View Full Version : Yee-Yee-Oh!: Mori (Legendary, Domination)
Table of Content
Introduction (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053430233&viewfull=1#post2053430233)
Chapter 01. Lesson of three arrows (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053430303&viewfull=1#post2053430303)
Chapter 02. Battle of Izumo Port (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053430753&viewfull=1#post2053430753)
Chapter 03. License to betray (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053430833&viewfull=1#post2053430833)
Chapter 04. Self-fulfilling prophecy of attack (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053431217&viewfull=1#post2053431217)
Chapter 05. Fatal attraction (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053431419&viewfull=1#post2053431419)
Chapter 06. First-time boarding (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053432226&viewfull=1#post2053432226)
Chapter 07. Closing the trap (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053432553&viewfull=1#post2053432553)
Chapter 08. Taming a crazy dog (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053432641&viewfull=1#post2053432641)
Chapter 09. Disappointed sailors (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053433234&viewfull=1#post2053433234)
Chapter 10. Dishonorable heroes (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053434927&viewfull=1#post2053434927)
Chapter 11. Elusive great catch (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053435036&viewfull=1#post2053435036)
Naval Tactics Discussion:
Naval Tactics #1: Trapping (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053432609&viewfull=1#post2053432609)
Naval Tactics #2: Chaos Begins (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053432620&viewfull=1#post2053432620)
Naval Tactics #3: The Wall of Arrows (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053432735&viewfull=1#post2053432735)
Videos: Japanese fleet vs. The Black Ship (3 clips) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053435283&viewfull=1#post2053435283)
Conclusion: Naval Battle Wrap-up (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140534-Yee-Yee-Oh!-Mori-(Legendary-Domination)&p=2053435700&viewfull=1#post2053435700)
Note: "Yee-Yee-Oh!" is a phrase immortalized by the Japanese game maker KOEI's "Nobunaga Ambition" series. In its 9th installment (Ranseiki, 2001), the victors/survivors of a naval battle (which was simply auto-calculated) chant "Yeeee-Yeeee-Oh!". This sound clip is recycled over and over in the game's subsequent incarnations.
INTRODUCTION
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4488&d=1331269289
Having skipped Empire and Napoleon TW, I am particularly interested in how naval battles work in STW2. So far I have seen "faster-than-you" Bow Kobaya and "fire-until-you-jump-ship" Nanban Trade Ships/Black Ship. But there are no tactics in those Naval Battles! The real pirates jump onto the enemies' ship and... kick them into the water!
So let's do the last western clan - Mori, to walk on the way of the Sea! We will fight naval battles manually whenever possible and figure out at least one good formation/unit composition/tactics for conventional naval battles!
First, let's take a preview of the Naval units, sorted by time of availability.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4485&d=1331269289
Category 1: Early-Mid Game (Pre-Realm Divide)
Note: All stats are based on in-game encyclopedia (v1.1.0 Build 4768.314775) on Mori's naval units.
Bow Kobaya. Agile but fragile, poor damage output. They are the designated escort of trade fleets. Practically, when the trade fleet is under attack, we order the Trade Ships to retreat, and let the Bow Kobaya run in circles for 20 minutes. After getting Fire Arrows (Way of the Bow), we might be able to set enemy ships on fire with them, making them a lot more useful in serious naval battles. The Mori variety comes with +10 Marine (bow crew). So they are actually pretty good as ranged units!
Medium Bune. Medium naval units with a surprisingly large bow crew. (All the more advanced, larger ships mainly increases their melee crew.) The higher ranged damage output without the requirement of boarding means that a group of them can concentrate their fire on a ship and quickly decimate it/sets it on fire. The Mori variety comes with +10 seaman (melee crew). So they have a good chance to win boarding other regular Medium Bunes, too. They are the backbone of early naval battles! But maybe there are harder backbones towards late game.
Sengoku Bune. Requires Military Port. Their low bow crew count means they provide very little ranged damage. But they make up by having a large melee crew. The Sengoku Bune seem to be the ideal counter to Medium Bune and anything that has significantly less melee crew and cannot out-run Sengoku Bune. A good ship to have in early game fights against Wako Pirates, as Wako Pirates have lots of Medium Bune that only has 35 seamen (melee crew). The Mori variety unfortunately only has +1 extra morale.
Fire Bomb Kobaya. Requires the lv1 naval tech (Way of the Sea) and Military Port. In my Shimazu campaign, my Nanban Trade Ship was often set on fire quickly by something like these little pests. They seem to be an ideal counter to the large, slow, and always flammable ships, as the Kobayas' speed can keep them from being hooked and boraded while throwing devastating fire bombs. Since burning enemies require time to repair their damage, this could be a good way to paralyze important enemy ships so we can work on the others. These small ships can also lay down water mines. So far I have only seen the mines in the tutorial! Maybe we can slowly replace lost Bow Kobayas with them. The Mori variety unfortunately only has +1 extra morale.
Synopsis: The above four should provide a solid roster for pre-RD naval battles. A preliminary battle plan looks like this: Medium Bune (60%) function like Yari+Bow Ashigaru to be the main damage dealer, while Bow/Fire Bomb Kobaya (20%) act as harassing troops, like Bow Cavalry, on the flank. Sengoku Bune (20%) acts as Heavy Cavalry to board weakened/paralyzed/slow opponent so our line can focus on the next target. The fast ships then chase down the routing units.
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Category 2: Mid-Late Game (produced during the pause before Realm Divide for post-RD actions)
Heavy Bune. Requires Lv2 naval tech and Military Port. They actually have fewer bow crew than Medium Bune, so just like Sengoku Bune they will be looking for chances to board enemy ships. But their poor speed probably means that they have to remain stationary and wait for the prey to get close. (The AI always will. :sweatdrop:) The Mori variety comes with only +1 morale. Looks like a good replacement of Medium Bune to form the line, but they will soon become obsolete as we have a better option down the road...
O Atake Bune. Requires Lv3 naval tech, which unlocks Dry Dock (the upgraded Military Port). This O Atake Bune is pretty much the upgrade of Heavy Bune. They also inspire other ships just like an army general's blue circle, so they are designed to be the Flagship. The Mori variety... again comes with just +1 morale. With the largest Marine (bow) crew (60) among all ships (Medium Bune has 55, a close second), O Atake Bunes are also quite deadly in ranged combat. But at this point the main damage dealer is probably handed to the next one...
Cannon Bune. Requires Lv3 naval tech, which unlocks Dry Dock. This is the Japanese (and weaker) version of Nanban Trade Ship (which is a weaker version of the Black Ship). If we fill the most of our fleet with Cannon Bune, they should be abe to severly weaken enemy ships in their approach, allowing for very low-casualty victories. They also cannot be boarded! The Mori variety comes with +10 accuracy and +10 reload! That's 50% on top of the vanilla! Of course we cannot let such a huge bonus go to waste, just like we would love to use Mori Bow Kobaya and Mori Medium Bune before. There seems to be a limit on how many Cannon Bune can be deployed.
Synopsis. The O Atake Bune and Cannon Bune easily replace Medium Bune as the backbone of the fleet. The Cannons will do great damage against various enemy ships, while the O Atake's arrow join in the attack when the enemy ships gets close. They still need to be complemented by fast ships, which should be the veteran Bow/Fire Bomb Kobaya from earlier. So a good post-RD fleet would be Cannon Bune (to the limit), plus O Atake Bune, and 30% of fast, arsonist ships like Bow and Fire Bomb Kobaya. The Cannon Bune and O Atake will form the line, while the light ships flank the sides.
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Category 3: Others
Nihon Maru. An one-time gift for becoming the new Shogun. They are even a further upgrade from O Ataka Bune, with 33% more bow crew, 100%(!) more melee crew, and the same inspiring ability. I am sure that castle on the ship contains multiple 3-piece restrooms. There is no Mori variety of the Nihon Maru, unfortunately. And of course there is only one Nihon Maru.
Matchlock Kobaya. Requires Gun Mastery, the late-game tech that enables the production of matchlock Ashigaru, Samurai, and Warrior Monks. The usage of them is similar to other Kobayas (Bow, Fire Bomb). So if we alrady have veteran Bow and Fire Bomb Kobaya, there seems to be no need to get the third.
Siege Tower Bune. Requires Gun Mastery. A medium-sized ship that shoot enemies from their high deck. But there are not many Bow/Gun Crew on the high deck, either. Since we already have Cannon Bune to fulfill the ranged damage dealer's role, there is no point to get them.
Matchlock Kobaya and Siege Tower Bune are probably designed for those who wish to go after gun tech while ignoring naval techs, so they can have better army (which in my experience is NOT) and navy at the same time.
But as the navy-savvy Mori we will ignore the last two kinds of ships.
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Other goals we wish to achieve in this campaign:
- Train multiple generals, one for each battle fleet, down the Admiral-Pirate path and use them to command all key naval battles.
- Test drive the Sengoku Jidai DLC special unit Wako Raiders and look for tactics to utilize their potential. The Wako Raiders is like a mutant of Katana Samurai. Compared to the samurai, the pirates actually have inferior charge (12 vs. 15), poorer armor (3 vs. 5), but higher melee defence (7 vs. 4). They are more surprise shock troops than hold-your-line tanks. They require Military Port and Sword School. So we can field them at the same time we have Fire Bomb Kobaya.
That concludes our introduction. :bow: Let's begin with the story.
leonardo davinci
03-09-2012, 08:04
60% of your fleet a cannon bune will not work, because there's a limit on them. thought it was 2. so don't make plans to rely on them for the most part later in the game.
will read this story with great interest. the others were great!
HopAlongBunny
03-09-2012, 10:01
Go Maltz!
I look forward to this; Mori is a faction I like to play.
The start can be quite variable; I was once at war with all neighbors (even the "ally") within 4 turns.
As noted above, you have a limited number of cannon bune; might be 3 - certainly not enough for 60% of fleet.
Grabbing popcorn and settling in for a good story :bounce:
Thanks for the information about Cannon Bune. :bow:
Chapter 1. Lesson of three arrows
Long time ago... about the time when the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Inca empire and Jean Calvin advocated Protestant Reformation, there was a clan lord in Japanese. His family name is Mori. His given name is Motonari.
Mori Motonari's clan, the Mori clan, was weak. They were surrounded by two powerful neighbors, the Amako clan, and the Ouchi clan, who rivaled each other. Mori Motonari had to play smart in order to survive between these two rivalry clans. In essence, his clan had to become a vassal of Amako or Ouchi, depending on who granted them better protection.
Now Motonari was getting old, and he had to worry about what would happen when he eventually pass away. Motonari had three promising sons (actually in history Mori Motonari eventually had 9 sons :sweatdrop: But at the time of the story he only had 3.).
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4492&d=1331298214
The oldest son, the heir of the Mori clan, Takamoto, was a very kind man. Motonari worried that he did not have the heart to perform cruel but necessary actions, such as cutting down enemies' heads, ordering his family members to commit Seppoku (cut their belly open and pick their intestine out) for committing dishonorable deeds, etc.
The second son, Motoharu, was regarded as one of the future greatest generals of Japan. He knew tactics; he was brave; and he knew how to win soldiers' heart. But Motonari knew military alone cannot make a clan survive. Military action was only directed by diplomacy and grand strategy. A wise clan lord would only fight battles he could win. (Note: Motoharu was adopted into the Kikkawa clan so he could become the heir of Kikkawa. This essentially incorporate Kikkawa into Mori like a parent-subsidiary company.)
The third son, Takakage, was one of the brightest man of Japan. He was smart; he knew strategy; he was calm; he always planned severa steps ahead. Takakage would complement Motoharu, so the Mori clan would prosper under sound strategy and brilliant tactics. (Note: Takakage was adopted into the Kobayagawa clan to incorporate them into Mori.)
Worried that Takamoto one day would not gain enough support from his two great younger brothers, Mori Motonari gathered all three one day, and was ready to give them a lesson. This lesson later became worldly famous as the "Lesson of Three Arrows".
You must have heard of the story when you were little, but the characters are of course replaced with easier-to-understand folks like an old farmer or some random landlord. And the subject is changed from arrows to chopsticks or just some random branch from the trees. :rolleyes:
So Mori Motonari gathered his three sons and passed them each an arrow, and asked them to snap and break the arrow with force.
Takamato: "Father, are you sure? This is a waste of precious resource."
Motoharu: "Easy. Done."
Takakage: "Does the weapon merchant offer refund?"
Motonari: "Just do it!"
All three sons broke the bomboo-made arrows easily. Then, Mori took up three more arrows, passed them to the sons, and asked them to break the three arrows together.
Takamoto: "Father, I really think we should go green on this and just use our imagination."
