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Thread: The Hojo Campaign Guide

  1. #61
    Noif de Bodemloze's Avatar The Protector of Art
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    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Does anybody have problems with Hojo and Takeda alliance? Always in start, when you make alliance between them. Then several turns later, they broke up and war is up! >_>

  2. #62
    Miles
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    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    I played through Hojo on Legendary recently and it was pretty fun. To deal with the Takeda issue I tried to break up him and Imagawa pretty early on and that seemed to keep him in check for a while. However, his army got strong enough that he felt he could bully me around and I wound up at war with him, Oda, and Date all at the same time. There was a chunk of years in there where I felt that one wrong battle would cost me the game. I did lose some, and ended up losing my heir at one point, but eventually crushed Oda and cleaned up the other two as the Ikko Ikki took over the middle. Some points to keep in mind...

    -Your home province(Izu-with the gold mine) is a money machine. Yeah. It can produce two units/turn, but you should really be putting a market chain in there and the best metsuke you can field. Don't upgrade the keep unless you think you can tech up and drop the top ninja building in there. You can produce ghetto troops there to get your army started out or reinforce.

    -Sagami should have a smithing upgrade built and expand the castle(over time as food allows) to let you recruit 2/turn. Build an armory encampment for gold armor on your melee units. Your yari ashigaru will last a good while and be a solid part of the early game. Your bow ashigaru will also be armored but your goal should be to work your way to Hitachi (station- haha) and make that your ranged troop province. Eventually you'll want to move your siege building to Hitachi, but you can build a couple bombers out of Sagami to help supplement your force. They aren't super great at attacking a fort, but they are pretty sweet when defended in the field and they are great when placed on a wall. When you tear down the siege building in Sagami replace it with the naginata dojo so you can get insanely armored naginata samurai.

    -Side note- I always recommend armor because that is the only stat that all units benefit from and that doesn't go up when a unit gains ranks.

    -Take out the guy you are at war with in the first couple turns. On the second turn (Summer) try to sell military access to whoever you can. Keep doing that as you establish more land neighbors. Use that money to try to break up Takeda/Imagawa alliance or to build up your infrastructure- particularly that gold mine.

    -If you can get Suruga out of Imagawa, you'll have the perfect province for metsuke(I left Ima in there for a while because Oda was crushing everyone and I wanted a buffer state). Otherwise you'll get it in Kozuka.

    -Night attacks- Stick your Daimyo in the woods for ambush with a melee heavy crew and jump the crap out of any missile heavy army heading in on you. The Night Attack bit not only limits sight, but lets you pop a single army.

    -Have a ninja or two good at disabling an army. Being able to cut an army out of reinforcing gives you almost the same benefit as Night attacks. I also had a metsuke running around with good bribe skills for a bit spending the money I'd get from selling access to buy troops because on Legendary the rate the AI generates troops is insane.

    -Judicious creation of vassals to disrupt your major adversaries. This is how I took Oda out of the fight long enough to let me break Takeda. Oda had Echigo and was going to gut me with his large/awesome armies. I was able to stall one army with ninjas and bought off his way back army- then used it to take Echigo while they were still in the province. I re-installed Uesugi as a vassal and this booted Oda away from my border and put Uesugi's ginormous province between Oda's northern armies and my vulnerable provinces. It only took a couple turn for Oda to declare on Uesugi and head back in, but the walk is so long it was like 1.5 years before he was back where he had been. By then I'd beated Takeda into peace (he paid like 13k koku for it too) and was ready to lock up with Oda on more even terms.

    I also used vassals to tie up Takeda when he went back to war, and also in my war against the Ikko Ikki. After RD I had to revassal some of them, but I rode out most of the endgame making new vassals of most provinces so my army could keep rolling. The only caveat is to never vassal a province that you need for a dedicated use or that provides a huge money building. I kept the troop producing provinces for myself. Both of the II home provs I used for troops in the late game once Hitachi and Sagami became remote. I also built huge Shinto Shrines there to reverse all the Ikko cult influence.

    -Another side note- I didn't use any ships at all for my Legendary campaign. It's up to you whether you feel they are necessary or not.

  3. #63

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by CyrusII View Post
    Did anyone try converting to Christianity as Hojo?

    It seems to me that if you manage to get a nanban quarter in Hitachi, your superior accuracy cannons and matchlocks allow you to turtle in your castles very well.

    The play would then focus on missionaries inciting rebellions left and right, then taking rebel provinces when opportune. At the same time, you can dominate the seas with nanban ships and tech up very fast with the churches.

