arquebus troop for your retinue) and finally how good your morale is. I believe that these aspects are fairly self explanatory, and the game apparently agrees since it does not explain too much about the military window. But your stats are more for your own personal knowledge, it helps to know your strengths and weakness but you can’t do anything with them from here.
To the right of this section, your total potential army and total army raised is displayed, as well as how many units you have in your retinue. This number is based on a few factors, which you can see by hovering over the total. Your ranking in the clan, difficulty, guildhouses and village upgrades can all add to your retinue cap. You can recruit infantry and cavalry whenever you like, but to recruit arquebusiers you need to have enough arquebuses to supply a full squad (250) with weaponry. You can also occasinally recruit Ronin when you find them wandering your lands. They are more expensive, but they consist of multiple squads yet only take up one space in your retinue, so they can be very useful!
The whole point of a retinue is that, as long as it is in friendly territory, it will gradually rebuild itself. Your levies do not, you must disband the levy and then re-raise it from the province to recover troops lost. This means you can send in your retinue to combat enemy units and then pull them back to recover while you send in your levies to siege. This way you don’t have to pull troops from your provinces over and over again and wait for them to reach the front lines.
So, let’s talk about levies then. The majority of the military window is used to display either your levies or your currently raised armies. To be honest I don’t find myself using this window to observe and sort through my armies, as this can be done just as easily, if not more so, from the map screen. Unless you have a great memory of exactly where each province is, looking at the ‘Army’ tab may not be very useful. The ‘Levy’ tab, then, shows you who owns each province and how many units are ready to be fielded. You can raise these levies simply by clicking the ‘Raise’ button on the right. You can also sort this list by the name of the province, the name of the ruler of that province, and the size of the army (the current, not total). I often sort the list by size, especially when i need to reinforce my current campaign, so that i don’t have to go province by province to find ones that are full and ready.
However, the one note I have on this is that this is not always the easiest way to build an army. When I am preparing to start a war, I often go province by province and recruit from the furthest provinces so that i can pull troops from closer provinces to maintain my momentum. The larger your clan becomes the more useful this becomes as it can be a pain if you have to wait for spread out recruits to all make it to the front lines before moving them in anyway. Using the military list and sorting by size is something i tend to do in the middle of the war as things become more hectic and less evenly distributed.
One other thing to keep in mind is that if you disband a levy within friendly territory, all the units that can do so will return to the province they came from. How this works is not always made clear by the game, sometimes it claims that you will still lose some units even though you are in friendly territory. This is because the province has already recruited enough of its levy that it cannot hold all the troops that would return from the currently raised levy. So don’t worry about the details too much with this, just know that if you disband your troops in friendly territory as many will get home safe and sound as possible in the situation.
‘Plots’ window
Plots are definitely interesting feature of the game, and other than prisoner exchanges plots are the closest thing to an alliance that you can have. But of course, plotting against someone in secret is dishonorable, and as such it costs you honor to join or start a plot. As the pop-up addition to this window states, you can plot to do things like ‘breaking free from your clan’ or ‘attacking another clan’. You may also plot to usurp the leadership of your own clan, and the AI characters will engage themselves in various other plots as well, like plotting to attain a spot in your Court. The better your Master of the Guard’s intrigue level, the better chance you have of detecting when other people are plotting against you. When you discover an enemy plot, you can either reveal their misdeeds to the world, damaging the plot members honor, or you can pretend that you don’t know and use the information to your advantage.
Probably the best thing about this Plots menu is that each plot gives you a number measuring the power of your plot, which is essentially the strength of the plotters compared to the strength of the target. This is an awesome tool to use to see how you stand up aganist your neighbors, as you do not have to actually begin a plot in order to see this value to compare yourself to rival clan leaders. This is true when you discover a plot against you as well, beacuse you can see what chance the enemy really has against you and who you should be careful not to upset. By taking out a few of the weaker member of the plot you can easily reduce its power below a threatining level without drawing too much attention, since it is very unlikely that anyone in the plot will bother to rise to someone’s defense in a situation like that.
Getting people to join your plots takes good relationships and skill in diplomacy, but if you are you lucky it can give you the upper hand against an opponent who you formerly posed no threat to. To invite people, you must start the plot, then you can invite other clan leaders or clan members to join you. This can be tricky however, as many people are often reluctant to join a plot lead by you since it will most likely further your own ambitions more than theirs. In addition, clans who are too weak may not join because they will not have enough impact on your plot, while larger clans may refuse to join because they would have to do too much of the work. Balancing the strength of people you invite is key to getting a large number of plotters involved. Keep in mind that you can hover over the response to a plot invite to see what reasons the person has for not joining the plot, some of which I have already laid out here.
One final note on plots is that you should never plot to do anything on your own for very long. If you want to attack a rival clan yourself, don’t start a plot just to measure your strength, not just because it is uncessary but also because you can get caught and suffer an honor penalty! If nobody is willing to join your plot you don’t want to let it linger lest you be found out by your target before gaining any momentum.
‘Diplomacy’ window
The ‘Diplomacy’ window is where one initiates the various different diplomatic requests that you can make. The success of these requests varies depending on your relationship with the person, and therefore also by your Diplomacy trait. By hovering over each individual request you can see what the requirements are for each. Generally speaking, opening this tab directly is not done, as it will simply remain on the same character for whom you most recently selected to ‘view diplomacy’. So, in order to get a new character onto this window, you have to right click another character’s portrait and click ‘view diplomacy’, this being the method you use to get someone in your diplomacy window in the first place (otherwise it will just be yourself). The various diplomatic actions you can take are as follows:
Form Clan: Leave your current clan and start your own. Often seen used during a war, by the losing side. Useful if you are not happy with the current administration (if you are a daimyo or vassal), but different from plotting to usurp the leadership of the clan (thus causing a civil war).
Join Clan: Similar to Form Clan, but with Join clan you select another clan to join when you leave your current one.
Invite to Clan: The inverse of Join Clan. Essentially requesting another character to perform the Join Clan action to join your clan.
Retire to Monastery: Used to ‘retire’ characters. However, it can only be used on your Courtiers, not your vassals, so it doesn’t really seem very useful to me.
Exchange Hostages: Essentially a peace treaty, this requests for another clan to give you a hostage and in return you give them one, thus decreasing the likelihood of them starting a war with you, and vice versa.
Declare War: Allows you to start a war with another clan. This formal declaration is required before you can actually go to war with another clan. Be careful to pay attention to the details of this one, as it may appear to take more honor than it really does if certain conditions are met (hostages on either side, your troops in their territory).
Send Gift: Sends a small gift of money to a character to give them a small, temporary opinion boost for you. Does not stack if used multiple times.
Offer Marriage: Requests for the person you have selected to marry you. Typically, however, it is easier to manage marriage requests from the ‘Marriage’ button on the character panel.
Grand Landed Title: Opens a list of your current Kokujin and Daimyo titles and allows you to grant them to who you have selected. Note that the person you select does not already have to be a vassal to grant them land, but they at least have to be in your court. You can also grant individual Kokujin titles by selecting the province you wish to grant and clicking the ‘Grant’ button, but it is often easier to grant Daimyo titles by using ‘Grant Landed Title’.
Demand Negotiation Rights: Requests for you to be given control over the right to negotiate with an enemy for peace. An example of this would be a war in which you and another clan are ‘allies’ in that started via a plot. If you want to back out of the war, you can try to get this other clan to agree to the same terms, thus giving you better bargaining power with the clan you are at war with. Great for backstabbing someone whom you want to lose the war that you plotted with them on.
As I said before, accessing the Diplomacy window directly is not going to occur very commonly, unless you are repeatedly pursuing a diplomatic course with a particular clan or character. However, many of these requests can be very useful in shifting the balance of power, especially if your diplomacy skill is strong. Bending people to your will amidst the chaos is just as important as creating said chaos.
