Five Star Difficulty Ironman

An extreme challenge: Five-star Ironman
Warning: This document contains heavy spoilers already onwards from the first paragraphs and in the setup of the whole description of the challenge itself. If you continue past here, you can never return to ignorance about the plot of Sengoku Rance. I recommend you postpone reading this until you have completed the game at least once.

Other disclaimers: This guide is not and will not be written in a very exact manner. I will write it in my own style and will not use time on strictly fact-checking every detail - instead I will try to dish out as much advice as possible and outline the general flow of successful games. The completion of the guide will be done gradually over probably several months, and will possibly halt altogether. In the latter case I will mark the article as unfinished.

This document is, for now, mostly a placeholder under heavy construction. When ready, it is meant to be a strategy and tactics guide for a pretty extreme (probably not the most extreme) challenge run in Sengoku Rance. I have succesfully completed this run and wish to share my story. Read at your own expense and leisure. Thanks and comments go to the /haniho/ thread at 4chan/vg. I recommend visiting there for high quality SR discussion.

Pictures/screenshots will be added at a later date, if I get to that. I prioritize critical information and outlines first, then expand on the graphic and explanative side.

This run took first 15, then the additional challenge another 26 more tries to complete. Some tries were more successful than others, some less so and ended quickly. Some spectacular starts ended up in bitter disappointment and losses that were caused by a few badly thought actions, in reality several clicks wrong. One of the losses was in the final battle itself.

I've played the game about a couple of thousand hours and played through about 50-80'ish runs (about half of them on average shorter challenge Ironman runs).

Background: my motivation for doing this
I got tired of Rance's chirades. Why does this guy always risk it all on here and this or that bravado move, and always win?

The answer I got up with it is: because you can reload and load always. So it got me thinking. What if you can't load and reload. What kind of tactics should and could you play. What Would Rance Do? (WWRD) in actual life?

I  wanted to complete the hardest, IMO most realistic difficulty, Five-star without bonuses, without reloading throughout the game. I tried my best at it from the first game onwards. I died. Many times. Then finally did it.

I found out this kind of playstyle (Ironman, no loading allowed) is very rewarding. It adds a layer of meaning to everything you do. If you lose a commander, he/she is lost forever.

The rush I got out of finally completing a 5SNB-Ironman run was exceptional. I wholeheartedly recommend trying this playstyle, especially if you are an advanced SR player. For the beginners.. I wish you luck and I commend your bravery. I've also lost a lot of Ironman runs on a lot of games, so I feel for you.

Rules of the challenge run
The rules of this challenge run "Five-star No Bonus Ironman", or perhaps 5SNB-Ironman, are as follows:
 * It is a second game of Sengoku Rance
 * It is Five-Star difficulty
 * You cannot use any bonuses
 * You must do the True history route (Kill The Monkey and IF-routes are outruled)
 * Ironman: You cannot load or reload based on your performance. You CAN reload if you made an obvious misclick (that means you meant to do something else than you did, for example meant to click on a commanders purple event but clicked on someone else by [drunken] accident, or such)
 * If Rance dies, or if there is game over for any reason like Kou dying in battle, you lose and have to start from the beginning
 * If you get sent to Alice's mansion (Were you not prepared to fight such a strong enemy?) you lose, and have to start over
 * No infinite time exploits or any other cheat or bug exploit is allowed (see below). I have interpreted this to mean, for example, that I must attack Honnouji no later than on Turn 100. A stricter ruling would be that you have to attack latest when Kou's events start looping (apparently 3-4 turns after she has been found). If you play right, I believe this is about Turn 98.
 * If there are uncertainties about what is right and wrong, I apply the What Would Rance Do (WWRD) principle. Usually Rance would abuse every possible advantage he could. But not in a way that seems to be in discord with the universe itself (like those looping Kou events, basically spending something like 20 turns preparing for Honnouji).
 * That is pretty much it. The idea was to simulate a life where you have one chance, and one chance only, to win the war

Infinite time exploits short explanation: Additional challenge, "True Sillfag" means the following: This guide will mostly focus on how you should go about the 5SNB-Ironman challenge. And at the end of the guide I plan to add a section which covers the differences when you add the True Sillfag challenge to the mix.
 * Obvious cheats like screwing with a bug delaying gourd breaking when they should break, are of course not allowed
 * The most important non-cheating infinite time exploit happens when you have found Kou after turn 90 and Xavier has manifested in Honnouji. You can delay attacking Honnouji forever. My turn limit for attackin is the turn 100.
 * Stalling Demon Army by using Battle Permits (avoiding a BP attack on Nagato) has been suggested in 4chan/vg/haniho/ to be caused cheating or abusing the infinite time exploit. I'm slightly disagreeing on this point, and remember stalling the DA 2-3 turns to clear some dungeons.. although I don't remember if I had BP's at that time or not. For sure, if the stalling is done "manually", that is without BP's, I'd surely allow it.
 * Other cheats/borderline exploits might be discussed here at a later time
 * True Route
 * Defeat Xavier before Sill is frozen
 * Hard mode: No savescumming and/or no "infinite time" exploits.
 * Super hard mode: All of the above plus Ironman.
 * I don't fucking care mode: All of the above, plus Sill has to deal the killing blow on Xavier
 * Basically all restrictions outlined above about the 5SNB-Ironman challenge apply

Outline of the conquer path
Below is depicted the rough outline of what you should be doing in each part of the game, also called the conquer path, in order to beat the challenge outlined above. I additionally linked the conquer path to the turn count for you to get a general outline of what to do when. I call it pacing.

