Guide to 5 Star No Bonus runs

== Introduction - Questions that should be answered before reading this guide

== What is a 5 Star No Bonus run (5SNB)? It's exactly what it says on the tin. A run of the game on 5 Star difficulty where no second game bonuses are taken, although an exception is sometimes made to allow you to enter the Kill The Monkey Route (KTM).

Why should I play 5SNB? Sadly my honest answer is that you shouldn't. All that you're really going to get from it is bragging rights and it's a sad fact that if you're playing well then it doesn't take long for a 5SNB run to become indistinguishable from a normal 5 Star run. If you want to do something challenging then I'd suggest that you either try a Lowest Turn Count run like this one or a points run (this is the best English one that I know of, although even its own author admits that it's a poor one and both the Japanese and the Chinese [1 and 2] have done much better).

What should I know before reading this guide? Above all else, you need to know that this guide has been written with the following assumptions:


 * 1) You have previously beat the game on 5 Star difficulty and have a good understanding of how to play both the game and the route that you wish to beat on said difficulty. Consequences of this assumption include the fact that I'm not going to be telling you what to do if you happen to capture a fantastic generic, when/how to upgrade most of your units, or why you should scout before almost every battle.


 * 1) No savescumming will be assumed in this guide. After all, 5SNB is a challenge run - why would you cheat it?


 * 1) You are not doing the KTM route. While you could probably still use this guide for a 5SNB KTM run, its early game is just too different from the other routes for me to bother adding special notes for it at every point in the guide.

Finally, for reference you should know that the first 50 points of SAT are intended to be spent as follows. All of these choices will be justified within the guide. 10 SAT - Rance Attack 20 SAT - Recruit Dousan 30 SAT - Call for Rizna 40 SAT - Call for Uruza 50 SAT - Third Action Fan

What route should I enter? Given that this is a challenge run, I suppose that it's best for me to rank the routes by difficulty and let you pick among them, although I personally prefer the True Route for reasons that may soon become obvious. Difficulty ranks, hardest first:


 * 1) Demon King entered via the True Route after the Battle Permits have been lost - This is obviously harder than the True Route and is therefore the hardest route in the game. Personally I'd advice against entering it, it's so hard that the only fair way to beat it is to resort to boring strategies like abusing Initial Time Advance (see the walkthough http://alicesoft.wikia.com/wiki/Sengoku_Rance:Walkthrough#Demon_King_route).


 * 1) True Route - Simply listing the victory conditions of this route and comparing them to that of the Isoroku Route will show that it's harder than the Isoroku Route and hence this gets placed above it (the lack of Battle Permits in the end game of the True Route don't help either). The only counterarguments for this that I know of are firstly that you can't get Seigan in the Isoroku Route (which is easily rebutted by observing that the Battle Permits are better than Seigan is) and secondly that you can exploit the temple event in the True Route in order to get unlimited free time to upgrade your units (which I have no serious rebuttal for). If you like these arguments then by all means do the Isoroku Route instead and tag on the Demon King Route at the end if you feel like it.


 * 1) Demon King Route entered with Battle Permits (i.e. either via the Isorku Route or prior to losing the Battle Permits in the True Route) - The fact that you have the Battle Permits for the entire route is enough to make this easier than the True Route. Any serious problems like Miki can be ignored via competent use of scouting, unlike what we have in the #1 spot.


 * 1) Isoroku Route - I've already shown that this is easier than True and it's obvious that the Demon King Route entered with Battle Permits is harder than this, hence this gets this spot.


 * 1) Kenshin Route - This is easier than the Isorku Route because firstly it requires you to conquer less land and fight the Demon Army less than the Isoroku Route does (e.g. the Kenshin Route doesn't require you to conquer Senkan Nagato, but the Isoroku Route does) and secondly because a skilled player can beat the bulk of this route in a matter of only a few turns.


 * 1) Ran Route - This route almost plays itself. Placing it here requires no justification.


 * 1) KTM - The big problem for this route is that, by design, there's no time pressure. If you don't exploit the lack of time pressure then it might move up a few ranks in the difficulty but the lack of time pressure is pretty much the entire point of the KTM Route, so I'm not sure why you would do that. As an aside, I'll mention that I'm strongly against 5SNBing this route. Even if you ignore the fact that you have to take a bonus to enter this route and therefore it's not really a 5SNB run, the big problem is that you'll never be given the Battle Permits in KTM and because of that the game really starts to drag. If you're going to 5SNB this route then expect to get bored pretty fast.

