Discharge the Honourable: Chosokabe (Legendary, Domination)

[Maltz]

Tosa's rebel also spawned a little too far away. So we will also have to wait till the end of winter to formally relocate.



Interestingly, our Ninja team of 3, who landed in Shigoku two seasons before our military, reported that Miyoshi has been secrety marching a large army toward Tosa. Maybe they will declare war on us if the rebels does not take Tosa quickly.

Also, war has finally broken out between Sogo and Miyoshi. While we expect to see some interesting battles between the two, we also have the chance to take over all their provinces with... less orthodox means. That's why we shipped 2 monks and 3 ninjas there in advance.

[Maltz]

A group of Wako pirates spawend southwest of Kyushu. Our main fleet is on their way!

These Wako pirates are actually like a beneficial pest to us. As it actively looks for the softest target within its reach, they promptly sank Miyoshi's tiny fleet reserving one of the two Incense trade nodes. So we promptly take it over! (Strangely, Wako trade ships do not stay on trade nodes.) Needless to say, our trade fleet will swarm and saturate this new trade node within a year.



We have also started to send a full trade fleet for the very northeastern Iron trade node. The iron will also help us construct valuable armorer buildings in Satsuma.

Thoughts #16: Province Specialization

Provinces have different resources (or no resource), so they are suitable for different purposes. In order to maximize our efficiency, we have to build up each province according to their respective specialty.

Priority #1: Recruitment centers

We only need a few recruitment centers to satisfy all our needs for fresh units. As Chosokabe has superior archers, Buzen's specialty Artisan - Fletchers - Master Bowmaker line greatly increases accuracy for archers for up to 20%. So we should make Buzen our bow recruitment center. We will need a high-level castle for rapid recruitment and bonus experience. We also need to upgrade the Archery Dojo line and the Encampment - Hunting Lodge line for cheaper recruitment cost and another +5% accuracy. With these upgrades, our Bow Ashigaru will shoot like Bow Samurai! We might not even recruit Bow Samurai since the Ashigarus are more than twice cheaper and comes in 33% greater numbers. Then we can forget about the Archery Dojo line all together. In the future, we might add a Siege Workshop line to produce some Fire Bomb Throwers and Siege Weapons, or Temple line for Bow Warrior Monks. They all have their uses.

Another very important recruit center is required for melee units, in which we prefer armor over melee attack, as our sea of arrows will be our primary damage output, and the role of the melee is mainly to hold the enemies long enough so they will be killed off/routed by our arrows. Satsuma's specialty Blacksmith - Armorer - Master Armorer will provide +3 armor for all melee units, Yari Ashigaru included. The Encampment - Armoury line gives another +2 bonus to armor. Our Yari Ashigaru will take arrows like Yari Samurai! And of course they are much cheaper and comes with +25% ultra size.

Another useful building for Satsuma would be the Sword Dojo line to hire Katana samurai. Just in case the enemy has a lot of swords, too.

In the future we also look forward to have a cavalry recruitment center, and that should be enough for all battles in Japan.

Priority #2: Money Makers

Money making provinces are limited to those that produce the most tax revenue. Generally this refers to very fertile provinces such as Hizen, Higo, and Tsukushi, where we will further improve their revenue with Metsukes specialized at supervising towns. The highest-level Markets are a must.

In addition, the end of Sake Den line or the Temple line both generates 25% extra tax revenue, which could be huge. If we have both of them...

Priority #3: Food Makers

Since we are liberally upgrading the castles and markets in the first two priorities, we need all the other provinces to act as Food Makers. Their castle and markets will stay at the lowest level possible, while their farms will be upgraded to the highest possible just like any other provinces. The extra food will help our town grow rapidly, and also serve as a cushion when we inevitably conquer high-level castle in the future. And the buildings for such provinces are the simplest markets (or temple for religious diverse provinces).

As you can guess, our next research goal will follow the Farm line for two extra levels, so we will run a huge food surplus and gain weight.

That's our plan for province specialization.

