The Shimazu Campaign Guide

[DerWish]

I have also started with killing Ito in the first 3-4 turns, but before finishing them made full alliance with Sagara. Marriage can be immediately proposed and their steadfast personality means you can trust them to back you in your conquest.
Eventually you will have to deal with them as it is a winning condition to own their ancestral castle, I'm eagerly waiting how Sagara will react when the Shogun turns rest of the clans against me.

[Buddha]

This got pretty long so if you don't like to read long things, then skip this post. You'll be fine.

Tips for Shimazu for beginners:

Hi, i'm an experienced player who has played the original Shogun, RTW, MTW, and MTWII. I've also played the Civilization Series, Europa Universalis Series, etc ,etc. I got Shogun2 recently and got my first domination win on turn 171 as Shimazu on normal/normal difficulty. Shogun2's definitely very different from the other Total War games. I'm about to start my second campaign with another clan, but here are my thoughts so far in no particular order about playing Shimazu and the transition gameplay-wise from the other total war games.

- First off, Shogun 2 is probably the most politically turbulent total war game yet made. Clans rise and fall in the blink of an eye and factions attack each other with a viciousness I've never seen before in a Total War Game. Pretty much every clan major or minor starts out with 1 province, so pretty much anything can happen and anyone can become a major threat to you.

- As Shimazu, First priority for me was to get to 3 provinces ASAP. All resources went to getting that first army to a full stack. I honestly don't remember the first 3 or 4 turns clearly, but i definitely know i took my first province during those first few turns, with the next province being captured a few turns later.

- After getting to 3 provinces, you have some breathing room and a little bit of money coming in. It's probably a good idea to get trade going. Get the trading port upgrade built and start building your trade fleet. Early on, you can get away with leaving your trade ships unprotected since you don't have many enemies and nobody else really has much of a fleet so feel free to send them everywhere and worry about building a military fleet later.

- I didn't do this next, but i should have: Make a trade ship and set sail for the far, far out trade node all the way next to the Date clan's starting area across the map. It's probably best to sail along the Shikoku Island side in order to establish the maximum number of diplomatic relations. Get trade going with the factions you meet until you reach your trading partner limit (limited by the number of your trade ports) and try to keep your trading partner limit maxed for as long as possible. In my actual game, this didn't occur to me until many turns later, but this is something you should definitely do once you start pumping out trade ships.

- I believe getting heavily involved in trade is important to the Shimazu's success, or at the very least, make the game a lot easier for you. The provinces in Kyushu are just not very rich in general and the lands in Shikoku and the immediate neighboring provinces in Honshu aren't much better either. So you'll either have to be a very economical Daimyo or else be prepared to manage an extensive trade network in order to support your war machine. And anyway, those trade nodes are right next to you. Use'em before somebody else does!

- As for the military part of the game, sieges are pretty different now. You can now assault the walls of a town without waiting to get siege equipment (cuz ur men just climb up the walls) so that means lots of 1 turn city captures, which speeds up the tempo of war in Shogun 2. I find playing siege battles, especially when you're assaulting, to be not so fun, so i usually auto-resolve them. I played a few when it was important, but successfully defending a citadel when outnumbered 3 to 1 isn't that much fun when you realize just how big the citadel is and how much non-combat running around is involved. Battles like this take forever, especially when you're trying to be efficient with your men, and it's just not worth it for me, even when i win.

- As for open field battles, which i like a lot better, not all that much has changed. One thing i didn't get around to recruiting was the hero units, so i can't speak on them since i won the game without them. At the end, i got so big that i could just throw 3 stacks of junk and win just by sheer numbers so i got kinda lazy and stopped paying attention to upgrading my military. But besides heros, open field battle hasn't changed much. Range units do their thing. Spear guys are spear guys and sword guys are sword guys just like in the other Total War games. The new unique unit battle abilities are kinda cool, but honestly, being used to the other TW games, i forgot about'em half the time and ended up not really using them much. The abilities are cool, but not really necessary.

- The slow speed option in battle is very useful and i use it a lot. When the initial engagement is about to begin, turn on slow speed and then give everyone their orders. Let the orders play out in regular speed and then a minute later, I put it back on slow speed and readjust unit assignments as the battle dictates. Rinse and repeat until victorious.

- Morale is important to monitor. A unit can lose morale very quickly unless you take action to fix the situation. Do not let your superior and expensive army become annhilated because the rout of an overstressed unit causes a chain rout of an entire wing of your line.