Motoharu: "Urgh... this is tough. I can't break the bundle."
Takakage: "Why don't you use a chainsaw?"
Seeing that all his sons failed to break three arrows when bundled together, Mori Motonari revealed his lesson.
Motonari: "Each of you is like an arrow. If you do not unite together, the Mori clan can be broken easily by anybody. But if you unite as one, the Mori clan is going to undefeatable!"
Takamoto/Motoharu/Takakage: "Yes, father!"
Motonari: "So today I reveal the new design of the Mori clan crest! Three dots united under one line - the three of you will always stick together!"
Takamoto/Motoharu/Takakage: "Yes, father!"
The lesson of the three arrows is over. But there are more important things for the Mori clan to worry about. The powerful Amako clan has launched yet another invasion on Mori's Aki province.
Motonari: "Boys! Let's discuss what we should do next."
Takamoto: "We should take a hygiene break!"
Motonari: "... Go, but come back as soon as you are done."
Motoharu: "I say we gather all we have and fight Amako!"
Motonari: "... Thanks for your creative insight. Maybe you should go back to your room, and read more Sun Tzu's Art of War."
Takakage: "Amako is a powerful foe, but if they only fight us in multiple small waves, there is nothing to be afraid about. We will be able to defeat Amako if we can focus all our military might on them."
Motonari: "... Go on."
Takamoto: "How do we focus all of our military might?"
Takakage: "Diplomacy. We have three neighbor clans, Ouchi, Kikkawa, and Amako. Ouchi is our ally. Kikkawa is neutral, but if we ask them to trade with us and sell them military access, they will remain friendly to us."
Takamoto: "I see!"
Motoharu: "Did we not have a deal with Kikkawa so I will marry their daimyo's daughter, so I can inherit the Kikkawa clan?"
Motonari: "I just came back from a trip to Bingo and had some tea with the Kikkawa daimyo. I saw his daughter. You... do not want to marry his daughter."
Motoharu: "NO~~~~"
Motonari: "OK. Let's serious plan what we will do for the next several years."
Sons: "Yes! Father."
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Motonari: "First, we will focus all our military power on Amako. Their Iwami province has gold deposits. Their Hoki province has good craftsman who makes very accurate bows. These two provinces are both crucial to our clans' economic and military power."
Sons: "Yes! Defeat Amako!"
Motonari: "In the next stage, we look for ways to expand east, with diplomacy or brute force. Our goal is to capture Bingo for its advanced shipyards to train a powerful navy. Then, we keep expanding east until we reach Bizen for its smiths. We will also take Mimasaka, which has Iron deposits, but more importantly, our territory will then be connected like a circle. This cuts down the need of garrison on the east front!"
Sons: "Yes! Expand east!"
Motonari: "When we free up the garrisons, we will be able to expand west with high efficiency. Suo has good horses, Northern Kyushu's Hizen, Higo, and Tsukushi contain some of the most fertile soils in all Japan. Then our clan will be truly undefeatable!"
Sons: "Yes! To Kyushu!"
Motonari: "But that's still far away from us. First, let's fight that Amako army."
Takamoto: "Good luck, father! I will pray for your success."
Motonari: "Takamoto, you are now old enough to lead an army. You are coming with me. This will be your first battle!"
Takamato: "NO~~~~"
Takamoto: "Father, are you sure this is a good idea? Putting me in front like this... Can't you lead a night battle or something?"
Motonari: "This is to let you gain more battle experience! My reinforcement will join up with you in no time. Night battles do not allow reinforcement on either side."
Takamoto: "I don't think I am fully insured for work-related injury! Please come quickly!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4495&d=1331301021
Note: When the CPU combines multiple generals in a single army, all of them gets full experience (on Legendary, they level very quickly). However, when human does it, the secondary generals only gain "1" EXP. So we still have to resort to the old trick of spliting generals into multiple stacks.
Takamoto: "Finally, father, you came! I saw the Amako army went into hiding in the hill full of trees."
Motonari: "So we cannot simply attack them."
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Takamoto: "Yes, attacking uphill is tough work. Charging downhill is easy job."
Motonari: "Good. So we try to get them to do the easy job."
Takamoto: "What do you mean, father?"
Motonari: "You get close to them, and see if any of them chase after you."
Takamoto: "Isn't that dangerous?"
Motonari: "If you are stupid enough to stand in the open and within their Bow Ashigaru's range, it is dangerous. Approach from the side, not front!"
Takamoto: "Yes, father!"
Takamoto: "Father, help! Amako's Yari Ashigaru has charged downhill toward me!"
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Motonari: "Good! Don't be afraid. They are infantry; you are cavalry. They are much slower than you. Maintain a steady lead to give them some hope of catching up, and lure them back here. I will take care of the rest."
Takamoto: "Sounds so easy..."
Takamoto: "Buhahaha, the Amako Yari Ashigaru ran into our trap! They are dead ducks!" :laugh4:
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Motonari: "Good job. But we could have done better. Our trap did not spring perfectly - one side of the trap got in contact with the enemy before the others. We have to practice timing to obtain maximum morale shock in the shortest time. Now go get another group to follow you!"
Takamoto: "Yes, father!"
Takamoto: "A second unit of Yari Ashigaru walked into our trap! See ya!"
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Motonari: "Our timing has improved - three units made contact within 2 seconds. But this one also has room for improvement. We should have at least one group approaching from their back, so they can't escape so quickly. Now we have to use cavalry to run down the fleeing men."
Takamoto: "I see..."
Motonari: "What are you waiting for? Go running down the fleeing men!"
Takamoto: "Yes, father!"
Takamoto: "Father, the Amako Yari Cavalry is charging toward you!"
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Motonari: "Hm, you were on their east, but they charged south. This is unexpected... There is no time to lay a trap. So we will use our best spear units to take the charge while the Ashigarus provide supports from the flanks!"
Takamoto: "No cavalry beats Yari Samurai!"
Note: The Amako Yari Cavalry started fleeing before our two Ashigaru units made contact. But we also lost about 20 Yari Samurai from the initial charge.
Takamoto: "Amako only has their Bow Ashigaru and Yari Samurai in the forest. Is it time to signal full assault?"
Motonari: "Try lure the archer out, too. It just takes a little more patience. Here is the tip: [B]Walk 10 steps, wait until they stop to pull the bow. Walk again."
Takamoto: "The Amako Bow Ashigaru is out of the forest!"
Motonari: "Not far enough - we need some time to destroy them before their Yari Samurai arrives."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4505&d=1331354521
Motonari: "Bow Ashigaru grab their attention, bodyguards, charge with me!"
Takamoto: "Taste this!"
Takamoto: "The Bow Ashigaru is gone! Their Yari Samurai captain marched downhill!"
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Motonari: "Even if they are samurai, seeing all his other men defeated, their minds are already shaken. Give them some arrows and they will start fleeing."
Takamoto: "Yes, we won!"
Motonari: "Under 10% casualty, not bad. What did you learn from the battle, my son?"
Takamoto: "Hm, I learned that any foe can be divided and conquered!"
Motonari: "Very true. There is one exception though. If you bring too many ranged units, the enemy will directly come to you. Then there is no time to divide them."
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Takakage: "Father, brother's victory is great. But the enemies are so stupid and predictable... it is almost an insult to our intelligence."
Motonari: "That's also unfortunately true. Once we understand their pattern, they are just 3-year old children, waiting to be spanked to cry and kicked to fly."
Motoharu: "Is that what you did to us, father?" :uhoh:
Takamoto: "Father, there are some Amako army leftover from our battle."
Motonari: "Indeed. Let's give chase. You come with me. We don't need anybody else to win."
Takamoto: "Why?"
Motonari: "We need to conserve energy for our infantry. Our goal is to reach the castle this season!"
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Takamoto: "NO! I lost 2 bodyguards!"
Motonari: "Don't be afraid of minor loss! You will get them back quickly."
Takamato: "They are people, too!"
Motonari: "Just treat them like a number!"
Takamoto: "Oh yes! I have become a 2-star general. Does that make me famous?"
Motonari: "Not yet. We need to have a lot more battles. Now to the castle!"
Takamoto: "Wait... what retainer should I pick? How about this sword?"
Motonari: "What the... the Sword of Amaterasu the Okami? Lucky bastard... Well, I got something nice, too: +1 honor and +1 field attack."
Note: Auto-resolved the second battle to accelerate the interview process.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4515&d=1331354521
Takamoto: "Yes! We reached the castle!"
Motonari: "In fact, I reached the castle, you and the infantry ran out of steam. But you are still close enough to join the siege as reinforcement."
Takamoto: "We assault right away?"
Motonari: "Why not, do you want to wait for Amako's reinforcement to arrive and wipe us out?"
Takamoto: "No!"
Note: After leveling up the generals to lv 2 (2 points go to strategist), combined Mori Takamoto with the infantry and ordered them to march toward the castle.
Takamoto: "Let's attack!"
Motonari: "Oh wait, I forgot something important. We have to sign trade agreements before we expand."
Takamoto: "Before or after we expand, does that make a difference?"
Motonari: "A small difference. Trade partners are naturally jealous. They don't like us to make more money than them out of it. So the smaller and less resourceful we are, the better the deal."
Takamoto: "I see..."
Motonari: "But when we grow extremely powerful later, the fact that we have the resources they want may give us a better deal.
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Takamoto: "Kikkawa is willing to pay us to trade!"
Motonari: "We need a lot of money at the beginning to boost our army. Let's sell military access to them, starting with 5 seasons."
Takamoto: "Wouldn't that be risky?
Motonari: "The Daimyos magazine gives Kikkawa a Weak military power ranking. As long as we stay ahead of them, they should not get the wrong ideas. Besides, now they have their miliary access to us, if they attack, they are going to be looked down by all other clans. The military access actually functions like an implicit peace pact. Besides, when they buy our military access, they will have no money left to hire more army! So they will stay weak and fall behind us."
Takamoto: "I see!"
Takamoto: "So now we are selling military access to Ouchi, too?"
Motonari: "Although they are our allies, they are still interested in military access. So why not? We have no intention to attack Ouchi in a short time. So we can use their cash. This also keeps their military power down for the beginning, when we are most vulnerable."
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Takamoto: "Finally we can start the castle assault. There is a unit of Bow Ashigaru defending the castle. How do we approach this?"
Motonari: "We can use some units as a distraction, while attacking them from the opposite side."
Takamoto: "So... they just and still and let us shoot them like this?"
Motonari: "They will eventually move. The key is shoot 2 volleys and wait for the next unit to come close."
Takamoto: "I see!"
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Takamoto: "Father, what if all sides of the castle is defended by archers?"
Motonari: "Then we have to deplete their arrow."
Takamoto: "How?"
Motonari: "Any fast unit can do this, watch me..."
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Takamoto: "So you WALK into their range, wait until they fire the arrows, and quickly run back and exit their range?"
Motonari: "Exactly. If you are concentrated and turn back as soon as you see their arrows, you can avoid casualty. The arrows of the defenders are limited. A standard Bow Ashigaru unit has 20 arrows, so... darn it!"
Takamoto: "Haha, father lose a bodyguard!"
Motonari: "Yeah, don't talk while you're fighting!"
Takamoto: "Father, Amako's Bow Ashigaru's morale was shattered when they run out of arrows!"
Motonari: "Yes, that's realy odd. But that makes little difference, since they cannot rout while they are already in the castle."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4518&d=1331354521
Takamoto: "What happens next?"
Motonari: "Deplete our archers' arrow to maximize their kill. Then storm with our melee units."
Takamoto: "Ah... easy victory! Let's continue to push forward!"
Motonari: "Good job. But we don't have enough men power to push forward AND leave enough garrison in this new province. Let's take a short break and let the reinforcement from Aki to catch up."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4519&d=1331354521
Takamoto: "Yeah! Vacation!"
Motonari: "Soon we will face a powerful Amako army. We must be ready."
This concludes Chapter 1 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 02. Battle of Izumo Port
Motonari: "Boys! The first step is always the most difficult, but we made it. Let's continue the good battles!"
Motoharu: "Amako must be furious that we robbed their gold mine. Buhahaha..."
The Mori clan grabbed Amako's Gold Mine, but there were still weak. They need to get a large army as soon as possible.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4520&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "We received a mission! We can build cheaper ships if we understand the Way of the Sea."
Takakage: "Hm, ships are quite cheap to build. A Medium Bune has a similar price as Bow Ashigaru. I say we just inore this."
Takamoto: "We do not have enough units to maintain order in Iwami. We must hire as many units as posssible.
Motonari: "Indeed, we have to make money to allow us to hire more units."