[Maltz]

Our scheduled evacuation of Tosa finally happened. Before we left, we tore down everything that can be removed, so even if Miyoshi takes Tosa next, they will not have so many freebies! Of course, it would be the best if they are destroyed before they could take Tosa. Such a small rebel force is almost like targeting practice.



Farewell for now, Tosa!

[Maltz]

Just as we suspected, Iyo was chosen as the new capital, which would totally destroy our relocation effort. We definitely prepared for it, as the capital was again relocated... to Bungo.



This is quite a disappointment, as we would prefer Buzen or Satsuma to be our new capital so we can hire a lot more units from them. Bungo is not too bad, as we can now hire twice as many matchlocks from its Nanban trade port.

[Maltz]

OK, so now we have lost all our existing trades... wait, we still have Miyoshi. Maybe they did not have any sea trade partner at the time, so they automatically restore their trades with us via a sea route.

Anyway, we can now afford to look for a number of new trade partners.

Thoughts #17. Trade Partners and Allies

Within 7 years, Japan has advanced from numerous warring tiny clans to several warring medium-large clans, it is now a good time to plan the grand strategy for the rest of the campaign. We need to grab one, at most two partners (can't afford more) to lesson our pressure in the inevitable Realm Divide. We need to make such friends as early as possible, cultivate the relationship, and make sure they stay on our side without any negative impacts between our relationship.



The first candiate is Hojo - the famous Hojo horde from the last life (Shogun Total War I)! At this moment, Hojo already has the most powerful army of all Japan. They are quite good with diplomacy as well - having only one enemy at a time. Certainly, they will be able to conquer the northeast of Japan in a matter of time. As they have their backs on the sea like us, they will hold a distinctive advantage over other clans and steadily expand. If we can keep Hojo on our side, we will be able to "sandwich" all the other hostile enemies in the middle and divide their attention. This is the best alliance option we have. Then we can worry about the Hojo horde.

[Maltz]

Next we are looking at the Oda-Ikko Ikki alliance. These two powerful clans are allies, establishing their dominance in central Japan (in history, though, they were nemesis). As their enemies are either too weak or too far away, they are unlikey to fail any time soon, so they are very stable trade partners.



Later on, we look forward to dissolve their alliance before the Realm Divide comes, and just make friend with one of them.

[Maltz]

We will probably stay with Oda, as Ikko-Ikki has the innate religious difference problem.

[Maltz]

The strongest clan closest to us is definitely Hatano, which has conquered almost all of Chugoku, the narrow land strip above Shigoku. They will certainly be able to continually trade with us.

The Ouchi clan is now making their last struggle against them. Our goal is to peacefully receive Ouchi's provinces before Hatano takes them. We already have Ninja there, so it will be quite easy to delay Hatano's progress.



To maintain our border security, we will consider allying with Hatano. From now on, we will try to stay out of all wars if possible. This is because that if we take provinces from any clan that is at war with us, no matter whether we are the invader or are the counter-attacker, we will suffer a diplomatic penalty. So far we already have a pretty bad reputation from it.

Exploit #15. Taking rebel provinces incur no diplomatic penalty

While taking over another clan's province makes others nervous, taking a rebel-controlled province is completely diplomatically neutral. That's why we have maximized all our agents early on - so we can very peacefully take over Japan.

So that means we will stay in good terms with Hatano, but at the same time turn their provinces to rebel one by one. We do that to anybody who is unfortunate enough to border us, too. It shouldn't be too difficult as now we have 5 Ninja and 5 monks, and a healthy income to support their operations.

[Maltz]

Takeda has managed to keep their alliance with Hojo. They are inconveniently located between Hojo and central Japan, so they will actually serve to delay Hojo's expansion. We suspect that Hojo might break their alliance when they eventually run out of room to expand. Takeda will also have to take intense heat from the powerful Oda-Ikko Ikki alliance once they take care of minor resistance in central Japan. Takeda does not really have a promosing future.



But we will trade with them for now anyway.

