Korean DLC walkthrough

[Genghis_Sean]

The Samurai Invasion of Korea

I didn't purchase the Korean DLC until recently and bought it in an effort to check off the achievements it offered. I wasn't able to find any walkthroughs for it here, so here's my breakdown for how to complete it. I started with the hardest one first, and am now working my way down. I began with playing as the Koreans on deity and won it handily, though I quit the first couple times as the Japanese overran me no matter what I did. I only later realized they were supposed to. Here are several principles one should understand for how to win the scenario:

1) Understand that the Japanese will overrun the entirely of the southern half of the peninsula no matter what. You'll have a half dozen units maybe and they'll have 30, so make your decisions accordingly. They managed to get all the way to Seoul, my capital, and take it before I was able to make a stand. What this means is that you should make wise decisions about your production. If you can complete a happiness improvement, I'd do that since it won't benefit Japan any once they own the city, and eventually you'll be taking the city back and happiness will be an issue. You can consider quickly completing a unit, but I suspect none will complete quickly enough, so you might need to settle for gold per turn. You'll hold Seoul long enough to build something but few others.

2) Forget the battles and win the war. By that, I mean don't subscribe to the kamikaze way of thinking, but flee to fight another day. Pull out your units and retreat to good defensible positions and then flee again. Eventually you'll be getting reinforcements that spontaneously show up, and China will send help as well.

3) Trebuchets and Turtle boats will win you the game. Trebuchets in particular are invaluable because they can grab high ground and pick off the Japanese as they approach. Try to build a cluster of 3-4 that you protect and along with a great general will allow them to upgrade to the point that they can cripple or kill in one shot. All other ground units are expendable.

Your navy is equally important because you'll be so heavily outnumbered. To kill a ground unit in combat often takes 2-3 units. If you finish it off with a melee unit, you often lose it the following turn because it is exposed. With turtle boats, you can kill a melee unit crossing the straight with a single attack. Therefore, you should designate at least one city to constantly crank out naval units. You'll want a cluster of at least four ships on each side of the peninsula to deal with the Japanese ships and to sink as many embarked units as you can so you don't have to fight them on land later.

4) Finally, focus on keeping a key core of units alive throughout the scenario and gaining them as much experience as possible. Principly, these should be trebuchets and ships. Don't worry about buying city attack for the trebuchets. They'll be used much more often to kill troops. Keep your ships in action constantly. If you don't have a naval action at hand, seek out landed foes to shell and gain more experience. Eventually, your elite units will take control of the scenario.

I never felt time pressure to win the game. Retaking cities starts slowly and then finishes in a rush. I finished with 17 turns to spare even on deity, so it wasn't that hard as long as you keep your head about you and don't get discouraged by how badly you're overrun at the start of the scenario. I'm finishing the scenario as Japan on Immortal setting later today. I'll do a writeup of that before too long.



Edit: Achievements earned:

Fear the Turtle Win the Korean scenario as Korea
Honoring the Ancestors Win Korean scenario on diety
Taekwon-DOH Lose the Korean scenario as Korea (by retiring at anytime)
Seoul Power Win before 100 turns as any power

 

[Genghis_Sean]

The next time around I decided to play as Japan on Immortal setting to unlock two more achievements. I expected this to be easier since in my first playthrough as Korea, Japan seemed to have endless forces that were repeatedly dropped on my doorstep. However, this turned out to be harder since you only get the forces you produce and you have to ship them to Korea yourself. They don't magically appear like they do when the AI controls Japan.

A few things of note:

1) Turtle boats are tough. You'll need to outnumber them if you don't want to lose ships facing them everytime.

2) Don't forget to take advantage of the Wapo Japanese tile improvement. I built one near the prime coastal targets. China likes to mount amphibious invasions now and then. They are pretty easily dealt with using only minimul forces provided you've got a small fleet to sink a couple targets as they come in. I mounted a single trebuchet in the mountains for the south western city. It would also cripple or kill the biggest invader and then I'd mop up the rest in a couple turns.

3) Happiness will become a big issue. I puppeted cities at first, and then once I got my happiness under control, I went ahead and claimed the cities one at a time and started building courthouses immediately. If you get a great engineer, there are two wonders to build, one of which is happiness based, though it requires a circus in each city, so you'll want to build those early.