- Even elite units can get slaughtered by arrows, so be careful with your troops. Some battles you lose more men to enemy arrows than anything else. It's not a bad idea to detach a force to kill off archers as soon as they become separated from their melee fighting colleagues in battle.

- Back to expansion again. The next immediate goal is to grab enough land to support 2 full stack armies while still having money left over to invest in buildings. The longer-term goal that goes with the short term goal is to conquer all of Kyushu. So i've got some improvements built, new troops recruited and all the trade stuff going on. What I did was to build up my military until it got close to the economic breaking point. That's when you start the invasion. Wars in Shogun2 are quick and bloody. At this stage of the game, you should basically expect every other clan to possess at least a full-stack army. So any old strategy where you put 6 units in this city and 7 units in that city will not work anymore. There is no multi-turn period where two factions wear each other down in a gradual manner. What happens now is that your enemy brings a full stack into your territory and he brings his gang of 3 friends and their full stacks with him. When I go to war at this stage, I want the war to be over within 2 turns. Long, protracted wars against a coalition of minor clans when you're still a small power will turn against you the longer it goes. You want it to be over quickly so that you can get back to building your empire's infrastructure.

- What's different about war in Shogun2: Your expansion is limited not by your military or economic strength, but by your ability to prevent civil revolt. If you're at the 4 to 6 province size, working your way up Kyushu and you come across the chance to quickly conquer a bunch of empty castles, should you do it? Maybe, maybe not. Revolt is a very real threat and if you can't handle an uprising (meaning at least a half-stack army suddenly appearing next to your new city) then it's better to wait until you have enough to hold the province AND advance your army into the next province. In my game, I got a little bit greedy and got to 8 provinces perhaps a little too quickly and ended up having 2 new provinces revolt on the same turn. The next turn, a coalition of 3 clans totaling 5 provinces declared war on me. Needless to say, it was a sticky situation in which the total military power arrayed against me at that moment was probably 6 or 7 stacks total against the 2 full stacks i possessed at the time. The game really slowed down for me as I was rushing my 2 full stacks from one emergency to the next while squeezing every yen i had to replenish lost troops while trying to gradually build my new 3rd stack army which was being built with superior quality units. So basically, minimize any chances of revolt, because it can slow you down.

- Religion matters. I chose to stay Buddhist all the way. There are at least 2 provinces in Kyushu that are likely to be Christian so be prepared to deal with unhappiness issues and don't let it bite you in the ass. No matter which religion you choose, you will ultimately have to deal with whatever religion is the "other" one.

- A word on metsuke, ninja and monks. These are all useful and i recommend using them all. Of course, you can win without them, but they help make the game easier. They're great for helping out cities. And i was saved more than once by a ninja who successfully sabotaged an army and prevented it from joining with another stack and crushing me. As a rule, I don't assassinate generals because I find fighting armies led by an ashigaru peasant to be boring and beneath my noble honor. I do however assassinate enemy metsuke, ninja and monks. High level enemy ninja and metsuke can be painful if not dealt with properly.

- A word on vassals: Are they worth it? Yes and no. Remember that in the long run, everybody is your enemy. I made use of vassalizing a good bit. You get a lot of things with vassals. You get income. You get a guaranteed trading partner who doesn't disappear unless you fail to defend them. You delay Realm Divide (it doesn't look as bad if you liberate a former vassal than if you take the province for yourself). You gain the services of a friendly army that you don't have to feed that can keep your enemies at bay and it seems that even 1 province clans can get to a full stack army regardless of whether the province is rich or not. And you also potentially get dragged into profitable wars in which you can quickly gain a province or two with little effort and no negative effects to your clan's reputation. I admit i'm guilty of poaching an enemy province from my vassal after he's already done the hard work of defeating the enemy province's defending army. Ok so i did it a lot. I'm not just power hungry. I'm sleazy too.

- But after Realm Divide happens, all your vassals will eventually turn on you so be prepared for it. For me, it actually happened very gradually. A couple vassals dishonored our sacred agreement the day the Shogun declared me an Enemy of the State. But after that, i lost a vassal maybe every 3 turns on average. To prepare for this mass betrayal, I always kept the total number of vassals that i had at a 1 to 3 ratio to my own. So when Realm Divide happened, i had 18 provinces and 6 vassals, giving me a total power and more importantly, the wealth, of 24 provinces when the hit the fan.

