Still having trouble with that "surprise beep you" mechanic once you captured twenty or so provinces?

Sad that every one of your trusty allies just betrays you and goes to war with you?

Well not anymore with this strategy, where you just say beep you to every single clan who is just waiting to betray you once you fill that little "Reputation bar"

So the facts:
  • We know Realm Divide happens when you fill the bar, which fills up when you:
    • Win Heroic Battles(happens really often in high difficulty settings where you need to 1v2 stacks)
    • Capture settlements

  • Rebellions caused by monks/missionaries will not fill the bar.
  • Rebellions caused by monks/missionaries does not form actual factions, they just sit there, pondering what to do with their life.
  • Rebellions caused by monks/missionaries does not take attrition.
  • Even though religious difference increases odds of "incite rebellion" a lot, a high tier monk still has a good chance causing rebellion in Buddhism territories.
  • Armies sabotaged by Ninjas cannot move or reinforce.
  • Metsukes are only good for money.(Not true, but they are not involved in this strategy)
  • Clans will not hate you as much when you stop expanding. (Expansionism penalty is big)
  • So long you are not obstructing their way to Kyoto, peace can be make if you sacrifice enough gold.


Then here's the Theory:
  1. If I stop expanding a bit from Relam Divide;(stop once reaching acclaimed would be nice)
  2. I can get truce with anyone I'm fighting and trade with them;
  3. Then I will be able to build an economy for the upcoming agent actions.
  4. If I can incite a rebellion in a province;
  5. then prevent their army from reinforcing the province with sabotages;
  6. sabotaging any army trying to take the province back;
  7. monks move onto other province while their army is destroyed;
  8. I can destroy an entire faction with just monks and ninjas.


The catches:
  • They send out more armies to take back lost settlements - Great!! You got 5 Ninjas, that's enough to keep two armies busy on a 50/50 odd while your monks do some hard core rebellion inciting.
  • They send their agents against you - Metsuke and Monks are countered by Ninja and Monks, and if they send Ninjas, use your Ninja to assassinate them while your monks run away to other provinces (to incite moar rebellions!). It's alright giving back some provinces to ensure the safety of your agents.
  • People won't stop going to war with you - Stop invading and defend, once you eat through their forces use monks to incite rebellion in their provinces (especially their military provinces), it should be easy since their military died by your hand, and they should accept peace after down to 2 or 3 provinces.


Now, the actual test:

I came up with this mid way during my Hard Oda campaign where I know that life will be pretty hard for me due to my enemies be able to land armies anywhere on my wide coastline against me if realm divide is reached.
So this is what I started with once I thought of this strategy(Turn 53):


And after 9 years of Total Agents......(Turn 91)



And I ended the game after two years doing only auto-resolves......(Had to manually resolve some thing on the Chosokabe island but that was it) could have went further and destroyed all the factions with the monks... but I eventually got bored of it once I know I can handle what's left with ease.

Still, I had to do some minor safe and loading because my agents got executed, though I do not think that it can't be done in situations where you can't/don't want to safe and load, just a bit harder.

Conclusion? It's a pretty good strategy if you want to even out the competitions before realm divide and really build up your forces... but can really get boring after 40 turns of agent actions along......

But yeah~ that's the utter agent domination strategy, for anyone who's struggling a lot with realm divide even on normal, it's something good to try out~

PS: Bring a Metsuke along if you are having trouble with 1v2 battles, some gold(or w/e they used) will sure grease the wheels~

PPS: Took Kyoto with one stack of my with only 6 samurai units... bribed the stack they kept out of Kyoto and auto-resolved it's face~