I have many of my old notes buried in a plastic bin somewhere, I am doing most of this off of memory. I intend to add or fix things as I think of them.

Resources such as links that I found fantastic for reference:


http://www.wicked-chibi.ninja/region/regions_online_shogun.html


https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/ej9esk/shogun_2_comprehensive_economic_guide_yes_in_2019/

https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/11396/dark-sides-economy-guide-for-shogun-2

NEVER set the battle timer to "Unlimited". There is a bug that can occur where if multiple enemy armies attack you and they come at you one at a time and you beat the first army, the other army/armies will not reinforce and therefore if you set the timer to unlimited, you cannot win and your only choice is to forfeit and suffer defeat, which REALLY sucks when you are defending an important town.


60 minutes max on the timer if you need lots of time to fight, and you can set the timer to 20 minutes if you are defending and want to be able to win by holding off the enemy until the timer expires so they automatically lose.

Essential Points Summarized:

1) Ideal Campaign Start: Set battle timer to 20 minutes. Have your Daimyo and any heirs/generals besiege an enemy town while you recruit troops. You will be building up your army while the enemy you are besieging will not be able to recruit. End Turn. The enemy will attack your forces, fight the battle. Play keep away with the enemy by having your mounted Daimyo/Heir/Generals and their bodyguards run around the map so the enemy cannot kill them until the timer expires. You win, Heroic Victory. +1 Honor gained. Repeat this at least 2 more times to get +3 honor while you are building up your army, then you can bring your troops to your generals and attack their lightly defended town with a full stack army. A little boring and time consuming, but creates and excellent starting point for your campaign.

2) Always cancel your treaties with another faction before you attack them so as to not get the penalty. Unlike TW: Warhammer where you have to wait 10 turns to attack or you will become unreliable which causes huge diplomatic penalties, as long as you cancel everything before attacking another faction, which will obviously make that specific faction hate you, there does not seem to be a bad penalty with other factions for canceling treaties.

3) Getting a Daimyo to 9 Honor is essential if you want to follow a strategy of looting towns a lot, because you can only lose a max of -3 honor and then no more penalties for looting, and as long as you have 6 honor, you are golden.


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Daimyo Honor. High honor benefits you, low honor can really screw you.

Daimyo with high honor = higher happiness among all regions controlled, better diplomatic relations with other clans, and increased loyalty among his generals.

Daimyo with low honor = penalties in all three (and the negative for generals can be catastrophic, a general deserting you with a full stack is no bueno, and to keep such a general in line, you have to keep a Metsuke embedded in his army, which means that Metsuke is not generating you money by being stationed in a rich province).

Daimyo start with 3 honor by default. They can reach as low as 1 honor and reach as high as 6 honor (max effective honor is 6, but they can have more in reserve). Any honor penalties or bonuses after each are not counted, but apply if the honor of the daimyo goes back to within a 1-6 range.

---------------------------------

Negative factors for honour include:

Betrayed Alliances: -1 per betrayal (max -3)>for attacking an ally or vassal
Terrible losses -1 or -2 per loss (max -3)>Daimyo suffers a crushing defeat
Looting -1 per loot (max -3)>looting provinces
Christian Daimyo -2>Converting to christianity
Christian faction -1>future daimyos of Christian clans after the daimyo that converted dies still suffer -1 penalty
Descent Into Bankruptcy -1(Max -3 temporary while bankrupt)>Allowing the treasury to reach 0 with negative income per turn
Empty Threats -1(Max -3)>Threatening someone through diplomacy and not following through with the threat after one year

Positive factors for honor include:

