Sengoku Rance:Tips

General

 * Releasing 5 prisoners at once gives you one Happy Pokkuru, which increases the level of one of your commanders by 1. This is best used on Rance or Kentarou due to their high level caps. Using commanders with defeated warrior hunt, sticky ground or light attack can allow you to net enough Happy Pokkurus to get Rance to level 60 or above without clearing any dungeons by the time of the Honnouji temple incident, which makes the commander battles there much easier.
 * Only commanders in your roster when you clear a dungeon will gain a level up. As Kentarou has a level cap of 99, it is best to clear all the dungeons only after he joins, or when you have your final end game roster ready.
 * Not all commanders are good. Some like Akihime are only worth using to see their events once.
 * On normal difficulty, most houses will usually only attack you once a turn. On 1 star difficulty, this increases to twice a turn and on 2 star difficulty, this increases to thrice a turn. Some exceptions like the Shimazu blitz apply regardless of difficulty, and Tokugawa seems to have a tedency to launch 3 consecutive blitzs in 1 turn (only once) on Mamushi oil field after the war starts.
 * Houses will continously recruit commanders and replinish their troops. It is impossible to make them completely run out of commanders or troops to attack with, although you can usually decrease their troop count to a very low number after a long period of time (30+ turns).
 * The Demon Army in most routes will never run out of troops or commanders. In the True history route, the demon army will get a ton of commanders and troops every turn until Shikibu is defeated, after which they will start to replinish their troops at a slower rate.
 * All non-foot soldier units with more than 300 troops will contribute to enemy troop scaling. Courtesy of KrossRoads/DarkMaster22's FAQ :


 * Enemy troops are scaled differently for different categories and difficulty levels:

Method 1:

Your average number of troops, calculated excluding footsoldiers and units under 300 troops. Difficulty level: Normal difficulty: You have the advantage in the scaling (enemies increase at a slow rate). 1-Star: The scaling is even between you and the enemy. 2-Star: Enemy has the advantage (same rate as you had in Normal difficulty). 5-Star: Enemy has a large advantage.

Method 2:

Number of territories under your control. Difficulty level: Normal difficulty: You have the advantage in the scaling (enemies increase at a slow rate). 1-Star: The scaling is even between you and the enemy. 2-Star: Enemy has the advantage (same rate as you had in Normal difficulty). 5-Star: Enemy has a large advantage.

Units ingame are scaled as such:

Demon Army: Method 1 Enemy's new recruits: Method 1 All non-DA enemies: Method 2 Foreign reinforcements: Method 1 Map Recruitments: Method 1 Event Recruitments: Method 1 Event prisoners: Method 1 Captured prisoners: Method 2, max 1000 Tenshi's troop escape event: Method 1
 * This means that buildings such as the Ninja school are generally a bad idea as they will result in increased enemy troops facing you, and increasing non-foot soldier troop counts should be done carefully. Note that some commanders always seem to start with very large troop sizes (e.g. Sakamoto Ryouma) and enemy troops will also increase based on the number of provinces you control.


 * If you have too many sastifaction bonuses available, you will have to use up some to make the others available. The most common culprit of this is the one that turns Meda Toshiee into a kabuki actor. This can also hide the action fan bonuses.
 * In the end phase, if you click the skip button, it will skip all previously read text for the WHOLE end phase, not just that particular scene. Use with caution.
 * After you conquer a territory, every turn the levy amount will go up by 100 gold, up to a maximum of 5,000 gold after 30 turns. If you are not in a hurry for books or gold, its worth waiting before levying a territory.
 * Reinforcements take a long time to arrive, so its best to use the first few sat bonuses on them.
 * Chances of capturing prisoners decreases if the prison is too full (at approximately 20/30).
 * Starting from turn 6, you will get a random textbook (normal) the first time you fight a battle. Every 10 turns after that, you will also get another textbook for the first battle that turn. You can get speed textbooks this way, which are not available from levies.
 * The game encourages you to be in a permanent state of war. There are events designed to force you into war with other houses if you remain at peace for far too long.

