finally did it.

[TR00PER7]

Finally did it.

Ignored farms and built the food stores for money, went for shimotsuke, hitta and satake while amakasu was an ally (although I dont know wether it would have been necessary as any invaders could have been payed off), then after I finished off kamakuras multiple invading armies I took their provinces and was close to hitting realm divide.

Built up 6 armies entirely of levies, so I was usually 2 vs 1 enemy even if they were mostly samurai I still could swarm them. 2 armies were to go through the southern provinces, 2 armies through the north and 2 armies through the center. I also built up some navys for only one situation where yashima could land an army by fleet and at the same time take the castle, otherwise I would usaully request peace with them a turn after with me paying some money and their entire army would leave.

taking kyoto area was a pain as yashima and fukuhara and 3 or 5 stacks around there and my stacks were spread out, they also managed to incite a revolt which caused another enemy stack to pop up, but using my agents to sabotage and distract their armies while reinforcements were on the way I beat them. from then on it was easy.

[TR00PER7]

Bump and update

So after I requested allegiance of fukushima and allied myself with satake and amakasu, I thought that would be enough to stop kubota from breaking our alliance and warring with me, it didnt.

then I decided to exchange a hostage and pay them 2000 for 5 turns for a military alliance, that worked for one turn before they broke it and I was given a warning about the threat of kubota attacking.

is this because fukushima is both kubota's and hiriaizumi's objective to take so thereby taking it, im trying to win the game so kubota decides to stop me?

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

In my campaign, I just declared on the Kubota immediately and destroyed them whilst they were weak. 'This town ain't big enough for the both of us' kinda thing. Once you consolidate your position in Tohoku, you can expand south without any interference.

[TR00PER7]

In my campaign, I just declared on the Kubota immediately and destroyed them whilst they were weak. 'This town ain't big enough for the both of us' kinda thing. Once you consolidate your position in Tohoku, you can expand south without any interference.

It worked, I managed to get kubotas most southern province through pledging allegiance but annoyingly kubota's last and most northern province had 5 naginata attendants and kept building more damn units as fast as I could so I couldn't really overwhelm them with a larger army. I tried destroying their farms in order to hamper their economy but didn't seem to help. It isn't really clear what units beat what. Harder difficulty's usually ment more casualties for your units but you would always win if you brought the right counter units to the enemy units. But now it feels like only balanced armies of mixed units and better tactics will work, which im ok with but its getting to that point where I can train some attendants, monks and samurai and not having to rely on levies is what is the problem as they dont really have much versatility.

Anyway, I eventually conquered kubota and I managed to have a nice corner of the map with 5 provinces, 2 I started with, 2 I got off kubota, and fukushima who pledged allegiance to me. I dont really have any allies but I have trade agreements with the bordering clans who are all busy fighting their own enemies which is probably a good reason to stay where I am and focus on economy and improving my army before I expand too far out. I discovered if I ever got too close to kamakura minomoto or kiso minomoto, war would be inevitable and on would come stacks of foot samurai when im still trying to buff up my economy to afford an army without completely bankrupting me.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Good to hear you're doing well Remember, cavalry is always key. So long as your levies can hold the line, you can win battles off the back of your cavalry charges. In regards to the Satake and Amakasu, they're not really worth keeping as buffer states, since the Minamoto will usually just annex them fairly early. Better to take them for yourself I think.

[TR00PER7]

Good to hear you're doing well Remember, cavalry is always key. So long as your levies can hold the line, you can win battles off the back of your cavalry charges. In regards to the Satake and Amakasu, they're not really worth keeping as buffer states, since the Minamoto will usually just annex them fairly early. Better to take them for yourself I think.

The problem I had with taking amakasu and satake was the provinces in the centre, shimotsuke and kozuke. Both being Minomoto oriented and usually both with one stack when I encounter them and hostile to me ment they would eventually go to war with me. taking satake and amakasu before dealing with them left them some easy targets.

One of my play-throughs, I instead went to take shimotsuke and kozuke first before taking amakasu and satake and that play through went a lot better than the others. Although, Amakasu was actually just about to invade me with their own army into my undefended province echigo, being fujiwara themselves, I planned ahead and had a junjutsui at their town to convert it if they attacked me as their army dissapears, I was going to convert it anyway after I had taken kozuke as I didnt want to risk kozuke going to war with me and attacking into amakazu otherwise then I would have two enemys on two fronts.

Also, I built the bushi schools fairly early so in most cases I would train a large army of foot samurai but this left me with a really strong army that couldn't be spread out to fight on multiple fronts, took a long time to replenish and usually with little income as the upkeep of foot samurai is about 3 levies or 1.5 attendants upkeep. Using a mix of attendants and levies was a better choice.

[TR00PER7]

The problem with amakasu, they have an alliance, trying to pledge allegiance gets their ally to fight me.


I tried seeing how far I could get by going down that road, I ended up paying money to okura which left me with no income. By the time I was at least getting a decent income (700 coin a turn) I was being invaded by kamakura and I still only had levy armies while they had samurai. Although, kamakura only went to war with me after I had taken satakes province, not hitachi, shimotsuke, as satake had expanded. I dont know if shimotsuke is kamakuras victory province which may have explained why they went to war with me after I conquered it, much like kubota with fukushima.

Im going to try it again, this time waiting till amaskasus alliance is broken and by taking satakes main province, hitachi.

