Overview
This guide is on inciting rebellions in Shogun 2: Rise of the Samurai, and using rebellions to your advantage. Rise of the Samurai is an expansion that adds the Gempei civil war era to Total War. This is my second rebel guide for Shogun 2, my first was On Rebels And Using Them To Your Advantage. Which covered inciting rebellions, especially via the Ikko Ikki, in the base Shogun 2 game set in the Sengoku period. We begin with basic mechanics, move into differences between inciting rebellions in basic shogun 2 and rise of the samurai, a section collecting screenshots of Gempei-era rebellions, the Fujiwara Rebel Japan Challenge and some closing remarks.
On the Path of Ruin
This guide is on inciting rebellions in Shogun 2: Rise of the Samurai, and using rebellions to your advantage. Rise of the Samurai is an expansion that adds the Gempei civil war era to Total War. I quite like this expansion and have been playing more of it recently, as my screenshots demonstrate. This is my second rebel guide for Shogun 2, my first was On Rebels And Using Them To Your Advantage. Which covered inciting rebellions, especially via the Ikko Ikki, in the base Shogun 2 game set in the Sengoku period.
This guide is not incredibly lengthy. People have games to play. We begin with basic mechanics, move into differences between inciting rebellions in basic shogun 2 and rise of the samurai, a section collecting screenshots of Gempei-era rebellions, the Fujiwara Rebel Japan Challenge and some closing remarks. I hope you all enjoy this, and find something you like as you learn more.
Think of how happy you will make your rebel friends.
Basic Mechanics
Monk agents are Sou in Rise of the Samurai. It isn’t just a name change, their upgrades pathways are different and it can be easier to get a level 2 sou/monk . Through the Buddhist monastery you can recruit sou that are initially rank 2. As with shogun 2, recruiting a sou/monk in a city with a holy site also improves their level, and this can be altered further with upgrades.
Sou function like monks, you can demoralise armies, placate the populace of cities, improve morale of armies and incite unrest. The numbers are different because of design choices, so a sou is also just a little more effective at keeping unrest down now, if you fully commit to raising happiness.
Unrest is caused by having your sou attack an external province by inciting. You can’t use a sou to cause a rebellion in your territories, but the usual rules of rebellions and minor factions arising from badly managed cities, or cities changing culture, still applies.
Inciting unrest takes a long time to improve, it is far down the upgrade path, but a level 2 sou can be relied upon to be able to cause real havoc in small un-upgraded settlements. They have a chance to flood a region with rebels when inciting unrest in a major or considerably upgraded province, but it is best to get level 3 sou for that. Keeping the level 2 for smaller provinces, or using your level 2s for other actions before they are ready for destabilising Japan.
So it seems similar to using a monk, and it starts off the same. Everything is as you would expect. As you begin causing unrest, small stacks of rebels emerge… and then things start getting weird.
The basic mechanics of Shogun 2 and how it calculated rebellions has been quite seriously changed.
A high level sou leads to more rebels, and larger more upgraded provinces lead to even more rebels and they become more elite.
Oh no… Our poor foes are in real trouble.
Differences in Inciting Rebellions
Sou can now create immensely large stacks, and if they incite in a major province the quality of the rebels varies highly, but tips to at least part of the stack being very high quality indeed.
Here are some examples (so you know I am not lying to you):
To discuss the many differences in starting rebellions in the Gempei era, in contrast to the Sengoku era, rebels initially appears the same, small rebellions, but blossoms out into a far larger and more promising form.
Almost all rebel armies (and these major stacks are armies) are led. These rebel lords usually come with some experience and can get pretty good if they throw off a few attempts to take back a province. You can of course throw weak units at them to level them up and then bribe them, but a new differences to shogun is the Shirabyōshi and how they can react to rebels. These rebel lords can be seduced, and it isn’t that hard. Pairing sou with shir can allow you to take down enemy regions, and then skim off lords for your stacks, while leaving major armies to hold a region. Whereas the junsatsushi would need to bribe the whole province to bring this lord over to your side, the shir can pick them off after your sou brings them into being.
I think that the larger garrisons in Rise of the Samurai are why the rebel stacks are so large. Petty provinces don’t always provide very promising rebels, but regions that can call upon many levies and others to protect the province face stiff competition from an actual rebel horde. Whether this is a deliberate design choice or simply the mechanics working with the rules they are given, is not known to me.