Honourable +1(Max +2)>Learning "Honourable" in the Daimyo's skill tree
Tea Ceremony +1 honor/+10 to diplomatic relations>learn Tea Ceremony in the Chi Arts
Vassal +1 (Max +3), permanent for current Daimyo)>Obtaining a vassal
Great victories +1 (Max +3)>Daimyo winning a heroic victory
Polite Wife +1>Married to Daimyo
Rumors of Treason +1>If a general's loyalty drops too low, an event sometimes triggers to have him commit seppuku. Accepting the event increases honor by +1
The Misfortune Of Others +1>An event message will come up telling about another clan that has had a terrible harvest. Assisting them costs 2500 koku, but gives +1 honour.
Chinese Courtier +1 honour/+10 to diplomacy>Daimyo retainer
Meijin +1 honour/+1 command attacking on land>Daimyo retainer
Legendary Tea Master +1>Daimyo retainer
Yokozuna +1>Daimyo retainer
Haiku Poet +1>Daimyo retainer
Master Potter +1>Daimyo retainer

The Shimazu Clan's daimyo all have +1 honor, granting them 4 honor by default.


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Gaining Honor:

You can gain honor with regularity by acquiring vassals and achieving Heroic victories. Vassals come with benefits including being guaranteed trade partners as well as bonus income, but can drag the player into wars if other factions declare war on them. Heroic victories can be gained by exploiting the in-game clock (set timer to 20 minutes): if the enemy attacks the daimyo with a superior force, he can simply run circles on the map until time expires. Surviving the battle with zero or minimal casualties usually results in a heroic victory. This method only works, however, if the enemy does not field cavalry.

Using both methods three times creates a daimyo with six honor plus three in reserve, allowing him to lose three honor without any penalty. This provides a powerful benefit: such a daimyo can loot as many provinces as desired without suffering any drawbacks.

A lot of posters I saw over the years whined about Realm Divide, how it suddenly ramped up the difficulty insanely, and how they could not keep alliances or vassals after Realm Divide no matter how much Koku they threw at them.

It is very simple.

On your Clan Management screen, there is a bar that fills up in yellow as the Shogun notices your achievements and growing threat to him. Once that bar gets full, Realm Divide happens.

What fills the bar? Mainly how many provinces you have captured, but possibly also a little bit from you getting Heroic victories or having high honor (like from using the Heroic Victory trick to reach 6 honor). Having used the Heroic Victory trick three times at the start, I think I could capture 16-17 provinces without triggering Realm Divide. My strategy was to reach that point, then turtle and defend while I built up my wealth and prepared my armies and navy, and only trigger Realm Divide once I felt ready to take on all of Japan.


Realm Divide also triggers if you capture Kyoto (before that bars fills).

KEY INFO: Realm Divide's negative diplomacy effect can actually trigger TWICE. If you trigger Realm Divide by conquering enough provinces, and after that you capture Kyoto, you will get a message that you capturing Kyoto has awakened everyone to your threat. This is important to know concerning Vassals.


VASSALS AND ALLIANCES:

Realm Divide causes -100 diplomatic penalty with AI factions. This is extremely difficult to overcome. It may be possible to hold on to a great alliance that you had from the beginning of the game, if you have every treaty with the faction and married into that Clan and give them tributes regularly, but you should EXPECT every alliance to end post-Realm Divide, this includes your vassals betraying you. Basically, do not trigger Realm Divide unless you have secured your territorial flanks and can afford to lose all trade.


VASSAL TRICK:
You can still create vassals after Realm Divide, but if you triggered it via filling the bar and not by capturing Kyoto, they will still get the -100 diplomacy and will eventually betray you.

However, though I have not tried this, I read an insight someone posted long ago, that if you have captured Kyoto, then any Vassals you create AFTER capturing Kyoto, will not have that -100 diplomacy malus and therefore could actually be reliable going forward. If you are into making vassals, try this trick out and report back in the comments.

Rule #1: Do not try to build military buildings everywhere, you only build military buildings in the best provinces for that purpose, and the rest of your provinces should be geared toward making money.

Note: You can rotate the map, but the game start you looking at the map with south Japan to your left and north Japan to your right. It is easy to refer to it as West-to-East, but it is actually South-to-North. I will try to refer to it as Left-to-Right, which would be Shimazu start on the left to Date start on the right.

