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[Doom]

Houjou attacks again.



Oh, Ran. Fancy seeing you here. They take 1/4 of another bordering province. The more land you have, the easier it is to get good odds on spreading out the enemy invasion forces and stalling them further. If you make a bee-line straight for a House to destroy them it can be risky to only have one province adjacent to them.

I reloaded a few times to investigate a Branching Choice later, so I got a shot of Souun too.



Souun is the primary reason to conquer Houjou House, but he and Ran are immune to capture until some Houjou House specific plot cutscenes play out. So you have to start war with them and stall for awhile. Souun is amazing for a Diviner because he can skip the Preparation and just spam Summon Ogre to deal magical damage to any single unit. He does not actually summon an Ogre on-screen but we'll forgive him for being perhaps the only great Diviner in the game.

Afterwards we get a cutscene where Oda and Houjou have a battle and Ran blasts through it with Suzaku. This is just story-building and does not actually affect territory gain or loss.






Ran feels that Suzaku's continued summonings are beginning to manifest inside her...

Alright, so if I can't conquer Uesugi with force, what's the point? Well, as I learned doing this LP, you can take Uesugi's first province and then stall them out for as long as you like. As soon as you attack and conquer territory once and are subsequently forced out by the night raid, a new cutscene will occur between turns.






Kenshin's uncle Uesugi Kensei will lead a successful coup, figuring that since he has a penis he can appease Oda without any of his best commanders or the Goddess of War or anything. You get a choice to continue the war or to vassal Uesugi and accept Kenshin as a prize.




This decision is so one-sided it's ridiculous. Vassaling Uesugi denies you the opportunity to levy or to recruit Kenshin and Ai. Perhaps worst of all, Kenshin is delivered to Rance... but the shame involved with dealing with the traitor Kensei causes her to become emotionally dead, Rance gets over her tsundereness and bangs her and she joins the harem instead of being a recruit with a Dating Sim Character Clear. You don't even get Satisfaction for this just to let you know how God Damn Dumb you are.

Possibly the only upside as I just learned is that vassal Houses will send you assistance randomly.



SHITTY RANDOM UNITS? SIGN ME UP.

We reload and do the right thing.



You have five turns to conquer the last Uesugi province. Not a big deal but don't think for a second that you can stretch this time limit.

[Doom]

Over at Takuga House, they search for purpose.




Mouri attacks!




Kiku is a powerful Ninja unit that knows Assassinate but she flubs it by using it as her first move and losing all her Action Flags. And it fails anyway! Turns an average battle into a steam-roll, but we can't catch her yet. I believe the Daughters are all immune to capture(and Mouri himself for obvious reasons) until an event pops up later.

The last cutscene, Rizna is overcome with distress at the hardships her medicine must be facing on it's journey.




And Rance's plan seems to be working.

[Doom]

Turn 59 begins! Uesugi will stop fielding Ai and Kenshin and their comps will actually become worse than usual.






We 1-2 punch them for 2/3 of their territory in a single turn. Easy.

The 5 turn limit is very generous for taking a 3/3 Province, but remember...



There will even be between turn cutscenes the first four turns of the limit where Kensei paces nervously and demands more messengers be sent to Oda before he retires to the Torture Room to relieve his stress. Barf. We'll execute him very swiftly next turn.

Last Action Fan! We'll investigate the Tokugawa Hidden Treasure Dungeon... 13 floors! Our first real Dungeon challenge.



We'll have Suzume in the party for as long as possible to get the most out of Dungeon Scout. She'll throw Shuriken to her last Action Flag and then either use Standby to stay in or Switch to cycle fresh Commanders in. Neither command will use her last action flag, she's naturally fast and we want to get the most Dungeon Scouting we can.






It pays off in a big way. Tokugawa Hidden Treasure is 13 floors deep but seems to be mostly low-level monsters with the occasional mid-level. We get a lot of 1-2 monster floors too. Thanks, Suzume!




Yow! What the hell are these things? This boss floor is easy enough with all our A-Team coming in fresh. No cutscenes, though!



+Action Flag textbook! It has some restrictions but this was random loot between floors. We'll use it next turn but damn, what a haul! We also get another +1 Construction Bar.