What is the layout of this guide? Generally speaking I'll tell you what to do and then there'll be a subsection explaining why I'm telling you to do it followed by another subsection of notes which cover anything that I think is worth knowing. This is generally done so that you can read the whole section in one sitting and then just refer back to the overall plan for that part of the game whenever you want to sit down and actually do it.

The Big Plan Your route through the game is quite simple, Hara+Ashikaga->Miko Institute->Uesugi->tie up loose ends->enter route->vassal Tenshi Sect->beat route

Why this route? I'll break it down. 1) Hara + Ashikaga - Past turn 2 you don't really have much else to do other than go to war with either Hara or Ashikaga and as far as I can see there's no good reason to delay these two wars or to war anyone else - Iga is unrewarding and Tokugawa isn't worth the trouble at this point. 2) Miko Institute - This comes next because it's simply the best choice, Natori is arguably the best unit in the game, and taking her house gives you not only a chance to grab some of the game's best semi-generics, but it also gives you the path to the Kenshi+Uruza+Dousan+Natori combo which few parts of the game have even as much of a chance of withstanding. Aside for this, you just don't get anything nearly as good from your other options. For the sake of completion, I'll go into detail on why you shouldn't go to war with the other houses we have available at this point: - Iga, Akashi, and the Tenshi Sect can be ruled out as being detrimental, two of them break a gourd and give you virtually nothing for it, and I'll explain why the Tenshi Sect is best kept alive later on in this guide. - Particularly in comparison to the Miko Institute, Takeda and Tokugawa aren't worth the effort for what they give you in return and that's assuming that you're capable of beating them at this point. The fact that conquering Takeda triggers a war with Houjou isn't very nice either. - Tanegashima is a poor choice, the power of its muskets make it risky for the lives of your commanders and in return it only really offers you Yuzumi, who you don't even have the Worker Bee for yet. Using this as a path to Mouri doesn't strike me as a good idea either. Kiku's Assassinate, the war with Takuga, the multiple tough castles, and even Mouri himself are going to make this a very hard path to go down. To make matters even worse the fact that you can't cheat the boss fight against Mouri with Alice's Mansion could even mean that you simply cannot defeat the Mouri House. As for the rewards, assuming that they outweigh your losses, what are you even going to use them for? If it's beating castles, then you should've just took down the Mikos and got Natori and if it's normal fights then the Battle Permits (which you've probably already got by this point) will make them redundant until much later on meaning that you would've been better off avoiding Mouri until a point later in the game where Mouri will be easier to fight. Long story short, Tanegashima is a risk that's not worth taking, and going to Mouri from Tanegashima is going to be a pointless nightmare -Asai-Askura offers you one big thing that the Miko Institute can't - NP. Well, it does on paper at least. Too bad that it doesn't really stand up all that well to closer examination. On top of being nearly useless units, Askura Yoshikage and Yukihime take a total of 4 NP from you just to recruit which already takes up 80% of the NP that was on offer from conquering their house. The fact that you need a lot of affection items to get any use out of them doesn't help either - you need 3 clears worth to prevent Yukihime causing a war, scare off her unit for 5 SAT, and get the NP bonus from her dad. This would be nice if Yoshikage's NP bonus was substantial, but this early on in the game it's nothing of note. Overall they're best left until later. 3) Uesugi  - This should be a no-brainer. None of the already mentioned options have become much more appealing and you'd be a fool to turn down an opportunity to get your hands on the Kenshin+Uruza+Dousan+Natori combo, particularly given how easy Uesugi should be to beat. 4) Tie up loose ends - This one is a bit weird. The biggest thing that you're going to be doing after Uesugi is just wait for your Battle Permits to become available. With the Kenshin+Uruza+Dousan+Natori combo you've already got a team that can beat just about anything the game has to offer so all that's left to do is improve the weaker parts of your army and in my eyes the only obvious things that your army is likely to be lacking are good Footsoldiers, so grabbing Senhime from Tokugawa should be a pretty sensible thing to do and once you've got that you might as well grab Imagawa and its optional 5 SAT. After Imagawa however, there's too much variation between individual playthroughs for me to offer any real advice. Just conquer whoever you think is a good choice to conquer and once you've got your Battle Permits up and running then all that's left to do is enter the route that you want to enter. 5) Enter route - I could give advice here, but the problems are two fold. Firstly, there's too much variation from playthrough to playthrough for me to give much advice and secondly there's no need for me to give any advice any more. By this point in the game you're pretty much back to the difficulty of a 5 Star run with bonuses and therefore you should already be in a position to know what you need to do. 6) Vassal Tenshi Sect - I'll explain this later. 7) Beat route - by this point you're definitely back at the level of an normal run and therefore you no longer need me.