One more disclaimer at this point: I'm not claiming my strategy of progressing slow and steady at just the right pace throughout the map is the only working one. But it worked, and the different parts of the strategy: army recruits, army battle strategy, SAT choices, etc. support each other and are based on the same idea of progressing with low risk. The detailed rationale for waiting 20-25 turns in the start is explained shortly in the next section.



The conquer path:

Conquer Oil field [About turn 25] -> Miko Institute [asap after Oil] -> Uesugi [asap after Miko] -> Kyo (Ashikaga) [Must be before turn 50, so if you have to, drop Uesugi conquer and get Kyo] -> Hara -> Mikan -> Mikawa (Tokugawa) [Attack at turn 60/61 when you get Battle Permits or asap otherwise] -> Imagawa (Hanny) -> Takeda -> Tanegashima -> Mouri (no full conquer, only Izumo and Akaheru) and Takuga -> Houjou [kill them on exactly turn 89] -> Texas (Asai-Asakura) -> (see below for Akashi/Tenshi/Iga)

My strategy contains no vassaling, with the possible (probable) exception of vassaling Tenshi after 90.

It is very preferable that you conquer Ashikaga before turn 50. Otherwise the gourd broken then will be Mouri's, and you have to leave Ashikaga unconquered (and unvassaled). Takeda's gourd can break, that doesn't matter since they are on your "kill before 90" list anyway. But if you let Mouri's gourd break at 50, it means you cannot kill both Ashikaga and Takeda before 90. If you kill Ashikaga, Takeda would be your 5th gourd (Owari+Uesugi+Mouri+Ashikaga+Takeda) and would initiate events. Leaving Takeda unconquered would be crazy, since they will declare war on you anyway, their blitzes will be hell, and Tourin is a prime recruit. IF you would rather kill Mouri when their gourd breaks at 50 and forget Ashikaga, you would have to go around Iga and Ashikaga from the south to kill Mouri, bulldozing Tenshi on the way and forgoing the chance to recruit Seigan + having the rioters for healing

Going to kill Mouri early is still another route to consider, but in light of all things, I prefer to kill Ashikaga after Uesugi, and before turn 50, for the very nice early'ish SAT rewards and a good extra footsoldier (Kuge) with asset tech, which brings down the gold needed to be held each turn (for the max asset tech bonus of 2000gold) from 50k to 25k, given you recruited Naoe Ai.

Houjou [Kill them on turn 89]: after beating Takeda they declare war on you, but you can ignore them, concetrate in the war to the west, and just wear them down with Battle Permits. You should still capture and recruit Ran. When turn 89 comes, kill them off so you get them conquered when Xavier manifests. When you are preparing for Honnouji, do the Oil dungeon event so you can start waiting for Souun to join. Remember to keep one spot in the roster free and a lot of (5+) NP free.

Akashi: Take over in the several turns after the Honnouji battle and before the DA's appearance.

Tenshi: I would kill them somewhere around turn 80'ish, if True Sillfag challenge is in effect. If the game is vanilla 5SNB Ironman, keep them alive and vassal after Honnouji battle so you can possibly get Seigan who is very helpful for the last battle plus works as a poor man's Natori in army battles (Seigan has 25% damage from max troops compared with Natori's 35%).

Iga: is ignored and left for DA to take over. This will in all probability lead to DA attacking useless territories near Yamato, instead of concentrating on Africa, which is a huge advantage. This switch in priorities seems to occur after you take over Cairo. See below: you can choose something else to leave at your back, but I really recommend leaving one country at least alive. Sometimes, of course, you won't go fast enough through the map and have to leave many unconquered.

Texas: I often had to leave Texas unconquered at 90 because of lack of time. They are just basically a leftover where every other country is more useful to conquer at any given point. But they still contain several good rewards: +5SAT for youknowwho, Working Bee (the crown jewel of conquering them), a dungeon that is especially useful for true sillfag challenge for the extra Sill healing effect, and Yoshikage for a good monk if needed (also true sillfag preference).

One eyed: ignored totally. Deemed too risky and costly in resources, mostly time.

Why wait for BP's before taking Tokugawa? Usually at this point, when you are finished taking Uesugi, Ashikaga, then Hara, and Mikan, it is turn 50 at best. It is a good time to wait, recover forces and gather money, tap SAT rewards, request reinforces and do some dungeons before the hell breaks loose again in the eventual fight against Takeda. If you fight Tokugawa land-by-land, you risk fighting their surprisingly tough units, of which at least one has assassinate. You should avoid fighting enemies with assassination and with extremely powerful front-row or back-row attacks, which increase the risk of losing commanders. Tokugawa is quite risky for losing commanders, so it is better to let BP's do the work of fighting. Also you will be fighting two enemies at once if you declare war on them, Tenshi and Tokugawa, of which Tenshi sometimes even triple-attacks in a turn (at worst I saw them quadruple-attack..). You might get hard pressed. Just take your time and keep Tenshi at as few territories as possible, and maybe just take one territory at Tokugawa just before you get BP's to help ensure the BP users help you progress far enough in Mikawa when 60 hits.