TIP: Shimazu, Mori and Chokosabe are great starting factions if you are new to the game, because the strategy for Shimazu is to secure their island, then conquer right until just before Realm Divide and then prepare. The same applies to the Mori and Chokosabe, except they go left to secure Shimazu/Otomo island. Then you post navies on either side of your territory to watch for the AI trying to sneak a fleet with a full army into your rear.


http://www.wicked-chibi.ninja/region/regions_online_shogun.html

Provinces with the "Smithing" specialty/resource are the key to easy victory in Shogun 2. There are 5 such provinces, they are:

SATSUMA (Shimazu start), BIZEN, KAGA, (one of Ikko-Ikki starting provinces), SAGAMI (Hojo start), and IWATE (Date start).

In one of these provinces, you build a Master Weaponsmith for +4 melee attack and an Encampment (I think it requires tech to unlock) which you turn into a Jujutsu Dojo for +2 melee attack.

You build stacks of Yari Ashigaru with +6 melee attack from that building combo, and if you increase their starting veterancy via veteran ranks from your castle and other methods, that will increase there stats further, such that you could have Yari Ashigaru with 12-17 melee attack that will beat Shimazu Katana Samurai. Remember that Ashigaru units have more men than Samurai units as well, and they are cheaper. If you want you can also build crazy strong Bow units or the various Samurai or Cavalry as well, but Ashigaru are the most cost effective.

If you have done this, you can probably auto-resolve your battles from here on out, especially if you bring 2 stacks of Uber-Ashigaru to each field battle or siege.

Cheers.

Navies are expensive and having the best ships to be able to auto-resolve battles is too costly, plus repairing ships that have been extensively damaged is ridiculously costly.


Important!: You can increase the speed of the battle to be faster, and remember that if you are defending against overwhelming odds, you can set the battle timer to 20 minutes and run away around the map until the timer runs out and you win.


Here is how to build inexpensive fleets that will give you victory fast:

Research the tech that gives you Fire Arrows. Recruit 5-6 Bow Kobaya. Note that Bow Kobaya get a speed boost skill.

Important Note!: you can right-click on the Fire Arrow icon in battle to set it to be used automatically on cooldown. Fire Arrows are unlimited in naval battles.


Here is what you do. You will face off in a line with the enemy, the enemy will be in a line. Move your Kobaya toward one end of the enemy line or the other. The enemy will start moving to attack you. Now you play keep away, where you have your Kobaya facing away from the enemy ships, ideally at an angle to their line so that them chasing you creates a T, your line of 5-6 Kobya are all shooting at their lead ship as they chase you, destroying their fleet one a time. If you are using Fire Arrows, they should speed up the process of victory by catching the enemy ships on fire and destroying them. You keep running away as the Fire Arrow skill reloads and use it on cooldown. And you can do this on maximum speed setting so that it is not as boring. There is an element of the wind affecting how well your fire arrows do at lighting the enemy ships on fire, if you master that victory should be even faster, but I generally just put Fire Arrows on auto-fire and ran around until they succeeded in lighting the enemy up.

Note that you can do this without Fire Arrows, it just takes longer because you have to whittle down the enemy ships troops instead of potentially near-instantly destroying an enemy ship that catches fire.

Cheers.

Wanna know how to potential move an army from one end of Japan to the other in only 1 turn via ocean movement? It takes some preparation, but here is how:

Let's say you want to move an army from the Shimazu capital to Bizen in the middle of Japan. OK, start building Bow Kobaya in that capital provinces port. Figure out the path your ships would take to get to Bizen if you just clicked on it. Now, have your Kobaya move along that path ALMOST as far as it can go in one turn, but stop about a Kobaya's length short. Next turn, you will have another Kobaya you built move to that first Kobaya's location (joining that fleet so they are in the same space), then you will click on that fleet, select one of the Kobaya, and again move that Kobaya along the path until almost its maximum range. Repeat this process until the final Kobaya in the chain could reach the destination port.

