Sengoku Japan

[ZargonX]

Ouch! Talk about tightly packed civilizations. Gave it a good play through today, and saw just what a challenge this scenario could be. Poor starting locations, scarce iron, and no diplomatic dealings (i.e. military alliances) with your neighbors for quite a while. Managed to get a slight tech lead, and took out another clan with my vast army of stone crossbows. Unfortunately, a little after that, my southern neighbors decided to take out my capital with their vaster army of stone crossbows. Ah well. Just means I have to try again, right

[asleepathewheel]

I played a bit as Oda. The key for me was taking the civ to my southwest (don't remember the name) once I secured Iron, it made things much easier.
I enjoyed the first half of the game, but got bored and decided to quit. But not before I took out a couple daimyos with my ninjas those are fun.

[grappleman]

sengoku is one of the harder scenarios IMHO, but if you pop enough barb huts you can get a good early tech lead. oh and killing daimyo's is VERY fun!

[mimi]

What level you guys playing on? I am playing it on monarch and was thinking it's pretty easy - kill their leader and the whole civ is gone... I just upgraded my daiyo and charged their capitals - killed 3 of them with a handful of stone archers, swordman upgrades (bushy-somethings) and my king... very cool.

[TheArsenal]

I am about 100 – 125 turns into this conquest playing as the … May … er …the Mauryi … er … Myob .. the tribe with the blue rectangle and black background. I like this conquest. Playing Monarch level, I am not having too difficult of a go at it, but that may be more due to a good starting position, access to iron and lots of early warfare. I researched the top portion of the tech tree to get to the powerful Bushido unit as quickly as possible which is slicing through everything so far. Even before this, creating a 14 unit stack of the starting swordsman (Arushi?) and stone throwers (equal stats to Warriors and Archers in the epic game IIRC) I was able to take out a couple of civs and do serious damage to one other.

Some random thoughts about this conquest:

The AIs I’ve met have so far (there are many I have not) researched the bottom portions of the tech tree, allowing me to get the woe creating Bushido (even though I researched at a leisurely pace) far before them, making taking out tribes fairly straightforward work.

Upgrades are prohibitively expensive.

Creating settler teams right before warfare allowed me to flood the empty land once the civ collapsed into dust after I destroyed its king. The other AIs have extra settler teams as well and they kind of just float around waiting for space to open up, so it was key to be quick and have them trail the battle.

Parking large stacks of units outside the capitol, twice allowed me to extort techs like nothing I have ever seen. This may be due to the fact that if I take that city, destroy the king unit, its game over for that civ.

So far, I have seen the king unit stay and fight instead of retreat to a city further back in its civ, which may have saved it for a turn or two, maybe more if it could sue for peace. I’m guessing it is programmed to stay with the largest defensive force, which was in its capitol city.

Cool conquest so far. Enjoyable.

[ZargonX]

I think access to iron is critical in this scenario. And for that matter, has anyone seen horses in it? There are horse-based technologies, but I have never seen the resource show up on the map. Am I missing something?

[Alexander I]

Hey...

Does anybody want to post the names of the factions in the Sengoku scenario? What are they?

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by ZargonX
I think access to iron is critical in this scenario. And for that matter, has anyone seen horses in it? There are horse-based technologies, but I have never seen the resource show up on the map. Am I missing something?

Yep.

[alva]

Those workers certainly do look cool.

four.... more..... days...

[TheArsenal]

A few more thoughts about this conquest.

I went back and played last night. And to my chagrin I find out I pretty much botched the name of every single unit in my post above. Close, but botched. For example Bushi is a unit and Bushido is a tech. Oh well.

To me, this game is getting more interesting as I go along. Once communications were allowed, I lost much of my tech lead. My closest rival the Hojo, I believe they are called, is a more or less a KAI covering 21% of the available landmass (this seems to be much easier for an AI to do when they can collapse an entire civ at once and build its own cities over the rubble) which is significant when you consider there are at least 9 or 10 civs left and I own 25% of the known world. The Hojo traded techs around pretty liberally it appears, so instead of the tech gap widening, as it does after a point in my usual games, it actually closed radically.

There are some very cool units in this conquest. The one which is causing me the most problems so far in my war against the Hojo, is a heavy defensive swordsman (5 defense I think) which moves across all terrain like a Conquistador. Because the terrain is so mountainous, it is particularly good at moving fairly far into your territory and at pillaging and snatching/killing workers, and hard to defend against. And the only available fast mover at this point, the Horseman, can do nothing against it unless it is stacked and on road/flat terrain.

My big mistake. I kept a Leader around for years, to ensure I could rush built the War Council, which is basically, the UN, so I didn’t pre-build. Well … as it turns out you can not rush building with GLs so now I am in a wonder race*. If I don’t build it first, my game long highly aggressive behavior will make sure I “suffer a humiliating defeat”.

*Error note: I could be wrong, I will check when I get home, but I am pretty sure the Civlopedia for this conquest still says GLs can be used to rush buildings, which is why I tried.

[Arrian]

Military GLs can no longer rush Great Wonders. They can rush small wonders and improvements, and make armies.

Scientific GLs can rush Wonders (and improvements as well, I assume).

-Arrian

[TheArsenal]

^ That I knew. And again, it could have been because it was late and I am mistaken, but I’m pretty damn sure I looked at the Civlopedia in this Conquest and reading an error said, “oh the GL rush rules are different in this scenario than in the epic game.”

[Arrian]

Ah. Gotcha. Sorry.

-Arrian

[ZargonX]

You know what, I remember someone else mentioning this, but I can't upgrade my Daimyo either Anyone else had this problem?

[Alexander I]

You know, can't say that I have. Sorry.