Daiteikoku:Game mechanics

Daiteikoku is a game in which the player leads the Japanese Imperial Army, suppresses the other countries, and unites the world factions. The player directs the organization and combat of the fleet as Secretary of the Navy, Tsuyoshi Togo.

It's fundamentally a territory conquest and management game, think Sengoku Rance, Risk, Axis&Allies. The objective is to conquer planets on the map, and balance your income with enemy scaling. Enemies scale based on your total star count, not on turns elapsed, so don’t rush, particularly if you’re having trouble, it will just get harder.

A single turn in Daiteikoku is divided into the following phases:
 * Beginning of Turn Event
 * Player Strategy Phase
 * Tactics Phase (only if attacking an enemy territory)
 * Event Phase
 * Enemy Strategy Phase

Title Screen
The main menu when starting the game has the following options:
 * Start a new game as the 'Empire of Japan'
 * Start a new game as CORE (Unlocked after winning the game and beating CORE)
 * Load a savegame
 * CG mode (Unlocked pictures)
 * Scene mode
 * Music Player
 * Alicesoft Investigation (Only for japan)
 * Option Menu
 * Achievements and Stats
 * Quit the game

Beginning-of-Turn Event
Much like in Sengoku Rance, one of the pending ADV events may randomly happen at the beginning of a turn before strategy phase begins.

Beginning of turn events have a hidden priority ranking, so conquering too aggressively early in the game can significantly delay useful events, such as the one for unlocking submarine tech.

However, it is also possible for more than one start of turn event to occur on a single turn, when both are of highest priority.

Player Strategy Phase
The Strategy Phase is when the positioning of your armies and all other logistics are decided. In this phase you will mainly be planning your course of action for the future, constructing and researching new ships, and moving your fleets.

Situation Report
At the beginning of each turn you will receive a basic balance sheet with your empire's current total income. You will also be notified of all impending invasions, natural disasters and prevailing weather conditions.

Star Region Menu
Each region is represented by a blip that has a progress bar representing Public Peace. When full, the blip will flash purple. There will also be a number of stars based on how many admirals you have stationed in that Region, up to a maximum of 10. There is no limit to the number of admirals you may have stationed in any region. You can click on any blip to bring up an information screen for that region.

The Star Region Menu displays the following:
 * Resources Income (on the left)
 * Technology Income (on the right)
 * Weather Conditions
 * Admirals stationed in the Star Region.
 * Public Peace: A measure of control over a planet.

Fun fact: If the map is seen carefully, there will be a vertical scanline going from left to right momentarily drawing an outline of a modified real world map based on which the fictional intergalactical map of the Daiteikoku world has been created on which star regions, based on locations in real world, have been placed.

How to increase income / public peace
If public peace in a planet, you will receive no Resource or Technology Income from it.

Public peace will improve every turn there is an admiral in the area at a rate of 1/8 a turn (whether or not they have a ship equipped).

Public peace will not improve with more admirals however (these don't stack):
 * the public peacekeeper (Peac) skill will improve peace by 2/8 a turn
 * Yamamoto Mugen, Koga Hitomi (before it changes to Berserk), Lydia Rokossovsky, Kurita Asparagus, Muccillini Venice
 * Hanitora will improve by 3/8 a turn
 * some admirals such as Aelfhilda and Higuchi prevent improvement to public peace (this takes priority over other public peace skills)

Fleet Organization Menu
The first button from the left, on the bottom of the screen. Opening this menu will display a comprehensive list of all your admirals and their relevant stats. You may also assign ships to your admirals' fleets from this menu. Ships will be organised from the largest to the smallest class. For more information on the meaning of the relevant stats of each ship, please refer to the Ships article and the Combat section further down.

An admiral's character card will be arranged as follows:

Each admiral can be assigned a maximum of four ships, within the limits of their command points. A the cost of each ship doubles with its size class so a frigate costs 45 while a cruiser costs 90 and a battlecruiser costs 180, generally speaking. Each slot may or may not have a bonus associated with it, which will give a bonus or penalty to a specific stat of the ship that is assigned to that command slot, or to everything at once. If the bonus does not apply to the ship assigned (for instance, a missile cruiser in a slot with a laser penalty) then the bonus has no effect. Any unique special abilities that each admiral may have will be noted in their character card.

Shipbuilding and Research Menus
From the left, the second button on the bottom bar is your ship construction menu while the third is your research menu. These will allow you to spend Resource and Technology points to expand your fleets. These menus are arranged in largely the same way as the Fleet Organization Menu, simply click the ship you wish to build.

Constructing ships costs Resources only. Research costs Technology only. Depending on certain conditions within the game it is possible to get a discount or indeed a markup on the costs of both and production and research. When selecting a ship to construct, the game will display four values. Clockwise from the top left, they are the amount of the selected ship you have active, the cost to produce, the resale value, and the amount you have inactive. From the left, the buttons are build, scuttle and cancel.