Our prize is another troop healer! +9... so with our earlier 15 we're healing 24 troops per Commander between turns. I'm so efficient! Turn 59 comes to an end.

[Doom]

Gon and Ryouma discover that Youkai can be slain by Human hands, undoing the curses it has spread. None of them are affected by it, though.



At 2 AM, Uruza is able to try out her magic phone and contact a bunch of unseen characters from another Rance game. They wish her well and she gets +1 Affection.



Another Ran attack oh boy. Houjou now has 2/3 of one of my provinces and 1/4 of another. This is getting irritating. It seems that even if Ran wasn't a one-way ticket to a loss, Houjou's army is surprisingly strong, especially if one of their unique Commanders shows up.

[Doom]

Turn 60. We move to seize the final Uesugi province but I'm not even going to play the music for this one.



YAWN.
















A happy ending! Satisfaction 116!

I believe the semi-unique commanders from the Uesugi army become mercenaries now and you can finally capture them. They're immune to capture before-hand so we can guarantee this scene.

[Doom]

Let's recruit Kenshin!













wait a second this isn't like my Japanese animes at all, where's the 30 episodes of jerking the audience around

7 Attack/Defense/Intelligence, 6 Speed, 3 Flags. Awesome combat stats, terrible at actually running the state but that's what Ai was for, huh. Commander's Charge is like Honda/Rance's special move and Power of the Goddess of War is Kenshin's passive that makes all enemies have -1 Action Flags and gives a Morale Bonus to your army. I think I will be pairing Kenshin with Uruza for antics on difficult battles. This is primarily why I shifted my plan, I really want Kenshin and Ai to round out my army because they're awesome Commanders. Also check out the Level 63/70 Dungeon Cap, making Kenshin another awesome Dungeon fighter like Ieyasu.

[Doom]

Let's recruit Naoe Ai!





Ai just answers with a nasty smirk and a "Heh" but she's our new Tactician. 7s in everything, 8 in Intelligence, 5 Search, 6 Construction and 8 Negotiate, Ai rules hard. She knows better Tactician moves(can spread more buffs and remove more enemy buffs at once) and starts with the passive Asset Tech, which takes 5% of your current gold and adds it to your Turn income. Multiple characters can have Asset Tech but it stops stacking at 20% so 4 is the cap.

Over at Takuga...










Mouri attacks with a strong comp!




Chinu can use a unique Magic Attack AoE but it requires Preparation so she is probably the least dangerous Mouri if you remember a Ninja. The automatic defeat from earlier was a one-time thing. I still haven't seen the event that makes the Daughters open to capture so we settle for a Morale victory on Defense.

[Doom]

You have to use a Fan to recruit Kenshin after conquering Uesugi House. Ai should join after a few turns but I used another Fan to recruit her immediately because I want to end their Exhaust turns as soon as possible.

We've defended against a Mouri attack and more cutscenes play. A generic imbecile has decided to fight his way into Mouri's castle...







Before that can happen, Mouri crushes the man with his fist.




I just wanna say that although most of the characters are Anime Cliche 101, they tend to be humorously well-written and then you get the interesting dudes like Mouri who aren't completely one-dimensional.

[Doom]

We took an Uesugi province adjacent to them so it's new neighbors time!



The One Eye House is a nation of Youkai! Founded by the Great Youkai King, the Youkai have isolated themselves from Humans after a Great Youkai War against all of Japan. They believe that time will heal the wounds. The One Eye House will never declare war on you but their commanders are amazing and it's an optional score-boosting goal to defeat the Great Youkai King. Their land is HUGE(the first province has 8 territories) and they're very strong so they're a complete end-game army.



Dokuganryuu Masamune or One Eyed Masamune is the Great Youkai King! He defeated the former King Omachi and founded the One Eye House, swearing to not meddle in the affairs of Humans or to let them oppress Youkai. He executes Ieyasu for his ambitions if you don't recruit him and can actually force Ieyasu to side with him if you go to war with One Eye House before defeating Tokugawa House.

I'd like to point out that Masamune isn't an eye-ball samurai who rides a toad into battle...



He rides a toad car into battle.