Takamoto: "What are the ways to make money?"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4521&d=1331384316
Takakage: "Brother, don't forget we can sell military access to neighbors."
Motoharu: "If we have no intention to attack the neighbor, we may as well sell them."
Katamoto: "They paid huge cash just like that?
Takakage: "Yes. They... really like to visit us."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4522&d=1331384316
Motonari: "Actually, there is a way to attack someone even after we sell them military access. But we don't have to do that... yet."
Motoharu: "Thanks to Ouchi and Kikkawa, we can upgrade the Hallowed Ground in Aki. There are two options."
Takamoto: "We can upgrade that to a Pilgrim Hostel, which gives more morale to units and better monk agents, or a Mountain Hermitage, which produces better Warrior Monks."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4523&d=1331384316
Takakage: "Warrior Monks are just too far away. But we will be hiring monks very soon. If they start with Rank 3, we can make wonderful things happen quickly."
Motonari: "Exacty. Upgrade to a Pilgrim Hostel!"
Motonari: "Boys, I have a strong feeling that the Kikkawa cannot survive past this winter."
Motoharu: "Yes. They just lost a battle to the Matsuda clan. We can see their army fell to the ground from AKi."
Takakage: "So we should sell them Infinite Military Access!"
Takamoto: "Hm, did we make them weak because we have exhausted their cash reserve every season?"
Motonari: "Maybe. Any clan who buys Mori's Military Access would receive The Curse of Mori - they will not have enough money to hire army!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4524&d=1331384316
Takakage: "Father! I think I am ready to serve the clan as a general!"
Motonari: "Good! So you and Motoharu, whenever he is ready, will be responsible to lead our clan's second army. Get a good balance between Yari and Bow and wait for oppurtunity. We have to be ready when the opportunity arises!"
Takakage: "Yes, Father!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4525&d=1331384316
Motoharu: "Father, two big news! The Kikkawa clan has been eliminated by the Matsudo clan. Matsudo has quite a large army in Bingo. But our Aki is rather defenceless."
Motonari: "We would love to fight Matsuda, but not right now. Survival is key - we have to befriend them."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4526&d=1331384316
Motoharu: "And Amako's arge army has arrived!"
Motonari: "This we have to fight, right now. Takamoto, come with me!"
Takamoto: "To battle!"
Takamoto: "The Amako Daimyo is here! We have 5 Yari and 5 Bow, they have 6 Yari and 4 Bow."
Motonari: "Yes. But we do not have to face them all at once."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4527&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "Right, father. We can easily call up their Yari Ashigaru units one by one to destroy."
Motonari: "Why don't you in charge of setting up the trap? From time to time,, I need some exercise. I will be the bait."
Takamoto: "Be careful!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4531&d=1331384316
Motonari: "Now the first unit is here... but what kind of trap is this?"
Takamoto: "Sorry, father. The Amako Yari Ashigaru suddenly decided to turn back, so we have to charge with whatever we have."
Motonari: "Hm... suddenly turn back? That's unexpected. Perhaps this is because I lead them pass a forest, and that charged their behavior pattern."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4532&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "So... father, are you saying this is your fault?" :rolleyes:
Motonari: "How dare you! 20 more men died because they did not have proper support. We could have let them go back and draw them out again."
Takamoto: "Understand!"
Takamoto: "How about this trap, father?"
Motonari: "The enemy fled almost instantly - we lost 1 man to destroy their 150. Keep up the good work!"
Takamoto: "Thank you, father!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4533&d=1331384316
Motonari: "Another good trap! Nobody escapes a perfect trap!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4534&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "We have baited and trapped all of their six Ashigaru units."
Motonari: "So we have to lure their Bow Ashigaru now."
Takamoto: "I volunteer... to hide in that forest so I can charge into their bows!"
Motonari: "One bow unit down! Takamoto, what are you waiting for?"
Takamoto: "Sorry! I am coming!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4535&d=1331384316
Motonari: "That's their last two bows. Watch out, the Amako daimyo is charging toward you! Pull back!"
Takamoto: "Yes, father! Let our spear handle him!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4536&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "Our spear units are too slow! The Amako daimyo is charging toward us, some of our Bow Ashigaru is in danger!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4537&d=1331384316
Motonari: "It is too late to pull back the bows. Let them fight!"
Takamoto: "The Amako daimyo is defeated by our superior numbers!"
Motonari: "Argh, 60 more men died by a simple mistake. Rally!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4538&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "We still won a good victory. Amako's daimyo is dead! We destroyed their main army!"
Motonari: "The end of Amako is near. Let's take their weakly defended castles before they regain their strength!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4539&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "Our victory completely turns the tide of the war... Hey, somebody actually made a monument for us!"
Motonari: "There is no time to stay and look! Keep pushing forward!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4540&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "We reached Amako's castle! They have some reinforcements nearby."
Motonari: "Too bad you had to arrive as reinforcements from the far corner, so we cannot simpy intercept them on their way to the castle. Regardess, this should be an easy fight."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4541&d=1331384316
Motonari: "Good, we were able to intercept our of the Bow units before they reached the castle. So there is one more unit left."
Takamoto: "Please let me try to draw out their arrows!"
Motonari: "Go ahead!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4545&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "Father, those Bow Ashigaru chase after me and has come OUT of their castle!"
Motonari: "Ha! Easy for us!"
Note: Before patches it was very easy to draw out Bow Ashigaru from castle. Now they almost always remain stationary in the castle. In this battle, the Amako Ashigaru was moved from one wall to another (since our army changed position). Maybe that triggers them to become mobile instead of stationary.
Takamoto: "Now there are no Bow units in the castle. We can take our sweet time to shoot them."
Motonari: "Yes. And most of them do not even move. Maybe the castle is too small."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4546&d=1331384316
Takamoto: "We kiled them all without even breaking the castle's gate."
Motonari: "Just one last Amako province left!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4547&d=1331384316
This concludes Chapter 2 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 03. License to betray
Motonari: "Takakage, there seems to be some changes happening in Ouchi's lands. What is it?"
Takakage: "Our trade fleet spotted Otomo's army - they have landed in Ouchi's territory!"
Motonari: "Who is going to win?"
Takakage: "Otomo's army is small, but Ouchi's army is smaller! They have been affected by the curse of Mori's Neighbor."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4563&d=1331445979
Motonari: "This is the moment we have been waiting for. Prepare an army as soon as possible!"
Motoharu: "Father, please let me help!"
Motonari: "Sure!"
Previously...
Motonari: "We do not have army to deal with Matsuda, so we may as well be friends for now. I know the Matsuda daimyo has a daughter. Who volunteers?"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4543&d=1331445979
Takakage: "Since I am now in charge of Aki's defence, I volunteer to marry Matsuda's daughter!"
Motoharu: "Poor Takakage, a Shrewish wife..."
Takakage: "For the sake of the family, I have to endure..."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4544&d=1331445979
Note: While a Shrewish wife is a really bad wife to have in reality, in STW2 this is one of the more practical wives. The -loyalty penalty is usually negligible. The +5% movement bonus can sometimes make differences of reaching the next castle in the season or not.
Back to now...
Motoharu: "Takakage, father asks us to get an army, but we have no funds. Let's borrow from Matsuda, shall we?"
Takakage: "A good idea. Our clans' are at very good terms. They will pay good price. And there is no risk of getting a surprise attack."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4564&d=1331445979
Motoharu: "Takakage, good news. Father and brother has taken Amako's last castle! Amako is history!"
Takakage: "I heard that Amako attempted to setup an ambush in the forest of Izumo, but father simply ignored them and directly go for the castle. As Amako lost their last castle, those ambush army disappeared instantly."
Motoharu: "Hot brilliant the Amakos..."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4565&d=1331445979
Motoharu: "Great, father has arranged more funds for us from our new neighbor Yamana clan."
Takakage: "Yamana's lands are of now strategic importance to us. So we may as well sign an alliance with them to really secure our relations. Then we can direct our army elsewhere.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4566&d=1331445979
Motoharu: "Hm... the infrastructures in our new provinces costs a lot of money. We still need more funds!"
Takakage: "Let's sell military access to Otomo, then!"
Motoharu: "Wait, don't we WANT to fight them soon? This is going to hurt our reputation."
Takakage: "Father mentioned that there is a way to declare war with a justified reason... I wonder how?"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4567&d=1331445979
Motoharu: "Wow. We are just selling military access to everybody. And 5 turns is just the beginning. We will follow up with 10 turns and 20 turns!"
Takakage: "That's unfortunately the only way to make fast cash to rush for Trading Ports. We are also close to get 5 Sake Dens, and then we will demolish most of them to make room for 5 Buddhist Temples. By the time we have 5 Ninjas and 5 Monks, who start at rank 3, no one in Japan can stop us!"
Motoharu: "I see!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4568&d=1331445979
Motoharu: "Takakage, Ouchi has been destroyed by Otomo! We missed the chance to sell them inifinite military access..."
Takakage: "Too bad! But we can still sell Otomo that."
Motoharu: "Are you sure we can attack them later without public scrutiny?"
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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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4570&d=1331445979
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!" :rolleyes:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4571&d=1331445979
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!
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!" :laugh4:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4572&d=1331445979
HopAlongBunny
03-12-2012, 07:52
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.
:bow:
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4573&d=1331446010
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.
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4574&d=1331446010
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."
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4575&d=1331446010
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.
Takakage: "Look on the bright side, now we can spend more time together on the battlefield!"
Motoharu: "Yes. Let's take that Suo castle!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4576&d=1331446010
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4577&d=1331446010
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.
Motoharu: "Nagato is ours!"
Takakage: "Strangely, we did not lose anybody. Those defending Matchlock Ashigaru must have terrible aims..."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4578&d=1331446010
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4579&d=1331446010
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.
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.
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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4605&d=1331596488
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4606&d=1331596491
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4587&d=1331596491
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." :yes:
That concludes chapter 3 of our story. :bow:
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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4588&d=1331596491
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4589&d=1331596491
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!"
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4590&d=1331596491
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."
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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4591&d=1331596491
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!" :wall:
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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4592&d=1331596491
Lesson learned: Any small enemy stack not sabotaged would still proceed to sabotage our infrastructure.
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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4593&d=1331596491
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4594&d=1331596491
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."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4595&d=1331596491
Motoharu: "Nice! No one escapes!"
Takakage: "Let's repeat this and see how many we can drag out!"
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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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4597&d=1331596491
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!"
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!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4598&d=1331596491
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."
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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!"
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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!"
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Norinobu: "Wow look at that - our great victory was awarded a monument!"
Motoharu: "But why is it tens of kilometers away from us?" :dizzy2:
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Norinobu: "So again we split into three armies to maximize our experience, right?"
Takakage: "Exactly. And since there is a small army just outside Bingo, we will sabotage them so we can fight them separately, for another experience feast!"
Motoharu: "Hm... how do we learn anything from crushing these bugs?"
Norinobu: "We learned that they... can be crushed like bugs?"
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Takamoto: "Father, great news! Younger brothers have destroyed Matsuda's main army in an ambush, and has seized Matsuda's two provinces!"
Motonari: "That's my great sons! Oh, of course, you are good, too."
Takamoto: "... please give me some battes to fight!"
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Motonari: "Unfortunately, we have again run out of enemies. Maybe with the new monks we recruited, we could incite some rebellions and give you some rebels... Huh?"
Takamoto: "What's wrong?"
Motonari: "Our trade ships report that the Imagawa clan is sending a huge army on their fleet, and is sailing west."
maltz: "WTF, again?"
Takamoto: "Huh? Who is that?"
Motonari: "Some random retainer outside. Hm... why is Imagawa sending a huge army this way?"
Takamoto: "Father. The Imagawa might inavde us soon, what should we do?"
Motonari: "We have only two armies. If we pull one back, one of our fronts will be defenceless. Since our trade ships are filling up the foreign trade nodes quickly, it is a good time to explore new markets and start hiring the third army."
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Takamoto: "How about the Ikko-Ikki? Although they are radical conservatives, we can still sell them goods, right?"
Motonari: "Yeah. They can burn all the Buddha literatures they want. They still pay for our silk and incense!"
Takamoto: "Father, Imagawa declared war on us! Their fleet is now just south of us! Although their army has not landed yet."
Motonari: "What a bunch of retards. What business do we have to do with them?... or right, we are their trade partners."
Takamoto: "Shall we ask for help from our allies?"
Motonari: "Normally this is not necessary, but Shoni happens to have a large fleet nearby. If we ask them to help, they might dispatch Imagawa for us. Saves work!"
Takamoto: "And they agreed!"
