Sengoku Rance:Walkthrough

For frequently asked questions, see Sengoku Rance:FAQ

Note that in terms of commanders, this article is designed to give you an idea of when you'll encounter the commander, a brief summary of what to expect from them and how to recruit them (if possible).

For information on what stats and Skills the commander has when encountered or recruited, see Commanders.

For how to clear the commander when recruited (if possible), see Character Clears.

For tips on using the commander, see Commander Tips.

General stuff

 * Generally speaking, the plot will advance when you conquer or vassal houses, so when in doubt, conquer more. Although it should be noted that as long as you pay attention to what the game tells you, it is very rare that you will have no idea what to do. In fact, if you go long enough without being at war, the game will trigger events that are clearly designed to make you think otherwise, although some of these can be rewarding (for example, if you go long enough without ever conquering a house from the very start of the game onward, you can be rewarded with the Popularity Staff).
 * In most cases, losing anything that could be considered a boss fight will send you to the Alice Mansion, where you can either get a Game Over, or try again at the cost of 4 points of your score. Be warned that the final castle battle of an enemy house is not considered a boss fight.
 * When in doubt, press F5 on the map, this will display a list of objectives and a list of houses who have gourds, with a picture to tell you if the gourd is broken or not. These gourds are vital to the plot and flow of the game:
 * The first gourd will always be broken by turn 10 at the latest (it usually happens on turn 10 exactly but conquering/vassaling the Ashikaga House can bring it forward). Afterwards, if you do not conquer or vassal houses that have gourds (conquering or vassaling houses causes their gourds to be broken), more gourds will be broken due to reasons out of your control.
 * Note that you do not necessarily have to be the one who conquers the house in order for the gourd to break. For example, if the Takeda House conquers the Houjou House, Houjou's gourd will be broken.
 * The events where gourds are automatically broken happen at turn 30, 50, 70 and 90, and the order in which the gourds will be broke will be: Takeda's, Mouri's, Houjou's and Uesugi's. However, Takeda's gourd will only be broken at turn 30 if there is only 1 gourd broken by then, this rule applies for the other gourds as well. For example, breaking Iga's gourd before turn 30 will prevent Takeda's gourd from being broken at turn 30 (this event is delayed to turn 50 instead). The same rule applies to other gourds (break 3 gourds before turn 50, 4 before 70, and 5 before 90). After breaking 5 gourds, you will be able to enter a route and in First Games, this will always be the True route (the conditions to enter other routes are elaborated at the bottom of this page).
 * In Second Games, you can skip the waiting for gourds to break by selecting the 'Feed Toukichirou (Hasten events)' event. Then, a few turns after selecting that event, a gourd will break as if it was turn 30/50/70/90, hastening events.
 * Note however, that there is a glitch that lets you break additional gourds before Kou goes missing, if you vassal any of the Uesugi, Akashi or Ashikaga houses, after the second gourd has broke but before the Tenshi Sect has declared war, the gourd of that house (or houses, there's no harm in vassaling all three) will break at the end of the turn in which you vassaled them, but the event where the gourd is given to Xavier will never happen, meaning that the events leading up to Kou's kidnapping will be delayed. For example, if you perform this glitch with the Akashi and Ashikaga houses, you will have to break 7 gourds before Kou is kidnapped, allowing you to enter the True or Isoroku routes and losing your chance to enter the Ran route.
 * For this glitch, emphasis should be put on the fact that the gourds have still been broke, so once 5 gourds are broken, even by this glitch, the events where the gourds are automatically broke will stop, allowing you to delay entry into a route for as long as you wish, without any restrictions on your gameplay other than the inability to go to war with the Shimazu House.
 * Note also that to enter Kenshin's route, both the Uesugi and Ashikaga houses must be conquered, meaning that you can only vassal the Akashi House for the glitch.
 * Unfortunately, despite it being possible to vassal the Iga House, it appears to be impossible to use them for this glitch, because no way has been found to vassal them without having conquered at least one Tenshi Sect province (which would have required them to have declared war on you, meaning that the glitch won't work).
 * There also appears to be another glitch that has the same effect as the previous one, it appears to be the case that if you vassal multiple gourd holding houses in one turn, only one of their gourds will be delivered to Xavier, but all of them will be broken.
 * You will often have the option to demand that a house surrenders, ending the war between the Oda house and the other house and they will become your vassal. Generally speaking, this has 3 benefits:
 * The National Power of that house will be added to your total National Power.
 * The house will occasionally send you reinforcements in battle. These reinforcements will always have 3 actions and 4 in every combat stat. The troops' size will be based off your average troops' numbers (excluding foot soldiers) and the type of unit that you are sent is dependant on the house you have vassalled.
 * You are allowed to pass through that house's borders, but other houses are not, meaning that if you plan your vassals well, you can attack without fear of your provinces being attacked.
 * Unfortunately, vassaling is generally advised against as it tends to deny you gold (from levies), items, SAT, commanders and events. These disadvantages sum up to be so damaging that 'vassal only' is considered to be a challenge run (particularly notable is that the reinforcements units have very poor stats - you'd be disappointed to find a commander in your prison with less than 4 in all of their relevant combat stats).
 * Provided that the Uesugi House has been introduced, is still standing and has not been at war with the Oda house, then when you are attacking or being attacked, Uesugi Kenshin may appear to help the defending side. Be warned that she has a passive skill that causes all of her enemies to have one less action available (min. 1) and that she commands an extremely powerful warrior unit.
 * Expect several events before and after sending Rance to battle. In fact, some houses even require its ruler to meet Rance on the battlefield before they can be conquered, so if you're stuck, try that. The same advice also applies to character clears.


 * Ogawa Kentarou will temporarily join one of the houses you are at war with on turn 20. He cannot be captured or killed. Once you've defeated the house he joined, or one of the Xavier fights has happened, or turn 70 has come, he won't fight against you any more. On the True and Isoroku routes, he will join you a few turns after the incident at the Honnou Temple (if you don't have room for him, the first non-important commander in your roster will die to make room for him). At some point after recruiting him, you will see purple options for Kentarou to go on adventures in Yamato (where Iga originally owns), Cairo, Shikoku and Mazo. Each adventure bumps Kentarou up by 5 levels and is very helpful in the final boss fight. Note that you must have conquered or vassaled the province where the adventure is to gain access to the adventure.

Differences between various playthroughs

 * Any game you started before having a cleared-game save file is called a "First Game". After having cleared the game at least once (game over doesn't count), it's called a "Second Game".


 * When starting a Second Game you get to spend points on various bonuses. The amount of points you get to spend is the highest score from your previous cleared-games, plus 5 points per route you have cleared.


 * For Second Games, you also get to pick the game difficulty. "Normal" difficulty starts your game with 60 points (same difficulty as First Game), and increasing difficulty starts you off with more points. Note these are the points you start with at the beginning of this new game, not the points you get to spend on the bonuses before starting this new game.


 * IF routes are only available in Second Game. In the First Game, only the True route is available, and for this reason all of the information about the events and houses that are available in all routes appear in the 'True Route' section.

True Route
Since all games start on the 'True' route, this route is discussed before any of the houses of Japan. Despite what your save tells you, you have not entered the True route until you have done the 'Search full force for missing Kou' event which becomes available once 5 gourds are broken (so scroll down if you want help beating a certain house).

Note that if it is your first game, the majority of events that would cause you to leave the True route will either cause a Game Over or will be inaccessible.

After 5 gourds are broken, there will be an event where Kouhime goes missing and until you have found her by doing the 'Search full force for missing Kou' event (requires 15 search), you will not be allowed to attack any house (although you can defend, and troops with Battle Permits may still attack at will). It should also be noted that you only have 5 turns to find her or else you get a Game Over. If you get this Game Over, you can just reload your autosave and make sure to find Kou before you end the turn.

Once you have done the 'Search full force for missing Kou' event, you will lose any remaining Action Fans you had for that turn and you will once again not be allowed to attack any house, until you have either done the 'Visit Honnouji (Nobunaga)' event or selected "Attack" when asked the question "Attack Honnouji?" at the start of your turn. Fortunately, however, you now have effectively unlimited time to prepare for this event and you are free to choose when to attack Honnouji.

When you eventually do the event, you will be given three choices. The first one will make you face a Game Over, while the second choice will continue with the assault (see below for details), and the third one returns you to the map (Warning: You lose 1 Action Fan in the process).

The attack consists of 4 fights in a row, where you can select the commanders you want to use. Note that losing at any point here will send you to the Alice Mansion, where you can repick what units you want to use for that fight, and all of your units will be healed and have their actions restored. Note also that every time you visit Alice's Mansion during the assault, Xavier's level will be decreased by 10, until it hits 20, even if you lost in a fight that didn't include him.

After the assault, you will have no remaining Action Fans for that turn, so plan ahead. Starting the next turn, you can resume attacking other houses again for a few turns (the amount seems to vary, reports range from 5-10) before the Demon Army appears. More information can found in the 'The Demon Army / Shimazu House' section.
 * 1) First is an army battle vs the Apostle Shikibu (a very powerful warrior unit) and humans (always two foot soldiers in the front and two archers with one miko in the back). Neither side starts out with an advantage and this battle must be won.
 * 2) Next is a timed commander battle against Apostle Rengoku (level 50, 1050HP and only has one standard attack) in human form with two level 30 foot soldiers. Sadly, absolutely nothing in this battle counts except for the units you choose to begin with, and how much health and actions you lose, so it's probably best to make a team out of as many fast units as you can (ninjas) and then just keep switching out units until the time runs out. To reiterate attacking anyone is pointless in this battle.
 * 3) *One tactic is to have Suzume switch out Sill until the battle ends.
 * 4) Next is a commander battle against a transformed Apostle Rengoku, the differences from the previous fight are:
 * 5) *This battle is untimed.
 * 6) *This battle in winnable (your damage matters now).
 * 7) *Rengoku's standard attack takes an action from the target.
 * 8) *He has a delayed magical attack that hits everyone for high damage and requires 3 shurikens to cancel.
 * 9) Finally the fourth fight is a commander battle against Xavier. All your commanders will be revived and recover their actions for this battle (but will not heal their HP, revived commanders will have 1HP). Take note that you can only harm Xavier (Demon Nobunaga) if Rance is taking part in the battle. Otherwise, any attacks without him being present will be rendered ineffective (so keep Rance alive by all means necessary, Diviners and Mikos are recommended). Xavier has two attacks: one is a standard attack and the other is a magical hit-all attack that requires no preparation. Xavier's health depends on his level. By default, he is level 55 with 1150 health.

Oda House

 * Provinces
 * 尾張 (Owari)


 * Basics
 * Visit the prison to unlock the chance of capturing enemy commanders, although it should be noted that the prison is automatically unlocked on the turn following the automatic capture of a unit (for example, the capture of Hara Shouji which occurs when you conquer the Hara House).
 * After the first H-scene with Sill, a colorless event at the bottom of the list will be unlocked that gives +1 satisfaction. How a girl is chosen is not known, but it appears to have a random element as some girls seem far more common than others. You must H the girl at least once before they can appear in the harem.
 * A battle with boars is unlocked every few turns. It gives 500 + 50 gold for every additional fight and is required to unlock one of the Six Great Treasures (see Objectives for information on the treasure and Game mechanics for more information on the event)
 * On turn 63, and every 4 turns following, the purple event 'Traveling carnival is here' will show up In Owari. You can chose go with 3G, Suzume, Sill (if she is available), Baba, and the heroine for that route (Kouhime for the True history route). It gives a +3 to the final score with every visit.
 * Be warned, if Owari is conquered, you get a Game Over.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Shibata Katsuie - An above average foot soldier commander. The real advantage is getting him for free.
 * Ranmaru - An average Warrior commander.
 * Tamagushi Fuuka - A miko commander who's required to unlock the Orochi dungeon (see Objectives).
 * Gracia - Replaced Akechi Mitsuhide after using a Satisfaction Bonus on him twice. Their names (before and after upgrade) are on the game progress report.
 * Maeda Keiji - Replaced Maeda Toshiie after using a Satisfaction Bonus on him twice. Their names (before and after upgrade) are on the game progress report.
 * Niwa Nagahide - A relatively poor archer commander you get for free. However, he starts with Defeated Warrior Hunt and large troop size. His name is on the game progress report.
 * Suzume - A ninja who nominally begins with Iga, but make her first real appearance in Oda. In a first game, she appears on turn 8 (if you haven't started any wars yet) or turn 7 (if you have).
 * Sill - Not technically a commander as she doesn't appear on the list. She does however become available in dungeons as a mage when you switch out a back row character (note that it's impossible to switch her out unless her HP is reduced to 0). She also appears together with Rance in many boss battles. Her level is always just 3 behind Rance's, potentially making her one of the strongest dungeon commanders in the game. In addition to her fire blast, she also has a unique heal ability that restores one of Rance's action points (it only heals when used on other commanders), making her incredibly versatile. She is also responsible for the "Auto Heal" skill Rance has during troop battles, healing 30 troop per action at the start. The ability can be enhanced in several events. After Sill is missing, the "Auto Heal" skill slot becomes available, allowing Rance to take "End Game Point" skill for himself!



Hara House

 * Provinces
 * 伊勢 (Ise)


 * Basics
 * You can declare war on the Hara House as early as turn 2 (taking 10 Neg). If you don't declare war on them, they will declare war on you anyway some time after you go to war with the Ashikaga House.
 * Be warned that if the three following points are satisfied then some Hara remnants may appear in Ise, automatically conquer it, generate their own army of generics, and declare war on the Oda House.
 * The player is in the Isoroku route and hasn't seen the event where Rance is told that Keikoku has given birth or the player is in the Ran route and hasn't seen the event where both Keikoku and Houjou Souun are discovered to be missing.
 * Either Cario is in the control of either the Oda House or a vassal of the Oda House, or both the Takeda House and the Mouri House are neither conquered nor the vassal of the Oda House.
 * The Hara House has been conquered and Ise is ruled by the Oda House,
 * NB: These remnants can only appear once per playthrough and cannot appear if the Iga remnants have appeared earlier on in the same playthrough.
 * You can demand their surrender for 18 Neg after taking two of their territories in Ise. After doing this, they will occasionally send you Archer unit as reinforcements.


 * Noteworthy commanders:
 * Hara Shouji - will be automatically captured when you completely conquer the Hara House. He commands an Archer unit with a hit-all Volley attack.
 * Akihime - she can only be recruited in a Second Game after completely taking over the Hara House. The top choice will have her join you while the bottom choice won't let her join - but triggers the same event as the first playthrough (H-ing her for 5 SAT). If you don't have enough national power to recruit her, then she'll be put into the harem automatically and you won't be able to recruit her afterwards (usually happens if you started with bonuses of other houses).
 * Gekkou - he is only available in version 1.04 after selecting the bonus character option at the beginning of a Second Game. He can be recruited by selecting a colorless event in Ise ('Lightning during the day') after the beginning-of-turn cherry blossom viewing event. This event will disappear after Nobunaga breaks the first gourd, so he should be recruited as soon as possible. Gekkou's passive skill gives him a 100% chance to assassinate any non-commander unit that lost all its action points during a battle.
 * Saijou Mochikiyo - A Diviner/Yin Yang unit who is Hara's chief vassal. Will remove himself from the game in one of Hara's end of turn event if, while at war with the Hara House, you haven't captured him, and the Hara House does not have complete control of their original province (i.e. during the end of the turn you own some of it) and if you haven't already seen a Hara end of turn event in this turn. His level cap is random.
 * Settoku Houshi - Can be recruited in Ise with 6 Negotiation points. He has 8 Negotiation points, which make him quite useful when recruiting prisoners. His name is on the game progress report.



