Goal: unite Japan by holding all 38 provinces. You lose if your last province falls, or if a third succession breaks your clan.

On the title screen choose New campaign, then the scenario (1560 or 1582), then how many players (0 to 9; press ? to see what each number means):

• 0: nobody plays. The computer clans fight it out while you watch, month after month, with pause and speed keys.
• 1: you against the computer clans.
• 2 to 9: players taking turns at this computer (hot-seat). A hand-over screen comes between turns, so nobody sees another player's provinces.

Each player chooses the fief whose daimyo they will be, on the map or in the list beside it, confirms it, may change their lord's name, and then sets his politics, war, charisma and ambition one at a time: each number counts quickly through the range the computer's lords have, and Space stops it. N counts all four again; Y keeps them. Then: do you want to watch the other fiefs' wars on the battle field? Last, the level of the computer clans (Gentle, Easy, Normal, Hard or Ruthless).

Quick start begins at once as the Oda clan in 1560. Continue picks up the game from its last autosave, made at the end of every month. Load campaign opens a save slot, or imports a save file.

Click a province on the map, or use the arrow keys, to see it. Tab steps through your own provinces. Red is your clan; the gold outline is the province you are looking at; the small white keep marks your lord's seat.

Esc opens Other. Mouse and touch work as well as the keys.

Each of your provinces gives its orders in turn, your lord's seat first (a delegated province has no turn: its governor gives its orders); Orders on the province panel marks the one whose turn it is. 0 Rest ends that province's turn and moves to the next. After your last province the month ends (with several players, the next player takes the screen; after the last, the month ends).

Each province has a governor and up to seven samurai: eight officers at most. Every officer has his own politics, war, charisma, ambition and loyalty, his own body points (BP), and leads his own men, with their skill and arms, in one kind of unit: cavalry, infantry or rifles. A province's men are its officers' men together, at most 100. View > Officer roster shows them all: S sorts it (by name, politics, war, charisma, loyalty, men or BP) and Enter or V shows an officer's own page. View > Province data shows everything about the province, with the ronin (samurai of no clan, each with a band of men) waiting in it.

Every order is carried out by an officer you appoint. Officers without the BP an order needs are shown in red; one with exactly enough may act. BP come back each month: 10, and three tenths of the officer's politics, up to 200, so a rested officer can take on the costly orders. Before you Authorize an order, your advisor (the officer of the province with the most politics) says what he thinks of it, in green; cancelling costs nothing. The result shows the values before and after, and goes into the chronicle.

Some orders take several officers: Enter marks or unmarks each, and D is done. Training men, moving officers and marching to war work this way.

Ronin come and go. Disloyal samurai may leave, taking their men.

• Move > Officers: mark the officers who go to a bordering province of your own, with their men and any gold and rice you send with them. Someone must stay. When your lord moves, his seat moves with him.
• Move > Gold or rice: choose a province of your own on the map, then the gold and the rice (either may be 0), then the officer who takes them.
• Develop (and the gold spent): cultivate land raises the land under the plough, up to what the province can cultivate, and with it the rice harvest and support, but it weakens the flood banks; flood control strengthens them, by an amount the river decides; develop town raises trade and gold; reinforce castle helps in battle. A handful of gold does nothing, and the advisor says so. For example, 40 gold of cultivation by an officer with politics 75 gives land +22 and support +2. The result rises on the screen (Other > Animation turns this off).
• Trade: rice and arms are bought and sold at the market price, which changes every month (rice is cheap after the autumn harvest); a trader with good politics gets a better price. The price and the total are shown before you agree: 100 rice sold at 1.3 brings 130 gold; 10 arms at 5.5 cost 55 gold. Arms go to every officer's men. Borrow gold: the moneylenders lend up to 300 gold for each province you hold, and add a tenth when they lend (borrow 62, owe 68); there is no interest after that. Settle debts pays back all the province can, with no officer needed. A clan that owes more than it may (because it has lost land) is pressed each month, and support falls in every province.
• Personnel: search for ronin: if one is found you see him, and take him into service (with his men) or let him go; recruit officers, the samurai of a bordering rival province (not its governor), with gold that is spent either way: he brings his men; dismiss officers (he answers first; he and his men leave); give rewards (10 gold is 5 loyalty); train officers in politics, war or charisma (2 points); appoint governor in any of your provinces, and then rule it yourself or delegate it; Delegate or rule changes that later. A delegated governor gives the province's orders each month as he sees fit, well if he is loyal; an ambitious, disloyal one may keep some gold. Each of his orders goes into the chronicle. Power wears down an ambitious governor's loyalty, and a disloyal, ambitious one may rebel and take the province over to a neighbouring clan, so look at the advisor's word (or the officer's page) on how reliable he would be before you delegate. The territory list shows how each province is ruled and warns of unrest or hunger.
• Diplomacy, from your lord's seat, by an envoy you choose there. The list of clans shows each one's head, provinces, men, your relations with them (0 hatred, 50 indifference, 100 friendship; they drift back towards 50) and any alliance. Arrange a marriage (100 gold, given back if refused; 24 months); propose an alliance (12 months); threaten (a weaker clan may pay, and a small one may submit; a refusal sours relations); send tribute (relations improve, and an alliance may follow; a small gift hardly impresses); break an alliance (they are angered, and your other allies trust you less); answer offers: envoys of other clans bring tribute or offer alliances, and you accept, refuse, or imprison the envoy, in the month they come. Each offer is put to you when the month begins (Decide later leaves it under Diplomacy), and a tribute may ask for six months of peace. A marriage weds the officer you choose to the daughter of the other clan's ruler: the tie lasts, keeps relations warm, and shows on the officer's page and in the list of clans, which also gives the last events between you. You are told a month before an alliance ends and when it ends, and a friendly ally may offer to renew it. Allies do not attack each other.
• Spy: spread war rumours in a bordering rival province that a third clan prepares to attack it: their alliance breaks and their relations fall; incite uprising lowers its support, and may set the peasants on its stores; an assassin may kill its governor. A failed agent may be discovered: the clan is angered, and the agent may be put to death. Spies are not sent against allies. If a player's lord is killed, the clan has a new head: one more succession.
• Military: hire soldiers (1 gold and 10 people each, and support falls; you give the new men to officers, untrained and unarmed); reassign men (pick an officer and his men go back to the pool, then set how many he leads, until the pool is empty); train men (each officer marked: skill rises by 2, and a point for every 25 of his war); War (below).