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Note: Unfortunately, we have to also ask Yamana's help. as there is no such option to just ask Shoni. Besides, Shoni's huge fleet just sat there and did not bother with the Imagawa fleet. And who knows why the Imagawa AI decides to attack the human again. A bug in their naval attack script?
Motonari: "Takamoto, I have something to tell you."
Takamoto: "What is it father? That I have a rice grain on my face? I wiped it off already."
Motonari: "We Mori need a third army, so we can expand into Kyushu. It is time for you to be responsible for an army."
Takamoto: "Am... Am I good enough for this?"
Motonari: "Sure! Because I will be going, but you stay. Just... don't follow your instincts and think about how to exploit the enemy's weaknesses. If in doubt, remember three things."
Takamoto: "Which three things?"
Motonari: "First, the enemies follow basic instincts. Try to understand their thinking pattern, expect their next moves, and let them step into your trap."
Takamoto: "OK!"
Motonari: "Second, make good use of agents. I give you one ninja and one monk. Remember, they are always lucky when you lay a siege on some castle. And there are many other ways to make them lucky."
Takamoto: "Some kind of superstition?... OK!"
Motonari: "Third, If you cannnot win, flee! If you do not want to fight for whatever reason, flee!"
Takamoto: "That's... not exactly honorable. OK!"
Motonari: "Good luck, son! One day you will be the daimyo of Mori clan!"
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Takamoto :"Wait... there are some nanban people asking us to trade... what shall we do?"
Motonari: "(distant shouting) we build the best navy of Nihon, so what is the use of Nanban? Tell them to go back to Europe!"
Motoharu: "Imagawa declared war, but showed no sign of landing. Where are they going?"
Takakage: "No idea... probably on our north shore?"
Motoharu: "We don't have time to waste an army to follow their stupid ship."
Takakage: "Exactly. Let's block their access with our own fleet! One Bow Kobaya is enough."
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Motoharu: "Hm... I think their fleet is stronger than that."
Takakage: "Yes. Stronger, but slower. They will never catch up if we sail in circles."
Motoharu: "So why don't they just ignore us and sail over?"
Takakage: "Because we control the strait. They can't pass unless they attack us. Once they attack us, they can't get pass. It is a perfectly circular logical loop."
Motoharu: "Puhahahaha! I like you, Takakage. Now they are forced to land!"
Takakage: "I doubt they are so flexible. If their task is to "reach this point to land", they will simply find the next route for it..."
Messenger: "Mori Daimyo! I am the emissary from the Shoni clan. We are attacked by Sagara clan! We urgently request your assistance!"
Motonari: "Oh? Hm... Sagara is allied to Ito clan, but Ito is also your ally. Which side does Ito pick?"
Mssenger: "Ito stands with us!"
Motonari: "So Sagara is now against the rest of Kyushu 1 vs. 7? You can win even without my help."
Messenger: "You are... probably right. But please, Mori Daimyo, if you say no, my head will be chopped off!"
Motonari: "Hm... Too bad."
Messenger :"Please reconsider!"
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Motonari: "Hm... there is one way..."
Messenger :"Please!"
Motonari: "Let's make a deal in secret, shall we?"
Messenger :"Yes!"
Motonari: "Just for your sake, I now agree to join the war on Shoni's side! I will immediately start preparing an army and march to Buzen. But you have to tell your daimyo that the Mori army is here to help. We have no ill meanings."
Messenger: "Of course! Thank you, Mori Daimyo! You saved my life!"
Motonari: "Now go back! And please come to see me when our army arrive later."
Messenger: "Certainly!"
This concludes chapter 4 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 05. Fatal attraction
Takamoto: "Puhahaha! The rebellion worked in Mimasaka! I am a genius!"
Monk: "... You are welcome."
Takamoto: "All I have to do is to keep the siege for three seasons, and the province will be mine! Father will be most pleased."
Ninja: "Don't forget that we are only lucky if you maintain the siege."
Takamoto: "BAH... just go scouting around. There is no more work for you right now."
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Takakage: "Father! It is nice to see you again. Brother and Yorinobu has returend to Bitchu to keep an eye on Urikami, as you requested."
Motonari: "That's good. Now Urikami lost their Mimasaka province to rebels, it will be our best interest if their main army leaves Bizen in an attempt to reclaim it."
Takakage: "So Mimasaka is only a bait?"
Motonari: "Maybe there are more than one big fish in the pond."
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Motonari: "What's our trade situation?"
Takakage: "We are still signing new deals whenever we have new trade ports completed. Why these guys would like to pay so much for us to earn even more from them, I have no idea. The finance of Mori clan cannot look any better."
Motonari: "Good. Let's head for Kyushu!"
Ninja: "Ha! I found something! Bessho clan had an army gathering at the border of Mimasaka - even before the rebel took over. And by the way I poisoned their daimyo's son just for fun."
Takamoto: "What does that mean?"
Ninja: "He will recover after a season or two."
Takamoto: "I mean the army!"
Ninja: "Oh. That means Bessho was going to declare war on Urikami and attack Mimasaka. But we kind of prevented the war."
Takamoto: "Oh... a lost opportunity."
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Ninja: "Lost one, gained one. If general Motoharu calls off my colleague in Bizen and stops burning down their castle gate every season, Urikami may get the idea to reclaim Mimasaka. Then that army will be frozen by me, and my associate can turn Bizen to rebel as well."
Takamoto: "That's... brilliant! You have a bright future in front of you!"
Ninja: "Thanks! My dream is to be people's hero and do everything free of charge!"
Motoharu: "The Imagawa navy gets blocked by us, and they turned around!"
Yurinobu: "Let's keep the pressure! Now we control the entry strait to our water, there is no way Imagawa can land in our territory.
Motoharu: "Maybe we won't get their invasion after all..."
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Note: Imagawa's fleet sailed all the way back to Migawa... I am speechless.
Takakage: "Father, we have learned the secret to use fire arrows, and we are learning new arts faster than ever."
Motonari: "Good. Just when we need it."
Takakage: "Should we get to our naval techs?"
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Motonari: "We still need some more seasons to build Medium Bune and the Military Port in Bingo, so there is no hurry to rush for Way of the Sea as the tech only unlocks Fire Bomb Kobaya. Let's do the Heaven and Earth art first, then Way of the Sea."
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Takakage: "Then finally we move on to the Chi arts?"
Motonari: "Exactly. After we finish all money-making Chi arts, we come back to finish the advanced naval techs."
Takakage: "Sure!"
Takakage: "Father, we are about to cross the strait to Kyushu next season. Anything we should expect?"
Motonari: "Other than the lukeworm welcome of Shoni? Somehow they are not getting happier because we are sharing the common enemy Imagawa. Even worse, for the Yamana clan, they actually get mad because we "have an alliance with one of their enemies". Now look at their list of enemies - Imagawa and Hattori. We have absolutely nothing to do with them! What's wrong with their heads?"
Takakage: "Hm... that's really messed up."
Motonari: "Anyway, as long as there is no sudden black out, we can proceed. Oh, look who is here?"
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Messenger: "Mori daimyo, you come! Thank you for agreeing to help with our clan's war against Sagara."
Motonari: "You are very welcome. So what's the current status of war?"
Messenger: "Not very good. Sagara had two full stacks of army. We just lost Bungo to them. Even worse, the sudden surge of Buddhist population in Buzen started a religious revolt." So we lost control of Buzen as well."
Takakage: "So did your army attack Sagara's defenceless home province Higo?"
Messenger: "We are still gathering an army in Tsukushi. Now Sagara's army has returned to Higo."
Takakage: "So there is no clear winner yet. How's Ito doing?"
Messenger: "They promised to attack Higo with us."
maltz: "I don't think you AI are that smart."
Messenger: "Hm? Who was that?"
Takakage: "Just a crazy retainer. Good luck on the coordinated assault."
Motonari: "OK! So please tell your Daimyo that we are here to help. We also brought 3 ninjas and 3 monks to assist our joint military actions. First, since we are about to cross the strait, we will help you deal with the rebel in Buzen. Then we will attack Sagara together."
Messegner: "Thank you! I am reporting this to our daimyo immediately!"
Takakage: "... Who is that crazy retainer?"
Takamoto: "Oh look who is here. The Urikama daimyo is leading a large army trying to reclaim Mimasaka! But I got here first!"
Ninja: "Please do not fight the rebels, if they die off, we will lose the luck!"
Takamoto: "OK, OK. Father told me to flee if I do not want to fight. There is no shame in dodging... an obviously easy victory. Right?"
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Ninja: "It is called a tactical retreat. Somehow we Mori clan always act before them. So what will happen is this that you will resume the siege next spring, and again got there before Urikama. They will never be able to lay siege on the castle even if you fled... I mean, tactically retreated!"
Takakage: "Father! We are now laying siege on the Buzen castle. Proceed with assault?"
Motonari: "Definitely. We are much more powerful than the defenders. Now where is my stunt double? I am going to take a nap in the back. Let him replace me for that one..." (Auto-resolved)
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Motonari: "Ah... that was a good nap. So what's the status in northern Kyushu?"
Takakage: "Shoni's army is gathering south of Tsukushi, leaving their castle relatively defenceless."
Motonari: "Ha! Are you thinking what I am thinking?"
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Takakage: "Father, I have already sent the monks to incite rebellions, and the ninjas to sabotage their army. None of them will be able to get back in time before both Hizen and Tsukushi fall to the Buddhist rebels."
Motonari: "Great!"
Takamoto: "Wa, look at this! We have an uninvited guest! The daimyo of Bessho is also leading a full stack army, trying to take Mimasaka!"
Ninja: "But again they have no chance at all. We act before them, so we lay the siege. The rebel acts after them, so we flee after them..."
Monk: "Maybe this is the last time general Takamoto have to flee. My colleague has... er, taken care of Urikami's Bizen and is on his way to Bessho's Harima :yes:."
Takamoto: "Oh? So my brother Motoharu will be able to sieze two extra provinces without facing these two full stacks... even not to declare war?"
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Ninja: "Exactly. That's the power of the rebel province - an attraction that they cannot resist. But as long as we have something in line before them, they will never be able to reach it!"
Monk: "And they will die waiting in the line! Buhahaha!"
Takamoto: "... Aren't monks supposed to preach peace and empathy?" :inquisitive:
Motonari: "Takakage, suppose we take over Shoni's provinces, we will be left with Sagara and Ito. Sagara is our enemy, and Ito is not very friendly, either. It will be ideal if we can somehow befriend Ito, so we can take some sweet time converting Shoni's population back to Shinto-Buddhism."
Takakage: "How about an alliance? There is no way they would refuse."
Motonari: "Alliance could be bad - what if we want to make a peace deal with Sagara? Then we would get a bad name as an unreliable ally."
Takakage: "That's true. How about marriage? I heard that the Ito daimyo has a single daughter. And one of my second cousins are still looking for a bride."
Motonari: "Cousin... Nobu... nobunoda? nobanodu? nabanudo? er..."
Takakage: "Yes, that's him. Anyway, let's see if we can get a marriage link with Ito."
Motonari: "Good!"
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Takakage: "Father! Is 350 koku a fair price?"
Motonari: " Less than the price of a unit of Bow Ashigaru to buy a clan's friendship?"
Takakage: "Father, as we expected, the Buddhist rebels are gaining ground. They have taken Tsukushi."
Motonari: "Hm, what took those in Hizen so long?"
Takakage: "Don't know. Maybe these rebels were hiding from the forests, so it takes them longer to reach the castle."
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Messenger: "Mori daimyo! We are under attack from Buddhist rebels! And... our armies cannot move because our cargo wheels were all sabotaged! Must be the bastards of Sagara!"
Takakage: "Yes! Must be those Sagara rats!"
Motonari: "This is really unfortunate. In fact, our army has reached Tsukushi. We will deal with the rebels there."
Messenger: "Sigh... we knew we should not covert to nanban's religion before we can get the permit to build chapels! We wish you good luck - those Buddhist rebels are quite powerful."
Motonari: "We will be careful. Now please go and tell your daimyo that they can always count on us."
Messenger: "Thank you!"
Motonari: "Ah... this is probably going to be easy again. Now where is the my stunt double again? Let me take another nap. Northern Kyushu summer is so hot and humid. This makes me sleepy."
Motonari: "What? We lost 400 men? Well... Let's hope Sagara gets tied down by Ito, so we can recover."
Takakage: "Sorry father. Without your precense, I did my best."
maltz: "No actually Mr. Kobayakawa took a nap as well." (auto-resolved)
Takakage: "Get this retainer out of here! Oh right, he brought the news that Imagawa wants a peace treaty with us if we pay 2700 koku... wahahaha!"
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Motonari: "Buhahaha! That's really a good afternoon joke."
