For this guide purpose, I made a slight edit to Sanada masayuki (tactic and traits) and Sanada Yukimura (Tactic) and added several created officers to speed up the game progress and to show various game management features. The featured tactic in this walk-through is "Snipe", a ranged attack skill with burst damage and range but with very short duration.


-SETTINGS-

The setting for the game is essentially the extreme mode with 2 modifications as shown below:
Soldier recovery is set to low instead of mid. Obviously with this setting, you can hardly afford to lose any soldiers given the small troop size of the clan. However, this setting also allows you to turn the table on a much larger attacking clan if you can successfully rout them in defensive fights. The daimyo direct control range is important in this scenario because any castle or fort out of the range of daimyo control will be quickly overrun if left to their own device.

The other setting is as shown below:
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-MAP SELECTION-

When selecting a starting map, I always check the locations of tribes. The idea is to figure out the number of tribes I can completely control (100%) in the early expansion. The reason is that anything less than the full control will require you to continue to spend gold to keep them in support (above 70%) which you cannot afford in this situation. And the benefit received from the full control is quite substantial. If I don't like the distribution of tribes on the map, I simply start over to get a new map. The below is the map I have chosen to start with. This is not necessarily an optimal map but not a bad one either.


In the game, certain tribes will always spawn at fixed positions and the others will spawn at random positions all over the entire game map. I have denoted by red circles for those tribes with fixed positions in this particular section of the map. I know that my first expansion target is Iiyama so I have denoted by blue circles the tribes I will be likely to fully control if I take Iiyama.

I also have a habit of checking the distrbution of all tribes sorted by abilities on the game map to see how many of crucial tribes I will control in the mid game.

Depending on a game situation, the most crucial tribes vary. However, I always check "Carpentry" tribes and where they are located. "Carpentry" tribes are important because this is the only way of reducing the amount of time required to developing or building things for the entire clan. When you develop or build things, it takes certain amount of time. For me, taking 31 days or 60 days to complete a task works out the same because I cannot use the retainer for 2 months for any other work. And a lot of things can happen in 2 months where you may need to transfer the retainer or to commit him to other more urgent tasks.

So getting it done within a month (30 days) matters. It takes POL number of 85 to complete district expansion and redisctricting in 30 days, POL number of 70 to complete adding a facility in 30 days, and POL number of 60 to complete a roadwork in 30 days. Also POL 85 can improve 3 roads in 2 months and POL 115 can complete 2 roads in 1 month.

However, you don't get enough retainers with these numbers. With each "Carpentry" tribe you control, the requirement for POL number to complete a work in 30 days drops by 2. So if you control 5 tribes, the POL number requirement drops by 10. For example, I think there are only 10 generals in the entire game who can ever reach POL 115. However, there are a far greater number of generals who can reach POL 105. In this scenario, Sanada Masayuki has a POL number of 83 at the beginning. If you have just one "carpentry" tribe under control, he will be able to complete a lot more work in 30 days.

After the opening cinematics, the clan quest "the Second Battle of Ueda" will immediately begin.The quest is essentially to send Masayuki, Nobuyuki, and Yukimura to Oyama Castle in Kanto where Tokugawa has summoned all his allies to the conference. All 3 of them must get there in 60 days. The first step is to transfer Masayuki and Yukimura to Numata Castle.

Then Adding a facility to Ueda must be done right away since it requires 4 labors, and Numata castle will be lost as soon as they arrive at Oyama Castle. Every 5,000 population in control adds 1 labor. Ueda Castle's population is 18,700. That means the moment Numata defects to Tokugawa, there will be only 3 labors available until expansion.

-ADDING FACILITY: UEDA-

Ueda is a castle. That means it will have 10 distrcts when fully developed. Before adding a facility, what I typically do is 1) check for all available resources 2) distribution of distrcts 3) basic production unit calculation. In this case, Ueda has 3 resources: fountain, lumber, and horses.
These resources not only affect the consideration for district facility development but also determine available castle facilities and their development level requirements. For example, having a fountain allows "Depot" to be developed later in castle upgrade. However, it requires the minimum of 2000 Crops, 500 Crafts, and 750 Conscripts before becoming available.