Ashikaga House

 * Provinces
 * 京 (Kyo), まむし油田 (Mamushi Oil Field/Mamushi Yuden)


 * Basics
 * You can declare war on the Ashikaga House on Turn 3 or later for 8 Neg. If you do not, then on random turns, the Ashikaga House will demand gold from you. If you refuse to pay, they will declare war on you.
 * There are some unknown mechanics in play which determine how much gold the Ashikaga House will demand from you. Under most circumstances, the will demand the lowest of either your total amount of gold or 15 times the current turn count, however if you have exactly 0 gold, they seem to never demand money from you and if your turn count is extremely high (the exact number is unknown, but it is believed to be sufficiently high to be possible only in the KTM route), they will demand the lowest of either your total amount of gold or 40 times the current turn count.
 * Ashikaga will automatically declare war are if you are at war with the Tenshi Sect (this appears to occur just before Turn 35 if you haven't declared war on anyone up to this point).
 * If you are at war with the Ashikaga House, it is possible for an event to trigger in which the Hara House will declare war on you.
 * Once you have conquered either Kyo or the Mamushi Oil Field, you can demand their surrender for 18 Neg, afterwards they will occasionally send you Miko units as reinforcements, these units will always know Miko Dance.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Yamamoto Isoroku - A powerful archer unit who while fighting for the Ashikaga House cannot be captured and is immune to instant kill attacks such as Suzume's Assassinate 2 unless certain conditions are met (see below).
 * She will join the Ashikaga House in an end of turn event one turn after you become at war with them, however if the war declaration happens during other end of turn events then she will join two turns later instead. For example, if you use an action to manually declare war on turn 4 then Isoroku will join them at the end of turn 5 but if the war is instead triggered by refusing to pay them at the end of turn 4 then she will instead join them at the end of turn 6.
 * Her joining can also be delayed if other event(s) get in the way of her event, but this is very unlikely to happen.
 * Provided that Isoroku is a member of the Ashikaga House, the first battle which Rance participates in against the Ashikaga House after Isoroku has joined them will be an automatically lost. Note however that this event requires Sill.
 * If you annihilate her unit* during a battle which you win**, you will see an event where she is fleeing and soon after you will see an event she is scolded by Ashikaga Choushin. Seeing this event will fully heal her unit, make it capturable, and make it vulnerable to instant kill attacks. Furthermore, as she is a route heroine she will automatically be captured whenever the game checks whether or not to capture or kill her. Among other technical things, this means that as long as your prison is unlocked and not full, and that you've not annihilated more than one other enemy unit during a battle in which you've annihilated her, she will be guaranteed to be captured. A possible exploit for this is to, after seeing the scolding event, capture her unit by sending Suzume alone in to a battle against her, allowing Suzume to assassinate and hence automatically capture her (with no risk to Suzume's unit as Suzume is tagged as being important to the plot and hence cannot be killed).
 * * going purely by the game's code, this may also apply if you reduce her troop count to below 20 (as opposed to making it reach 0).
 * ** NB: The event triggered by conquering the last territory of the Ashikaga House should take priority over this.
 * Regardless of any of the above, she will also be automatically captured when you conquer the Ashikaga House.
 * Yamaguchi Tamon and Inoue Shigemi/Shigeyoshi - Once Ashikaga House is defeated, these two subordinates of Isoroku will join you after Isoroku's second purple event is seen (must have at least 7 spare National Power and 6 empty slots in the roster beforehand). Their names are on the game progress report.
 * Ikkyuu - Can be captured in battle but won't be automatically captured when you conquer the Ashikaga House. His special skill, Witty Comeback can be used to reverse the battle rating and make any losing battle a win. However, this skill can only be used thrice during the game, so it should be saved for extremely difficult battles.
 * Ashikaga Choushin - Automatically captured after conquering the Ashikaga House. Due to his very poor stats he is widely considered the worst unit in the game. He is only worth recruiting for the Emperor Ring (see Items) and the character clears of himself/Akihime (see Character clears).
 * Ashikaga Yoshiteru - A generic-faced commander who is level 45. Can be captured in battle. His name is on the game progress report.
 * Kuge Kyouko - After Kyo is conquered, she can be recruited with 15 Negotiation. She starts with Light Attack, a very useful skill for capturing other commanders. Her name is on the game progress report.
 * Kuge Kiyoko - After Kyo is conquered, she can be recruited with 15 Negotiation. She starts with Asset Tech, which can generate up to 2000 G income per turn when you have 50000 G. Her name is on the game progress report.
 * The "Mino Three" - Ganko Ittetsu (Tactician), Andou Kyuuri (Diviner/Yin Yang) and Takuwan-sama (Warrior) -. If Mamushi Oil Field is conquered, they can be recruited with 3 Negotiation each.
 * Aburako Dousan - A monk that you can obtain after recruiting all her three subordinates (the Mino Three in Mamushi Oil Field) using Rance's satisfaction point. She can use Convert Action 1 in army battles and has four action points, and therefore she makes a great combo with any unit that loses all its action points in a single special attack (e.g. Ninja units). Youkai Ward attacks enemies without any counterattack. Since she's a monk, her troops fully recover at the start of a turn. She also comes with quite a big troop size. Her name is on the game progress report. In total, she cost 5 fans to hire.



Iga House

 * Provinces
 * 大和 (Yamato)


 * Basics
 * You can declare war on them (for 15 Neg) anytime after Inukai has been told about Suzume's defection.
 * Iga will not declare war unless you are not at war with anyone and the Tenshi Sect monks have been massacred (which is the same event that causes the Tenshi Sect to declares war, often meaning that the Tenshi Sect must be conquered or vassaled before Iga can declare war). Once these conditions are satisfied, Iga will usually declare war very quickly, possibly at the end of the turn in which the last war you were in ended.
 * A few turns after war has begun, there will be a command in Yamato to ask Suzume about info on Iga ('Get information on Iga from Suzume'). Afterwards, a purple event will be available which gives you 2000 gold and also apparently makes the Iga army weaker ('Dirty plan (What's Inukai's is mine)' [sic]).
 * If have not yet entered a route and you conquer Iga by conquering their last territory with a group that does not include Suzume, around 11-13 turns after you have conquered Iga, Inukai will lead a revolt and take Yamato back from you. Fortunately, it seems to be the case that this revolt can only happen once
 * Conquering Iga with a group that includes Suzume will give you 5 SAT.
 * In Second Games, regardless of how the war has (re)started, if you have 3 spare national power a 35 Search points event in Yamato will appear around 3 turns after the war has begun. This event has Rance duel with Inukai (level 42, 260HP) and his 3 dogs (level 5, 100HP).
 * For Rance to win this fight, the recommended level is 51 or above, although with either luck or some of the contributing factors listed below, it is possible for Rance to win with a lower level.
 * As Inukai is in the back row and therefore shielded by his 3 dogs, Rance must have a minimum of 4 actions in order to win this fight.
 * Rance Attack can allow Rance to win at a lower level, although the biggest issue is that Rance will usually not have enough HP to survive the fight.
 * As Rance's Spd stat contributes to the turn order in this fight, increasing it will increase your probability of winning, particularly if you pay close attention to the order that Inukai's dogs have been attacking you in.
 * Losing is an instant Game Over.
 * Winning the duel takes over Iga and recruits Inukai.
 * The game doesn't count as a normal conquer, so you can still invade other provinces on the turn in which you have done this event.
 * Alternately, also in Second Games, if you have Gekko, you can do a colorless event in Owari called 'Punish Inukai!', doing this event will conquer all of Iga's provinces and will not count as an actual conquering. This removes Inukai from the game.
 * Be warned that if the player is in the Isoroku route and hasn't seen the event where Rance is told that Keikoku has given birth or if the player is in the Ran route and hasn't seen the event where both Keikoku and Houjou Souun are discovered to be missing, then if either Cario is in the control of either the Oda House or a vassal of the Oda House, or if both the Takeda House and the Mouri House are neither conquered nor the vassal of the Oda House, then if the Iga House has been conquered and Yamato  is ruled by the Oda House, some Iga remnants may appear in Yamato, automatically conquer it, generate their own army of generics, and declare war on the Oda House.
 * NB: These remnants can only appear once per playthrough and cannot appear if the Hara remnants have appeared earlier on in the same playthrough.
 * Since these remnants do not include Inukai, they cannot cause Inukai to lead a revolt.
 * Once you are at war with the Iga House, it appears to be the case that you can only vassal them (for 18 Neg) if you have either conquered or vassaled 4 provinces adjacent to Yamato (including Owari). Once vassaled, they will occasionally send you Ninja units as reinforcements.
 * Once you have conquered two territories in Yamato, the five Goninjais will begin appearing in battles, other than having Remove Status 2, they are no different that generic Ninjas.
 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Inukai - Can only be captured via the duel in Second Games, if you don't see his event, it's because you need one empty space in your commanders' list. You also need 3 unused National Power.
 * The five Goninjais (Ninja 14, Ninja 16, Ninja 33, Ninja 55, Ninja 68) can be captured via regular battles.
 * Matsuo Bashou - Can be captured in battles but won't be automatically captured after taking over Yamato. His name is on the game progress report.
 * Haniwa Nyorai - Can be recruited in Yamato with 15 Negotiation points.A monk with 7 attack points,Large propaganda effect and Clay Figure Smasher, a skill that dealt 2.0 x damage to Haniwa units.



Tokugawa House

 * Provinces
 * 三河 (Mikawa)


 * Basics
 * Any time after their introduction, you can declare war on them for 13 Neg.
 * They are allied with the Takeda House, and will declare war on you if you are at war with the Takeda House, regardless of if the Tokugawa House is vassaled or not.
 * Possibly for the sake of fairness, Tokugawa will not declare war on you if you're at war with Takeda due to the Takeda Family Bonus.
 * Similarly, if and only if they are vassaled, they will declare war on you when the Demon Army appears (they will not declare war on you when the Demon Army appears if they are not vassaled). When doing this, they will conquer Toukaidou if the Oda House controls it.
 * Other than being at war with them, there are apparently no conditions that need to be satisfied to vassal the Tokugawa House, which can be done for 30 Neg. Afterwards, they will occasionally send you warrior units as reinforcements.
 * Be warned that, regardless of any houses that you have conquered before or after their declaration of war, it seems to be impossible to vassal the Tokugawa house after they have declared war on you by either of the two above methods and it also seems to be impossible to vassal them after the Demon Army has appeared.
 * See the One Eyed House's section for information on how these two houses interact.
 * Initially, they only use human troops and commanders but once the player takes over two territories of Mikawa, the Youkai (specifically, Raccoon Dogs) will participate in battles as commanders and any of them who remain uncaptured will defend the last territory in Mikawa together, which as they are all quite strong units will make the battle very difficult. Naturally however, the battle becomes significantly easier when most of the Youkai are captured beforehand as they will be replaced with normal human commanders (note that Ieyasu himself cannot be captured). Be warned that when fighting the Raccoon Dogs, despite the commanders being Youkai, their units do not receive triple damage from Youkai Ward, probably due to the troops in said units being human.
 * After winning this battle, if the player is either in a first game, or has not found out that Ieyasu's favourite dish is tempura (see his entry below) there will be a commander battle against Tokugawa Ieyasu (level 55, 600HP) and two bodyguards (level 25, 250HP), be warned that in commander battles Ieyasu has a powerful attack that will hit an entire row (like Yamamoto Sweeping Fire) but requires preparation (and 2 shurikens to cancel), however if you have a strong enough team, he can usually be defeated before this becomes an issue.
 * Be warned, losing send you to the Alice Mansion, but will not decrease their level.
 * As covered in more detail below, if the player does know that Ieyasu's favourite dish is tempura, the player will have the option to take Mikawa without a fight, once they've won the battle in the last of the Tokugawa house's territory.
 * Another way to obtain Mikawa is to vassalize the country after you have declared war on it, which will make new purple events appear in Mikawa, the first of these new events is 'Tease Tokugawa Ieyasu', after doing this, the event 'Steal heirloom from Tokugawa Ieyasu' will appear in which you will get the Blue Seal Case, an equipable item that reduces the damage received by a unit by 30%. There is also a third purple event, 'Go to Tokugawa for ero' which will give you 1 satisfaction point (which is essentially a waste of a fan since the 'Tonight at Rance's place' even in Owari will do the same thing). Then if you have Ikkyuu in your party, 2 more purple events will show up in Mikawa ('Tease Tokugawa Ieyasu even more' {requires Sill, although it's impossible to not have her when this event is available} and 'Tokugawa Ieyasu...'). These last 2 events will kill off Ieyasu and make Mikawa come under your control without a fight. Note that neither Senhime nor Tokugawa Ieyasu will be attainable via this method and Senhime's H-scene will not happen. Sadly this means that outside of getting the Blue Seal Case and the standard Warrior reinforcement units, there is basically nothing to gain from vassaling the Tokugawa house, and if you go as far as conquering them via this method, it can be argued that you've wasted your Action Fans, since it would cost you a total of 6 fans (5 purple events and at least 1 for the actual vassaling) while actually conquering them normally while you are at war only costs 4 (assuming you never lose a battle) and gives you 5 SAT and the opportunity to recruit Senhime. The only real reason to vassal the house is if you can't beat the final battles, but as described above, you can just capture the Youkai to make the battle easier, which may not even cost you any Fans (just capture them when Tokugawa attacks you) and gives you the opportunity to recruit Ieyasu.
 * Note that after the Tokugawa House is vassaled, Senhime & Ieyasu are still attainable if you make the Tokugawa house declare war again by any of the methods listed above.
 * If you decide to do this, note that if you vassal the Tokugawa House while at war with the Takeda House (to do this you will have to go to war with Tokugawa and then Takeda), Tokugawa will declare war again as a end of turn event, possibly on the same turn in which you've vassaled them.
 * Taking over Mikawa also enables an event where Kaguyahime (Alien) requires three parts to repair her spaceship, which can be found randomly in dungeons. Completing this will allow you to H her and get the item Black Tri-Star Doctors (黒医三連星). Not completing this gives you the option to heal Rance to full health every visit, which may be better in some cases.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Tokugawa Ieyasu - Can only be obtained in Second Games. To get him, you must capture Sakakibara Yasumasa and talk to him twice to learn Ieyasu's favorite dish is tempura. This requires both Sill and Kouhime. Afterwards, when you have taken over the last Tokugawa territory, if Sill is available then you will be offered the choice to either fight Ieyasu or to bring out the tempura. If you choose to bring out the tempura then Ieyasu will give you all of the Tokugawa House's remaining territory without a fight and he will join you at the beginning of a later turn, provided that you have sufficient room in your roster and sufficient NP.
 * Note his joining event seems to have a low priority and therefore may take a while before it triggers. Note also that despite Sill appearing in this event there seems to be no sign in the game's code that she is actually required for it to trigger.
 * Furthermore, note that conquering Tokugawa in this manner will disable all of Senhime's appearances, including the initial +5 Satisfaction H-scene that would normally be triggered when conquering the Tokugawa House.
 * The 5 underling youkais (Honda Tadakatsu, Ii Naomasa, Sakai Tadatsugu, Hattori Hanzou, and Sakakibara Yasumasa) can be captured in battle directly. The first four (all except Sakakibara) can also be recruited by doing Ieyasu's events after Ieyasu has joined. They may join other factions after Tokugawa falls and before Ieyasu joins you, but Ieyasu's events will automatically poach them back from those factions.
 * Senhime - will be released from the Mikawa dungeon after an automatic H-scene that appears when you completely take over Tokugawa territories (again, only if you fought Ieyasu instead of offering him tempura). She can be recruited via a purple event in Mikawa. (Her initial cost is 4 and you can't recruit her if you don't have enough nation power to accommodate her cost). If you don't use her to fight for several turns, she will leave you and will sometimes join other houses. Upon clearing, she will not leave you any more.



Tenshi Sect

 * Provinces
 * なにわ (Naniwa), 蜜柑 (Mikan)


 * Basics
 * The following only applies in non-KTM routes, in the KTM route, the Tenshi Sect is much like any other house and they require 16 Neg to declare war on.
 * War breaks out with Tenshi sect a short while after two gourds are broken. This will happen even if you don't have provinces adjacent to Tenshi sect.
 * When you are at war with them, there will be rioters within each of your provinces and they will begin to accumulate. in the command window, you can see the % of accumulation. And by selecting this option, you can suppress them (resets the % of rioters to 0). If the % of rioters reaches or exceeds 100%, then at the end of the turn, there will be riot. The first option is to fight them, where you will send a group of commanders to battle against one peasant unit of 1000 soldiers. The second option is to let the riot go on, which will lower the nation power of the respective province by 1, but will never reduce the national power of a province to below 2. Only one riot will happen per turn if multiple provinces have over 100% dissent.
 * If Tenshi sect has not been defeated after the first fight with Xavier, the player will be asked whether to cease fire with Tenshi sect or to continue war with them. Doing the prior will turn Tenshi sect into your vassal and doing the later will continue the war, but will allow you to vassal them for 10 Neg. They will never send you reinforcements.
 * A few turns into the war, some of your troops will desert, the number will be quite noticeable in higher difficulties.
 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Seigan - Will join in a low priority start of turn event in non-Ran or Isoroku routes after the Tenshi Sect is either conquered or vassaled after the first fight with Xavier (note he will never join you if you conquer the Tenshi Sect before entering a route, in this case you will be rewarded with a +5 SAT event instead).
 * NOTE: He requires room in the commander list and 3 NP before he will join. Also, since Seigan's join event is low priority, it may be advisable to remove battle permits or stop attacking for a few turns to make sure he joins your army. If he doesn't join your army, he may join it way later in the game even after Sill has been frozen. (his joining event has Sill in the conversation)
 * Genri (言裏) - Joins a few turns after Seigan joins. NOTE: Also a low priority event.
 * The "Three Good siblings," or the Miyoshi Brothers, ( Miyoshi A-kichi (三好Ａ吉)(Foot soldier)、Miyoshi B-ko (三好Ｂ子) (Miko)、Miyoshi C-zou (三好Ｃ藏)(Archer) ) will join Tenshi Sect after you have been at war with them for a few turns. They have all 5's in the combat stats, 2 action points, 1 cost, and each of them respectively has a 7 in one of Exploration (Miyoshi A), Negotiation (Miyoshi B), and Construction (Miyoshi C). The siblings can be directly captured in battle.
 * Yodokun Gosai - Can be captured in battles. Her name is on the game progress report.
 * Honda Masanobu - a Tenshi tactician, who doesn't seem to have any story significance. He is considered an "important character" and has certain related immunities (Gekko's Assassination+), and it is believed he also cannot be captured unless his original faction has been conquered and he has been rehired by another house. His name is on the game progress report.