Takakage: "They seem to be serious, actually. And of course I have asked that crazy retainer to cut the emissaries' nose off before sending him back."
Motonari: "What a bunch of clowns!"
Takakage: "If they dare to come back, our real navy will be ready for them!"
Takamoto: "The rebels are fleeing! Charge!"
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Note: There is no more point of fleeing if we are confident that some rebels will be left fleeing off the field and back into the castle, and therefore keep the siege alive. This way, the Bessho stack is locked in their "attack Mimasaka" mission, and will never get the wrong idea to attack us. Just to play safe.
Takakage: "Father, we have received a special prmotion on Ashigaru trainers. For 8 seasons we can train superior Ashigaru!"
Motonari: "Wow. That happened way too early - we do not even have encampments yet! Can we ask the Ashigaru trainers to delay this?"
Takakage: "How? They have posted the recruit ads..."
Motonari: "Hm... so unfortunate..."
maltz: "No problem. We only need to load the auto-save from the beginning of the turn..."
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Takakge: "Father! We have received a promotion... Sushi buffet is 20% off this week!" :laugh4:
Motonari: "Nice! Let's go!" :laugh4:
Note: Actually I have no idea whether canceling the promotion event will actually delay it. Maybe the event will never return! We will have to wait and see.
Motoharu: "To Bizen! This is too easy... we only have to wait and suddenly we have another city to take over. Hm, I suddenly feel sleepy... "
Yurinobu: "Exactly. Now we have access to the best blacksmith of Chukoku! Let's start the constructions! Yeah let's take a nap together." (auto-resolved)
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Note: Forgot to split the generals! Corrected this in real-game.
Motonari's stunt double: "That's Hizen! The last province of the late Shoni. Soldiers, start the assault! Is my voice acting good today?"
Takakage's stunt double: "Sh...! We only get paid if nobody recognize us! Let's just issue the orders!" (auto-resolved)
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Yorinobu: "General Motoharu, it seems that the little badges in front of my chest are a little different than the rest of yours..."
Motoharu: "Indeed. You are going to be our clan's very first Navy general! Congratlations!"
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Yorinobu: "But my only retainer gives me +1 attack for land battle..."
Motoharu: "Er... too bad. That means you can look for chances to do landing attacks."
Yorinobu: "But... when is the last time you hear about a landing attack?"
Motoharu: "Actually, never. Ha!"
Takakage: "Father, our ninja reported two full stacks of Sagara army in Higo. Our ninja only temporarily disabled one of their generals."
Motonari: "Hm... it looks like Sagara was not even hurt since the beginning of the war."
Takakage: "Should we attack them?"
Motonari: "Let Ito play with them if they can. The Christian population needs some time to convert. If they come to us, we will crush it and force a peace treaty."
Takakage: "Sure. But Sagara also converted..."
Motonari: "Ah... that Bungo province is a holy curse! Whoever takes it converts right away without thinking about consequences."
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Takakage: "Father, Ito threw a full stack of army onto Sagara and was promptly defeated."
Motonari: "Yep. Not everyone has night-vission goggles. Sigh... we have to rely on ourselves."
Takakage: "But Sagara is here. They are asking for peace!"
Motonari: "Oh? That's funny. If we can make Sagara focus on Ito, we can buy all the sweet time we want to convert the population. Then our monks will be freed up to cause some damage."
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Takakage: "How about their daimyo's daughter. We can't run out of single second cousins..."
Motonari: "Yeah, Nobunoda or whoever he is! Deal!"
Takamoto: "Ah... the two huge stacks awaiting outside Mimasaka have both disappeared. Finally I can take it."
Ninja: "Great! But... that would be end of our lucky streak."
Takamoto: "No worry - I have asked your associate to recite a rebellion in Yamana's province! That's where I will be headed next."
Ninja: "Have fun!"
Takamoto: "Yeah! Catch me if you can, rebels!"
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Norinobu: "Great, we already have four Medium Bune. I will lead a powerful navy!"
Motoharu: "And we are now able to train Wako Raiders from Bingo, too!"
Norinobu: "Gosh they are so cheap and effective. They would be a great addition to our armies. But why not do it in Bizen for the armor bonus?"
Motoharu: "Because... Bizen does not have a port! Those Wako requires a military port..."
Norinobu: "DOH! We will have to wait for Satsuma then."
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This concludes chapter 5 of our story. :bow:
Peasant Phill
03-15-2012, 13:03
And here I was hoping for a naval focused campaign.:shrug:
No worry, there is some Imagawa fleet coming, and our navy and first dedicated naval commander is almost ready. :bow:
Chapter 06. First-time boarding
Motoharu: "Yurinobu san! I heard you are leaving us to lead the navy. What's your task?"
Yorinobu: "There is an Imagawa fleet approaching, and my job is to sink it! Strickly speaking, our navy is not ready yet - we are still waiting for a Sengoku Bune and two Fire-bomb Kobaya. But what we have should be an overkill already."
Motoharu: "Soga... (I see). I just got a report that our Metsuke in Kyoto has intercepted an Imagawa Metsuke. It seems that Imagawa's ambition did not end!"
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Note: This looks awefully similar to what happened in the previous Shimazu story. Imagawa declares war with a full-stack army via ship, followed by a Metsuke travelling on land. If the first wave is defeated, they might send the second, bigger wave. The existence of this clan is simply to annoy us. MUST KILL!
Takakage: "Father, as you ordered, we produced superior (level 3) Metsuke from Tsukushi thanks to their superior school system. Together with their mafia (Yakuza) background and some extra skills in Town Supervising, they have amazing town management skills (6-stars)! We plan to have 4 of them and let them supervise our 4 richest towns."
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Motonari: "Hm... but I remember hearing some legendary Metsuke who could supervise towns like giant sweat shops in Indonesia... that's why we get our incense from them practically free, right?"
Takakage: "Indeed. The best and most practically attainable town management comes at level 4, with 3 additional points into town supervision for a total of 10 stars. But that requires either 15 years town-supervision experience (60 turns = 60 EXP), or 1 year of intensive training in agent arresting (15 EXP x 4)."
Motonari: "Too bad, there is no agent nearby for us to catch. Oh wait, the Ashikaga Shogun in Kyoto nontheless hires a new monk every time we arrested the old one."
Takakage: "That seems to be best source of agents. We already sent one Metsuke there to train, but that is our 5th Metsuke, aiming to become a bribery specialist."
Motonari: "Hm, we need some extra manpower to quiet down the Christian populations in the rich provinces in Northern Kyushu anyway. So let's delay the intense training until they can be called away."
Motonari: "Hm... so how are the stars the Metsuke wear convert to the actual extra tax we collect?"
Takakage: "For a six-star Metsuke, they make an effect of 33% additional tax, subject to administration cost. The admin cost rises with our province count. Currently our admin cost is about 40%."
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Motonari: "So... er... What's the actual extra tax we collect?"
Takakage: "33% x 0.6 x total production. In this particular case (Iwami's production = 4313), we get more than 800 koku per season!"
Motonari: "Can't wait to see what a 10-star Metsuke does on Iwami!"
Motoharu: "Harima taken from rebels! We are getting close to Kyoto!"
Yorinobu: "Lord Motonari's instruction has arrived - the second army is to push east just one more step to Settsu and stop."
Motoharu: "Hm... that could be problematic - the Hatakeyama clan has a huge army like two stacks and half in Settsu. And their base is all the way in the northeast. So there is no easy peace with them if we declare war."
Yorinobu: "Must find a way to distract them..."
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Note: This part of the game was completely quite a while ago, and now I really regret not luring out Hatakeyama's army using the rebel's Harima castle (and then turn Settsu into rebel while it is undefended).
Takakage: "Father, we now have Bungo. Like Buzen it has a huge Catholic population..."
Motonari: "That's why we brought 3 monks here. One for Buzen, one for Bungo, and one extra for incite rebels."
Takakage: "So what do we do with the Nanban Trade Port here?"
Motonari: "This thing spreads the Nanban religion and increases our upkeep cost. What's the benefit of the port?"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4658&d=1331869051
Takakage: "Imported Matchlock Ashigaru. There is also a little town growth bonus. But ce can't make use of its trading function as our base Aki is not connected via land route. Plus we are pretty much trading with every costal clan anyway."
Motonari: "Bah. We will recruit much better ranged units than Matchlock Ashigaru. Let's burn it!"
Takakage: "Yeah, burn it!"
Takakage: "Father, you gotta hear this. The Imagawa clan again asks for peace, if we pay..."
Motonari: "Wait, let me guess. Last time they want us to pay 2700 koku. This time... 5000 koku?"
Takakage: "More."
Motonari: "Hm, they seem to be more stupid than I thought. 8000 koku?"
Takakage: "More."
Motonari: "So they are both stupid and crazy. 10000 koku?"
Takakage: "More."
Motonari: "No way! 12000 koku?"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4659&d=1331869051
Motonari: "Wahahaha! Oh I am going to choke on my tea! This is... I don't have any word to describe this!"
Takakage: "Let's show them the reality!"
Motonari: "Yeah. Once Hoki and Bizen gets all their good upgrades, we are going to use our best fleet to ship our best stack to Imagawa and kick their ass! And then we see how much they want to pay us!"
Takakage: "Yes! I will tell admiral Kuchiba to gain some more experience on navy."
Takakage: "Admiral Kuchiba, an Imagawa fleet is coming your way!"
Yurinobu: "Backed to a shore? So they would not even attempt to escape!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4660&d=1331869051
Note: After controlling the nearby straits with Bow Kobaya, the Imagawa fleet, which was probably tasked to blockade our ports, got stuck in the shore outside Settsu (probably waiting for our Bow Kobaya to sail away).
Yorinobu: "Just four trade ships? That's easy... can I use a stunt double?"
Takakage: "Please take this as a practice to find good tactics to master naval battle!"
Yorinobu: "Ok!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4661&d=1331869051
Captain Jaku Subalo: "Admiral Yorinobu! From now on I will be your second-in-command in naval battles. My name is Jaku Subalo."
Yorinobu: "I like your pirate name!"
Jaku: "(In style) You forget one very important thing mate, I am captain Jaku Subalo."
Yorinobu: "... Nice. So Jaku, what can you teach me about piracy, I mean naval battles?"
Jaku: "First, we need to know that the enemy will always come to us under any circumstance."
Yorinobu: "That's silly."
Jaku: "A little. But they tend to find the gaps in our formation and sails behind us, probably in an attempt to surround us."
Yorinobu: "I see."
Jaku: "So that gives us lots of potential ideas we can experiment one by one."
Yorinobu: "Good. So what's our ultimate goal in naval battles?"
Jaku: "Capture or sink every single ship, letting none escape."
Yorinobu: "Great! OK here is an idea. If I line up my Medium Bune in a flat line, but leave spaces in between, wouldn't Imagawa's trade ship inevitably travel through the gaps between our ships... then we can start boarding them?"
Jaku: "Let's try it out!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4662&d=1331869051
Yorinobu: "They get close! Board now! Go go go! Darn, Why are you not going?"
Jaku: "Admiral, I am afraid your method failed. The Imagawa fleet passed through your gap and is now at our back."
Yorinobu: "So what should we do?"
Jaku: "Just break up from the formation and capture it!"
Yorinobu: "Darn, what a chaos. The Imagawa fleet were everywhere, and we broke up our formation to board random targets..."
Jaku: "But since they are so weak and slow... we still managed to capture all of them! We won!"
Sailors: "Yee-Yee-Oh!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4663&d=1331869051
Yorinobu: "My trap idea did not pan out. Any suggestions, Jaku?"
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Jaku: "I actually like your idea. All we want is to capture enemy ships, so they do not get to flee. So any tactics that focuses on "capture them as soon as possible" is a good one. But Imagawa's fleet was a little too fast, and you issued the board command a little too slow..."
Yorinobu: "I can issue the board command sooner next time, but Imagawa's fleet was already the slowest possible - they are trade ships!"
Jaku: "So we need some thing to really slow them down..."
Takakage: "Father, Sagara and Ito have finally started to fight. Ito foolishly kept bumping its one full stack into Sagara's two stacks - inside Sagara's territory. It looks like Sagara is going to win this one."
Motonari: "Hm... is Sagara smart enough to counterattack? Maybe not."
Takakage: "If they are stuck, we are stuck, too."
Motonari: "Indeed. Now our monks have arrived to preach in Bungo - our army can move out! Let's interfere and break this stupid stalemate!"
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Takakage: "So which side are we on?"
Motonari: "Sagara is winning, so we have to help Ito. They will certainly pay us to fight Sagara."