Fortunately, having a lumber allows a lumber mill which raises the Crops by 5 times the distrct basic production unit. In general, a castle does not have much of problem fulfilling the development requirement for a castle facility since it always have 10 distrcts. However, a fortress with fewer distrcts may have a problem where it may be impossble to fulfill the requirement even if the resource is present.

Since step 2) and 3) are closely connected, I will explain it together.
For each district, there is a starting level for each of 3 products. In this case, D for Crops, E for both Crafts and Conscripts. These starting levels are the function of multiplier on the basic production unit (BPU) of that district. F = 3 X BPU, E = 4 X BPU, and so on. There is a separate guide out on this particular data, so I won't go too much in detail. At any rate, if you reverse the process, BPU = F/3 = E/4 = D/5 and so on. In this example district, BPU = E/4 = 516/4 = 129.

Figuring out BPU for each distrct is important because the production boosts from facilities are the functions of multiplier on BPU. As mentioned earlier, a lumber mill boosts production of crops by 5 times the BPU. As a rule of thumb, most of production boost facilities give 4 times BPU at the end of 2 step development. If BPU is unusually low such as 72, it may make more sense to develop an alternative facility other than production boost one. For example a conscript distrct with BPU of 72, building a cathedral will only add 4 X 72 = 288 soldiers to max conscript numbers. By building a Noh Theater, additional population growth of 18 per month can be acheived in addtion to the gold boost. Since max militia munber is 16.65% of population number adjusted by popularity rating, the militia increase over the long run will be higher. The reason I am not mentioning Hachimangu although it gives a bigger boost in militia number short term by increasing the max popularity is that Max popularity should be raised primarily by policies not by facilities and I never build one under practically any circumstance.

Once the starting levels for different products and BPUs for all distrcts are counted, the planning for facility development can proceed. I always work out the facility development plan for all distrcts before I start to add a facility because many of the facilities not only boost its own distrct but also affect neighboring districts for particular product/products. For this guide, I will only show a particular delemma I had in deciding which facility to build.

At this point, no facility has been added yet. However, I have pretty much worked out the facility decisions for all distrcts except one. This commercial distrct has a fountain that allows a rice exchange to be built which has a very good population boost. However, this distrct also has a very high BPU of 141. In this case, a production boost facility is in order. A typical solution to this will be to build a rice exchange and to build facilities that boost crafts of nearby distrcts in its neighboring distrcts such as orchards and coin exchanges. In this case, that is not an option. So I must give up one or the other. In the end, I decided to build a rice exchange because I figure that it makes up more than enough in saved supplies and troop strengh by disposing attacking enemies quicker with a bigger troop count. However, this is an unique situation. In most of other cases, the decision would have been the opposite.

-TO OYAMA AND BACK-

Boosting support of two tribes located between Iiyama and Kaizu concludes the first month of activity. By the second month, July of 1600, Masayuki is in Numata ready to depart for Oyama.
Taking the full troop strength from Numata, Masayuki and his sons head to Oyama. Just about 3/4th way to Oyama, Sanada Yukinaga (created officer as a son of Masayuki) departs with the full troop strength from Ueda to arrive at IIyama just as Masayuki arrives at Oyama. After the cinematics, Sanada is now on the western side against Tokugawa and his eldest son Nobuyuki defects to Tokugawa with Numata Castle.
Now Ueda is completely surrounded by Tokugawa and his allies with 12 month truces with Asano and Yuki clans and 6 month truce with Tokugawa although Tokugawa will move against Sanada before the end of truce. In the meantime, switching of sides makes Iiyama siegeable as Hori clan becomes an enemy.

In Aug 1600, Masayuki heads to Numata as a part of the quest while Sanada Yukinaga faces Hori's relief force from Kasugayama.
Fortunately, this battle turns out to be a successful night attack where Yukinaga has been able to dispose both Iiyama's defenders and the relief force with minimal casualty. And IIyama falls to Sanada. I was going to use this as a case to illustrate some of the battle mode fight points but that has to wait for the next time.

