Good Evening,

First off let me thank Gestalt, Weierstrass, and everyone else involved in the development of this Mod. After commenting some thoughts, I was asked if I could come up with some strategic tips for the overhaul as they had mentioned players can struggle at the higher difficulties. For reference, I've completed quite a few domination campaigns in Very Hard, and Legendary. (My favorite so far being the Satake!)

The important thing to remember about MoSS is that it is not merely a patch, or a value modifying mod. It's a complete overhaul of the game and most of its systems. Therefore when you're trying to complete campaigns, and increase difficulty, relying on strategies developed for the Vanilla game translate poorly into this Mod. I'll try to keep these tips brief and comment on questions and specifics later on.

Economics --

This is probably my favorite aspect of MoSS and its influence on the game play itself. In Vanilla the way you built fortifications / recruiting centers / economic powerhouses etc were based solely on map position. E.G If the town had a blacksmith you would upgrade the castle fully and build high quality troops out of it.

The resource system in MoSS throws this out the window completely. Any town you own can be build up however you like, the specialty resource system skill exists (gold, iron, stone, etc) But these only influence how much koku or resource the town itself can produce and has no impact on troops that are recruited in the province.

This leads us into the towns you are able to build. Farmer, Urban, And Samurai. All three of these towns serve distinctly different purposes, and you have to balance all of them to maintain a successful empire.

The absolute most important resource in this mod. Is your food.

In their most simple forms;

-- Farming towns generate food (and Ashigaru cap). This town type reduces unrest to neighbouring provinces.

-- Urban towns provide a large bonus to commercial buildings (also provides ashigaru cap, but these towns cost food to maintain and upgrade). This town increases unrest in nearby provinces.

-- Finally samurai towns increase samurai unit caps (a huge aspect of this town is that it costs no food to upgrade) This town reduces unrest to nearby provinces.

Understanding where to put these towns in your empire will improve your game play. A lot of MoSS campaigns give you a large amount of territory on turn 0. Being able to plan ahead on what towns will be; your koku produces, your recruiting centers, and your farming towns will make your life 100x easier.

The building system in MoSS was overhauled, so city slots are no longer locked to the castle level, but the town level of the city. You want to eventually upgrade the town to its max rank as you progress in the tech tree, but it's important to note you do --- NOT --- always want to use all the slots available to you as you upgrade your town.

Unrest is a mechanic added to balance how a town responds to what buildings are created within it. Some provinces enjoy having a lot of buildings (Urban) and others (farmers) ill dislike being completely packed with buildings. The relationship between provinces is VERY important in MoSS, and ignoring unrest will lead to poor growth and constant rebellions that slow down the rest of your campaign.

A common thing I find myself doing in my campaigns, is building up farming towns to their max rank, and only building grain warehouses within them. These towns will provide a large amount of food to your empire. These types of towns are necessary to provide enough food to your koku producing and recruiting centers across your territory.

Units and the pace of the game --

MoSS is not a mod you can take your starting units, and cleanly sweep all of your enemies across Japan. Replenishment is nerfed in this mod to be much, much lower than what you're used to seeing in Vanilla. Some units can take 10+ turns to be at full strength after taking considerable losses in combat.

Depending on what campaign you choose, you will have some scattered troops across your territories and clan retainers as your starting forces. What you will notice about these troops is the absolutely huge difference between samurai units and levy ashigaru. Katana Samurai retainers could endlessly kill spear ashigaru levy as long as the unit was fresh.

Understanding this impacts your ability to engage enemy forces, walking up to your first enemy and just auto-resolving every battle will deplete your starting units quicker than you think. You cannot recruit your samurai retainers if you lose them in battle, without technology and investment into your towns early on, making these units incredibly valuable.

With replenishment being this low, you need to take time to think about engagements and wars before you begin them, as prolonged wars will take a toll on your clans strength rating.

Diplomacy --

Strength, is, power. I cannot stress enough how much your clans strength rating will impact your ability to negotiate with other clans.

Solely by having a weak ranking, other clans will look unfavorably upon you. This could mean;

No trade deals

No alliances or the cancelling of current alliances

Straight up war declarations

This means you have to take your time in conquering Japan. Start a small war, take their land, and let aggressive expansion calm down before expanding again. This has the added benefit of delaying your realm divide until you have a much stronger empire.

Campaign Strategy --

As if iterated before, this mod does not allow you to win your campaign with base units or technology. You have to grow, develop, improve relationships and forge alliances with other clans.

What I commonly do is avoid as much contact with other clans early on. Improve yourself economically and don't piss off your neighbours. Build up to all of your basic towns in the technology tree, and work towards naval mastery to import silk or coal (depending on what you have around you) into your empire.

Build up your agents during this time period and let them rank up before getting into any major conflicts. Agents are -- VERY -- strong in this mod, and simply going to war with another clan who has agents while you have none will be stressful if you cannot blitz them completely. (looking at you Hattori)

After securing a strong base of income, work towards improving your military and trying to field the best units possible (Mix your armies with your strongest and weakest units).

I hope these tips can help some players who are struggling with the mod.

If you have specific questions that I didn't cover in my ramblings, please comment and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

-- Checkup