4) Go with Samurai over Musketmen. They are cheaper, just as good in a fight, and you have plenty of iron. You'll get more troops into the fight that way.

5) The hardest Korean city to take was the last one. I was finally forced to use attrition and thrust in cannon fodder in the front lines to die while I placed my trebuchet on the prime spots to assault the city. I had a small fleet just off the coast, and then I had ground units lined up on the road ready to charge in the fill any vacancies. Once I took it, I was never in any real danger of losing it. It was also the last city I took. China had TONs of troops in the hills including a lot of cannon, and I was afraid to make a hard push for Beijing to end the scenario. It seemed risky.

What you do is look at victory conditions. If you've been playing smartly, you'll have killed a lot more of the enemy than you've lost and you'll have a lot of elite units. I played out the entire scenario and had the highest score, so I just stalled and ended turns as fast as I could and I finally earned the two additional achievements I sought:

Samurai Delicatessan Win as Japan
A Righteous Victory Win on Immortal

 

[Genghis_Sean]

My third game is as China on Emperor difficulty. This game doesn't need much of a walkthrough because it is the easiest game I've played so far, though it's a bit tedious. I'm on Turn 56 and I just leaped past Japan on the victory points chart, though I've yet to retake a single Korean city, so it's just a matter of time now. I'll either need to find a way to break into the Korean peninsula or take the faster path of just running out the clock to get the win.

1) I restarted the game on turn two several times as I experimented with what social policies to adopt. I ended up taking the Liberty tree and starting off with Citizenship followed by Representation. I really wanted that 33% reduction in social policy costs. I then finished off the tree to get the added city production and the happiness boost. I started the game at -24 happiness, and I found that intolerable.

Next, I start filling out the Honor tree heading down the right side first. I hated to miss out on the double experience policy, but in fact you won't be doing more than skirmishing for a while as Japan overruns Korea. By the time you actually face the Japanese, you'll have it. In the meantime, make a beeline for Professional Army which eliminates virtually all of your unhappiness.

2) Go around and set all your cities to stone works wherever possible. Production values are pretty low in places and you'll want to be able to crank out a steady stream of units. Workshops are also a priority. Buy happiness buildings here and there to stave off the killer penalty. You'll have a great income, so the gold will be largely unneeded.

3) Great engineers will pop pretty quickly. I used them right away to build the Himeji Castle and Porcelain Tower. Make sure all cities are finishing the appropriate buildings to unlock the ability to build Iron Works and Circus Maximus. Naturally, I built them all in my capital.

4) Your only threats early on are amphibious invasions by the Japanese at your city on the east coast near the bottom: Lianyungang. It's usually about 5-6 units, which can be handled by your Chinese crossbowman, a cannon, and a melee unit. Be careful because they will attack the city from the water, so you'll have to kill them quick. You only have one ship to start with, which I used to pick at the Japanese on the Korean coast in order to generate some experience, but it might be better to station it down here to pick off the embarked units.

5) It will take you until most of Korea has fallen to finish your military buildings and start producing units. I then began pushing up to the last Korean city left with a cannon and that alone was able to hold it. Before too long, Nurhaci declares war and comes south to attack you. Grab the high ground with ranged units, and you can start racking up the kills. Get a garrison unit in each city to eliminate any lasting happiness, and the game is pretty much won. It didn't take long to set up a defense that was killing units as soon as they came into range and every kill adds to your victory point score. Game over. Run out the time or if you're more patient, try to take back Korea.

Achievements unlocked:

Yow Ming! Win as China
Dragon Emperor Win on Emperor

Edit: I resumed the game the following morning and there was an immediate change of fortunes. Nurhaci finally stopped pushing troops south because they were getting slaughtered under my combined cannons and Cho-Ko-Nu. I stopped worrying about him and pushed troops south into Korea. I had so many troops backed up waiting for my assault that I finally forgot about style points and casualties and just started pushing troops south into every spare corner of territory I could find. I lost troops, but killed whoever attacked them on the following turn and continued pushing forward. When a few turns had passed without Nurhaci encroaching, I offered him peace and he not only agreed, but gave me Gems to do it. Three Korean cities quickly fell and then I took my guardian force on the eastern coast of China that I left to combat amphibious invasions and started them east across the bay to land on the southern coast of Korea. It's going to be much faster to just take Korea than to run out the clock. Resistance is collapsing, my troops are backed up all through northern Korea and I've plunging south as fast as I can move. Game soon over.