Takakage: "And just before that, Sagara would pay us for infinite military access. Wow, 5080 koku! And we already sold 5 turns for almost 1000 koku last season."
Motonari: "That's so mean, but I like it!"
Takakage: "And Ito pays 1970 koku for declaring war on Sagara!"
Motonari: "Good! Let's fight a good one!"
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Takakage: "Father, Ito's damaged full-stack joined the battle as expected."
Motonari: "Good. You don't get this kind of help very often. Let's see how the battle plays out!"
Takakage: "It is going to be an easy victory. No nap?"
Motonari: "We want to deplete Ito's army in this battle as well. Better see it ourselves."
Takakage: "Sure!"
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Takakage: "Father, Ito's daimyo and his son are chickens. They sat in the back and let their soldiers attack the castle..."
Motonari: "That's only slightly better than throwing themselves to the spears. Is there anyway to take a closer look?"
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Takakage: "Our ninja already opened the gates for them, and they still chose to climb the walls!"
Motonari: "I don't get it..."
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Takakage: "Everything is going well... hey wait a second, father, there is some Sagara Light Cavalry coming your way!"
Motonari: "Nope. I don't see anything."
Takakage: "They are coming! At least the replay shows they are coming..."
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Takakage: "Watch out! Our general is in grave danger, my lord! Your bodyguards are dying!"
Motonari: "Nope. Nothing came. We finished the battle without losing a single bodyguard."
Takakage: "What the... is this the wrong replay?"
maltz: "This is the right replay."
Motonari: "... so... hm..."
Takakage: "Er..."
Note: The faulty replay is a known issue when reinforcements are involved. So we will have to cover the battle with words. Please use your imagination.
Takakage: "Father, Ito's soldiers were killed off at the bottom of the wall. They failed."
Motonari: "Not surprising. But they did good works for us. Sagara's defenders are weakened, and they have much less arrows than us."
- Please imagine: Ito soldiers were defeated by Sagara defenders and were routing off the field. -
Takakge: "Look, the Sagara reinforcement have arrived."
Motonari: "And we are very well prepared for it. Let's finish them!"
- Please imagine: Sagara's weak reinforcement were slaughtered by Mori army. -
Takakge: "No more reinforcement. Now what do we do?"
Motonari: "If we want to minimize casualty, we can move up our Bow Ashigaru one by one and shoot their melee units. But that's very time consuming."
Takakage: "Yeah. This kind of micro-managing is only required in the beginning. Let's do the macro-managing."
Motonari: "So we storm the castle all together!"
- Please imagine: Mori's army split into three, one for each opened gate. -
Motonari: "Bow Ashigaru in loose formation - march forward and shoot!"
Takakage: "After Heaven and Earth we have so many arrows - certainly we can outlast them."
- Please imagine: Mori's Bow Ashigaru march forward and start firing at defenders inside the castle. -
Motonari: "The west gate bow units are under return fire, but the east gates are lightly defended. Yari Asghiaru on the east gate - charge into the castle!"
Takakage: "Sagara's melee units swarmed to east gate! Now left gate is undefended!"
Motonari: "Yari Asshigaru outside the south gate, charge!"
- Please imagine: Mori's Yari Ashigaru started to enter the castle. Some of them met heavy resistance. -
Takakage: "Sagara's Bow Ashigaru in west gate run out of arrows! No one is defending west gate!"
Motonari: "Yari Asshigaru outside the west gate, charge in and take the town center! Hold it at all cost!"
- Please imagine: Mori's Yari Ashigaru engaged in fierce fighting in east and south gate, while those entering from the west gate successfully occupied the undefended the town center. Some Sagara units returned to defended, but it was too late. The Count down clock goes... 3 - 2 - 1 - 0... injury time... Victory! -
Takakage: "That was a good fight! Can't forget how silly those Ito soldiers when they rushed up the wall when the gate was wide open 20 steps from them."
Motonari: "Sigh. Their commander is not much better thatn that. They just sat there and did nothing after their men fled. Ito lost almost all of their men from gross incompetence."
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Yorinobu: "General Motoharu, be careful, the Hatakeyama clan just shipped a full stack army to this area."
Motoharu: "Yeah it scared me, too. But they landed in Miyoshi clan's Awaji island. The two clans are enemies."
Yorinobu: "That's good. Why don't Hatakeyama just build a Bow Kobaya in Settsu and ship a full stack from there? That's much faster than shipping all the way from the northeast."
Motoharu: "My father would say, would you prefer to fight a genius or a moron?"
Yorinobu: "...ok. Let's just keep our mouth shut."
Motoharu: "But once Hatakeyama or Chosokabe defeat Miyoshi, they would both run out of enemies. Maybe we need to do something so they do not turn onto Mori at the same time..."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4672&d=1331869113
Takakage: "Father, it is checkmate for Ito. Rebels in range, and all their mobile armies and recruiting castles are sabotaged. They can only watch the rebels taking both their castles."
Motonari: "Good job. Our work in Kyushu is almost complete! But we have a lot of diplomatic work after this. The risky invasion on Imagawa, the manuever between Chosokabe and Hatakeyama, and the breaking up of the Takeda-Hojo super alliance... We have to plan carefully."
Takakage: "Certainly!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4673&d=1331869113
This concludes chapter 6 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 07. Closing the trap
Motoharu: "Admiral Kuchiba, good news for you!"
Yorinobu: "Yes?"
Motoharu: "OK this is top secret - so don't tell anybody. You have been assigned to lead a surprise assault on Imagawa's home province!"
Yorinobu: "Am... am I good enough?"
Motoharu: "You are the only naval general we have got. So it has to be you..."
Yorinobu: "Okay... that's... kinda encouraging."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4684&d=1332036267
Motoharu: "We are now working on a good army for you. Looks like that you will lead a mixture of Bow Ashigaru, Naginata Samurai, and eeewww... Wako Raiders. Not sure why they deserve to fight along with our samurais! (furious)"
Yorinobu: "Okay! I must train myself better to prepare for that day!"
Motoharu: "Indeed, there is a fleet of Wako pirates just south of Aki. That's yours!"
Yorinobu: "Right away!"
Jaku Subalo: "Good to see you again, admiral Kuchiba!"
Yorinobu: "Let's kick some hairy wako butt!... if we can figure out a way to board ships efficiently."
Jaku: "Yes. And actually I have an idea!"
Yorinobu: "Let's hear it!"
Jaku: "If we use a ship, any ship, in the back of our Medium Bune line, and use them to block the advance of enemy ships once they enter the gaps of our Medium Bune..."
Yorinobu: "Good idea! Let's try it out. And I will issue the board command a little earlier."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4685&d=1332036267
Yorinobu: "Here comes a Wako Medium Bune!"
Jaku: "Now, block their exit!"
Yorinobu: "Initiate boarding sequence! Rope out! Gocha!"
Jaku Subalo: "Nice! We caught their first ship in no time! And some of their following ships stepped onto our mines!"
Yorinobu: "Nice! So are they going to sink right away?"
Jaku: "They just suffer only minor crew damage and morale penalty. Strange, the ships are usually unaffected."
Yorinobu: "Doesn't sound much..."
Jaku: "We have to keep the pressure with arrows anyway, nice, this one immediately surrendered after stepping on the mine!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4686&d=1332036267
Norinobu: "Our trapping method worked! It would be great if we can lure more of their ships forward."
Jaku: "Unfortunatey, the rest of them just remain still and shoot."
Yorinobu: "How about let's try luring them with a small ship?"
Jaku: "Worth a try!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4687&d=1332036267
Yorinobu: "OK! it... did not work."
Jaku: "It looks like that we have no choice but to sail forward and board them."
Yorinobu: "But our formation might fall into chaos again."
Jaku: "We do not want to break the formation in the fear that they will be divided and conquered. But if we still stay relatively close, we should be fine."
Yorinobu: "Indeed. Let the chaotic stage begin!"
Norinobu: "Once our sailors jumped to their ship from the Sengoku Bune, that's the end for them!"
Jaku: "Indeed. But it seems to be a balanced match! Let's just add the warcry anyway."
Norinobu: "Sure! Walalalala~"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4688&d=1332036267
Jaku: "Admiral, I have been wondering for a long time..."
Yorinobu: "Yes?"
Jaku: "You are on that Sengoku Bune, right?"
Yorinobu: "Right."
Jaku: "So where were you when the boarding took place?"
Yorinobu: "I was... er, playing poker in the bottom deck. Somehow the land armies are kept away from naval battles. And let's not investigate why thousands of people can fit in the underdeck of a Bow Kobaya."
Yorinobu: "Hm, strange. None of the Wako ships escaped that night, but we still let two escape..."
Jaku: "It seems that there are two kinds of surrender. If the ship is boarded and then surrounder, the ship is captured. If the ship is too damaged/morale broken and then surrounder, the ship actually will escape."
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Yorinobu: "So that means we have to make sure every ship is boarded before they get too broken?"
Jaku: "Unfortunately, yes."
Yorinobu: "OK... so we just have to board them with better efficiency!"
Takakge: "Father! We receive a promotion - superior Ashigaru recruits for 2 years!"
Motonari: "That's great! Our best armor upgrade will be available very soon. We can definitely use this to train some good Ashigaru."
Takakage: "Great! I will place the orders on Hoki and Bizen. Hm... somehow I think I have some memory about this. Did this promotion happen before?"
Motonari: "I have that Deja Vu feeling, too. But apparently our clan log did not show..."
maltz: "We actually have canceled more than 10 Ashigaru Master events just to wait for the armor upgrade buildings to complete in Bizen..."
Motonari: "What are you talking about? Are you that crazy retainer?"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4690&d=1332036267
Note: It works! That means we can dodge almost every negative random event and delay any positive random event by loading the auto-save file at the beginning of the turn (only available in Legendary). But this also cancels any son/daughter born.
Motonari: "No wonder I tried so hard but could not get another son or daughter (blush)."
Takakge: "Father, wake up, wake up!"
Motonari: "Hm... huh? What's wrong? It is still nap time..."
Takakage: "We let our stunt double take care the siege of Hyuga for us, right?"
Motonari: "They FAILED?"
Takakage: "They did not even go! Our stunt doubles both called in sick and they didn't go to the siege of Hyuga caste!"
Motonari: "What the... so an Ashigaru captain led the assault?"
Takakage: "Yes. But fortunately, we still won easily."
Motonari: "Oh! Where is that Ashigaru captain? He deserves promotion!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4691&d=1332036267
Note: When we are in need of new generals, an easy way is to use an army with no general to win a victory, such as a siege assault. If we have enough provinces at more than 1000 koku, the game has a high chance to trigger the event to promote the captain to a general.
Takakage: "Welcome to the Mori clan roster! Mr.... hm, strange, I forgot your name, sorry."
maltz: "Because I forgot to check... sorry."
Ex-Ashigaru captain: "It is OK. Thank you all! I will fight with my life!"
Motonari: "From now on you are a general! And we name you the commissioner of supply!"
Ex-captain: "Thank you! But I don't know how to do this job..."
Motonari: "Don't worry. We will train you - actually right here, with the Hyuga castle."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4692&d=1332036284
Ex-captain: "Hm... but we already revived the Ito clan and made them a vassal. How do we train?"
Takakage: "Well, we prepared a gift for them... can you see that white flag in the distance?"
Ex-captain: "So why bother reviving them in the first place?"
Motonari: "Don't you think I look more honorable if we have a vassal clan?"
Ex-captain: "Yeah? But we will lose it to rebels..."
Motonari: "That's not what we can control, right? At least it seems that way."
Ex-captain: "I kinda miss the simple life of an Ashigaru captain..."
Note: There is a feature/bug that a vassal destroyed by rebel will not cancel the daimyo's +1 honor bonus from Vassal.
Takakage: "Father, have you heard about Martian training (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?140603-Martian-training-Very-high-EXP-soldiers-right-off-the-recruitment-center)?"
Motonari: "What training?"
Takakage: "It is a way to make our most experience soldiers teach the others about the way of fighting. But it is so efficient that it happens instantly - no battle required."
Motonari: "Ha... that's impossible. Only practice make soldiers more experienced."
Takakage: "I agree, but there is something wrong with this world so weird things can happen. Let me give you an example - all we need is one damaged units as training seed."
Motonari: "Ok... then?"
Takakage: "Ideally the damaged unit is exactly at half strength of a full-sized unit. For a Bow Ashigaru, which has 120 men per unit, we are looking for 60-90, but 60 is ideal."
Motonari: "Ok, we have various damaged units, but we should be able to make 60 (Bow) and 75 (Yari) by some simple calculation... OK, got them!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4693&d=1332036284
Takakage: "Wonderful. Now let's start the training! All we need to do is to let the most experience soldiers teach (combine with) the damage unit, and them teach back, and teach others, and teach back... So eventually everybody teaches everybody."
