Sengoku Rance:Tips

Be warned, this page is mostly opinion and very little of it has been subjected to debate or verification.

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 due to his high level cap, and as he partakes in many important commander battles. 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.
 * 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 tendency to launch 3 consecutive attacks in 1 turn (only once) on Mamushi oil field after the war starts.
 * Houses will continuously recruit commanders and replenish 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 Ishiji is released, after which they will start to replenish their troops at a slower rate. The Demon Army gets much more troops in the other routes.
 * 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 provinces 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
 * 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. Most enemy commanders will be scaled based on the number of provinces that you control, so you should try to increase them as much as possible when you have the funds to do so.


 * If you have too many satisfaction 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 province, 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 province.
 * Reinforcements take 6 turns 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.
 * Botan hunts are available again 4 turns after you do them and panda hunts in Nakakuni (the Takuga gate) are available 7 turns after you do them. The one in Owari increases the botan's level by 1 every time you complete it and the one in Sado by 2 every time you complete it.
 * The cherry blossom event (pre-requisite to Nobunaga breaking the first gourd) only occurs after the first gourd house is defeated (typically Ashikaga) or on turn 12. The gourd event will occur shortly afterwards, or on turn 15 if no gourd houses have been defeated yet.
 * The dungeon events that unlock H-scenes with Sill and Suzume can only occur after the cherry blossom event.
 * The default game animation screen is VERY slow and turning off animations does not help much (time taken for damage numbers to finish displaying, time for windows to pop up, etc). One way of fixing this is to use cheat engine and set the speed hack modifier to something like 3, which will greatly speed up animation speeds.

Commanders
"Depends on if you use bonus or not. If you do, you gonna have better units at the begin of the game, so upgrading Rance is not the best thing you should do (but you definitely need it if you want to get "fuck 300 women" achievement). I'm doing a 5-star no bonus at the moment and upgrading Rance's stats is actually the best thing I can do if I want to win the game by conquering (and completing all achievement as well). Here is what I do to up Rance to a godly unit at early-mid game:
 * Not all commanders are good. Some like Akihime are only worth using to see their events once.
 * Unlike most games, the insta-kill moves in Sengoku Rance have a fairly good probability of working, so they shouldn't be ignored.
 * Some skills are only available on certain turns, such as dungeon battle expert and counter attack 1. Since there is no way to tell before hand, save and reload if the skill you want is not available on that turn. The counter attack 1 skill seems to be available on turn 3 at the earliest.
 * Mikos except for Natori and Chinu are not worth it as the amount healed is too low, does not give you influence back in battle and prevents you from bringing another commander to kill the enemy quicker.
 * Keeping Fuuka around after you unlock her h-scene is not recommended unless you are trying to unlock the Orochi cave or get her character clear. Her usefulness is very low.
 * Raping Kanami does not grant you any SAT. You do not need to talk to her at all, just wait till Maria gives you the Kanami sex ticket. The H-Scene will occur in a beginning of turn event after that. She is required to find the Tora no Ana dungeon in Akashi so keep her around at least till then.
 * Monks (including Seigan), Archers, most tacticians (except for Sanada Tourin and Uruza) and Mikos do very low damage in commander battles, regardless of how high their level is.
 * Regardless of what items are equipped or how high your level is, the maximum amount of damage that may be done to Xavier or his apostles per hit is 20% of their maximum health. This includes Rance's Rance attack at level 99 vs a level 55 apostle (only 230 damage will be dealt, same as if you had used the normal attack).
 * If not doing the Kenshin route, Okita Nozomi can be dismissed after finding the Ero-Candle item in dungeons and unlocking her H-Scene, as well as finding the SM Dungeon in Mazo and/or getting the Charm of the Immortal Fox Deity. She is very slow in dungeons and only has 3 AP. The quickest way to do this is to talk to her once, talk to her at 7 affection to get a generic h-scene, find the Ero-Candle, then get her H-Scene.
 * More realistically, she's probably not worth recruiting at all. She's only good in dungeons, and costs too many fans to get.
 * In commander battles, only basic skills will be available. You will not be able to use charge, commander charge, etc and most passives like Hibachi or Lover will not work. Attack luck will work for both troop and commander battles however.
 * A points runner poster a guide a while back. On upgrading Rance:
 * At turn 6 and 16, try to get 2 spd textbooks (spd 4->6).
 * Conquer Mamushi oil field before turn 12 and impose levy to get 1 atk book and use it to Rance (atk 5->6).
 * At the end of turn 12, Rance's mood must be 7. The start of turn 13,Rance will get an event which gives him 1 affection. If his mood is at 7, it will give him an auto power up. Up his atk (6->7)
 * Conquer Miko Ins after get 2nd spd book at turn 16. H-event with Natori gives him an auto power up (spd 6->7)
 * After that, impose levy to get 1 def textbook and another def textbook at turn 26 (def 4->6). Power up him and up his def to 7
 * Give him elite troop. His stats should be 8-8-6-8 (give him int book if you want, but don't use power up to boost his int to 7. Not worth it)."

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 from tacticians appear 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 6 commanders 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.
 * Commanders that are captured then released from prison are removed from the game and will not join other houses. Combined with light attack, this can be a great way to remove troublesome commanders like Goemon rather than waiting for the random capture chances of defeated warrior hunt.
 * Tacticians are very effective. Their buffs 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 shikigami 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.
 * On top of influencing the Battlefield Effect, fields, towns, and castles affect initial Battle Rating of the fight.
 * Field: 10% advantage to defender, no Battlefield Effect change.
 * Castle: 90% advantage to defender, Battlefield Effect +20%.
 * Town: Around 30% advantage to defender, Battlefield Effect +10%.
 * The damage cap of a unit is it's actual troop size modified 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 here 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 ninjas 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 demon army 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.
 * Every time you deploy a non-generic cleared character with Rance, he or she will get +1 affection point. This is an easy way to build up lots of affection for commanders that can benefit from many level ups, such as Uruzu. Only one character can gain affection this way and some take priority over others.
 * Since most defensive battles will be fought on fields, giving a commander in a defensive group Field Battles Weekly is a good way to make full use of it.

