The Hojo Campaign Guide

[Belisarius]

Post yours here.

[monsterfurby]

Here are a few hints from my current normal difficulty Hojo Campaign:

1. You can pay Takeda 1000 koku on your first turn to break their alliance with the Imagawa. DO IT. It will save you a lot of trouble down the road. Note that Imagawa seem hardcoded to betray and attack you in turn 3 - be prepared.
2. After you have isolated Imagawa, have one medium-sized army guard the western entrance to your lands. They can't reach your castles in one turn so you should make sure you can meet them before they get there. This is much preferrable to half-manning both castles as you WILL lose them one by one in that case.
3. In the meantime, take your main army east (i.e. every single soldier you can spare - always recruit up to your limit, so you still make around +50 or +100 koku each turn. Your conquests will bring you more income) and crush the enemy clan there.
4. Ally with your new neighbor to the east and go after Imagawa. This will allow you to focus your attention on them.
5. If Tokugawa are still alive when you get to them, conquer and vassalize or ally with them - you will not be able to run towards Kyoto at this point as long as you have Takeda or another large clan from the northeast sitting at your doorstep.
6. Take down Takeda, preferrably at a time they are busy with another clan from the northeast. If they are allied with all their neighbors - just wait, sooner or later they will go against them.


That's all I have so far, hope it will be useful for someone Let me know your experiences with the Hojo!

[Becephalus]

Hojo was the first game I lost. I play on hard with autoresolving all battles. I took out the Imagawa and edo. But then Tokugawa, Takeda, and One of the northern clans all hit me at the same time. I won some battles, but was eventually chased down, cornered, and killed. I should have made a strong ally earlier.

[Ma'ahes]

Here are a few hints from my current normal difficulty Hojo Campaign:

1. You can pay Takeda 1000 koku on your first turn to break their alliance with the Imagawa. DO IT. It will save you a lot of trouble down the road. Note that Imagawa seem hardcoded to betray and attack you in turn 3 - be prepared.
2. After you have isolated Imagawa, have one medium-sized army guard the western entrance to your lands. They can't reach your castles in one turn so you should make sure you can meet them before they get there. This is much preferrable to half-manning both castles as you WILL lose them one by one in that case.
3. In the meantime, take your main army east (i.e. every single soldier you can spare - always recruit up to your limit, so you still make around +50 or +100 koku each turn. Your conquests will bring you more income) and crush the enemy clan there.
4. Ally with your new neighbor to the east and go after Imagawa. This will allow you to focus your attention on them.
5. If Tokugawa are still alive when you get to them, conquer and vassalize or ally with them - you will not be able to run towards Kyoto at this point as long as you have Takeda or another large clan from the northeast sitting at your doorstep.
6. Take down Takeda, preferrably at a time they are busy with another clan from the northeast. If they are allied with all their neighbors - just wait, sooner or later they will go against them.


That's all I have so far, hope it will be useful for someone Let me know your experiences with the Hojo!

Actually, if you look into your diplomacy, you start out with a trade agreement with Takeda, so when the Imagawa attack the Takeda won't. I've been playing the Hojo on hard, and it's a freakin' blast with your capital being able to pump out 4k income relatively early on. This lets you create just one or two more market-specialized castle towns so you can use that blacksmith to its greatest advantage. So, here are my own pointers to add...

1.) The Imagawa are easy prey, believe it or not. You can get fire bombers on turn one, use them! I have pushed back the Imagawa (read:annihilated) when they attacked my blacksmith town (name escapes me atm). So while you send your main army east to take out that pesky hostile clan at Musashi, you can land a crushing blow to any besieging army!

2.) Save money. No reason to build up lots and lots of building chains, or even armies, for that matter. The AI, while it does raid on occasion, would rather siege than wait you out. Use this to your advantage...as a defensive-driven faction, let the enemy exhaust themselves. This works out great later on when your enemies have tech'd up building chains that otherwise you wouldn't have built, allowing you more troop types with little investment.

When the Imagawa have been pushed back and their army defeated, attack! When you capture that first town, go directly to diplomacy and force a vassalage on them. This does two things: double your land mass, and give you two vassals. Two, you ask? Why yes...the Tokugawa are include in the deal, so you now have a nice boundary to the west of your fledgling territory. And later on, you'll probably wind up capturing them for yourself when those vassals are killed off by the Hattori or somesuch. So, with one fell swoop, you have secured your western flank and obtained a new cash flow via tribute/trade.

