Daiteikoku:Guides

The following playthrough will get you virtually every important character at one point or another. That means Sarah, Eliza, and Mary: Katerin, Miya, and Gepe: Retia, Manstein, Rommel, and Gobbels: Dorothy, Carol, Hannah, and that Other Girl, as well as Douglas.

Specifics on Saves:

Eliza: Can be captured in South Africa. Sink her fleet and then recruit her, she comes with an anti-aircraft ship.

Sarah and Mary: After the British open up their warp portals and give you hell for a bit, sit in Paris until a warp portal event kicks in. After, invade London.

Katerin, Miya, and Gepe: Doing this particular route (saving Adolf), you need to kill the space monster. Well, maybe you don't, but I know at least that Germany must be defeated.

Retia and Gobbels: Do all of Doenitz's events before Germany is defeated. Then let her leave when she asks you. You do not need to give them money or anything-in fact giving them money makes it longer before they can join you.

Rommel: Kill the guy defending the globe/event thing in North Africa. Then recruit.

Manstein: Wait until he attacks you as part of the Soviets. Have Retia in your command. Talk to him twice.

Dorothy + the Kanadians: Must invade Kanada before USJ. Joins after defeating Gamerica and doing the "Specio" event (its at the top after Washington falls)

Carol: Either saveable from CORE by invading USJ immediately (one turn later and she gets mind broken), or comes to you naturally by invading Kanada route.

Hannah: Comes to you naturally.

That other GIrl: Conquer Chicago X against CORE or conquer Washington DC after all the events.

Halsey: Invades from Kanada after you discover the second warp gate from Hawaii. Capture her by sinking her invasion force.

Douglas: Recruitable only if you defeat President Roose. Comes to you after capture of Gamerica.

Knights Lawrence, Nelson, and Montgomery-Montgomery is only gettable by doing events with Eliza(or Mary?) after you capture her. Nelson comes to you after Arabia and Lawrence is gettable after conquering London IF AND ONLY IF you have Sarah from the warp portal event.

That Arabian chick-after fall of Arabia, pay the 10000 cash immediately to get her.

Zhukov-Apparently, recruitable after fall of Soviets. Have not gotten him personally, so unverified.

MauMau in Kenya-Don't sink her fleet when you conquer the planet. 30k gold is tempting but not worth it.

Do not invade from the Spain backdoor or you will not get any of the Gamericans.

Early Game
With a little bit of luck, you can end up with 6 territories in about as many turns. Here's what you do:

A) Send everything in to attack the first Chinese territory. Doesn't matter what you build here. If any ships are damage send them back to Japan.

With the money you get buy the tech level 1 laser battleship and equip it to random people (except takeda, he doesn't use them that well).

B) Send everything that can still fight to the second Chinese territory. Build a harbor.

C) Optimize your ships to the point where they won't take damage in the first defense.

D) Storm the last Chinese territory. You can grab the pandas pretty easily too.

Now its turn 4. In the meantime the Americans have been bombarding you with ideas. Say no to everything and send your undamaged ships to where the first Chinese territory was and the rest to the harbor. Get the Inugami/Wolf guy event as soon as you can. When America declares war on you, you should have 4 undamaged fleets. Send Inugami + the weaker one to Manila 2000 and the other two fleets to Midway. You should be able to do math to figure out how to best optimize the battle situation, but the early laser battleships, while it'll hurt you later, give you a lot of firepower. Because you attacked immediately after the US DoW, the enemy ships are unable to fire lasers, so keep that in mind.

It is now turn 6ish and you have 6 territories. Follow up by grabbing the commander from Manila, then researching the missile battleships and equipping them to take the island south of Hawaii as well as Malay Tiger as soon as you get Japanification (so as to grab the commander there). Build a harbor in both locations, and then swamp Australia around turn 10ish. This sets you up into a great position to strike at Gamerica, the Soviets, or Aeris.

Don't forget that because you bumrushed China, Togo isn't invulernable in the last territory, but he has invulnerability for later. If you really want to, you can abuse this and take Hawaii around turn 14/15 by having Togo solo the carrier fleet and laugh while they do nothing to him. Don't forget to grab commanders whenever you can in your events, above all other events you should prioritize new commanders > Doenitz > Izumi.

Mid Game
Now you should be thinking about the route you want to go into. The most friendly route is the "turtle" Empress route, where you first clear all of Doenitz's events (and then Izumi's) while slowly pushing torwards Arabia. Get as many cash and ship specials as you can-with lots of missile battleships this gives you a strong enough force to push very hard, especially against the barriers that the Aeris tend to have. Once Arabia is taken, be prepared to deal with Rance. After dealing with Rance (or alternatively, letting him batter your walls while the rest of your fleet hides in Africa), do not attack Suez (as that would take you into Dokutsu route, which can be very bad if you have no income or admirals) but instead South. You need to wait for the Aeris Empire to take North Africa before you can take Kenya. Be sure not to attack the Kenyan fleet when doing so, despite the 30000 cash bonus you get by doing so. Then you can save Andromeda (the battle station there isn't too hard because you bumrushed through the other territories) and then grab Rommel. Don't forget to say Yes to Doenitz's request to leave because we want Retia. Once Dokutsu falls, take the fleets that you used to defend against Rance and finish him off fast because the Russians will be coming. With your forces in Africa, move them to Paris but do not go into London until you trigger the warp event because we want to save Sarah and co. You should have captured her sister in the meantime-as a general rule if you see an enemy commander that you want (with the exception of Kenya) destroy their fleet entirely.

Don't forget to do Adolf's events so you can have her (and later Manstein) in your fleet.

Late Game
After triggering Sarah's event you should take London down easily and then proceed to spread out your fleets and secure every location in the area. Send a few of your elites back and have them get ready to assault the Soviet Union. You only need two fleets or so at each territory to defend against the US, but do not take Hawaii or else you will trigger some events that we want to avoid right now.

Buy the big raft snowships and equip them, then push torwards Moscow. Do not take it until you have heavy carriers as well as Manstein when he attacks you. Manstein is a beast and you'll need him for when your heavy carrier investment becomes less useful in Gamerica. Grab the heavy aircraft carriers because you need them to kill the space monster. With your fleet of Togo + 3 other guys, all with maxed heavy aircraft carriers, send them to first snipe the Russian guy so as to cut the monster's attack in half (allowing your ships to tank one round of attack) so you can proceed to finish it off the second round. Now you can save Katerin and co by taking Kateringrad and then Ekateringrad. The Soviet commanders are not terribly strong compared to Gamerica's or Aeris's for the most part but having them is better than nothing.

With your now massive fleet you should have no problem taking Hawaii. You could cheese and go in the back way through Spain but that's no fun and you miss out on a lot of characters that you can spam clear for cgs after you take over the world. Do the warp portal event (both of them if you haven't already) and open the route to Kanada. You can either wait for Halsey to come down so you can capture her when she invades from Kanada, or you can just go in for the kill through Kanada (or directly through USJ, if you want to fight CORE). You need to completely wipe out Dwight's entire formation, not just his fleet, to capture him, I believe.

If you are going the CORE route, prepare for fun as you get kicked out of all of Gamerica. You can just equip all your ships with carriers though and just plow through their fleets-they are not very strong for the most part as long as you are careful about not putting female characters in, as any territory with "WAO!" in it causes them to do half damage. Hint: Hannah is not a female character.

If you are going the standard Gamerica route through Kanada its a bit easier and more straightforward as you just have to deal with a few NAP pauses before you can stamp them out. Then just go to the Emperor ending to finish the game or try and clear as many characters as you can.