Dungeons

 * Every time you complete a dungeon successfully, you will gain the specific treasure from that dungeon, or if you already have it, a random treasure. If you have all treasures, you will mostly gain stat book 2s or a healing item. All your commanders in your roster at the time will also gain +1 level.
 * Since only the commanders you have in your roster when you complete a dungeon get +1 level, you may wish to complete it after you have assembled your "end game team" to level them up as much as possible (typically, this is after Kentarou joins in some routes).
 * If you complete at least one floor successfully and leave, you will come back one floor deeper. This is regardless of how many floors you have completed the first time round. Since you also get 1 item (mostly an ogre bone) every time you complete a floor, you can complete all floors up till the second last floor, then leave and come back again. However, this is extremely time consuming.
 * You have a high chance of gaining an affection item every time you exit a dungeon (even if you run out of AP and are forced to retreat). This can be done infinitely to farm up lots of affection items, by using a single character, running out of AP then exiting the dungeon. This can be done fairly quickly but requires lots of action fans.
 * If you complete a cleared dungeon again, you will usually get just an ogre bone.
 * There are 19 dungeons in the game, but 1 is a plot dungeon with no level up bonus, and 2 of them require Kentarou who does not join in the Ran, Kenshin or Kill the monkey routes. 2 more (Orochi and the Road to Hades) are very long dungeons typically only used to see unique events and CGs. There are also 2 level ups from the ogre hunts in Shikoku (Takuga). This gives you a max of 18 level ups via dungeons in routes where Kentarou joins and 16 in routes where Kentarou does not join. Rance will also gain 2 extra level ups each from the SM Dungeon and Satomi Empire. The optimal level for Rance before Honnouji is therefore 77 in routes where Kentarou joins or 79 in routes where Kentarou does not join (assuming you are saving the dungeon level up bonus for later).
 * Diviners do extra damage to ogres (enough that they will almost always instant kill it), which are present in the ogre hunts, the battle against Seitaii Shogun, and the final floors of Heijoukyou (Iga), Hell City (Edo) and Sekimei's Tomb (Saitama, Nanjou Ran route only). The damage bonus does not appear to apply to Sekimei.

Nanjou Ran route

 * This is the most relaxed route other than the Kill the monkey route, so it is sometimes recommended for your second playthrough.
 * After you clear the oil dungeon before 5 gourds are broken, you have 6 turns (assuming all purple plot events are chosen as soon as possible) before Rance will automatically head to Honnouji. It is not necessary to fight Xavier since it is a scripted fight. You can simply right click at the commander selection screen to "lose" the battle automatically.
 * Keikoku will first appear 10 turns after you clear the oil dungeon. The Shimazu family will declare war on you after that.
 * 21 turns after you clear the oil dungeon, Keikoku will disappear with Souun. 2 more turns later, the first holes to hell will open up in Mazo, Shinano, Sado, both Dokuganryuu provinces, Saitama, Kazusa 2000, Edo, Kai and Toukaidou. The ogre units defending the holes are very weak so can be dealt with easily.
 * To avoid Shimazu from automatically taking over Senkan Nagato, you can leave the Mouri house alive with Senkan Nagato as their last remaining province. It will not be automatically taken over then.
 * Using a throw away generic commander at hate can be a good way to sacrifice a commander in order to recruit the Shimazu brothers.

Conjectured tips
Whilst diving in to the game's code, I've spotted a few tricks that I've not looked in to enough for them to merit them being put on a more formal page. Some of these I've put to the test in the game, but most of these should be taken with salt.
 * Feeding Ishijijii appears to make every non-player faction stronger. This should be repeatable.
 * There's a few conditions on it, but Mouri, Takeda, and the Demon Army are coded to attack more often than anyone else.
 * If you're on 2 star difficulty, then after turn 40 most houses will get a boost that makes them able to do more in their turns. The boost is bigger on 5 star.
 * The Tenshi Sect will not attack a province that they do not own on even numbered turns.
 * Outside of cases like the Takeda blitz and some weird cases with the Demon army (and in particularly, Apostle Shikibu), losing more than one battle during the end of turn phase will prevent the AI from attacking you again on that turn. This is not on a per house basis and appears to hold up empirically.
 * Be warned - there's a few weird cases where this definitely won't apply but the game won't do anything to tell you that something weird has happened. For example, it's been speculated that Tokugawa has a secret blitz (much like Houjou's thing where they attack you with their uniques).
 * The game's code also suggests that losing just one battle during the end of turn phase should be enough to give the AI a 50/50 chance of not being able to attack you again, but this doesn't seem to hold up to in-game tests.
 * I think that there's some part of the code for 0 star difficulty that might influence this, but it worked fine when I tested it on 1 and 5 star.
 * In-game tests demonstrate that you don't even need to enter the battles - just right click.
 * This is almost certainly exploitable with Pursuit Battle or Battle Permits.
 * The AI won't attack a province that it doesn't own if it doesn't have more than 19 commanders at over 59% troop count that haven't already acted this turn. For reclaiming territory in provinces that it does own, this number is 9.