And since I forgot it, the Score is mostly cosmetic. You'll lose one point per turn, you get extra points for performing bonus deeds(kill super hard optinal bosses, find hidden easter egg treasures, clear the Dating Sim elements of unique NPCs, etc) and in general it rates how well you're doing because the faster you beat the game, the better you're doing. But the only benefit of a higher score is bonuses in your next playthrough.
My translation patch isn't perfect, but the only bits it didn't translate are intuitive to figure out so who cares. Like I said, my score total is shown on the map despite being a PQO here, and I know I lose one a turn.
What are Gourds? They're a plot element and a foresight thing I'll mention later.
If you ever forget what you're doing, Current Status will summarize the most important bits, from "Do This Or Die Right Now" to "You can get a unique cutscene with this NPC!" Very handy! And since I won't open and screen-cap it, let me add that the save system is really nice: it lets you label each save with comments up to 360 characters long!
Chaos is a Sword, so he's permanently held by Rance as an item. But he's a great Sword, so it's hard to complain.
These are the two bonus items I chose for New Game+. The Golden Bear Statue has the ... Power (of a) Golden Bear! I'll pass it to Ranmaru for now. The Bee? It's a secret, I'm not twinking anybody I currently have with it!
Army Management is super important and separate from the mini-Civ/Dating elements of the game. As a matter of convenience, you can throw gold at every unit to heal it to full. Or do it individually.
Let's make like R^2 and discuss unit types more in-depth like!
Warriors or Busihido are Offensive Melee Units. Their attack is better by default and they can learn unique attacking options, such as Attacking and Denying the enemy their Counter-Attack or Attacking with Bravado that Influences the Battle Meter. By default, they can hit shit or Standby(wait and not forfeit an Action Flag.) Warriors benefit immensely from attacking first and pair well with Foot Soldiers who can protect them and preserve their HP for the best Alpha Strikes.
Rance's starting stats of 3 Actions, 5 Attack, 4 Defense, 5 Intelligence, 4 Speed make him above average and he has several story prompts to boost them further. Stats max at 9 and with his story boosts it's ridiculously easy to get him at a 7 or better in everything.
Search, Negotiation and Construction are Civilization-style stats! Construction is used for Development and Battle-ground Prep, so having Bureaucrat units around that don't fight is a good idea. But only about two of them, and definitely no more than five, which is the cap of guys you can send to do business dealings anyway.
Negotiation is mostly used to Declare War or make enemy countries Surrender. Since we're conquering Japan there isn't much room for allies, though there are some unique situations that you can find if you really look.
Search is Exploration and related to finding Dungeons, Treasure, and the occasional important Plot element. Also Scouting enemy armies, but that tends to be trivially easy.
Cost is what the unit runs against your National Power for existing. Some units are fancier than others and Costs increase as your Max HP increases. But Max HP or Troop Size boosts all of your stats and primarily your attack, so it's worth it to boost Rance from 150 dudes to 200 dudes for now, after we heal everybody to full. Rance is terrible at actual ruling but fantastic at fighting. Fortunately, we have goons to do boring shit for us.
You have options to Replenish(Heal up to your Max HP), Recruit(Increase Max HP, costs increase about every 250 guys), and to Dismiss(decrease Max HP, generally don't do this.) Upper Limit rises naturally so don't worry about it. In the upper left corner, Health + Level are listed. Those are dungeon stats! And Rance has Auto Heal(Sill), which is Sill's healing bonus I mentioned earlier, giving Rance a starting Passive. Most other units will have to earn these by Dating Sim elements.
Ranmaru's Attack 6 becomes Attack 8 with the Golden Bear Statue, and with Def 4, Int 7 and Spd 6 her stats are awesome. Like Rance, she sucks at anything but Fighting. At the top of her info box here is her Emotion Gauge, or how she feels about Rance. It's the dating sim element and we improve it by talking to her from the map screen or giving her gifts, but we haven't found any gifts yet!
Katsuie has 4 Actions, which is fantastic, and 4 Atk, 7 Def, 6 Int, 4 Spd and bad Civ-stats. So he's awesome at taking damage, deals respectable damage, and can attack or stack his guard stack frequently. Intelligence as you'd imagine is a caster stat, but it also provides defense against magical damage, so it never hurts to have.
Foot Soldiers are the Defensive line of almost every army in the game. They can deal average damage and can fortify their Defense. They begin every battle with 50% Guard Meter, which is a 50% chance to intercept any attack intended for somebody in their vertical row... but it also halves any physical damage they'd take! Using Ally Guard will increase the Guard Meter by 80% or better depending on the Commander and passives, and once you're over 100% Guard you'll always intercept. Taking damage reduces Guard Meter by 40%. Foot Soldiers cannot attack from the back row, but can Guard against Ranged Attacks from Archers and the like all the same.
Foot Soldiers can learn unique attacks as well, or better their Guard Abilities, such as starting battle with 100% Meter instead of 50%, gaining 150%+ Guard Meter per Fortify, or the ability to All Guard both rows.
You will horribly lose battles if you don't learn to appreciate about 3-4 good Foot Soldier units. Note that to encourage you to get those boys killed, Foot Soldiers can be replenished dirt cheap at 1 gold a pop compared to 4 for Warriors!
With 4s in every stat, Maeda Toshiie is basically a meat shield to fill out your ranks in the early game. 4 Negotiate and 3 Construction make him a good starting bureaucrat, though.
Akechi Mitsuhide is your starter Tactician and has a mere 2 Action Flags and 4/3s in every stat, making him bad at fiting. With 6 Negotiate, 4 Search and 4 Construction he's awesome at running the state for the first half of the game.
Tacticians attack like Archers, but are responsible for Buffs and Debuffs. Any Buffed(Colored Arrow) stat is increased by 50% in battle, and Tacticians randomly give buffs if they're included in the unit, about 4 with possibly more due to better Intelligence scores. Battle Strategy will give additional buffs(2-4) and Remove Status will remove Enemy Buffs from 2 random units(but only units that have buffs, so it won't dumb-fire and hit unbuffed units if an Enemy with a buff exists.) They deal less damage than actual Archers but can still do respectable ranged damage if their Stack size is kept up.
Niwa Nagahide is straight 4s across the boards, with straight 3s for bureaucracy. What makes him stand out is that his starting stack size is huge at 450, thus making him solid Archer support. He also begins the game with the passive Defeated Warrior Hunt, which means that units he damages/defeats are more likely to be captured in battle.
Archers are Ranged Damage Dealers best suited to sitting in the back row and focusing down priority targets, provided enemy Foot Soldiers aren't around to intercept. They deal better than average damage like Warriors, especially compared to other Range Units, but they cannot counter-attack. They can learn specialized firing patterns that deal extra damage to specific units.