Instead of leaving Iga in your back, you can consider other choices, like Akashi. Akashi yields good SAT though, which Iga doesn't if you get Inukai. Although I never got him myself and don't think he could be a notifiable extra commander, that is, better than for example Goemon, Tourin, Ikkyu, Uruza, Maria, Kasumi... Anyway you can't really kill Iga nor Akashi before turn 90, since they have a gourd. So it is basically a choice of leaving Iga or Akashi, since demon army doesn't conquer Hannies, Tenshi or Texas, and Texas you can anyway take down if you have the time. In this case (and in my past games) I have usually chosen Iga to leave behind, because Akashi yields bigger SAT and shares Izumo with Senkan Nagato, which could be a problem. Akashi also borders Nakakuni which could be, in an unfortunate case, be taken over by two consequtive attacks. Iga also borders Mikan, but has 5 neighboring countries, putting (supposedly) their chance of randomly taking it over lower than Akashi taking over Nakakuni (which happened to me once). Tokugawa is out of the question because they will declare war on you with Takeda, and having a warring country next to Owari later game is annoying. So Iga seems the best choice.

Why delay the start? The rationale of getting popularity staff
My strategy seems very slow at start for many (all) people I have discussed my strategy with. Why wait 25 turns to start progressing? Delaying the start is such an integral part of my strategy that I have to explain the reasons why to start with. There are at least five main reasons for this.

One: Popularity staff. You will get Popularity staff usually between the turns 21 and 28, if you haven't conquered another country (one country like Oil). Popularity staff is worth, along the course of the game, easily 200.000 gold. Even a conservative estimate would be 150.000 gold. This is calculated by averaging 20 troops gained per turn times 100 gold / troop. I usually have the item on cannon troops, with a usual 140 gold / troop recruiting cost. If you get the Popularity Staff on turn 25, and finish the game on Turn 105, you get 80 turns * 20 troops / turn * 100 gold / troop = 160.000 gold.

You can compare this with the money benefit you get from progressing throughout the game for example 10 turns faster, say, having 5 countries with a total of 20 NP (average 4 per country) for 80 turns more than you would have if you delayed and got pop staff. Then the money from this would amount to 20NP * 60 gold/NP/turn * 80 turns = 96.000 gold which is about half of what you get from Pop Staff. Of course you can use the NP for having a larger army, which has many varied uses. Gold-wise, the Pop Staff seems well enough a better option. Also on the minus side for the fast moving strategy, see below reason five: you will have to fight unfairly large troop stacks with your early low stacks of 500'ish. And at this part of the game you just don't have the money to raise everyone's troop count. Unless you take the SAT bonus, which is of course an option but is away from something else SAT-bonuswise, like asking reinforcements.

Two: Capturing a buffer of commanders in prison, prioritized: getting Ikkyu. While you are waiting for the pop staff, you can also capture a lot of enemy commanders. It is easy in this stage of the game, where difficulty is so low. The crown jewel is getting Ikkyu. When I scout a battle with Ikkyu in the early game (or well anywhere), I go usually all-in with Defeated Warrior Hunters and Light Attackers and forget gaining territory. Ikkyu is basically another Tourin PLUS can with all likelyhood force-win any 3 army/castle battles in the game with Witty Comeback. Other priority targets for you to capture would be diviners, foot soldiers and remotely usable commanders with other special skills (like Asset Tech and Merchant, but especially Defeated Warrior Hunt, Pursuit Battle, Light Attack..). Also monks if you are doing True Sillfag. I suspect, although I haven't tried, that the Monks can also be succesfully used in many other parts of the game. Remember that 5 captures also can be converted into Pokkuru to raise Rance's level. This is important mainly for the final battle, but also the Honnouji battle where I lose once.

Three: Clearing Miso Katsu (MK) allows (usually) for you to rack up a surplus of affection and other usable items. I have no exact data on what is the probability to get a certain type of drop from MK, and didn't regrettably keep track on what dropped how often. You seem to get an affection item about 1/3rd of the time, I'd say. The affection item in question seems to be equally probable for all four types. This means that on average, when an aff item drops, you gain (4+3+2+1)/4 = 2,5 affection. In average you then get about 0,8 affection for clearing Miso Katsu, which is almost as much as you would get from just doing a Rance's room, plus of course you get the other items for the times you don't get affection items. About 1/3rd you get something almost useless like Seirogan. That is not even totally useless though, as it can be used for half-healing a unit with a 1000 troops or more later in the game, for example a tactician or Ninja having a Battle Permit. In this use, it would be worth about 3 gold / troop* 500 = 1.500 gold. Therefore at worst, money-wise, clearing Miso Katsu is a much better choice than doing Botan Hunt, which yields 500 gold the first time. Botan hunt's money yielded goes up by 50 every time you do the event. So if you do it 20 times, you get 1.500gold per one. So averaging that over the 20 times, you get about 1.000 gold per one Botan hunt if you do it 20 times. To get back to Miso Katsu, you could get also a good medicine for example, and that is worth something like 10.000gold upwards in late game, making the gold gain comparison vastly preferable for MK over doing Botan Hunt. Then the approximately last 1/3rd is something unpredictable, for example Motivation Papers or also books, if I remember right. It is very hard to put an exact value on Motivation Papers, but in the Demon Army war stage of the game, and possibly also earlier, they are totally life savers in many cases. MP's are a very unique but extremely useful item you can't get anywhere else in the game. The amount of drops could vary greatly. One game I get 9 motivation papers, other game only one but instead a lot of affection items. All in all, Miso Katsu re-clearing seems to beat any other activity you could do at this stage of the game.

Four: Creating a buffer for winning the next stages of the game. This is done by conquering every possible territory (all but one) in each of Kyo, Oil and Hara. That means getting 2/3 territories in Oil and Kyo, and 3/4 in Hara. Although this is something useful to do, one could argue it is not a benefit of waiting, but more of a way to mitigate the downsides of waiting, that is, to allow a faster progress when you start to move. The buffering works so that you don't have to defend your own country at Owari and can focus on attacking, as the countries mentioned will (usually) first prioritize clearing their own provinces you hold over attacking you.