Omachi is the former Great Youkai King. Masamune defeated her during the Great Youkai War and they fell in love. She is the Guardian of the North.



A spider youkai, Noir is the Guardian of the East.



A cyclops youkai, Nogiku is the Guardian of the South.



A ... ninja youkai, Orime is the Guardian of the West.

All four are Masamune's wives.









Elsewhere, Nobunagula's ninjas grab the Uesugi Gourd.




One Gourd left friends. Remember, Akashi and Iga are easy Houses but they'd tip us over 30 turns early. Mouri and Houjou are pains in the ass but we're going to squat on them for good reason. Ideally in the next 30 turns we can just pump my coffers, build my armies and capture the Maid Daughters and uncurse Mouri. In the home stretch of Turn 87-90, we'll defeat as many Houses as we can back-to-back.

[Doom]

Turn 61. We impose a levy on the second Uesugi province and use some items. Yoshikage gets a +Int Book for a cap of 6 Intelligence, my Amazing Old Man snaps into a Construction Jim for a cap of 9 Construction and we give Isoroku the +Action Textbook to bump her up to 5 Action Flags, which is 5 Yanmato Sweeping Fires in a single battle if we get the turns for it. Due to the class restrictions this is about as good an outcome as we're gonna get from the book or I would have just tossed it to a 3 Pointer like Honda.

Ranmaru is at 7/7 Affection, let's talk to her!



Deciding not to break Rance's wrist, Ranmaru shifts to Trust and we teach her Light Attack. It deals 20% damage but it increases the odds of capturing a Commander. And it stacks, so ideally we'll be having Ranmaru attack a Maid Daughter with three Light Attacks before we KO them in the future Screw that it takes 2 Action Flags per use and Ranmaru only gets 3, we teach her Side Attack instead. 2 Action Flags for a 100% attack with no Counter Attack damage. Good strategic ability.

We have our Amazing Old Man solo a Search 9 to discover a dungeon in the second Uesugi province.



And we're out of Action Fans! What a quick Turn 61.

[Doom]

Houjou attacks. I decide to try a Burst Damage Comp.




It's not impossible to fight Ran, it's just very frustrating to have her instantly wipe your army. We defend against the single Houjou attack.

Mouri attacks twice!




A Stalling comp, we counter-stall so they can't attack our soft units for Morale and we make sure not to attack Teru. If she has 100%+ Guard and the other Foot Soldier has 100%+ Guard, we attack Teru so that her weaker ally intercepts and we can get morale without killing ourselves. Otherwise we use Standby to wait.



A weak Generics comp but we're low on guys. We manage to swing it with what we have left and the 40% Miko Storms. My army is getting better but still isn't capable of 4 Attacks/Defenses in a single turn. Hmmm.

Actual prolonged war is causing Mouri to become bored.





This should unlock the Event I mentioned next turn!

Elsewhere...



Yuki abandons the generic Uesugi lord she slept with to convince Uesugi to go to war with me. We should be able to locate her next turn since we've been Character Clearing Yoshikage. We have to hurry or she'll seduce another House into war. I hear she even goes insane from shame after doing this enough times.

And back at Owari, it's Sill's birthday!






Rance got her a beautiful kimono! Wow! It has all the standard features. Satisfaction 121!

[Doom]

Turn 62! Rance's 120 Satisfaction Bonus is -1 Replenish costs again, giving us maximum benefit. Every unit in my army should now replenish it's HP at half-cost between turns!

We've got no time to lose and we don't want no extra wars we don't pick ourselves, so we 2-man a Search 15 to look for Yuki.









Rance thinks that "Maybe", otherwise I bet Yoshikage would lodge his spear in Rance's stomach and hand us a Game Over screen.



Woaaaah bad stats. Yuki has 4 Action Flags, 6 Intelligence and knows the improved AoE Miko Healing Spell so if nothing else I'll try running her in some of my comps as a pure Healer. Her Cost is 2 with 500 Stack so that's very reasonable. Caps my National Power, though! I'm not sure if Yuki is a New Game+ only recruit or not but as you can see she's nothing to trip over yourself trying to recruit.

We use our last Action Fan to develop for a point of National Power. Turn 62 ends!