The specifics Hara + Ashikaga What to do: Turn 1 - Use your first Fan on 'Dango princess: Kouhime' and use your second to recruit one of the units who was made available by that. Don't waste money healing from the first fight, it'll happen naturally. Turn 2 - Recruit the other 2 units who were made available by the 'Dango princess: Kouhime' event. Turn 3 - Do the 'Prison (Capture enemy commanders)' event and declare war on [bold] Ashikaga (Hachisuka Muneya and Akechi Mitsuhide are the least wasteful units to use to declare war), and buy troops for Rance. Defend against any attack from Ashikaga. Turn 5+ - Recruit Yamamoto Isoroku and give her Whirlwind Shot. This has a few parts to it: Part A) (strictly unnecessary, but very helpful) Trigger the event where you auto-lose to her (after she's been introduced, just send Rance's unit out alone to fight any battle against the Ashikaga House, Isoroku's appearance in the battle is not required). Part B) In a battle which you win, reduce her troop count to 0, triggering the event where she is fleeing from battle, followed by the event where she is scolded by Ashikaga Choushin (see the notes for details) Part C) Capture and recruit her (see the notes for details, but it is of particular importance to note that once you've seen the scolding event, Isoroku can be insta-killed and is under most circumstances guaranteed to be captured if you annihilate her unit in battle and is therefore easy to obtain post scolding {just solo her with Suzume}) Part D) When possible, give her Whirlwind Shot. Turn 6 (meeting Suzume) - Use the 10 SAT bonus for Rance Attack. Turn 6+: Conquer the Mamushi Oil Field Vassal Hara (this can be done any time after taking two of their territories, even after said territories have been lost. If Owari isn't at risk then blitzing the Hara House is often a good way of achieving this) Conquer Ashikaga Recruit the Mino Three, followed by Dousan (use your 20 SAT Bonus).

Why you do it: Dango princess and the recruitment must come first, you've simply got nothing else worth doing on turn 1 and as for the recruitment at turn 2, those units are going to be pretty helpful in the next few turns, so why not get them now? NB: Sill's 5 SAT scene will happen as a start of turn event, it's not worth wasting a fan on.

Leaving the prison event until turn 3 is optimal because it means you'll have more of your units available in case Ashikaga attacks (which is good, because killing their troops now means not dealing with them when you're attacking them next turn). In other runs it would be optimal to not do this event at all since capturing someone automatically (e.g. by conquering the Hara House) will automatically open the prison, however in this run we want to get Isoroku before we'll get a chance to do that (explained later) so we need to open the prison manually. As for why we buy troops for Rance, aside from the obvious reason of increasing the survivability of a unit who must not die, it's because you're going to need them later on for capturing Isoroku.