Five: Game punishes you for moving too fast. Note that the game's difficulty level does not go up by turn, it goes up by conquering countries. So staying in Owari for 20 turns let's you rack up money (admittedly little) and slowly build troops for the (admittedly few) commanders you have, while the game on the enemy side stays easy and battles are very low-risk. If, on the other hand, you reach Uesugi in 15-20 turns, I can promise a painful game where you will struggle, as your troops stacks are so low that your commanders will quite often be deleted in the battles no matter what you do. At this stage you don't have BP's to avoid battles, you have to fight each battle manually. Once or twice I lost games and hair when I had to defend against ridiculously high troop stacks of Tenshi at Kyo (2.000'ish against my 500'ish) after I went too fast.

'''Six: Isoroku is a beast and you usually can't capture Oil under 10-15 turns in Ironman. '''Reliably capturing Oil under 10-15 turns is hard, since I haven't found a way to reliable capture Isoroku in under 10 turns. She basically blocks you from winning Oil castle unless you capture her or do 5-Oil, that is, capture Oil before Isoroku shows up, which works maybe 1/20 times (I don't know, never did it). If you have a strategy for reliable capture of Isoroku or getting Oil in Ironman under 15 turns, you can comment below. Now if you count the turn difference between pop staff start (25 turns average) and capturing Oil at 10-15 reliably, you get 10-15 turns. This is the max you can probably get as a headstart compared to capturing Isoroku and rushing forward. '''It should be noted here that if you can get Oil in under 10 turns, it might be (probably will be) gold-wise preferable to push forward and forget Pop staff. The big If: this is preferable IF you can keep up the 10-15 turns of headstart compared to the suggested conquer path and timetable above in this guide.'''

In effect, the game has an inbuilt mechanism to balance too fast and too slow progress, to regress towards mean considering the time/turns used in progressing. It gets exponentially (well ok, gradually) harder to progress fast, the faster you go.

In Ironman this punishment over progressing fast is especially annoying, since it adds high risk of losing commanders to every battle you choose to fight.

So, what follows is my strategy and pacing of the game, following the outlined rules for 5SNB-Ironman.

Frequent loss-causing situations to avoid
Basically I play the game in a very risk-averting manner. Slow and steady beats quick and risky in Ironman style gameplay. Here are some places/situations where I frequently lost even very promising runs. And paired is some advice on how to avoid losing there. See at the end of the guide, section Bonus: Why did I lose? Additionally, below are some very annoying parts of the game that can cause you to lose (important) commanders, since I gave up a couple of times after losing Natori, Ikkyu or Dousan. Basically, if you lose too many good commanders, you will be at a loss to recruit more. Therefore it is important to protect your commanders.
 * Takeda final rush is a surprisingly hard battle, where I lost or almost lost about 10 times in total. Avoiding: Remember to upgrade Rance, that is to give AP and/or buy a lot of troops and/or give him books and elite troops SAT bonus before you beat Takeda. In my experience, it is enough for Rance to have 400'ish troops, 4 AP and the statistics 8ATK, 7 DEF, 7INT, 7 SPD. With this speed, Yamagata can't (in all likelyhood) hit you twice with Onrush before you can kill him. Go for him first. It is preferable to upgrade Rance's statistics over the troop count, since you can't really field Rance in army battles after you get to Uesugi (see the 2nd bullet below). So buying troops would therefore be a waste of money. But you need Rance to have strong stats for the final fight and Honnouji, plus having Rance on high level helps a lot in dungeons.
 * Fielding Rance too brashly (too late in game) in army battles. Another "classic" reason why I lost games. Avoiding: totally stop using Rance in army battles after beating Mikos, except for beating Kenshin easily, and possibly some very special situations like triggering Uruza's or Yuzumi's H-scenes in Akashi battles.
 * Losing other important commanders in battles. Avoiding: cannot be completely avoided. You will have to take risks to win the game and to progress speedily enough, and some of your commanders WILL be wiped out in the battles. The worst possible losses are Dousan, Natori and Kenshin because of their unique game winning / breaking abilities. Basically all others can be replaced. Also once I made Ikkyu my game winner by investing a lot on him early, then lost him, and quit that run. Things you CAN do: Rather lose foots than Natori et co. Recruit a lot of foots and capture a buffer of them into Prison. Get seal of the undying fox and put on your best commanders. Play SAFE and use my strategy of all-guard foot or two foot soldiers in each row (if you can spare the loss of attacking power) combined with an all-guard shiki diviner user. See army strategy. Playing this way will drastically cut your chance of losing anyone really important.
 * Mental issues: going on mental tilt after a big loss of a battle, a loss of a whole game, and losing coolness. Making bad decisions under mental stress. Playing too heavily drunk. So on. Avoiding: only play when you know you are not disturbed by others or distracted in general. Do not play drunk or excessively tired. Watch and think about your own performance. Try to notice when you are playing bad calls and/or getting angry, then stop and continue another day. At the hardest battles e.g. end game, if you find yourself too excited, remember in this game you have time to think. Take the time to calm down. If you see yourself losing several games early, study yourself a bit and if you see you are on tilt/angry, cut your losses, save your time and continue another day.
 * Neglecting dungeons and leveling up before Honnouji and/or the final battle. To be expanded on.
 * Taking too big risks in offensive areas (for example Miko, Uesugi), while Owari has two fields conquered by enemy countries. Remember: enemy (Hara/Ashikaga) could easily double attack Owari. Avoiding: get Pursuit Battle for Ranmaru and clear Owari when it gets to the point that you have lost 2-3 territories there. Build a "buffer" in the first 25 turns by getting all but one territories from Hara, Kyo and Oil (enemy tends to clear their own country first of your influence, then continue taking over Owari.
 * In general, avoid all sudden-death situations if you can. This is one reason I don't attack One-Eyed and don't fight against the Mouri all-out battle. I also lost once against Inukai after doing "Inukai's boss" event and having low levels. Any risk of such kind can be avoided, so don't take the risk unless you are sure.
 * Tokugawa final castle. The assassination and strong fighters in frontline are the problem. Avoiding: field general foots in both front and backline, and an All-guard shiki user. Battle prep twice.
 * Facing Ninjas with Assassination (2) in army battles in general. Avoiding: scout and avoid these fights categorically if you can. Exception: if you want to capture Goemon and the scouting looks like you have a chance of hitting him with Light Attack. I'd really take the risk and did, didn't regret at all. Another exception: you basically have to defend your territories in Senkan Nagato in the last turns before DA appears in True Sillfag, even if Kikkawa Kiku appears.
 * Takeda castle fight if you didn't finish off Takeda before the 4 commanders join in the war. Avoiding: Kill Takeda in the turns before the commanders are introduced, if in any way possible.