In Sep 1600, Yukinaga heads to Takato Castle of Kyogoku clan while masayuki also heads to Takato on his way back from Numata to aid Yukinaga in his siege of Takato.
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-BATTLE MODE: SOLO BATTLE TIP 1-

Kyogoku Takamoto with 1700 men comes out to meet Yukinaga in an open field battle. One of the reason to use the battle mode is that it resolves a battle much quicker than the auto battle mode. In this case where time is of essence, the battle mode is only option available. By far the most important general rule of engagement IMO is to strike first and to strike from a staionary position if using a ranged attack tactic.
To accomplish this, the troop should move only to the point where the front red line is just shy of where the enmy is expected to be after the move as shown above. The reason for this is that there is a slight delay in attack order. So when the enemy is spotted and the attack order is issued, the troop will still advace a bit more before executing an attack order. By that time, the enemy has already opened fire.

Once in position close to the sighting of enemy, the troop will make a very small incremental advance while the cursor is at the battle clock keep pausing and pausing as the incremental advance continues until the enemy is spotted.
By the moment of enemy spotting, the battle clock should be in pause and the troop should be in a stationary position. In other words, in perfect position to unleash a deadly barrage. If it is not, something is not done right.

In this game, I am using "Snipe" as the primary tactic. Snpe is powerful but has a very short duration. While using the tactic, the cursor must be on the portait to show the elapse of tactic usage. Just when the tactic expires, press the portrait to pause the battle and activate the tactic again. This actually take some practice to do it properly because the pause must come exactly at the moment of tactic expiration. This way ensures the uninterrupted maximum damage possible.

After quickly eliminating Kyogoku, the fight moves to Takato Castle. Yukinaga makes a big circular move to minimize the turret damage and get into the perfect position to spot and make the first strike as discussed before. The rest is same as before as well.

After the fall of Takato Castle, Sanada Masayuki returns to Ueda in preparation of Tokugawa invasion while Sanada Yukinaga continues to Iida Castle to finish off Kyogoku clan.

Out of 2 tribes that I have expected to control fully once IIyama falls, I will be able to control only the Musket tribe. As it turned out, there was a secret path (in red circle) connecting the voluteer tribe to Kasugayama Castle. However, with the capture of Iida Castle in not too distant future, I should be able to control 3 additional tribes.


-STORM APPROACHING-

By the middle of November, the battle at Sekigahara is in full swing and Tokugawa Hidetada as a part of the quest marches to Ueda with 46,000 men. Right behind his 46,000, there are more than 20,000 Tokugawa troops marching toward Ueda while 3,500 men from Maeda clan march toward Iiyama Castle.
The fall of Iida Castle will occur soon but not soon enough for Sanada Yukinaga to come back into Ueda Castle before the battle. As soon as Iida falls, Sanada Yukinaga will enter Iida Castle. In this way, much needed horses and muskets will be immediately available for defenders of Ueda and Iiyama. The released Ueda troops won't immediately return to Ueda Castle but will be added over several months via accelerated troop recovery. However, this is not a problem since the troops Sanada Masayuki brought from Numata has entered Ueda and replenished a significant portion of troop strength anyway, and the returning troops over the months will help keep the defending troop strength to grow. So the real fun is about to begin.

-ADDING FACILITY: IIYAMA-

Unlike Ueda, Iiyama is a fortress with only 3 available districts. It has two resources:lumber and Horses. Although Horses allows the Riding Ground as a castle upgrade, it requires the minimum development of 1500 Crops which is impossible to do. With 102 BPU, the argricultural district can have the maximum of 918 crops using lumber mill and coin exchange from the neighboring commercial district. Other than that, the distrct facility development is quite simple because there isn't much of choices or combinations possible.

Other than raising the crop production, a lumber mill also drops the internal infrastructure development time for that particular castle. This is the only other way of reducing time required to develop or buiding things other than controlling "Carpentry" tribes. And the reduction is quite substantial. In terms of getting things done in 30 days, the minimum POL requirement drops by 10. Typically it takes POL 70 to complete adding a facility in 30 days. With a lumber mill, POL 60 can do the same work in 30 days. Of course, this is limited to the internal castle improvement only. In other words, this does not affect things occuring outside of the castle such as roadworks.