Asai-Asakura House

 * Provinces
 * テキサス (Texas)


 * Basics
 * Anytime after their introduction, you can declare war on them for 13 Neg.
 * A scene will occur where you meet two envoys from Asai-Asakura. During this scene you will be given two options, choosing the second option will cause them to declare war on you.
 * If you aren't in war with any house, there may be an event which will start the war anyway, as if you chose the first option (this event sometime happens even without the event where you're given a choice occurring). This event won't happen before the conflict with the Tenshi Sect, unless you're in the KTM route.
 * After taking over one of their territories, you will be attacked by an endless wave of pandas, when you lose the waves will stop, and you will be forced to retreat and lose the territory (it's best just to right click as soon as the pandas appear). On the following turn, you can take over territories normally.
 * Some turns after the war has begun, an earthquake will hit Texas, weakening them. Afterwards you can do a purple event on Texas for send poisoned "aid" and weaken their troops even more.
 * Once the event where Asakura Yoshikage considers surrendering to Oda has happened (this appear to require taking a territory in Texas after the scene in which Hakkin Dasan ends with him taking off his mask and telling Yukihime to leave), you can demand their surrender for 15 Neg. Afterwards, they will occasionally send you Monk units as reinforcements.
 * In Second Games, a few turns after defeating Asai-Asakura, Yukihime will use her body to influence another house to go to war against the player. This can be prevented by recruiting her father Asakura Yoshikage, raising his relationship to Normal, and pick an exploration command in Texas for 15 Search points before the first house fights you due to her influence. Note that, you must have at least 1 free national power and less than 30 commanders, or the exploration command will not appear.
 * While her exact mechanics are not known, it appears that Yukihime has the following priorities when making a house go to war with you, that is, she will only use #3 if #1 and #2 have already been conquered, vassaled or are already at war with you.
 * Tanegashima House
 * Uesugi House
 * Takeda House
 * Mouri House
 * Interestingly, it appears that these may be the only houses that Yukihime can make declare war on you. If all of these houses are already in a state where they can't declare war, she seems to stay in her findable state forever.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Asakura Yoshikage - Automatically captured upon taking over Texas.
 * Hakkin Dasan - To recruit him, do a purple event in Texas after taking it over. The first choice will kill him, the second will recruit him. Also the same turn you recruit him a red event called Panda Hunt will show up in Kazusa 2000. This is a commander fight against 3 Pandas with 350 HP. It adds 400 pandas to Hakkin Dasan's unit. From that point on it shows up every four turns adding 500 pandas each time.
 * Yukihime - Only available in Second Games. She joins you after the exploration command in Texas which can become available either by bringing Asakura Yoshikage to normal before she starts a war between you and a random house, she'll not join you after this event.



Miko Institute

 * Provinces:
 * 邪馬台 (Yamatai)


 * Basics
 * Before you can declare war on them, you have to do 3 events at Yamatai, all of which give SAT.
 * Declaring war takes 18 Neg.
 * They cannot be vassaled.
 * Their final territory is special, it has a 50% Battlefield Effect in their favour (and only in their favour, if you later defend on this territory, you won't have the same bonus). Note however that this is not a castle battle, so the Battle Rating will not start out significantly against you.
 * Conquering them gives 5 SAT and will give Rance an affection bonus.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Natori - Automatically captured upon taking over Yamatai, she is a very useful character with high stats and Miko Storm 2 which kills 30% of all of the enemy's troops. Whenever she is H-ed in Rance's room (which occurs very rarely, but for no apparent reason, talking to her before visiting Rance's place seems to up the probability of her being the H-ed girl), he gets an affection bonus.
 * Souma Hayate - Can join the Miko Institute after 2 territoires are conquered, but he can be missed if you conquer them quickly enough. He Commander Charge with a high number of actions and good stats. His maximum level is random. His name is on the game progress report.
 * Himiko - A monk with 6 actions, 7's in ATK/DEF/SPD/INT and 6/6/3 in Search/Neg/Const. She will be deployed after the story scenes which result from fighting a few battles with the Miko Institute, after which she can be captured at any time. Her maximum level is 40. Sadly she has Field Battle Expert, so if you keep her until the game ends, you will miss out on 2 points since she cannot have End-Game points. Her name is on the game progress report.
 * Goemon - A ninja with 7's in ATK/DEF/INT, 6 SPD, but has only 2 action points. He also has Assassination 2 and Battlefield Construction 3. Can be captured in battles. His maximum level is random. His name is on the game progress report.
 * Maya and Isuzu - Miko commanders who are subordinates of Natori. They can be captured after an event showing them asking Natori to let them participate in battles. They will never be killed in combat against you and have unique portraits but are otherwise insignificant. They have average stats.



Imagawa House

 * Provinces
 * 東海道 (Toukaidou)


 * Basics
 * If the player defeats the Tokugawa House (or just takes over Mikawa, if someone else owns it), the Hannies will declare war on the player (the declaration of war might come a little later if some Imagawa introduction events are still being processed).
 * You can declare war on them after the first event that involves their appearance (requires 10 Neg).
 * They cannot be vassaled.
 * Their army consists of unique Hanny units, they are immune to all magical attacks and they all have a ranged, non-magical attack which can hit any of your units. They cannot be captured.
 * After several scenes, the Hanny Shinsengumi will try to cross through your territories to get to Kyo. You will be given a choice to allow them through or stop them. If you don't let them pass through, they will declare war on you. If you let them through then they won't declare war on you, which is a requirement to recruit Okita Nozomi.
 * Once you've been at war with them for a while, a purple 'Collect hanny's information' event will become available in Toukaidou (the prerequisite seems to be the event where the hannies have a tea party). Selecting this makes the 'Meet Imagawa Yoshimoto secretly' event available, when you do this event, you will be presented with two choices. If you choose to keep his secret (first choice), then once Imagawa is defeated, you'll get an H-scene with Imagawa Anko and 5 SAT. The second choice lets you completely take over the Hanny's territory with no further battles, but you won't get the H-scene.
 * Warning: the events won't happen if Sill is not available.
 * If you conquer the Mouri House while the Takeda House and Imagawa House are still standing and not at war with you, Takeda will conquer Toukaidou. This does not appear to happen in the Kill the Monkey route and will happen in both first and second games.
 * Noteworthy Commanders
 * Okita Nozomi To recruit her, you must let the Hannies pass through on their way to Kyo, then after completing 3 special purple events in Kyo, the option to recruit her will become available (also in Kyo). Be warned, if you declare war before the Hannies reach Kyo, the purple events won't appear and you can't recruit her. If the recruit option doesn't appear, bring your national power up until it does, and note that it requires Sill. Her stats are nothing too special, but she has a high level (useful for commander/dungeon battles) and has a base cost of 0 NP. She also has a couple of SAT bonuses you can trigger and it convenient for Kenshin's route.



Uesugi House

 * Provinces
 * 佐渡 (Sado), MAZO (MAZO)


 * Basics
 * The Uesugi House will declare war at the end of turn 101 if they are still standing, they will also declare war after a few turns if you have conquered or vassaled the Asai-Asakura House and are currently not at war with the Tenshi Sect or the Demon Army (note that the Iga House also has very similar conditions for declaring war, and will usually declare war on you before the Uesugi House). Otherwise, you can declare war on them for 20 Neg.
 * Once you start fighting the Uesugi house, whenever Rance and Uesugi Kenshin face each other on the battlefield, you will get an automatic victory.
 * In First Games, if the player go to war against the Houjou House then the Takeda House will quickly take out the Uesugi House (unless the player go to war against BOTH Houjou and Uesugi, or if the player is also currently fighting Takeda).
 * After conquering an entire province from Uesugi, they will have night raids to push you back from conquering the second province (it is impossible to capture any territory from Uesugi until the coup event takes place, as they will continue night raids).
 * After a few events in the Uesugi House's turn (the last of which is Kenshin returning from training in the mountains), the next time you attack Uesugi House (even by Battle Permits), there will be a coup, with Kenshin's uncle taking over and his messenger offering to give you Kenshin in exchange for peace.
 * Slaying the messenger on the spot, the first option, allows you to conquer Uesugi House normally.
 * Choosing to accept, the second option, will make the Uesugi House your vassal, after which, they will occasionally send you warrior units as reinforcements.
 * In the True Route, Xavier, searching for Uesugi Kenshin, will take over the Uesugi house if it is a vassal, turning it into a Demon Army territory.
 * Note that the coup event will not trigger if Rance has not met Kenshin yet and has not seen at least one night raid. If Kenshin's uncle is not defeated within 5 turns after the coup event, Kenshin and Ai will be lost forever.
 * Once you have conquered the house and recruited Kenshin and AI, a battle with boars is unlocked every few turns in Sado. It gives 500 + 100 gold for every additional fight and is required to unlock one of the Six Great Treasures (see Sengoku Rance:Objectives.) This one is superior to the one in Owari, as it offers 20 points per turn (a total of 60 are needed) versus the Owari event's 10, see Game mechanics for more details).


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Uesugi Kenshin - Will only join you if you slay the messenger and conquer the Uesugi House, she can either be recurited directly by a purple event, or she will join in a later start of turn event.
 * Naoe Ai - Will only join you after Kenshin has joined. You can either wait for her to auto-join after a few turns or if you want her now; you need to pick a purple ??? event to have her join you.
 * NOTE!: In older versions of the game, If you pick the Uesugi house 2nd Game bonus, it is possible to get 2 copies of Naoe Ai! One from the 2nd Game bonus. The second copy can be acquired through a purple ??? event in Sado.
 * Torako and Katsuko - Can only be captured in battle after you conquered the Uesugi House and they get hired by other houses (unless you start the game with the Uesugi bonus, in which case you cannot capture them, as they will not join other countries after Uesugi is defeated). Their maximum levels are random. Their names are on the game progress report.
 * Irobu Eroko - Can be captured in battles. Her name is on the game progress report.



Takeda House

 * Provinces
 * 信濃 (Shinano), 貝 (Shell/Kai)


 * Basics
 * You can declare war on them for 6 Neg anytime after their introduction, however in non-KTM routes, you will also require the event where the Takeda generals consider how Oda will effect the balance of power between Takeda, Uesugi and Houjou.
 * They will almost immediately declare war on you after the temple events of Isoroku route.
 * In Second Games, they will begin preparations to declare war on you if you reach turn 72 without already being at war with them. The preparation takes 6 turns, but can be delayed by 3 turns by doing an event in a province owned by the Takeda House taking 8 Neg, and then 3 more Neg for every time it is repeated (so 11, 14, 17... Neg).
 * They cannot be vassaled.
 * If the player go to war against the Takeda House, the Tokugawa House will go to war against the player.
 * The Takeda House is known for its Cavalry units, which are similar to Warrior units except that they do more damage than Warriors and can hit the front or back row of your side from the front or back row of their side.
 * In First Games, if the player go to war against either the Houjou House or the Uesugi House, then Takeda will quickly take out the other house (unless the player go to war against BOTH Houjou and Uesugi, or if the player is also currently fighting Takeda). See the individual house's sections for more details.
 * On later playthroughs, on turns 54/55, regardless of if the Uesugi House is still standing or not, Takeda will take over Saitama from Houjou, this can be prevented by declaring war on either the Takeda or Houjou houses but if you later make peace with the Houjou House (after turn 55), Takeda will take over Saitama as an end of turn event. Possibly removing the Houjou House from the game.
 * Note that If you conquer the Mouri House while the Takeda House and Imagawa House are still standing and are not at war with you, Takeda will conquer Toukaidou in and end of turn event. This does not appear to happen in the Kill the Monkey route and will happen in both first and second games.
 * At the end of the third turn after war has begun with the Takeda House, its four generals will start participating in battles. Then on random turns, the four generals of the Takeda House will lead a consecutive blitz charge, attacking you four times in the same turn. As a note of warning, you will be told that the 'Takeda army is gather' the turn before the blitz.
 * The blitz attack will always contain two uncaptureable units with randomly generated (but still valid) moves on the front row called 'Takeda Cavalry', they will be accompanied by one of the Takeda generals and up to 3 units from Takeda's army.
 * See below for tips on how to beat specific battles of the blitz however as a general note, it's best to deliberately lose to the Takeda House until the blitz is forced to target castles, this way you will start all of the battles of the blitz with a huge advantage.
 * The generals attack in the following order:
 * Kousaka Yoshikage (Ninja)
 * Sanada Tourin (Tactician)
 * Baba Shouen (Cavalry)
 * Yamagata Masakage (Cavalry)
 * A green exploration command (for 40 points of Search) to assassinate Takeda Shingen becomes available once both of the following conditions are met:
 * The player has previously defeated Takeda House via brute force and let the game auto-save. This can have been done in an earlier play-through, but can also be done in the current one (by conquering via brute force and then loading a save file where Takeda still exists).
 * In the current game you have successfully blocked all 4 consecutive attacks in a blitz, AND no other events is suppressing events at the beginning of the turn (which introduces the availability of the command, where Rance and Suzume discuss about Shingen).
 * To clarify, the beginning of the turn event CAN occur on a different turn than the turn following the one where you blocked all 4 consecutive attacks. You only need to block ONE blitz, and it is possible for the event to occur after later blitz, which you do not need to block.
 * The Takeda House automatically falls after the assassination, and Sanada Tourin will be captured, details on the other generals are found below.
 * Note that if you want to conquer Takeda normally (which is much easier if you can do it before the generals start to fight), you only need to conquer Shinano and Shell/Kai to defeat the Takeda house, any additional territory that Takeda might have acquired will automatically come under your control once these two provinces are conquered (this is one good way to get control of Saitama, and therefore the ability to declare war on the Dokuganryuu House without having to declare war on the Houjou House).
 * If you choose to conquer Takeda normally, after winning the final battle, Baba Shouen, Yamagata Masakage and Kousaka Yoshikage will have a battle with Rance's unit, with squads of 50 each. This shouldn't be too difficult as long as Rance's unit is at a good stength and Rance has at least 4 actions.
 * Note that Rance's unit is not healed before this battle, so you should try not to use Rance in the last battle against the Takeda House, because if you do, Rance will have to fight the three generals with whatever troops he has left from the previous battle, which can become dangerous if Baba Shouen uses his Commander Charge or Yamagata Masakage uses his Onrush to reduce Rance's moves.
 * Losing will send you to the Alice Mansion and heal Rance's troops, but otherwise, the battle will not become any easier.
 * Winning will kill the three generals that you have fought and capture Sanada Tourin.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * The four generals of the Takeda House, be warned that they all have a passive skill which gives they all 4 buffs at 50% strength (that is, the maximum strength), for this reason, a Tactician with the ability to remove buffs is highly recommended for any battles against the generals. Note that while they are still a part of the Takeda House, they cannot be hit by insta-kill moves.
 * In blitz attack order:
 * Kousaka Yoshikage, one of the best Ninjas in the game. Of particular note, he has access to Assassinate 2, meaning that he is probably best fought with units that are immune to insta-kill moves (in the latest patches, that means any unit that you cannot fire, if you have done a good job upgrading him, Rance can do well in this fight).
 * Sanada Tourin, one of the best Tacticians in the game, he has access to Battle Strategy A/3 and Battle Rating Down 2 (he does not have any buff removing ability). His Battle Rating Down move should be feared, as the 3 uses of it that he has is enough to turn a won battle into a lost one, fortunately however as he is a Tactician, his AI can be exploited, if you remove as many buffs as possible from his side, he will often 'waste' a turn reapplying them.
 * Baba Shouen, the second best Cavalry unit in the game, he has Battle Rating Up 1 (taking 2 of his 5 actions, fortunately it is weaker than Tourin's Battle Rating Down 2) and Commander Charge (taking all of them). Save some of your stronger units for him, and hope that he immediately uses Commander Charge, otherwise he can be a tough fight - there's no tricks for beating him.
 * Yamagata Masakage, the best Cavalry unit in the game, he has Battle Rating Up 2 (taking 2 of his 5 actions - it is stronger than Tourin or Baba's move) and Onrush (taking 2 of his 5 actions, doing 1.3x damage, and reducing the number of actions of the unit it hits by 1). Much like Baba, there's no tricks to beating him, just throw your strongest units at him and hope for the best.
 * Note that after the assassination,the three uncaptured generals (Baba Shouen, Yamagata Masakage and Kousaka Yoshikage) will become reffugees and be hired by other houses, making them captureable. Note also that since they are not classed as 'important' units after they have left the Takeda House, they can be hit with insta-kill moves such as Whirlwind Shot or Aim and Shoot, allowing for easy captures if combined with Defeated Warrior Hunt and some luck. Be warned that they often have over 3000 troops when they join other houses and can even appear in castle battles.
 * Akiyama - Generic male cavalry unit with 6 action points, 6/6/7/6/5/5/5 in stats, Rear Guard Charge and Battle Rating Up 2. He can only be captured after Takeda has been defeated and he has been hired by another house.
 * Super Jockey - Generic male cavalry unit with random stats, including a random level cap (Highest seen is 63). Can be captured anytime.



Houjou House

 * Provinces
 * 江戸 (Edo), 上総２０００ (Kazusa 2000), さいたま (Saitama), 死国 (Death Country/Shikoku)


 * NOTE!: Italicized provinces signify an event-based change in that land's control - i.e. Shikoku is acquired by Takuga in its first event, and Saitama will sometimes be taken over by Takeda.