[Maltz]

Now we have run out of sea trade routes, we can still trade with one land-route partner - Ouchi. Ouchi's day is counted as they are obviously the next taret of Hatano.



Probably due to my sister's influence, they actually offered to pay us to trade! We will take their money any day.

Exploit #16. Remove trade ships from the nodes for better trade deals

A potential trading partner tends to charge us more if they know the trade deal would benefit us more than them. A good way to trick them to sign a deal cheaply with us is to first remove all trade ships from trade nodes, negotiate deals with them, and then move the trade ships back to the node. All of the above trade deals were signed this way.

[Maltz]

We have established as many trade routes as we can. Our clan will be making almost 10,000 koku from trade alone! This is definitely one step up from our old trade routes. Besides, every new trading port will give us one additional trade partner.



Prophecy Exodus is accomplished!

That concludes Chapter 12 of our story.

[Maltz]

Book 3 - Passion of the Buddha

Chapter 13. The curse of Nana

Welcome back, uncles and aunties. My name is Chosokabe Motochika, the heir of the Chosokabe can. I am here to report our clan's gloriously... dishonorable story in this legendary campaign. It is now the spring of Nanban year 1552. I am 13 years old.

When we relocated from Shigoku to Kyushu, we purposely gave up two provinces: Tosa and Iyo. We would not take back Tosa, but we can certainly take back Iyo very quickly. In fact, our ramen general had been waiting in the forest just outside the castle. That will mark the quick end of Kono clan's rebirth.

Exploit #17: The harmonious bulldozer

We are also actively planning ahead. We already discussed that we wish to avoid expansion through regular clan warfare, which greatly hurts our relationship with every clan. Ideally, all of our future new territories are taken from rebels.

Essentially, we wish to create the situation that our 3 full-stack armies will be ready to take over a rebel-owned castle as soon as it is available. In the future, we might add the fourth army when we have the new general for it.

This means that for now we need to have:

(1) At least 3 monks to incite rebellion. We have 4. We need to leave one monk back in Bungo in order to hold off the spread of Nanban's religion there. In the distant future when we add the 5th army, we might call up the 5th monk and simply tear down the Nanban trade port.

We also want to minimize meaningless rebellions - rebellions that will be quickly put down by the owner of the province, since it will not only be a waste of money, but also reduces the target clan's relationship with us needlessly. Monks who have nothing to do will simply chat with (and demoralize) some soldiers to pass time.

(2) At least 3 ninja, one assigned to each monk. We have 5. Their most important job is to sabotage any large army that might be able to intercept and defeat the rebels we incited. If they don't have any army to sabotage, sabotaging castle gates is not a bad idea.

The combination of the monks and ninja will travel just ahead of the full-stack army, so they can prepare each castle to be taken down.



Here is an example. We are going own Iyo, so we can easily expand to Sanuki owned by the Sogo clan. Sogo's main army is out to attack Miyoshi, whose main army is on their way to Tosa. So Sanuki's castle is quite defenseless, but some army remains in the province.

This is an ideal situation of reciting a successful rebellion, since the resulting rebels will be scaled up due to precense of additional Sogo army. That army, however, will not be able to defend the castle against the rebels in their turn, because we are going to sabotage its movement with our Ninja. As a result, the very defenseless castle will be no match against the beefed rebellion, and Sanuki will certainlly fall to the rebel's hand - while our full-stack army awaits within one-turn's march distance just outside their border.

The result is our very peaceful ownership of Sanuki next season. No other clans raised their eye brows (except Sogo is now unhappy about our monk's activity). Our clan fame still goes up accordingly since we now own more provinces.

[Maltz]

Let's first fast foward two seasons and take a look at our setup in Chugoku (the middle countries). We have successsfully made rebels taking over Ouchi's Suo, and in the end turn they will take over Ouchi's Nagato.



Our first army has been waiting just outside Suo - they will be able to attack the castle in the next season, and immediately march toward Nagato so they can take it next. Then this army will be responsible for expanding on the upper route of Chugoku. Our second army, led by my father himself (currently in Buzen, which is shown on the left of the picture), will land in Suo and take over the lower route from there.

