Ishin no Arashi: Converting Shikoku

The han of Tokushima is on the east coast of Shikoku. After learning it had been converted to sabaku, I headed in that direction to see what I could find. Tokushima is just east of Tosa, but there are mountains between the two so you have to head to the north coast and then head east to get there.

Mountains are bad news in Ishin no Arashi. High mountains are outright impassible. Normal mountains take more life to walk through than other hexes, and you run the risk of getting involved in landslides, which can kill your bodyguards or injuring your character, reducing his maximum life.

On the way to Tokushima I had to pass through the han of Takamatsu, in Sanuki province.

Unlike the bustling Tosa, Takamatsu consists of a castle and not much else.

As you can see from the above screenshot, there's not much going on in Takamatsu. There's a harbor leading to Yokohama in Sanuki-1 (the above screenshot is Sanuki-2), and a gambling house in Sanuki-3. Takamatsu is also a very weak han. The wealth and strength of Takamatsu's army were not impressive to say the least. It only had two officials of any capacity, the jushin Hasegawa Soemon (長谷川宗右衛門) and the hanshu himself, Matsudaira Yoritane (松平頼胤).

There are four ranks of samurai affiliated with a han. Starting with the lowly hanshi (藩士), then the jushin (重臣) the karo, (家老) and lastly the hanshu. (藩主) Hanshi have no impact on a han's politics, but the jushin, karo, and hanshu all contribute to the han's overall philosophy, with the opinions of higher-ranking officals counting for more.

Both Soemon and Yoritane were lower level than Ryoma so I gave converting Takamatsu a shot. The first thing I did was go to the castle where both officials were hanging out. First I tried to convert Soemon to kogi.  It was extremely easy with our difference in levels. (1 vs 6)

The hanshu Yoritane, however, was not happy to stand around idly as I debated his subordinates, and attempted to persuade me of the rightness of the sabaku cause.

When you're the defender, you end up on the left side of the debate.

I was a higher level than Yoritane, so defending against him was pretty easy, despite his higher rank.

Yoritane has super low stats. Even if converted, he's still vulnerable to being converted back.

With his stats, Yoritane was going to be no challenge at all, but he also was not a fan of foreigners. His foreign policy was also pretty strongly joi where Ryoma's was the more foreigner-friendly kaikoku. That's a potential problem. Trying to discuss domestic policy with someone whose foreign policy is different from yours is dangerous--there's a chance that they'll try to kill you instead of listening to you. So before trying to convert Yoritane to kogi I had to convert him to kaikoku first.

That took a little over a day, and then it took me a little less than a day to convert him to kogi. As soon as I did Takamatsu's policy swapped from sabaku to kogi. But I didn't stop there--even though both Yoritane and I were now kogi partisans, I spent another day continuing to persuade him. That made his inclination toward kogi even stronger, which would provide a little protection should someone else try to persuade him.

I considered trying to convert Yoritane into a controllable PC by getting his Trust up to 80. Having a hanshu in your pocket is nice; you can control the armies and develop the han when you do. The high rank also helps a lot when debating. But Yoritane's stats were just so low, and Takamatsu was so weak that it just didn't seem worth it so I opted not to.

With Takamatsu now converted, I checked out my stats, and they had changed a bit too:

My philosophies changed from the start of the game--quite a bit.

When I started the game Ryoma was 36% sonno, 64% kogi but was now 15%/85%. His kaikoku/joi balance had also changed from 64/36 to 76/24. The reason for this is that when you argue for a specific philosophy and win, it doesn't just change your opponent's philosophy--it changes yours as well, though not to the same extent.

So, it's on to Tokushima in the east. On the way the previously-seen Harris Treaty historical event proceeded, as 88 nobles lined up to condemn the treaty. Also on the way I was notified that one Matsuda Hidejiro had gotten himself killed in a fight. I had to look him up--apparently he was a sonno-joi Shinto priest. In real life he lived a lot longer. Sucks for him I guess.

On the way to Tokushima I ran into a gambling house. Usually there's a ninkyo oyabun (ie Yakuza boss) that hangs out at each. There was one here, but Yakuza bosses are pretty inconsequential so they're not worth bothering with.