 * Basics
 * Will declare war on you if you conquer Takeda.
 * If province adjacent to a Houjou province other than Saitama, there will eventually be an event where a Diviner/Yin Yang is dispatched into Oda's territory to deal with some ogres. After doing her job, she'll trip and you'll have the option to either stare at her panties or rape her. Raping her will make Houjou automatically declare war on you while staring at her panties will cause nothing to happen. Note that you will not gain any satisfaction points or a CG for raping her.
 * You can declare war on them for 12 Neg.
 * On first playthroughs, unless you are at war with either the Takeda or Houjou house, the Takeda house will take over the Houjou House in two end of turn events after you go to war with the Uesugi House. Interestingly, despite what Souun says in this event, he does not actually appear in Takeda's army.
 * On later playthroughs, on turns 54/55, regardless of if the Uesugi House is still standing or not, Takeda will take over Saitama from Houjou, this can be prevented by declaring war on either the Takeda or Houjou houses, but if you later make peace with the Houjou House (after turn 55), Takeda will take over Saitama as an end of turn event. Possibly removing the Houjou House from the game.
 * Be warned that Nanjou Ran can acquire a magical attack called Summon Suzaku, this move will use all of her actions, but will hit all of your units with a 2.0x damage modifier.
 * Generally speaking, It's best to scout and avoid her until she eventually loses the move, although this can be a problem since she's scripted to appear in the Kazusa 2000 castle battle. Once Ran has lost the move, she will be not much better than a generic unit.
 * Both Ran and Souun will die if you conquer Houjou without capturing Ran beforehand.
 * Souun will die if you conquer Houjou after capturing Ran but before Souun disappears. There is about one turn time window for this. Ran can no longer be recruited afterwards
 * In non-Kenshin routes where the Demon Army appears, if you have not captured Ran by the time the Demon Army appears, Souun will offer to make peace with Oda.
 * Accepting it allows you to keep any conquered Houjou provinces but any remaining Houjou provinces become unattackable and you lose the ability to declare war on Houjou (strangely, this is not the same as making them a vassal).
 * Although Souun says he will come up with a plan against the Demon, there are no scenes of this afterwards - the game acts as if he has been unsuccessful, and the Demon Army will interact with the Houjou House as normal.
 * They cannot be vassaled.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Houjou Souun - To recruit him, go as far as the game will allow into the Oil Dungeon in found in the Mamushi Oil Field after fulfilling the following conditions and then wait for him to join in a start of turn event when you have sufficient NP:
 * Nanjou Ran is currently recruited (see below), and has not been made to leave for any reason.
 * The event where Souun goes to seal an ogre in Mamushi Oil Field has been seen (this triggers soon after capturing Ran)
 * Both of Ran's purple events have been seen (these are both triggered by talking to her normally, although the second event required the Houjou House to have been conquered).
 * The player is incapable of entering the Ran Route (i.e. you are either in a First Game, have already entered a route, or have already broken 5 gourds).
 * NB: Souun joins in a VERY low priority beginning of turn event which is often pushed back by story events and other events of higher priority. Therefore he is most likely to be recruited at any point in the game where there are few story events, and nothing of a high priority is occurring..
 * Nanjou Ran - Can only be captured when you are at war with the Houjou House and their storyline has progressed far enough that she stops using Suzaku in battles. If in doubt, you can check if she has stopped using the move by scouting before a battle which includes her, and then checking what moves her unit has. She will be unrecuritable until Souun has gone missing.
 * Daidouji Komatsu - Automatically captured when defeating the Houjou House. Can be captured beforehand, but only after Souun goes missing and you get the event where she complains that the country sucks. Her passive skill (Fan Club) increases her troop size by 20 every turn, so she can be quite useful in lenghty playthroughs. In order to clear her character you need to have no Diviners/Yin Yangs in your commander list, so try to bring her to Love before getting Ran or Souun.
 * If she's kept in prison long enough,("long enough" appears to be defined at the start of game, she may take as few as 2 turns or as long as 40+ turns depending on how the game acts) an event will be available in Owari to violate her (before the event appears, there will be a start of turn event where her fans will demand her release from prison), choosing this event will give +5 Satisfaction and send her to Rance's harem, after which she won't be recruitable any more.
 * Tsukahara Bokuden - Can be captured in battles. His name is on the game progress report.
 * Houjou Masako - A unique faced Diviner/Yin Yang who becomes the temporary leader of the Houjou House if Souun goes missing. Will automatically be captured if Houjou is defeated while Souun has yet to disappear.



One Eyed House

 * Provinces
 * エゾ (Ezo), 奥州 (Oushu)


 * Basics
 * Will not declare war on the player.
 * To declare war on them, you must first do the '??? investigate the yokai empire' event in their territory. Then a new event battle with the Seiitai Shogun should appear in Saitama. After doing this battle, you can declare war on them for 13 Neg. See here for details on the battle.
 * If you have not captured any of his wives yet, you can end the war with them by doing the event 'Make peace with Dokuganryuu Masamune'.
 * They cannot be vassaled.
 * After taking over the last One Eye territory, there will be a duel between Rance and Masamune (with Sill supporting Rance if she is available). Masamune will heal himself to full health using eyedrops whenever he drops under 50%. To counter this, first recruit Nogiku, Orime, and Noir, as well as defeat Omachi's unit in battle (and trigger the event after battle), then pick an event in the One Eyed House territory to learn from the three girls how to fight Masamune. If this event is triggered, Masamune will still use eyedrops only once, but subsequently that move will be disabled by Rance and Masamune will no longer be able to heal. It is possible to defeat Masamune without recruiting his wives and triggering their event. It is also possible that he won't use his healing spell at all - this happens only if Rance is 60 level or above - that, however, might take a while to achieve. Losing the fight will send you to the Alice Mansion, but it won't make the fight any easier.
 * If the Tokugawa House is not at war with you, and not conquered (it can be vassaled) while you are fighting the One Eyed House, at some point, One Eyed Masamune might take control of it. There is no apparent trigger for this event, it seems to happen regardless of your progress against the One Eyed house or how many wives have been captured, although the trigger may be as simple as a certain number of turns (more research is needed, since the event seems to occur randomly, it might even be possible while Tokugawa is at war with you, but there's no recorded incidents of this happening). Interestingly, the two armies do not appear to merge, but Tokugawa Ieyasu has been seen fighting for the One Eyed House after this event (even his Youkai subordinates are nowhere to be seen, much like when a house is taken by the Demon Army, the commanders just seem to vanish). This has lead to speculation that he may become a refugee and be capturable from other houses after the defeat of the One Eyed House, but this is unlikely - if you hack to capture him, his recruitment from prison event is completely generic and whenever you talk to him, he acts as if he was recruited via tempura, despite never actually being given any and there are no reports of him joining another house after the One Eyed house has fallen.
 * Interestingly, even if the last One Eyed territory you conquer is in Mikawa, the battle against Masamune still takes place in the Youkai Castle, as if you were in Ezo.
 * Another interesting fact is that upon taking Mikawa, the Hannies will say that "Oda conquered Tokugawa" despite that not really being the case (the Hannies seem to declare war as soon as Oda takes Mikawa they don't seem to actually care for Tokugawa).


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Dokuganryuu Masamune - After you defeat his house, he may join in you in a start of turn event. His national power cost is 5, but he only require 2 free national power and a free slot in your roster to join. He does not appear to attend army battles when you are fighting against his house.
 * In 1.04, he will not join if any of Nogiku, Orime, or Noir are cleared (originally he could join even if all three girls are cleared)
 * Masamune's wives:
 * Omachi - She commands the most powerful Diviner/Yin Yang unit in the game, and she has two special offensive moves, Lightning and Large Lighting, see Skills for more information but note that the only reliable ways to beat her are either a team of Ninjas and some very powerful offensive units, sheer luck (savescumming) or careful exploitation of All Guard Shikigami with other Action reducing moves (e.g. Accurate Shots). Defeat her unit in battle and win the battle to get an event where she turns into a stone. Then after Masamune joins you, get Masamune up to Trust, and then an event should occur where she joins you (requires Kouhime).
 * NOTE! (WORKS IN OLDER VERSIONS ONLY): If you pick the One eyed house 2nd Game bonus, it is possible to get 2 copies of Omachi! One from the 2nd Game bonus. The second copy can be acquired if you character clear Masamune. This can be done by invading just one area of one eyed house territory and getting Masamune to trust. This is actually a glitch and is fixed in v1.04 of Sengoku Rance; in the latest version it's impossible to clear Masamune or get a second Omachi if you began with the One-Eyed bonus.
 * Nogiku - Defeat her unit in a battle in which you win and she will be captured. She's one of the best Foot Soldiers in the game, comes with All Guard.
 * Requirement: You have to recruit Akashi Kazemaru who MUST have Hibachi as his passive skill before she can be captured, but note that he does not need to attend the battle to capture her.
 * A reason for this might lies in the Nogiku's H-cg. In which it shows that Nogiku is bounded by an iron chain which (coincidentally?) is identical to Hibachi's iron chain, but otherwise, there's nothing in the game that would even hint to the fact that Hibachi is required.
 * Although unconfirmed, it appears that you have to let a turn pass after giving Hibachi to Kazemaru for the effect to actually kick-in.
 * Orime - Defeat her unit in a battle in which you win and she will be captured, she is a fairly standard Ninja unit with very good stats.
 * Noir - Defeat her unit in a battle in which you win and she will be captured, she is a Warrior unit with Commander Charge.
 * Note that for all of Masamune's wives, there have been reports of players failing to capture them (or in Omachi's case, turn her to stone) despite fulfilling all of the conditions to do so.
 * Some players believe that their captures are tied to the 'Bodyguard' units, however this is largely believed to be false, since you can still succeed in capturing one of Masamune's wives while the 'Bodyguard' unit bearing the wife's name is undefeated and present in the battle.
 * Some players believe that there is an element of randomness to the captures however this is also in doubt. Many players have reported never experiencing issues capturing any of the wives which would be evidence against the presence of a random factor.
 * There is one proposed resolution to this. Experiments suggest that whether or not you capture a wife, provided that you have satisfied the conditions to do so, is tied to what units she is deployed with. That is, if you fail to capture a wife despite defeating her unit and satisfying the conditions to capture her, reload and then fight the same group of enemies again, you will be guaranteed to fail to capture her on your second attempt. This may suggest something about the first time you battle a wife, in this unique case, the wife is guaranteed to appear, which may influence whatever random variables are used to determine your success or failure in capturing the wife. In short, it is suggested that you may be guaranteed to capture any given wife, provided that you have satisfies the conditions to do so and you defeat their unit upon your first encounter with them, while for all following attempts, the success or failure of the capture is random, but somehow tied to what units she is deployed with (it may just be the case that the same random variable which determine unit deployment also determine the success or failure of the capture, although as above, some players suggest a deeper relationship between the deployed units and the capture, more experimentation is needed).
 * Moscow Fuyushougun - A foot soldier commander with very large troops size. Can be captured in battles, but his troop size will revert to 1000, and he has high cost, making him quite useless. His name is on the game progress report.

Tanegashima House

 * Provinces
 * 丹波 (Tamba)


 * Basics
 * Will not declare war on the player.
 * Any time after their introduction, you can declare war on them for 16 Neg.
 * You may force them to surrender (become a vassal), for 20 Neg if you have captured Yuzuhara Yuzumi or if Xavier kills her in Kenshin route. They do not appear to send you any reinforcements.
 * If you happen to be at war with another house when facing Tanegashima, an event will happen and will show Tanegashima thinking about how they have weapons, but lack manpower to use them, and he will come up with and idea to sell his musket units cheaply to the other house so that they can fight you together. To make things worse, when you are one territory away from defeating Tanegashima, he will give even more musket units to that same country if you did not defeat it first.
 * In a First Game, if the player goes to war against the Akashi House while not at war with the Mouri House or the Tanegashima House, the Mouri House will move in and conquer Tanegashima.
 * In Second Games, if you are not at war with the Mouri House or the Tanegashima House when you begin the Isoroku or Ran route, the Mouri House will conquer the Tanegashima House.




 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Yuzuhara Yuzumi - can be captured in battle. Will be automatically captured when Tanegashima House is defeated. Be warned that she has a move called 'Aim and Shoot' which has a chance of insta-killing the commander it hits on top of doing normal damage.
 * Tanegashima Shigehiko - automatically captured upon taking over Tamba.
 * Kikan Juutarou and Saika Mako - can be recruited in Tamba after recruiting Tanegashima Shigehiko.

Akashi House

 * Provinces
 * 姫路 (Himeji)


 * Basics
 * You can declare war on them for 13 Neg at anytime after Akashi Kazemaru has been introduced. He will be introduced at the end of the second turn after you have conquered or vassaled a province adjacent to Himeji.
 * If you have a province adjacent to Himeji and Akashi Kazemaru has been introduced, the Akashi House will begin preparation to declare war on the Oda House as a start of turn event (note that other events can take priority over this).
 * 5 turns after this preparation has begun, the Akashi House will declare war on the Oda house as a start of turn event (which like the previous event, can also be put off by other start of turn events), however this preparation can be delayed by 3 turns by doing an event in Himeji for a 15 Neg.
 * Note that unlike Takeda's delayal event, the Neg required to delay the war never increases.
 * Possibly due to a glitch, if you have not conquered the Mouri House, Akashi's declaration of war will simply happen without an accompanying event, but if you have conquered the Mouri House, the event will be accompanied by a full start of turn event.
 * Note that this only happens if you have conquered a province adjacent to Himeji, leading to an indirect advantage for those who choose to vassal the Tenshi Sect or the Tanegashima House rather than conquer them.
 * In First Games, if the player goes to war against the Tanegashima House and is not at war with the Akashi House, the Mouri House will move in and conquer the Akashi House. This will occur even if Mouri has no provinces adjacent to Akashi.
 * In Second Games, from turn 51 onwards (and possibly earlier, these events are difficult to confirm), if you're not at war with anyone and the Mouri House is still standing, an event where Akashi is pressured into declaring war on the Oda House by the Mouri House will be 'queued' (and can never be unqued unless you declare war on the Akashi House), this event will make the Akashi House declare war on the Oda House in an end of turn event (which can be delayed by higher priority events).
 * With seemingly no conditions, you can vassal them for 30 Neg, however they do not appear to send reinforcements.
 * While facing the Akashi House you will see several events caused by the Nuhe.
 * After you take over one territory, an event will occur introducing the Nuhe Ikuno. After this, your next battle with the Akashi House will be automatically lost due to the Nuhe Ikuno and after this, the Nuhe Natatori will be released, causing your next battle against the Akashi House to be automatically lost. What happens next depends on when you next fight the Akashi House.
 * If you fight the Akashi House again in the same turn that you've automatically lost due to the Nuhe Nataori, you will fight a normal battle and afterwards you will see Nuhe Yuuge's introduction.
 * If you do not fight the Akashi House again in the same turn that you automatically lost due to the Nuhe Natatori, you will see Nuhe Yuuge's introduction as an end of turn event.
 * After Nuhe Yuuge has been introduced, your next fight against the Akashi House will be automatically lost, then either after your next battle with the Akashi House or as an end of turn event, the Nuhe Hibachi will be released, but she will not cause you to automatically lose (Yuuge is the last automatic loss you will have against the Akashi House).
 * When dealing with the Nuhe, the following should be noted.
 * Battle Permits will not face automatic defeats, but can trigger all of the other events.
 * If you have Senhime, the automatic defeats are a good way to do the 3 losing battles required to Character Clear her, since they don't put her life at risk.
 * Conquering the final territory of the Akashi House will trigger an event that takes priority over the other events, meaning that you can conquer the Akashi House without Hibachi being introduced.
 * At the end of the turn after all of the Nuhe events have finished, you will be told in the enemy country information (even if it's turned off) that 'Many patriotic children join the army', these units often have pathetic troop sizes (often less than 50) but they are capturable, and seem to be randomly generated and therefore might be worth investing some time in capturing, since they tend to have more moves than most generics (e.g. Charge on a Warrior or All Guard on a Foot Soldier) and have sometimes been known to have 6/7s in some of their stats.


 * Noteworthy commanders
 * Akashi Kazemaru - See Character Clears for how to make him useful.
 * Kamiizumi Nobutsuna - Can be captured in battles. His name is on the game progress report.
 * Abe Heizou & Asahina Hyakuman cannot be captured, but when they are killed in a battle, they can trigger an event in Kazemaru's turn which is in the Clear Game Report and can take priority over some of Akashi's events, such as Hibachi's introduction.



Takuga

 * Provinces
 * 死国 (Death Country/Shikoku), 中っ国 (Mid Earth/Nakakkuni)


 * Basics
 * They will be introduced in 5 end of turn events after you declare war on either the Mouri House or the Houjou House. In the last of these events, they will take control of 中っ国 (Mid Earth/Nakakkuni) from the Mouri House (the last two events require the Mouri House to still be standing).
 * After the last event of their introduction, if you go to, or are at war with the Mouri House they will begin their 5 turn preparation to declare war on the Oda House. These preparations can be delayed by 3 turns by doing an event in a province owned by Takuga, taking 8 Neg, and then 3 more Neg for every time it is repeated (so 11, 14, 17... Neg). Other than this event, they will not declare war on the Oda House, meaning that if you conquer the Mouri House before the events introducing Takuga have finished, you should be able to prevent them ever declaring war.
 * Any time after they have took control of 死国 (Death Country/Shikoku), you can declare war on them for 16 Neg.
 * They cannot be vassaled.
 * Takuga's units often have massive troop sizes, on 5 Star, they've been known to have 9999 troops on most of their units.
 * If you have recruited Okita Nozomi and the events with Yamanaka Kojika have progressed to the point where the Hanny Shinsengumi have met her (see the Mouri House's section for details), then after an event between Sakamoto Ryouma and the Hannies (possibly requiring the rest of Takuga's event to have happened) and an event where the Hannies attack Takuga, a purple event 'Support Shinsengumi terrorists' will be available in Takuga's territory and you will be given the option to fund the Hannies with various amount of gold or nothing, picking nothing achieves nothing but otherwise, regardless of what amount of gold you pick, the Hannies will take over one Takuga-controlled territory every other turn for the Oda House. Note that the Hannies will not conquer the final territory of a province.
 * If you fight them until their only remaining province is Death Country, you may pick a purple event 'Close the gate and shut Takuga out?' and click on first choice to close the great gate and shut them there forever where they will not be able to attack you but you won't be able to recruit Sakamoto Ryouma any other of their commanders that you have yet to capture.
 * This event won't appear if you conquered 中っ国 (Mid Earth/Nakakkuni) before they did.
 * Once you have conquered their last province, you will fight a commander battle against 3 level 30 Red Ogres (320HP) and 3 level 25 Blue Ogres (275HP). Losing will send you to the Alice Mansion and heal your units, but the Mansion won't make the fight any easier.