- After i got over the last of my serious civil revolt troubles, I finally got to 10 provinces, and at this point, trade was providing me a very large income. Still two steps away from the level of fame that triggers realm divide, i found myself in a very secure position with full control of Kyushu and a strong foothold on the main island where the long-dead Mori once dwelled. The two only other clans with 10 provinces, Hojo and Imagawa, were on the other side of the map and Kyoto still lay far from my lands. Defensively, I could defend all my land with just 2 stacks although i had 3. So i disbanded old units that i was going to replace with newer and better units later. I think if you can make it to this point as Shimazu, then this is when they'll really shine because most of your territory is on an island far away from everybody else and the huge amount of money you save by not needing an extra 2 stacks will let you become the most advanced clan in Japan.

- Next, i focused on maxing the capabilities of all economic and specialty buildings in order to replace some of the lost income when the eventual Realm Divide happened in the future. Meanwhile, I built out my fleet to a level where it could take on anybody else's fleet. Then i teched my military until i had a sizable advantage in unit bonuses. I think i got to the point where my regular Katana samurai trained in good ole Satsuma had 22 attack and defense + armor = 21 with similarly high morale and charge numbers. By this time, my treasury had grown to 50,000 and looking back, i should have hoarded more LOL.

- Militarily, things became pretty quiet. Nobody near me was strong enough to challenge me and most didn't try. There were a couple minor, quick wars. Towards the end of my long halt of expansion, (now known by Shimazu historians as the Period of Calm Before the Storm) i finally doubled the size of my offensive military to 4 stacks. Having the katana bonus, i had a lot of katana samurai and katana cavalry but i also had plenty of upgraded naginata and assorted ranged units. I didn't build any monk units, siege units or heroes. Most of my generals were 4 stars by that time, so my military was in tip-top shape.

- It was the final conquest of Shikoku and the beheading of all Chosokabe males that led the cowardly Ashikaga to declare against me and led to Realm Divide. I thought i was ready when it started, but in retrospect i know i was not. What followed can only be described as 7 relentless, lost years of brutal warfare waged in an all or nothing, high stakes game of musical chairs fought to a desperate stalemate while my empire collapsed into economic depression, diplomatic betrayals and civil revolts. For the first time, i resorted to looting cities in order to keep my head above water economically. The quality of my armies began to erode as veteran units could not be replaced by the same high quality units from faraway Satsuma province. For the first time, i found myself personally defending cities i knew i was going to lose just so i could cause more losses than the computer would in an effort to weaken the enemy army enough to halt their advance.

- After 5 brutal years, the money ran out. The grand 50,000 koku treasury was now zero and i was staring at a 1000 per turn loss that i could no longer do anything about. I had disbanded every unnecessary unit. I had downgraded my proud military fleet to a mere heavy army transport flotilla. I had squeezed money from every possible source and there began to appear impudent, little, Japanese Robin Hoods rebelling against me. The progress i had made in 5 years defending what was mine and destroying enough opposition in order to finally advance vanished like a ninja's trace while i fought a second War of the Rebels. My carefully built war machine was eating my empire's economy alive while new peasants under my control were resistant to serving a new master.

- At this point, i became the most daring i had been at any other time and proceeded to aggressively attack cities just so i could sack them in order to get some quick cash like a hopeless meth addict. At one point, i sacked 7 cities in a row in a handful of turns just to keep the empire afloat. Even at a strength of 25 to 30 provinces, the game was played with a sense of desperation. While these gains were temporary, they did gradually have the combined effect of eroding my opponents' ability to raise quality stacks against me. The Hojo, Imagawa and their allies slowly gave ground.

- Finally, i got my economy growing again. After a brief year of replenishing the front line troops, the following years of mop-up ended up being the easiest part of the game for me. I finally stood unopposed and lord of all.

- So those are just my thoughts so far after 1 complete game. I'm sure my thoughts will change after more playthroughs.

[Draganm87]

I play on hard as this is the level I have played all previous Total war games,

I also wanted to start straight off the bat with Takeda (Horses horses horses), but after getting Whipped around like 12 times I rolled Shimazu for a more easier starting position.

I have a problem , I can take on Ito? pretty easily, usually take the first province within the first turn, make them tax exempt ( if you pull your army out with out making them exempt turn 3 will result with a rebellious army within your province you have to deal with ) and follow on the 2nd turn to finish off their retreating stack, I then pull the army back in within turn 3 and start taxing the province.

I pump the two ports and start maximising trade nodes, (no one seems to stop me or my ships for at least 10-15 turns), my next step is to wait for a counter offenisve by Ito against the newly conquered region, all the while upping my economy buildings and making units.

Once they attack, you defend and wipe their army, then move forward to conquer their last province.

Once Ito is dead and by this stage I am allied with the northern red guys Sagara? this is when my problems begin, economy is fine, I send ships to scout the world and trade with who ever I can, smash trade ships on nodes and defend against Wako pirates.

