The Shimazu Campaign Guide

[Momosan]

I tried again and Sagara took Bungo 1 turn before I could. I built up my fleet expecting the worst but for some reason Shoni went to war with Ouchi as opposed to me. I secured 4 of the trade nodes and built up an Ashi army. I waited for Shoni to start taking Ouchi provinces then I blocked the land route with a metsuke preventing him from coming back and proceeded to take all his towns and sagara's as they declared war on their side even though we were allied and had a marriage. Was cheap, but after 20 or so campaigns of getting double teamed I would've done anything.

[killahcheese]

Yeah I wouldn't say Shimazu should be deemed as "easy" due to the volatility of its position in very early game.

Compared with Chokosobe, it should be normal rather than a easy campaign.

[Pinky333]

But, there so easy

[johannlo]

once you take out shoni its easy as pie
getting to that bit is the hard one. I had to restart my first go (very first go mind you so I was still learning the nuances and differences to previous years).

Even if you go all out offence, you end up at a stage whereby you have wiped out Ito and have 3 provinces, one stack stranded on the east side (which takes 2-3 turns to reposition to take the west side of the island). Meanwhile sagawa sit there with 20+ stack waiting for you, and in alliance with shoni as well usually. Once you start on them shoni is involved, which doubly means your trade routes get threatened (you can't realistically build naval AND land stacks fast enough to take sagawa's 20 stack, have enough left to counter shoni AND command the seas). ANd you can't afford to build stacks AND bribe shoni away from sagawa. And you can't use hostages as you know you'll be wailing on shoni soon enough lol though I guess you could if you were truly heartless

The trick it seems is to wait for shoni to get tanged with oishi or whatever, also having enough reserves to rush sagawa then plant a blocking half-stack at the bridge worked for me too. 2000 shoni troops dying on a bridge to a force half their size or less, I love it.

Once Kyushu is yours its easy mode IMO as long as you keep your trade up, trade is the key

[Siven]

After i take out Ito, Sagara are usually in an alliance with Shoni. What i do which i find works well is to ask Sagara to break their alliance and trade agreement with Shoni and offer them anything i can apart from money to get an alliance in return. This usually works and in a few turns Shoni might attack them while i press onto Bungo and around to Shoni's regions.

Sagara i have found can withstand Shoni pretty easily, but when I wipe out the Shoni, my alliance with Sagara holds me back from taking their region as I try to play honourably so i dont want the dishonor treaty negative. What i do then is use Monks/Missionaries to incite rebellions o take them out.

That is typically how I take the island

[gaelfury]

A question: I took up the opportunity to become Christian when it came up, built a Namban Quarter and then got friendly with the Christian province Bungo to help them survive for long enough to build a Namban quarter of their own with the aim of killing them and seizing a second Namban Quarter of my own to help pump out Galleons. however, 20 turns in they still haven't built one and my trigger finger is getting itchy. Can only one Namban Quarter be built on the whole map?

[gaelfury]

In regards gameplay, I have completed it from both ends of the map, Shimazu and Date. Shimazu i went hell for leather to start with and took Huyaga and Bungo, did not ally with Sagara but they did with the lot to their North, so recovered for 5 turns at Bungo and then took Bizen (bridge to the mainland and better arrows troops) by now owned by the other lot. Sent monks in to the two provinces round the bend and got an uprising (a lot of save and reload work on Very Difficult setting!) allowing me to cut their remaining armies down and then recover and take the rebels whilst my monks made trouble for the Sagara to keep them quiet. marched on Sagara, now owned the Island.
Teamed up with Chocs, Date and Takeda clans and then took the beach-head all the way to Bitchu. Was attacked by the Hojo lot and when delivering my return invasion found that realm divide occurred with me badly exposed everywhere. marched on Kyoto (first time playing, so not aware of what would happen next) and took it then found that i was hated by my allies too! Promptly lost most of the mainland provinces and surrounded at Kyoto. Eventually led a multi stack reliving force up the peninsular and very very slowly gained control of Japan.
Did again with Date and I think it was much easier this was round as you could isolate your enemies more - Shimazu start isolated and protected, but in the long run it makes it harder to control the centre IMHO.

[gaelfury]

Thought I'd give Shimazu another bash going Christian early to spice things up, getting stuffed on the mainland, too much need of troops holding down a fort to be able to intercept raiders. Oh for having more than one Namban Quarter to build the kind of Navy needed to make everyone get nice fast! LOL!

[Verius]

I spent the last few days trying to put together a battle plan for conquering Kyushu as the Shimazu (as once you have Kyushu controlled, it gets much easier, since you have a huge trade income from the local nodes...assuming you took them which you should...and a very defensible base from which to assail the mainland).