[Doom]

Houjou attacks with the worst comp I have seen in some time. I defend on a budget.



Do you even Tanuki?

Finally. I've been waiting for this cutscene for a long time.









Worried that Ran's continued use of Suzaku will summon one of Xavier's Apostles, Souun convinces her to stop summoning him. This means two things. Ran can now be captured and it will actually be feasible to fight Ran because she'll stop using Summon Suzaku to insta-wipe your army.

This is a New Game+ so we will actually go out of our way to not recruit Ran. Why? In your first playthrough you will always go down the True History route. In New Game+, you can do things that will put you on a new path about halfway through the game. Recruiting Ran is one of them! The biggest downside to this is that without capturing Ran we won't be able to recruit Souun. An actual shame.

[Doom]

Mouri attacks but luckily it's a Chinu comp again.



I just wanted to point out that as we enter Mid to Late game that you'll see me doing this a lot: winning battles easily against opponents that out-number me 2:1. It's just how the Rock-Paper-Scissors of Class Balance works. Foot Soldiers are great at blocking Archers and stuff but Warriors Alpha them for hundreds of damage while taking a hundred or less themselves. As long as you protect the Warriors with a Foot Soldier of your own they're free to carve up the enemy. Rance here only has 970 dudes but he is dealing 800 damage an attack since Uruza gave him +Attack Boost for this defense.



Pow! We haven't actually gone and seen the Mouri Event yet so still no recruiting that Maid.

Afterwards, we get a new cutscene which I think may be New Game+...








Uhm. Stay strong, M... Miss Kojika...

Oh finally, I've waited for 3G to give me these items. You usually get them on Turn 61 but I think I've had a lot of higher priority cutscenes going through.




Battle Permits are unique items. They have several rules but they dramatically increase the rate at which you can invade larger Houses or reclaim your own land.

1) You get 5 Permits, each for a separate unit type. Warrior, Tactician, Diviner, Ninja and Foot Soldier. The unit must have a Stack of 1000 or more.

2) At the end of your turn if the unit is not already exhausted, it will attempt to reclaim territory from an enemy(higher priority) or seize land from someone you are at war with. There is some RNG behind it but if the unit is strong they will very often succeed.

3) Win or lose, the unit will lose between 1 and 1000+ troops so it can become costly.

4) If the unit wins, you've just seized a territory with a single unit. Nothing a Permit Holder does counts against your Action Fans in any way.

5) Permit Holders cannot seize an entire province, or they cannot attack the last territory of an enemy province. They can clear out any enemy footholds in your own land.

I give one to Sanada and another to my Generic Racoon Foot Soldier guy. With a little bit of luck I can cleave Mouri and Houjou to their final provinces and squat on them for the next 25 turns easily. I'll have to gradually build Stack in my other troops to use the rest and as you'd imagine the only way to get a freaking Diviner to 1000 troops is to have been nursing a Generic Diviner since early game or to go recruit Ran or Souun. Doh.

[Doom]

Oh, a new option on top of Mouri's land.



Yup. We can accept his invitation to an All Out Battle!





The All Out Battle is rather dangerous. Mouri himself will always show along with a few of his Daughters and generally good unit comp. Kiku wasted her first turn on a failed Assassinate again. Lucky!




The victory is actually very easy with this comp and Kenshin + Uruza. Rance and Kenshin stall to avoid crashing into Teru's Guard, Natori gives us the Morale advantage with Miko Storm 2, Uruza shoots everybody for -1 Action Points and causes a lot of the enemy army to run out of Moves early when combined with Kenshin's aura and Sakakibara and Katsuie keep everybody from taking significant damage. At the end I have Rance and Kenshin use Rance Attack and Commander Charge to blast Teru to half health without taking Counter-Attack damage for extra Morale.

We win!





Delighted, the Mouri army retreats and we seize a three territory province in one Action Fan! Wow! The downside is that if you lose the All Out Battle you'll receive a Game Over, presumably as Mouri crushes Rance with his bare hands. Mouri's Daughters should no longer be tagged immune to Capture so hopefully we'll get lucky in the upcoming long stall.

