Still haven't gotten passed the zombie army.
After multiple play throughs, here's what I'm currently doing. I build the prison on round 1, I buy another ashigaru and miku unit. I take one of Ashikaga's towns when they demand money. Then Hara declares war on me. I ignore both and only fight when they attack. That way I get the relationship points and prisoners without spending action points. I piss off the ninja's to the left and the Azai-asakura above me (now I have 4 enemies). I'm using 2 units for each fight. At the most I get attacked 3 times in 1 turn.
By turn 30 I have 25 prisoners, did not spend actions points on them.
What I don't understand is, what is the difference between character LVL and stats? From what I see, the LVL is only for beating the Oda zombie guy? And the stats are for actual battles?
pay attention to the gourds. After about Turn 10 you should get the scene where nobunaga gets sick, meaning that the gourd for ODA is broken. Certain clans also have gourds so if you conquer them, or someone else conquers them, then those gourds will break as well. After 5 gourds break, Kou gets kidnapped and the story progresses to the demon army. If you wanna win you have to accept 3 facts.
1. You can't win in 60 turns yet and won't earn any points
2. You have to choose fights carefully.
3. You need commanders with high lvl (around 40) and good stats (atleast all 6s)
Character LVL is important for Duels. That would be when commanders fight individually. There are a few nations that require you to fight a duel to win, like tokugawa or mouri and a few story events where you have to. If you lose it's an automatic game over. There are also dungeons you'll need to explore and having good commanders helps. Stats typically refer to battles, with the only other variable being troop amount, but lvl plays a part sometimes too. Kenshin for example has commander charge, which does damage based on her lvl
You want to beat Takuga, Tokugawa, Uesugi, Mouri specifically. They all have good characters with decent stats and high lvl Especially if you cure Motonari and then recruit him
If you don't go to war with houjou in time, takeda will conquer them. If you don't go to war with akeshi in time, MOuri will conquer them. This only happens in the first playthrough to push the story along but if you let this happen then you're gonna be short 3 gourds by default and stuck with only 2 places to conquer. You have to stall the story by getting rid of the clans without gourds like Hara, Tokugawa, Tanegashima, Imagawa, Miko institute and Azai-asakura. At that point you need to go to war with uesugi to get Kenshin (She's goated) and Ai. I would also suggest you declare war on houjou and akeshi before they get conquered. That way you can fight them later to get their commanders. Do not declare war on the ninjas because it won't help much and it'll short you a gourd. You can conquer tenshiism if you want but if you hold out you can get seigan later.
