This page gives you general strategy advice for Age of Shoguns, as well as specific tips and tricks. It is a useful tool for Civilization newcomers or anyone who is becoming frustrated about not winning. Veteran civ players may find it more challenging to avoid reading this section until they have played a few games and have the opportunity to discover these tricks on their own.
- When moving ships, always leave one movement point free so you can
fortify the ship at the end of the turn. This gives you a big advantage
if you are attacked on your off turn. The AI makes frequent use of this
tactic.
- Look for opportunities to build cities in places where they can give
you the "Panama Canal Effect", allowing your ships to traverse two
bodies of water via the city. This can save a lot of ship movement time.
There are some excellent places in the Tournament scenario to built
these types of cities.
- Make frequent use of the "e" key to tell a unit to explore on its
own. If you use a Horseman to explore, be aware of a small problem that
can occur. Horses can go into mountains, jungles, or swamps. If your
Horseman is on auto-explore, and passes a goody hut located on
impassable terrain, the Horseman will continue to circle the goody hut
until you intervene.
- When building improvements, look for bargains. Some improvements
have no long-term maintenance costs. Also, be sure to note the cultural
value of an improvement before you build it. The role of culture has
been expanded in this mod pack.
- Ninja and Ronin, available to Political clans, are units that have
Hidden Nationality. You can use them to attack enemy units and pillage
terrain improvements without causing a war. However, Ninja and Ronin
cannot attack cities without a declaration of war. Be aware that Hidden
Nationality units will be aggressively hunted down by all clans. You can
protect yourself from this by stacking them with a normal unit. Stacking
a normal unit with a Hidden Nationality unit is a particularly nasty
trick when you have a right-of-passage agreement with another clan and
you use it to trash their infrastructure.
- If you have colonized a small island, consider placing units on
every land square. This will prevent any serious invasion of that
island. However, you still need to keep a few units inside the city to
ward off amphibious Raider attacks.
- One nasty trick is to make a right-of-passage agreement with a civ
and then blockade their ports.
- The Farming and Political Ambition techs are specific to
agricultural and political civilizations. Other clans that want to learn
these will have to make an enormous research investment. However, keep
in mind that the Great Library in AOS yields 2 free techs upon
completion, and the first clan to achieve Philosophy gets 1 free tech.
Because you choose the free tech you receive, this is an excellent
opportunity to expand your clan's capabilities on the cheap. Once you
have these special technologies, you can build the related improvements,
but you will still not be able to build the special units.
- When doing map trading, always trade
with the weakest civ first and work your way up to the powerful civs. As
you build up your map, a trade will look more attractive to the powerful
civs.
- When in the hands of a human player, the Tokugawa can be dangerous in the early game. The Tokugawa start the game with Sword-Smithing, so they can make immediate use of iron to build relatively powerful units. Also, the Tokugawa can build a Dojo at the start of the game and immediately upgrade their Shogun-1 to a Shogun-2. The AI will never move a Shogun out of a city, but the human player could use an early Shogun-2 to create havoc, even killing weaker enemy Shoguns. The Tokugawa also start the game with a Horseman, something no one else will have until later in the first Era of the game. This Horseman is very dangerous when used in concert with a Shogun-2.