‘Characters’ window
The ‘Characters’ window displays a list of all the characters in the game. Yes, all of them. Fortunately, there are some tools you can use to refine the list a bit. You can list all of the characters, only the characters in your clan, or only your land-owning vassals. Beyond that, you can also thin the list further by selecting the boxes to the right of the search sorting. The ’employed’ box represents whether they are employed in your court or not. These will not be your vassals but rather your courtiers who are appointed as a ‘Master’ of something. The next set of boxes allows you to view people who are plotting to achieve something. However, the name of it is misleading, as most of these people are ‘plotting’ merely to achieve a position in a court, rather than being part of an active plot from the Plots window. After this comes gender, and marital status, both of which are self-explanatory.
In the window listing the results of your refined (or unrefined) search, you can then sort the list in a few ways. You can sort by the Name, Family or the Objective (plot) of each person. You can also sort them by their Martial, Diplomacy, Intrigue, Age, Opinion (of you), and their Honor.
While lists are nice and all, I personally don’t find much use for this particular window very often. For me, it is usually easier to browse characters by other means. If i am looking for a suitable wife, I will browse my selections via the marriage request feature, since it will already sort the character list to display unmarried women. If I am looking for a suitable target for Ninja Clan missions, or Court Master actions, I will go to the ruler view for the clan i intend to target and then go back and forth through the clan leader’s vassals from their individual character panels instead of trying to sort the Characters list just right. If anyone has some great reason for using this window I would much appreciate the tip.
‘Ninja Clans’ window
This window allows you to recruit ninja for various purposes, and tracks the ninja you have active as well as providing some information about your Master of the Guard.
At the top is the aforementioned information about your Master of the Guard. You can see who it is, what their current intrigue is, what they themselves are currently engaged in (via Court window task assignment), and the most recent hostile ninja activity in provinces you control.
Below this, there is a window that displays all the ninja clans, active or passive, that are in your territory. By passive, I mean that when a ninja clan first appears they will wait for a period of time for you to give them a mission. If you do not do so in this time frame, they will disappear. The clans you have given missions will also appear here, and the progress of their mission will be displayed. For both of these, the progress/time is shown by a bar that slowly fills in.
When a ninja clan appears you will also see their statistics. Each clan has it’s own ability (chance to succeed) and stealth (chance to be detected). Depending on these, and the Intrigue of your enemy’s Master of the Guard (and their ninja, via a mission) you may succeed or fail in the mission, as well as potentially having a ninja get captured and reveal your identity as the author of the mission! You can, in fact, succeed in a mission and still get have a ninja get captured, if the ability of the clan is quite high while the stealth is low enough.
The important part of all this however, is what kinds of missions you can engage these ninja in. You may not spend much time watching this window or observing progress, particularly because you will get a report whenever active ninja finish the mission they are on. There are a variety of missions and they are as follows:
Assasinate a character in another court: Allows you to target someone (after selecting the appropriate province) for attack by the ninja. You can target anyone you like, including clan leaders and members of your own clan, and you should expect the same from them as well.
Protect against ninja attacks: Gives you better protection against ninja attacks. I do not know this for sure, but I believe this to be determined simply by their ability and not their stealth. At the very least, they cannot be ‘detected’ in this mission as they are working to prevent other missions from succeeding.
Take a character from another court hostage/Rescue a hostage from another court: These missions allow you to obtain hostages without it being a 1 for 1 exchange. This is an effective means of getting an enemy to remain at peace with you, and also for allowing yourself to attack someone given the opposite circumstances where they have taken a hostage from you.
Weaken the defenses of a province: This mission gives a -50% defensive bonus (in other words, a 50% penalty) to the province it targets, useful both in negating defensive bonuses from Castle upgrades as well as making a vulnerable target even easier to acquire.
Undermine relations between a province’s ruler and a relgious faction in: Attempts to provoke a religious rebellion in the province you select. This is likely affected in part by the current religion of the clan targeted, as well as any religious buildings present in the province.
Burn down a random guild manufactory in a province: Will randomly destroy a guild in the province selected. This does not disable the slot from being used, but the effect is not merely temporary and will require the the province’s holder re-buy and rebuild the guild that was burnt down.
Cause a character in another court to lose honor: Similar to assassinating someone, you select the appropriate province and then choose the person you wish to dishonor. Cheaper than an assassination, and can have various results (death of target via Seppuku or temporary peace due to low honor).
Each ninja mission has its own uses at different times. It is a good idea to try to keep yourself under protection from attacks whenever convenient, and especially when your empire has recently risen. Otherwise, ninja missions are best used for short-term shifts in balance, allowing you to remain at peace when weak or give yourself further advantage when you are strong.
‘Religion’ window
The Religion window is pretty straightforward, there is not too much to see here. This window lists the three available religions in the game, and also lists who is a member of each, the ‘leader’ of each, and what the ‘relation’ between each faction and their religion is. There is also a ‘Decisions’ section at the bottom but i have not found a use for it… though I believe in other games by Paradox Interactive there are actions you can take relative to your religion.
If you hover over the ‘Leader’ and ‘Followers’ headers, it displays the bonus you get for being a member of that religion and the extra bonus for being the leader of that relgion. This also gives you a good idea of what kind of bonus you get for building a shrine for that religion. And if you hover over a faction that is a follower of that religion, it will tell you the points that make up their ‘relation’ with the faction. For every shrine to that religion that exists in territory your clan controls, you gain +1 relation with the faction. The ‘dedication’ number is an indicator of how many shrines of that type you have versus how many shrines of other types you have. To maintain 50 dedication you can only have shrines of that one religion!
This means at the start of the game you may want to try to focus on one type of shrine to improve your chances of being the leader of the religion, as this will double the bonus you get for being a member of it. However, as the game progresses you will inevitably fight and conquer followers of other religions who have shrines to their religions in their own territories. This can hurt your score but as the game progresses this will happen to every faction, and additionally you will most likely end up having more shrines overall the further you get, thus increasing your relation to the faction via shrines built to them. Late in the game this modifier to your relation with a relgion will outweigh the points you get from being dedicated to that one religion.
Obviously each religion has their own unique bonus, and you should choose whatever one best suits your playstyle, or else your position in the game. If you have a variety of available opponents, you may want to join Shintoism to increase your monthly honor income. If you are facing a larger opponent, Buddhism is a good choice because it will allow you to rebuild your army quickly enough to compete. If your troubles are not with your military conquests but rather with building guilds while you continue to rampage the country, Christianity will aid you with that.
Besides giving you these bonuses, your choice of religion also impacts how the other religions respond to you. By this, I do not mean how followers of the factions will respond, but rather the religions themselves. Whatever religions you are not a member of, they are more likely to launch rebellions in your provinces. This becomes more frequent when you are at war, and it is even more frequent to see a particular religious faction rebel when you are fighting a follower of that religion, or if you have a shrine to a different religion in the province that ends up rebelling. Also, keep in mind that simply being a follower of a religion does not make you immune to rebellions from that religion! Even if you are the leader of Shintoism you may still suffer attacks from Shinto rebels in a province that you have a Shinto shrine in.
First Playthrough
Before actually getting into a serious game and trying to decide what clan you think will best lead you to victory, I recommend a ‘spectator’ playthrough first. Pick a small clan, preferably one with more than just a single province, but not one large enough to draw attention from your neighbors. Pass the time observing the wars that are going on, and watch to see which clans rise and which ones fall. Observe which buildings the various AI characters decide to build so that you can get an idea of what pace you should be building and what matters most. As different clans rise to power, go through the structure of the clan. Does the leader keep most of his Daimyo titles, or does he give most of them out? Does everyone have one, or has the leader given several titles to a few officers? In particular, early in the game, does a clan leader spread the power and give several courtiers a small number of Kokujin titles, or does he select fewer, more capable vassals to grant larger number of Kokujin titles to? These are all things you should try to learn a little about to help give you direction in your first playthrough, so that you can develop your own personal style as well as learning who truly has strength and who is weaker than they appear.