To win as Shimazu, you probably do need to be pretty good on the tactical battlefields, as at several points in the early game you'll be facing equal or slightly larger sized stacks, and you can't spare the time to regenerate the major losses you'll take if you autoresolve (even if you win) or can't beat equal numbers on the battlefield with at least 1/2 of your troops remaining (and at least 75% of your troops remaining if you're defending a castle).

To start off with, start training towards Way of the Sword (so that you get your free Katana Sam as early as possible - usually I've found with almost no time to spare before the Sagera declare war). Also upgrade your roads, fields, and port - port especially is high priority to get to a Trade Port ASAP.

In the first 2 turns, take Osumi (I generally move the army to the border on turn 1, train a couple of ashigaru bow units in the castle, and merge them and attack Osumi's castle in turn 2). You'll usually face Ito reinforcements (sometimes Ito moves his troops north on turn 1 and you won't), if you do, an important tip is that their relative location to the castle on the campaign map is roughly where the reinforcements will arrive on the tactical map. During the setup phase for the castle siege, place your troops in ambush in the rough area you expect his reinforcements to show up, and crush them as they come in before attempting to take the castle. Doing it this way pretty much guarantees the castle siege itself will be a ho-hum affair. Build a Sake den in Osumi - you'll be leaving the province soon, and you'll need the happiness to keep it peaceful...and the ninja you get from there will be invaluable in the early game.

After taking Osumi, hunker down for a couple of turns - train a unit of Katana samurai, and other than that one unit continue to train Ashigaru in Satsuma, and reinforce your army with them (generally I go for an even mixture of yari and bow). Hire a ninja as well as soon as available, and send him north. Ito is heading down from Hyuga with about a half stack, and you want the advantage of crushing him from safely within castle walls to minimize casualties. Once he arrives, crush him and immediately move your entire stack out and up the coast to Hyuga's castle, and take that out (you should have a full half stack by now). Send one of your generals back to Satsuma. It's a good idea to train another katana samurai and send that to reinforce - two katana samurai in a stack make defending castle sieges against largely ashigaru armies much easier.

Start building a second stack in Satsuma - there's a better than 50/50 shot that the Sagera in Higo will declare war on you sometime around turn 12-16, and you need to be ready for them. Equal mixture of bow/yari ashigaru. After you get trade nodes and the associated koku from them, train another Katana there as well (by the time the Sagera get there, you should have your trained Katana, your free Katana from Way of the Sword, and 10-12 Ashigaru equally divided between spear and bow).

After taking Hyuga, check out Bungo with your ninja - if you've moved fast enough, the Otomi still control it, but most likely their army just got stomped up in Buzen by the Shoni. If that's the case, immediately move your army from Hyuga up and take Bungo (and if you're planning on staying Buddhist, burn down the Nanban trade port) - if you wait more than a turn or two after you've captured Hyuga, the Shoni will almost certainly take Bungo, and that will make life much harder. Use your ninja to try to delay the Shoni army if they're already on the march to Bungo.

If you take Bungo (and you should), you may need to exempt Hyuga from taxation for a turn or two while you train up a small garrison to keep the place happy (or build another Sake den, which I recommend, to get a 2nd ninja), but as Hyuga is barren soil, that's not a big loss to your treasury, especially as around this point you've completed your trade port and should be pumping out trade ships every turn and sending them to the nearest trade nodes. You should be able to get at a minimum two trade nodes. I've rarely gotten all 4 of the southern nodes - but two is plenty to start off with. It's a good idea to move your ninja over to Higo around this point as well.

At this point, whether you're in Bungo or Hyuga, this army should entrench and start reinforcing. In most games this is about when the Sagera turn on me and send their stack down to assault Satsuma. Use your ninja to attempt to stall any reinforcements to that stack. If you have another ninja (from Hyuga), send it up the coast to keep an eye on the Shoni - They've probably got their Buzen stack headed down right about now as well. If you can crush both the Sagera and the Shoni stacks in a castle defense, you can quickly consolidate the rest of the island (exempting places from taxation as needed until they have a garrison to quell any unrest) - but move fast - the turn after you beat a stack, you should be moving to grab the province it came from. If you wait a few seasons to regenerate your men, they'll already be well on their way to building the next stack to assault you with.