I'm adjacent to Shimazu land now but I have no option to declare war. In a future cutscene the Shimazu brothers will amass defenders on their borders but just go "Man, that crazy foreigner sure is crazy." Nothing to attack here for now.

I impose a levy and...

Declare war on Takuga.




War? With Humans? Sounds like a lark! Turn 63 ends with us back at war with 3 Houses simultaneously. Again!

Oh, it's been awhile so I throw 5 losers out of Prison, then another 5. I Pokkuru Rance twice to Level 56 and end Turn 63.

[Doom]

Raccoon Guy and Sanada reclaim two of my territories at a combined cost of 253 troops. It's not a big deal but the more land I have to stall with the better if I need it.

Houjou attacks with a terrible comp so I blitz them down with a Warrior-heavy comp.




Yuki functions decently enough, probably healed 300+ troops overall. Money saved!

Whoops. I used too many guys last turn... Mouri attacks with an overwhelming comp.



But they can have it. 1/3 of my territory and now I have my Permits, it'll be an easy stall. A shame to miss a chance to catch Kiku, though.

Cutscene!




The light of Hope, Miss Kojika?

Cutscene!



Just Kenshin and Ai hanging out. Gets me another Good Medicine like the last two Buddy Buddy NPC scenes.

[Doom]

Turn 64 begins and I decide to knock out some cutscenes that are only available after Turn 61.

We chat with Ranmaru and most of the scene is H so here are some links.

Ranmaru 1
Ranmaru 2
Ranmaru 3
Ranmaru 4



Katsuie you butthead. We talk to Ranmaru again for a second cutscene.



This will pay off in a few turns.

For our last Action Fan we'll go clear out the Sado Gold Mine. A ten floor dungeon but the monsters are all mid-level or better.







The boss floor is an actual threat! Super Hannys hit like trucks and I end up with Rizna and Naomasa exhausted.





My reward is a pretty good item and 5000 gold. Turn 64 ends.

[Doom]

Quick note, I dismiss Niga and Akechi(Generic Archer and Generic Tactician)'s stack down to 1 to pocket gold and then fire their asses to free up National Power. Good riddance!

I reloaded a few times to play with capture chances but here's what I ultimately settled on. Between turns, Raccoon Guy reclaims the territory Mouri took and Sanda reclaims some land Houjou took for a mere 250 troops. Stall stall stall.

Then Takuga attacks ohno.





Takuga's uniques are really strong and their comps tend to be solid but otherwise they're not unusually threatening.

Mouri attacks!





Damnit.

Houjou attacks!



Bingo! We're not going to recruit her but now I can make a save file here and do the Ran Story Playthrough later. This also...




Leads to Souun deserting Houjou House. Makes battles with them significantly easier now that I can't run into two of their unique Commanders. If this was your first playthrough this is where you'd recruit Ran and wait for the chance to save Souun and recruit him later.

Mouri attacks again and I forfeit 1/3 of a province to them. Deja Vu.

Cutscene!







Just to cut you off here, Katsuie never does anything to kids if we clear Ranmaru. I don't know about what happens if we follow Katsuie's advice and listen to his creepy friend from earlier... but Character Clearing Ranmaru or Katsuie, one is exclusive to the other. Character Clearing somebody gives them a high random chance to get +1 Affection just for using them in battle and Character Clearing Ranmaru in particular means that Ranmaru and Katsuie will always have Attack and Defense boost if they fight in the same battle together. Basically makes them 150% as good as they were, really awesome especially for Katsuie.

[Doom]

Turn 65 is up and we Search 12 for a dungeon in some Takeda province.



Kaizuka! The Shell Paradise. A mere 5 floors this should be an amazingly easy clear.











Rance is a Shell collector. Who would have guessed? Finding each rare shell actually gives +5 Satisfacation and I rocket to 136 Satisfaction from this single dungeon! The item I get from the semi-random good item set is, as always, good. Five floors, all mid-level monsters and a boss floor with some mid-to-high level monsters. An easy clear.

We blow Rance's Satisfaction 130 Bonus on giving every unit in my army +50 Stack. Turn 65 over.

[Brentai]

Rance having a hobby that doesn't involve his dick is kind of creepy for some reason.