Movement
Movement is done by opening the Star Region Map in a Region where admirals are stationed. Click the button at the bottom right corner of the screen, then select the region you wish to move to. From here select any number of admirals to move between the two regions. Admirals may be transferred both ways. Admirals may be moved up to two star regions per turn. Moving an admiral into enemy territory will initiate combat. You may not move an admiral into enemy territory if they have sustained any damage at all, but any admiral may take part in the defence of a region no matter how much damage they have sustained. All admirals regenerate health at a slow pace, the speed of which can be increased by building repair docks or equiping ships with repair functions.

Disasters
Once you click End Turn any disasters are resolved. The most common of these are uprisings and attacks by space monsters. These battles are same as defence battles (see "Enemy Phase" and "Tactics Phase" for description) Uprisings are fairly simple battles that can be quelled by an admiral with a sufficient amount of frigates while space monsters are virtually impossible to defeat (see the disasters' section of the wiki). When the public peace of the area is reduced to 0 the monster will retreat and you will lose considerable amout of resources (need to confirm whether the loss is random). Space monsters cannot hold territory.

Tactics Phase
This phase consists of invasion battles where you chose to attack. This phase takes place at the end of the Strategy Phase and before Event Phase after all disasters are resolved.

Weather conditions
Planets generally have a fixed weather condition that appears on random turns. When the condition occurs, it is always the same one for that planet.

Some planets will not have weather conditions until a special event occurs, such as Chongqing and Nanjing, which only have weather conditions after the Yuan take them over.
 * Sunny (晴天): Default weather, no effects.
 * Surprise Attack (奇襲作戦): Defending admirals cannot attack with fighters and lasers. No effect on attacking admirals.
 * Minovsky Pollen (ミノフ杉花粉): Lasers cannot attack
 * Monroe's Wind (モンロー風): All female admirals have their attacks reduced by 50%
 * Men's Hell (男殺油地獄): All male admirals have their attacks reduced by 50%
 * Sandstorm (砂塵): All fighters and cannon attack have damage reduced by 70%. Effect to allies nullified with dust-resistant (防塵) ships.
 * Freezing (極寒): All attacks have 50% damage reduction. Effect to allies nullified with cold resistant (防寒) ship or admirals with cold-resistant ability.
 * Dragonfly Fog (蜻蛉霧): All admirals with level of odd numbers have their attacks reduced by 70%
 * Darkness (暗黒): Fighters cannot attack
 * Derukui Effect (デルクイ現象): Defending admirals get +10% attack for every level from level 4 onwards (i.e. +10% at level 4, +20% at level 5, etc.). No effects on attacking admirals.
 * Lucidity / Abnormally Transparent (異常透明) : All attacks are doubled.

Invasions and combat
The tactical view will show the distribution of enemy forces. The objective of a battle is to fill the gauge at the bottom of the screen enough to ensure that the ensuing planetary invasion is successful: To pick a field to deploy your admirals, click on one of the star fields (blue circles). Most battles have multiple formations and you are unable to reassign units after the first attack phase (unless you got the special M.Base building in that star or an adjacent one).
 * A minimum of 8 stars or 80% is required to win the battle
 * The percentage of stars you claim from a battlefield is equal to the percentage of HP you slashed off the defenders, rounded down. You lose all of a star field's stars if your admirals there don't survive

Select the green circle in the top right to finish the battle by sending the army. The army dies while trying to land if you don't have 8 stars, giving you options to restart from the beginning of the turn or the beginning of the strategy phase

Battles have between 2 to 3 attack phases represented by the arrow steps at the top of the screen. This is the battle's time limit. If each engagement is not resolved decisively the battle will go into its second or third phase, after which no one may take any more actions. Minimum number of phases for one battle is 2. If you have a neighbouring territory under full control (no unrest on it), you get an additional third phase.

After selecting a star field (blue circle), you will have a menu to select admirals, you can pick up to 4 admirals per star field, but only 8 admirals total across up to 4 fields, can be deployed.

It might seem bringing more than 8 admirals to enemy territory is pointless, but you can always consider bringing more generals of diverse stats and looking at enemy groups and their stats you can decide which ones to deploy: Low HP/high attack enemies are better taken out by high speed units before they can even fire, while weaker but high HP ones should be handled by a high endurance admiral of your own who has a diverse array of weapons on him and so on. When you have finished your assignments click the button at the bottom right corner of the screen to close the menu.

When you have completed deployments, the engagements will be resolved. There are four different weapon types, each one with priority over all the weapons that follow it, so starfighters will always strike first, followed by lasers, and so on: If more than one fleet has the same weapon then order of attack will be decided in descending order of radar strength (higher radar range can spot and lock on enemies from far away and thus start attacking earlier). If a ship has multiple damage types in its fleet these are still resolved according to the priority order, the admiral merely gets more actions but the weapons do not all fire at once.
 * 1) Starfighters
 * 2) Lasers
 * 3) Missiles
 * 4) Cannons

Once every ship has fired its weapons the star field's engagement ends and you proceed to the next one. Once all field engagements have been resolved the attack phase ends. If you have filled the victory gauge enough (8+ stars) you can attempt a planetary invasion regardless of whether you eliminated all the enemies or not. Otherwise click the button at the bottom right and the battle will proceed to phase 2, with the remaining ships fighting further engagements until one side is completely wiped out.

