The Tokugawa Campaign Guide

[Aohh]

I am on the point of winning the Tokugawa campaign on normal, my first campaign on normal by the way.
The secret weapon? Diplomacy bonus and the declare peace treaties. Particularly handy when Imagawa+ Takeda + Hojo gang up on you. Handy with all the relationships overall. This was new to me. I never used the declare peace before.

[chillipixel]

Yes i think you will have to leave the province

[Otsman]

hokay, so the past week I have been playing off and on as the Tokugawa and I must say it has gone very well as I am on the verge of victory.
There were several things I did that made the campaign go quite smoothly.
- I bribed the Oda army right outside Mikawa to begin with, this provided a much needed troop bonus and Owari was mine on the third turn.
- I found that being a vassal for 10 or so turns does not hurt.
- When I did decide to attack the imagawa after building up my armies and inf. i demanded any of their allies to break any existing alliances. almost all clans will accept for a price.
-I only made two alliances throughout my campaign. early on I simply gave money to the clans around me to boost their attitude.
-so, with no enemies and no allies, and surrounded by a sea of green, I was able to turtle for 20 or so turns, seizing all but one trade port, which gave me a HUGE income boost. I was able to build up most of my infrastructure, and research both chi and bushido arts.
-If any province rebelled, I took it no matter how far away it was, having a very capable navy this helped quite a bit.
-By the 1565 I has 50k saved up, three full stacks and a conglomeration of provinces all over japan. by now most clans had been wiped out and only a few were left, particularly the kiso north of me.
-right now I am cleaning up after a complete invasion of them.

[Kyze]

Interesting, reading all these responses of "Bribing the Oda on turn 1" I guess none of you are trying this on legendary.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

I started off my hard campaign beating the first Oda army quite easily, and then they sent a larger army that i fended off in the capital (I lost my daimyo in the battle). Then i took the oda province right before the Saito could get it.
The Tsutsui and the Saito declared war on me, the Ikko Ikki kept the Saito busy while I took both of the Tsutsui provinces (And the green clan to the west of the Tsutsui had also declared war on me, but they had no armies so they were no threat to me).

But then the horrible Ikko Ikki declared war on me and just steamrolled me with their insane stacks.
Oh well, I'll give the tokugawa another shot.

[zhiphius]

played 2 tokugawa campaigns lately, first one on hard, 2nd on normal (as christian tokugawa).

first campaign: (Imagawa vassal, 2nd playthrough i had oda vassalage thanks to a mod)
Captured 4 trade nodes right off the bat, created several trade agreements and sold military access (5 turns) for 500-1000 koku per. which allowed me to quickly recruit troops and develope mikawa and owari.
Asai imploded to rebels, allowing me to take omi. From then on it was research and building my armies. 1 ronin (AUM mod) stack, 2 mixed ashigaru/samurai stacks. Got the 5th trade node in the west when otome died.
After about 10 years of developement etc, takeda declared war and was wiped out. Another period of rebuilding followed.
This is pretty much how the game progressed, to earn extra income i sold military access for 5 turns repeatedly. I gained controll of 5 foreign trade nodes and had several trade agreements in place allowing me to field a vast army despite being a vassal.
I seized opportunities when they came, such as omi turning into a rebel province and takeda declaring war.
Good use of agents, with omi i could recruit rank 3 ninjas, i had the reduced ninja cost art. This helped massively when Date took all the east beyond kai/north shinano. (suffice to say sabotaged buildings in all their provinces crippled their economy and Date imploded. later used these 5 now 6 rank ninja's to eliminate imagawa).
Free of vassalage, defending western front while rounding up the shattered east.
Protecting the trade nodes with navies, crippling kyushu with a small sea invasion then expanding with campaign win in goal. (shikoku which was ruled by chosokabe imploded to rebels heh).
Thats pretty much it, only had 2 alliances while taking the east. nothing more. Alot of trade agreements, but upkeep cost was kept to the same as tax/trade node income. Trade agreements took care of province developement (+ the military access deals ).

playthrough 2: Oda-tokugawa vassalage (mod) christian tokugawa.
As above, took 4 trade nodes early on, later the 5th. Eliminated imagawa and developed the provinces, recruiting armies.
Oda engage hojo/takeda which allowed me to capture izu, sagami, mushashi. Later i got kai aswell when it went to rebels.
Spent 15~ years developing lands, armies and creating naval fleets. got nanban port, converted to christianity and also used this time to convert my provinces + bordering AI controlled provinces.
By that time, oda had all the east appart from my territory and 3 provinces east of it (satomi's 2 + hitachi) which i quickly grabbed before he could snatch them.
Spend another decade or more reducing oda land through revolts to 5 provinces and took all the east from the rebels for myself.
Spent more time developing, while using monks to cause havoc in the west, oda expanded around kyoto and became shogun (funny enough kyoto was his last province). Oda eventually imploded after i made him break ties with the terrifying asai.
Spent another period recruiting armies and improving the territory.
Eliminated chosokabe with 2 emissaries, landed 2 armies on kyushu to check the small clans there. Then steamrolled asai/kitabatake who held the rest.