Shino allies with Sagara, and when ever I declare war on them they both turn on me.

After many failed campaigns following the first time Sagara and Shino both turned on me, I built up two massive armies ready to take on Sagara and Shino at the same time I declare war on Shino and get ready for the Sagara incurssion towards my capital... this time the AI hates me and some random faction lands next to one of my cities with a full stack and declares war :/ so no matter what I do the AI has an answer preventing me from waging war .

[Royce]

I must be missing something because no one seems to mention that towards the end of the game all of the provinces turn on you and declare war and your finances go in the toilet. I controll all the trade hubs and that still doesn't matter. I can't seem to find a solution. I was within 3 provinces of winning the 40 province campaign and quit. It was just to frustrating to try and deal with all the uprisings and no money. If someone has a solution I'd sure love to hear about it. I played as Shimazu twice and no matter what I tried after I controlled 19 provinces it all crumbled.

[-iceblade^]

I play on hard as this is the level I have played all previous Total war games,

I also wanted to start straight off the bat with Takeda (Horses horses horses), but after getting Whipped around like 12 times I rolled Shimazu for a more easier starting position.

I have a problem , I can take on Ito? pretty easily, usually take the first province within the first turn, make them tax exempt ( if you pull your army out with out making them exempt turn 3 will result with a rebellious army within your province you have to deal with ) and follow on the 2nd turn to finish off their retreating stack, I then pull the army back in within turn 3 and start taxing the province.

I pump the two ports and start maximising trade nodes, (no one seems to stop me or my ships for at least 10-15 turns), my next step is to wait for a counter offenisve by Ito against the newly conquered region, all the while upping my economy buildings and making units.

Once they attack, you defend and wipe their army, then move forward to conquer their last province.

Once Ito is dead and by this stage I am allied with the northern red guys Sagara? this is when my problems begin, economy is fine, I send ships to scout the world and trade with who ever I can, smash trade ships on nodes and defend against Wako pirates.

Shino allies with Sagara, and when ever I declare war on them they both turn on me.

After many failed campaigns following the first time Sagara and Shino both turned on me, I built up two massive armies ready to take on Sagara and Shino at the same time I declare war on Shino and get ready for the Sagara incurssion towards my capital... this time the AI hates me and some random faction lands next to one of my cities with a full stack and declares war :/ so no matter what I do the AI has an answer preventing me from waging war .

Try using a monk/ninja combo.

Incite a rebellion and before that sabotage the farms and buildings to increase unhappiness

[flashy01]

Dont wait for the Sagara incursion, take the initiative and attack them first. You need to bring Higo province under your control. I had the Sagara as alliance for a fedw turns til I build Satsuma castle to lvl 2 create a market + mezuka and send him north. Build an army either full or 3/4 stack with a couple of Katana units bow and ashigaru, move them into Higo and declare war.

You will fight 1 full stack and 1/2 stack against your 1 or 3/4 stack army. Your Katana should smash them especially downhill and take Higo. Once Higo is under your control the Shoni will come with 1 full stack army within 2 turns so have replacement units ready and fight a devensive battle.

Move your mezuka to the Shoni provinces and take the decent size garrison within the Hyuga province and attack Bungo. Destroy the Nanban port and move a monk into the province to deal with the religious unrest.

[For Victory]

There are so many variables to this game it's just astonishing. As the Shimazu, should I be bringing my Daimyo into battle and leveling him up or should I keep him safe? If I bring him into battles, who will watch my capital? Last question of the night before I pass out, should you (most of the time) ally yourself with your Sagara neighbors or just destroy them? Thank you.

[Gulatr]

Don't ally with them, but be on good terms and don't attack before you have finished the Ito clan.

Go ahead and use him as the main general, just be careful not to suicide charge him on a Yari unit, if you do send him into the fight, keep a close watch.

Even if you don't bring him to the front lines, he isn't making any difference being in Satsuma, if the province is attacked he is worth the same as any other rank 1 General.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

Damn... I have alliance with Sagara and together we killed our enemy from the North-Island. Any chance how I can go war with them without bad karma? just say, we are not your allies anymore?

[izuata]

Why is this the most active clan it seems? It's so boring and easy :|

[flashy01]

^^ Speak for yourself, just because you dont like Shimazu doesnt mean everyone has to dislike them. I started to love playing the Shimazu on hard since you get drawn into a hard fight against the Shoni early on and for me the Shimazu have a great history; gotta love those Katanas (favorite unit).