Declaring war on Ashikaga (and not Hara) at turn 3 is optimal for reasons which were discovered by reading the game's code. To put it simply, one of the consequences of this being a run on 5 Star difficulty is that defeating the Hara House, whether that be by vassaling or by conquest, significantly increases the strength of the Ashikaga House. This leads us to a strategy which can be used to minimise the difficulty of both the Ashikaga and Hara houses. Specifically, we capture Isoroku and conquer the Mamushi Oil Field, vassal Hara, and then conquer what's left of Ashikaga. Counterintuitively, the key to this is actually Isoroku (explained below). Speaking of Isoroku, she's also why you declare war on Ashikaga manually rather than doing it by refusing to pay them (which incidentally, isn't always an option at the end of turn 3, Ashikaga sometimes gets a different event), doing it manually will make her be introduced one turn faster than refusing to pay them, giving you one more turn of oppurunity to capture her than what you would otherwise have (this extra turn also comes when Ashikaga are at their weakest, which is nice). NB: With a little bit of luck there's an alternative tactic that you can use at this point (known as '5-Oil'), however without reloading it's impossible to know ahead of time whether or not you're going to get this luck, so this tactic can be seen as a little bit of a risk. The basic idea is that you play the first 3 and a half turns as you normally would but rather than manually declaring war on Ashikaga you instead do something else with that fan and then hope that when you end the turn you get the event where Ashikaga demands money from you. You then choose to not pay this money and hence have Ashikaga declare war on you with Isoroku's introduction delayed until the end of turn 5 which (with some luck mostly relating to where Ashikaga attacks and what with) will give you a good shot at conquering the Mamushi Oil Field during turn 5. Needless to say, if this works then you're in a great position (you can even get Dousan as your first SAT bonus), however if it goes wrong then you might be in for a bad time. Sometimes you'll recover from it easily and other times Ashikaga and Hara will respond to your blitz tactics with their own blitz tactics and you won't be far off from a Game Over. If you're wondering why this is focused around getting the declaration of war from Ashikaga at the end of turn 3 rather than waiting another turn and seeing if it happens on turn 4, the simple answer is that you can easily fail to get the event on turn 4 as well as turn 3, which quite quickly turns into wasted fans.

Recruiting Isoroku is such a high priority because you simply can't make much progress against Ashikaga while she's fighting for them, she's their strongest unit by far and her presence alone is often what's going to stop you from conquering their castles (if she's in Ashikaga's army then she's guaranteed to appear at their castle battles). As for why you want to arguably waste a fan letting her automatically defeat Rance, that's because Rance is your best unit at this point and you're needlessly handicapping yourself if you choose to fight Ashikaga without him. These two subjects are actually quite closely related - Isoroku is such a powerful unit that I'd advise not attending any battle against her unless she's either very badly defended or if you've got Rance, preferable with Rance Attack, who is guarded by a good Footsolider. Not having one of these conditions satisfied will mean that you can't make up for the deaths that Isoroku will cause, losing you the battle (or if Rance dies, the game) and any chance of getting her to 0 troops.

You rush giving Isoroku Whirlwind Shot because it makes Kyo's castle much easier and it will come in very handy against the Miko Institute later on. If you're worried about the lost SAT then don't be, over the course of the game you'll easily get her back up to 7 Normal.

Rance Attack is chosen as the SAT Bonus and taken so quickly simply because it's so helpful at this point, it makes Rance a much better unit and that's a tough fact to ignore.

To completely explain why the Oil Field is optimal to conquer first, I need to go into some detail. What appears at the Ashikaga castles depends on whether or not you've captured Isoroku and whether or not it's their last castle. If you've not captured Isoroku, then the Oil Field has 3 warrior units in the front row, with Isoroku and up to two random units in the back. If you have captured her, then she is replaced by another random unit in the back row and one of the front row's Warrior units is replaced by an Archer. If the Oil Field is their last castle, Chousin will also be in the back row. As for Kyo, the front row is always a footsolidier, a Ninja, and a Warrior while the back row is up to 3 random units, replaced by Isoroku and/or Chousin depending on the same factors as above. Long story short, if you've not captured Isoroku then the Oil Field is the hardest of the two, at this point in the game you just can't handle the offencive force of 3 warriors and Isoroku's bow. Once you have captured her however, the Oil Field is probably the easiest - the totally exposed Archer will fail quite quickly, and with Shibata to eat hits the two Warriors shouldn't be a problem (unlike Kyo's Foot solider, who can tank pretty well if you're unlucky). So on difficulty alone you should be targeting the Oil Field, but there's more reasons than that. Having the Oil Field means that you can make progress towards getting the Mino Three and Dousan and it also gives you access to the SAT giving events which are needed to go to war with the Miko Institute, and it also gives 1 more NP to you than Kyo, while the only interesting thing that Kyo offers you are those two Kuge sisters, who are pretty bad when compared to the Mino Three and Dousan.

As for why Hara is vassaled, and why it is vassaled prior to conquering Ashikaga, this can all be boiled down to the same reason. You've probably lost a lot of Owari's territory to Hara and vassaling them is the easiest way to get you back into the safe zone of having Owari completely under your control and only having Ashikaga to worry about. For the sake of completion I should say that there's more reasons to it than this (e.g. Hara's castle is very hard to get through and isn't all that rewarding to beat) but most of them aren't worth mentioning.