And the last tip on this note: post your games for comment. If you are faced with a big decision, seek feedback. Learn from your mistakes and try to accept, or at least consider, the feedback you get (even if given in bad or hostile form). I adapted some (a lot) of the even harsh criticism into bettering my game. Usually I didn't directly adapt the strategies suggested, but found a way or an idea to improve my play by adapting some part or feature included in the criticism.

Turns 1 to 25: The start of the game
Relax, you are in the easiest part of the whole game. You can lay back. My strategy at the start of the game centers on getting the popularity staff item. The rationale is explained above.

This won't be a turn by turn guide. Still, first two turns I usually go for Dango Princess, Get Fuuka -- Turn 2: Prison, Get Kazuninja -- Turn 3: declare war and attack on Oil. I don't recruit Hachisuka since he sucks and you will probably soon capture better foots.

What works is that you attack once, defend once per turn and use one fan on something else. You should try to divide your limited team to two equal teams. Usually Rance, Shibata and a weak third backline is enough to win a battle early. So is Ranmaru, Maeda Toshiie and Niwa backline. For the first battle Rance goes into, buy him 230'ish troops.

Your goal will be to slowly gain ground in Oil, then Kyo, then Hara. If you feel unsure, you might want to (if you have aff items) let enemy attack Owari twice and then give Pursuit Battle to Ranmaru, then take back Owari. Then continue as usual.

Attacking twice per turn is, in all likelyhood, counter-productive, since you are wasting a fan on attacking and can't defend over the end of the turn, thus wasting a fan on an attack while you could defend without the fan spent.

You can use some of your spare fans mostly on depleting commander events at first. Then after Suzume joins, search Miso Katsu and if you have a spare fan per turn, search it. If you later have 2 spare fans and you took over all territory at Kyo, Oil and Hara, clear it twice per turn. Of course you can spend fans on upgrading commanders if you have the aff items and they need it (Katsuie's and other foots EIG or all-guard, a possible diviner's all-guard shiki, or perhaps Ikkyu's BRD1-2, if you catch him)

Your rewards from reclearing Miso Katsu will be, based on my experience, at average better than by doing anything else while waiting. See above (Why delay the start? Rationale of getting pop staff).

After turn 20, 21. You have a chance of getting Popularity Staff given to you by a based hanny. If/when you get it, go ruthless and kill Oil. That marks the end of this section and the start of the next one.

Turns 25'ish to 60: Mikos, Uesugi, Kyo, Hara, Mikan.
Start of this section is when you get popularity staff. This phase of the game ends when you hit turn 60-61, get battle permits, and consequently it is a preferable time for you to attack Tokugawa.

Turns 61 to 90
-Under construction-

Turns 90 to 100
After 90, of course everything changes. You find Kou missing, but you must delay searching for 3 turns, then find her on the 3rd/4th (not sure which.. let's find out). Usually you would use this time to clear dungeons, upgrade commanders, spend Rance's SAT upgrades, so on. Delay.

After she is found, you still delay and do undone things as far as you can stomach it according to the WWRD principle. Clear undone dungeons at least. Recruit commanders who you think would help you beat the big bad demon. Talk to your most important commanders and give them items. Build some strength.

About delaying the game and avoiding infinite time exploits, I have a strict rule I go by. I never attack Honnouji later than turn 100. After that I deem it cheating. So I never make Kou wait on the attack more than 7'ish turns after she is found, and that is also already kind of pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable delaying.

End game (Demon Army war and winning)
The war in DA is the topping of the cake. You should aim for the war to be short and fast. Before going into the war, I suggest making sure your Cover Action global sequence is aligned so that your next action will cause Political Turmoil.

My army building philosophy, general army strategy and battle-style
This section, one of the most important ones, covers army building and operations strategy. It centers heavily around winning battles with as few losses as possible, and at the same time, making sure as few of your commanders as possible die in your service, often causing you to replace them with worse commanders and losing all resources (money, action fans, affection items, books) you have possibly sunk into bettering them.

