The Samurai Invasion of Korea – Playing Japan (Deity)
First of all: I had to laugh really hard figuring out where the name of the achievement Samurai Delicatessen originates from. It’s an old Saturday Night Live sketch, featuring John Belushi as Samurai Futaba. Hilarious!!! For Civilization 5s Samurai Delicatessen you’ll have to beat the Samurai Invasion of Korea scenario playing Japan. Here’s how I played it on Deity difficulty.
Japans leader at the time of the invasion(s) of Korea was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who is regarded as Japans second “great unifier”. He succeeded Oda Nobunaga, who is originally the leader of Japan in Civilization 5. The third unifier was Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was leading Japan in most other parts of Civilization.
After unifying Japan, Hideyoshi seeked to invade Ming-China. Talks for free passage through the territory of Joseon Korea had failed. Korea, an ally (more vassal) of China at the time feared that the two great powers would wage war on Korean soil, which they wanted to avoid. Eventually this was of little use for Korea, as Hideyoshi saw no other way, but invading Korea.
In May 1592 the invasion started, followed by incredibly quick territorial gain through the Japanese forces. In June Seoul (former Hanseong) had already fallen, most of Korea, including Pyongyang followed within three months!
German and French names of this Steam Achievement:
DE: Samurai-Delikatessen
FR: Délice de samouraï
Samurai Delicatessen – Strategy
I played on Deity difficulty right away – especially after the overwhelming success in “Fear the Turtle” playing Korea. Use your initial army to capture Busan in turn 0. Bring units in place to attack Daegu as fast as possible. You’ll need it for its Silver, improving your Happiness, and the strategic value of the road through the hillside. Move your Triremes west to bomb Mokpo and also dispatch some units west to capture it later:
Use the initial culture to apply Social Policies for Happiness. I went for the following:
- Piety
- Organized Religion – +1 Happiness from Monuments and Temples
- Liberty
- Republic – +production in cities
- Honor (complete the right tree first)
- Discipline – +15% bonus for melees flanking each other
- Military Caste – Happiness and Culture from city garrisons
- Professional Army – Happiness from defense structures and decreased upgrade costs
At this point of the game, Meritocracy is of little use, as your Korean cities won’t be connected to Kyoto until you manage to build a Harbor.
The sequence in which Korean cities will fall will most likely be this:
- Busan
- Mokpo
- Daegu
- Jeonju / Gangneung
- Seoul
- Haeju
- Pyongyang
I did this until turn 29, merely a third into the game, which has a turn limit of 100.
The Happiness Bug
Now while you go ahead and conquer Korea using almost only your initial troops, you’ll realize your Happiness rating stays unaffected by your captured cities. In the picture above you see a Happiness rating of 46! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Now if you reload a game before this time, you’ll see something like the first image here:
As you see in the second image on the right: The captured cities on Korea don’t count towards your empires unhappiness!!! To me this is a clear bug and it impacts the game hugely (in your favor). It basically means you should play the Samurai Invasion of Korea as Japan in one go – don’t load a game. It also means: Don’t be interrupted. I hibernated my computer over night “during this game”, so I could continue playing with a very high Happiness rating.
The comparison gets even more obvious looking at the plain numbers:
| Turn 12 after loading | Turn 61 without loading
|
|
| Unhappiness from Number of Cities | 21 🙁 | 18 |
| Unhappiness generated by Population | 31 🙁 | 30.4 |
Call it an exploit, but I dare say: Without this it would be almost impossible to win the Samurai Invasion of Korea as Japan on Deity. You could easily win it on lower levels of difficulty, I’m sure.
Samurai Delicatessen Course 2: Holding Korea
As you saw in above screenshot, I had entirely conquered Korea in turn 61. This means it took more than 30 turns since Pyongyang to capture the last two Korean cities and deal with the incoming Ming-Chinese reinforcements! The quick downfall of Korea had overstretched my supply lines. Also: Every 10 turns you’ll have to deal with several Musketmen and Bowmen spawning in Korea through their Righteous Army trait. They don’t do much harm except for capturing workers and delaying your reinforcements heading north.
The Chinese don’t only come for you by land – they’ll also send huge waves of units (9-12 units!!!) to you across the Yellow Sea. Deal with those around Mokpo – have some Triremes ready and always some land units to fight off the Chinese.