Thats pretty much it. ^^
Tokugawa can be played many ways, its not hard on normal, bit harder on "hard". Think being christian tokugawa was among the funniest i've done so far
The key is to sell military access all over (5 turns ones) so you can a good starter economy. Get those trade nodes, develope the lands and recruit a sizable army. Seize opportunities when you can, take rebel provinces even if you gotta get military access for them. Keep good relations and use diplomacy, ninjaes and monks/emissaries as a weapon.

Again for economy, develope this first (do get the first bushido art tho) as economy is extremely important as tokugawa. Build a bunch of monasteries if you have to (instead of sake dens). Get reduced agent cost at a point too.
Army upkeep shouldnt not chew up trade agreement income, only trade node + taxes. Use trade agreement income for developing your lands. Pay attention to which clans your over-clan (imagawa in vanilla) wars with, if it benefit you join them, if they can kill imagawa for you, let them.

[WingDing]

I'm playing on very hard, but haven't finished the campaign. I decided to just stay put in my homeland and upgrade the Owari and Mino castles to be rocks that will shatter my enemies. Well, that was the strategy anyway.

Turn 1:

*Paid 2k to get the Imagawa to break their alliance with the Takeda (my experience has been that the Takeda are usually a major problem for me and, I suspect, they influence the Imagawa into stabbing me in the back). So the Imagawa got their pound of flesh from me on turn 1 and broke their alliance with the Takeda and I haven't had to watch my back since. I've been going long enough to have held 8 provinces for a wee bit.

* Traded with everyone I could. Adopted my general.

* Defeated the first Oda army and then split my army into 2. One army I move back little toward Mikawa and the other with my daimyo I move closer to the ocean toward Owari.

Turn 2:
*Oda goes all in against the army without my daimyo. I simply retreat it. I send my daimyo army to undefended Owari and take it. Poof, the Oda are gone and I think my daimyo collects some honor for defeating another clan.

*Owari has fertile soil so I upgrade the farm. I put my entire army in Owari. My first priority is to upgrade the Owari fort to a castle and eventually a fortress.

*I don't recruit any troops at the start (the Imagawa get uppity if you start recruiting frantically). I pretty much just save for the castle upgrade and upgrade the two farms in my control. I think I built roads to be able to defend Mino and Owari with one army transferring between them if necessary.

*I only researched chi (food and roads) from the start. Actually I did research bushido later to open up the sword school for some samurai. Seems like the other clans freak out when you try to build a fortress and they come after you when it is close to being finished so I try to build it quickly so I can defend it. Saito declared on me 1 turn before it was finished and I simply marched over and took Mino. Their army was setting up an ambush in the forest behind Minos for some reason. I had recruited archers for my castle defense and when they attacked Minos I ripped 'em up with arrows.

Several turns later:

*I finished the fortress. The Hattori declare on me and bring in 3 huge veteran filled stacks (6 exp bar bow ashigaru) along with their 4 star daimyo to attack Minos. I know I can't hold my fortress or Minos with my bow ashigaru (actually I just don't want to wait through all the load screens and reloads of a huge battle to find out if I can survive with mostly bow ashigaru) so I exchange military access with Kitabatake and go on a blitzkrieg into Hattori land. (In this game I often find the best defense is a blitzkrieg offense.) I sabotaged one of his minor stacks and zipped into his territory.I immediately take undefended Omi and head toward the Ninja city below Omi and take that too. The Hatakeyama smell blood and roll into the Hattori's other city. All that's left of the Hattori empire is their capital. The Hattori scramble back home and call off their invasion into my cities. I use my superior ninja and metsuke to make their armies miserable and even bribe some of their troops into my own. Their death march to their capital is too slow and the Hatekayama finish them off by taking their capital. Suddenly the Hatano, Ikko Ikki, and some other clan declare on me and I've been fighting them off with an unsuccessful blitzkrieg strategy where I've got my army way too deep in enemy territory and can't get it back to save my own cities.

Anyway, I actually think my strategy has potential, but my mistake (and it's always one I seem to make) was to recruit too many bow ashigaru. I always imagine archers to be better than they are. They're great for castle defense, but if your enemy puts you under siege, you're screwed. I think if I had recruited more Samurai earlier I would have been able to withstand the onslaught from the minor clans. I'll go back to an earlier save and see if I can. I probably should have used diplomacy to break up the Hattori alliances, too.

