Fall of the samurai quick and easy victory

[beastfeast]

Here is my technique for a quick and relatively bloodshed-free path to victory in fall of the samurai in a long campaign. I managed to win the campaign by turn 28. See if you can do better!

1. Grow to the point where your economy earns you 6000 a turn. Build finance centres and industrial improvements to help you achieve this goal.
2. Secure your boarders,you'll need about 7/8 provinces for this to work.
3. every turn declare war on a clan that owns 1 province that is part of an enemy faction. Use your 6000/turn income to buy peace and vassalage from these clans. They will contribute to the number of victory territories that you need to win the game. Make sure you scout the map so that you can find all of the enemy clans.
4. Rinse and repeat until you have acquired enough vassals to trigger realm divide.
5. When realm divide hits you declare war on clans that own 1 province that are members of your own faction. You will be able to force them to become vassals immediately. This should give you enough provinces to win the long campaign. It also gave me 4000/turn in income from my 20 or so vassals! Before long the income from your vassals should pay the cos of buying them if you wish to keep playing.

Hope you like my strategy

[Shea O'Gorath]

Its a bit cheap and kinda destroys the point of the game but it is cunningly effective il give you that.

[Gen. Sherman]

What difficulty is that on? I usually play on hard and very hard, and nearly every time I vassalize a clan that is the opposite alliance they almost immediately break and declare war. I'm assuming since you have so many vassals that some of them must be from the opposing alliance???

[beastfeast]

I tested this on normal difficulty. Does the vassal clan declare war on you immediately!? Some clans are more trustworthy than others. I tend to vasalise the clans near me last because of the diplomatc difficulties this can cause with other clans. Also if a clan near you betrays you the consequences are likely to be quite severe..

The sado clan often betrays you. So do the tsu clan. Each ai is programmed to behave differently. I found that most of the other clans are loyal on normal difficulty. I don't have patience with higher difficulties because I know I can win against the AI anyway. Its frustrating to have to fight against the same crappy, poorly led armies again and again. Besides, all you need to win the game is plenty of artillery, ideally Armstrong guns.