This is not to say, however, that you should be purely a spectator. I strongly encourage that you still try your best on this introductory playthrough. Take out a few surrounding clans that have only one province. Try to gain as much power as you can before one of the more major powers decides they no longer wish to wait to destroy you. Or maybe you will get lucky, and get invited to a plot against them. Either way, it just takes a lot of pressure off of the game if your first solid goal is not to conquer all (well, half) of Japan. This allows you to focus your efforts more, and not have to worry about doing all of the micromanaging that comes later in the game, especially as opposed to starting the game as a major player and trying to figure out everything from there.
Keep in mind that the game does have an element of randomness, however. Certain clans are going to be more likely to rise to power while others fall, but there is never a guarantee that a particular clan will overcome its immediate opponent every time. On the same note, the different means that clan leaders will use to divide their lands amongst their vassals will cause the building patterns of each vassal to be different. People who own only a single province are going to have a very predictable build pattern. Same goes for those with 2 provinces. But beyond that things are less predictable.
My final piece of advice for this playthrough is that you start it in the later era rather than the earlier one (Rise of Nobunaga and on is the late era, Onin War is the early). This is because in the earlier era there are a smaller total number of clans, and they each tend to have more consolidated power. This makes it hard to find a small clan with favorable position, and even harder for that clan to compete early in the game. In the later era, however, many of these clans have been broken up into smaller groupings, and so there are a much greater number of little pockets of small clans for you to choose from.
Walkthrough: Opportunist
This walkthrough takes the approach of a peaceful staring clan, typically a smaller group, and how you can use them to work your way to the Shogunate through calculated moves and a little bit of luck. This approach is friendlier to newer players as the pressures you face early on are not as heavy and you tend to have several options as to what you first move ought to be as well as who you might like to begin the game with. The flaws to this approach, however, are that it can be difficult to gain enough strength quickly enough to overcome a major obstacle, and also that your neighbors may make decisions that limit your options and can potentially leave you stuck. With that being said, lets get to the guide.
One important aspect of this approach is that the beginning stage of your path to victory has many more steps than the other stages. You start out small, with little power, and with a massive foe perched nearby while you are surrounded by a number of clans who rival you in strength. Managing a handful of provinces and only one or two vassals is much less stressful, but it also means that every move you make counts for a lot. On the other hand, starting off as a larger clan, or a clan at war, gives you a much clearer and simpler path to begin with, but becomes very complicated in the middle stages, especially if you wind up as the target of a plot. Essentially, your progress in this game is all about building momentum, and with this approach you start with very little but can build it steadily and end up overcoming each new obstacle with relative ease so long as you have a good plan, and occasionally a bit of luck.
First off, you have to select a starting era and clan. For my walkthrough, I have chosen to start in the earlier era (Onin War) and to play as the Date clan.
I choose the earlier era for this approach because, as I stated in the previous section, there are a smaller number of clans, and they each tend to have more power amongst themselves. This means that many regions are more evenly balanced, and that you will be able to make moves to increase your power without offending any mid-level opponents.
When choosing your location, the main consideration (for this era, at least) is what you want your first major obstacle to be. If you begin in the West, you will have the Yamana-Hosokawa war to contend with, and all those clans that the war entails. Ultimately, you will have to face the victor of this war, whether or not it is one of these larger clans who started it. In the East, your major obstacle will be the Uesugi clan. They start the game as the second largest, and their territory spans from the northern shore to the southern shore of Japan, so there is literally no way ‘around’ them.
Finally, when selecting your clan, you want to take into account what your first few potential moves might be, who your rivals in the area will be, and the strength and potential of your own clan. I would probably not recommend the Date for a first-time player only because of the weak stats that their leader begins with. A clan like the Osaki might be a better selection, since they have a bit more land and also a more skilful leader, but really any selection will do so long as you play your cards right.
Opportunist: Setup
Here, I have selected the Date, so I will more forward with them as my example. Their leader may not be the best, but there are ways around that issue, and their territory and location are actually quite nice for this approach.
From this screenshot, you can see what my most immidiate concerns will be, and how i ought to move forward. My initial plan is to take out the Soma first, as they have 2 territories to my 4 so i shouldn’t have much trouble defeating them. Next, I can go for the Mogami, as I will have 6 territories to their 3, thus giving me the advantage once again. And, if you look closely, the Ashina actually do NOT share a border with me, as their is a mountain region between me and them which keeps us from having a direct border. The only thing I truly have to be cautious about is to not appear too weak in front of the Osaki and wind up having them ambush me at an inopportune time. In a game like this, however, nothing is guaranteed, and so I can only push forward to see how my plan will unfold.
Before I can do any of these things, however, it is important for me to fix the glaring issue facing my clan, and that is the weakness of my leader. With 2 Diplomacy, 0 Martial, and 2 Intrigue, it seems unlikely that I will perform very well, particularly in my ambition for military conquest. However, upon closer inspection, I discover that things may not be as bad as they first appeared:
On my Clan leader’s Character screen, you can see that he actually has 6 martial skill as well as 4 skill in the other two. This is because your characters gain bonus skill from their marriages. Your character will gain half the skill of their wives, and this is a key element in increasing your own power. Note that I said ‘wives’, not ‘wife’ meaning that you can gain different bonuses from your various wives, so it pays to add another one or two as early on as possible. The way it works is fairly simple: whichever wife has the best of a stat is the one you get the bonus for that stat in.
So, my first priority is to find another wife that will increase my skill even more. Despite my need for martial skill, my first wife has a fairly high level of it already, and so i will instead search for a wife with better Diplomacy skill to increase my level of that. Upon pulling up a list of potential women to marry, my direction does change slightly however.
The best wife I could have would give me a 7 point bonus to diplomacy (from her 15, divided by 2 and rounded down), but I am also lacking in bonus Intrigue. The third available woman in the list here has 12 Diplomacy and 12 Intrigue, which would result in a 6 point bonus to each, an increase by 4 in both categories! In addition, this would only be 1 point less than the most potential Diplomacy skill I could gain, so I am more than willing to sacrifice it. You can also see, however, that the marriage is not a sure thing, as I have no real relationship with the Kono and am not a stand-out clan or highly honorable figure myself. Fortunately, the marriage was accepted, and I am now ready to take my next step.
The next step here is not yet war, but rather the development of my provinces. A higher level Castle means more potential troops to deploy, and a higher level Village means more revenue to support the army. So, I begin upgrading what i can in the provinces that I do have. I also decide to take a bit of a risk, and to grant one of my 4 territories to a courtier of mine, promoting him to vassal.
Which one i choose specifically is somewhat inconsequential at this point, as they are all of equal strength and thus of equal value to me, so I grant a province which will be used in the short term in the hopes that it will be a bit stronger when i am ready to make my first military move.
The risk I take here, though, is that I do not yet have a great deal of power or a very large army yet. By granting this territory to a clan member, I am giving them control over 1/4 of the power in the clan. It is highly unlikely that he will contest my leadership position, as we both know I would easily overcome him, but it did end up leading to him becoming a ‘pretender’ hoping to inherit control of the clan from me, over my own son. As he is my only vassal, he is the only one with a vote other than me, and so the vote is split 50/50. As a ‘pretender’ to the ‘throne’, he loses 40 opinion points from me, which ultimately kicks off a ‘bad relationship with liege’ penalty as well, making things a little tense at the start. The reward here is that he will be able to develop the Castle or Village in that province at the same time that I am building one of each in my own provinces. While he will recieve the income from the province, I will be able to make use of the increased levy size of the province, thus helping me gain a military advantage earlier on.