Army battles philosophy
“What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.” -Sun Tzu

An optimal strategy saves you resources (commanders to use in a turn) and MONEY (win with as little casualties as you can) plus helps you progress and GAIN resources. So this philosophy leaves us with two-three objectives of every army battle (with few exceptions):

1) Win the battle and gain ground

2) Win with as little (monetary) casualties as you can

3) Additional: capture enemy commanders (will be covered later)

4) Additional rare cases: perhaps loot some money or trigger beneficial events

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” -Sun Tzu

This essentially means that you should scout all battles that you can. In SR, you don't always have to, but almost always it helps and is worth sparing the one commander to do it (unless you know exactly what to expect like certain scripted castle battles). Scouting is all in all a superb advantage.

“Who wishes to fight must first count the cost”

-Sun Tzu

This is covered in the money section of the guide. In any case, not all fights are worth fighting. Later in the game you could just cancel a fight that will in likelyhood cost you more than 3000 gold, and win it by fielding a Battle Permit User who can at most lose you 3000 gold.

“The wise warrior avoids the battle.”

-Sun Tzu

As said, a lof ot battles in SR are NOT worth fighting. They are mostly covered elsewhere, but you should avoid fighting battles with assassins unless you want to capture them (Goemon) and in the later game, avoid fighting ridiculously high troop stacks where you only can expect a huge damage to your troops and/or risk losing commanders.

You should always stack battles with a great team that can surely win. Fielding a half assed or too risky team that relies on unsure probabilities is, in most situations, useless and counterproductive. Go for CERTAIN wins every time you want to fight. In other times if you can't win and can spare the loss, press the X and let them win.

“Great results, can be achieved with small forces.” -Sun Tzu

This should be a different part of the guide but I'll leave it to someone else. Suffice to say, you should practise winning with the least possible commanders you can. Here is an example, where the title "some units are worth more than one" obviously applies to all 3 fielded.

“Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”

-Sun Tzu

In SR, you are not in a hurry. Take your time to think about your move no matter where in game you are.

“Never venture, never win!” -Sun Tzu

In certain times, you have to take risks to 1) win or more likely to 2) improve. You MUST take risks and try new things in order to improve. It is impossible for me to make a guide covering each situation. Most of it you must learn yourself.

I took several times huge risks and many times lost. But never regretted. Refer to the last section of this guide. There is always something to be learned from losing.

“Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.” -Sun Tzu

This applies to the last part of the challenge. If you take 90% of the map, the diffuculty level will be so high that you will be fighting enemy stacks of 4000+ consistently. The critical position is ONLY when you risk losing a full country OR at the end of the challenge, risk losing any territory in Senkan Nagato.

Ok.. enough philosophy.

Typical setup for a battle
This is a very important part of the guide. My typical and target setup for a normal battle I want to win with the least casualties is as shown in this picture and elaborated below it. Also shown is the typical (good) result that can be achieved: the win without any casualties. The desirable setup stands throughout the game, with the exception of very early where you can't really have enough all-guarders or all-guard shiki diviners.

Before you look at this pic, let me add that the combo of an all-guard shikigami diviner + Dousan is extremely powerful when you want to win without any losses, as that diviner can then spam 2-4 all-guard shikis along the course of the battle.

Setup explanation in text:

'''Back 1: Diviner with all-guard shikigami. Andou Kyuuri in pic.'''

'''Back 2: A hard hitting "game winning" commander 1. In pic Uruza. Can reduce enemies' action points. Additionally can cancel any or all enemies preparation, for example Souun+Ran diviners shikigamis.'''

'''Back 3: A hard hitting "game winning" commander 2. In pic Natori. Can move the battle slider ridiculously much plus cut down enemies' troops so any attack will do less damage to you.'''

'''Front1: A foot, with preferably All-Guard (priority1) and Enhanced Initial Guard (priority2). In pic Senhime. Usually both not achievable/ not practicable to give both to all foots you want to use, since many of them will/should die instead of other units.'''

'''Front2: Hard hitting first-liner or possibly also a very offensive backliner (like cavalry or Tourin) who can also take a hit. In this pic Kenshin with also the utility of cutting off one AP per enemy unless it is their only one. Works very well with Uruza if you have to win THAT SINGLE battle per turn (usually you'd spread them across the turn if you have to win more than one battle and it looks preferable. For example a fast Uruza, given her speed bug, can cancel some/many musketeers).'''

'''Front3: Hard hitting first-liner or utility (like Dousan or a monk in specific cases). Or just someone like Leila who can hit fucking hard (with her royal guard). Or a cavalry. See above: use your brain.'''

This setup, IF you can spare to field 6 and have the army configured, wins most of the battles in the game (excepting castle battles) with very little losses, unless the diviner gets hit early on (which WILL happen several times in a full length game - there are and will be a lot of coin tosses in this strategy.)

The problem usually is that you don't have all the necessary roles.

'''In any case, you should aim to create "SETS" of above definitely winning teams, that is one of each a--guarding footer, all-shiki guarding diviner, 2 backliners, and 2 frontliners, along the game. Start with two half-assed teams with foots and hard hitting frontliners. Evolute to hard hitting backliners and maybe first one all-guard shiki diviner. Build into two teams of a full set about or around the time you fight Uesugi. Plus utilize the Ninjas. Usually you would have a very well working team or hopefully two teams who can win with no trouble per turn. Then you can comfortably progress, build your army and strenght with only little loss of money and troops.'''