East and North are the only real question as a Hojo. If you can secure an alliance for a certain side, take it. Since you ARE a defensive faction, you need to let the enemy come to you. And while you can take on a significant amount of enemy troops, it's not wise to fight on two fronts. What I normally do is place my main army in the disputed border town and wait for an attack; once the enemy has depleted a full stack, strike out and nab a town or two. The great thing about the Hojo position is that even the seemingly wide-open eastern flank is that it can be boiled down to the town east of Musashi. The AI will need to take that town due to the road structure.

After a dozen or so turns, the Takeda will get all uppity...better for you! They will generally attack your blacksmith town, leaving their main town open. Now, I generally wait to crush their armies in a siege before attacking their town, but it's up to you. Soon, you will have three territories with vassals to your west, a secure northern border via chokepoint (with added cav bonus, for what it's worth), leaving only your eastern flank to be the only real wide-open point.

This is the part where things begin to stagnate, which can feel odd considering the rush nature of this game. Don't let it get you nervous, because you are strongest when the enemy has time to rally its forces. Break them in a siege battle, and watch and laugh as they go from Strong to Feeble in one turn, 11 territories to 1 in two turns. Now, I turn to units and techs, whoohoo!


Units:
Bows are fun, but bombs are king. For every bow unit, I generally have a bomb unit to go beside them. When the enemy brings samurai, you can laugh again as your bombers take out half the stack, leaving your retainers to mop up. Now, you can use the catapult given to you via mission in the main disputed town for added support. Since the enemy WILL bunch up, target them when far away for maximum spread. Often I can take out 150-250 men before they reach bow distance. Add the bonus of killing off a general leading an ashigaru-heavy army, and you've just nabbed an easy battle.

Now, this is the part that gets odd. Yari ashigaru are helpful, but you should try to avoid field battles. Why? Because bombers are less effective, unless you get really good at micro'ing them to hit those pesky archers (and let me tell you, it's fun to rout 400 archers with 60 bombers). And since samurai are better equipped to defend the walls, it's a better investment to go katana or doichi. Yari samurai are good as well, but swords are key here. So, later on, ~4 katana, ~6 bow, and ~4-5 bombers are a good setup.

Cavalry? What cavalry? Ignore it, don't need em for sieges.


Techs:

Personally, I just get enough techs to build up sword dojos, and then rush for catapults, while researching at least the first Chi tech. This puts you roughly around turn 20, which is when things die down a bit. So, switch over to Chi techs...namely, the farm/market line. This ends with you building castles faster and cheaper, but the main target is farms. You need those beautiful suckers to support your growing blockade of castles! Once you get the basics done, it's up to you...focus on firearms or castles, or dabble in ninjas.

Conclusion:

Basically, as the Hojo just realize that, being open to attack on three sides and specialize in sieges, you're going to have to be patient. Use aggressive AI behavior to push forward in crippling assaults that force them into vassalage...use diplomacy to create a forward line of defense that actually gives you back money...and have fun with big explosions! The joy of seeing 300+ rout due to the machinations of 30 fire bombers is beyond words. Forget cavalry, forget pike formations...live and die on the walls!

[Sir Robin]

One of the early Hojo missions gives you a unit of artillery. Battles, including sieges, become much easier when you can bombard opponents from half way across the map.

[Popgun]

I managed to ally with the Imawagwa and the Takeda early on. It basically allows you to march north and smash all the minor tribes and you don't have to worry about the Useugi or any clans attacking you in the flanks because the Takeda are there. The only problem is I now own all of northern Japan but I am surrounded by allies.

[valky]

I managed to ally with the Imawagwa and the Takeda early on. It basically allows you to march north and smash all the minor tribes and you don't have to worry about the Useugi or any clans attacking you in the flanks because the Takeda are there. The only problem is I now own all of northern Japan but I am surrounded by allies.

Ever tried using Monks
It is ridiculous fun to block their armies using a Ninja and the Monk starts a rebellion. It depends on luck though, but I was getting my first monk very early on and he is fully trained to incite the mob. (luck = CTRL+L *g*)
If the Ninja is succesful you don't get negative reputation, so if it won't work after 4-5 tries, then leave it - same applies to the monk.
I just managed to completely annihilate my ally Takeda (~8 provinces) using this 'cheap' tactic. Wasn't even getting dishonour.Though you have to take down the rebellion army afterwards, but they are far more easier to manage than some full stacks of samurai.
The advantage is furthermore, you always get major happiness because they were rebels and you don't need to leave your troops in the town.

Guess it takes as long as you need to conquer, so it's just my style of play At least in the Hojo campaign, but it's getting boring & easy after some time. (playing on hard)

[DarkArk]

^^ quite possibly the most munchkiny S2 tactic I have yet read.

