Yee-Yee-Oh!: Mori (Legendary, Domination)

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "Father. Our army in Aki is ready to attack Otomo. We can declare war now!"
Motonari: "There is no need to declare war. Let Shoni pay us to help them fight Otomo."
Takamoto: "Oh nice, 2480 extra koku!"
Motonari: "And there is no diplomatic penalty at all!"

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "We started a war on Otomo, who just bought our infinite military access... and they don't care? Why is this happening?"
Motnari: "Because we ony help Shoni to fight them. We did not declare war on them."
Takamoto: "But we did declare war on them?"
Motonari: "Don't you get it? We did not!"



Note: It seems that as long as ANY clan (say clan A) is at war with any other clan that is NOT currently our enemy (clan B), we can declare war on clan A without any kind of punishment, by asking clan B to allow us to help in their war. And we usually get paid by clan B as well!

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Good! If we dump the infantry, we can lay siege on Otomo's Suo castle this season!"
Takakage: "And we can sabotage Otomo's army on the field, so we can easily steal their Nagato castle, too!"
Motoharu: "We can defeat Otomo without any major battle!"

[HopAlongBunny]

Maltz you have done it again.

You show a great way to profit and expand with Mori. The opening is such a cluster.... because of so many neighbours.

I had never thought about access as an implicit agreement not to attack; bonus on top of the money you wheedled from them :)

The game does develop along similar lines each time; I used the same "support ally" dodge to attack Ouchi to save my ally Shimazu.

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "Father, Motoharu and Takakage will add two provinces to our territory soon!"
Motonari: "Indeed. That will expose us to both the Shoni clan immediately, and the Chosokabe clan in the future. What do you think we should do diplomatically?"
Takamoto: "Definitely not fighting them both at the same time."
Motonari: "Our clan is not very powerful yet. We need to put a lot of trade ships into our foreign trades business, which will provide the income to enable us to build a powerful army."



Takamoto: "So we befriend with both clans first... Don't both their daimyos have unmarried daughters?"
Motonari: "Only true for Chosokabe. Shoni's daughter has been married to someone else. Befriending Shoni is now particularly tricky, because they are bound to convert to Nanban's religion very quickly. So we have to act fast, or it would be hard to ally with them. We already lost the oppurtunity to marry their daughter."
Takamoto: "So let's ally with Shoni now!"
Motonari: "And don't forget to get them someone else to hate! Friendly diplomacy only works if our friend has another enemy.

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "How about Chosokabe? Do we ally with them as well?"
Motonari: "That would be dangerous - what if they start a war with Shoni? Then we will have to break alliance with one of them and suffer from dishonor. These two clans are close to each other, so war is certainly possible."



Takamoto: "So only marriage with Chosokabe... got it. That will give Motoharu a wife!"
Motonari: "Remember, friendly diplomacy works only if we don't make too many friends!"
Takamoto: "How many more "friendly diplomacy works only if..." do you have?
Motonari: "About seven or eight."

[Maltz]

Takakage: "Congratulations, brother. You have been arranged a marriage!"
Motoharu: "You know, sometimes I wonder whether we can ever have the freedom to choose our wife."
Takakage: "You can always have a legit mistress, you know. That's what my Shrewish wife deserves..."
Motoharu: "I didn't hear anything."



Note: Mori Motoharu had a historically famous ugly wife. Motoharu was however very loyal to his wife. Motoharu said, "looking at a beautiful woman for three days makes me bored; looking at an ugly woman for three days gets me used to it." He ended up having six children with his wife.

[Maltz]

Takakage: "Look on the bright side, now we can spend more time together on the battlefield!"
Motoharu: "Yes. Let's take that Suo castle!"

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Great! Now all we need to do is to steal the Nagato castle while Otomo's army is away."
Takakage: "That has been arranged. Foolish Otomo left almost nobody defending the castle."
Motoharu: "Nice! But we still had to take care of Otomo's army on the field."



Note: Tried two approaches to this:

(A) Take Suo, then Nagato (as depicted in the walkthrough). The Otomo army remains on the field, and had to be killed off by the Nagato army.

(B) Take Nagato, then Suo. The Otomo army vanishes.