Edit: also, I was also pretty poor due to the fact I had loads of levys after I had requested allegiance but I never really want to risk disbanding them because I felt they were necessary for defense.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

The Minamoto will declare on you eventually whatever you do. There's no point trying to stave off the inevitable. With the Hiraizumi and Kubota provinces under your belt, you should have enough income to at least upgrade your farms and some other economic buildings. When they're done, you can begin to churn out some monks and samurai to fight the Minamoto. Levy and attendants should be enough to take on the small clans (Satake, Amakasu, Ashikaga, Soma etc), especially seeing as you start out with 3-4 family members/cavalry units (depending on when Yasuhira comes of age). Four levy archers, four-six levy naginata, two-four sword attendants and whatever cavalry you have will be a good early army to sweep away the minor clans before you tackle the Minamoto. The minor clans can field a large stack or two each early on, but you'll have the edge in cavalry. Use that to your advantage, wipe out their armies then just roll into their capitals. With the Fujiwara, the best defence is a good offence. You can't really afford to sit back and try to build up, because you'll fall behind fast.

[Janne]

I was a little disappointed that your sister clan seems to always declare war on you at some point. In my most recent playthrough as kubota, I turtled for a few turns, got an infrastructure of economic buildings in ugo and warrior monk buildings in uzen. Then I took out the other greens using monks and now things seem to be going well. Play to your faction's strengths, in kubota's case, monks.

[TR00PER7]

I was a little disappointed that your sister clan seems to always declare war on you at some point. In my most recent playthrough as kubota, I turtled for a few turns, got an infrastructure of economic buildings in ugo and warrior monk buildings in uzen. Then I took out the other greens using monks and now things seem to be going well. Play to your faction's strengths, in kubota's case, monks.

but hiraizumi's strength is the junsatsushi, which I do get, not only because they are useful at converting provinces, but also because the buildings required to train them, markets, food stores and granary, give me extra food and wealth but the problem is that the junsatsushi them self cant stop the enemy from invading converted provinces with full stack armies with a daimyo. They can bribe armys which dont have daimyo but most of the armies that invade me do have a daimyo (kamakura and kiso for instance). So I end up converting provinces only for them to be taken by an enemy clan a few turns later. The provinces which I convert which also give me a lot their military units arent really all that useful as their mostly massive armies of levies which dont help much against kisos mix of sword attendants, bow attendants and foot samurai.

also how quick should I be at expanding? because I have selected a long campaign so I dont know how many turns that means I should take doing stuff. Looking at my hojo campaign on normal, I managed to complete the main objective in 70 turns.

[TR00PER7]

The reason I ask how quick I should be at expanding is because I tried to expand as fast as I could in order to beat kamukara early on when they were weak, but even after 20-25 turns, I converted hitachi only for kamukara to go to war with me soon after and they had 4 foot samurai, 4 sword attendants, 11 levies while I had about 1 sword attendant, 1 nag attendant, 7 bow attendants and 10 levies but I had been training foot samurai just before the attack so I got lucky. But after I had defeated the first stack, it wasent long before another stack came along with the same units as before and at the same time my army had just about fully replenished from beating the first invasion. And this is ignoring there was always the other clans that were hostile with me with their own stack, all of which could have gone to war with me when I tried to deal with one of my enemys.

And I was really trying to build a decent army really quickly but even that wasn't enough to be prepared to invade kamukara or even defend that well against them.

[TR00PER7]

Sorry for bumping this thread, I decided to change the question rather than making a new thread as it was just a general Hiraizumi walkthrough or guide I needed. The units I need to train and when. What buildings to build and what places to take.

If I can just see how someone else played, I can see the big mistakes I must be making or the many little mistakes.

[TR00PER7]

Well heres a good strategy, pay off kamakura and/or kiso until they go to war with one another.

Every time I tryed fighting them when they were allied was either a disaster or very damn close as they both are so damn strong, once I requested peace with some trade agreements, military access and maybe exchanging a hostage (which doesnt always work) they will accept and eventually they will go to war with their sister clan in the near future.

So while kiso and kamakura were fighting, I could build up, take remaining provinces and prepare to invade one of them, which I did, but I decided to stop before I hit 16 provinces as thats when you hit realm divide. I didn't want go steamrolling through the enemy provinces as yashimi and fukuhara are still both allied with one another and are both very powerful, it would be best to wait till they go to war with one another before I invade them, then their forces are divided rather than concentrated.

Im doing a long campagn which I think is 200 turns? im at turn 51 so I got a good long time of improving my economy and armies until Im ready.

EDIT and Update: Well, waiting for fukuhura taira and yashima taira to go to war with one another took a lot longer than I thought, and a lot of that time was spent paying both of them off not too invade me. they did eventually start getting hostile to one another but not war.

What I wanted to bring up was, are attendants and samurai even worth it? you can get 2 levies for 1 attendant or 3 levies for one samurai (and partially monks) in terms of upkeep cost, so I could have more full stack armies that can be spread out on multiple fronts or concentrated in one area. The reason I ask, was because I was doing my damn best to beef up my economy in all 14 provinces but even that wasent enough to support my 3-4 armies as I was recruiting only samurai units and occassionaly bow attendants.

And are farms even worth it? I felt I made more money and food from building food stores and the improved farms had little effect, probably because they only give me wealth where as food stores give both wealth and growth, growth seems to help in the longer run.