[valky]

It was only about the stupid ally I did with Takeda, spent quite some time to get things working on my right warfront and they started to steam roll me. So I went back to an earlier save and just tried if it would work that way
In the next campaign I'll choose my allies more carefully...if at least the dishonouring treaties would decay over time and not appear randomly even if I did not break any agreement.

[I WUB PUGS]

This is my experience with the Hojo Clan on hard settings.

Keep in mind that you will spend the better part of five years sitting in your two original territories.

The keys to success are the development of a superior economy early on and maximizing your chi tree research, coupled with strong diplomacy with your western/southern neighbors.

Economy:

• After driving out the invaders from Musashi (you can autoresolve twice in a row and be done with them) scrap your army to save cash, and I mean every troop except your generals.
• Build up your port in Sagami immediately
• Build up the gold mine in Izu (Izu is the most profitable province in all of Japan).
• Send trade ships to get iron from up north, and grab as many of the trade nodes from down south as you can. I only have incense from Indonesia coming in, and it is worth a ton of cash.
• Build up your farms and dedicate chi research to this chain. You have to mind your food supply otherwise you will have revolts. When you hit Chonindo you've basically assured yourself as a farming superpower. But this will be much later.
• Markets are worth it to upgrade, but mind that they take food away from your stockpiles.
• Trade, trade, trade and more trade. It is best to sacrifice cash to gain trade agreements since when you start expanding you will be in control of most trade items and even 3-4000 in cash will be paid off even from a small customer in 4-6 turns, so your initial investment is worth it in the long run.
• Taxes can sit at normal throughout the entire game, anything higher really irks your people and once you start building up your provinces the buildings will compensate for the growth penalty.

Units/Combat:

• I didn't have a cavalry unit for almost 15 years. Too many Yari Ashigaru out there to make them worth the cost.
• Katana Samurai are the kings of the battlefield, No-Dachi can break enemy units very quickly but they are basically the same as Lancers from NTW. Hit hard and pull back immediately.
• Someone already said it, but do indeed make your living on the walls. With 4 Bow Samurai and 2-3 firebombers and a reserve of katana samurai, you can hold the walls against 4-1 odds. Now I like to be passive aggressive on the defense. The enemy will almost always have one point of attack overpowered, take a mass of katanas and yaris out against the weak part of the attacking army and then run around the flank and smash the enemy strong wing while they are attacking your walls. I massacred the Date this way and they outnumbered me 10-1.
• Hold reserves of Yari troops to charge and bog down enemy cavalry. Katana can handle everything on the field except cavalry, so use your Yari as support troops. I've killed many a general and Daimyo bringing them in to attack my katanas only to meet a peasant with a spear.

Diplomacy:

• I see no reason to go drive west/south until you are safe in the north/east. Too many strong clans to the west and south, let them beat each other up.
• Waiting out the wars and getting rich while you research superior units will give you time to see who the weak ones are and who has overstretched themselves. The Takeda will undoubtedly overextend, as will the Uesugi.
• Use the Imagawa/Tokugawa wall. These two are great trade partners who will probably stick around because they seem to be cautious clans. Maintain very friendly relations at all costs.
• Takeda, Uesugi, Sagami and Date will kill each other en masse, eventually you will have weak foes all around you, unable to check your advances against the smaller clans.
• When faced by a large clan who you can only win 3-4 battles against, make sure you win those battles and big, and then extract a peace. The AI will almost always settle for peace with a trade agreement and they will pay you after you've beaten them several times in a row.
• Once you have conquered the northern half of the country, you will be at the good'ol "Total War Critical Mass" level and you can't be beaten after that point.

Sea Trade:

• One of the disadvantages of being a sea trading nation is that you will absolutely have to build a Navy and a big one. 2-3 stack of mixed ships will secure your sea lanes, but this big of a navy is also pricey.
• Search out more and more trade partners using an agent. The further you expand up north, the more ports you will have and therefore the more trade routes.

So to sum up:

Infrastructure is key, build it up in every province. Exploit the seas. Be friendly. Be very very patient. Live on the walls with melee troops in reserve.

[For Victory]

@ I wub Pugs,

I followed your advice but only met with trouble. Firstly, playing on Normal, I defeated the Musashi troops once and then they vanished into their own territory. Then, I got a warning that the Imagawa were going to attack me. I am also wondering about the logistics of securing trade nodes as the Hojo. All of the nodes are on the other side of the island/map, seems like a lot of risk. Going back to my game, the Musashi re-appeared and killed my general and his army. Not quite how I pictured it. Does playing on Hard make things go any differently?