While (B) seems to be an efficient solution, (A) turns out to be better because (1) Defeating Otomo's remaining army creates "military crackdown", which enables us to leave no garrison in Nagato - this army will be needed elsewhere as the story will later reveal; (2) One extra fight brings more experience to soldiers; (3) Suo can be taken one turn earlier for a little extra profit.

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Nagato is ours!"
Takakage: "Strangely, we did not lose anybody. Those defending Matchlock Ashigaru must have terrible aims..."

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "Father, an Ashigaru captain led a perfect assault on the Nagato castle. Shall we promote him?"
Motonari: "Eventually we will have a powerful navy, and we need extra generals to lead those fleets. Maybe this is a good start."



Note: There seems to be two kinds of promotion events. The first kind happens at the beginning of a season. The new general appears in the capital. The second kind happens immediately after a victorious land battle (naval battles never work for me) led by a non-general. The new general appears with the army that fought the battle. Both events are random. If we are in great need of new generals, we can satisfy the second condition in an auto-resolve battle. Simply repeat the auto-resolve battle until the promotion takes place.

[Maltz]

I had never thought about access as an implicit agreement not to attack

Offering military access porbably sends the message to AI that "this human has no intention to attack you". Maybe that's why they love to pay for the peace of mind. As for whether the AI will be less likely to attack us after they get our military access... it is probably because they have been made poor by purchasing our military access.

Once we stop selling them new access and they are again free to accumulate their military strength, they probably will still declare war if they think you are the softest neighbor they have. The AIs seem to ignore the huge diplomatic hit they receive for attacking whom they have military access to.

[Maltz]

Takakage: "Brother, the new general's name is Kuchiba Yorinobu (口羽頼信)!"
Motoharu: "Sounds just like another random Joe... So he is goin to finish off the Otomo army in the field?"
Takakage: "Yes. We outnumber the Otomo army. Let's wish him good luck!"

[Maltz]

Takakage: "Yorinobu won easily!" (auto-resolved)
Motoharu: "That was quick. So now the Nagato province is celebrating the military crackdown of Otomo. Nice."
Takakage: "Yes. We can combine Yorinobu's men into our army."

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "It is good to merge with Yorinobu's men and make a powerful army. But we have nothing to attack."
Takakage: "Actually we might have to hurry. Our ninja reported that Matsuda clan has sent a scout army into our territory."



Motoharu: "They wouldn't just send army to patrol the field for us. Something big might be coming. Can you ask your nice wife to confirm that her family's possible invasion?"
Takakage: "Do you really want to let Matsuda know we are prepared?"
Motoharu: "I like you, Takakage."

That concludes chapter 3 of our story.

[Maltz]

Chapter 04. Self-fulfilling prophecy of attack

Motoharu: "A large army at the border plus an intelligence report from "our sources"? They spell war on the frontpage headline."
Takakage: "So this is what we get from Matsuda? I sacrificed my virginity for this shrewish wife, and this is how they repay us? Trying to stab us in the back?"
Motoharu: "Takakage, aren't you happy that you are justified for a divorce?"
Takakage: "I... actually like her. She is annoying when she complains. But at night..."
Motoharu: "Let's just drop this topic and rush to war!"

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "Father, the Matsuda clan is suddenly much less to friendly to us due to Threats of Attack (-72). What is this?"
Motonari: "This is a self-fulfilling prophecy to make sure that they do attack later."
Takamoto: "Does not make any sense. We are much more powerful than them, enjoys a good relationship with them, and we are their only trade partner. So they want to fight their only friend like this?"
Motonari: "Maybe they saw that our Aki province was temporarily undefended, and thought they would have a chance."



Takamoto: "But they have no way to hold it even if they could steal it."
Motonari: "Son, the smart men would pretend that they are friends with you as long as you can help them. But they will betray you in a heartbeat when you have no use to them anymore. The stupid men, like the bunch we are facing now, just make decisions from a roll of a dice. Would you prefer to fight the smart men or the stupid men? Just beat their crap out!"

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "So... how do we fight the stupid man?"
Motonari: "How about selling them our infinite military access?"
Takamoto: "They would buy it even if they plan to attack us?"
Motonari: "I am not sure. Does not hurt trying."



Takamoto: "They paid 1110 koku! Maybe they thought this would lower our guard."
Motonari: "You probably over-estimated them. The truth is they always buy military access when you share borders with them."