When I assign retainers to a castle or a fort, there are two major considerations I give: 1) fighting strength and tactic/trait combo effects 2) infrastructure development (in terms of POL figures): overseer (the amount of product increase) and infrastructure developer (the time taken to build things.) In reality, it is actually hard to fulfill these two considerations to satisfaction. With a lumber mill, the options for the combination of retainers at a particular castle increase. I will explain this in more detail when I discuss the retainer assignments.
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-BATTLE MODE: BASIC APPROACH TO CONTROLLING MULTIPLE BATTLES-

Obviously, if left to auto battle mode, both castles will fall. So engaging in battle mode fights for both castles are essential to successfully defend them. However, a battle mode fight can be done only one at a time. If two battles occur simultaneously which will likely happen in this case, only one battle can be engaged.

To make things worse, while all this is going on, the battle of Sekigahara will be over with Tokugawa victorious. In turn, many of former western coalition daimyos will defect to Tokugawa including Toyotomi (ungrateful scums) and Mori (Spineless cowards.) This actually has a significant implication for Iida and Takato. With the balance of power destroyed in Tokai region, it frees up many of Tokugawa allies in Tokai to take aggression on Iida and Takato. So, instead of fighting 2 battles simutaneously, it may very well turn out to be 3 or 4 battles fought simultaneously. At the same time by default, Sanada leaves the western coalition, and that event turns every remaining western coalition partners to enemies to make every daimyo in Japan into an enemy. Sounds fun, isn't it?

This is a new situation because, in my first trial run on this scenario, I didn't take Iida precisely for this concern. But this time, I couldn't resist the temptation of controlling 3 tribes and the benefits they provide (greed is blinding.)

On top of that, this is the extreme setting with AI set at max. What that means in this situation is that any sign of weakness will guarantee more aggressions like flies swarming to a rotting meat. So the task is not just about repelling attackers but essentially routing them without losing troop strengths at all locations. Sounds impossible? It is hard but doable.

The first step to controlling multiple battles is to understand the auto battle engagement intervals. When the opposing armies meet, they first get into battle formation. Then, there is an interval of pauses between engagements. I call it 2 ticks. It's just something I use to measure the interval. In other words, during this interval, there is no battle and no loss of troops. It is short but sufficient enough to engage and finish one battle mode fight and then engage in the other battle before the interval expires.

If there are more than 2 simultaneous battles, buying time is essential. For defenders in front of a castle, simply sending them back into the castle and bring them right back out will buy you time for them to get into battle formation again + the interval. For those troops engaged in open field battle or attacking an enemy base, simply have them disengage as needed. Of course, this requires a habit of pausing the game before and after each battle.

If the battle cannot be finished in 2 ticks, the choice has to be made depending on the situation. For defending a castle, this is a no brainer since you can always reset the battle by simply entering the castle and come back out. However, in other battle situations, that is not so simple. I will explain this in more detail in the battle resetting mechanism.

Fortunately, this particular situation involves primarily defending castles which make engaging in multiple simultaneous battles rather straight forward and manageable. I will show you how it's done when the battles actually unfold.

To complete the quest, Tokugawa Hidetada must surround Ueda Castle (as shown inside the pink circle.) In a new development, some of Tokugawa units are moving toward Takato Castle (as shown by red circles) while the rest of Tokugawa troops continue toward Ueda (as shown by blue circles.) So the battles at Ueda, Iiyama, and Takato are now a certainty.

After the cinematics showing how the overwhelming Tokugawa force was defeated by the small Sanada force of 2,000, Hidetada unit will disappear but the rest of Tokugawa units continue on with their invasion.

Immediately after the conclusion of quest, the battle of Sekigahara ends with Tokugawa victorious with the western coalition greatly weakened. By default, Sanada leaves the western coalition and becomes the emeny of both the eastern and the western coalition partners.

In a quick tatical assessment, the invasion force toward Iiyama is still some distance away and doesn't require an immediate attention. In the meantime, it looks like the invasion force toward Ueda is regrouping to make a pincer movement from 3 directions. That means Takato will see the first major defensive battle.

However, there is a small force led by Komatsu right at the castle trying to leave to regroup with the rest of the invasion force toward Ueda. Obviously, you don't want to let her get away to regroup. Ironically, Komatsu is the daughter-in-law of Sanada masayuki, and the family feud is about to begin.

