Overview
It has been awhile, but I beat Shogun 2, Rise of the Samurai and Fall of the Samurai in a previous eon, and in doing so I absorbed a ton of extremely helpful information from others and my own personal testing. This information was so good that it sticks with me to this day, and I have wanted to create a guide for awhile, and I can finally procrastinate no more.So here are many essential tips & tricks for Shogun 2, may they bring you honor and victory!
Work in Progress
It has been a long time since I played Rise of the Samurai, I’m doing this off memory, I’ll update it as I think of things.
Read my Shogun 2 guide for a lot of tips & tricks that carry over to RotS, such as the ocean movement trick, etc.
If this guide seems a bit brief for an “Ultimate Guide”, keep in mind my main goal is to emphasize the information that will significantly improve your gameplay and save you from time-consuming mistakes.
Resources
[link][Guide] Rise of the Samurai Legendary by (^_^) is a good overview:
[link]Essentials
Administration
Administration will become a huge problem as your empire expands, as the higher the Administration, the less tax income you get. In fact, if you take one province too many without the right preparations, you can actually hurt your income instead of improve it because of the higher Administration cost.
How do you reduce Administration? In the Mastery of the Arts (technology), in the Bunka tree, go down the line to learn the Arts that reduce Administration by 20% and another 20% for a total of 40%. I think these same Arts unlock the “Palace”, which if you build the top tier Palace, it reduces Administration globally by 20%. So you can reduce Administration globally by 60%, which should pretty much nullify the nastiness of the Administration mechanic and allow you to have enough armies to Steamroll to victory.
Junsatsushi
Junsatsushi are ridiculously useful, especially in the early game. If you can get allegiance of a province over 50%, you can request that province join your faction. This is best used on single province factions because using the action against a faction with 2 or more provinces results in a declaration of war. Also, best used when an army is not in the town, as the cost of the action increases if an army occupies the town (basically you are now bribing the army and the province).
They cannot be used against Great Clan Daimyo-lead armies or the last province of a Great Clan, but lesser clans are fair game. Basically, if you see a lesser clan with only 1 province, “it’s free real estate”. You can get a province without having to send an army, which is particularly useful if you are in a situation where you need all your armies to defend but still want to expand. Or think of it like if you encountered a rebel held province in Shogun 2 and wanted to capture it without fighting.
Siege Defense
The first tier of castle in Rise of the Samurai is a settlement with no walls. I highly recommend you NOT try to garrison a town and defend it with only a Tier 1 “castle”. Why? Because it offers no benefit over a field battle, while you now have to defend the capture point or auto-lose, and if you lose, your entire army will be killed, as opposed to if you just reinforce a town defense, your army can retreat if you lose.