[eddietaylor09]

nice interesting and very informative post, thanks for sharing.
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non voice projects

[The Thin Red Line]

Interesting, reading all these responses of "Bribing the Oda on turn 1" I guess none of you are trying this on legendary.

Personally I find legendary too much of a chore. I’ve done a handful of legendary campaigns and saw it through with Date and Chosokabe. But, to be honest the endless sieges just bore me to tears.

I’m in the middle of a Tokugawa campaign at present, on Hard. I’ve just turned the corner and I’m about to unleash the steamroller.

-
First turn:
Get trade agreements with all the clans around you.

Bribe the Oda army.

Then move your original force next to the horsebreeder icon on the campaign map, making sure that you’re in range of your castle so that the bribed troops can support you. Then move your Diaymo to the other side of the horse breeder icon, insuring that all three forces are supporting one another.

When Oda attacks in turn two you can cane him as you’ll clearly outnumber him.

Turn Two:
Kill the Oda army when he attacks. Advance on his province.

Don’t recruit any more troops, build a harbor.

Once the harbour’s built, throw out bow kobayas to the trade nodes, I normally get around 4.

Turn Three:
March on Oda’s province, remembering that you can move the army right up to it and then jump your general out to get a little more distance. Autoresolve for the win.

Turn Six or Seven
Threaten the Saito (to the north of Oda’s starting province), demand payments from them. Eventually they’ll crack and attack you. Take their province.

…

From there on in it’s just a case of gradually building up your economic capabilities and from there your military.

Continuously replace clans who cancel / are unable to maintain trade agreements. You’ll be rolling in money. Get the various levels of ports built and fill up your nodes. Remember to place bow koybayas next to occupied nodes as you never know when the occupying clan can bite the dust, allowing you a cheeky steal.

You have three provinces at this stage. Create a full stack for each province. Bearing in mind that you’re surrounded at all times (Takeda normally kills off the Kiso in my games and the Hattori clear out central Japan).

Over time clans will attack, specifically the Hattori.

Fight him in a siege battle and strike into his territory using the army waiting in the Saito home province.

--

It took me some time to get the hang of it, but once I did it was a cakewalk.

I was still Imagawa’s vassal for a long time. I had gone after all the diplomacy chi techs and diyamo honour retainers and didn’t want to take the hit.

Once they attacked I cleaned them out in around a year.

Once you’re free of Imagawa it’s straightforward.

[bwise23]

First time i got ganged, everyone was declaring war on me.. hojo, takeda and Date allied vs me.. and ikko ikki is almost unbeatable with veteran monk armies. i m giving it a second try on legendary. even if i demand break of alliance , everytime takeda and hojo become allies again. I m stuck with 2 provinces and i don't want to declare war on Imagawa because of the diplomacy penalty. Should i demand that hojo and takeda break the alliance with the imagawa? Who is a good future ally for tokugawa? I tried with the hatakeyama on first try but they got eliminated by ikko ikki at some point even if they were mighty at some point.

[bwise23]

just finished Tokugawa on Legendary.. pretty tough i 'd stay but also pretty interesting in terms of using a different gameplay like heavy use on metsuke and diplomacy. I also used autoresolve on 95% of the battles after the first 10 turns. Note that i did the long campaign not the short one. Here's how i did it:

- I took owari on first 2-3 turns like described in this thread, demand payment of 400 from saito for military access on my lands, then bribe odas army on 1st turn. Defeat the army marching on you and take odas province as soon as possible.

- My plan was not to take the diplo hit, so i didn't declare war on imagawa. I later found out that i could incite revolts using monks in their provinces and that wouldn't have an impact on diplo later on as it's just provoking them to declare war on me. Anyway i stayed a vassal for many years. Here's what i did to survive. I did not build any army or what so ever for at least 10-20 years. Reason is PC has much more eco anyway so you can't outmuscle it since you are only on 2 provinces. Take whatever trading nodes u can (i only managed to get one until i got free of imagawa) and build market in both owari and mikawa.

-I used all the money mainly on diplo. First get as many trade agreements as you can with ALL your neighbours (this will improve your relationship with most).

-Make sure hattori don't get too powerful by paying them to do trade embargos to their neighbours, and make sure they break any alliances they form. Also ikko ikki is unbeatable if left alone(i was lucky they were taken out early but i made sure they didn't have alliances etc.)

-The most crucial part was paying a lot the Date and takeda to break the alliance with hojo whenever they did so , and also arranged trade embargos. So soon enough they killed hojo . (note that if takeda and Date declare war on imagawa you are screwed cause you have to join imagawa if you don't want to take diplo hit, and if you do join war against them u insta lose unless u did what i did) So I waited until i got loads of cash and asked break of alliance between Date and imagawa, & takeda and imagawa. Also trade embargos etc. Soon enough takeda declared war against them and I joined with imagawa so that i don't take the diplo hit. Next turn I pay all my cash to takeda, exchange host and marriage to get peace and good future relationship.