Gambling houses in Ishin no Arashi are the fastest way to gain money--or lose it. The game is Cho-han; a simple game where two dice are rolled and you bet up to 50 Ryo whether the result is even or odd.

Maybe it's 50-50 odds, but it often doesn't feel like it. Here I lose.

You can only gamble a few times per turn before getting kicked out. I ended up breaking even before continuing onward to Tokushima.

On the way to Tokushima I picked up a few more followers, and also got accosted by some random bushi that wanted to convince me of the righteousness of the sabaku cause. Getting debated by mooks is the worst--they're usually decent opponents, you can get your philosophy changed if you lose, and if you win you get nothing but lost life and a little experience.

Once I got to Tokushima, I discovered that it was even less significant than Takamatsu, with only the hanshu and no karo or jushin at all. The hanshu himself, Hachisuka Narihiro (蜂須賀斉祐) was tougher than Matsudaira Yoritane at level 11, but his stats weren't that high, so I proceeded to debate him.

Narihiro's level was roughly my own, but with his lower stats, he was easy to persuade.

After about a day, I converted Narihiro--and Tokushima--to kogi, and brought Ryoma's level up to 13 in the process. I opted not to get Trust from Narihiro either, and after persuading him a few more times decided to try to convert Iyo-Matsuyama, the only non-kogi han left on Shikoku. Because why not? However the province of Iyo where it was was pretty far away; at a bare minimum it would have taken 6 days to get there normally.

Ishin no Arashi provides for the need to travel quickly with the Switch (切替) command which is available in any non-city area. It allows you to switch between "hex" mode "square" mode.

You're asked to confirm before switching modes as it takes a full day to do so.

Square Mode is designed for fast travel over land. You're presented with a more zoomed-out map of Japan, and can move up to four areas per day, as opposed to 1 in Hex Mode.

Square mode is convenient, but you can't do much more than move with it.

You don't get many commands in Square mode; you can move, change character AI, or switch back to Hex Mode, but that's it. And as each command takes a full day you're better off not fiddling with the AI. It's best to go quickly to your destination and switch back to Hex Mode.

By the 23rd of February Ryoma had made it to Iyo castle. And I got a message that the Bakufu's request for an edict condoning the Harris Treaty had been roundly rejected.

While not the strength of Tosa, Iyo-Matsuyama isn't awful--2700 soldiers and 800 guns.

Iyo-Matsuyama was like Tokushima in that there's just one guy to deal with, the hanshu Hisamatsu Katsuyoshi. He was level 11 too, so it only took me a few days to win him over. I persuaded a random court noble that wandered by too, just for good measure.

The island of Shikoku was now entirely kogi

Converting all of Shikoku was all well and good, but none of the hans on the island except for Tosa are really all that important. Ryoma was in no position to start converting yuhans, so the next step was to travel to the mainland and look for new allies and train up my stats. I headed to the first port and sailed to Yokohama.

Yokohama is located in the province of Musashi. Musashi is also where Edo, the seat of the bakufu is, so there's no hanshu, only the Shogun himself. As such Musashi can never be converted from sabaku without actually conquering the province. Edo Castle is the most heavily armed and fortified castle in the game so this is no mean feat. As an aside, conquering Edo Castle is a "hidden" way to win the game for sonno or kogi players--it's extremely difficult to do, but once Edo Castle falls you've effectively conquered the bakufu.

However I discovered a very odd bug when disembarking: the town of Yokohama was just gone.

That grass hex to the left of me is supposed to be Yokohama

I've never seen this before. I rebooted and loaded the game--Yokohama was still gone. So I started a new game and went back to this screen, and Yokohama was there like it was supposed to be. I'm not about to start over, so I guess Yokohama is going to be off limits this game. Not that it matters that much, as there's not too much in Yokohama anyway.

So rather than go to Yokohama, I decided to go to Edo instead, since it's on the same screen anyway. Edo is a massive 16-screen city, tied with Kyoto for the largest in the game. You can spend a lot of time just wandering around the city, and that's what I had Ryoma do, going from school to school boosting his Academic skill.

Despite six pages of characters being in the city, there was nobody worth recruiting. I did notice that Kenkichi and Chojiro, who I had turned on AI for, were both here training. Chojiro was still weak but Kenkichi was doing well outside of his anemic Appeal so I started traveling the city with him and persuading random people to get his level up.