    The biggest downside I see is that you'd have to wait a long time for nanban trade to reach the east or sail an army to the west and take a province with a nanban port there. (preferably with a monk inciting rebellion first, but this early the chance of success would be rather low).
    I am in the process of doing this now on VH. I hit RD and I am at year 1581. The imported matchlocks really help but I scrapped the nanban port on a whim and am trying to get my economy back under control. I am still allied to the Chosokabe who is it at war with a major minor clan in the south, so that keeps both clans with terrifying military off my back. It's kind of funny that I am allied with buddhist Chosokabe while a christian clan declared war on me long before RD. Once I bribed a Honma stack of ashigaru and slaughtered their daimyo's other stack I eliminated the last major threat to my power base in the North. The Chosokabe and that other clan are the last threats now.

    Once you get decent leveled missionaries and religious generals, converting is easier and less time consuming. I move a stack into the next province and keep missionaries to stabilize the last province. It still takes a few turns to turn a completely buddhist province but I can move on once the situation stabilizes and let it convert slowly with a tax exemption or wait a couple more turns if the income is high.

    This is probably the sloppiest campaign I've done so far. I had to restart after the first attempt because I lost my last province. I haven't used the fire bombers much and I haven't teched to siege weapons yet. I didn't build up Ito as far as I could have and I actually lost Sagami for several turns and had to retake it. Then I spent the next 10 turns trying to lure the Ogigayatsu out of their castle with light cavalry where I immediately captured their home province of Musashi. When they tried to retake the castle, I slaughtered them. But now I'm in a transitional but safe state. I was worried about Tokugawa after RD, since I had them as a vassal and they had three stacks and 3 provinces near Izo but I managed to outwit them in the end.

    I want to kill off my current Daimyo since his conversion to Christianity affected his honor but he has 6 stars now. Once my heir gains some honor, maybe his father will get unlucky. But then again he's only 44, too young to die of old age
    Last edited by Allch Chcar; February 28, 2012 at 10:35 PM. Reason: whoops, Izo province. :laughter

  4. #64

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Hey everyone, I wanted to get your advice on a Hard Hojo Campaign I've started recently:

    I started off by capturing the rebel province in the first year, and then began to build up my economy (forging alliances with both Takeda and Imagawa). However, the Oda came out of nowhere, conquered all of the Imagawa in around a year, and then declared war on me (causing the Takeda to cancel their alliance). I captured two provinces, which gave me a nice base (up to 5 total), and then settled on a Peace Agreement so as to not overextend myself.

    Here's the issue though; the turn after, the Takeda declare war on me, and advance with close to three stacks of troops. At this point, I have maybe one and a half stacks at most, meaning they'd easily have 2:1 advantages (and for the most part more experienced and better troops as well). I've tried a number of things:

    - Trying to ambush the Takeda as they advance down the pass between Kai and Suruga. This works until the third battle, at which point their forces are just too much.

    - Getting the Satsumi to attack (their much smaller armies are easily crushed before the Takeda look in my direction).

    - Creating an alliance (by giving up a hell of a lot) with the Takeda before they attack (they promptly break the alliance the next turn). (Shamefurr dispray!)

    - Sneaking up to Kai and situating myself there; again, when outnumbered close to 3:1 even when defending it's just too much.

    My next idea is to capture Kai, but instead Pillage it and use the cash to build up a second army asap. Even then I don't know if it would be enough, but it might be worth a shot.

    Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I could get around this? I'm currently making just over 1000 Koku a turn, and probably have at most three turns before Takeda's army reaches me. It's frustrating, as I find the normal campaign difficulty quite easy, but the AI's huge army sizes just too difficult to face.

  5. #65

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Several false starts with Hojo at legendary as it is very easy to come unstuck in the first few turns.

    But current campaign is going well and I have maintained my initial alliance with the Takeda and Imagawa for about 80 turns and let them serve as a buffer to the west and north while I've gradually pushed eastwards and up the coast.

    Your four key provinces should be Izu for its gold mine, Sagami for its smith, Kozuke for its library and Hitachi for its artisans and fertile soil.

    Trade can be problematic as getting ships to trade nodes takes ages and they are all too easy to lose and take another age to send out a new trade fleet.

    You really are better off upgrading that gold mine and buying farm upgrades and building markets.

    Found the Hojo fire bomb throwers fun but far too unreliable to be worth giving up two units of ashigaru for - at least in sieges they were killing a respectable number of enemy but they weren't routing them (possibly because of it being legendary?) and so I eventually replaced the siege engineer with a market.

    The campaign really took off though when a Date 4-star general who'd just conquered Hitachi and Shimotsuke off me with what looked like an unbeatable full stack of samurai spontaneously deserted to me with all his best units - had my own generals betray me but never one of the enemy.

    Now my only worry is that he's going to do it again....

  6. #66

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    On very hard/legendary:
    Any idea how to get christianity early (ie. triggering nanban encounter)? I hit realm and divide before the event (turn 40? I think).

    What I did was:
    Get the acadamy on the left, pump out level 3 metsuke. Make a lot of markets. Get warhorse resources, sell trade for up to 4-20K profit.