Exploit #18: There is nothing they "can't do", only things they "can't imagine"

In order to make our agents always successful, we better have one army besieging a castle at any given turn. If not, we better hope that there is a Wako pirate fleet spawned right beside our main fleet - no luck so far. This means that we have to carefully pace our expansion.

Sometimes we might rather let an army wait for an additional season before storming the castle, so that they will be able to continually cover the luck of our agents on the next turn.

[Maltz]

Now let's rewind back. Seeing that Sogo and Miyoshi will soon lose their lands to rebels, we want to extract the last bit of profit from them - what is better than selling infinite military access to them? They can't use it anyway.



Together they paid more than 2000 koku for the garbage. Thanks!

Exploit #19. Infinite Military Access for the Dying

Just before a neighboring clan is destroyed, we can extract their last value by selling Infinite Military Access to them. They will go broke on it.

[Maltz]

We have successfuly made rebels taking over Sanuki and Awaji, immediately after Awa is taken by Sogo. Miyoshi is instantly destroyed!

Their one and half stack of soldiers were forever lost in the forest between Tosa and Awa. Even if they were in Awa, since Rebels act after Sogo, they still vanish as Awaji was their last province. Such a abrupt end of a peaceful clan... maybe that's what they deserve for trying to ambush us in Tosa.



So after our ramen general takes Sanuki, he can board a Bow Kabuya to land on the Awaji island. Then all we need to do is to wait for Sogo's army to leave the castle - probably for Tosa.

[Maltz]

Our ramen general easily ended the rebels' resistance in Sanuki. Such an easy victory (auto-resolved) even though the enemy was half of our size.

[Maltz]

The end of Miyoshi means that we can now afford another trade partner. The biggest clan that has not been paying for famous Chosokabe imports are the Hatakeyama clan. This clan has a really incompetent publicity department - they are hated by almost the entire Japan (not us though). Here you go. Good luck resisting the rest of Japan.



And they agree to pay 990 koku! However, moving the trade ships away from nodes make no difference.

Note: There is a bug that if a trade route is broken in a given turn, a new route will not be available unless a new saved game is loaded.

[Maltz]

Due to our eagerness in charging cheaply (actually, freely if we disregard the upkeep of trade ships) imported products for high price to the rest of Japan, we have earned a one-year town growth bonus. Neat!



Actually, my family has a better reason to be happy this season, because...

[Maltz]

My sister, Nana, has returned to us! She has fufilled her mission of maintaining Ouchi's relationship with us Chosokabe to the last minute.

Ouchi was able to temporarily hold one province within Hatano's territory, but they were no match of Hatano's military might there. But the last straw on Ouchi was definitely the rebels recited by nobody else but our monks.



My sister has expressed that she wishes to remain solitary and does not seek re-marrying opportunities, which is actually a common practice in the Sengoku Jidai.

[Maltz]

In the meantime, the Hatano clan has lost a trade port to their enemies, and they are unable to trade with us anymore... so we need to find a replacement. Now we have exhausted the larger clans, so we have to look for small clans like Satomi.



They are land-locked by Hojo. And even for their aggressive temperament and questionable integrity, they seem to be content to remain as Hojo's pets. But it does not matter as long as they actually PAY us to trade! (Again, moving trade ships away from trade nodes no longer makes a difference.)

[Maltz]

Here is an example of an uncessfull rebellion. We called up a large rebellion force in Aki due to the precense of a large Hatano army in the province. However, our ninja has already moved (see the smoke arising from Aki?), so there is nothing we can do to prevent the rebels being crushed by Hatano's army.

Lesson learned: recite rebels first, sabotage army second.



There seems to be an upper limit for rebellion - I have never seen anything more than 2/3 stack. If the province's owner has a full-stack army, they will have no problem crushing the rebel. However, some clans prefer to station a large army in the caste instead of on the field. In such case we will have to lure their army out of the caste - by a juicy province, or by reciting a bait rebellion.