 * Noteworthy Commanders
 * Sakamoto Ryouma - Automatically captured when Takuga is conquered, otherwise cannot be captured and is a fairly normal Ninja unit.
 * Gon (a very good Foot Soldier with Fellow Troops' Revenge and Ally Guard+ but suffers from only having 3 Int), Kawanoe Yuzuru and Kawanoe Mine (both fairly average Warrior units) can be captured in battle, or automatically captured when Takuga is conquered. They are not recruitable unless Sakamoto Ryouma is in your army. Gon will leave your army after a few turns if Ryouma is no longer in your party.
 * Shoutoku Taishi - Can be captured in battles. His name is on the game progress report. He comes with a monstrous 9 atk and 5 action points, but has a miserable 0 def and int, and 4 speed. His level also caps at 45, so, along with having 5 action points, he can be a valuable asset for commander fights.



Mouri House

 * Provinces
 * 出雲 (Izumo), 戦艦長門 (Battleship Nagato/Senkan Nagato), 赤ヘル (Red Helmet/Akaheru), 中っ国 (Mid Earth/Nakakkuni)


 * Basics
 * You can declare war on them for 12 Neg anytime after their battle with the Akashi House, which happens at the end of any turn that you conquer or vassal a province adjacent to Himeji.
 * They will declare war on you almost immediately after you have entered the Isoroku route. Otherwise in Second Games, they will only declare war by beginning preparations to declare war on turn 62, these preparations take 6 turns, and can be delayed by 3 turns by doing an event in a province owned by the Mouri House, this event takes 8 Neg to do, and then a further 3 for every time it is repeated (exactly the same mechanic as the Takeda House).
 * They cannot be vassaled.
 * After defeating the Mouri House in battle at least once, if the Mouri House still has at least two provinces, an event in Mouri's turn can happen where he will grow impatient and offer the player a chance to fight in an all-out battle (this event can take a long time to trigger, even as much as 7 turns if you keep the battles with the Mouri House to a minimum, it does not require Rance to have met Mouri, nor does it require you to have won a battle against Mouri Motonari).
 * To take the challenge, you must do a purple event in a province owned by the Mouri House 'Invitation for battle' and then choosing to accept (declining the challenge is a waste of a fan).
 * By taking the challenge, the player will fight all the powerful commanders of the Mouri House together. That is:
 * Mouri Teru (see below)
 * Mouri Motonari (see below)
 * Iwami Ginzan (a Musket unit with Speed Luck)
 * Kikkawa Kiku (see below)
 * Murakami Suigun (see below)
 * Kuu Hime (see below)
 * Note that Kobayakawa Chinu does not attend this battle, meaning that she can't cause an automatic defeat (see below).
 * Winning the fight allows the player to capture an entire province from the Mouri House directly instead of winning it one territory at a time (if Izumo is still until the Mouri House's control, you will get Izumo, if Izumo is not under their control, you'll get Senkan Nagato, what happens if they've expanded further than that is unknown).
 * NOTE: Though you acquire a province by winning the challenge, it doesn't count as conquering it, so you can still invade other provinces on that turn.
 * Losing will cause a Game Over.
 * The challenge can be taken until the Mouri House has only one province left, or until Motonari's curse has been lifted.
 * If the event where Kobayakawa Chinu is in the forest looking for ingredients for poisons has happened, then the next time you battle against her unit, she will serve poisoned drinks to your army, which will lead to an automatic defeat. This event only happens once and can be circumvented with a different pre-battle cutscene (such as Uruza's character clear).
 * Note that If you conquer the Mouri House while the Takeda House and Imagawa House are still standing and not at war with you, Takeda will conquer Toukaidou. This does not appear to happen in the Kill the Monkey route but will happen in both first and second games.
 * If you are not at war with the Mouri House or the Tanegashima House when you begin the Isoroku or Ran route, the Mouri House will conquer the Tanegashima House.
 * When you take the final territory of the Mouri House you will fight a commander battle against Mouri (if he is cursed, he is level 50 with 1200HP, if uncursed, he will fight exactly the same as if he is cursed, but he will only have 450HP) and his 2 level 25 bodyguards with 250HP each. He has two attacks, one that does 200 damage and one that does a 1.5x a normal attack's damage. He is not immune to magic in this fight.
 * Losing sends you to the Alice Mansion which will heal your commanders, but the Mansion doesn't make the fight any easier.
 * If you take the final territory of the Mouri House while Mouri is cursed he will be killed. Otherwise he will be captured.
 * To lift Mouri Motonari's curse:
 * Defeat the Takuga House and recruit Sakamoto Ryouma.
 * Search for the dungeon in Izumo (requires Kouhime and Sill), this may be done before step 1.
 * Select the event 'Ask Ryouma about Motonari' (this appears in any province where you can talk to her normally).
 * Go through the dungeon in Izumo until you fight an enemy called Daidaara (だいだーら) on the 7th floor, after which you'll have an event (you can leave the dungeon after that if you wish).
 * When it's Mouri's turn, Mouri Motonari's curse will be lifted and he will fight like a regular unit (which is actually bad news for you in army battles, unless you killed him so much that his HP has become very high). Note: If you have not seen the event where his curse is lifted, then his curse hasn't been lifted - you can defeat the Mouri House with Daidaara dead, but Mouri still cursed.
 * If the Mouri house bonus is chosen and Senkan Nagato is the last Mouri province, the Demon Army/Shimazu will not take it or the Mouri House over. This allows you to avoid fighting either of them as they cannot get past Senkan Nagato (at least until they take over another house adjacent to your provinces). This is useful if you want to avoid fighting either the Demon Army or Shimazu until you are ready, however this does not prevent Gigai from challenging you or Shimazu from stealing your female commanders.


 * Noteworthy commanders:
 * Mouri Motonari (cursed) - As long as he is cursed he will have the following properties in army battles:
 * He will be a unit with a health bar rather than a troop count, he starts with 500HP which increases by 50 every time his unit is defeated. Strangely, it seems impossible to reduce his health to 0 in one hit, it seems to be the case that the maximum amount of damage any attack can do to him is half of his total health (making a Commander Charge from a strong and high levelled unit a good way to defeat him).
 * Despite what scouting will tell you, both of his attacks are exactly the same - they kill 200 of your troops without him taking counterattack damage.
 * He will be immune to all magical attack except for those that deal damage based on the percentage of a units troop count (for example, he is immune to Shikigami but not Miko Storm).
 * He has a hidden troop count that determines how much counterattack damage he deals, and may effect the damage done to him by moves that deal damage based on the percentage of a units troop count.
 * As with most plot-crtical units, he cannot be captured, killed or effected by insta-kill moves.
 * Mouri Motonari (uncursed) - A very powerful Warrior unit with Commander Charge and Initial Battle Rating. He will be captured upon defeating the Mouri House, however if you get his relationship up to Trust, he will turn into something very similar to his cursed form (see Character clears for more info). When recruited, his basic attack in commander battles (Motonari Punch) can be very useful because it does 200 damage regardless of the enemy's defense, which for obvious reasons, is great against high level enemies like Xavier, where most other characters do less than 100 damage.
 * Strangely, in his uncursed form, he seems to have as much HP in dungeons as what he had when he was cursed, that is, if you lets him reach 1,000 HP, and then uncurse him, once you've beat his 450HP version in the final (comamnder) battles against the Mouri House, he will have 1,000HP in commander battles when you recruit him.
 * Mouri's three daughters who are all automatically captured when Mouri House is defeated but can be captured in regular battles once you have won the all-out battle.
 * Mouri Teru - one of the best Foot Soldier units in the game and due to her having the skill Counterattack 2, you should be cautious even when there's a risk of attacking her, or else she may hit you back for massive damage.
 * Kikkawa Kiku - One of the best Ninjas in the game. Of particular note, she has access to Assassinate 2, meaning that she is probably best fought with units that are immune to insta-kill moves (in the latest patches, that means any unit that you cannot fire, if you have done a good job upgrading him, Rance can do well in this fight), she also has access to Leaves Hiding, which gives her such a big defensive buff that, particularly with an item like the Guts Armour, she becomes tougher than most Foot Soldiers. Note that if you wish to H Kiku or clear her, she must be captured before the Mouri House is defeated. Note also that failing to H Kiku also denies you the H-scene with all three of the sisters (see Character Clears).
 * Kobayakawa Chinu - The second best Miko in the game, other than the instant loss you can face against her, be warned that she has the very slow, preparation requiring move 'Poison' which deals damage equal to 50% of the your current troop size, and requires two Shurikens/Accurate Shots to be cancelled. In addition, Poison counts as a physical attack, letting Foot Soldiers with guard active receive reduced damage. Note also that Chinu will always die the turn after the Demon Army appears.
 * Yamanaka Kojika - You must play at a slow pace to see her interactions and events with Ashikaga Choushin, Inukai (this one appears to be optional), Seigan (this one occurs while Oda is at war with the Tenshi Sect), and the Oda House.  The aforementioned events will not be triggered anymore after an event where she meets the Shinsengumi and encounters Mouri Motonari face-to-face. Next, an event at Mid Earth and an event at Battleship Nagato (where she fights the Mouri house by herself) must be triggered. All the events listed must happen while the Mouri House has more than one province. When Mouri House has been conquered to the point that they only one province left and all of the necessary events have been seen with Kojika, an event about her should appear automatically. Then, after defeating the Mouri House, her purple recruitment event should be available at Izumo.
 * Ahen Shounin - A mercenary miko commander with troop size over 4000. His defense stat is always 1, although the other stats are random. When you capture him, his troop size reverts to 1000. Worth your time to imprison him to deny his use to your opponents.
 * Murakami Suigun - A tactician commander with a special tan-skinned portrait (like some of the Shimazu girlfriend commanders, who you can't capture). She has 6 action points and 6 in Search, Negotiation, and Construction and she has Remove Status A/3, Battle Strategy (All) and Solidarity. She cannot be captured until after the Mouri House has been conquered, and she has been recruited elsewhere,
 * Kuu Hime: A unit with a generic appearance that appears in the All-Out Battle with Mouri, she cannot be captured until after the Mouri House has been conquered, and she has been recruited elsewhere, but she comes with 7 Int, making her arguably the third best Diviner in the game. She also has Advanced Shikigami, although that probably shouldn't be feared since it's slower than regular Shikigami.



The Demon Army / Shimazu House

 * Provinces
 * カイロ (Cairo), モロッコ (Morocco), アマゾン (Amazon), 南アフリカ (South Africa)