[izuata]

Not saying they suck, just feels like a serious step down because I started off playing Tokugawa and Takeda. I'm just wondering why this particular clan is so popular that's all.

[Gulatr]

It's a good clan to start with, good position on a far away island + nice bonuses and great Katana Samurai.

For a veteren Total War player this clan will be easier then the rest.

[Slaists]

I must be missing something because no one seems to mention that towards the end of the game all of the provinces turn on you and declare war and your finances go in the toilet. I controll all the trade hubs and that still doesn't matter. I can't seem to find a solution. I was within 3 provinces of winning the 40 province campaign and quit. It was just to frustrating to try and deal with all the uprisings and no money. If someone has a solution I'd sure love to hear about it. I played as Shimazu twice and no matter what I tried after I controlled 19 provinces it all crumbled.

The key to survive the realm-divide economically is to release provinces as vassals and trade with them. It is likely, at some point, they will turn on you again. Just rinse and repeat: reconquer them and release them again, reestablish the trade agreement...

[Finnish Rebel]

I must be missing something because no one seems to mention that towards the end of the game all of the provinces turn on you and declare war and your finances go in the toilet. I controll all the trade hubs and that still doesn't matter. I can't seem to find a solution. I was within 3 provinces of winning the 40 province campaign and quit. It was just to frustrating to try and deal with all the uprisings and no money. If someone has a solution I'd sure love to hear about it. I played as Shimazu twice and no matter what I tried after I controlled 19 provinces it all crumbled.

Have you considered using the Realm Divide mod? It made my Shimazu campaign amazing, actually it just got better after the realm divide hit, with me and my allies versus the rest. Seems more realistic than everyone going after your ass as well.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[homefry]

The Shimazu is good and fun. It's good because you can recruit some awesome units in large numbers from the huge economy and learn how these units behave in battle.

Back in my Hattori campaign, I couldn't even recruit 1 unit of bow samurai and had maybe 2-3 katana samurai.

[Slaists]

Have you considered using the Realm Divide mod? It made my Shimazu campaign amazing, actually it just got better after the realm divide hit, with me and my allies versus the rest. Seems more realistic than everyone going after your ass as well.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

why on earth would you want to tone down the realm divide? shimazu is a cake-walk as is...

[newt]

Not a cake walk for all of us, oh Great One.

[govertguitar]

Some tips which helped me alot:

After you conquered the island you should take a few turns to build garrissons and convert to christianity.
Build alot of churches they increase chi mastery rate and you will convert faster to christianity. Then you should make a few missionaris they are REALLY powerfull.

I cleared the way all to kyote everywhere were christian rebels so i had free pass to kyoto. When realm divide happen i had a few buffer zones of rebels between me and the enemys and through my ~10 churches i had my chi mastery rate around 200 and thanks to that i gained like 10k koku each turn even without trading (i had 4 trade nodes).

tip: because most regions are budhism at the start even a level one missionary can incite rebels.
around 1580 80% of japan was christian hehe.

Also as christian you can make nanban trade ships and no one will ever touch your trade nodes.

I played at medium/medium but it was pretty much a cakewalk so i am gonna try hard when i got the time for it

[DeMolay]

why on earth would you want to tone down the realm divide? shimazu is a cake-walk as is...

Realm divide is the worst part of this game for me , it's bugged (rep hit bug "dishonoring treaties " stacks ) and unpractical (makes diplomacy totaly useless whereas in such a situation , diplomacy would be extremely important in real life )


In most of my games when i reached realm divide , i simply gave up playing , it screwed my campaign beyond repair as it became completely uninteresting , Realm divide killed the fun and immersion , AI basically shows its true colours : everybody is against you regardless of their interests and past history with you , as if all clan's daymios had been abducted , drugged , brainwhashed during the night , then wake up in the morning declaring war on you regardless of the long lasting friendship , all the thousands of gold i gave them , all the epic battles i fought at their side to save their asses etc : Realm divide seriously sucks for me

The first mod that gets rid of that useless realm divide will get my high praises (and btw realm divide is unrealistic , because East vs West final showdown in Azuchi Momoyama period was the result of the death of Hideyoshi who had unified without "realm divide " , it was basically a story of succession ( Hideyori Toyotomi vs Tokugawa Ieyasu ) , here the devs added this crap feature that kills diplomacy , immersion , roleplay and fun just for "gameplay difficulty " , but it's a total epic fail as far as i'm concerned , game is nice but i hate this feature that ruined all my campaign's immersion and i really hope someone makes a mod to get rid of that for good , sorry for the rant .