Motonari: "Hm?"
Takakage: "And here is the result - tahdah! ALL our Bow Ashigaru have become level 6!" (The unit not leveled up is because of its damaged status - we will have to wait for them to recover.) All our Yari Ashigaru have become evel 4! Compare this to the last picture to see the difference!"
Motonari: "What the... am I dreaming?" :dizzy2:
Takakage: "Father, while Wako used to spawn close to Aki, now we have Kyushu, Wako seems to have moved to spawn close to the south shore of Kyushu."
Motonari: "Hm... so we can ask Admiral Kuchiba to come here and beat them up."
Takakage: "I am afraid that's not possible. Admiral Kuchiba Yorinobu needs to be ready shortly to ship the army for our surprise attack on Imagawa."
Motonari: "So we better have a second Admiral for a second navy to deal with Wakos."
Takakage: "That's why we promoto captain... argh I forgot his name again, in the first place, right?"
Motonari: "Right. We kinda decided to promote the captain because we only have 5 generals for almost 20 provinces..."
Takakage: "Besides, we have already built a second navy in Bingo. In fact, Kuchiba will be leading the second navy. The first navy has already been transferred to southern Kyushu."
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Motonari: "So we will fight the Wakos without an Admiral... what's our chance?
Takakage: "The Wakos are always easy pickings. In fact, we just received the victory report!"
Motonari: "How did the battle go?"
Takakage: "We adapted Admiral Kuchiba's trap tactics. This allowed us to capture their first ship, although it was not really required as we already routed it before it entered the trap..."
Motonari: "So the trap is only useful for ships that are not very easy to rout. Then?"
Takakage: "Then no more ship came forward, the battle turned into a shootout, which according to Kuchiba's report is not surprising."
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Motonari: "We should have no problem winning the shootout... but it was night..."
Takakage: "Yeah, arrows seem to have reduced range and accuracy at night. So we had to board! So our ships had to broke their formation and moved up to look for chances to board among the expected chaos."
Motonari: "Chaos means fail to stay organized... is there no better way?"
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Takakage: "Just like land battles, we might be able to move the Medium Bune line together when we group them as one, but this also reduces their... possibilities to board enemy ships, which tend to cluster together."
Motonari: "I see. So maybe chaos is the better way when all we need to do is to end the battle quickly and capture them firmly."
Takakage: "Oh, and to increase our superior ranged power's advantage, maybe we should try day battle sometimes."
Motonari: "Good suggestion!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4698&d=1332036290
Motonari: "Ha, this is easy! Once we surround them, there is no way for them to go."
Takakage: "Indeed. Ships are much harder to manuever than units, which can be broken down into individual soldiers."
Motonari: "So the best way to make sure we capture ships is to swarm them in the chaos!"
Takakage: "When we hold the advantage, yes!".
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4699&d=1332036290
Motonari: "A fine job by the captain! Too bad we cannot promote him even after such a nice victory."
Takakage: "Hm, eventually we want at least three fleets. One for Wakos, two for offence and defence along each shore. So we still need one more general. I will see if we can create the situation in the future."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4700&d=1332036290
Takakage: "Here we go, the third admiral!"
Bukabara Hidesato (福原秀穎): "What an honor, thank you!" :bow:
Motonari: "Nice! Where did you find him?"
Takakage: "Chosokabe's Iyo province was taken by rebel... which of course was incited by us. And I managed to rush there just days before Chosokabe's army took it back - but I stayed behind and let captain Bukabara do the work."
Motonari: "I see. Good job here! So you will be responsible for the Shikoku campaign then. I will relax a bit and take the new generals and our future admirals to train in Hyuga."
Takakage: "Father, please don't worry. I will prove that I can do just as well as my two older brothers. Especially now I have level 6 Bow Ashigaru... oh wait, there is one level 7 unit now! But I already sent the damaged seed back to Hoki!"
Motonari: "Keep them fighting and see if you can get that unit to level 9!" :yes:
This concludes chapter 7 of our story. :bow:
Naval Tactics #1 Trapping
Naval battle is a totally different game. Many principles in land battles do not apply, and we have to find new tactics to excel. But the general principle is the same: bring a larger navy that is designed to counter your enemies' ships! Or more practically, we will field a mixture of ships so we don't have to swap ships constantly.
For argument purpose we will categorize ships into three:
Damage output: These ships have a high bow crew count or cannons. They provide the most damage. Good examples are Medium Bune and Cannon Bune. Most of the fleet has to be damage dealers. Even if the worse happens, you win the combat but every routing ship runs away - you are still invincible!
Boarder: These have a high melee crew count. Their purpose is to board the enemy ships. Good examples are Sengoku Bune and late-game large ships (which can also serve as damage dealer). You only need about 2 of them, since they deal very little ranged damage.
Kobaya: They are great counters of giant ships as they set them on fire. They can also help intercept the routing ships. But if there is no such giant ship in the enemy, we do not need a lot of them. Setting ships on fire is not very easy - routing smaller ships with lots of arrows IS.
The three categories of ships also has a paper-rock-scissors relationship. Boarder eats Damage dealers (but can't board Cannon Bune!), Damage Dealer eats smaller ships (Cannon Bune eats everybody!), and smaller ships can set heavy ships on fire.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4729&d=1332036302
The first tactics that works well is Trapping, designed to board an enemy ship efficiently. Note that the tactics does not guarantee the victory in boarding - we still need a superior boarder. Ideally, we have some designated boarder like Sengoku Bune, against an inferior ship that has a lower seaman (melee crew) count like a Medium Bune. A Medium Bune can board a Kobaya or a hurt Medium Bune.
There is a good chance that when the AI ship approaches, they look for gaps in our formation and try to go through it. This happens very frequently for AI's first ship. So if you see a group of Wako Pirates and you use the wind correctly (let the wind blow to the face of your opponent to slow them down), the Wako Trade Ships will fall behind, and the Wako Medium Bune will come to you. This is our chance to capture one of the Wako's better ships (a crap ship for us to keep, though) without even having to move and break the formation. We leave the gaps for them to do just that, and wait for them to get close.
So we need one ship beside the gaps that can easily beat the approaching ship. For example, if the AI has a Wako Medium Bune, we can use a Sengoku Bune. Or if you are Mori, your Medium Bune has 10 more melee crew, and is therefore a good counter of Wako's Medium Bune. In late game, if the AI has a Sengoku Bune, we can use an O Atake Bune. Nothing can go wrong if we bring better ships! Close the gaps during deployment if you do not want the AI's ship to come in between. This may have a side effect of disabling the AI from ever coming to your remaining opened gap, as they tend to go strait ahead. And if you happen to close a gap "strait ahead", they simply circle to your flank. So try to create open gaps close to the center of your formation.
Prepare the trap so there is one ship, any ship, behind the line. One ship can watch over multiple gaps. So you can promptly cut the exit of the trap once the enemy ship enters a trap. They can also help firing and make the surrender come even more quickly. If you have Medium Bune, don't forget to do war cry.
Boarding is an art. The command of boarding has to be issued about 3 seconds (1X speed) before the two ships are completely parellel to each other, or it is too late! Your ship will attempt to turn around to chase the target, which takes forever. Everything is messed up if you fail the first chance! It is actually OK to issue the command a little too early, since all your ship will do is to row forward a bit, without turning left or right, when the target come straight to you (for the gap). Once you start the boarding, you have the superior melee crew, and your damage dealers are raining arrows on the target. The enemy ship is pretty much dead meat.
Once you finish this first ship, OR the enemy does not go for the trap for whatever reason (sometimes they can get blocked by a surrendered ship), we will enter a shoot-out phase. The AI does not move any ship forward anymore. So we will have to go to them, which requires another tactics.
Naval Tactics #2 Chaos Begins
Most conventional naval battles will end up in a shoot-out stage, when the AI ships no longer moves forward, and simply stand and shoot. If we do not do anything, our superior ranged damage will eventually win us the combat, but most routed ships will simply run away. We want to capture them before they run away!
A big difference between naval and land units is that ships turn very slowly. Therefore, if we block their front and sides, they are pretty much stuck! When they are stuck, they become very easy board targets. For medium ships and above, boarding is a much faster way to capture them than shooting them to rout, then capture.
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In reality, this phase of combat will probably end up a huge chaotic mess especially on Legendary mode, where we usually are too busy to tell individual ships to go to a specific spot and orientation. But the ideas are the same.
The AI ships have a tendency to form clusters. If the AI ships form multiple clusters, or one large clusters at front and scattered ships in the back, we can simply ignore the others and focus our attention on one cluster, defeat it, and move to the next. All we need to do is to use our ships to surround this cluster and block their front and sides to block their escapes, and pour our superior ranged damage to them. Once they are damaged and weakened, even routed, they can be boarded and captured easily.
Since enemy's fires are also quite concentrated, protect your weaker ship in the back of the net, or they may be killed very quickly.
The key of boarding at this stage is to be flexible. At this stage, the enemy ships should be weak enough so any of our medium or better ship can easily capture them. So it does not really matter whether we use a designated boarder to capture ships - of course, it is a lot safer if we do.
Avoid sending a board command when the target ship is still far away from your boarder. This is because that once a board command is issued, your ship will attenmpt to row to the side of the target in their CURRENT location. If the target ship moves, your ship will have to change their position - and often this results in your ship turning endlessly on the same spot and accomplishes nothing.
Worse, since you can only issue One Board Order per target ship, this also PREVENTS your other ships from boarding the target even they happen to be right beside it! If this happens, you will have to cancel the board command of the original boarder, then activate boarding from the closeset boarder. So we should have a habit of ONLY issuing a board command if the ship is going to come in very close contact with a target ship. Otherwise don't - it often makes things worse.
There seems to be a glitch for Kobaya - from time to time, after successfully surrender a routing ship with the boarding command, the boarding command is not canceled, and we have to manually cancel it, or the ship cannot be ordered to manually do ranged attack (as it will try to board it instead).
On Legendary, things could be chaotic especially because you cannot pause to issue command. When there are lots of actions going on, and when you click on ships, you not necessarily gain control of the new ship! This control is not very responsive probably due to the slowed graphic response. So we will from time to time order the wrong ship to do things. This contributes greatly to the chaos factor, unfortunately. It is easy to say "double check whether it is the right ship!", but in reality there is probably too much going on to check.
But since we have suprior ranged power anyway, it is just a matter of the time that individual enemy ships gets boarded and captured. Don't feel too bad if you let one or two run away. You can use your many captured ships, which should have full movement left, to chase down the fled ships and easily kill them all in auto-combat. :laugh4:
Chapter 8. Taming a crazy dog
Motonari: "So... I remember your name now! You are general Kobayakawa Atsuyori (小早川敦賴)!"
Atsuyori: "Thank you, my lord. My family name is easy for you to remember; it is identical to your third son's adopted family..."
Motonari: "Yeah... what a shame that I did not remember... anyways, let's train!"
Atsuyori: "So where do we begin?"
Motonari: "First, we need to train our courage, so we are not afraid to face a superior enemy. Let's take Hyuga's rebel-controled castle for an example. There are a bunch of infantries and two units of Light Cavalry. We have to fight them."
Atsuyori: "Hm... but isn't this going to lead to us being killed?"
Motonari: "The true courage is not to face a superior enemy without a plan. If we can draw out the Light Cavalry and kill them, the rest of the infantry can never catch up with us!"
Atsuyori: "Why don't they spread out and surround us?"
Motonari: "They are not as smart as you! Like I used to say - that's why you are here and they are there!"
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Atsuoyori: "Look out, the enemy Light cavalry is charging at you!"
Motonari: "The other one is still far away! It is our chance! I will face them - you charge them in the back!"
Atsuyori: "Woo... after some hard works, we finally routed the rebels' two Light Cavarlry units. But we also lost 1/3 of our men."
Motonari: "We can relax now - the Light Cavalry is the only enemy unit that runs faster than us. From now on we are not going to lose any more if we do not want to."
Atsuyori: "Great! So I will live to become a good naval general for the clan!"
Motonari: "Speaking of navy... there is some Wako threatening us, but this time they prefer to talk. If we pay them 2000 koku, they actually will reduce the raids of our foreign supplies. What do you think?"
Atsuyori: "I say we kill the pirates!"
Motonari: "Hm... there is still much for you to learn, Atsuyori. Look at that bonus of foreign trade goods - 25%! How much do we gain from each trade node?"
Atsuyori: "Hm... let me see... we get 103 units of cotton and silk, and 138 units of incense."