Now that I have my domestic orders in affair, it is time to prepare for war. This is not as exciting as it may sound, however, as I will have to wait for some time to build up my Honor before I can safely move against the Soma. So, for now, I will kick back and relax while I watch the Onin war unfold (and you should too 😉 )
Opportunist: Phase 1
With the ultimate goal of this game being to conquer enough of Japan to declare yourself shogun, the inevitable path to victory is through warfare. As an ‘Opportunist’, you have to carefully choose your battles to properly position you not just in terms of your immidiate neighbors, but also with your first major obstacle in mind, as well as the progress of the rest of the island. The first phase of the path to the Shogunate, then is to become strong enough to overcome my first major obstacle (in this case, the Uesugi). To do that, I need to build up a fair sum of power and overcome a number of my more immidate rivals, and so phase 1 will be the pursuit of this shorter term goal.
Thankfully, the beginning of this approach is quite easy to handle. The Soma will make for an easy target, and it is very unlikely anyone will interfere with my plan for now. All I have to do is wait until the right moment. The first thing I have to look at, then, is how much Honor I will need to declare war on them.
Here, you can see that I need 24 Honor to go to war with them. At this time, I have 26 Honor, so you may think I could go to war with them right now. However, there are two reasons why I will not.
The first, and most important, is that when you have a low Honor count (less than 20) you will suffer a variety of penalties. Nearly everyone’s opinion of you will drop, including your own clan members, and you may even be forced to Commit Seppuku (suicide) in order to retain what little of your family’s honor remains. This is a problem because it will reset your relationships with just about everyone, from opposing clan leaders to your own vassals. Any plots you had in the works or alliances you were hoping to form will be put out of reach once again.
The other reason to avoid low Honor is that it prevents you from interacting with the Imperial Court. You can use the Imperial Court by donating money, and you can choose from receiving a one-time increase to Honor, a one year buff to your Honor buildup, or an end-game buff to your Honor buildup. The longer term buff gives less honor, but the more you can increase your Honor influx, the more often you can go war. However, you cannot do any of these things if you don’t have the necessary Honor (30) to interact with the Imperial Court. Because of this, I prefer to wait to declare wars until I will still end up 30 Honor or perhaps slightly less, in order to keep all my options available.
During the time that I wait for my Honor to build I can focus on trying to develop a province or two so that I can increase my military strength, as well as recruiting myself a Retinue. I typically base my Retinue size off of the Retinues recruited by my neighbor clans, but a good rule of thumb is one regiment for each province you control.
Also during this time, I encountered the misfortune of my clan leader dying and my heir inheriting the clan. Having this happen early on is actually pretty luck though, since I do not have many relationships to preserve or plots to worry about. This just means I need to get another marriage or two for myself.
After some time, nearly 30 years in fact, I am now ready to go to war with the Soma clan.
You can see that I already have my troops ready to march. This is so that their morale will be at full strength when they attack, while my opponent will not have had time to reach full morale yet, giving me another slight advantage.
With little time to respond, and my army’s superiority in numbers, the Soma do not raise levies of their own and instead march their Retinue around the side to try to flank me and besiege one of my provinces. Meanwhile, I lay siege to their province on my border, and it is once again time to wait for a while.
You can see here the window that is shown when you select an army besieging a province. In this screenshot, my army has damaged the walls creating a breach, which enables me to assault the castle without taking as heavy of losses.
In this screenshot, you can see that if you hover over the ‘Assault’ button, it will tell you roughly what your chance of winning the siege is. With a ‘fair’ chance to win you don’t really have much to worry about, but this early on in the game and with so few troops it is better to wait out the siege than to sacrifice too many troops trying to take the province.
A bit later, I have taken one of their provinces, but this has cause Buddhist rebels to rise up in one of my provinces.
This is particularly frustrating as the entirety of my army is already deployed, leaving the garrison back at the province nearly empty. To solve this, I take my Retinue away from the ongoing siege and move it to combat these rebels. And even though the rebels outnumber my Retinue, they end up disbanding once their numbers drop low enough, meaning that I don’t have to finish them off to defend my territory.
After taking the other territory owned by the Soma, I want to disband my levies as soon as possible to increase my income and get them all home to prepare to be deployed again.
You can see here that not all of my troops will ‘return’ to their provinces, but this is because these provinces have already been rebuilding their levies while the deployed troops were away. As long as you disband your levies in your own territory, and that territory is connected to a levy’s province of origin without any gaps in ownership, all the troops that can return to it, will.
Meanwhile, the clans to the north of me appear to be reaching similar points of progress as i am.
The Nanbu, the second largest clan in this northern region (5 provinces, Osaki is #1 with 6) have made their own move against a nearby clan with only 1 province, bringing their total to 6. This means that the Nanbu, the Osaki, and I will all be tied with 6 territories each. However, you can see that I am already making progress, as I started behind the two of them and have now caught up. I also made the first move on someone before either of them, and hopefully my next move will come before either of theirs as well.
My original plan remains unchanged, however, as the Mogami are still the next most viable option for me and they have not been attacked by anyone else. So, I am back to building Honor and my provinces until I can go to war with them.
Opportunist: Phase 1, part two
While waiting for my Honor to be high enough for my next strike, a Ninja Clan happens to enter my territory
Whether it is because of my increase in size, or merely a coincidence, I intend to make use of them. Personally I typically choose to to put them on ‘defense’, as it is the cheapest option and also a very important one. The larger you become, and the more clans whom you border that may recruit Ninja of their own, the more likely you are to be targeted by Ninja. While it is fun to assasinate a leader, or to damage someone’s Honor, and although it can be useful to incite rebels or damage defenses in a province, I try to always have Ninja protecting me from enemy Ninja attacks first and foremost.
Another interesting developement along the way is the growth of my first-born son.
As you can see, I chose to have him be trained in Military matters. You can see that he already has a fair amount of Diplomacy skill, and since he will be inheriting the clan I want his capacity for war to be dominant as well. My next couple sons I may instead send to study Intrigue or Diplomacy, and then when they become strong enough I will place them as Masters in my court.
Waiting for too long in this game can be dangerous, though, as the more powerful clans in this game are rarely hesistant to move forward and gain land at their first opportunity. Because of this, it is important to balance your own developement with your acquisition of land. I do not have many territories yet, and thus my income is still low, so I am hesitant to spend it on a Guild or even on a Religious Building. Getting one Religious Building is important so that you can join the Religion of your choice and gain the passive benefits it grants. But there are other options available to you at similar or reduced prices that also be of use. Considering my options here, I decide to Subsidize the Imperial Court, rather than to build a Religious Building, so that i can be assured of my success in the north.
You can see here the various sources of my Honor gain, most importantly my Court Rank as well as the Subsidization that I purchased. With these factors combined, I will be able to go to war again in another year, rather than having to wait another 30 years like I did in the beginning. In addition, the Osaki also made a move against a weaker group in the north, and so my options are becoming more limited the longer I wait. If someone else beats me to the Mogami it could be disatrous.
As the eve of my next war approaches, I recieve a friendly request to exchange hostages with the Satake clan to my south.
I have not mentioned them too much, but as a matter of fact, they actually begin as tied for strongest (7 provinces) on the Eastern stretch of the island, tied with the Koga-Ashikaga (seen below in light red), but the Koga-Ashikaga begin the game at war with the Uesugi and are the only clan involved in that war, all but ensuring their demise.
I have mostly ignored the Satake up until now, seeing as there were a number of smaller clans between me and them, but their first target was a clan which held 4 provinces and was no match for them. I had hoped they would become my ally, and have even married one of my daughters to their leader to help our relationship, which likely played a role in this offer of an alliance. Either way, I will choose to accept their request, as it will be easier for me to work alongside them to take on the Uesugi rather than to try and conquer the entire eastern stretch without falling too far behind the Uesugi. Speaking of which, you can see in the screenshot where the hostage exchange was offered that the Uesugi now have a new target, the Ogasawara, a fairly sizeable clan to their west. This is not a cause for immidate concern, but it does show the urgent need for me to gather enough power to properly combat them when the time comes.
As an additional note, when I say ‘ally’ or ‘alliance’, what I am referring to is the Hostage Exchange option of Diplomacy, which is less of an ‘alliance’ and more of a ‘non-aggresion pact’. We are not agreeing to work together, but rather it all but ensures that we will not go to war with one another as there is a significant Honor penalty incurred when attacking a clan you have exchanged hostages with. I did attempt to do this with the Osaki early on, but they were not interested, or more likely, not threatened by me.