Next it is time to talk about elites. I said minor rebel groups aren’t very impressive, but at times even small rebel armies will have samurai. Sometimes it is a small army of horse bow sam (as above), and other times it is foot samurai leading levies. What is significant is that samurai definitely appear in rebel stacks. I have seen hosts with foot samurai, and I keep right away from them, letting them take down my enemies.
Cavalry can be a part of rebel stacks, and if you are inciting many rebellions, it won’t take you long to come across them. The cavalry are lords (which are bow cav by default) and the mounted samurai units. They can have a few chevrons of experience as well. When inciting unrest in Minamoto provinces and those with bushi training grounds, I did notice more samurai.
I have not seen mounted naginata in a rebel stack. It really may not be possible, they are a fringe unit in this game, hard to get to, and rarely seen. If you have a screenshot where they did pop up as rebels, please link it below.
Bow monks can and do appear. They are pretty quick and easy to get in this expansion, so their availability may contribute to their emergence in a stack. I have not seen very many of them, but the AI factions also seem to love building them.
There are not very many units in this expansion, but the stacks are highly variable with what they can have. Some may be full of levies with an emphasis on ranged, others may be stacks of foot samurai or elites led my already upgraded samurai horsemen. I have seen quite a bit of naginata attendants, but then you don’t usually see many samurai. Sword attendants are usually in a samurai led stack, but I have not seen a whole stack of sword attendants.
Rebel Onna bushi and garrisons. What makes rebels rather worrying is when they are not a full stack, but are elite. If this army gets a province, and elites will rip through a garrison of levies, then trying to take the province back means you now have to fight the rebels and the garrison, whatever it is based on upgrades. Even if a building is damaged, it still counts for garrisons. So those trying to fight rebels already inside a province can end up having to fight all the garrison levies, and any elite units provided by buildings—units such as the onna bushi, the samurai women with naginatas. If a full stack takes a province, then they can’t use the garrison.
Lastly, inciting can not be done to everyone. The Rise of the Samurai expansion has three cultures, and you can not incite unrest in provinces that have your culture. To be clear, this isn’t about the percentage, it is about how the faction leans by its very being. So if you have an alliance of Taira scum, you can’t incite unrest in Taira dog cities.
This is a departure from Shogun 2, in which you could cause rebellions even in allies cities. “You are my trusted friend and we are in an alliance, but I have paid for an army of yari samurai led rebels rise up and take that castle town you love so much. Cheers. From Brosamurai”. Now you simply can’t do that, so it is something to consider, because if/when the allies of your culture turn upon you, the sou will not be able to help you by inciting unrest in their cities. If you are Taira prostitutes, you can only incite unrest in the cities of the cultured Fujiwara or honourable Minamoto clans. This is definitely in contrast to how inciting unrest occurred in Shogun 2.
There are many exciting dimension to this campaign concerning rebels, and the above are the main reason I have wrote this guide.
A Collection of Screenshots
Fujiwara Rebel Japan Challenge!
In my last rebel guide, I provided a rebel challenge for players to try. A variant of that this time is to play as the Fujiwara. Either can work due to their initial upgrades in the bunka tree, but Kubota are the pre-eminent monk faction. A little like Uesugi in Shogun 2. The challenge is to take only a few provinces, and build as many monasteries as you can. You will send these out and start to cause deadly rebellions among the cities of the Minamoto and Taira.
I found this a very enjoyable agent-intensive game. Keep some mind towards defence, and prepare to have warrior monk armies for the late game.
You complete the challenge if you turn half of Japan rebel, or if you remove all branches of the Taira and Minamoto via rebellions. It can be done. Here I took out a major Minamoto stronghold with rebels.
From there you can continue to rebel any non Fujiwara clans and rule with an alliance or pick off the Fuji that are left. It doesn’t matter if all of Japan isn’t Fujiwara controlled or Fujiwara culture. You will rule over the ashes and the bandit lords.
😀
Good luck!
None troll like an old sou.
Closing Remarks
In this short guide we have discussed inciting unrest in Rise of the Samurai. Attention has mostly been upon the way inciting unrest and rebels are different to the core game of Shogun 2. The sou is a slightly different beast to the monk, and although they have some more restrictions, the stacks they create are generally larger and more elite.
Thank you for your attention, I hope you learned something. Feel free to discuss rebels and the Gempei era expansion as you like below. Thank you.