EDIT: The Imagawa and their allies declare war on me each time, even on Hard. Since I disbanded much of my army, I had to scramble to get something ready to stop them. I REALLY don't like bomb throwers. Archers have vastly superior range and just mow bomb throwers down from safety outside my castle and I can't touch them.

[Shabby_Ronin]

@ I wub Pugs,

I followed your advice but only met with trouble. Firstly, playing on Normal, I defeated the Musashi troops once and then they vanished into their own territory. Then, I got a warning that the Imagawa were going to attack me. I am also wondering about the logistics of securing trade nodes as the Hojo. All of the nodes are on the other side of the island/map, seems like a lot of risk. Going back to my game, the Musashi re-appeared and killed my general and his army. Not quite how I pictured it. Does playing on Hard make things go any differently?

EDIT: The Imagawa and their allies declare war on me each time, even on Hard. Since I disbanded much of my army, I had to scramble to get something ready to stop them. I REALLY don't like bomb throwers. Archers have vastly superior range and just mow bomb throwers down from safety outside my castle and I can't touch them.

It is terrible advice. Ma'ahes has it correct.

Build a goldmine and a road in the blacksmith province and spam out bombers and bow and spear ashigaru, destroy the Musashi then repair the castle and let your troops regenerate. During this time don't build anything but cheap troops and maybe roads to aid in replenishment.

Ally with the clan next to your new province and be ready to crush the Imagawa. Wait for them to attack and then use all those troops you have been training to beat them back to their last town and force vassalage on them. Now you can consolidate your position, build it up and prepare for the Takada to attack.

The bombers are amazing troops, they have single-handily won victories for me in the field.

[Ecka65]

WARNING: I played Hojo this way purely for fun (something different).

I decided to roleplay - we would honour ALL treaties and NEVER break them. If an ally attacks another ally, we would side with the oldest ally. We would NEVER declare war on our own initiative. Essentially, we have no immediate ambition to become Shogun. If it happens, it was fate.

I chose simply to defend my own borders. The northern clan that Hojo start at war with eventually asked for peace and accepted vassal! I never made an incursion onto their soil and they had a plump full stack. That secured that border.

I figured I'd need agents, so I went a different route. The gold province build a sake den and a Monastary. The other province went yagi dojo and horses. I love yagi cavalry and consider them one of the best units.

Without level ups I needed to work the Monk and Ninja. In combination I call them "spec Op's" teams and try to have two in most campaigns minimum. Obvious target was the Imag province that will road connect the two starters. Eventually I got it to riot (whilst leveling the two agents nicely) and quickly marched in and put down the rebellion.

The next 5 or 6 years went by with staedy research and just playing around with the agents. At this stage I'd not made any new allies. Takeda had gone gang busters and decided to attack my vassal. RULE TRIGGER - Must defend my vassal. What I couldn't believe was that Kai was undefended. I siezed it to stop the charge bonus cav being built (sort of defuncting my earlier builds ) and ended up taking a few provinces off them. As soon as they asked for peace I accepted (new rule ).

It is now late 1560's, I have 9 provinces all very well developed, including all victory provinces except Kyoto. Have Indonesian incense and the far northern iron supplementing trade. Many cities have Metsuke pushing things along and I have my two Spec Op's teams generally keeping look out or up to no good against the Shogun's enemies or "Upstarts". A couple of clans in the south are close to the size that a player would trigger Realm Divide. So I'm watching that with interest to see if it actiually happens to the Ai.

I'm unsure wether I'll actually win (or be able to with such "rules") but it certainly has been a very different campaign thus far.

[StrongIsland]

Actually, if you look into your diplomacy, you start out with a trade agreement with Takeda, so when the Imagawa attack the Takeda won't. I've been playing the Hojo on hard, and it's a freakin' blast with your capital being able to pump out 4k income relatively early on. This lets you create just one or two more market-specialized castle towns so you can use that blacksmith to its greatest advantage. So, here are my own pointers to add...

Really nice tips. How exactly do you accomplish this 4k income though ? I've tried upgrading the gold mine and stuff but do you upgrade the castle early and add on markets to all the starting cities?

[Shabby_Ronin]

Really nice tips. How exactly do you accomplish this 4k income though ? I've tried upgrading the gold mine and stuff but do you upgrade the castle early and add on markets to all the starting cities?

When the gold mine is maxed. It's the richest province in the game.

[Drtad]

I just tried Hojo on hard and forgot to ally with Imagawa when I had the chance (only allied with Takeda). Big mistake.