One other quick note is that I choose to take this opportunity to send Ninja against the Uesugi to damage their leader’s Honor. Since they had just recently begun their war with the Ogasawara, there is a good chance that their leader’s Honor will be lowered to the point of them suffereing some penalties to relationships, and it will also assuredly delay the launching of their war as well.
Now, however, with all these other matters settled, it is time for me to make my own next move foward. I begin an attack on the Mogami, and quickly find out that it could not have come any later.
Surprisingly enough, the Kasai, who started with only 4 provinces, actually make their own move against the Osaki and see some success early on. Their two western-most territories in this image are actually territories that used to belong to the Osaki. And, as you can see, I am only on the second of the Mogami’s three provinces, so there is a possibility that the Kasai could end up becoming more powerful than me after these two wars end. Fortunately my plan beyond my attack on the Mogami was pretty open-ended 😉
It is not long after the Kasai start their war with the Osaki that the Nanbu realize they are also facing a do-or-die situation, and decide to move on the Osaki as well. As I said before, the AI in this game is rarely hesistant when they see an opportunity, and the Nanbu decide to capitalize on the weakness of the Osaki to make some territory gains of their own.
Opportunist: Phase 1, part three
With the Nanbu, Osaki, and Kasai all rivaling me for power, and all being at war at once, it means that I must make my move as well. However, I chose to follow a slightly different path than the Nanbu and the Kasai. Rather than attack the Osaki as well and try to gather the few scraps that remained, I instead decided to declare war on the Kasai. Since they are closer to me than the Nanbu, and were still taking Osaki territory but had been weakened by that war, it would be of great benefit if I could gain both their lands AND the lands they would take from the Osaki. And fortunately, this move worked out perfectly.
I got a little caught up in the action, and would have liked to take an extra screenshot or two to show the unfolding of this war, but stakes here were pretty high as whoever ended up with the most territory after this fight would surface as the most powerful in my region, or at least the most powerful besides the Satake. With so few targets left, and with the power on the east coast becoming so consolidated, it is likely that the Uesugi may begin to turn their attention eastwards before too long.
While taking territory away from the Kasai, I realized that I had gained control of a couple of religious shrines. I mentioned religion earlier, though at the time I did not want to spend my money focusing on it. Getting a shrine or two for free, however, can be of great benefit. Despite not having great standing with either Shintoism or Buddhism, having one shrine of any religion allows you to join it and gain their membership benefits. This game I have chosen to join the Buddhist religion, as it allows your retinue and levies to re-recruit much faster. The Opportunist approach is usually better suited to the Shintoism religion though, as it provides bonuses to honor generation and thus allows you to declare war more often to increase your territory more, even if only by small amounts.
When all is said and done I have surfaced as the most powerful, and with my current hostage exchange with the Satake and our good past relations I am hoping that the Satake and I will wind up teaming up against the Uesugi.
As you can see from the screenshot, the Kasai continued to take some of the Osaki lands as I was taking their lands, which worked immensely to my favor and brought me from a closely-matched rivalry with the three other powers in my region to easily out-matching the only real remaining threat, the Nanbu. The next question to answer is whether I should attack the Nanbu now or if I should plot against the Uesugi.
Fortunately, answering this question is a bit easier than one might guess. I can start a plot against the Uesugi at no honor cost to myself, and then go through the list of potential clans to invite to see who would actually get involved in the plot.
Looking at the map, there are some clans who stand out more than others, but in a situation like this it’s best to get everyone on board that you can. The Satake and Togashi are the two central figures to this plot; without them it is unlikely that we will win. The Hatakeyama are important too, though, and I’d like to the Satomi (small clan south of the Satake) and the Nanbu to all be in on it.
Going into my plot window and starting the plot, I discover that things aren’t too bad. The Nanbu would actually be willing to join me in the plot, as would the Satake and the Satomi. However, the Hatakeyama clan’s leader does not have enough Honor to join the plot safely, and the Togashi are embroiled in other wars and will not participate. This means that I will have to wait for now. After the series of wars that got me to this point I suppose I am due for a brief respite. This will give me time for my troop numbers to recover and to build up my empire a little further.
It is not too long, however, before I am actually invited to a plot by the Satake.
While it would have been nice to gather members myself, as the Satake have not included the Nanbu in this plot, the AI players often have more sway with one another than the human players. In this case, the Satake managed to get the Togashi on board with the plot, even though they were in the middle of a civil war at the time! The downside to this is that they will not be able to contribute to the Uesugi war as much, but with their size and strength we really don’t have any time to waste. The Satake seem to acknowledge this fact as well, as the plot kicks off almost immidiately after I join it, and so the war with the Uesugi begins.
A little ways into the war, things are looking pretty good.
At this stage, the war is progressing quite nicely, and we also have a newcomer to the fight. The Ikko-Ikki faction has reared its head in the south of the Uesugi lands, as seen in this screenshot. I won’t get into the historical explanation of the Ikko-Ikki movement, but it’s worth checking out. What it means to Sengoku is that anyone too large or too aggressive will suffer rebellions lead by this faction, and they are a HUGE PAIN to deal with. The only upside to them is that they are not very aggresive, and will tend to stick to taking over whatever Kuni they are in and not really moving much further from there. They can pop up anywhere, though, so be prepared to deal with them at some point if you intend to become as large as the Uesugi, which you will need to do in order to win the game. But more on them later.
Here, you can see that I have taken the Kori that I was sieging in the previous screenshot. But, what you don’t see is that I have actually had to retreat and regroup. A small group from the Uesugi marched to defend those territories, and even though it was smaller than any one of my groupings, it still caused some trouble. This is for a variety of reasons, but primarily due to the guild buildings that the Uesugi has built in their territory. Some of these increase their army’s ability to either deal damage or to damage morale, and so even though I outnumbered the unit I encountered, it was still able to overcome my first attack on it (and even wiped out my retinue!).
More on the Uesugi war in the next section…
Opportunist: Phase 1, part four
Death is a natural part of life, as they say, and this is also true in Sengoku. If you expect to win every war without losses, or to never lose a Kori that you have taken from someone else, you are very likely to be disappointed. Choosing the right time to regroup is important and can actually increase your strength and momentum. Although I had retreated in the previous screenshot, I did escape with much of my intial army still intact. After disbanding these armies and returning their troops to their home provinces, I am ready to raise a new army and come back with even more levies than I did the first time, as well as a slightly higher income to support these larger armies.
Because of this, and because of the Uesugi’s weakened state, I am able to push much farther into their territory and gain much more land for myself.
You can see here that there are only a few Kori remaining that I intend to target, and that the rest has been taken either by the Satake or by Uesugi vassals who decided to leave the clan when they had the chance. You will also notice that someone in my own clan is plotting to usurp the leadership of the clan from me! As much as I am outraged by this, it is something that can happen during the course of a war.
The larger your clan is, and the more serious the war you are in is, the more difficult it becomes to balance the various aspects of your clan. Your vassals will constantly be asking you to promise them the next Kokujin title, and you can only promise one at a time. Even if you give out two in the same pause period, one of those vassals will act as though you did not deliver on your promise, so you are better off only ever promising a title to one vassal at a time. Refusing them is much better than the alternative, as they will be more upset with you if you renege on your promise than they will be if you don’t promise them anything.
It is hard to keep track of all these things though, and it is inevitable to leave someone upset. During the course of this war I had two separate scares where the game notified me there was a risk that one of my vassals might revolt. And, as I showed with the screenshot, a third vassal wants to replace me altogether. Managing all these aspects is nearly impossible to do perfectly, so don’t beat yourself up if something goes awry. A small rebellion or two is easy enough to put down at this size, and as long as most of your vassals are happy you don’t really have anything to fear from a lone threat.
