What do I do? The operation permits are powerful but I can't defeat anyone for shit. All my units are way too weak

I fucked up big time

The game has level scaling
IIRC for most you need to decrease the vast majority of your non foot troops to be

You deserve every bad thing that befalls you, OP
I don't know how you get through the game once and into an if… route and without even knowing this shit, jesus.

god dammit man, I dont know where that difficulty spike coming from. I was going fine except for the fucking ninja nation wanting to be cunts.

Dungeon style bosses are a bit different from regular battles in that level really matters. If you haven't been grinding levels in dungeons then yeah you're going to have trouble.

shit man, do I have a time limit on me? oda's little sister is getting really sad and i feel bad everytime.

Depends on the route but in general? yes, you have a bloody time limit

Are you literally retarded?

lel the game hasn't even begun yet.
Heres a protip to you, Grind Rance and Kentarou to as high as you can. Give Rance every combat stat boosting item and let Kentarou fight the faggy apostle until he is 99.

Is that supposed to be Japan? Kind of similar shape but still not even close to accurate map

No, its JAPAN.

I was never able to beat Rance. I was actually more interested in the gameplay than story or porn but I never realised how fucking hard the game was.

Demon invasion was almost impossible ofr me to defeat

The demon army thing can really be overwhelming, but you need to realize that its basically atrition warfare. If you are used to winning against a house in a couple turns it might make you quit the game, but you eventually would had won against the demons in 40-50 turns anyways.

Yeah I basically gave up because I thought it was endless and kept getting destroyed non-stop

Well, yeah. If you want to even have a chance to curbstomp the demon army you need to own a least half of JAPAN and have sounn/kenshin, which you most likely wont in your first game.
I do agree that the difficulty of the true route is considerably higher than what it should be compared to the If ones.

Ok first, avoid fighting without a good foot soldier present. Foot Soldiers reduce casualties, which saves you money, reduces chances of commander deaths and makes the battle bar move less when you get attacked.

Make your main attack squad with Rance, Shibata Katsuie, Yamamoto Isoroku, Uruza and Maria. Give Katsuie Enhanced Initial Guard, Isoroku Sweeping Fire, Uruza's special shot skill and Maria with her special attack. If possible, give Isoroku and Maria Castle Siege Expert as a passive (if it's not available, reload and try on a different turn, it rotates with other skills every 4 turns).

For defense, use Mouri Teru, Leila, Naoe Ai, Daidouji, Magic and Rizna. None of them need anything special to function.

Use Defense boosters on your foot soldiers and on Rance, Attack boosters on Rance, Maria and Leila, Int boosters and speed boosters on Naoe and Uruza.

Your average turn should be: attack once with Rance, raise affection/purple flags, upgrade NP of shitty territories/do exploration events with poor combat commanders and then story events.

Commander stats and skills are more important than raw troop number. If possible, recruit the Warrior sister in the Ashikaga territories that has Light Attack and give her the passive that helps capture commanders and have her on attack. Suzume can be super useful to kill tough foot soldiers. Try to stay above 50,000g so you maximize returns from Asset Tech each turn. Always keep a low amount of prisoners since too many prisoners makes it harder to capture enemies.

That is bullshit. All you have to do in the first game to utterly curbstomp Demon Army is:
1) Get enough units/territory to stall Miko Institute until you get Goemon or even better, that -hime unit with 8 in all stats. Reload until you get it if you a scrub. Your units are shit and you need better ones.
2) Conquer Uesugi and Houjou one turn apart so that Takeda does not fucking absorb the other.
3) Raise your units to at least 1k troops. After that, bonuses diminish, but before this point it's absolutely vital to do this.
4) Raise Rance's level until you can't. Raise his stats until you can't. You can't get rid of him so you might as well make him stronger.
5) Use Natori for fuck's sake, she's a killer. And Kenshin. And Houjou units. Tanegashima is shit, but that girl musketeer, I forget what her name is, if you give her the +2 action item she'll be a killer against high-troop units.
6) Kill off useless units, get useful units. Keep noncombat units below 300 troops. First reinforcement option on normal should always be Leazus or however the fuck it's pronounced. Since your units in the beginning are shit you have to rely on them on normal.
7) Invade One-eyed house, preferably after Takeda and before Demon Army attacks you. You'll need to level Rance a lot to survive the fight at the end of it or you could go the Hibachi route and recruit three of his waifus. Getting Hibachi is fucking painful though.
8) Keep SAT up. Do dungeons from turns 13, 23 and 33 onward (if I'm correct), events et cetera.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Nukes, and more than two of them this time.

Leave this board and never return

P. Sure you just need to capture takedas home provinces to defeat them. Also, get uruzas special attack and use dousan to recharge her and launch it multiple times.

...

I really hope you're going to end up doing a KTM play-through on the hardest difficulty just so I can laugh at your suffering after this.