Game winning commanders (backrow)
What I define as "game winning" (army battle winning) back row commanders. The idea is that they can move the battle slider enough to win the battle or almost constantly contribute remarkably to the army win.
 * Uruza (with accurate shots)
 * Ikkyu (with battle rating down 2)
 * Tourin
 * Natori
 * Cavalries (with battle rating up2, Onrush, Back Row hunt or pursuit battle if defending)
 * Maria (with Triple-Fire tulip and 500+ or more depending on game stage troops)
 * Kasumi (with atk books boosted to atk6, 500+ troops or more depending on game stage and Tri-Fire tulip)
 * Souun
 * Your own personal diviner who you can groom to be a game winner from the start with pop staff (elaborating later)
 * Goemon (Can boost the battle prep +24% and assasinate)
 * Naoe Ai (Borderline, but can do it if you let her be battle permit user and buy her troops to 1000)

You might notice I didn't include assasinating ninjas or Isoroku. Both have a tendency to fail regularly so you can't make sure you win with them. They are more like a handy bonus in cases where you maybe want to win big.
 * Other offensive champs in backline, like NInjas, if you get them to 7ATK and buy more troops than 1000. In any case you should have some ninjas to counter enemy diviners.

The above means that the game has like at tops 10'ish really good backliners not counting assassinating ninjas like Suzume who can be a hefty addition or Isoroku. It also means by extension that you should really protect the commanders mentioned above.

Game winning commanders (front row)
Here are the corresponding game (battle) winning front row commanders. They can move the battle slider or in some other war substantially contribute to the victory.
 * Aburako Dousan
 * Kenshin
 * Yuzumi (with +2AP bee or a +1AP book)
 * Leila (do not underestimate knights attack x2 damage. Give her +1ATK somehow to 7 and she owns)
 * Motonari (very late game..)
 * ??? There aren't THAT many front rows who are 100% winning, so you can substitute if you can gather all backrow winners above, some of them to front row like Tourin of cavalries, who can take some hits.

Example armies
Your aim throughout the game should be to make an army to stand the test of time (the end game). This is an example of a good.. really good army in late game. The same run army at turn 61 where I attack Tokugawa. Usually though, you should use more foots. What follows is an early army and pay attention to the highlighted commander. This guy can win most of the battles for you at this stage (shikigami to start with, all-guard shiki after that to finish). Also below an example of a very early army. The emphasis on motivation paper is no accident. They are likely the most valuable drops you could get from reclearing a dungeon (if you have time). Anyway, notice Maeda T. and Niwa cut down to 484 or 485. This is the safe zone to cut your commanders which cannot be used later down to. At 500, they use another NP point. You can't let that happen overturn if you defend with them, so to be sure, cut them down to 485 before you end turn. They don't need more troops at the early stage of the game and for example the diviner with allguard shiki has so much more value than even 100 more troops on Niwa or Maeda.

Always at the start of the game, cut some non-essential and sometimes even essential commanders to 485 troops at the end of every turn, IF you can therefore recruit more commanders with the cost of 1 NP.

This tip applies to the rest of the game also with the limits of 500 and 1000 troops. Be smart about using your current NP. Also some captured foots are SO CHEAP compared to the scripted ones like Kuge Footsoldier or even Senhime.

This is extreme. Didn't work out finally. Titled "avoiding 500":

-Might make another section about optimizing NP-

Tips on accumulating money and raising the troop count of your army
First of all: money matters. The more money you get in and can avoid getting out, the higher troop stacks you will have on the commanders that you want them on. The more losses you can replenish. The harder battles you can win. So on.

So here is random tips on random order for now:

Tip1: Win every battle on as little losses of expensive troops (non-foots) as possible. This is the most important tip.

Tip2: Play a defensive strategy on battles. Look to my army building philosophy and general army plus battle-style above. In short: play an all-shiki diviner in every battle you can, plus if possible, pair with all-guard foot below preferably with enhanced initial guard. The wins will come from backliners and frontliners hitting enemy (on some games, DON'T attack with front but keep the shiki guard) and you will take less damage as you have good defence.

Tip3: Use standby at times to preserve a shikigami guard.

Tip4: Use Rance's autoheal with standby to heal him to maximum at the end of battle, when you can burn both yourse and enemies' all other action points

Tip5: Fuuka can be used to heal back about 20-30.000 gold if you use her well. Also her large propaganda effort contributes.

Tip6: Popularity staff is worth 150.000 gold

Tip7: Taking the SAT bonus of adding 50 troops per commander late game is worth perhaps 100-150.000 gold.

Tip8: Keep up a war with Tenshi to use the rioters for healing at many situations (Fuuka or Natori, I didn't ever recruit another Miko). See below: the optimal fielding for healing off the rioters. Field Natori, a shikigami guarder, Footer or Kenshin, and Dousan, and of course the ones who need healing. Use Natori to all-heal. Use Dousan to only convert action to Natori. That way Natori should be able to do 4 all-heals in the course of the battle.

Variate according to who you have left at the end of the turn (but always leave someone, almost anyone, like Rance, to defend against Rioters so you don't lose a NP). I sometimes downright lost games to losing too many NP to rioters. Then you have to construct them back, losing fans.

-Will be expanded on...-

How to avoid losing commanders, and what to do when you lose one (replacements)
Usually along the course of the game you will lose commanders. It is unavoidable. See army strategy on how to play and win as safely as possible.

SAT bonus strategy
The approximate order of SAT bonuses taken. Pros and cons.

Winning different castle battles
The useful and consistent setups for winning different castles. Focus on the hardest (DA, possibly Takeda, etc..) or the most annoying (Raccoon dogs..)

Bonus: why did I lose?
Perhaps the best way to learn and improve is to learn from the mistakes of others. So I will post a short recap of why I lost each of the 15 first 5SNB-Ironman runs and the 25 latter 5SNB-Ironman-True Sillfag runs.