Nobody seems to want to truly disrupt what we have going on though, and I am able to take the last few Kori I desire from the Uesugi without any setbacks.
At this point, it seems reasonable enough for me to bargain with them for peace. I am happy to allow the Satake to take their remaining territories instead, for a few reasons. First, I still have the Nanbu behind me, who have (thankfully) left me alone all this while, and I can gain almost as much land from them as the Satake can from the Uesugi. Another reason is because of the Ikko-Ikki in that area. The western patch that remains of the Uesugi should not be affected by it, but their presence would block any forward progress from there. The other patch of the Uesugi lands that remain is in the same Kuni as that Ikko-Ikki there, as well as a couple of the Satake Kori being in that Kuni. I am more than content to let the Satake handle the Ikko-Ikki while I pursue my own ambitions. And lastly, as I said before, those remaining territories are too far from my current holdings for me to feel safe trying to protect them. I did offer the Uesugi a chance to submit to me and essentially become one large vassal, but they weren’t interested.
With the Uesugi threat removed, and no clear, immidiate obstacles in my path, it is time to regroup and also to try and remain unnoticed.
After all the territory I have taken, I have actually landed myself a spot on the leaderboard, and I must have also passed the Satake along the way! This is yet another reason I am happy to leave the rest of the Uesugi to them while i focus on unifying my own territory. You may also notice that the stronger clan in Japan is no stronger than the original most powerful clan (the Hosokawa) at the start of the game, but I have done a great deal of catching up. This means that I still have time to waste before having to worry about falling behind the remaining contenders for the Shogunate, and if I can keep the peace with the Satake then there aren’t really any direct threats to my power either.
What, then, should my next move be? Well, having gained some very strong Kori from the Uesugi, I should be able to make more money, enough that I can start thinking about producing some Guilds to increase the strength of my army. Before that, however, my first priority is to obtain some Daimyo titles.
Despite having a fair sum of land, I do not control all the Kori in any one Kuni! This may not seem very important, as I have come a long way from where I started, but Daimyo titles serve an important purpose in this game. Since I cannot hold more than 5 territories, I have had to give much land to my vassals. But, the same rule applies to them, and many of them have 5 Kokujin titles at the end of this war. One vassal even has 7, having taken a few extra Kori all on his own. Without a Daimyo title, none of my vassals can distribute any of their lands, and this means they will also not accept any more from me. I still have the option of giving new vassals their own lands, but I don’t want to spread the power too thinly, nor upset the vassals whom I have put my faith in until now. By going back through the territory I control most of, I can gain a few of these Daimyo titles to give out, which will make my vassals happier and will also allow them to distribute their Kokujin titles, which will ultimately result in each of those Kori being built up faster, thus providing more military strength for me.
This change in direction marks the official end of Phase 1. The Uesugi have all but crumbled. I have caught up to those on the leaderboard, without them even gaining any ground from the starting point! And, in the interest of maintaining my Opportunist approach, I would rather wait for the opportunity to attack someone who is weak, or to make a move to keep up with another clan, rather than be the one to make that first move myself. Phase 2 will address my issues on the homefront, the gathering of Daimyo titles, and the progression of the remaining clans in power to see what my next move will be.
Opportunist: Phase 2
In Phase two of this approach, it is now time for me to focus on building my strength and biding my time while I wait for my new rivals to make their own moves. Having secured myself a spot on the leaderboard, the other members of it are now my new rivals, and my previous rivals on the eastern stretch of the island are a thing of the past. The Satake have gained considerable strength, but I view them as more of an ally than a rival, and the Nanbu no longer have strength comparable to my own. But, I have done far more growing ‘out’ than I have growing ‘up’, so to speak, so it is time to reinforce the territories I have gained and position myself so that I can move against whoever I must in order to achieve victory.
Since the current standings are so close, there is no real rush for me to expand further, and I have already gained much more land than I anticipated. This does mean that I have also increased my income, however, and so I can actually progress more rapidly by building my wealth and spending it on some guilds to strengthen my army rather than trying to expand more and making myself a bigger target without having the solidarity to defend myself. This doesn’t mean I can’t go to war though, and as I stated in the previous section it will actually be important for me to go to war to gain some Daimyo titles so that my vassals can properly manage their land holdings, and I will be able to expand further without having to offend anyone or incur any penalties.
To do this, I start with the smaller clans, so that I do not increase in size too rapidly and draw too much attention. This means that I will be saving the Nanbu for last, and so instead I went after the Honma first. This is because I could gain two Daimyo titles by taking their territory, and also because they divide the two portions of my territory which prevents my levies from properly returning to base unless they cross back to their own side.
Of course, this does not mean that all the rest of Japan will sit idle.
The first event to happen is that the Satake and Takeda go to war with one another. It is difficult to say who began this war, as the Satake have a clear advantage in the east, but the Takeda are much larger overall (2nd with 11%) than the Takeda, so it could have been either of them. I am hoping that the Satake will prevail here and push them out, and then perhaps we can move west together, but regardless of what happens I am ready for the number of remaining clans to decrease so that it will become clearer what my next move ought to be.
A little later, the current game leader, the Yamana, seem to be besieged by a number of plotters against them.
This is precisely why I try to avoid becoming too large or drawing too much attention, and also why I avoid making the first move against someone if I can help it. The AI never favors whoever is in the lead, and you will frequently see them target the top few clans as a group in the hopes that they will become the new top clan. I am a little concerned that Ouchi may gain too much power here, but with all the clans the Yamana are at war with it is unlikely that any one of them in particular will gain too great an amount of power. You may have also noticed in this screenshot that the Takeda have actually grown slightly in power, but I will talk more about that later.
For now, it has finally come time for me to go to war with the Nanbu. Truth be told, however, it is not because I have eliminated everyone else available to me, but rather because of the current honor cost to me.
You can see here that going to war with the Nanbu will only cost 16 honor! There will be no penalty to me due to my opinion of them, and here is why. Recently, they sent ninja against me and I managed to capture them. Knowing that they had sent ninja against me greatly damaged my relationship with them, and so I figured I ought to take advantage of the opportunity and save some of my honor, as it is quite costly to attack these smaller clans at this stage in the game.
I also wanted to move against the Nanbu because it seemed as though I would have to turn my attention back to the front lines sooner than expected. Much to my surprise, the Satake are actually losing quite badly to the Takeda.
I was not paying enough attention to say for sure, but my guess is that they must have marched some troops all the way from their territory out west to increase their power here in the east. Although I no longer care too much about whether the Satake are my friend or my foe (or non-existent), a good Opportunist never misses a good opportunity. I still have some time before I need to move against the Takeda though, and as you can see I have now reached #1 on the leaderboards, so I don’t want to move too quickly and would rather give my army some more time to recover.
Now that I have eliminated all the other clans that remained in the East, and the strength of the Satake is dwindling, it is time for me to move against the Takeda. I don’t want to wait until they have wiped out the Satake, as it will give them time to recover their strength and will thus provide me with a much more difficult fight. I’d rather help the Satake survive and allow them to contest the Takeda by supporting my offensive against them. Interestingly enough, it seems that their decision to attack so heavily in the east was actually a terrible mistake for them as well. Looking to the west, you can see that the Sagara clan took advantage of the Takeda while they were busy, and have overtaken all of the Takeda’s lands in the west.
This is a good example of why it is important to not lose focus of the whole of Japan, as the shifting balance of power can lead to some clans rising or falling quite rapidly. If you wait too long and take too much time building your territory up without expanding enough, you may find that two large clans have gone to war and finished, and that the one that remains is now nigh unstoppable.
Here, you can see that a case simliar to that could potentially occur, and so my move against the Takeda is all the more warranted.
Opportunist: Phase 2, part two
After the dust has settled, I have grown in strength considerably, and it turns out that the situation in the west came dangerously close to the potential outcome that I had described.