As for why Ashikaga is conquered rather than vassaled, to put it simply - unless things have gone horribly wrong (see the notes for this section), you'll gain nothing of value from vassaling Ashikaga.

As for the Mino Three and Dousan, Dousan in particular will be needed for your war against Miko Institute. I can't stress enough how good she is, she's a Monk with great stats who is usually recruited with a high troop count and also comes with the game-breaking Convert Action. As for the Mino Three, I'll discusse them further in the Miko Institute's section.

Notes: Gold - If you're ever short then fire all but one of the troops that Takigawa Kazumasu and Akechi Mitsuhide have. Chances are you'll only be using them as scouts and you'll appreciate the gold when it's needed.

While you should certainly defend against them if you think that you're going to win or if they're about to cause a Game Over, most of the time you can ignore any attacks made on Owari by Hara, Ashikaga is more important and once you've vassaled Hara all of that territory in Owari will be yours again. If in doubt, exploit covert action.

During this part, you may find yourself with some spare Fans, here are some guidelines for using them. If you have spare Fans but not units, either aim to get SAT (dungeons {particularly after turn 11}, the Miko Institute, and Suzume are good paths to this) or if possible, you can upgrade some of your units (don't forget that levies give you books). If you have spare Fans and units, consider increasing your NP or recruiting some units (the Mino Three are a particularly good choice, get the Diviner first). If you're short on troops, don't forget that the 'Rest all troops' thing will heal them.

All of the recruitment in this section may cause NP to be an issue, therefore I'd advice caution when considering any recruitment from your Prison in this part, although it goes without saying that if you get lucky and grab someone awesome then you shouldn't hesitate to recruit. The same also holds if you get very unlucky, lose some good units, and have little choice but to recruit. Also, when working on the Mino Three keep in mind that they sometimes join with over 500 troops, which should be cut down to under 500 in order to make sure that you've got room for the others and Dousan. Also, if you're still struggling to make cuts after conquering Ashikaga, keep in mind that the Tenshi Sect troop defection event will be coming soon, which might do the job for you. Note also that Dousan's troop count is based on the average troop count of your units when she joins you so make sure to heal up your units and do all of the other stuff that's usually done to the manipulate game's perception of your average troop count before you have her join (e.g. cut the troop count of any non-Footsoldiers with just over 300 troops down to under 300).

Keep an eye out for turn 30, if you've not broke Ashikaga's gourd by this point then Takeda's gourd will automatically break, possibly causing you issues later on. Conquering Ashikaga after this point would mean that you've broke 3 gourds before you're even out of the centre of the map which for many reasons that I won't go into, is not desirable. Sadly, every method of solving this problem amounts to cheating. Reloading is an obvious solution, but there is another way around this - exploitation of a glitch that lets you break additional gourds before Kou goes missing. To put it simply, after the second gourd has broke but before the Tenshi Sect has declared war, if you vassal any of the Uesugi, Akashi or Ashikaga houses, 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. What does this mean? Vassaling the Ashikaga House shortly after the Takeda House's gourd has automatically broken will make the Ashikaga House's gourd not count! This is still far from a perfect solution and it leaves you at a disadvantage (it even prevents you from entering some routes), particularly if Isoroku hasn't been captured yet, but it's better than nothing.

This early on in the game, the Hara Reinforcements units can actually be of some use. Don't disregard them.

Aside from being a great archer this early on in the game, Ikkyu is a very powerful unit if used correctly. If you capture him then I'd suggest that you clear him a.s.a.p., give him Battle Rating Down 1, and then start sending him out in to battles along with Rance in order to trigger an event which will boost Ikkyu's affection by 1 every time the event is seen, and repeat this until he's got the game-breaking Battle Rating Down 2, and maybe also Initial Battle Rating later on.

Dealing with Isoroku is the hardest part of fighting the Ashikaga House and to be honest, it might even be the hardest part of the entire 5SNB run. This leaves us with a question that must be answered - how should you do it? Well, before I answer this I firstly need to make sure that you know how her capture works, so see here [walkthrough link]. As for how you should capture her, the Suzume method suggested on the linked page will work fine once you've seen the scolding event (NB: She's guaranteed to appear in Ashikaga's castle battles, which makes her ripe for assassination, consider using Covert Action to exploit this fact even further), but it's triggering the scolding event that's the hard part. My best advice is just to play intelligently and fight Ashikaga as much as possible, she'll appear sooner or later.