Again, exempt provinces from taxation and/or leave a few ashigaru as needed to prevent unrest. With the income from the new (and as you just crushed their stack) undefended provinces, you'll be easily able to afford to garrison over a couple of turns and then restore taxation. If you attack quickly, you should be able to take Higo & Buzen immediately after their respective stacks are beaten, leave a few more reinforcements in those provinces, and then take Tsukushi and Hizen 1-2 turns after, long before the Shoni can build up another significantly threatening stack.

A few notes:
1) You don't want as big a stack defending as they have attacking if you're attempting to draw them into a castle assault - if your stack is bigger than theirs, they may either lay siege or just destroy improvements. You WANT them to assault your castle, that way you have all the fortification and morale advantages of defending a castle.
2) The Sagera field a lot of light cavalry early on - do NOT be drawn into an open battle with them - even though yari ashigaru are good defending against light cavalry, your bow units are not, and the Sagera will field tons of yari ashigaru as well (they don't generally field many bow units). The cavalry will cut your bowmen to ribbons using their mobility advantage to flank your yari, while their yari engage yours. Once your bows are routed, your yari will be assaulted from the rear by the cavalry, typically resulting in a mass rout. On the other hand, light cavalry are nearly useless in a siege - and that 20 stack of theirs that they send to assault Satsuma that has 5 or 6 light cavalry, and the rest ashigaru? It fares poorly in a castle assault against a 15 stack of 2 katana samurai, 6 bow/yari ashigaru, and a general.
3) The Shoni will almost certainly be fielding bow samurai from Hizen - again, you don't want to face them in the field unless you have to (though it's easier to beat with your likely army composition than the Sagera cavalry formations). Bow samurai are much more dangerous than bow ashigaru. Hunker down behind your walls, let them come to you, and keep your high value units (like your katanas) under the cover of the walls or near the keep where the bow samurai can't reach them.
4) Katana samurai absolutely destroy yari ashigaru who are sent to assault walls, and have a significant advantage against yari samurai (which you may face a unit or two of, especially in the Shoni stack).
5) Because of the above, it is important to destroy the Shoni/Sagera armies early - the longer you wait, the more likely they are to build up and start adding melee samurai to their stacks, which makes defending your castles much more difficult.
6) When I played as other factions, I found I had to build up infrastructure much faster (roads, farm improvements, etc). However, in Kyushu, facing the likely Shoni/Sagera double team very early in the game, it's much more important to build two armies that can take out the initial Shoni/Sagera army stacks. Going heavy on offense early makes life far easier for the Shimazu.

General tips for winning castle sieges as Shimazu (I know, probably most people here know this, but there may be a few who don't):

1) Bowmen at the walls to start, cover the most likely assault vectors (typically the front half of the castle). If they have a flanking force to the rear (which sometimes happens), send a unit of bowmen at a run to that location from an area of the walls that looks like it will be otherwise safe. Set up your katanas near the keep. Position yari ashigaru a little behind each of the bow units. Reposition as needed when the battle starts to ensure you have maximum coverage of the advancing enemy forces.

2) When the enemy yari ashigaru get to the bottom of the walls, withdraw the bowmen from the wall they're assaulting. If it's the major assault (not just a flanking assault with 1-2 yari units), run one or both katana samurai unit to the walls to defend, otherwise bring up a yari unit to defend. Katana samurai annihilate yari, and from the protection of the walls, they won't take much damage from the bowmen. Have your withdrawn bowmen attack any bow units firing on the walls (I hate friendly fire deaths, and katanas are perfectly capable of downing yari ashigaru without any help from them). Any flanking bowmen (ones on the walls to the left/right of the assaulted section) can keep firing on the yari ashigaru. Generally it's best to slow the action to half speed while you're doing this, as a lot of the time, you'll have 4-6 yari hitting the walls at about the same time, and you'll need to withdraw multiple bow units and replace them with melee units very quickly.

3) When figuring out where to place your defenders, always have the katanas in the centermost section of the attack, that way when they rout the yari climbing their section of the wall (and they will), they can immediately turn and help the friendly yari ashigaru on their flanks to rout the yari climbing the adjacent wall sections.

[gaelfury]

Nice run through Venus, very interesting analysis.

[Verius]

Nice run through Venus, very interesting analysis.

Thanks. I was having a hard time figuring out how to win as Shimazu playing how I had started out playing other factions (Date and Chokosabe so far). Both of those, it was relatively easy to gradually expand (after the initial burst to 3 provinces) while building up the local economy. However, every time I tried to do something similar as Shimazu I wound up in a really tough spot due to the fact that you frequently get war declared on you within the first 4 years or so by two clans, who attack from different directions (Shoni attacking the north, Sagera attacking the south) with full (or nearly full) stacks. When I was focusing on economy early, I was only able to defend one of those two positions, which generally meant I was in a poor position in the early game, with one battered stack trying to regenerate/take new provinces while a 2nd enemy stack was taking provinces from behind, and the other enemy rapidly rebuilding a stack to force me into a two front war again.