I was able to catch her just as she completes from the siege mode to movement mode. I have a habit of pausing the game before and after any action. It is a very useful habit to acquire especially when you are about to engage in a battle mode combat.

When you enter into a battle mode combat while the game is in pause, the battle screen will also start in pause that gives you the time to assess and plan your battle. Just pause the game and click on your unit which will show a battle sign to indicate that a battle mode combat is possible. Click on the sign and you start the battle with the timer paused.

Every castle has fences and turrets to impede enemy army attacking the castle. As a rule of thumb, the higher the castle HP, the more fences and turrets there are.

These obstacles are useful in defending a castle but it also cuts both ways in that they also impede your movement to get closer to the enemy. This is especially significant for troops primarily using a ranged attack tactic.

When you use the ranged attack mode (when you click on your unit then click on an enemy unit to attack, you can choose between the ranged attack mode and the meelee attack mode,) your unit will automatically keep the distance from your enemy unit reflecting the attack range. However, as your enemy unit's frontline thins from your attack, you will automatically move closer in order to keep them within the attack range again.

As you might have guessed, if you have a fence in front of you which impedes your movement, the enemy unit will be slightly out of attack range. Not only the damage loss is substantial but also it gives your enemy time to regroup and counter-attack.

Of course, there is the issue of control guage (I call it "mana bar" since you need a certain amount of mana to use a skill in most of RPG games and it works pretty much the same) but that is a whole another discussion that I will skip here.

So it is best to move your unit to a point there is no obstacle to get closer to the enemy unit but quick and easy to hide behind the fences and turrets if needed (as shown above.)

So the family feud ended with Komatsu's unit destroyed with the loss of 5 men from Sanada Masayuki's side.

One of the major obstacles I faced in playing NA games as a non-Japanese person was the sheer number of provinces and castle names. I knew that a good hierarchical categorization was helpful in remembering a large amount of data. So I did some research to figure out how to organize this categorization.

At the end, I found that the hierarchical categorization in order of Regions - Provinces - Castles was quite useful for me. I am sharing this categorization because sometimes I use the name of region (for example, a reference to Tokai region in an earlier section) in this guide.

Note 1: The provincial boundaries on this map are based on modern Japan, and do not exactly match the Sengoku era provincial boundaries. However, these boudaries more or less follow the historical precedents enough to be used as reference points to identify the general boundaries of each region.

Note 2: In the game, "KInai" region is mentioned. "Kinai" means the neighboring area of the capital. So Kansai region can be understood as "Kinai" region. However, "Kinai" is usually defined as the much narrower area leaving some of provinces in Kansai region not included. As a result, I use Kansai rather than "Kinai" as the regional name to inculde all the provinces organized into regions.

Note 3: Since the area covered by "Ezo" in SOI is limited to the southern tip of Hokkaido, Ezo as a region and as a province is essentially synonymous.

Note 4: In SOI, some of the larger provinces are broken up into smaller provinces. For example, Dewa province in Tohoku region is broken up into 3 provinces as Ugo, North Uzen, and South Uzen. To avoid any confusion, I am going to follow provinces defined by SOI for this guide.

Tip 1: Many of provinces will end their names with zen, chu, or go. This means Front (zen), Middle (chu), or Rear (go) indicating shared provincial name with denotation of how far or close from Yamashiro, the capital province. For example, Ugo and Uzen in Note 4 can be understood as U-Far and U-Near provinces. Similarly, Bizen, Bicchu, Bingo can be understood as Bi-Near, Bi-Middle, Bi-Far provinces or Echizen, Ecchu, Echigo can be understood as Echi-Near, Echi-Middle, Echi-Far provinces.

Tip 2: In Kanto region, some of the provinces share the same name but in a different way from Note 3. They are Kazusa (Upper-Fusa) and Shimosa (Lower-Fusa) provinces. The same rule applies to Kozuke and Simotsuke provinces.

I thought about expalining each region and provinces in it with some details on key characteristics and stats but I decided not to because it would require 9 new sections and I am just trying to give last few sections that I have prepared material for in advance.