But I came back and started another one. Is it just me or do the Ogigeyatsu (Musashi) start out with a larger army? I was able to siege them and successfully retreated after killing the majority of their army (couldn't finish them) and they became my vassals. It was working out until Uesugi destroyed them. -_- I think setting up for a backstabbing of Imagawa is the way to go here.

[emilsinclair]

Just finished my normal difficulty campaign as the Hojo. I thought I'd share, briefly, how it went down.

There are, of course, different strategies that could potentially work, but I began my campaign with the aim of keeping the Takeda and Imagawa clans as allies, thereby protecting my flank while I conquered the rich provinces of the Kanto plain (to the east of the Hojo starting position). Historically, the Kanto was always the key to conquering Japan. To that end, I tried to arrange marriages with those clans when possible. I don't think the Takeda agreed to an alliance for some time, but once they did, they stuck with me. I never left my home provinces undefended, though. I always wanted to be ready in case they changed their minds.

With the Imagawa and Takeda as allies, it was not too difficult conquering the Kanto provinces. Takeda, fortunately, conquered everything around the Kanto, so by around 1860 I had 9 provinces, and was completely surrounded by allies. This allowed me to focus the next 10 years on building my economy. I knew that as soon as I attacked the Takeda, and broke my alliance, I would have to take him out quickly, and this would trigger realm divide, so I would have to be prepared to lose my trade partners. So I built up my economy and got about 30,000 koku in my bank before going on the attack - I was bringing in about 5,000 a turn, with 3 or 4 full-samurai stacks. I moved a full stack by ship and took out the Date in the north, then swept that army down south while I attacked the Takeda in 4 different provinces in one turn. He was not prepared. Because my economy was so strong, I could pump out stacks of armies really quickly, and I conquered half of Japan in about 5 years. The Imagawa stayed with me until nearly the end - I was actually quite sad to kill them, because they stood with me for so long, so I let them declare war on me because of realm divide, when I could have taken them out much easier by taking them by surprise.

In retrospect, I think the key to my campaign was finding a way to build my empire to a moderate size early on, while being able to come out of that expansion with solid allies protecting at least some of my borders. From there, it was essential to prepare for the end-game scenario by building a really strong economy. After that economic structure was in place, the rest was a breeze. I imagine this strategy would be much more difficult to replicate on harder difficulty levels.

[StrongIsland]

I just tried Hojo on hard and forgot to ally with Imagawa when I had the chance (only allied with Takeda). Big mistake.

But I came back and started another one. Is it just me or do the Ogigeyatsu (Musashi) start out with a larger army? I was able to siege them and successfully retreated after killing the majority of their army (couldn't finish them) and they became my vassals. It was working out until Uesugi destroyed them. -_- I think setting up for a backstabbing of Imagawa is the way to go here.

Yes they definitely start out with a larger army if you count the one garrisoned in their city as well. If I were you I'd try to capture rather than vassalize them, and instead become good allies with the Satomi and let them work as a shield for the crazy Uesugi clan.

[I WUB PUGS]

Eh, what I posted is working again since I just restarted as Hojo since I screwed myself in the last campaign.

If you buddy up with the Imagawa with military access and all that then they won't attack you. Takeda like to bribe you with money to break trade agreements with Imagawa, but don't take the bait.

With the Musashiian army that starts in your territory, you have to attack them right away. Even an auto resolve will beat them easily... THEN chase them after they retreat and attack them again and they will no longer have that army since a routed army that is engaged and beaten is wiped off the map.

The trade nodes??? I've got 10 trade ships each on the iron in the north, the silk from china and the incense from indonesia. Believe me I'm rolling in the dough. I've got 4 1/2 samurai stacks and a 10 ship fleet and I'm still pulling in 4k a turn in profit. Granted I'm also deep up north now.

This isn't terrible advice, it has worked multiple times. But the real keys are to keep Imagawa close and kill off that first invading army. Seems like the CAI gets scared or something if you do that.

The turtle does indeed work for Hojo.


Edit: Btw the smart thing to do with trade nodes is to upgrade Sagamis port right away and churn out trade ships, as soon as you get a ship, send it to a trade node, next turn send another one to a different trade node, etc, etc. Yes, it takes a while for them to get there, but I secured 3 out of 6 in my current campaign by rushing the nodes with just one ship each.

[DarkArk]

I crushed the Imagawa, took their one province, and made them my vassal. Sure you could ally with them, but why would you when you can crush them on your walls and secure a province with an intellectual center? +2 rank Metsuke are great to have in the early part of the game.

Alliance with the Takeda is essential, but you have to do it after you vassal the Imagawa.