In month 3 (spring) gold comes in from trade; in month 9 (autumn) the rice is harvested. Soldiers eat into both. Floods come with the rains of months 5 to 7, and typhoons in summer; good flood protection keeps the fields. Unhappy provinces rise up. Envoys of weaker neighbours bring tribute or offer alliances, and strong, hostile clans mass soldiers on your borders.

Your lord governs from his seat. If the seat falls, he escapes to another of the clan's provinces. If he dies, the next officer of his province succeeds him, and the clan's officers lose some loyalty; a third succession breaks the clan. Officers whose loyalty falls low are reported. At the end of a campaign a summary shows how long it lasted, what you held, the battles won and lost, your rulers and your major battles, and then the map as the campaign left it.

View > Chronicle keeps the campaign's news, orders, battles and decisions, and goes with the campaign into its saves.

Military > War: choose a bordering rival, mark the officers who march (someone must stay), choose the commander from them, and how much gold (for bribes) and rice the army carries. Each of them pays 40 BP.

Every officer leads his own unit: C cavalry, I infantry, R rifles, with his men's number under it; the pennant marks a commander. The field has plains, a road, forests, hills, mountains, a river crossed by a bridge and a ford, and the castle, where the defenders stand.

• Deploy first: click the lit hexes on the left to place your units. T shows the ground alone.
• Each day has a morning, an afternoon and a night (the field turns dark, and rifles cannot fire). In each phase every unit of yours acts once, then the enemy's.
• Moving: click one of your units, then a lit hex. Cavalry have 6 movement points, infantry and rifles 4: a road costs 1, plain or castle 2, forest or hill 3 (cavalry 4 in a forest); mountains and the river cannot be crossed. A unit may stop early and still attack; with no points left and nobody to attack, its action is over.
• Attacking: choose the method, then click the enemy: 1 ordinary (an enemy next to the unit); 2 rifle fire (rifles, one or two hexes away, not after moving, no reply); 3 charge (cavalry, not from a forest or hill nor into the castle: twice as hard both ways); 4 ambush (infantry who halted in a forest: twice as hard, no reply). Forests, hills and the castle protect those in them.
• H halts (in a forest the unit lies hidden). F flees to a province you choose; your commander fleeing withdraws the whole army, as X does. V shows a unit in full. S Spy: bribe an enemy unit (not their commander) with the gold the army carries, and it may change sides; or call in a reserve, a samurai with men from a province of yours bordering the battle. Tab picks your next unit; the arrows move the cursor (passing over a unit does not choose it), and Enter or a click on one of your units chooses it, or acts with the chosen one.
• Both armies eat rice every day; when yours runs out the attack fails, and you are warned before. Destroy the enemy commander to win; lose yours and the battle is lost. The defender holds after 30 days.

Afterwards a page tells every officer's fate: the victors hold the province (the commander governs it, with the rice and gold left); after a defeat the army falls back where the commander chose, and some may be killed, captured or desert, the disloyal first. A summary heads the page: the men on both sides, the rice and gold carried, eaten, spent and returned, and the province. After a conquest you choose who governs it; if your lord led the army, he governs it himself and nothing is asked.

When a computer clan marches on one of your provinces, you are asked after the month's wars: lead the defence yourself, or leave it to your generals. Leading it, you fight on the same field from the castle: the enemy deploys and moves first in each phase, then you move your units (M, A, H, V and T as above). S calls in a reserve from a bordering province of yours; defenders do not bribe. F (or X, or Esc) gives up the castle: your army leaves with its men, and your lord goes to another of your provinces. The result goes into the month's news, and every officer's fate is shown. In the desktop edition, closing the window during a defence leaves it to your generals. In online games the server still fights invasions of your provinces.

With Other > Hex battles off, the computer fights your wars for you and you see the result. The computer clans fight their own wars on the same field; with Watch other fiefs' wars on (Other > Settings) you see each one at the end of the month: Enter skips a battle, Esc skips the rest.

Display time (1 slow to 5 fast) sets how long the battles you watch and the results take. Animation shows a develop order's result rising. Sound turns the music on and off; Settings also sets its volume, and Restore defaults puts every setting back. Quit goes back to the title screen. In the browser the music starts at your first key press or click, and F, or the button at the top right of the page, shows the game full screen.