Once I gave up on the early economy (just building up the initial set of improvements in my first province, and after that only my trade port - no castle/farm/etc improvements other than the sake dens I mentioned) and went all out to have two decent stacks (neither full, but both 12-15), I found I could fight both stacks off in a castle defense, and banzai the rest of the island very quickly. The nice thing about going full offense that early is that each opposition clan is pretty much going to have just the one stack, so if you're good enough to beat those stacks with slightly inferior numbers in a castle defense without heavy losses, you have a window of time to consolidate before they can rebuild enough to be a threat, and two stacks that can each take a province every couple of turns. My current game (admittedly, on normal, haven't tried this strategy on hard yet) I controlled all of Kyushu by turn 26, with the Sagera and Shoni alliance declaring war on me around turn 16. Currently turtling in Kyushu while I now focus on economy to build up some serious samurai heavy stacks to go take Shikoku or move up into Honshu (probably Shikoku, as I want their stone for castles in Buzen and Satsuma which will be my main samurai factories.)

[jmatt]

This "guide" thread really should have been two threads: one for "normal" and one for "hard". Because honestly, the two have nearly nothing to do with each other.

Normal mode can be won with your eyes closed. Hard is like playing a completely different game. And it's difficult to discern which posts apply to which mode. But I think it's safe toi assume that any post that goes like the following has nothing to do with hard mode:

"Yeah, I just took all those purple provinces from Oti, then I beat that red sagawa clan and rested a bit before beating shoni. Be sure to grab all of the trade nodes! Before I knew it I was in Hizen." (clan misspellings intentional)

If this has been your game experience, try the hard mode.

[johannlo]

In everyone's opinion, if you're playing a long game, how much time should you leave it until realm divide and still have enough time to conquer the 40 required provinces.

I'm in year 1560 and turtling away, one more province and I'll trigger RD, so need to decide how much of a 'war chest' I'll need to build up. As soon as RD hits and I lose my trade I'll go from 10k to 1k per turn so I think I need at least 50k in the bank lol. Fortunately I've done land consolidation on everything already so infrastructure costs moving forwards will be quite minimal for my existing territories at least.

Also anyone noticed, post patch, taking rebel provinces incurs RD, I thought that was n't the case befroe?

[Blee]

In everyone's opinion, if you're playing a long game, how much time should you leave it until realm divide and still have enough time to conquer the 40 required provinces.

I'm in year 1560 and turtling away, one more province and I'll trigger RD, so need to decide how much of a 'war chest' I'll need to build up. As soon as RD hits and I lose my trade I'll go from 10k to 1k per turn so I think I need at least 50k in the bank lol. Fortunately I've done land consolidation on everything already so infrastructure costs moving forwards will be quite minimal for my existing territories at least.

Also anyone noticed, post patch, taking rebel provinces incurs RD, I thought that was n't the case befroe?

No, taking rebel provinces did trigger RD before. Also, create vassals out of the first few territories you conquer as well as make a couple marriage agreements with your current allies/trade partners. That way you'll be able to keep up trade for a little at least.

Also, conquering Kyoto as the province that triggers RD is great. Then RD doesn't kick in all in one turn.

[Pbartender]

Huh. I skimmed through almost this whole thread and I'm pretty shocked. Every one seems to be saying the difficulty with this clan is that you try to take the home island while staying Buddhist and then have to deal with religious revolts in your homelands or convert to Christianity but then have poor diplomacy with the rest of Japan. Am I the only one that actually allied with the Shoni who control northern Kyushu? You don't need every province to meet the victory conditions, so I'm rather surprised everyone seems to find it necessary to take the whole island for themselves rather than try creating a southern power-bloc against the mainland.

I took a similar, but slightly different tack from this...

Early on, I took Osumi and Hyuga from the Ito, built my trading port so I could start snatching trade nodes, as usual. Meanwhile, I'd made allies with Sagara, who had taken Bungo. Shortly thereafter, Shoni, who had taken Buzen, declared war on me and Sagara joined me as an ally. The Shoni eventually took over both Higo and Bungo from the Sagara, but Sagara held them long enough for me to fortify Hyuga and Satsuma.

Shoni raided some of my outlying towns, but I repelled from my castles. Unfortunately, their castles were also fairly well fortified and I wasn't ready to invade, so I couldn't counter-attack. Instead, I used every diplomatic trick I could to secure peace and trade with them. The Shoni have recently converted to Christianity, and I followed suit...