 * Basics
 * The Demon Army only appears if you're on the True, Yamamoto Isoroku IF, or Kenshin IF route.
 * Some time after the first fight with Xavier (usually between 7 and 10 turns), Xavier will appear in Africa and take over the Shimazu House, renaming it the Demon Army.
 * They cannot be vassaled.
 * Upon the appearance of the Demon Army:
 * Senkan Nagato will be automatically taken by the Demon Army if you conquered it or if it is under the control of the Mouri House but is not the last province of the Mouri House.
 * Two new SAT bonuses will be unlocked 'Militia May Appear During Attacks' and 'Militia May Appear During Defense' unfortunately, the units this bonus gives are quite poor for this point in the game. They are always warriors, with a troop size determined by your average number of troops (exuding foot soldiers) and there combat stats are 6 Atk, 6 Def, 6 Int and 4 Spd, with 3 actions.
 * Kobayakawa Chinu will die the turn after the Demon Army appears (note that if you're aggressive enough, you can trigger events with Apostle Madou before she dies).
 * After the appearance of the Demon Army, Xavier will start having events during his 'turn' which occurs either after a battle with the Demon Army (even by Battle Permits) or at the end of your turn. These events seem to happen in no particular order, although some seem to have a higher priority than others, the noteworthy 'Xavier's turn' events are as follows:
 * The Shimazu brothers will launch 5 consecutive attacks on the Oda House (the first 4 attacks are lead by the brothers, oldest to youngest, the final attack is lead by Agireda). Unlike the Takeda Blitz, there is no reward for winning all of these battles, but the final attack is probably your best chance to capture Agireda. This only happens once.
 * In the True route only, If there are other houses left (vassaled or not), Xavier may directly kill off one of those houses and convert them into Demon Army provinces. The only houses that will be spared are:
 * The One Eyed House (however in Kenshin's Route, Xavier may make them declare war rather than join the Demon Army, this is sometimes claimed to be a glitch)
 * The Asai Asakura House.
 * The Tanegashima House
 * The Hara House
 * The Tokugawa House (although if they are vassaled, they will declare war on you and will conquer Toukaidou if the Oda House controls it)
 * The Tenshi Sect
 * The Imagawa House
 * As a matter of fact, it seems to be the case that Xavier will always take over houses in the same order, Uesugi→ Takeda → Mouri→ Houjou → Iga → Akashi → Ashikaga→ Miko Institute→Takuga, although by using family bonuses, you can spare some of the houses.
 * See the appropriate sections for how Xavier's conquering differs in other routes.
 * Nanjou Ran will die (often at the same point that the Houjou House either is or would be taken). This does not appear to happen in the Kenshin route.
 * Depending on how Ran died, there may be an event where the Apostle Gigai returns to Xavier. Then, either after this event or simply on a random turn of Xavier's if this event didn't happen, there will be an event where Gigai mentions how he wants to fight a strong guy in Oda, after this Gigai may appear in Xavier's turn after battles, and you must send a commander to face his challenge. Note however that some have reported seeing this event before Ran's death but either way, it does not appear to happen in the Kenshin route.
 * If you send Houjou Souun, he will kill Gigai, this will character clear Souun.
 * If you send Ogawa Kentarou, after he has been turned into a demon, he will tie with Gigai, gaining three levels in the process (be warned, Gigai may appear before Kentarou turns into a demon, especially in the Isoroku route where there are so many start of turn events that it is almost certain that Gigai will appear before Kentarou turns into a demon). Since this event can be repeated as many times as you wish, letting Kentarou reach a very high level very quickly, this is the recommended way to deal with Apostle Gigai.
 * Sending anyone else will kill that commander (sending Rance will lead to a Game Over).
 * After the first confrontation with Gigai, a new purple event will appear where Rance thinks of how to deal with him. Afterwards, when Gigai appears again, picking Rance will lead to commander battle between your commanders and Gigai, where you can kill him.
 * In this fight, Gigai will be level 53 with 1110 health, he has a standard attack which reduces the target's number of actions by one and he has a hit-all attack that requires preparation (and 3 shurikens to cancel). It is also worth noting that Rance does not need to attend the battle.
 * If you happen to lose this fight it will not lead to a game over, but instead Rance will be forced to go on his promised "date" which Rance will refuse to talk about and become irritated, losing 5 SAT.
 * There will be an event where Kurohime returns all of Xavier's power to him, in this event, Apostle Madou recommends that Xavier uses forbidden youkai. Note that since Apostle Gigai appears in this event, it seems to require him to have appeared before it can happen, although this event seems to be skipped in Kenshin's route but the Soul Binder will still be released in a later event.
 * After this event, on another of Xavier's turns, the Soul Binder will be released. This will add Infected units to the Demon Army, these units have one standard attack that will decrease the maximum troop size of the unit it hits, the magnitude of this decrease will be proportional to the amount of damage the Infected unit has done, however it should be noted that they cannot 'infect' on a counterattack. These units cannot be captured.
 * Until the Soul Binder is sealed (scroll down for info on how to do it), every turn, 1 of your units will be unusable due to the Soul Binder's curse (although this can be fixed with Motivational Paper).
 * Monster units will join the Demon Army (this event will usually happen after the Infected unit have joined or when you have advanced close enough to Senkan Nagato, but it can happen earlier, it has been speculated that it either it or the events leading to the Infected units joining the Demon Army will happen as soon as the Demon Army's number of troops is sufficiently low, and since the Infected units joining seems to require Gigai to have appeared, it seems to be the case that this event can be forced to happen if you are aggressive enough to significantly lower the Demon Army's troop count before Gigai has appeared).
 * Unlike any other units in the game, the Monster units cannot be distinguished just by looking at their emblem.
 * The Monsters with green coloured troops are essentially Foot Soldiers.
 * The Monsters with blue coloured troops are essentially Archers, but they give counterattack damage.
 * The Monsters with red coloured troops are essentially Warriors.
 * The Monsters with totally different looking troops (with the white, mushroom like heads) are best compared to Omachi - they use the same Lightning attack as she does, although they lack Large Lightning.
 * Once the Monster units have appeared, the final territory of every Demon Army province will always include a unit called 'Time Killer' these units do exactly as their names imply - they have between 2 and 4 Actions (inclusive) and they have the move Advance Time.
 * The final battles of Cairo, Amazon and Morocco will also include Shogun units. They all appear to be immune to insta-kill moves and they all have the move Lightning.
 * Shogun Isun in Cairo has Battle Strategy 3 and Remove Status 3, naturally this means she can be forced to waste turns if you bring a Tactician to the fight to always replace or remove any buffs she removes or adds to the units of either side. Winning this fight gives 5 SAT
 * Shogun Bepcho in Amazon is the same as Isun, although this fight only rewards you with 1 SAT.
 * Shogun Wispin in Morocco is the same as the other Shoguns, but has Remove Status 3 replaced with Advance Time. 1 SAT is given for victory.
 * Note that no Monster units can be captured.
 * In the True route only, after you have seen the event where the Monster units join the Demon Army, there will eventually be a Xavier's turn event in which the four Shimazu brothers will plan an ambush on Rance. Following this event they will disappear from battles until said ambush. The ambush will occur immediately after winning any army battle against the Demon Army which included Rance but not Kouhime and was fought at any point prior to the scene which immediately follows the defeat of Shogun Isun (note - the ambush can even be triggered by winning the battle against Shogun Isun which will cause the Shogun's scene to not trigger, meaning that you will eventually have to redo the battle against the Shogun).
 * Firstly, there is an army battle against all four brothers (note that all of your units are healed to whatever number of troops they had at the beginning of the first battle, and have their actions restored beforehand), losing this fight will lead to a game over.
 * If you are struggling with this battle, one suggestion is to use the Demon Kentarou exploit mentioned below, if you place him, alone in the front row, then the only enemy unit that will be able to harm your other units is Shimazu's relatively weak tactician, letting you win just by bullying down the health of all of their units with your backrow.
 * Afterwards there will be a commander battle against Shimazu Yoshihisa, he will be level 42 and will have 1158 health, other than that he's just like any other Foot Soldier. Be warned that you cannot switch units in during this fight (you only have the units that you start the battle with), fortunately, losing this fight gives you the opportunity to retry, rather than simply being given a game over. Retrying will reduce Yoshihisa's level, to a minimum of 20.
 * After the fight, Yoshihisa dies. There will also be military chaos which will use up all remaining Action Fans, also from this point onwards, the other Shimazu brothers will die in regular battle after defeated (which is necessary to character clear Agireda).
 * After Ishijijii has been released, there will be a Xavier's turn event with Apostle Madou, after this event, he will start appearing in army battles. He's basically another of those Omachi-like units but with better stats, although he does comes with the passive skill 'First Move' which gives him a chance to move first.
 * In the True route only, two turns after the Demon Army appears, regardless of if you have room or not, Kouhime will join as a Foot Soldier (if you don't have room, the first non-important unit in your roster will die), be warned that unless her unit is equipped with the Charm of the Immortal Fox Deity, whenever her unit is annihilated, she will die, giving you a game over.
 * In the True and Isoroku routes, around 4 turns after the Demon Army appears, there will be a lack of the Hirami Lemons that are used to suppress Miki's transformation into the Demon King, failure to find them in under 6 turns will cause Miki to turn into the Demon King, leading to either a Game Over in First Games or entry into the Demon King route in Second Games, to find them, you must complete 6 floors of a dungeon in Mikan to find the lemons (while you're there, you might as well just clear the dungeon, also note that the purple event 'Search for hirami lemons' in the same location seems to achieve nothing).
 * In the True and Isoroku routes, provided that the event where the player needs to find Hirami Lemons has been completed, then some time after taking over Senkan Nagato (and provided that you still control it), there will be a start of turn event where Apostle Shikibu will have a duel with Kentarou, in this duel Kentarou will announce that he has Youmeishu, which heals his health to full and restores all of his actions. Shikibu will always be 3 levels lower than Kenatrou, so her health will be such that she takes 5 attacks to kill, forcing you to either use the Youmeishu, or to have previously given Kentarou an Action Textbook 2.
 * Be warned, to use the Youmeishu that Kentarou has, you must place your mouse over him and select it, it will not be used automatically, it costs a turn to use, if you win the battle without using it, you can keep it for his use later.
 * NB: At some levels, if he has Attack Luck and receives its buff during the fight, Kentarou can win this fight without using the Youmeishu, however as this does not work at all levels it is not as reliable of a tactic as giving him an Action Textbook 2.
 * After winning the battle (losing is a game over), Shikibu will be killed and Kentarou will turned into a demon, and Miki will run off. The player must then perform three searches for Miki (the first requires 20 points of Search, the second requires 25 and the third requires 30) or else after four end of turn events, she will turn into the Demon King, leading to either a Game Over in First Games or entry into the Demon King route in Second Games.
 * You cannot attack other houses until you have located Miki (except by Battle Permits).
 * When searching for Miki, note that you do not need to accumulate all the points needed to find her in one action, if for example you only have 20 out of 30, you can click accept and then on your next attempt you will only need 10.
 * Once Kentarou has become a demon, he will no longer take damage from the any enemies in commander battles other than Xavier himself, however in army battles nothing can kill him, meaning that if you fire all but one of his troops (or simply never let them replenish), you can use him to automatically win defensive battles. In addition, if Kentarou is by himself in an army battle, he is guaranteed to gain the 1 affection point that is randomly awarded to a unit after army battles.
 * When Miki is found, the player will have 0 Action Fans left for the rest of that turn, so plan accordingly. After finding Miki, the result is dependant on what route you are on:
 * if you are in the True route, Sill will get frozen, making her unusable in dungeons and will prevent the vast majority of events that require her presence, of particular significance calling for (but not accepting) reinforcements will no longer be possible.
 * Around 3-4 turns after Sill is froze, Rance will get irritated and will lose between 6 and 10 satisfaction points (or all of your SAT, if you somehow have less than the number that the event will take from you). This will repeat every 3 turns until you have done 2 purple events titled 'Frozen slave: Sill' and have seen a start of turn event where Kouhime slaps Rance. Be warned that the necessary purple events with Sill do not seem to occur as start of turn events and that the third purple event with Sill is not needed to stop the SAT loss.
 * In the Isoroku route, Isoroku will agree to stop attending battles, although the game functions as if you fired her unit.
 * In the True route only, after you take one territory in South Africa or two territories in Morocco, the Demon Army will try to sink JAPAN. You have 4 turns to prevent this or else you will have a Game Over.
 * To prevent this, the player needs to make an attack on the enemy forces at Tenma Bridge (a red event located in Morocco, see below) to clear the game, this can be done even without conquering all of the Demon Army on the map - you only need to have taken over every territory in Morocco.
 * When there is one turn remaining to prevent the event (checkable by pressing F5 on the world map) and provided that you control a province adjacent to Morocco, there will be an event available in Morocco 'Stop Ishijijii's growth (Suzume's Mission)' which will delay the Game Over by one turn, you can abuse it as many times as you want, giving you an effectively unlimited amount of time to prepare for the final battle.
 * In the True route only, once you have conquered Morocco, you will have access to a red event 'Attack Tenma Bridge to stop Ishijijii'. Once you have picked the units you want to use (the game will tell you the requirements), you will fight 2 battles.
 * The first is an army battle against 6 Monster units.
 * The second is the final boss fight, a commander battle using all of your commanders against a level 98 Xavier (2010HP), a level 25 Bodyguard (250HP) and a level 30 Toukichirou (650HP). This fight works the same as the Xaveir fight at Honnouji, Rance or Kentarou must be present for you to do damage, losing send you to the Alice Mansion, etc. All the same tips apply as previously.
 * Xavier himself is almost identical to the weaker version you fought at Honnouji, the only difference is his level and HP.
 * The Bodyguard is the same as every other Bodyguard in the game.
 * The only new element is Toukichirou, who has a move that can hit anyone on your side and takes one action from them.
 * Obviously, winning finished the route.
 * If the player conquers South Africa, the event that follows changes based on your route, although it should be noted that in all of the routes where the Demon Army appears, you have no good reason to conquer South Africa (in the True route, conquering Morocco takes less effort and gives you access to the end game, in the Isoroku route, you only need to go as far as Senkan Nagato to trigger the end game, and in the Kenshin route, doing anything other than using Kenshin to trigger the end game is a waste of time):
 * In the True route, you will fight the Apostle Madou, he has two forms:
 * The first form is level 40 with 850 health, he has a standard attack and and two move that require preparation, one is a hit-all attack (which takes 3 shurikens to cancel) and the other heals him fully (takes 2 shurikens to cancel). Losing will send you to Alice's Mansion, where repeating the fight will have the usual effect (including reducing Apostle Madou's level in both stages of the fight by 10, up to a minimum of 20).
 * The second form seems no different, but if you lose at this stage, after being sent to Alice's Mansion, you will not be able to repick you team and their actions will not be restored, possibly causing you to instantly lose.
 * After winning this battle, the Soul Binder's curse will be lifted, and you will have 0 Action Fans left for the rest of that turn, but the even 'Demon's daughter: Kurohime' will become available which gives Rance 5 SAT.
 * In the Isoroku route, you get the same result as in the True route except that the Madou fight doesn't happen (you even have the same dialogue in the 'Demon's daughter: Kurohime' scene, despite the fact that some of the events mentioned in that scene don't happen in the Isoroku route), however in the Isoroku route, you will also be able to do another event called 'Demon's daughter: Kurohime', which gives 2 SAT.
 * In the Kenshin route, absolutely nothing happens, you don't even lift the Soul Binder's curse.
 * In the True route only, be warned that attacking Senkan Nagato, or any of the Demon Army's province in Afirca with your Battle Permits will cause Kouhime to take them from you.
 * In the True route on Normal (0 Star) difficulty, if you have satisfied the conditions listed below then you will get a scripted start of turn event which has the Oda House automatically conquer all of the provinces which belong to Demon army, except for the original Shimazu House's provinces (i.e. the four bottom left provinces, "Africa"). This event will also fully heal all of your troops.
 * The conditions for this start of turn event to trigger are as follows.
 * The player must be in the True route on Normal (0 Star) difficulty (or equivalently, in a First Game).
 * The player must have seen the start of turn event where Kouhime's collapse at the coming-of-age ceremony is discussed. Note that this event's only triggering requirement is that the player must have previously seen the event where the Soul Binder is released.
 * The player must not have seen the event where Kentarou battles Apostle Shikibu (see above for details on how to trigger this event).
 * The turn which has just been started must have an odd number which is greater than 79.
 * The Demon Army must control Senkan Nagato.
 * NB: Houses unconquered by neither you nor the Demon Army will remain after this event, meaning that both you and Xavier can still conquer them.
 * NB: This event will only give you Demon Army provinces; It will not automatically recover any territories that you have lost to the Demon Army in the provinces that you already own.
 * Strictly speaking, the bare minimum requirements for beating the Demon Army (and therefore the game) in the True route are to conquer Cario and defeat Xavier. Interestingly, since you're still allowed to attack while there is a Hirami Lemon shortage (which always occurs before Apostle Shikibu's duel with Kentarou), you can beat the game before Miki goes missing, Kentarou turns into a demon, or Sill gets frozen. To do this you simply have to be extremely aggressive when fighting the Demon Army, you've basically got from when the Demon Army takes Senkan Nagato to when you either get a game over or enter the Demon King route from not getting the lemons to Miki in time to conquer all 3 territories in Senkan Nagato, all 4 territories in Cario and all 4 territories in Morocco, and then spend a fan to initiate the attack on the Tenma Bridge, although it's worth noting that depending on when the lemon shortage occurs, time may not be the biggest issue for anyone attempting to do this, the biggest issue is likely to be winning battles, even losing a single battle of the Shimazu blitz can be a serious setback, although exploiting second game bonuses could make this significantly easier. If, in the end you do manage this, you get the reward of being able to battle Xavier while Sill is still available, and you'll be able to finish the True route in an extremely low number of turns (assuming you started out with 3 Action Fans, and never lose a single battle, the entire route can be beaten in under 50 turns and possibly far less). In theory this method could be used to save Ran's life, or even fight Apostle Gigai while Ran still lives.
 * This trick has a small extension - rather than entering the end game of the True Route you can instead conquer all of the Demon Army's provinces and wait until the lack of lemons forces you in to the Demon King route. If you are successful in doing this, the event where Miki becomes the Demon King will play and then the game will become genuinely unwinnable and enter something of a sandbox mode. There are two main reasons for this: the first is that, because the Demon Army has no provinces, the regular "win" condition of the Demon King route cannot be satisfied and the second is that, because the Demon Army has no provinces, Miki cannot talk to Xavier and therefore the usual chain of Demon King route events cannot even start. Once you are in this broken version of this route, the only plot event that will play is the event in which the route is entered. Even events such as Kentarou leaving the Oda House will not play and of particular note, Ishijijii's growth counter will freeze.


 * Noteworthy Commanders
 * See above for information on the Infected units, the Monster units, the Shoguns and Apostle Madou.
 * Apostle Shikibu, an extremely powerful warrior unit, cannot be captured, died after the duel with Ogawa Kentarou
 * Agireda - A fairly powerful warrior unit, she can be captured in battle in the True History and Isoroku route, but she can only be character cleared in True History. In the True History and Isoroku routes, it is possible to increase her troops by 1000 for each of the 2 colorless events available after conquering Cairo and Amazon.
 * Ootomo Sourin - a Musket unit with the unique 'Special Cannon' ability that can deal severe damage to all enemy units even from the back row! This ability uses all action points. He cannot be captured. He is only available to the player as a Shimazu House character in Free-for-All mode.
 * The four Shimazu brothers are extremely powerful units that will surrender to you and be placed in the prison after you kidnap Kurohime in the Ran IF and Kill the Monkey routes.
 * Shimazu Yoshihisa is almost certainly the best Foot Soldier in the game and due to him having the skill Counterattack 2, you should be cautious even when there's a risk of attacking him, or else he may hit you back for massive damage.
 * Shimazu Kazuhisa by stats alone, he is the best warrior in the game although he lacks the good skills needed to fully exploit that title.
 * Shimazu Toshihisa is an extremely powerful Musket unit, due to his large troop size and almost perfect stats, he will almost always hit you for massive damage.
 * Shimazu Iehisa is probably the least special of the brothers, he's simply a Tactician with very good stats.

General stuff

 * IF routes can only be done in Second Games. The requirements for entering the route must be completed before the Incident at Honno Temple (after the Incident at Honno Temple is triggered, the route is locked)
 * A trick, which allows you to create a save game that makes you able to go all routes in the game is to arrange things such that conquring the Houjou family would result in the 5th gourd being broken. Then the save can be made after the following has been done (you will need to able to have at least 3 Action Fans to do this).
 * Firstly, to make sure you have the conditions to enter the other routes satisfied, you must:


 * 1) Conquer Ashikaga.


 * 2) Capture Yamamoto Isoroku and see her H-scene.


 * 3) Recruit Kenshin & Ai.


 * 4) Have Kenshin at Trust and previously deployed into a battle with Rance.


 * 5) Seen the scene where Xavier is given the Emperor Headband.


 * 6) Recruit Ran, and have spoken to her once (requires Souun's disappearance).


 * 7) Conquer Houjou up to the point where you can conquer the family in one battle (down to their last territory).


 * Then, at the beginning of a new turn with three moves, you have the option to:


 * 1) Enter the Kenshin route immediately.


 * 2) Attack the last Houjou territory (1st move), talk to Ran (2nd move), and enter the Oil dungeon (3rd move), putting you on the Ran route.


 * 3) Anything else after defeating the Houjou House (Isoroku or True route — with Souun possibly joining you as a commander if you take Ran to the Oil dungeon).

Nanjou Ran route

 * NOTE! If you do not go to the Mamushi Oil Field dungeon after unlocking it, Ran will leave your party after a certain number of turns (around 20) and you will lose both her, Houjou Souun and any chance of entering the Ran route.


 * To begin the Ran IF route, you must capture Nanjou Ran while fighting the Houjou House. To do this, you must see several events while fighting the Houjou House up to the point where Souun tells Ran about the true nature of Suzaku and when scouting, you can see that she no longer has the move 'summon Suzaku', afterwards you will be able to capture her in battle (although it may be the case that if enough gourds are broken, you may also have to see the event between Apostle Shikubu and Ran before Ran is capturable). After capturing her, wait until Souun goes to a dungeon in Mamushi Oil Field before you defeat Houjou House. Then, recruit Nanjou Ran from prison and defeat the Houjou house, afterwards, talk to Ran until she asks Rance to go the dungeon, then if you complete this dungeon before either entering another route or Kouhime's kidnap, you'll be on the Ran IF route.
 * Note that completing the dungeon will send Oda into military chaos so you'll have no Action Fans left for the rest of the turn.
 * A short time after beginning this route, if you are not at war with the Mouri House or the Tanegashima House, the Mouri House will conquer the Tanegashima House.
 * During this route, remnants from either the Iga or the Hara houses may appear and retake the land that was originally theirs. For details, see the sections of those two houses.
 * Some time after completing the dungeon, you will get an event where Suzume and Chaos discover that a demon is in Honnouji.
 * If you have conquered the Tenshi Sect at this point, an event in the following turn will give you a choice to release Manmaru or keep her, keeping her will eventually lead to a Game Over.
 * Warning: if you capture Manmaru right before being forced into the fight with Xavier, it is possible that the event for releasing Manmaru does not happen before the fight with Xavier, making the game unwinnable.
 * Afterwards, you will fight Xavier and Toukichirou in a timed battle (Xavier is the same as he was at this point in the True route, Toukichirou is the same as he always is), once the time is up, Xavier will be sealed (provided that you do not still have Manmaru in your possession, if you do you will always get a Game Over, even if you level up and beat Xavier).
 * Once this event is finished, you will lose all of your Action Fans for the rest of the turn.
 * After sealing Xavier, the Ran route becomes very simple, from this point onwards, as long as you have control of Saitama, you do not need to conquer anywhere, and with a few exceptions (see below), you can just let your Battle Permits protect you and hit "end turn" until the game forces you to do something.
 * About twenty turns after starting the Ran route, there will be a new red battle event in up to 10 of your provinces marked off with stars to fight ogres 'Close hole to hell' in this event you will fight 2 units of 1000 Blue Ogres each and 1 unit of 2000 red ogres (red ogres are stronger than blue ogres, both act basically the same as Warrior units).
 * When doing this, note that Diviners/Yin Yangs seem to do double damage to ogres.
 * Note also that there is no penalty for losing the battle, except for a wasted Action Fan.
 * At the beginning of each turn that at least one of these events has not been done, you will lose 1 Nation power and on random turns, Owari will get attacked by ogres which are harder than the normal battles (2 Red ogres and 2 Blue ogres, who's troop size increases until you have done all of the battles).
 * Losing these battles gives a Game Over.
 * Once all of these events are done, a start of turn event unlock a 12 floor dungeon in Saitama which you must go through to access the endgame.
 * After clearing the last floor, you will fight a boss battle against Sekimei who is level 80 with 2310HP, extremely high speed and a standard attack which can hit targets in the backrow. Fortunately, his attacks inflict very low damage compared to Xavier and unlike most routes with Xavier, you have infinite time to prepare (nothing forces you to enter the dungeon) and you can always deal damage to him (so there's no need to keep Rance alive), he is accompanied by 3 level 30 Red ogres (320HP) and 2 level 25 Blue ogres (275HP)
 * All of your commander's actions will be restored before the fight with Sekimei. Furthermore, despite that fact that none of your active commanders will be healed, all of your defeated commanders will be revived with 1HP.
 * As per usual, losing sends you to the Alice Mansion where you can retry with the enemy's level reduced, to a minimum of 20 and all of your units fully healed with all of their actions restored.
 * Beating him completes the Ran route.