Kenkichi came across one random house full of low-level Satsuma hanshi--and one random shishi from Shimosa, Sagara Sozo. (who I hadn't heard of and only gets a couple of lines in my academic Bakumatsu who's-who, yet gets tons of Google hits because apparently they've made multiple manga series about him--weird choice, Japan, any of the other dudes in this house probably would have had more interesting stories) But it was a perfect spot to start persuading and building Kenkichi's level.

Even against Kenkichi, Sagara Sozo was a pushover and swapped philosophies with one debate

Most of the Satsuma hanshi were kogi already (a little odd since Satsuma is pretty sonno-heavy except for its hanshu in scenario 1) so there wasn't even a risk of losing.

Meanwhile, I had Ryoma wander the streets of Edo traveling from school to school, slowly raising his somewhat-modest Academic attribute. While wandering the eastern end of the city, though, I got summarily attacked by a small band of shishi.

There are two types of combat in Ishin no Arashi--duel combat and army combat, although the mechanics are mostly the same. The first thing you're asked when you get attacked is whether or not you want to run, though you won't always have the option. You won't always succeed, and you'll often lose some Appeal from running from fights.

Once you're committed to the fight, you're asked whether you want to fight yourself. If you say no, then your bodyguards will fight for you. Opting to fight yourself is more dangerous but is one of the few ways you can raise your Appeal. Letting your bodyguards fight for you is safer, but you have to let the computer control the fight, and your bodyguards are usually far more fragile than you are. If you're letting your bodyguards fight for you too much they may occasionally force you to risk your neck yourself--and likewise if you take on fights yourself too much they may occasionally demand to fight in your stead.

After those two questions, the fight starts proper. Here's what the battle screen looks like.

Duels are like a very primitive fighting game

Here's what each of the options mean:

1. Combat timer. When this reaches 60 the fight is over.
2. Attack power. Varies based on Swordsmanship and Military stats; affects how much damage you do per attack
3. Number of companions/bodyguards. Shows how many people are fighting.
4. Life - the character/companion dies when this reaches 0. It's scaled to your current life, not your maximum life--so fighting after a day of debate has exhausted you is extremely dangerous.
5. Name of the character and whether they're fighting themselves (本人) or if their bodyguards are (同士).
6. Portrait of the fighting characters--defender on the left, attacker on the right.
7. Number of units in reserve. When one of the fighters has their life reach 0, one of their unit markers turns into a gravestone and the next fighter comes out. When all markers are gravestones the fight is over.
8. The characters themselves fighting

Combat itself is mostly action-based using the numeric keypad. 4 and 6 move left and right, 8, 5, and 2 are for high, stab, and low attacks respectively, and 7/9/1/3 are for blocks and stances that as far as I can tell don't actually do anything. Return will let you flee the battle. It's fast-paced and you probably won't come out unscathed. The extent of the damage won't be obvious until the fight's over.

The way damage is calculated in a fight is kind of weird. It's especially obvious when armies fight, but damage is proportional so the more people there are in a group, the more damage you'll take from each hit. For example, to take an extreme, say you have one guy fighting against an army of 5000, and they each trade one hit, bringing the other's life bar down a little bit. At the end of the fight that 1 guy will be hurt a bit--and a few hundred soldiers from the army of 5000 will be dead.

Anyhow, I took a few hits because fighting in this game is clunky, but killed the attackers with little difficulty. I got 12 points shaved off my maximum Life, but fortunately there was a restaurant nearby. Restaurants are not as good as doctors for restoring maximum life, so I had to eat there twice (paying some money both times) to restore my Life to maximum.

The foods you eat differ in appearance, but not in 

As I was leaving, I ran into Toda Ujitada (戸田氏正), the hanshu of Ogaki, pictured above at the edge of the screen. He was also really low-level. I converted him--and Ogaki--to kogi, but afterwards was flooded with messages that everyone around him was trying to convert him back, so it was unlikely that I'd be able to keep him kogi.

At this point I decided that Ryoma was wasting his time in Edo since there wasn't anyone of interest to recruit and decided to leave. I left Kenkichi there to keep training. Next post I'll be working on finding some new recruits with Ryoma and building Kenkichi into something that's not worthless in an argument.