[Maltz]

That full-stack Hatano army indeed crushed the rebels and marched north. The rebels were getting out of control there! Now we can ask them to take a break this turn.



Then we call up another rebel army to take over Aki.

[Maltz]

Our 3rd army has successfully taken over Suo, give it over to my father's first army, and now takes Nagato to establish a firm foot hold in the upper route of Chugoku. Those weak rebels are no match against our highly experienced army.



By the way, the province of Suo has good warhorses. So we will develop that into a cavalry recruitment center.

[Maltz]

Our 2nd army has no trouble hunting down minor rebels on the Awaji island. Well done!



Now let's wait for Sogo's greed to spell their end in Awa.

[Maltz]

The summer of 1553 is a really productive season for us, with three additioanl provinces (Awaji, Iwami, and Aki). Also, Hatano's army will be bumped out of our border automatically.



By the way, our research on the next farming technology was completed. So we have started upgrading farms, starting with the richest provinces in northern Kyushu.

Thoughts #18. Tax on towns will eventually surpass trade

While currently our trade income is about twice as much as our tax income, eventually we will have to heavily rely on tax income. As stronger clans devour their weaker neighbors, there will be less and less clans to trade with us. In order to quicky develop our alternative revenue, we will develop two additional levels of farms in all provinces starting from the most fertile.

The surplus of food will enable all our towns to grow very rapidly. For example, if we stop our expansion at 20 provinces (just before the Realm Divide) and get 30 units of surplus food, our towns will grow 120 more units per year. The accumulative effect could be huge as time goes on. In addition, as Chosokabe we receive additional income on farming. So why not go crazy on farming?

[Maltz]

At the moment we took the Iwami province, Hatano's full stacked has been bumped all the way to the border of Bingo. And the full stack has pre-used all its movement for this season.



What this means is that we don't even have to waste money to sabotage it - the fresh rebels will take over Bingo without any difficulty.

Poor Hanato, they are hopeless puppets in front of Buddha's passion.

This concludes chapter 13 of our story.

[Maltz]

Chapter 14. Harmonious expansion

Wecome back, uncles and aunties. I am Chosokabe Motochika, heir of the Chosokabe clan. It is now the summer of Nanban year 1553. I am 14 years old, turning 15. I cannot wait for the day that I am enlisted as a formal general of the clan. It could happen any day now.

With the help of extremely functional agents, we have been able to expand very rapidly through fresh rebel provinces. Our biggest victims are the Hatano clan in Chugoku, and the our old trading partners Miyoshi and Sogo in Shigoku. Maybe soon they will become history.



Let's have an example - as soon as we occupy Iwami, our agents incited a rebellion in the next province Izumo. By the end of this turn we are going to move our army to the border of Iwami, so they can reach the castle in Izumo in the next season.

Thoughts #19: The Rapid Expansion Phase

Our goal is to rapidly expand through the use of agents until we almost reach the fame requirement to become the public enemy of all clans. We will make a complete stop of our expansion and focus on economy. We will not trigger the Realm Division unless we are confident that we can beat the oppositions even if it comes down to a war of attrition.

[Maltz]

My father easily took another castle controlled by Rebels.



This is probably the Aki province. Since provinces all look the same in Chugoku, I am not really sure.

[Maltz]

Our clan's power grows rapidly, and we are now able to hire one additional unit in all provinces. But we don't really need to hire soldiers everywhere - we have enough to meet all our needs at this stage. We have actually started to disband some low level vanilla units to cut down our maintenance cost.



Currently, the only two provinces that we hire from are Buzen (Bow) and Sazuma (Yari). The Encampment upgrades there are both complete!

[Maltz]

We have also been advancing at a steady pace in the lower route of Chugoku. My father purposely did not attack the castle of Bingo this season, as doing so would bump a full stack of Hatano army, which is currently in the northwest forest of Bingo, to Bitchu. Then they will defeat the rebels we incite this turn.



As we keep the siege on, that full-stack army has to slowly walk to Bitchu, and they will be too late to save that castle from the rebels.