Finally! After $hlmun attempts at beating the Emperor in the final country, I won! Why did it take so many attempts? Because it’s entirely down to luck whether you win or not.
You see, unlike the previous battles where you can choose how many of each type of army to use, and the order to send them out (and the ability to spy on the enemy to find out what they’re going to send out), the final battle is five random Rock, Paper, Scissors fights. You’ve no way of knowing what the Emperor is going to choose, and each time either of you wins a fight, the other person loses half their entire army. Since the Emperor starts with more than twice as many soldiers as you, you’re already essentially two fights down.
And when you lose overall, so many of your soldiers run away that you have to spend several days racking up StreetPass hits again to replenish your soldiers enough to try again.
Having only managed to win, at most, one of the five fights on every single attempt, my final battle was four wins and a draw, easily besting him. Phew!
No. I won’t be playing the “after game” content. And once I’ve got all 80 plants in StreetPass Garden (I’m up to 75) I can put StreetPass Plaza to rest for a bit and actually play some “real” 3DS games again!