Here I have made a more condensed guide with pictures for those who opt not to visit the much less prestigious gaming website gamefaqs.
For a more detailed explanation of basic mechanics checkout
here and for skill&card descriptions, refer to
this.
WeGo turn-based system (or simultaneous turn)
Koei is known for their Dynasty Warriors historical simulators featuring deep and complex mechanics
Campaign map of the Kinai region. The game mostly involves moving generals which are represented by chess pieces across the board from node to node in a Risk-like fashion.The number under the chess pieces represents the total strength of the pieces in a node. Orders are executed when you press the end turn button, same for enemies. When your piece moves into an unoccupied node you automatically take control of that node. If that node is occupied by an enemy, then a battle will happen.
General, skill and card:
General has 5 attributes:
1. Strength value which represents the strength of the unit.
2. Cost - the cost to use this general, must be within the total cost set by the scenario.
3. Card - one time only special ability that when you choose to use it, it will fire at the start of the action phase.
4. Skill - skill that has a chance to fire during battle. The chance is randomly decided at the start of a turn, but if it will fire this turn then the game tells you by putting a small icon at the bottom of chess piece of that general.
5. Level - increases the chance of general's skill firing, note that this level is different from unit level.
Units have two attributes - type and level
I am not a graphic whore but...
Battles are resolved automatically. Each side exchanges fire and casualties are computed then the units return to the nodes they originate. Units that drop to zero strength "die" and they return to the reserve force of their owner, which can be redeployed after a few turns.
Type advantage
Can't we move on with this cliche already?
Units are classified into three types: Horse, Spear and Musket. One type is stronger than the next, in a simple rock-paper-scissors fashion, Horse beats Spear, Spear beats Musket, Musket beats Horse. The stronger type does double damage to the stronger type, while the weaker type does
zero damage to the weaker type.
You didn't really read what I was typing right?
Units can level up by fighting series of battles without dying. Level 1 does 1 basic damage and each level +1 basic damage, to the maximum 3 basic damage at Level 3.
Example: Attacker: Horse(level 1) of 4 strength vs Defender: Spear(level 1) of 4 strength. Horse deals 2 damage to Spear, then Spear returns fire which deals 0 damage. When battle ends the results look like this: Attacker: Horse 4, Defender: Spear 2.
As you may have noticed damage capability is not affected by the strength of the unit but only the unit type (Horse/Spear/Musket).
Damage is determined by unit type, not strength
Less is Moar
Example: Attacker: Horse 3(Level 2) vs Defender: Spear 4 + Spear 5
The tricky part of this scenario is that each side gets to fire once on every unit on the other side so
each Spear on the defending side takes 4 damage(attacker is level 2 so 2 basic damage, x2 since horse beats spear). Similarly if the attacking side had multiple units each of them will also receive damage. One implication of this mechanic is that piecemeal attack is better than attacking with all your units at once, since no matter how many unit you bring you can only fire once in a battle, so by launching an attack in waves you can actually cause more damage than putting everything you got in one shot.
Example 1: A: 4+4 (Horse) vs D: 4+4(Spear)
Result: 2 damage to each Spear
Example 2: A: 4(Horse) vs D: 4+4(Spear)
Result: 2 damage to each Spear
Example 3: A: 4+4(horse) vs D: Horse 4 + Musket 4
Result: 2 damage to each Horse on the attacker's side, 1 damage to Horse, 0 damage to Musket on the defender's side.
What about A: Horse 4 + Musket 4 vs 4 + 4 (Spear) then?
The answer is only one unit type can be brought into battle in an offence, so you have to choose between attacking with Horse 4 or Musket 4.
NOTE: the unit type that deals the most damage is chosen as the damage dealer
Ouch
Example: In this scenario the Musket is the only damage dealer on the defender's side. Judging from the pixels the Muskets are at least level 2 so 2x2 = 4 damage to each Horse unit.
Overrun your opponent by bringing more of the same
You may ask why would you attack with more than one unit then? One reason is that if the strength of the attacker is greater than the defender, then the attacker automatically wins and will move into the node the defender was occupying. This mechanic I call it "Overrun". Note: only the attacker can perform Overrun.
The Overrun mechanic let you override the limitations of rock-paper-scissors. A Horse 10 can beat a Musket 9 because of Overrun, which otherwise wouldn't happen. But there must be a catch right? Indeed the catch is that lower strength units get to move first, which means in the above example, Horse 10 will never be able to overrun Musket 9 because the Musket will move before the Horse, and a Musket launching an attack on Horse 10 will reduce its strength to Horse 8, which will not be enough to overrun a strength 9 unit.
Example: We have a Spear 1 and a Spear 9, enemy has two Spear 5. We both ordered the units to move seperately into the same node. The action sequences are: Spear 1(mine), Spear 5(enemy's), Spear 5(enemy's), Spear 9(mine). When two units have the same strength, it is randomly determined which goes first.
As you will find in actual play, moving your units in a massive blob is very inefficient and makes you susceptible to attack, since a high total strength means that massive army of doom will also be the last to move. It takes only a few attacks to completely neutralize a large army(see picture above for example). Prediction is key.
Income and upgrades
Every six turns you can upgrade your units and castles. Each upgrade increases the strength of your unit/castle by 1. Upgrading costs money which is deducted from your treasury. You can increase income by capturing nodes. Some nodes have higher income than others and some node even have special facilities that give you additional bonus. Here is a list of the faciliities and explanation of what they do.
Castle
The most important facility. Castle has many functions. For one any friendly unit located at a node where the castle is present will restore 1 strength at the start of a turn. Castle also has strength of its own which helps preventing Overrun against your army. In defending if none of your units could deal damage to the attackers, the castle will deal 1 damage to the attacking units. You can also put units into a castle which return them to reserve force. They will be fully healed can be redeployed after 3 turns. NOTE: units that die (being Overrun, or strength reduced to 0) will takes 4 turns to redeploy. NOTE#2: Units are deployed in action phase, meaning you can't deploy and move in the same turn!
From left to right: Stable, Town, Blacksmith.
These facilities have similar function. They increase the number of times your units can upgrade and increase the chance of general's skill firing for their respective type. Stable - Horse; Town - Spear; Blacksmith - Musket.
Goldmine, Church
They both increase the income of a node.
Harbour
Heal any units by 1 strength. That's it. It has nothing to do with naval movement.
That covered the basics I think. I don't expect many will play this game or read this but I will still check this thread from time to time. If you have encountered problems or just don't know where to start I will try to help.