 * One of the most noteworthy features of the Ran route is that since Xavier is sealed, the Demon Army does not appear, this has three main consequences:
 * Kobayakawa Chinu does not die.
 * Ogawa Kentarou never joins preventing any events with him or Miki.
 * Because Xavier does not conquer them, the Shimazu House will live and eventually declare war.
 * Following this, they will one by one absorb the Mouri House, Takuga, and the Tanegashima House after several events if the player hasn't conquered them. As a result, the Shimazu will acquire both the special characters of those houses and the southern part of JAPAN. These events can be triggered faster when either Shimazu gets attacked or attacks (they're Shimazu house turn events).
 * The merging events do not happen if the events on the Shimazu house or the targeted house are not finished. They can also be prevented by either lifting Motonari's curse or capturing one of the three maids of the Mouri House.
 * As the war continues, the Shimazu brothers will randomly cause one of your female commanders to defect, however only females who can be fired and are not at Love with Rance will defect (Patch 1.03 makes it sufficient to keep your female commanders if they have at least Trust).
 * This appears to be a truly random event as you can reload to the previous turn and get a different result.
 * Defected commanders cannot be re-recruited even after you recapture them.
 * After the first defection, (usually the following turn but as it is caused by a start of turn event, it might be bumped back by main Ran route events), a green exploration command will become available in Shimazu provinces, allowing you to kidnap Kurohime for 50 Search.
 * The turn after Kurohime is kidnapped, the Shimazu brothers will surrender themselves to you (make sure you have enough space in your prison) but the Shimazu House will remain hostile under Agireda's leadership.
 * Take note that there is no upper limit to the number of defections that can occur and that you can only have one commander defect per turn and sometimes, female commanders who are at Trust can defect if the majority of your army is a trust.
 * Once Kurohime is kidnapped, the defections will stop.
 * Tip: To prevent defection, you can leave your prison at 20/30 or more and regularly capture commanders, this will replace the defection with a useless event.
 * BUG! The above event (female commander defection) can be pushed back by non-unique events. In other words, it is possible to never trigger any defection. If you conquer Shimazu in this way, the game will still assume you have captured the brothers and they will disappear from the game. This seems to occur more often if you avoid getting in contact with the Shimazu for a long time (by not conquering Mouri).
 * Finishing the IF route will unlock a new option in the Second Game Bonuses which will allow you to start the game with Ran and Daidouji Komatsu, the Houjou House will be at war with you from the first turn, and Houjou Souun will be missing already.
 * Note: the ending to this route changes depending on whether Ran has trust or love when you beat Sekimei.

Yamamoto Isoroku route

 * To enter the Isoroku route, you must recruit Yamamoto Isoroku, do her H scene and then do the "Searched for Kou but..." event before entering a different route (note that you do not need to fulfill these conditions before Kou goes missing, you can H Isoroku while Kou is missing and still be able to enter the route, although be warned that you can't do Isoroku's second event with Kou, meaning that you must at least do that before Kou goes missing).
 * Beware that once you enter Isoroku's route, anything requiring Kouhime's presence (discovery of certain dungeons, character clears for some commanders) will no longer be possible.
 * It should be noted that the Isoroku route is notorious for having a high number of start-of-turn events. Be wary of this if you plan to recruit anyone who joins as a start of turn event (e.g. Houjou Souun)
 * During this route, remnants from either the Iga or the Hara houses may appear and retake the land that was originally theirs. For details, see the sections of those two houses.
 * At the start of the turn after entering the route, you will fight Demon Nobunaga - the fight is the same as it was in the True route but this time you only have to do the one commander battle against him (you will not have to fight his Apostles) and Ogawa Kentarou will be available for you to use (although there is a glitch where he will not become available if you have 30 commanders), after this fight, you will not have any Action Fans to use for the turn.
 * The turn after the fight against Xavier, the Takeda House will declare war on you if it is still standing. Not long after this, the Mouri House will declare war on you, although they will conquer the Tanegashima House beforehand if it is still standing and not at war with you, they will also make the Akashi House declare war on you if it is not vassaled (the timing of these events depends on if the Takeda House is still standing or not and if the Mouri House was at war with you before the route started. At the earliest, the Mouri House can actually declare war on you on the end of the turn in which you enter the route, that is - the turn before you fight Xavier).
 * As per usual, if they are still standing, vassaled or not, since the Takeda House has declared war on you, the Tokugawa House will soon declare war as well, and because the Mouri House has declared war on you, it can be expected that Takuga will soon be introduced and will declare war (assuming that you haven't already conquered the provinces of these houses). This cumulatively means that at worst, you could simultaneously share borders, and be at war with 4 houses, and unlike the True route, Xavier won't kill them off for you (see below).
 * In this route, the Demon Army is largely the same as in the True Route, with some differences:
 * While Xavier will still conquer the Shimazu and Houjou houses, he will not conquer any other houses in this route (although he still takes Senkan Nagato from the Mouri House).
 * In the Isoroku route, the Demon Army cannot be defeated normally. If you conquer any provinces in Africa other than Cairo, the Demon Army will instantly take more provinces away from you (see below on how to win the route).
 * You can use the Battle Permits against the Demon Army without having them taken away, or having any of your permit users lose battles when acting independently.
 * The Shimazu brothers do not attempt to assassinate Rance, making them unable to be killed, therefore making Agireda unclearable.
 * The Demon Army does not attempt to sink JAPAN, meaning that taking Morocco will not give you access to the endgame and Apostle Madou will never fight you in an army battle.
 * As mentioned in the Demon Army's section (see above), you will not fight Apostle Madou when you attempt to lift the Soul Binder's curse.
 * Ogawa Kentarou's events are also very similar to what they are in the True Route; most of the changes are to do with the event when Miki is found. The changes are as follows:
 * Unlike the True Route, the Isoroku route cannot be beaten until Miki is found.
 * Miki will not go missing until Isoroku has announced her pregnancy.
 * Sill will not be frozen. Instead, Isoroku stops participating in battles (the game treats this like she died).
 * After several start of turn events where Rance gains small amounts of SAT, a character called Keikoku will be introduced. Eventually (roughly 25-30 turns after entering the route), Keikoku will demand a tax hike, reducing your Action Fans to 1.
 * After this event has happened, unless you do an event where Suzume reads Isoroku's mind (this is a purple event for Isoroku and may cause turns where you have all of your Action Fans), Rance will die at the start of a turn after you've gone through 4 turns that only have one Action Fan each. Your final warning for this is an event where Keikoku breastfeeds.
 * Be warned, if you've avoided talking to Isoroku, and you've been sticking to your autosave, this can make the game unwinnable due to the event where Isoroku congratulates Rance on the baby taking priority over the event where Suzume reads Isoroku's mind.
 * After your fourth turn with only one Action Fan, if Suzume has read Isoroku's mind, Keikoku will flee Oda in a start of turn event. After this event, you will be reduced to zero Action Fans for the turn. Then, there will be another start of turn event where 3G tells you that Keikoku has not been captured and gives you 4 options. Picking the final option gives a Game Over, picking Isoroku will advance the plot and picking any other option will achieve nothing.
 * After this event, winning an army battle again the Demon Army will cause Keikoku to join them (note that Battle Permits usually won't trigger the event and it may be blocked by other post-battle events such as the events including Rance and the Shoguns - it may simply be a Xavier's turn event). She commands an extremely powerful monster unit (red, warrior type) and all of the units with her will gain all 4 buffs presumably at full strength (much like in the Demon King route). She cannot be captured or killed but she does have some unique battle dialogue with Rance and Isoroku.
 * Once Rance has decided to impregnate Isoroku, it will happen either as a purple event for Isoroku or as a start of turn event. Soon after this (usually within a couple of turns), she will announce her pregnancy as a start of turn event.
 * Once Isoroku's pregnancy is announced, all that is left to trigger the endgame is to find Miki after she goes missing. As in the True route, Senkan Nagato must be conquered for this to happen and apart from the differences mentioned above, this event proceeds the same as it did in the True route.
 * It should be noted that you have no reason to advance any further than Senkan Nagato in this route. Conveniently, you don't even have to conquer the Mouri House to do this. If you accept Mouri's invitation to battle, you can conquer Izumo and then attack Senkan Nagato from there, although this may be impractical in some cases, as you may have to withstand attacks from the Demon Army, Mouri, Takuga, and Akashi simultaneously in order to hold Izumo and Senkan Nagato, but once Miki has gone missing, there's no need to hold out any longer (in fact, apart from avoiding the Game Over you get from losing Owari, at this point, you barely have any reason to battle at all).
 * Provided that Isoroku has announced her pregnancy, then not long after Miki is found, Xavier will complain to Madou that he will be better off just killing Rance rather continuing with their current tactics. After this event, Xavier will attack directly, triggering the final boss fight - a two part commander battle against Xavier (level 98, exactly the same as he was in the True route), Apostle Madou (untransformed, level 40, again, exactly the same as he was in the True route, but be warned that his healing ability can target Xavier although it very rarely does) and Toukichirou (level 30, exactly the same as he was in the True route). Losing here will also have exactly the same effect as losing the final boss fight of the True route would (you get sent to the Alice Mansion).
 * The first half of the battle is timed, if you damage any enemies but fail to finish them, they'll continue in the second part with full health, but regardless of what you do, in the second part Xavier's own health will reset to 50%. So if you're not confident that you can completely kill an enemy before the turns in the first part end, don't bother attacking, just try to keep Rance/Kentarou alive for the final part of the battle. An enemy that you managed to kill completely in the first part won't show up in the last part of the battle (except Xavier).
 * Once the time for the first half of the battle has ran out, the second half will start. As previously mentioned, Xavier's health will be set to half of its maximum and all other non-dead enemies will be healed to full. Any buffs, Guard Shikigamis or anything similar will not be transferred from the first half to the second half, although actions used and HP lost will, otherwise this battle is just an untimed continuation of the first half. Winning this battle completes the route.

Uesugi Kenshin route

 * Preconditions for entering:
 * Kenshin and Naoe Ai are in your army.
 * Ashikaga House and Uesugi House have been conquered.
 * Kenshin's affection is at Trust.
 * Kenshin and Rance have been deployed in battle together (You will see a scene where Kenshin gives Rance riceballs).
 * After you get Kenshin to trust, an event happens where Xavier gets the Emperor Headband. This seems to happen around the time between 4th and 5th gourd is broken, and never before Turn 23, confirming that you have the requirements to enter Kenshin's route, although you don't need to have recruited Naoe Ai for this scene to occur.
 * After that, the new purple action "Have a picnic with Kenshin" will appear in Sado; choosing it will start the Kenshin IF route and take all of your actions. On the following turn, Rance will fight Rengoku with Sill (oddly he is not identical to what he was in the True route, he is only level 40, untransformed and has 850HP), and there will be an unwinnable timed battle in which Kenshin fights Xavier, followed by you losing all of your actions for the turn.
 * You'll start the Emperor Race afterwards. This involves Kenshin only. This race involves Kenshin getting 100 points. You'll get a list of twelve characters, and Kenshin will receive 20 points for defeating each of them. If she loses a one-on-one duel, you will get a Game Over. If Kenshin wins an army battle, she will gain 1 point. If she loses an army battle, she will face assassins and get 3 points, so sending her alone to a losing fight can be to your advantage, particularly if you are running out of opponents to face in the Emperor Rance or if you wish to exploit the Akashita Dog.
 * Note that Kenshin will not face any pursuers when her Level drops to Level 1, it appears that Kenshin needs to be above level 20 for this event to occur.
 * The twelve participants of the Emperor Race are: Dokuganryuu Masamune (Youkai Empire), Oda Nobunaga/Xavier (Demon Army), Okita Nozomi (recruitable in Kyo), Baba Shouen (Takeda), Gon (Takuga), Keikoku (independent), Yuzuhara Yuzumi (Tanegashima), Mouri Motonari (Mouri), Shimazu Kazuhisa (Shimazu/Demon Army), Uesugi Kenshin, Suzutani Musou (independent) and Kumano Gorou (independent).
 * Dokuganryuu Masamune, Okita Nozomi, Gon, and Yuzuhara Yuzumi can only be fought if they are in your army.
 * Note that, until Kenshin's level goes down to 1 (see below), you will be unable to fight participants that are in your army.
 * Baba Shouen, Mouri Motonari, Shimazu Kazuhisa, Suzutani Musou, and Kumano Gorou can be fought regardless of recruitment (in fact, the latter 3 cannot be recruited).
 * NOTE!: Conquering the Mouri House while Mouri Motonari is still cursed will cause a GAME OVER (an event occurs where he crushes Uesugi Kenshin). He will be at Level 50 once his curse is lifted.
 * You will not be able to fight Suzutani Musou or Kumano Gorou until you have had a start of turn event which tells you their location, allowing you to use a 15 Search command to locate Suzutani Musou (in Naniwa) and Kumano Gorou (in Saitama). These evens seem to have a lower priority if you are at war with a house that has an Emperor Race participant.
 * It seems impossible to fight Baba Shouen until after the Takeda Blitz has occurred.
 * Interestingly, if Kazuhisa leaves the Demon Army before the Shimazu Blitz occurs, the Shimazu Blitz will never happen.
 * Due to a glitch, It is possible to be unable to fight Kazuhisa in Izumo even though you have control of Izumo and have seen the event where Suzume tells you that Kazuhisa is headed towards Izumo. This seems to happen most often when you leave Senkan Nagato as the only remaining Mouri province and the event where Suzume tells you where Kazuhisa is triggers before defeating the Mouri house. There will be no option to search for Kazuhisa, even after conquering the Mouri house.
 * There is no way that Xavier or Keikoku can be fought by anyone in a way that will win points.
 * In Second Games, if you chose a Bonus House at the start with a racer under your control (i.e. Takeda to get Baba Shouen or Mouri to get Mouri Motonari), the racer becomes unavailable to fight in the Emperor Race, except for Kenshin and Masamune.
 * Participants that were released from prison before the start of the race or dismissed from your army are also disqualified. Note that it seems to take a turn for the Emperor Note to note that a participant has been disqualified.
 * Xavier and the Demon Army act very similar to how they do in the True route, however the following should be noted:
 * Xavier will start killing the participants randomly during his turn, even ones in your army and prison, so reload if he kills someone you'd like to stay alive. Even if you release a participant from your prison, they can still be killed by Xavier.
 * Xavier will not kill Masamune if he is in your army.
 * Xavier will not kill Kenshin during his turn.
 * Xavier will not kill any more participants if there are only four remaining in the race: him, Keikoku, Kenshin, and one remaining participant for Kenshin to defeat.
 * Around 15 turns into the race, Xavier has a chance of killing a fake Keikoku (0 points) or a random samurai (+2 points). This has a random chance of happening every turn.
 * Strangely, the samurai is sometimes worth 3 points, his worth might be proportional to Kenshin's lead in the race.
 * Before winning the race, the Demon Army cannot be conquered. If you manage to conquer ex-Shimazu provinces, the Demon Army will randomly take back provinces from you in an event (just like the Isoroku route).
 * In the Kenshin route, Xavier conquers houses differently than he does in other routes:
 * The Shimazu House will be conquered by Xavier takes about 5 turns after the race starts.
 * Xavier will cause the One Eyed House to go to war with you (possibly a glitch) when he kills Dokuganryuu Masamune as part of the race.
 * Xavier will conquer Takuga when he kills Gon as part of the race.
 * Xavier will conquer the Mouri House when he kills Mouri Motonari as part of the race.
 * If Xavier attack Baba Shouen while he's still with Takeda,his life will be spared and Takeda House will still standing.If Xavier attack Baba while he's being Ronin or guest general for other house after Shingen assasination incident,he will be killed by Xavier without mercy from anyone.
 * Similarly, Xavier does not conquer the Tanegashima House when he kills Yuzuhara Yuzumi or the Imagawa House when he kills Okita Nozomi.
 * If Xavier manages to get 100 points, he will become the Emperor and will order the Japanese to kill Rance, resulting in a GAME OVER.
 * On a related note, the Houjou House acts differently in the Kenshin route than what they do in other routes and all of these seem to occur without any good reason.
 * The Houjou House seems to not surrender to the Oda House in this route,
 * Nanjou Ran only dies if she goes to the Oil Dungeon or conquer the Houjou House without capturing her.
 * Even if Ran dies, the Apostle Gigai never joins Xavier.
 * Your Battle Permits act in the same way as they do in the Isoroku route, not the True route. That is, they will never fail, and they will never be confiscated.
 * Note that Ogawa Kentarou does not join you on this route, meaning that none of the events with Miki will happen (this also means that Apostle Shikibu cannot die in this route). An interesting consequence of this is that provided that you have enough territory to get the 100 points required to win the Emperor Race, you have no reason to battle the Demon Army in this route, aside from the one province you need to conquer to trigger the endgame of the route once the race has been won (which is trivially easy once Kenshin has the Power of the Emperor, which is quite possibly the most powerful skill in the game).
 * As covered in more detail in the Demon Army's section - the Soul Binder's curse cannot be lifted in this route.
 * After doing a few events with Kenshin (either two purple events or simply some start of turn events), her Level will automatically go down to Level 1. A new option in the Satisfaction Bonuses will allow you to bring her Level up by 10 (e.g., Level 1 -> Level 11). This can be done until Kenshin's level exceeds 39.
 * After Kenshin's level has been reduced, every time you talk to her, she will gain 2 Levels until she reaches Level 60 or 61. However, once she becomes the Emperor, she will no longer gain levels through this method.
 * It is possible to have Kenshin bugged so that she will gain 2 levels with no restriction, until she reaches her level cap. One possible method to do this is to have Kenshin get to level 8 before using 4 sat bonuses on her to bring her level up to 48, and then just leveling her up by talking to her and with affection bonuses.
 * The event to decrease Kenshin's Level can be suppressed by having other events trigger instead. It appears to be relatively low-priority and it's possible to win the Emperor Race without dropping to Level 1. To do so, do not conquer the territories which house the participants. Instead, conquer territories like Naniwa and Saitama, which house two independent racers.
 * Warning: It is possible to end up in a situation where you are stuck with insufficient points to win the Emperor Race by eliminating contenders. In particular, this can happen if you dismiss participants and/or pick a lot of house bonuses which disqualify participants.
 * If you end up in a situation where Kenshin has less than 100 points and there are no beatable participants left in the race, then Keikoku will poison Kenshin and kill her, causing a Game Over.
 * If you start the race with only Xavier, Keikoku, Kazuhisa, Suzutani, Kumano and Kenshin as participants, then you will be locked into a Game Over unless you can farm points by having Kenshin win or lose troop battles. This is because Kenshin can only defeat Kazuhisa, Suzutani and Kumano before Keikoku kills her.
 * Recruiting Nozomi, defeating Tanegashima, Takuga, and two independent participants while you have 4 SAT bonuses saved is probably the easiest and most direct route of winning the race. If you have Nozomi recruited, plus Yuzumi, Ryouma and Gon in prison before the Emperor race starts, with the Ryuuguu Sword Urashimaru equipped on Kenshin, the Emperor Race can be ended in five turns after you entered it.
 * If you are not fighting any house with race participants, the first two beginning-of-turn events after the race starts will be Suzume finding Suzutani Musou in Naniwa and Naoe Ai finding Kumano Gorou in Saitama. After this, you can win after doing these steps:
 * Fight Suzutani Musou and Kumano Gorou in the same turn (Kenshin's Actions, but not HP, are restored between fights).
 * Recruit Gon and Yuzumi from prison.
 * The next two turns will send Kenshin to level 1, after this, use Rance's Satisfaction Bonuses to raise Kenshin to level 41.
 * Defeat Gon, Yuzumi and Nozomi (Kenshin can easily win the against them if she is at level 41 with the Ryuuguu Sword Urashimaru equipped).
 * After a set amount of time, Keikoku will cause neutral neighbouring houses to declare war on you. Houses can be convinced to attack you within mere turns of each other, denying you enough time to finish one off. However, if you are at war with 3+ houses, she will wait until your enemies decrease.
 * Once the race starts, you can't conquer the last Takeda territory until either Kenshin or Xavier defeat Baba (but defeating Takeda before the race starts makes it much easier). The option to fight Baba shows up only after the four Takeda generals have done their blitz attack, and Baba does far more damage than Kenshin; you need to be at Level 62 with the Protection Paper equipped to stand a decent chance of winning, and sometimes you will lose because Baba can get two turns in a row. If you equipped an item that cannot be removed, you may need to level Kenshin up to her max level or reload. Another option is to use the 2nd game bonuses to buy either the Guts Armor (which will greatly reduce the damage Kenshin will receive) or the Ryuuguu Sword Urashimaru that adds 100 damage.
 * After receiving 100 points, Kenshin will get the Power of the Emperor skill (see the skills section), afterwards she can also automatically vassal any hostile house with the exception of the Demon Army because they're not from JAPAN.
 * Note that unfortunately, the vassaling is practically little more than a formality and an excuse to get the endgame started - you won't get any unique reinforcements from houses that are usually impossible to vassal and event like the Tokugawa House betraying you won't happen.
 * Once Kenshin becomes the emperor, if you conquer a Demon Army province, the entire Demon Army will be conquered (so you can recruit a few extra units for the final battle and/or clear them for points beforehand, if you feel like it), and soon after you will get a scene where Xavier will go into the Orochi Dungeon in Yamatai.
 * Note that you cannot enter the Orochi Dungeon without defeating the Miko Institute (although by this point in the game, this is easy, simply declare war on them followed by using Kenshin to demand their surrender).
 * If you take more than 5 turns to enter the dungeon and defeat Xavier, Orochi will awaken and you will receive a GAME OVER.
 * Note that each turn, Xavier will go deeper into the temple. Depending on how deep he's gone, you will encounter him, and begin the final boss battle (a commander battle against Xavier and Toukichirou) passing floor 8/10/15/18/20 of the Orochi Dungeon.
 * The fight, Xavier and Toukichirou are almost identical to what they are in the True and Isoroku routes, however there is one small difference - Xavier has 2050HP and is level 100 in this route, otherwise, everything else is the same.
 * All commanders' actions (but not HP) will be restored when the fight starts. Additionally, you will be able to choose the commanders present at the start of the fight. What commanders are present on the final floor do not matter.
 * Making use of Sill's actions to heal any damaged commanders during the climb is advisable, as her actions will be restored for the boss fight.
 * Be warned that since Ogawa Kentarou does not join you on this route you will have to make sure you have a Diviner/Yin Yang ready to shield Rance repeatedly during the fight.
 * Winning this battle finishes the route.

