You play a feudal lord in charge of a small ninja village -- surprise! As you build up your village, the shogunate asks you for your help unifying the country.
The game is structured so that you'll be hard-pressed to beat the game in your first playthrough within the 16 game-years score cutoff. However, you can continue playing afterwards without contributing to your score. This means you can take your time, enjoy the game for its theme and get to know the road in your first playthrough.
Even so, beating the game within the timeframe of 16 years (in game time) takes some strategy and planning.
Tips
Focus on layout efficiency.
Good layout efficiency means money saved on leveling your dedicated worker-villagers.
Collect your "stipend."
As long as you're fairly sure you can beat the Imperial training army, duke it out as often as you can when it's available to offset the monthly cost of maintenance. I battled as often as could while multitasking, but only got up to around level 70/100 by the end of the game.
In addition to padding your pockets, you can get some important rewards such as permanently increasing the number of ninja you can send out each battle and calvary.
Give your worker-villagers basic work-gear early on.
The scythe and tenegui are cheap, and the sooner you get them, the quicker they'll turn around and turn that extra work stat into profit from shop sales as the game continues.
Keep your balance low.
This shouldn't be hard. If you're not increasing the Shogunate army to keep plowing forth, you should be increasing key villager's levels, researching new shops which yields exponentially increasing income as the game continues, or upgrading your villagers' gear. At any given time, you should be aching for cash unless you know you're saving up for something soon (e.g. you're about to ensue in a battle that would unlock cavalry).
Stack buffs on each army unit.
You can gear up and level up your village ninjas, but stacking buffs entire units with strategically placed ninja is the game-changer (literally) when you're up against armies larger than your own.
Check out your villagers' stats and plan ahead of time.
How do you know which villagers to invest in? Make sure you're not barking up the wrong tree by using this table to sort villagers by skill, attack/defense, strength, marksmanship, work and hp.
Invest in the high-buff, low-attack or the high-attack, lower-buff ninja? You decide!
Skip unnecessary upgrades.
You got the completionist's itch out of your system in your first playthrough. If you can beat an army without researching that armor/weapon, skip it. Chances are, by the time you need gear upgrades, you'll have unlocked much better pieces.
Upgrade your buff-ninjas, and only them.
Use that money you saved to level up ninjas which will contribute a buff to your armor. Stop when you've unlocked the desired buff unless you are having trouble with side quests.
BUFFS
- Infantry take the blunt of bullets. Invest in Bullet Resist for your Infantry.
Suggestion: Galapagos's forte is Marksmanship, but sticking him in Infantry late game with Bullet Resist 4 (Only guy who can learn this. Attained level 9) can let the unit pack a bigger punch. As an alternative, Ishida has extremely high Strength and Attack, making him great as infantry, but only buffs Bullet Resist 3.
Tricks
There are a few non-obvious tricks I've noticed. Take advantage of these gems when designing your layout.
- When crossing to and from their own homes, villagers can walk through each others houses.
- Villagers can walk through the flat part of Lumber and Ore depots.
- After using a workshop, villagers can exit out the other side from which they entered, thereby crossing through. They cannot normally walk through the workshop otherwise.
Save before playing with layouts. If you mess up big time, you can save hundreds in construction fees.
Cheats (sort of)
- If you save before sending your guys out to battle and lose, you can load your saved game, thereby saving you lost time and money. That said, the game seems to discourage this by compensating your loss with 3-5 of a random unit.