Now, you have a Kobaya ready in the starting point. Move the army into that ship. Now move that ship to join the first ship in the chain, which will create a fleet of 2 ships. Select that fleet, select a ship (should be either one, or if not, select the one that still has movement points remaining), and have that 1 ship move along to the next ship in the chain. The army will go with the ship that has movement points. Rinse and repeat, and you can move the army along the chain of ships until it reaches the destination port, all in 1 turn!

Rebel factions are not ambitious and will not leave their province to go conquering other provinces. So if there is a province you do not want to deal with but obviously don't want your enemy to have, if you can get it controlled by a rebel faction, well that solves your problem.


Using a Monk or Missionary can be brokenly overpowered, even Buddhist against Buddhist but especially when your religion differs from owner of the province that you want to revolt.

The strategy is to move your clerics into a province, convert enough of the province (or if your clerics are leveled/skilled for conversion, the entire populace) to your religion, and then incite revolt. If the rebel army is big enough and wins, congrats, you have removed a province from your enemy and created a non-aggressive new neighbor. Also, I believe you can do this without declaring war, so it can be a fantastic way to let you seize new territory without going to war.

Note that sometimes, especially if the province was the home base of a Clan that was destroyed, the rebel army may be rebels of that Clan, and if they win, it will revive that Clan as a faction.

The regular monk unit, the Buddhist Monk, has many different uses, from boosting happiness or morale in towns or armies respectively, demoralizing enemy armies and inciting revolts in provinces, converting or "wounding" enemy agents, and converting the population to Buddhism.

Missionaries can do pretty much the same, but their skill tree is very different, and here is my essential tip in this regard:

Go straight to and all in on the skills that boost conversion to Christianity. Your missionaries should not be used for any of that other stuff, the goal if you decide to be Christian is to get the maximum number of missionaries you can get (5 normally but there may be way to increase the cap), level them up and skill them up to where they are super apostles of preaching the Gospel (I think with enough levels and skills they could cause a +10% conversion rate per turn each or something like that, maybe more).

NOTE - there may be a maximum amount that your agents can convert per turn, something like maybe 60% maybe, basically a game design intended that you have to spend at least 2 turns before you can convert a province to 100% Christianity.

The goal is for you to be able to move your agents into a province, and in 2 turns, maximum 3, that province should be 100% Christian and ready happily become one of your provinces, either via conquest or inciting a revolt.

The most direct way to get the option to become Christian is to capture the Bungo province where the Nanban trade port is located. This should soon prompt the message that will give you the opportunity to have your Daimyo convert to Christianity.

The opportunity could come along randomly, but it is not certain enough to rely upon.


For more detailed information, read the guide here on Steam "How to become Christian" by "Abraham Lincoln", it appears quite excellent, and will tell you how to actually convert your Daimyo after you get the popup.

In certain provinces you can build a Master Weaponsmith (+4 Melee Attack) or Master Armourer (+3 Armour). You can also build the encampment building which you can then turn into an Armoury (+2 Armour) or a Jujutsu Dojo (+2 Melee Attack); for a total of either +6 Melee Attack or +5 Armour for units recruited in that province.

So which is better?

Short and sweet answer: +6 Melee Attack

Why? Because normal Yari Ashigaru have +4 Melee Attack while normal Katana Samurai have +12 Melee Attack. Give your Ashigaru +6 and now they have 10 Melee Attack. With high Veteran ranks they could very well climb to +16 Melee Attack, and that is not including the General skill that gives Ashigaru +3 Melee Attack. And remember, Ashigaru units have more soldiers than Samurai units. Basically, unlike Rome 2 where I do not believe you could ever get peasant level units anywhere near as good as Praetorians no matter how many upgrades or veteran levels they had, in Shogun 2, you can essentially make your cheapest, "worst" melee infantry into killing machines that will wreck even the best Samurai. Now technically if you were fighting another human player, Samurai could be increased by the same +6 Melee Attack and therefore keep the large difference in stats to Ashigaru and therefore Samurai could still mulch Ashigaru easily in that situation, BUT, the AI is very unlikely to do that. Therefore, you can make your Ashigaru better than the AI's Samurai and so mulch the AI's forces with a horde of cheap but now powerful units.

