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 and possibly delete.

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.

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
 * 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. I have interpreted this to mean 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 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

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.
 * 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.

The conquer path: Conquer Oil field [About turn 25] -> Miko Institute [asap] -> Uesugi [asap] -> 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 -> Texas (Asai-Asakura) It is very preferable that you conquer Ashikaga before turn 50.

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 Honnouji and DA appearance.

Tenshi: I would kill them somewhere around turn 80'ish, if True Sillfag challenge. If 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.

Iga: is ignored and left for DA to take over. This will in all probability lead DA to attack useless territories later in the game.

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

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 strrength.

But 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.

--- more to follow

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, which is worth, along the course of the game, easily 200.000 gold. Even a conservative estimate would be 150.000 gold.

The popularity staff takes 21-28 turns to get. You can get it if you didn't conquer another territory and it is turn 21 or higher.

But while you are waiting, you can also capture a lot of enemy commanders and repeatedly clear the Miso Katsu dungeon for affection items and other goods (pinnacle of which are the motivation papers), plus work on a buffer for winning the next stages of the game by conquering every territory in Kyo, Oil and Hara.

Please 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 costs you very little.

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.

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.

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.

You should use 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 (you took over all territory at Kyo, Oil and Hara), clear it twice per turn. You can do it. Your rewards will be at average better than by doing anything else.

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.

End of this section is when you hit turn 60-61 and can attack Tokugawa.

-Under construction-

Tips on accumulating money and raising the troop count of your army
TB filled in: different ways to get more money, avoid losses and accumulate troops so that you can build your army.

My army building philosophy, general army strategy and battle-style
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.

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. 20:52, June 30, 2018 (UTC)84.248.168.242

-- Muri