Pretty much any strategy game becomes a challenge of pattern recognition.

Once you've played this game for a while and understand how the AI works then it becomes much easier.

If you have particular questions or issues in winning then feel free to post them and maybe someone can help you.

Keep in mind that earlier scenarios are going to be easier since there aren't any really large clans yet. Later scenarios can be extremely difficult if you are trying to take on the largest clans...it's possible to do but you really need to know how the game works to pull it off.

Hi tvance52. I'm new to SoI and I was wondering if your above mentioned patterns of the AI are listed anyehere? Thanks.

not that I know of, it's mainly just recognizing how the AI opponents play the game and how they react to what you do.

For example, if you send units to attack an enemy fortress it will draw out several enemy units to defend it. They will set up defensive units 1 crossroads away from the base you are trying to attack. If you leave a strong enough unit 1 crossroads from that (so 2 from the fortress or castle they are defending) then you can send other units around to attack another fortress or castle while some of their units are occupied defending the first fortress/castle they thought you were going to attack.

So basically a feint to one location while leaving a diversionary force to lock down their defensive units who stay to watch what they are doing, meanwhile the real target is a secondary location who's defenders are drawn away by your diversion. A pretty common military tactic in real life. The diversionary force you leave to scare them needs to be big enough to be viewed as a threat, if it's just 100 soldiers the AI knows they're not a threat and will probably ignore it.

Another example is waiting for the AI to attack another clan, wait for their units to get some distance from their home bases, and then attack their lightly defended bases. The AI rarely sent units back unit it is too late.

There's a lot of little things that you start to notice as you play that you can counter, or in some cases exploit the AI.

The AI will tend to attack the weakest nearby clan, so if you know that you plan accordingly.

getting allies/ vassal is important in my opinion as far as i have play now.
As this is my 2nd playthrough, my 1st play i got badly surrounded by npc collision without an allies. result lol you can imagine.

The important thing is to grow fast at the beginning and get a base of power. If you don't then enemy clans will outgrow you and you're in real trouble.

Conquer some bases early if you start small. You can consolidate your gains once you've taken enough bases that you are no longer an easy target for you neighbors. You just need to get enough gold income in the beginning so that growing your troop numbers without losing money each turn (ie, positive income each turn), use that to grow enough troops and food to attack a fortress or two, and the boost in population and therefore labor will allow you to start improving your economy.

Allies can help that but they can also hinder that. You need to take out weak clans near you as soon as possible, if you make them allies then they're just going to get absorbed by bigger clans and you're in even more trouble. You would be better off never allying with weak clans but attacking and absorbing them instead.

You might want to ally with the most powerful clan near you and attack the weakest clans you can in order to build up.

Alternatively, you might want to become a vassal of a powerful clan so they can scare away other clans from attacking you while you build up by attacking weak clans or picking off bases opportunistically. Once you get big enough then the clan you pledged fealty to will release you from being a vassal and you'll regain your independence.

An easy way to learn the game is to start in the far North East in an early scenario before Nanbu build up.

There are more 10 district fortress locations up there than anywhere on the map. You can start a new clan up there or build a few with an existing clan on top of taking out neighbors. Once you take out the couple of clans in the far north you will be very strong since you can concentrate all your forces in one direction to the south.

You can use the GameFAQs location guide to see which locations have 10 districts. A great location for a custom clan is Kakumagawa or Yuwa Kurose in Ugo Province by the Anto, Tozawa and Onodera. You can take the Onodera clan relatively easy and then focus on the weakest targets you can. None of the clans in that region are very strong in the early scenarios.

To learn the game using a decent start, create 2 or 3 custom clans in that are in good locations like the two I mentioned plus Oikata and Kubota . This would give you 3 or 4 fortresses that all have great potential (8 or more max districts), are close together to reinforce each other, and can overwhelm nearby clans. Have your main custom clan take out your other custom clans (give them a created officer with weak LEA and VAL, maybe good POL to help you manage your territories when you absorb them). Or if you're not worried about achievements you can use the in-game editor to give them 0 troops and food, give their fortresses 0 morale.

This will give you a very easy start to learn the game and you can move on to tougher starts once you feel more comfortable.

The fortress locations are linked in this Steam Guide which you can bring up with the Steam overlay in-game:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2901225717

My advice is not to ally with just anybody as you cannot win with all allies surrounding you unless you have massive amount of talented officer and a big base. Otherwise, you need to conquered and expand from early on but never over expand as you are spreading thin and cannot defend yourself.
It is a challenge for mid scenario, earlier on scenarios is fun for beginner or just to see what's going on. Later on scenario is much harder as bigger clan will gobble up smaller clan quickly without you realizing it.

On my second playthrough (birth of Nobunaga scenario) I learned how to break the game. All you need to do is spam new fortresses. If there is a drawback of that strategy, the game doesn't explain it.

Originally posted by Strategyking:

On my second playthrough (birth of Nobunaga scenario) I learned how to break the game. All you need to do is spam new fortresses. If there is a drawback of that strategy, the game doesn't explain it.

There isn't, and it does indeed break the game, and probably more so than anything else IMO. And chiefly because:

1) New forts start with 5k population instead of the logical 0 or token 100 etc, which means ~500 (varies with Popularity) more troops have appeared out of thin air. And that's before you do any development, a few turns of which turns that 500 into 1k+. That 5k also boosts your labor pool by 1, meaning you're not going to struggle as much as you might to find the 2 extra labor each turn for the development. So if you turtle-up for a year or two, sell your supplies to fund fort construction, and assuming you have non-dead construction locations, then you'll soon have several thousand more troops available in a very short space of time.

2) The AI won't build new fortresses unless certain conditions are met, and they have no concept of the above benefits of building a new fortress, and so no concept of how over powered it is for them to put it at the top of their priority lists. Not 100% sure what the conditions are but uninfluenced tribes is certainly one, and if there are isolated tribes on the map that can't be influenced then they'll build a fort nearby to enable it. Otherwise the AI won't build forts until they've run out of ways to develop their existing ones. And the clan's daimyo also needs to be tier A or maybe even S. Haven't tested the latter than extensively to know for sure.

If you keep playing the game, and keep wanting it to be some sort of challenge, then not building new fortresses should be the first thing on your house rule list. Since #1 makes it both OP and snowballing, and #2 means it's a player only action the AI can't/won't copy. The only drawback from the player's perspective is finding the gold to build them, and a supply of officers to have at least 1 in every fort for development. But otherwise, the moment you get enough labor to build new forts then it's effectively the end of the game.