User blog comment:TsuchiNoKao/Games like Sengoku Rance/@comment-33997589-20200727174945/@comment-33997589-20200727201447

Turn 0 and Turn 1 in Rance X are 100% linear, you have just one quest that you have to do, later in game you got some options.

If someone likes one grand strategy there is a good chance he will like another one so Paradox games are worth mentioning I think. " The paradox has a feel of lots of territory management, which is something I liked from Rance " - Does Sengoku Rance have that much territory management? You can only develop province and prepare for next battle, sometimes do something like "build ninja estate", one time Enforce Taxation. And rest of events are rather focused on talking to characters/acquiring items/doing dungeons - and those feel more like RPG elements than Strategy (but the fact that those decisions make difference in later battles makes it strategy elements). Maybe there is a little more territory management in Dai series (I played Daibanchou only) as there you have some building slots, you need to keep forces to keep order in province and move units to collect taxes so it can be more similiar to EU4 as you have some building slots in each province, and every province have it's unrest so you sometimes have to keep forces there, you can develop them, reduce/increase autonomy etc. (and if in general you like territory management and developing your provinces I think EU IV is best for you).

About Total Wars - the strategic element differs a little in each game, you would need to check them separately but in general it's much less complicated than in Paradox games and more battle-focused (where in Paradox games battle is 100% RNG with dice rolls where you don't have any control over it and some modifiers like from commander stats and attacking from river/on mountains). From Total Wars I like Shogun 2 the best as I like the era it's in - there are early gunpowder weapons that can be quite powerful but with their slow reload speed they can't dominate battlefield alone so all kind of infantry, archers and cavalry still have it's purpose. The battles are real-time but you can play with active pause so basically you place troops in a place you want and react to enemy movement. And your units have stats somehow similiar to SR - in Shogun 2 it's Morale, melee attack, melee defense, armor, charge bonus and for ranged units - range, reload speed, ammuniton and accuracy. And if you like fantasy element more you can try Total War Warhammer.

And BTW nice blog post, I might try some of those japansese games as I never heard of them. Are those games from section " The closest I've found not made by Alicesoft are" translated to english? I can manage to play games with VN reader but having actual translation is more comfortable.