The Sagara have taken a large amount of the Ouchi lands, enough that it kicked them off the leaderboard, but in the end they rose too quickly and wound up with a civil war on their hands. Although it shouldn’t take too long for them to settle it, this does give other clans an opportunity to push them back a bit while they are in the middle of this conflict, and it also means that even after the civil war is settled that some unhappy Daimyo and Vassals may defect and start their own clan instead.
With the end of the game in sight, and with the number of powerful clans decreasing while the power each one has steadily rises, the end of my “Phase 2” is beginning to take shape and my choices as to how to move forward are becoming more limited as fewer clans remain. For now, however, my victory over the Takeda has propelled me well beyond any of the other powerful clans in the game, and so it is once again time for me to slow down and prepare myself for the next opportunity that comes my way. To gain control of at least 50% of Japan, I will be required to push futher westward, even if I decide to eliminate the Satake as well, as they will not be enough. The only options I have available are to fight the Hatakeyama or the Togashi, and going up against either one could prompt the other one to get involved as well which would make for quite a tense situation. Ultimately, it seems as though overcoming the Togashi will be necessary for me to carve a path to the center of Japan, and so I expect to make them my next opponent, if the opportunity presents itself or if other events are set in motion that will require me to take action.
Further narrowing my options is the return of the Yamana clan, as they wind up actually getting the Hatakeyama to submit to them entirely without having to fight with them much at all.
This is honestly a bit disconcerting, as the situation is now quite difficult to predict. In my first success with this approach, I was the last of 3 remaining clans, each of which was a giant. I was third largest, and ended up fighting against the first after they declared war on the second, and was able to successfully defeat them in their weakened state while they continued to try to combat the second largest remaining clan.
In this situation, however, I find that I am the largest by a fair margin, and there are not as few clans remaining yet. It is highly likely that one or more of them are plotting against me already, and if two of the other four clans on the leaderboard with me decide to fight me at the same time it could be catastrophic. The Yamana and Togashi combined would have more strength than me, and even the Togashi reinforced by the Ochi would cause me quite a bit of difficulty. Not to mention that if I did face any difficulty that anyone not already opposed to me would be likely to make a move of their own while they had the chance. What happens will next almost certainly decide the fate of Japan and will determine whether or not I am able to attain victory. For the moment, I hope desperately that the Togashi and Yamana find some reason to go to war, or really that anyone decides to attack the Togashi, so that I may also attack them and become stronger without having to face as much opposition. I can’t wait forever though, and if I let the Yamana become too strong then I may be unable to defeat them. There are also things like civil war and defection to consider, however, so nothing is yet set in stone. And so, despite being the strongest clan in all Japan, I will have to wait once more and make my move when the time is right.
Opportunist: Phase 3
In this phase, the end result should turn out to be total victory! After the trials and tribulations of the beginning phase, and the growth through the second phase, you should be poised to sieze victory one way or another. In my case, I happen to be in the lead for the start of this phase, but as we have learned from the course of this playthrough it is not necessary to be the strongest player in order to achieve victory. In fact, the Opportunist approach tends to do better from the underdog position. However, the Opportunist approach is really more about taking advantage of favorable situations, and so if you do happen to find yourself getting ahead you shouldn’t worry too much. Just know that as your size grows it brings more risk to your empire.
But, with the position I am in I have very little to worry about. I am quite a ways ahead of the next closest contender, and with a little clever diplomacy or a fortunate hostage exchange or two, I can ensure my relative safety for the near future. It also helps that my reach comes close to a central point of Japan, as the terrain is quite narrow there and thus it is easier to contain any offenders. Even the territory that i currently control only has a few narrow roads to it, and the Ikko-Ikki seem quite happy to control one of those routes for me. In order to win, however, I cannot simply sit and watch forever. The larger that these clans become, the greater the stakes become as well, and if I lay idle for too long I may find myself surpassed or outnumbered.
After waiting and watching for an opportunity, an event happens that leads me to believe that the time to fight has arrived.
The Yamana (2nd largest) have declared war on the Sagara (3rd largest) and after the civil war within the Sagara they are weak enough for the Yamana to exploit them.The gap between the size of these two clans is close to the gap size between the Yamana and myself, and so I don’t want to allow them to take advantage of such a large opponent who is relatively weak compared to them. This means that my next move will be to attack the Yamana holdings in the east and to try to put myself in a position to become unstoppable short of an island-wide campaign against me.
I have to admit that I did fail to notice the Yamana-Sagara war earlier though, and allowed the Yamana to gain more of an upper hand than I would have liked. I was concerned that the Togashi would decide to fight me as well if I moved against the Yamana. However, after waiting for a better opportunity, they ended up offering me a hostage exchange!
This couldn’t come at a better time as it virtually guarantess that the Togashi will leave me alone for the next 5 years. Now is the time to make my move against the Yamana.
As I prepared for my attack on the Yamana, I took another look over and found the Sagara in quite dire straights. The Ochi (4th largest) decided to get in on the war against the Sagara after seeing them suffer so greatly at the hands of the Yamana. While it does mean that some of the powers that concern me are getting larger, it also means that they will keep out of my war with the Yamana as well.
All these things turn out to be fairly fortunate, as my declaring war against the Yamana seems to have set someone’s plot into motion.
The Satake, Satomi, and the few other minor clans in my vicinity all declare war on me at once, very shortly after my declaration of war against the Yamana. This is a perfect example of why I was so hesitant to make any moves against the Togashi or the Yamana, as it would afford many their only opportunity to surpass me. But, with both the Togashi and Ochi out of the picture, it is unlikely that these other groups will do anything more than provide me closer territory to deploy troops from in the future.
My good fortune (or timing, perhaps) is compounded by the fact that the Yamana are a bit held up in the west by various religious rebels as well as the Ikko-Ikki.
Not only will this impede their war against the Sagara, but it will also buy me and my vassals time to deal with the Satake and Satomi so that we can focus the entirety of our attention to the west.
It isn’t too long before the Yamana are able to eliminate their threats in the west and begin marching east to deal with me. Although I am not quite finished with the Satake and Satomi, I was careful to spread my strength evenly enough to keep from losing ground to the Yamana while still progressing smoothly against the rest.
To be fair, I have all but defeated the Satake by now, and I can expect my vassals to do the rest of the work against the Satomi. With a little bit of clashing against the remaining Yamana forces, I should easily be able to take the territory that originally belonged to the Hatakeyama (the whole section adjacent to my territory).
With their attention turned now towards me, an interesting development arises in the west.
The Gamo clan, a remnant of some other clan that is no longer relevant, is now at war with the Yamana. I am not sure who started the fight, as it could be a desperate land grab by the Yamana after seeing their lack of success to the east, or the Gamo may be taking advantage of their focus on me to try to gain some territory of their own. Either way this is actually a great opportunity for them as the Yamana have not been performing too well against me thus far. In fact, the Ochi seem to think this is a good idea as well, as they also join the fight against the Yamana once they witness the success of the Ochi.
Now, the Opportunist in me sees a new possibility arising here, something that I was trying to figure out how to manage in the first place, and yet here the answer lies in my lap. In our first phase, we learned that no plan for the future should be so rigid or definite, and that adaptation to your situation is more important than the amount of power you wield. In the next section I will detail exactly what this new possibility is 🙂
Opportunist: Phase 3, part two
WIth the Yamana facing overwhelming odds, and my campaign against their territory nearest to mine reaching completion, I devise a new strategy that should propel me to within arms reach of the Shogunhood. Rather than push further west and fight over what remains of the Yamana, I decide instead to make peace with them and give them a chance to reach a stalemate against the Gamo and Ochi.
With the territory I have gained from the Yamana, my troops are already in position to march upon the Togashi, and the Ochi will have their hands full trying to fight the Yamana on their own. This is the perfect and ideal opportunity for me to take the Togashi lands from them and all but guarantee that I will be victorious. If I can take the Togashi lands then I will control all the east (except what the Ikko-Ikki still have) and I will also share a very, very narrow border with the Ochi, meaning that even if the whole of western Japan suddenly turns against me it will be very easy for me to repel them from that position.