If you've been given the Popularity Staff, then I'd suggest equipping it to someone who will later become a Battle Permit user and the natural starting point for that is to check your Prison or to take a good look at the Mino Three. Beyond that however there's too much randomness for me to give any specific advice, all I can really say is that I would advice against giving it to Shibata - you'll be better off using him as an actual unit, and getting your hands on a 1k Footsoldier is pretty easy anyway (either buy the troops or just capture someone big at some point).

While most of the management you of affection items and the upgrading your units should be easily handled by your already existing 5 Star experience (e.g. if possible, give Shibata Enhanced Initial Guard), if you ever happen to have an abudance of affection items and a few spare fans, bare in mind that Suzume and the Kyo dungeon are [bold] very exploitable for SAT purposes (cross reference Character Clears with SAT page [suzume and dungoen links] for details).

The Miko Institute Before starting the war, you should take a break, both in-game and out. This is the last major hurdle before you'll be back to the familiar ground that is the difficulty of a 5 Star run WITH bonuses, so you really don't want to trip up here. Here are some pointers for before you start the war: 1) Check your items, many people forget to give Rance their textbooks. Now is the time to correct that mistake. 2) Work on some events. How many events you do here mostly depends on what the current turn is and how many free Fans you had while fighting Ashikaga, although your absolute deadline for declaring war on the Mikos should be during the turn where Rance meets Apostle Rengoku for the first time, any later than this and you risk Iga declaring war on you (NB: this makes doing the events which are required to be able to declare war on the Miko Institute a high priority). The important thing however is that you don't over do it, if you do too many events now then you'll have nothing to do later on when you've got a spare Fan. Generally speaking it's probably safe if I just advise you to use your own best judgement however given that Dousan is such an important unit for this part and has probably started out on well over 500 troops, feel free to dump a bunch of money in getting her in the 900s. You could even do a couple of levies just to feed her troop count and give Rance some more textbooks, the fact that Dousan is a Monk should make this pretty painless in the long run. 3) Have a think about what's best for your army. In particular, you'll have to consider which (if any) of the Mino Three which you're going to fire. In my experience the Diviner is a very useful unit and should be kept pretty much no matter what, however the same can't be said of the Warrior and Tactician. If you can replace them with better units then by all means do, I almost always fire the Warrior immediately after getting Dousan and keep the Tactician for any easy fights (he's a pretty good archer) and later on for a Battle Permit. Another big issue is your Prison, the short and simple advice is just to "grab anyone that you need to hold back the Tenshi Sect while you fight the Miko Institute, particularly Footsoldiers". As for how you're going to be using your army, your front row for any tough battles should now be Dousan, Shibata, and Rance, and the back row should include Suzume and Isoroku, along with another unit who's appropriate for the enemies you're facing. The Kuge sisters are also worth a look.

As for the war itself, there's no non-obvious step by step instructions for beating the Mikos, so all I can give you are a set of notes: Over the course of warring and conquering the Miko Institute you're probably going to gain at least 20 SAT so it's worth noting here that your 30 SAT and 40 SAT should go on getting Rizna and Uruza (Rizna should be got sooner rather than later, you don't want to have to wait extra long for Uruza) and your 50 SAT should go on the Action Fan. As for why these are the optimal choices, it's just simply the case that none of the other choices can even compete with them. Uruza and the 3rd Fan are just too good.

If you're having any NP problems, consider conquering Mikan. It's two easy battles and it gives the Tenshi Sect something other than Kyo to attack. Speaking of Kyo, that's also the easiest place you've got for upgrading the NP of, so that's another option to deal with any NP issues.

As for how you should be fighting, this is the point in the game where what you've learned over multiple playthroughs becomes more and more useful. Use your good units against the Miko Institute and don't hold back against them. Treat every fight as if it was a castle battle and unless you've somehow got a bunch of really good units, only attack once per turn. Use your bad units for scouting and holding back the Tenshi Sect, keeping a little extra spare for the riots or in case Seigan turns up at a bad time and place.