The first runs "vanilla" 5SNB-Ironman
Basically #1 game I took very (too) serious, and ended up butting my head into Hara castle, then lost Rance to it around turn 40.

Games #2-#7 (about) I kept trying the same (attacking Hara first), and losing.

Games #8-#10 I did according to the guide, focusing on Oil field first, and failed by getting owned in Owari every time by Hara and Ashikaga while failing to get Isoroku captured.

Game #11 went better. I captured Isoroku by diligently defendging Owari instead of attacking, and vassaled Hara. I lost when Iga declared on me, and I tried to do the "Inukai's boss" event to get them out of the way, then died fighting.

Game #12 I took Ashikaga and decided to try my luck at killing Hara, which succeeded by fielding two diviners, one with advanced shikigami which basically won the match. Also managed to get Ikkyu which was a huge victory. Try #12 ended at defeat at Honnouji (Xavier's battle). Turn 75. Couldn't get Xavier lower than 500hp. Had been neglecting dungeons.

Game #13 was lost at turn 52. After losing Andou Kyuuri, Isoroku and later Natori in battles against Tenshi, I decided to give up. The mistake here was probably taking Hara before Uesugi. Tenshi troop stacks became ridiculous (2k+) and were seriously annoying.

Game #14 I got to a good start, and started clearing Owari of Tenshi influence. I got a few good fights in, then screwed up in a fight fielding Suzume and Rance. I got scared of Suzume dying, forgot to focus and in the end attacked an enemy fighter with Rance at 100 troops. Resulting in Rance's funeral. A real fuck-up (alcohol was involved). It was a game that wasn't progressing well though. Everything felt like a struggle. Biggest regret is that I used Ikkyu only at Mikos castle, not later, when I could/should have steamrolled Uesugi castle with him. In this kind of gamemode, better safe than sorry..

Game number 15 was successful and I won the challenge.

The additional Sillfag runs
Sill Try#1: Lost to Rance at front (Uesugi)

Sill Try#2: Lost to losing Oil after failing to give pursuit battle to anybody while going Oil->Mikos start

Sill Try#3: Lost to Rance at front (Mikos)

Sill Try#4: Lost to Rance at front (Mikos) AGAIN

Sill Run#5: Lost to Byakko after having a low commander level roster.

Sill Run#6: Lost early game losing Owari to Hara double attack while taking risk to grab Oil.

Sill Run#7: No record. Possibly same reason as #6.

Sill Run#8: Extreme frustration. Lost to not getting Kenshin who I thought imperative to an overall win. I played all my cards, couldn't get Kenshin in time. Lost Mazo to counter attacks. Had to defend Owari. Lost Kyo to Tenshi. Biggest mistake: NOT GETTING PURSUiT BATTLE!!!

Sill Run#9: [My record here contains about 10+ random swear words]. Rance dead at Takeda final rush at turn 65'ish while I'm comfortably expanding, 4 BP users and very good roster.

Sill Run#10: Screwed it by putting Rance in frontline again. This time against Mikos (front row had 3x 1000+ foot soldiers who went aggressive). Getting Kyo early strengthened Mikos considerably. It was a product of wanting to get pop staff (which failed).

Sill Run#11: Made it to the end, lost by not gaining ground in Cairo against DA and Shikibu.

Sill Run#12: Lost to losing Dousan at 30'ish turns, foolishly and riskily fielding only 4 commanders, gave up after.

Sill Run#13: In an act of extreme frustration, fielded Rance alone against Uesugi without scouting. Kenshin didn't show.

Sill Run#14: Rance loses against Hara early. Spear attack 2 footer with 700 troops. Having shit luck and/or being too tired today.

Sill Runs#15-17: Dark runs full of mistakes and frustration as above. I realize I had lost my mojo and can't successfully play, so I take a break.

Sill Run#18: Very successful run which ended in the final Xavier battle, after I didn't field a foot in front row and forgot (due to emotional stress/excitement) to defend with Teru who got switched in, in the last 1-2 turns before killing Xavier.

Sill Run#19: Run ended. Forgot to give Ranmaru pursuit battle. Invested on Ikkyu who couldn't force wins on castles alone. Took Kyo early which added pressure on Owari from Hara and raised the difficulty level too much too early. Couldn't proceeed to win at Mikos, then lost Ikkyu in offensive battle.

Sill Run#20: I lose the very first (real) battle. I decide to just do a redo.

(Sill Runs #21 to #23: I sadly cannot find records on these. Here are my guesses based on some screencaptures I did instead)

Sill Run#21: I must have lost this one on Takeda final struggle after forgetting to buy Rance troops and giving him 4 AP to beat the Takeda final rush.

Sill Run#22: Looks like I got popularity staff really early off a random drop in Miso Katsu, went fast, got greedy and probably lost the game to Rance dying or enemy killing Owari.

Sill Run#23: I got to the end and faced DA and tried my best to kill them in 10 turns. And failed. The run ended when I saw Shikibu appear and I dropped the game since Sillfag challenge cannot be completed after Shikibu appears and Miki gets lost. ( that was confirmed on an earlier run: even if you made it to Morocco, you can't start the Tenma bridge fight with Miki missing)

Sill Run24 and 25. These were tilt runs which I lost quickly to absolute stupid army fielding decisions in the first 5 turns.

Sil Run#26: I win. I might put this as a separate section but for now, as far as the most of the guide goes, the run #18 was overall best and ended up with the absolute best army anyone could muster for the end game in this Extreme Run, SillFag additional challenge.

But on the other hand the latest, if not with the best army, it 1was the run where I won so that should be something to be learned from.

To be continued.

-- Muri