And so my war with the Togashi begins. One thing that I have not commented on quite as much up to this point is actually something that becomes much more relevant as you become larger and go to war more often. Based on your size and aggresiveness, you will experience increasingly frequent religious rebellions in your territory. I didn’t have too many to deal with during my fight against the Yamana-Satake-Satomi battle, but now that I have so much territory and have been continuing to press my advantage, more and more of these rebels have been showing up. In fact, I would probably estimate that I devoted more of my own forces to suppressing these rebellions than I did towards defeating the Togashi. But, they are a bit easier to manage, as all I have to do is raise levies from the nearby Kori and group them up, and I can then disband them right away, so even repeat rebellions in an area don’t require too much attention to deal with. It is best to deal with them quickly however, as they can occasionally grow in size if given time. I had a few uprisings during my war with the Togashi where the number of rebel troops surpassed 10,000! So it is something you definitely have to watch out for.
Despite these distractions, I am still able to push foward against the Togashi without too much resistance beyond the first few fights.
In this image you can see me employing one of my favorite tactics in this game, particularly against larger enemies. It’s a classic: Divide and Conquer. I didn’t get any awesome results with this strategy, but in past games I have a daimyo and all his vassals under him, or at least a few minor vassals, break off from the main clan once they get separated in this fashion. It’s not guaranteed to work, but it is still an effective strategy even if nobody betrays their clan. By separating a larger clan like this, it allows you to block the flow of troops to one side, and so you don’t need to commit your army as seriously to that side while still being able to conquer it. It also helps to minimize the territory that your opponent has their troops in, as the AI will work really hard to dodge your attacks on them and to take back territory whenever possible.
If you can surround your foe, and force their troops to battle yours, you can speed up the process of conquering them.
A little bit before I took that previous screenshot, I went to check on the ongoing war between the Ochi and Yamana.
It seems that they are still fairly evenly matched. The Ochi have definitely made some progress against the Yamana, but the Yamana have eliminated the Gamo in order to maintain a bit of their size. All this means for me is that neither side has the strength required to attack me directly, and at my first opportunity to intervene I will gladly do so, and in doing so I will secure my victory.
Having eliminated the Togashi, my strength has now reached the point that I have surpassed the Ochi and Yamana combined. Even if all the clans who rank on the leaderboard were to combine their forces, they still would not match up to my strength. Not to mention the fact that the only two remaining clans with any power are busy fighting one another. In the meantime, I have lined my troops up along the Ochi border and will declare war on them in mere moments.
To be quite frank, at this point in the game I hardly have to take this war seriously. I only need another 5% of Japan to declare myself the Shogun, and at that point all I have to do is hold it. With my level of solidarity in the east and no current threats from within my own clan it is hard to forsee any issues facing me other than those on the western front. And with the Ochi and Yamana weakened from their war with one another it is unlikely that even their combined strength will be enough to slow me down. For the most part, I intend to make the first few moves against them, and then once I have secured enough land I will simply let my vassals do the rest of the work of keeping the Ochi and Yamana busy, while I wait out the confirmation of my declaration of Shogunhood.
Opportunist: Phase 3, part three (Victory)
A year or two into the war against the Ochi, and things seem to be going alright.
On their southern flank, I have taken a couple territories and still have reinforcements behind me. In the north, however, things are a little more tense as my personal troops are just slighty outnumbered by his. My vassals have a fair number of forces in the area, but the Ochi unit that is attacking the Yamana Kori is probably not going to be sought after by my vassals, at least not until they take that territory. Controlling this northern passage is also more important to me as it will be easier to defend once I have taken it and will allow me to concentrate my efforts to the south where I can be approached from many more sides.
Unfortunately, it seems like the Ochi are aware of the advantage they might gain by keeping me fighting on both of these fronts.
In addition, they have summoned a much larger army than I expected, and must have given up close to every attack on the Yamana. I said before that I wouldn’t really have to take this war seriously, but it seems I must remain involved for a little while until we gain the upper hand in this war. Fighting an enemy of this size often takes this kind of time and effort to achieve anyways, so I suppose I shouldn’t have underestimated them.
The one upside to the Ochi’s divided attention is that it does give my vassals ample opportunity to push further into Ochi territory. Although I have become outnumbered on the northern flank, my vassals have taken the opportunity to capture several territories along the coast. Personally, that is not the approach I would normally take, as our holding there would be easy enough to divide or cut off, and could be attacked from multiple sides. But, as long as I am holding the attention of the Ochi up north, my troops should have a nice foundation for sweeping across the Ochi territory.
After a little while longer, I have finally taken hold of the northern passage, and my vassals are rapidly moving in on various Ochi Kori to the south.
We are still a little too focused on the very center of their territory however, and this does end up leading to some repeated capturing and then losing a Kori here or there. Ultimately it doesn’t matter too much, as it forces more fights to happen and thins out the Ochi ranks, leaving my own personal reinforcements as well as my remaining vassals with little resistance to their attacks.
The only real potential problem with this sort of behavior is how it affects my attempt to become shogun. To claim the title of Shogun, you need to hold at least 50% of all the territory in Japan for 3 years. By now, it’s not really a question of “if” but rather “when”, but it would be frustrating to make it 6 months into the claim only to lose it because the enemy snuck in and assault a couple of recently captured castles. Thus, I would recommend waiting until you are a little beyond 50% to begin your claim, or at least until you have your own personal levies and retinue in position to protect your borders. When you are ready, all you have to do is press a little button below your portrait, and then the timer begins.
Once you begin your attempt to become Shogun, you can switch to more of a defensive posture rather than an offensive one. If you are still enjoying your war campaign then by all means, press onward, but with only 3 years left until the end of the game it is not as important to press your opponents as hard. It is generally better to maintain your own personal forces and let your vassals do the rest of the fighting, especially if you have done well enough in the ongoing war that you have gained the advantage against your foe. It is possible that all the remaining clans might make one last-ditch effort to stop you from winning, although it happens very rarely. When it does happen, you simply want to be ready.
In this particular scenario, what happened for me instead was that the other remaining clans went to war with the Yamana in the hopes for a last minute power grab against a weakened opponent of great size.
The Ouchi didn’t do too bad, and i’m sure things went okay for the others, at least as first, but it does seem like a strange choice to make. Then again, I suppose the AI isn’t really aware of the ‘threat’ of your victory and instead simply does what seems like the best move for them at the time.
Once you have made it this far in the game there isn’t really much to do except anxiously awaiting your victory. With the hard work behind you, and the last great war you wage coming to a close, you can kick back and relax for a bit and just let the time go by if you please. Whatever you choose to do in your final moments, it won’t be long before you get a nice little pop-up telling you how great you are.
You’ll notice that you have two options here: one is to ‘resign’ to the main menu, and the other is to simply close this window and continue. It is a little anti-climactic that there is no neat cutscene or credit roll, but most of the hard work and great victories have already happened some time ago and the actual declaration of your victory is more of a formality than anything. If you are still having fun playing, feel free to continue to press onward and obliterate your remaining foes if you wish. The bigger these clans gets, the more entertaining it can be to watch them crumble when their morale hits rock-bottom, and so you may still find entertaininment in continuing. In my game, the Ochi didn’t unravel as dramatically as I had hoped they would (really, nobody that I fought did so in this playthrough) and so I instead choose to be satisfied with my victory and to seek a new conquest for myself.
Hopefully you were able to make it this far too, and that you had some good “opportunities” to make a name for yourself during the Sengoku Jidai. There are plenty of other opportunities out there for your to explore as well, and now that you know just how to exploit them you can go back for them with added confidence. If you didn’t quite reach victory on your first attempt, or even your first few, don’t give up! The more you play, the more you will learn, and if you get even halfway to this point on your own playthrough you will be able to confirm for yourself that no two games of Sengoku are ever quite the same, and so a whole new set of possibilites awaits your on your next attempt. Good luck and have fun!