[Maltz]

Takamoto: "War is declared! Just like the threat said. Shall we call helps from our ally?"
Motonari: "If they join our side, what would they do?"
Takamoto: "Hm, Yamana and Shoni do not share any border with Matsuda."
Motonari: "Right, so there is no point to even ask. Plus, what if any of them refuse? Then we just had ourselves a new enemy."
Takamoto: "Understood!"

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Puhahaha... stupid Matsuda, our ninja sabotaged his large army, so their daimyo could not move, but he still declared war."
Takakage: "Yes. If we did not sabotage him, he would have laid siege on us and assaulted the castle last season. We could win the battle, but would suffer some heavy losses. We prefer to fight them on the field as the attacker."
Yorinobu: "But... there is a small stack of Matsuda army who burned our Trading Port. That not only removes most of our trade income in the previous season, and our repair will not finish until the next season. That's thousands of koku of damage!"
Takakage: "Yeah. We were careless. We should have set up some kind of ambush in the forest."
Motoharu: "Well, it is not too late to kill them now!"



Lesson learned: Any small enemy stack not sabotaged would still proceed to sabotage our infrastructure.

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Ops. After dispatching that small stack we did not have enough energy to attack Matsuda's daimyo."
Takakage: "Let's hide in the forest by the road, and wait for him to pass by!"
Yorinobu: "Good idea!"

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Bad weather. That's bad news - most of our army are Bow Ashigaru, and most of Matsuda army is Yari Ashigaru."
Yorinobu: "Even worse, they are running up a tree-filed hill to hide."
Takakage: "That's indeed a bad scenario. But here we have three brains. We can probably figure something out."

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Get ready!~~~"
Takakage: "That's good. Due to the forest's coverage, brother Motoharu has to get really close to Matsuda's army, but he can still lure their Yari Ashigaru to go after him."
Yorinobu: "So what should we do now?"
Takakage: "We lay a perfect trap and eat that Yari Ashigaru alive."

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Nice! No one escapes!"
Takakage: "Let's repeat this and see how many we can drag out!"

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Let's count... we have killed six units of Matsuda Yari Ashigaru. But somehow they stopped following me... and I have lost several men by the arrows."
Takakage: "It looks like that we reached the limit of luring Yari Ashigaru. The forest provides too good a cover for them, and they now refuse to charge at brother even if brother was almost right beside them."
Norinobu: "So what do we do?"
Takakage: "We start to draw their Bow Ashigaru toward us! Tell the Bow Ashigaru to get ready for action!"



Motoharu: "The Bow Ashigaru are really hard to bait. Every time they step into a forest, they suddenly decide to retreat. Any suggestions?"
Takakage: "Brother, you have to re-plan your path. Lead them through a path that provides no forest coverage for them!"
Motoharu: "Got it!"

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Ha! That's the 2nd and 3rd Bow Ashigaru unit we captured. They are just now match 2 vs. 9!"
Norinobu: "And they were stupid enough to overlap their formations... you know, when I was a Bow Ashigaru captain, this is covered in "formation 101" - spread out when you take arrow fires!"
Takakage: "Good you remember what you learned. That's why you are here and they are there!"

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Watch out! The Matsuda army is marching toward us!"
Norinobu: "Enemies in range. Fire at will!"
Takakage: "Outnumbered in spear 4 to 7, outnumbered in bows 2 to 9, outnumbered in cavalry 1 to 3... Their bravery, not their stupidity, is to be respected."

[Maltz]

Motoharu: "Seeing all of their men routed, the Matsuda general charged into our spears to end the last battle of his life. His last sight was hundred of arrows coming at him."
Norinobu: "Eh... Are we not afraid to shoot our own men?"
Takakage: "Surprisingly, friendly fire is a rare occurance in this world. So empty your arrow bags!"

[Maltz]

Norinobu: "Just 15 friendly fire casaulties... that's a relief."
Motoharu: "Yeah no problem. We nailed them in this ambush! Let's have a beer!"
Takakage: "No time to slow down - let's take Matsuda's provinces before they recover!"

[Maltz]

Norinobu: "Wow look at that - our great victory was awarded a monument!"
Motoharu: "But why is it tens of kilometers away from us?"