The peace with them gave me enough breathing room to consolidate my hold the provinces I've got (a couple of them came close to revolting when I converted), beat off an invasion by sea from the Ouchi, and improve my economy. Now, I've got a cadre of high-level ninja, missionaries and metsuke stirring up trouble throughout the Shoni countryside. I've already taken Higo and Tsukushi back from the rebels that kicked the Shoni out, and the rest of the island should be under my control within a few more turns.

[sanch]

Since Patch 2, I have been struggling to get contol of the starting island. Does anyone have any tips?

[Kongle]

I finished the game on legendary, what I did was to get Shoni to break their trade agreement with Ouchi, wich then lead to a nice Shoni Ouchi war. To end the Shoni Sagara alliance I offered military access for 20 turns to Sagara and possible some money. Then it was just to wait for the right moment.

Started a new legendary campaign now after the patch. Sagara and Shoni never allied up, and ended up in a war against eachother and Shoni allied up with Ouchi. If Sagara and Shoni is no longer automatically in an alliance (after turn 1) after the new patch, then the early challenge is more or less gone.

Take out Ito, build up, wait wait and wait. Then take them out when you see an opening.

Edit: Tried a few more legendary campgaigns, and its not easy. Sagara always allies up with Shoni, and to make it worse Ouchi also always allies up with Shoni. When Ito dies its just a matter of time before Shoni declares war and Sagara(despite marriage, alliance and Shoni being christian) never sides with you.

The only times I managed to assemble the island on legendary have been when
a: Sagara didnt ally up with Shoni, no clue why.
b: I gave military access to Shoni (or Ouchi) to break up their alliance and trade deal. And did the same with Sagara Shoni to break up their trade and alliance. This is obviously and exploit though, so not doing that again.
c: Another way is to use a ninja or metsue to block the island for Shoni, but that requires Shoni and Ouchi to be at war, if you can get that to happend, then it should be possible to kill Shoni anyway and no need to exploit.

[WelshDragon]

Damn, was doing well on a hard campaign last night, trying to do a christian game and in the middle of trying to put down several buddist revolts, the Ouchi show up with a full stack of samurai and it was game over, I was too spread out to recover.

How do you recover from going christian? Your daimyo loses too much honor, everyone hates you, and you have revolts unless you keep huge garrisons in every buddhist town.

[Pbartender]

Damn, was doing well on a hard campaign last night, trying to do a christian game and in the middle of trying to put down several buddist revolts, the Ouchi show up with a full stack of samurai and it was game over, I was too spread out to recover.

How do you recover from going christian? Your daimyo loses too much honor, everyone hates you, and you have revolts unless you keep huge garrisons in every buddhist town.

Missionaries, missionaries, missionaries and chapels... Plan ahead.

Every town, expect for towns you are using for recruiting should have a maxed out sake den, a market and (most importantly) the highest level church you can build. One you get past the basic chapel, missions and churches not only convert the province they're in, but neighboring provinces, as well -- that's very important on your borders. Also, use missionaries to demoralize enemy armies that are in neighboring provinces. It's free, it gets experience for the missionaries, and they convert the populace while they're at it. If you have the money (and you're missionaries are good enough at it), have them incite revolts as well.

By the time you invade, the enemy troops will be softened up, and the province will be halfway to Christianity already.

Once you conquer the province, plop one or two of your missionaries down inside the town and have them "minister" to the settlement. They'll help with the conversion, and they really calm the populace down, making them much, much happier without the need for such a large garrison... I usually get away with leaving two or three ashi archers behind, if that.

[WelshDragon]

Missionaries, missionaries, missionaries and chapels... Plan ahead.

Every town, expect for towns you are using for recruiting should have a maxed out sake den, a market and (most importantly) the highest level church you can build. One you get past the basic chapel, missions and churches not only convert the province they're in, but neighboring provinces, as well -- that's very important on your borders. Also, use missionaries to demoralize enemy armies that are in neighboring provinces. It's free, it gets experience for the missionaries, and they convert the populace while they're at it. If you have the money (and you're missionaries are good enough at it), have them incite revolts as well.

By the time you invade, the enemy troops will be softened up, and the province will be halfway to Christianity already.

Once you conquer the province, plop one or two of your missionaries down inside the town and have them "minister" to the settlement. They'll help with the conversion, and they really calm the populace down, making them much, much happier without the need for such a large garrison... I usually get away with leaving two or three ashi archers behind, if that.

Great advice, thanks very much. I built a couple of chapels but need to focus on that aspect more when I try again tonight.