You cannot retreat from battles when you're the attacker, so if you do not win, you may as well reload or invade to restart from tactics phase/start of turn.

Enemy troop scaling (also affects tech levels and building change costs)
Scaling is based on star count, not turns, so invading a lot early without keeping up on your resources and technology research will cause your enemies to get much stronger than you. Try to advance at a rate that lets you accumulate enough tech to research a few of your latest ship options. The exceptions, Chun and Yuan power up at a set time instead:
 * Enemy troops (with the exceptions of Chun and Yuan) scale based on your star count
 * It's almost always better to wait. You will get stronger, your enemies won't. The exception is that before turn 30, not invading Hawaii/Chernob/Arabia can cause the CORE revolt, which will simultaneously reduce recruitable commanders in Gamerica and make them harder to defeat
 * Power ups are not consistent, for example, Gamerica powers up when you take the 18th star, but Aeris when you take the 17th star.
 * Generally, however, in your early game, power ups occur when you take your 8th, 12th, 17/18th and 22nd stars so stay 1 star below that to make defending or attacking easier
 * Tech levels scale on star count as well. This means that you'll have access to the next generation of ships, but if you expand too aggressively, you won't have the tech to research them
 * Furthermore, you have to research the previous gen to unlock the next gen for most ships.
 * Building modification costs also scale based on star count. It costs less to change buildings at tech level 1 than it does at tech level 2, etc. So if you're going to change your buildings, do it early on.
 * Chun become stronger on turn 30
 * Yuan become stronger after the start of turn event where Gamerica starts funding them (occurs 3 turns after Yuan appears)

Buildings
You can build only one building after conquering a planet. The options available depend on that specific planet.

After last patch it became possible to change the building anytime during your tactical phase by spending additional tech (Warning: if you change your building to a fish market later on after the initial building, you won't get the fish ship).

Experience is participation based
If an admiral was assigned to a starfield during a battle, they get experience. It doesn't matter if they had 0HP at the beginning of the battle, died during the battle, didn't kill any enemies, etc. Experience is not split between commanders, so assign as many as you can to battles.
 * specifically, at level 1, commanders get
 * 540 base EXP when invading, which decreases by 45 per level
 * 180 base EXP when defending, which decreases by 15 per level
 * modifiers, like Nagumo’s Edu stack with Dojos, but not with another commander with Edu in the same starfield
 * dojos modifiers stack

Event Phase


The events menu orders events by 4 types:
 * 1) Major events - In general, events with major, empire-spanning consequences, such as asking Mikado to perform the banishment ceremony, will be placed at the top.
 * 2) * Important events, such as to secure an Ending, or that can trigger a game over if left unselected are also included in this section, but will additionally have a 'badge' so they stand out
 * 3) * Watch out, small-scale generic events get mixed into here that are not important, such as to get a cheap ship
 * 4) Character-specific events - Tougou deepens his relationship with the character over a number of events that usually start with the recruitment event and end with a pink-coloured event, which represents an H-scene. Some of both H and non-H events (often the final one involving that character) will confer a benefit upon the character in question. This is almost always +30 command points, but some characters will receive other bonuses, including skills, improved slot bonuses or even upgrades to their fixed ship.
 * 5) Generic events - Small-scale generic events will yield benefits like extra resources or new admirals (usually these have little storyline value, but the mercenaries, Visber and Alps are an exception).
 * 6) Clear bonus events - After you clear an ending, to receive the bonus, you must first select the related event. There are 8 in total, most of them are recruitable commanders.

Enemy Strategy Phase (defensive battles)
Impending attacks are marked on the world map with a red alert beacon around the source planet of the attack. If more than one of your territories neighbours the attacking planet, the enemy attack will target any of your neighbouring planets randomly (this is determined during the strategy phase, so if you reload your game, they can attack in different directions).

Defensive battles are resolved in the same way that invasions are, except that instead of sending the army to invade, victory is automatically decided after each attack phase. If you have 8+ stars after the phase, you will not get the subsequent attack phase, even if it was available. As some admirals are only capturable while defending, make sure to destroy them before getting 8 stars.

In addition, when defending, you can choose to retreat by pressing the red circle in the bottom left. Retreating or being defeated will result in a significant decrease to the planet's public peace. If it is less than fully peaceful, the region will fall under enemy control and your admirals will be returned to the nearest friendly region. In the case of a disaster or rebel, you will lose resources or be unable to restore peace for some turns.

If Japan is ever invaded, admirals (including those stationed in regions also invaded in the same turn) will be magically transported to Japan and will remain there.