Over time it’ll become easier, if you take care of your veterans. If you manage to build Himeji Castle in Kyoto, it’ll be even easier. It’s not essential for you, but the bonus will make it even harder to fight the Chinese, should they manage to build it in Beijing.
Samurai Delicatessen Course 3: Conquering China
By the time you reach the nearest Chinese province it will be strongly garrisoned and you will encounter heavy resistance. Fighting the way from Korea to China is actually the easier part. Once you get to China you’ll have to fight against the Great Wall bonus. Basically all your units can only move 1 tile, as every move costs you an additional movement point. Only your knights have 3 movement and can move twice on open land.
It’s essential that you close the gap in the road between Korea and China. Also I strongly advise to bring some workers and build additional roads. You’ll have to bring in more troops than China kills per turn. By this time, all cities at home only produce military units, but you’ll have to get them to China quickly and on a broad front.
By this time you MUST have absolute dominance at sea, too. Your Triremes have 3 major tasks here:
- Destroy embarked Chinese units (it’s easier than at land)
- Support city attacks by bombing from a distance
- Secure passage of your units on the way to Beijing (only if you come across the bay, you’ll be able to bring in sufficient troops to seriously threaten Beijing)
While Liaoyang falls without naval support, the remaining Chinese cities are tougher nuts to crack. Ningyuan and Shanhaiguan are coastal cities, with only one coastal road connecting them. Bring in your troops by sea, along the main road and through the hinterland, where you can move outside the Great Wall. Ningyuan is easier, because your veterans can bomb it from a distance. Shanhaiguan is the worst, because it’s surrounded by hills. You can bomb it from 3 hills in the north and NW, as you can see on the Samurai Invasion of Korea Map.
When finally facing Beijing, the goal of all Japanese ambitions, make sure to come through the hills NE of it, through the open plains east and across the bay to attack from SE. This time of the game every turn takes more than 10 minutes, as you control more than 100 units. Half of them are close to Beijing already – the rest is on the way.
By this time, if you did a good job protecting your veterans, you should have several veteran Crossbowmen (Logistics and Range) and ideally also 1-2 veteran Trebuchets. Bring them in place and bomb Beijing while your melees fight the Chinese reinforcements coming from their heartland in the south.
Once Beijing falls you win the game. China kept sending huge waves of units to Korea, so better keep the Mokpo garrison and fleet there, to not have them interrupt your supply line. The demographics are quite impressive. The huge Chinese and Manchu military explains why there’s almost nothing happening, when these two are at war. Also it’s impressive evidence, that playing the Samurai Invasion of Korea as Japan you should better not mess with the Manchu.
Samurai Delicatessen – Conclusion
Playing this particular game, Samurai Invasion of Korea, my troops took the very same way I traveled in March 2015: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, across the sea to Busan, Daegu and finish in Seoul. A great feeling! Only the game didn’t stop at Seoul… This was a great game in a quite nice scenario. One game doesn’t take ages, which is great for variety. On Deity playing Japan to get the Samurai Delicatessen Steam achievement is even a considerable challenge! Enjoy and share your experience in the comments section below! Domo arigato! 🙂
These are great guides for sure. The first time out, my computer crashed while I was a couple turns from taking Beiing, and the Manchus declared war, so I withdrew and just ran the clock since I was so ahead in score. Yeah, attacking when you have a happiness of -234 and -33% on combat strength was tough given the number of cannons dug in around Beijing. The second time round for conquering Beiing, I actually decided to conquer Weifang first, since it’s lightly defended. That gave me a base to harass Jinan to block reinforcements and swarm the plain SE of Beijing with cross bows. With the supply of Cho-ko-nu and cannons cut off, Beijing had no chance. Turns out Jinan fell the same turn, and the Manchus declared again. Good times, but that one was in the book.
Also, strangely, the righteous Korean troops always spawn in the same place, and if your unit is on that space, it gets pushed aside and any worker working the square si killed. There’s an odd bug!
Thank you so much for writing all these Robert, I tried so hard on my last attempt that I played 6 hours non stop(because of happiness bug) and lose, and that was the fifth attempt in total, LOL. I managed to take Shanhaiguan but finally defeated by tons of manchurian army from the north along with countless chinese choo-ko-nu and canons. Thank you again for providing me some insight on this and hope I can win this next time.