- I allied with takeda until Realm divide and went eco really big. I got all the bottom trading nodes and pumped army to plan for Realm divide when it hits. In my opinion the rest is easy. When Realm divide hits EVERYONE declares war on you. You already have major bonuses from diplo if you reaserched all the right stuff in chi so just vassalize every province you can and make heavy use of agents. Your eco will take a big hit, u won't be able to fight at sea (i had to sink all my ship just to limit the upkeep) and pc will leave you maybe half the trading nodes u had. Vassalizing will help u very much eco and defensively. Because of your +20/30 to daimyo honour and +30/40 from chi arts + 20/30 from trade agreement +100 from alliance, +5 clan commands respect they will never betray you .

Feel free to ask any questions. I could post screenshots if there is demand

[eXistenZ]

campaign on normal, and am i the only one who gets strange missions? First i got a mission to capture Echizen, which would mean i had to go through hattori and kiso lands, and then declare war on Ikko-ikki. Now, turn 28, i got a mission to capture Miyagi, whih means i have to go trough 3 satake provinces.... Obviously im not gonna do that

[Whiskeyjack]

campaign on normal, and am i the only one who gets strange missions? First i got a mission to capture Echizen, which would mean i had to go through hattori and kiso lands, and then declare war on Ikko-ikki. Now, turn 28, i got a mission to capture Miyagi, whih means i have to go trough 3 satake provinces.... Obviously im not gonna do that

That happens with all faction's, hopefully CA will fix it to give more sensible mission's, until then better to just ignore those ones.

[eXistenZ]

That happens with all faction's, hopefully CA will fix it to give more sensible mission's, until then better to just ignore those ones.

yeah i know, but with tokugawa its the first time that ive encountered two really stupid missions

[Chedric]

I had a really good legendary start with Tokugawa. Took out Oda in the field and started trying to grease the diplomacy wheels with everyone else. The one thing I didn't quite get was the whole "Imagawa doesn't like you building armies" thing. That didn't sink in until this last reread of bwise's post. See normally I figure I need a large army to deter invasion. Anyway... Imagawa got tired of me, but that wasn't until after I had cemented an alliance with Hojo and broke Takeda's alliance with Imagawa. Then while Imagawa was off defending himself from Uesugi, I took my army in Mikawa and basically jacked him from behind.

Brought myself up to 4 provinces, and seemed to be on decent footing with solid borders(alliances on both sides). However... the Uesugi decided to attack Hojo, Takeda decided to team up with Uesugi on me, and the Ikko Ikki and Hattori chewed through Takeda and Kita on the other side and are figuring out how to divvy up Owari.

What makes this even a little more heart-breaking is that I took a 1-2 punch from Takeda and Uesugi and almost won out despite first being out-samurai'd and then being outnumbered/outvetted. Had I stuck my army out in the trees to ambush, or had my ninja in place 1 turn sooner to stall Takeda...

Ugh...

[RicRuler]

I cant figure any of the campaigns out, even on normal. It seems if I don't build a military, Ikko will come and squash me. If I build a military, the money will run out. I cant take lands as a vassel.

I mastered Rome, Medieval mostly because money wasn't an issue. Hats off to those who have done well in this game.

[Conanophile]

I've been trying this one, just on normal though.
Bribing works very well to begin with, the Oda fall fast.
Next head straight for Imagawa, with archers and a few yari samurai plus both generals, using money just to bribe any small stacks.
Manage to Ally the Hattori, trade with minor clans.
Well did quite well, wiped out Uesugi, Takeda, Yamanouchi, Hojo, fairly quickly.
Allied Date.
Then spent many turns developing, set upon Honma at Sado. Landed an Army at Ugo , took that off Honma. Went round to Iwate took that (off Honma again).
Then had the Country divide.
Eliminated Date (tho allied) so as not to have a dagger at my back.
Then was steamrolled by a multi stack coalition coming down from Kyoto. Hattori, broke their alliance despite being at war with all neighbours except me !

SO how do you deal with the Country Divide (otherwise known as everyone Gets the Human Player)?

[RicRuler]

after a million attempts on the normal level, I won a Tokugawa campaign. I bribed and attacked everything east of me and then had enough power to take Kyoto and get my 40th province just in time.
I had been losing troops in all the battles and my economy at this point was in a deep recession.

I have since won campaigns on normal level on Chosokabe very easily and then retired Tokugawa on hard level and am getting my head bashed in.

This game is hard, but very entertaining

[RicRuler]

I think your talking about realm divide. I tried not to take over too many provinces too fast. That way when I had 20 provinces, there were only 4 clans left in the game. This minimized the amount of enemies I had to deal with

[RicRuler]

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