Kill the Monkey route (KTM)

 * In order to enter this route, choose the option 'Can Kill Toukichirou' in the Family Bonus section (costing 10 points) before starting the game. Then, beginning on turn 7, the 'Kill Toukichirou' option will appear in Owari and you will enter the route upon choosing this option. This event will be available until the first gourd breaks.
 * The route is notorious for its unique (and somewhat weird) properties:
 * This route is recognized by the game as a route when you save progress, but it isn't quite a real route; there isn't a story attached to it and it is more of a Sandbox Mode than anything else.
 * The main uses of this route are getting points and watching obscure events without being interrupted by the game's storyline and the events caused by it. This makes this route very popular for obtaining Family Bonuses.
 * Much like the Demon King route, you do not get any bonus points for clearing this route.
 * All events related to Xavier will no longer occur, although it should be noticed that Suzaku will appear if you visit the Oil Dungeon when looking for Houjou Souun, so this particular plotline follows the True route rather than the Ran route.
 * Note that, as Souun cannot fight Suzaku for revenge, you will not be able to clear him.
 * Ogawa Kentarou doesn't appear or join in this route.
 * Kobayakawa Chinu does not die in this route either, so you can use and clear her.
 * Sill, Kouhime, and any other characters who would disappear in various other routes will all remain in this route.
 * Kouhime will not join you as a footsoldier unit (or Shibata Katsuie for +1000 troops).
 * The Shimazu brothers will act just like they do in the Ran route, however - they will not absorb other houses, they will only steal your female commanders.
 * Be warned as this route does not follow the plot of any other routes, several events that occur between, or due to different Houses will often occur at odd times, or not at all. For example, if you simply pay off Ashikaga and wait in Owari without attacking or declaring war on anyone for 200 turns, the Takeda House will never be introduced and even despite their countdown to war starting on turn 72, they will neither declare war on your nor conquer Satiama until after their introduction.
 * Naturally, this causes several weird occurrences and possible glitches. There have even been (unconfirmed) reports of players having Nanjo Ran and Houjou Sounn recruited simultaneously.
 * A number of events which are usually controlled only by the turn count have also been known to not occur. For example, both the events where a Hanny gives you the Popularity Staff and where you are given the Battle Permits do not occur in the KTM route.
 * The route ends when you defeat every country on the map and end your turn.
 * As mentioned above, it is quite easy to obtain 'unlimited time' in this route, if you so wish, there is nothing stopping you from paying off Ashikaga indefinitely and staying peacefully in Owari forever, allowing you to abuse SAT bonuses to make a very strong army out of your starting units. Used correctly, these exploits can rapidly decrease the difficulty of the route. Somewhat humorously, if you do this, the only house which will declare war on you prior to you declaring war on anyone else is Asai-Asakura.
 * Anyone who does use an exploit like this should be warned of the potential for a chain of bad events to trigger upon the introduction of other houses (e.g. Takeda's conquering of Saitama along with declarations of war from Mouri, Takeda, Tokugawa and later Uesugi).

Demon King route
WARNING: If you have entered this route, the game is unwinnable - a Game Over is guaranteed.


 * You will enter this route if you fail to get the Hirami Lemons for Miki or if you fail to find her after her disappearance (see the relevant sections for more details).
 * This route has some unique properties:
 * You are told to restart the game because it is impossible to win. The closest you can come to winning is to obtain a Game Over via conquering all of the provinces possessed by the Demon Army.
 * Warning: If you have closed the gate on Takuga and Xavier has then conquered them (prior to Miki taking over the Demon Army), you will not be able to 'win' the Demon King route due to the closed gate making the final province impossible to conquer.
 * You do not get any points for clearing the Demon King route as it is not a real route.
 * When you conquer all of the Demon Army provinces, you will get an event where Rance confronts Miki and Kentarou. In this event, Kentarou accuses Rance of cheating and then Rance tries to attack Miki but the duo disappear. It ends with Rance complaining he is too tired and the game then ends with the 'Game Over' screen (the credits do not play, because you have not beat a real route).
 * Unlike other routes, two units can be disabled by the Soul Binder's curse per turn.
 * Miki will appear in army battles, she has a special unit which fights alone (similar to cursed Mouri) and possesses a HP bar rather than a troop count. This unit will only use an extremely powerful physical attack which targets one unit in any row and kills 9000 troops per use (note that as this attack is physical, Guard Shikigami can block it and guarding Foot Soldiers can half the damage taken by it). It appears to be the case that nothing can harm Miki (even Rance).
 * Xavier will appear in army battles. Strangely, his unit can be annihilated despite the fact that his unit should be like Demon Kentarou's, due to Xavier being a demon.
 * Similarly, Ogawa Kenatrou's unit will be stolen from you and it cannot be annihilated by any means (even Rance). Fortunately, since Kentarou has left, his sword will be returned to your inventory, allowing anyone to wield it.
 * Many Demon Army units will appear who have an invisible ability that causes all units on their side in the battle to be given all 4 buffs (at unknown power) at the start of the battle.
 * Fortunately, castle battles in the original 4 Shimazu provinces will be completely unchanged from how they were in the True Route, that is, Miki will not appear and the enemy units will not spawn with all 4 buffs.
 * The Demon Army will gain a large number of troops and commanders every turn, making their numbers effectively infinite.
 * Even if this route was entered via the True route, provided that you still have your Battle Permits, they will never be confiscated from you. They will effectively function the same as they do in the Isoroku route.
 * In general, if you wish to 'win' the route, the following are required:
 * Due to the number of troops the Demon Army will be killing every battle and the costs incurred by Battle Permits (if you have them), it will be almost impossible to survive without a high income and low outcome.
 * The best way to obtain this is to conquer most of the map before entering the Demon King route and to take as many Satisfaction Bonuses that lower troop replenishment cost as possible.
 * Skills such as Merchant and Asset Tech, while potentially helpful, are not required.
 * A good number of good scouts is required, if you do not have enough good scouts, you will have to risk unknowingly entering a battle where Miki is present, which will cause you to lose a large number of troops and possible lose some commanders. In the Demon King route, you should scout before every battle.
 * Naturally, you should have access to a large number of the strongest commanders in the game before attempting to 'win' the route, if you do not have a strong roster then you may be completely reliant on the Demon Army not attacking in order for you to make progress and winning without Battle Permits will be almost impossible. A lack of strong commanders will also substantially increase the difficulty of any castle battles.
 * The following strategies are useful if you wish to 'win' the route:
 * Before entering the route, you may wish to minimise the amount of times you've fought the Demon Army (although as above, you will want to have conquered most of the map before entering the route), doing this will maximise the number of former Shimazu commanders that the Demon Army has, increasing the probability that you'll face them rather than the significantly tougher Monster units.
 * If you still have Battle Permits, use them to take all the territories which you can and only defend against battles that appear to be winnable (usually, this means battles in which Miki does not appear), then as soon as you have the opportunity, attack the last territory of a province that you wish to conquer with your best troops and repeat this process until you have 'won'. Covert Action may be useful here, particularly for any province where the Demon Army has no choice but to defend.
 * If you do not have Battle Permits, you will have to find alternative means of both acquiring and defending territory:
 * Since you can no longer rely on Battle Permits to regain any territory that you lose due to Miki appearing in a battle, it is necessary to obtain a method of winning battles in which she appears.
 * The simplest method is the exploit Initial Time Advance, see here for a guide on how to acquire it. The basic idea is to exploit the fact that there is no battle in the game which starts out with more than 25 turns available and the fact that for every commander in a battle who has Initial Time Advance (or the Underworld Clock which has the same effect), the battle will last 5 less turns than what it otherwise would have. This means that if 5 commanders who have Initial Time Advance are present in the same battle, the battle will end instantly meaning that whoever started with an advantage in Battle Rating will win. In the overwhelming majority of battles (i.e. battles where the neither side has Initial Battle Rating, or a similar ability that changes the Battle Rating at the start of the battle) this means that the defending side will win, giving a very easy way to win a defensive battle in which Miki has appeared.
 * When using this method, it is suggested to have more than 5 commanders who have Initial Time Advance, since the Soul Binder can disable up to 2 of them per turn. Although in practice, since this is the fastest and most reliable method in the game to win any defensive battle, it is suggested to simply acquire as many commanders with Initial Time Advance as you can.
 * If possible, you may wish to give Initial Time Advance to your fastest units, the reason for this is that if you ever find yourself in a situation where you cannot deploy 5 commanders with Initial Time Advance, you still may be able to guarantee victory with less than 5 because your fast units are likely to take up the first few turns, meaning that by the time the battle ends you will have not lost enough Battle Rating to lose. In these cases, All-Guard Shikigami and Initial Battle Rating may be helpful.
 * In obtaining commanders with Initial Time Advance, the 'Increase Everyone's Affection by 3' Satisfaction Bonus will be very helpful.
 * If, for whatever reason, you are not happy with a team that will almost always win on the defense. It is possible to create a team that will never lose when defending a castle. To form such a team, you need 4 commanders with Initial Time Advance and 2 commander with Initial Battle Rating. Furthermore, one of these commanders must be equipped with the Underworld Clock. The end result of this is that even if you were to enter a battle where all 6 of the enemy commanders have Initial Battle Rating (and you faced them with the team just described), the combined force of your Initial Battle Ratings and the castle's Battle Rating advantage would cancel the enemy's Initial Battle Ratings out, leaving you with a battle that ends instantly with the Battle Rating being 50/50 to both sides, making you victorious as the game gives the victory to the defender in the case of a draw.
 * Another, less reliable method of winning a battle which includes Miki is to use skills such as All-Guard Shikigami, Kenshin's Power of the Goddess of War and Uruza's Accurate shots to minimise the damage that Miki can do, while doing whatever you can to win the battle.
 * Note that Due to Miki's high speed, your units with All-Guard Shikigami will have to be very fast, or else Miki may defeat them, or one of your other important units, before they can move.
 * In order to reuse All-Guard Shikigami or Uruza's Accurate Shots, Aburako Dousan may be helpful.
 * As for general offense and defense, it is recommended to simply have a strong group of commanders, if all else fails, you can devout the majority of your roster to exploiting Initial Time Advance, allowing you to stalemate the Demon Army with a defensive force that will (almost) never lose while you use your best offensive commanders to win one or two offensive battles per turn (and simply retrying the next turn if you lose an offensive battle), until you've 'won' the route.
 * Unfortunately, this method can still fail if some of your offensive commanders die, so it is advisable to do everything in your power to prevent your best units from being defeated in an offensive battle (in particular, if you have the Charm of the Immortal Fox Deity, make sure you have equipped it to your most valuable offensive unit).
 * One suggestion is to use your now unlimited time to acquire enough money to make the troop counts of your offensive units high enough to reduce any worries of their unit being defeated in battle.
 * If things go very badly, and all of your strong offensive commanders die, the only solution will be to use your unlimited time to upgrade your commanders as much as possible, until you have a team that's strong enough to win offensive battles. Although while doing this, you will have to deal with that fact that this will be very time consuming (so much so that it will likely be faster to just reload a save from before things went so badly) and may still fail since some of the game's strongest units like Natori and Omachi are impossible to replace and at this late stage of the game, you won't have much choice as to what type of units you can use. In short, if you're unlucky enough to lose all of your good commanders, it is best to accept defeat.