This applies if you are using Bow Samurai as well, which I think have 6 Melee Attack normally, so with the +6 Melee Attack they would equal Katana Samurai, but after having decimated the enemy with arrows first.


I considered that +5 Armour might be better on Warrior Monks, Katana, Naginata and No-Dachi Samurai and Katana Cavalry, and on General units, because they already have high melee attack and their melee attack and defense can be further increased by veteran ranks while armour cannot, so the idea being:

A Shimazu Katana Samurai unit has 14 Melee Attack and 5 Armour. If you could recruit them at Rank 6 or 7, I believe they would get +6 Melee Attack and +6 Melee Defense, so they would have 20 Melee Attack. Ok, so now they can either be given +6 Melee Attack or +5 Armour from buildings.

Which is better, a 26 Melee Attack, 5 Armour Katana Samurai, or a 20 Melee Attack, 10 Armour Katana Samurai?

I was never able to do or find the testing needed to figure that out.

But that debate only applies to units that already have high melee attack and furthermore assumes you get the tech and build the buildings that would let you recruit +6 or +7 Rank veteran units right off the bat.

Everyone else, Yari and Bow units and light cavalry, etc, would all benefit more I believe from the +6 Melee Attack so they can more easily and quickly kill Samurai units, so I would recommend going +6 Melee Attack.

First of all, if you did not know, you can ask the AI to give you money when you offer a trade agreement. So not only are you benefiting from the trade, you are getting a nice chunk of change upfront as well.


Warhorse Studs = Big $$$

I did not know this until I saw a Reddit post about it, but apparently if you have Warhorse Studs resource, and you have a connection route to be able to trade with the AI, they could offer you tens of thousands of Koku to get a trade agreement.

I would not get the trade agreement right at the start of the campaign, give the AI time to generate the money, but if you can get to the Warhorse Studs resource and have many opportunities to make new trade agreements, you could potentially set yourself up for the rest of the campaign financially doing this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/ej9esk/shogun_2_comprehensive_economic_guide_yes_in_2019/

Reddit user "Doccit" makes a good point with his guide about how the benefit of minimum taxes and waiting on growth takes too long to see. I highly recommend you read his guide.


But since a lack of understanding of "town growth" and "food" have been issues since day 1, if I'm going to make an Ultimate Guide, I need to address it:

Let's use a province that has a wealth of 3000 Koku. If you set taxes to 10%, that province will generate 300 Koku per turn off that wealth (there may be additional income from commerce, farming, trade, etc, but let's keep it simple for now).

If you set taxes to 30%, then you would get 900 Koku per turn from that 3000 wealth province.

But let's say that province experience "town growth" and eventually has 4000 wealth. 10% would = 400 Koku per turn, while 30% would = 1200 Koku per turn.

So obviously you want your provinces to grow in wealth. Having 10 provinces worth 3000 Koku each at 30% tax rate = 9000 Koku per turn; while 10 provinces worth 4000 Koku each at 30% tax rate = 12000 Koku per turn. That extra 3000 Koku income I think would support an additional full stack army of Yari Ashigaru with change leftover.


HOW TO INCREASE GROWTH:

There are buildings and technology that increase your growth, and reducing taxes should increase growth, play around with it and check a provinces info screen to see changes in the growth rate based upon what you are doing.

Key info you need: 1 Surplus Food = +1 Growth in ALL provinces.

So if you are generating 50 Surplus Food per turn (you can see how much Surplus Food you have on the main screen, I think bottom right corner?) then that would be +50 town growth in EACH of your controlled provinces. So let's say you control 10 provinces and you have +50 Food and therefore +50 Growth in all of them. After 10 turns, the wealth of each of those individual provinces would have increased by 500, so 5000 across all 10 provinces. 30% of 5000 = 1500 Koku per turn, which is close to supporting a full stack army of Ashigaru. And if you can keep the +50 Food Surplus and gain control of more provinces, your total wealth and income should keep going up and up.