  7. #67

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Well for my hojo campaign on hard, I immediately built up a navy and 2 stacks of men. This made my economy not so great and I became bankrupt. After that I sent one army all the way to chosokabes stronghold and destroyed them because they only had that 1 province. So then after that i sent my other army off into Satsuma lands and took it. Then I started taking all the provinces going north until I met the date clan and I started getting beaten bad by their 3 stacks of men, so I gave them 2000koku for peace and an alliance. By this time, I have already destroyed all the other clans on the island where chosokabe used to be, and I started attacking the mainland of japan and got into war with the Hattori, it took a really long time but i defeated the Hattori and took Kyoto

  8. #68

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Pelopidas_Of_Thebes View Post
    On very hard/legendary:
    Any idea how to get christianity early (ie. triggering nanban encounter)? I hit realm and divide before the event (turn 40? I think).

    What I did was:
    Get the acadamy on the left, pump out level 3 metsuke. Make a lot of markets. Get warhorse resources, sell trade for up to 4-20K profit.
    Not really, I think it's pretty random. You can download the mod which doubles the required number of Prestige to hit realm divide though. Otherwise you really have to watch your prestige very carefully.

    Quote Originally Posted by malun327 View Post
    Well for my hojo campaign on hard, I immediately built up a navy and 2 stacks of men. This made my economy not so great and I became bankrupt. After that I sent one army all the way to chosokabes stronghold and destroyed them because they only had that 1 province. So then after that i sent my other army off into Satsuma lands and took it. Then I started taking all the provinces going north until I met the date clan and I started getting beaten bad by their 3 stacks of men, so I gave them 2000koku for peace and an alliance. By this time, I have already destroyed all the other clans on the island where chosokabe used to be, and I started attacking the mainland of japan and got into war with the Hattori, it took a really long time but i defeated the Hattori and took Kyoto
    You certainly don't make things easy for yourself. The Hojo starting position isn't too bad if you can ally with Oda. It's easier if the Mogami can defeat the Date for you since they usually end up fighting each other at some point.

  9. #69

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Unlike what many people here are saying, the Imagawa never attacked me. Unlike the Shotomi (? purple clan in the east), who's been my ally for quite some time and just decided to betray me at some point.

    In my game, both the Uesugi and Takeda have been trashed. The former by me and the Date (I did all the job though), while Takeda has been fighting somewhat successfully, until half the big clans united against him (Hikki, Hattori, Oda...).

    Sad thing is, for once, I was allied with them. I hoped they'd protect my flank while I went for northern Japan, but now, I gotta do my best to help them as they get invaded by waves of Oda and Hattori soldiers. Meanwhile, I also somehow don't trust the Date (also allied with me) at all: he keeps asking me for help in exchange of a trade agreement that he cancels as soon as I've helped him. I'm pretty sure he'll turn on me as soon as the fighting in the west wears down my armies.

    With insight, I wish I had went for the Imagawa earlier, before they got conquered by Oda. Their province are juicier than what I got by fighting the Uesugi and Shotomi (?), and would be handy when it comes to protect my capital.

    Edit : Ha, and none will accept a trade agreement except Takeda. I have a decent reputation, and producing a few goods. That and the lack of nearby trade node makes this "Easy" faction quite harder than Chosokabe and Shimatzu.

  10. #70

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    I mainly conquer my ''opponents'' in the beginning.

  11. #71

    Default Re: The Hojo Campaign Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Meneldil View Post
    Unlike what many people here are saying, the Imagawa never attacked me. Unlike the Shotomi (? purple clan in the east), who's been my ally for quite some time and just decided to betray me at some point.

    In my game, both the Uesugi and Takeda have been trashed. The former by me and the Date (I did all the job though), while Takeda has been fighting somewhat successfully, until half the big clans united against him (Hikki, Hattori, Oda...).

    Sad thing is, for once, I was allied with them. I hoped they'd protect my flank while I went for northern Japan, but now, I gotta do my best to help them as they get invaded by waves of Oda and Hattori soldiers. Meanwhile, I also somehow don't trust the Date (also allied with me) at all: he keeps asking me for help in exchange of a trade agreement that he cancels as soon as I've helped him. I'm pretty sure he'll turn on me as soon as the fighting in the west wears down my armies.

    With insight, I wish I had went for the Imagawa earlier, before they got conquered by Oda. Their province are juicier than what I got by fighting the Uesugi and Shotomi (?), and would be handy when it comes to protect my capital.

    Edit : Ha, and none will accept a trade agreement except Takeda. I have a decent reputation, and producing a few goods. That and the lack of nearby trade node makes this "Easy" faction quite harder than Chosokabe and Shimatzu.
    keep a strong army to keep imagawa/takeda off you, abuse sagami like no tomorrow to get upgraded army units. Beeline for hitachi to get upgraded archers.

    in a perfect world you'll manage to take the 5 golden eastern provinces, screw trade nodes and rely on metsuke + markets. (though do take the eastern trade node).

    Hojo isnt that hard, just take advantage of highly upgraded, cheap units.

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