While turn 50 is your deadline for Takeda's gourd popping, I wouldn't be too worried about a long fight against the Mikos. Their generics are good enough to replace any non-serious losses, and some of their semi-generics are awesome.

As with Ashikaga and Hara, there's an advanced strategy which involves leaving Hara and/or Ashikaga alive in order to make the Miko Institute easier. Personally I've not tested it as I'm happy with the current Miko Institute strategies and the three front war sounds a bit too risky for me, but feel free to try it out if you want to.

Here's some general tips for the individual battles with the Miko Institute: Sheer persistence, even for the castle, just retry until you insta-kill (or you get lucky enough to be matched up against bad units like the Gathered Footmen) Don't underestimate the scripted fight in their first territory, I'd advice that you go all out against the Miko-loving group Don't be intimidated by the final fight, despite the 50% disadvantage, it's easier than you think - since it's not a Castle, you start with a relatively small disadvantage in rating, and the disadvantages in Battlefield Effect can be dodged by insta-kill moves, of which you have 3. Don't underestimate Dousan, some people think that she's only good for Convert Action, this isn't this case - her stats and troop count are so good that she can be used in the same way that you'd use a warrior unit. Just make sure that you know when to use Youkai Ward and when to use her regular attack.

Uesugi onwards As I've explained earlier on in the guide, I can't really give you much advice for anything past Uesugi and therefore I won't waste your time here event trying. As for Uesugi itself, you probably already know all that I could tell you. Namely that conquering them before Kenshin is lost is optimal and that while you're at war with the Uesugi House, sending Rance into any battle against Kenshin will cause you to have an automatic victory which can be exploited multiple times to pretty much get the Uesugi House's first province for free.

Why you vassal the Tenshi Sect The first thing that I should explain here isn't so much why you should wait to vassal them, it's why you should keep them alive until you can vassal them. My reasons for this are as follows: 1) Keeping them alive doesn't cost you much to do. If the Hara House is vassaled then the Tenshi Sect can only attack Kyo, which is easy to defend and it isn't even all that big a deal if you somehow lose it. With only a handful of exceptions, their units are some of the worst in the game and are therefore easy to defend against. Only at most one riot can happen per turn, these riots are so easy to repel that I've only ever seen Chousin's unit fail to do it. You can often win the fights just on counterattack damage. In my experience they don't attack very often. Once you have the Battle Permits, the Tenshi Sect becomes completely irrelevant. 2) Keeping them alive is beneficial, because it keeps you in a constant state of war. Which allows you to: Get extra items from winning battles, along with affection and troops for your commanders which participate in these battles. Avoid other, more problematic wars (e.g. prior to route entry, both Iga and Asai-Asakura's declarations of war are conditioned on whether or not you're currently at war with someone else) Easily prevent Senhime from leaving you. 3) Keeping them alive is also beneficial for the same reason that let Hara live for longer than necessary. Conquering or vassaling any house in the game makes all of the other houses stronger. 4) You can turn the riots to your advantage, the riots are so easy to beat that you can send a fully army to fight them and use the battle as an opportunity to have your Mikos heal your units.

As for why you keep them alive until they can be vassaled rather than conquering them prior to this, my explanation depends on the route. In routes where you can get Seigan then I can give the good explanation of "because Seigan is better than the 5 SAT and the early NP that you'll get from conquering early, and if you're really stuck for NP then you can still conquer Mikan and vassal the Tenshi Sect later on" and in routes where you can't get Seigan than my explanation is "read on" for Ran Route players while for Isoroku Route players my explanation is the admittedly much weaker "do you really think it's worth the required fans and losing all the benefits which I've listed above? Naniwa's also a fairly tough conquer, are you sure that it's worth the effort?".

As for why you vassal them when you're given the option rather than turning it down and conquer them, my explanation is mostly "aside from the difference between the land being conquered and the land being vassaled, they both give the same rewards, so why waste fans conquering them?", however particularly for Ran Route players there's a special benefit to the vassal (and it's not just dodging the potential Manmaru Game Over) - vassaling them can be used tactically, because enemy houses can't move troops through your vassals, you can let the Tenshi Sect conquer Kyo and therefore once vassaled use them as a wall between you and the (Ran Route irrelevant) other half of Japan, making the Ran Route even easier.