PROBLEM:

Building higher tier castles use food, and building higher tier markets (Rice Exchange, etc) also use food, and I think there are some others. And to get more food, you need to build higher tier farms, which can cost lots of Koku and takes time.

Generally you want your castles to be at least Tier 2 so you have 2 building slots, so you can build a market and a ninja inn if the province is a non-recruitment province, and you want at least Tier 3 castle in a province you will be recruiting from, so you can build an encampment + whatever Dojos or Stables you need according to your army composition strategy.

This means each province will be using up at least 2 food and maybe more, so their farms need to generate more than that to have a surplus. This is doable, but you need a lot of provinces with lots of upgraded farms to achieve +50 Food Surplus. This is what Doccit means when he wrote that by the time you achieve this you should have already beaten the game.

But if you do not want to have to remember to change your tax rate each turn, and you are fine with a slower build up until you reach the point where you generate so much growth and income that you can just steamroll to final victory, such as in a Domination campaign, this is good info to know. You could get 30 or so provinces, keep the AI at bay while growth increases your income to crazy levels, and then build enough armies to steamroll the rest of Japan.

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/ej9esk/shogun_2_comprehensive_economic_guide_yes_in_2019/

Just read Doccit's guide concerning Metsuke, he writes it up nicely. Basically you put your Metsuke in your richest provinces (those that are Very Fertile or have Gold Mines) to boost the effective tax rate and thereby give you more Koku.


Key Info: if your Daimyo has low honor or a general has low loyalty but you don't want to kill him off, you can put a Metsuke in his army to keep that general inline. But if you are following the other parts of my guide then that should never be necessary. I never had issues with general loyalty when my Daimyo had 6 honor.

Chokosabe start on an island with 4 provinces they want to secure first before moving on.

Chokosabe have perhaps the easiest start in the game, but there is a downside. Trade routes must connect to your capital, and Chokosabe's capital is on an island, and there are only 3-4 ports on the island, so Chokosabe can only have 3-4 trade agreements. This issue reappeared in Warhammer 2 when Malus' Dark Elf faction capital in the Mortal Empires mode is placed on an island with no trade access, the code has never been fixed.

WORKAROUND (assuming you do not use a mod that allows you to change your capital):

Capture the whole island, do not build any castles higher than Tier 2. Then conquer Bizen for the Smithing specialty, because Bizen is going to be your new capital and your main recruitment center. Make sure it is well defended, and build the Castle to Tier 3. Once that is done, you raise taxes to the highest level, end turn, then turn off taxes in all your provinces except your original capital which you leave taxed at the highest level, then end turn, and your original province should rebel, hopefully the rebels win and takeover, and now your new capital should be Bizen.

Important Note!: Your capital gets +1 recruitment slot, so having your capital be Bizen is even better because it will allow you to recruit more units faster. It is a waste to have the capital be a province that will not be recruiting any units after the early game.

Note: I think rebel armies spawn stronger if you have an army in the province they are revolting in. This info can be useful if the rebels struggle to capture the town, just have a large army within the border of the province but not in town, and the rebels should spawn strong enough to capture it. Likewise, if you don't want the rebels to be too strong and too difficult to retake the town, don't have your army in that province.


Other than that, the Chokosabe are overpowered because with Bizen, they can create +6 melee attack Bow Samurai for a total of 12 melee attack, which means they can shoot the enemy to mulch and anything that makes it into melee with the Bow Samurai will then be pulverized.

Enjoy.

Just like Christianity, as Ikko-Ikki you want to convert provinces to your religion before conquering them or inciting them to revolt. Inciting Revolt, like stated before, can be an overpowered tool to even the odds for you.

Remember that you start with Kaga, all your troops should be produced there with +6 Melee Attack as soon as you can do that.

Now, I think Kaga is not the capital, they start with 2 and the other province is the capital I believe, and the capital gets +1 recruitment slots. If this really hinders or annoys you, you can use the trick from the Chokosabe section to lose your capital and move it to Kaga.