 

[Morningcalm]

Nice work! I will pore over these before trying to win the scenario as Japan.

 

[BobDole]

Nice effort, but I'm guessing no one did a walkthrough for the Korea scenario because it's so damn easy, even on Deity (at least for Korea and China). Here's my walkthrough for the scenario as Korea/China.

1) Load up the game.
2) Set to "Deity" even if you're not very good. Select Korea or China.
3) Make stuff, and send that stuff Japan's way.
4) Enjoy your inevitable victory since there's almost zero chance of losing to Japan or the Manchu (who oftentimes sit around and do nothing), unless you purposely try to do it.

Yeah, they made the scenario too easy, at least for half of the civs you can play as. I'll probably go back to it and try it with the Manchu for a challenge, since I haven't done it with them yet. Maybe that will actually make it a little harder.

 

[ggmoyang]

I'll probably go back to it and try it with the Manchu for a challenge, since I haven't done it with them yet. Maybe that will actually make it a little harder.

Playing as Manchu is quite hard. They're behind in tech and all their strength is Keshik equivalent UU, But that Great Wall... Capturing Beijing is real pain.

 

[Waywocket]

Taekwon-DOH Lose the Korean scenario as Korea (by retiring at anytime)

Well damn, that's a whole lot easier now .

 

[Genghis_Sean]

First Impressions:

I'm kind of sick of the slog, so I'm playing as Manchu on settler difficulty just to get the final achievement. It's a crazy civilization. First of all, you begin with double experience from combat. Naturally, I tested whether I still received the 50% experience gain bonus when choosing Military Tradition social policy, and I do. The banner calvary has a move of five and can canvas the map with ease and take down any opponent with a fearsome ranged attack. You start with only a single city. However, the Manchu special ability is awesome: whenever you destroy a barbarian encampment, the camp guard joins your side. This means you gain a musketman, pikeman, crossbowman, archer, or warrior. In my first couple camps, I got a trebuchet and a banner calvary, but I've not seen anymore since, so I suspect that was a one-time thing.

I restarted several times trying to decide how best to crank out cities and get up to the kind of civilization size that would permit me to take on someone the size of China or Korea. While I scouted out the map and cleared barbarian camps, I realized with each unit that joined me, that I was building a formidable army. I eventually quit and realized I had some serious rethinking to do.

Why do you need a bunch of cities? Typically, it's to generate science and production, but science is turned off, and I'm building an army faster than I ever could by clearing camps. The more I spread my cities, the fewer camps that spawn. True, my army units are being birthed with zero experience, but they level crazy fast with the Manchu experience bonus coupled with Military Tradition.

So I restarted and stuck with a cluster of three cities, one of which is my capital, and I'm disinclined to build any others. I took the nearest Chinese city, losing a couple weak units in the process to a cannon, but my army is still growing. More problematic is that now that Japan has overrun Korea, I still have no credit for defeating Seoul. That means I'm going to have to fight EVERYBODY. With both capitals equidistant from me, my current plan is to head west and take out Beijing and then sue for peace. Then, I'll have to switch my entire army from one front to the next and declare war on Japan and fight my way down the Korean peninsula. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Genghis_Sean]

Ugh. This has been really hard. As somebody said earlier, the Great Wall of China makes this a total obstacle. being only able to move a single space/turn with my melee units. I've completely overrun Beijing and have it surrounded by ranged units, but the cannon in the city targets and destroys every melee unit that comes in range, so that I can't capture the city. The narrow path of approach makes it really hard to get them in there en masse. I tried sailing and dropping some units south, but they were pounced on my naval units. This is much harder than a settler-level game should be.

 

[Genghis_Sean]

Done, finally. By far the most difficult aspect was capturing Beijing. I simply had to correct my attack to ensure that several melee units would arrive in attack range at the same time. Before, they were in a line and were killed one at a time. After that, I declared peace, shipped my forces east, and rolled through Japan recapturing Korean cities with no difficulty. Japan put up only token resistance. Once Seoul fell, the game was won.

Achievement earned:

Emperor Fu Manchu Win as Manchuria