Troop battles

 * After every battle, there is a chance that one of the commanders in the battle will gain an affection point. There is also a chance that you will gain an affection boost item.
 * Since you need to attack and defend multiple times a turn, arrange the commanders in the order that you want to use them to make it more convenient. You can still use "arrange by relevant stat" when exploring, etc as it will not permanently change your sort order.
 * You don't always need to put ranged units in the back. Sometimes its better to put them in the front row to get better protection from foot soldiers without all guard.
 * Not all troops move at the same speed. Monks are very slow, while diviners act quickly on their first turn but are very slow on their second turn. Increasing the speed stat for slow units such as diviners will not do much. Turn order is determined before the start of the order, so speed buffs in battle fro tacticians do nothing unless they obtain it before the battle via speed luck or items such as Field Battle Weekly.
 * You can only kill or capture a max of 2 enemy commanders a turn, although light attack allows you to bypass this limit (for example, if you hit two enemy units with light attack, you can potentially capture or kill up to 6commanders after the battle, although this requires lots of light attacks).
 * Instant kill attacks do not guarantee that the commander will be killed after the battle. Troop count of the defeated commander will also stay the same after the battle.
 * Unique commanders, such as house leaders required for the plot, undismissable commanders like Suzume and commanders like "Ogawara Guard" that only show up in certain battles cannot be captured, although some of them may be killed after the battle.
 * Exception : Rance always dies when his troop strength is reduced to 0.
 * Tacticians are very effective, their bufs make a huge difference in battles. Correspondingly, enemy tacticians should be priority targets as well. However in FFA mode, when you mostly have access to generic tacticians, they are much less useful as they only have battle strategy 1.
 * Since tactician buffs are randomly assigned before the battle, it is sometimes better to use less troops in conjunction with a tactician. For example, a foot soldier, omachi and a tactician will ensure that omachi has a very high chance of receiving a intelligence boost.
 * The number of pre-battle buffs a tactician can give is 1 per INT and the effectiveness is 5% per INT.
 * Guard shikigamis can block any attack except instant kill attacks, no matter what the strength of the attack is. Use weak units to remove the barrier, or wait for them to attack and have it removed via counter attack damage. The first portion of the damage from commander charge will also remove the barrier before the rest of the unit attacks.
 * Footmen guard halves all physical damage done to the unit and killing large stacks of footmen can take a very long time unless you bypass it with magical attacks, guard break, guard cancel or instant kill attacks.
 * Battlefield effect is a % modifier to how much damage one side can do or receive. It can be modified by Ninjas using battlefield construction or by spending SAT bonuses on increasing battle preparation.
 * The damage cap of a unit is it's actual troop size modiffied by skill modifiers and battlefield effect. For example, a unit with 1000 troops can only kill 1000 troops assuming it is using a normal attack and the battlefield effect is 0%, regardless of how high it's stats are.
 * It's not necessary to increase all stats to 9. Some unit types like musketeers can easily reach the damage cap against most enemies with only an attack of 6. See Troop Properties for more details.
 * As a general rule, it is always worth it to max INT for diviners/mages/tacticians, attack for Ninjas/Warriors/Footsoldiers that you are using for damage and an attack of 6 or 7 is sufficient to reach the damage cap against most enemies for cavalry/musketeers/canons, assuming they receive tactician buffs.
 * Archers are rarely worth it, as their poor stats (they do about the same damage as ninas but are much slower) and high replenish cost make them ineffective unless you use them in very large troop sizes, which is expensive and affects enemy troop scaling.
 * Unless doing a point run, it is not necessary to use as many operation permits as possible. It is very expensive to replenish the non foot soldiers ones (unless you use SAT bonuses to lower the replenish cost) and it also affects enemy troop scaling.