Motonari: "The average price of Cotton is 33. The average price of silk is 40. The average price of incense is 47. So how much does 25% of the above profit us?"
Atsuyori: "Let me take a brush and paper..."
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Atsuyori: "103/4 x (33+40) + 138/4 x 47 = 3500!"
[B]Motonari[/B}: "We profit 3500 koku for 8 season! 28000 koku of profit! Of course in reality we cannot sell all of those. For domestic market we only get half of that. But that's still far more than the investment of 2000 koku."
Atsuyori: "Wow! Definitely deal with the Wako! Can we sign a permenant deal with them?"
Motonari: "I like your thinking, but unfortunately we have to maintain our image in front of the samurais..."
Yorinobu: "Haha! We have arrived at the coast of Imagawa's home land, and their navy is nowhere to be found! Let's land!"
Jaku: "If you land now, your army will suffer from winter attrition. Better stay on the boat and eat canned Tuna."
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Yorinobu: "Ok... so I will delay the attack for a season. It seems that Imagawa has gathered all its two stacks of army in Totomi to defend its Fortress."
Jaku: "Do you think you can beat them?"
Yorinobu: "The headquarter already sent some monks and Ninjas to help. So there are lots of flexibility of what we can do. We will start with turning their defenceless provinces to rebel."
Jaku: "Nice!"
Takakage: "Ha, Chosokabe has two stacks of army, that means they can only defend at most two provinces."
Monk: "So we will work on the third!"
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Ninja: "Don't get over-confident. Their remaining two armies are still very powerful."
Takakage: "I actually want them to declare war so I get more chances to train our soldiers. I remembered that I once received a Threat of Attack message from our source... wait, that's you."
Ninja: "Strange, I don't remember sending that warning."
Takakage: "Huh? But who else can be the source?"
Ninja: "Not me... but now you mentioned it, I did have some vague memory of sending a warning of Threat of Attack."
maltz: "It is from a parallel universe! Too bad we never got it back once we jumped to this universe."
Takakage: "What are you talking about?" :dizzy2:
Atsuyori: "My lord! Imagawa asks us for peace again!"
Motonari: "A few seasons ago they bumped the threat to 24000 koku! After a while that's not even funny anymore. :furious3:"
Atsuyori: "Yeah... too much idiocy brings more frustration than humor. So what did we do?"
Motonari: "We castrated that emissary and sent him back."
Atsuyori: "... I am glad I picked the military career path. Anyway, here is their new price!"
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Motonari: "Haha. Now our army is right in front of them, they start to get scared, huh?"
Atsuyori: "Let's beat them up and see what's their new offer!"
Motonari: "I have a feeling that they will sell their sons and daughters for it. Wahahahah..."
Yorinobu: "Landed! Come and fight me! Crazy Imagawa dogs!"
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Yorinobu: "... Hm strange, nobody comes to fight me. I thought this is a perfect example of a "landing attack"?"
Jaku: "Yeah. When a general's skills advance to the "pirate" line, he will eventually gain +4 command for a landing attack."
Yorinobu: "But how do we make that happen?"
Jaku: "Maybe the Imagawa armies receive the order to focus on defence, so they are prohibited to make any offensive action."
Yorinobu: "Does that mean that the pirate line skills are therefore useless? There are lots of pre-requisites for them."
Jaku: "Possibly. Anyway, You may as well just become a better land battle commander. It will come in handy in more situations."
Yorinobu: "Sounds like the plan. Let's assault the castle next season!"
Yorinobu: "Eh? What is this? We caught the... the BLACK SHIP?!"
Jaku: "Jakupot! We are famous!"
Yorinobu: "Let the parade begin! Yeah...."
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maltz: "Nap time is up! admiral Kuchiba, you have to keep an eye on the Imagawa army."
Yorinobu: "I just had a dream that we caught the Black Ship!"
maltz: "That unfortunately belongs to another parallel universe, and we actually used auto-resolve. That's not going to happen here! We will capture the Black Ship like real samurai!"
Yorinobu: "Sure!"
Yorinobu: "We surrounded Imagawa's Hamamatsu castle! But they have two stacks... what should we do?"
Jaku: "I don't know, I am only a navy captain..."
Ninja: "You know, I can sabotage the reinforcement so you only have to fight one..."
Monk: "There is no need for that. I have seen how our daimyo and his sons fight. Just follow my suggestions!"
Yorinobu: "OK... let's start the assault!"
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Yorinobu: "Hm... that's a fortress we are trying to break in. So master, what's your suggestion for that?"
Monk: "There are two arrow towers, on opposite ends of the castle. The gates to get to the first level, though, are on the other two sides."
Yorinobu: "So if we attack the gates and rush in from there, we can avoid some arrow damage?"
Monk: "We only charge in in the last moment to finish them off - for now, we stand outside the gate and shoot them. Oh and our ninja already opened the gates for us."
Yorinobu: "That's... very efficient!"
Ninja: "And I don't charge you a penny for it!"
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Yorinobu: "Okay... so where do we deploy?"
Monk: "We want to use the two gates to attack safey, so we want to deploy on the side that does NOT have a gate, but have a tower. This way, the enemy's ranged units are drawn to the same side as the tower, and when we attack from the gate's side, all the dangers are far away."
Yorinobu: "I see! Then... what's next?"
Monk: "Do you want to do the easy way or the hard way?"
Yorinobu: "...The easy way?"
Monk: "The hard way is to carefully dodge all of the opponents' arrow fires all the time. The easy way is to draw out their arrows with... yourself. Once they are out of arrows, they are just another ordinary target practice."
Yorinobu: "Isn't that put myself in... grave danger?"
Monk: "Don't worry, as long as you run backward as soon as they release the arrows, you will be safe!"
Yorinobu: "Are you sure it is the EASY way?"
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Yorinobu: "I lost a bodyguard from that easy way!"
Monk: "Well, even Lord Motonari lost a bodyguard. You did very well."
Yorinobu: "Oh really? Nice! So... I went on to draw fires from more Bow Ashigaru units... but there is still one unit defending the inner level, and I could not get close enough as the arrow tower would be activated."
Monk: "We might be able to draw them away if we move the entire army to pretend that we are going to attack from another side of the fortress. But let's save the trouble and proceed."
Yorinobu: "Sure. The easy way, right?"
Monk: "Easy or not, they are all good and safe ways!"
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Yorinobu: "Ok, so I marched one Bow Ashigaru unit and myself to close to the gate and hold their fire."
Monk: "Wow... those are some fine Bow Ashigaru you have got here."
Yorinobu: "Yeah, General Kobayakawa passed the Martian training seeds to Harima just before we departed."
Monk: "Nice! Now what do you see inside the gate?"
Yorinobu: "I see defenders patrolling the lower level like an endless parade."
Monk: "Do they sometimes stop right in front of you for a brief moment?"
Yorinobu: "Yes. Like they are taunting me!"
Monk: "Three volleys right in their face as soon as they stop! Don't forget to use Fire Arrows if you can!"
Yorinobu: "Got it! Fire!"
Yorinobu: "Defeated one unit! Let's keep going!"
Monk: "No no no, pull out everything. The reinforcement are going to join the battle!"
Yorinobu: "Where do they come from?"
Monk: "Didn't we make a guess? Let's see.... we got it completely wrong. They arrive from the opposite end. Ops."
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Yorinobu: "Now what do we do?"
Monk: "Experience shows that they have a tendency to charge into you. Let's see... the Imagawa Daimyo is the first reinforcement, and they are coming this way!"
Yorinobu: "We have no time to bring up that Yari Samurai!"
Monk: "Use your Yari Cavalry! Charge them in the back! Kill him!"
Yorinobu: "Charge!~"
Yorinobu: "Wow... can't really see why their daimyo just threw his life away like that."
Monk: "Yeah they do all kinds of crazy things. Don't relax! There will be wave after wave of inforcement! One at the time, though."
Ninja: "I scouted them out - there will be tons of Yari Ashigaru."
Yorinobu: "OK... so we need to bring in sword infantry. The pirates! Maybe one Naginata Sumarui as well."
Monk: "Yes. 3 units are enough to make perfect traps."
Yorinobu: "So we will have to get very close to where they come in?"
Monk: "Not overly close - so we have time to re-arm the trap after defeating each unit."
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Yorinobu: "So... how do we make sure that they walk into our trap?"
Monk: "We bait them."
Yorinobu: "With what?"
Monk: "What's the most valuable unit?"
Yorinobu: "That's me... ok. I got it. The easy way, right?"
Monk: "Exactly. This is actually 10 times easier than drawing out arrows."
Yorinobu: "Oh, here they come! Charge!"
Yorinobu: "Wow... I lost count of how many Yari Ashigaru we trapped... and that last unit of Bow Ashigaru testified the arrow-proof golden armor of Naginata Samurai, HA!"
Monk: "Yeah... your Naginata warrior had more than 500 kills, the pirates have more than 300 kills each. Must be heavy to carry all those heads on the waist. So let's continue!"
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Yorinobu: "So we just keep shooting the defenders who parade and stop in front of us?"
Monk: "Exactly. And you can actually reach the upper level. Those units remain almost stationary."
Yorinobu: "Sure!"
Yorinobu: "Oh here comes a routing unit! And... somehow they think escaping FROM the castle is a good idea..."
Monk: "I guess they know they are going to die for sure if they remain in the fortress. Running on the field gives them a better chance to live."
Yorinobu: "Now what are we waiting? Let no one escape!"
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Yorinobu: "Ok... finally we have killed most of the defenders! Had to get to the opposite gate to catch the other half."
Monk: "Yes. We had 1080 Bow Ashigaru, each with 30 arrows. That gives us 30000 chances to kill about 2000 men. We actually have some leftover arrows... but they are too well hidden."
Yorinobu: "So do we charge in?"
Monk: "Most definitely! But watch out for the towers - take one first! And use Naginata Samurai!"
Yorinobu: "Victory is ours!"
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Note: By the way, there is a small feature/bug of the game. If we train a unit before a relevant upgrade building is completed, but the unit finishes training AFTER the relevant building is completed, the resulting unit does NOT have the new upgrade. So 3 of our Naginata Samurai actually has 1 less armor than the others.
Yorinobu: "So, we just let ONE guy escape? Wonder who that is...."
Monk: "What a shame it is not counted as a heroic victory. To me it spells insanity all the way."
Yorinobu: "Thanks! Now I need some tea break..."
Jaku: "Wait, admiral! Imagawa's navy is threatening us, too! You still have some energy left right? Come and lead us!"
Yorinobu: "OK~"
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Yorinobu: "Hm... Imagawa's fleet is a even mixture of Bow Kobaya and Medium Bune. The Bow Kobaya are faster... and they come straight toward us!"
Jaku: "So we shoot them! Don't forget to board when they get close!"
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Yorinobu: "The Bow Kobaya's are defeated and surrendered! The Medium Bune are here!"
Jake: "We can board them with our Sengoku Bune!"
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Yorinobu: "One tries to get away!"
Jake: "The wind is right - we can use our fastest ship!"
Yorinobu: "Release the rope! Got them!"
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Yorinobu: "Ha! Nobody escapes this time! In your face, Imagawa!"
Jaku: "Good job! Our only mistake was to let a Fire Bomb Kobaya accidentaly sail into the arrows of the enemy. Fortunately, they did not flee even if there were 5 men left!"
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Yorinobu: "Great, we can hire a Nanban retainer... he is a... Shipwrecked European. When are we going ever defend at sea? And it is a bad omen."
Jaku: "But the alternative is also very bad."
maltz: "Let's fight the battle again and get some other retainers..."
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Yorinobu: "Got one retainer for land defence +1 command!"
Jaku: "Great, now we can chase down the only fled ship!"
Yorinobu: "Huh? Somehow I thought we got them all... but how do I do that? Our ships are low on fuel... I mean low on man power - they need a break, too."
Jaku: "Didn't you just capture 5 ships? The survivors are all very fresh."
Yorinobu: "You want me to fight a battle with those sea scrap?"
Jaku: "Why not? There is no way you can lose it..."
Yorinobu: "Can I pay poker on the lower deck?"
Jaku: "Ok go ahead. I will take care of them..." (auto-resolved)
Hidesato (Admiral #3 in training): "Look at Imagawa! Now they are willing to sell their sons and daughters... but they don't have any."
Atsuyori (Admiral #2 in training): "That's what they get for being a crazy dog! This should teach them a lesson! I say let them become our vassal!"
Motonari: "Ha. Good riddance. But we seriously need to stop expanding or we would trigger the Realm Divide. So we cannot ask Imagawa to become our vassal."
Atsuyori: "Hm... how about asking them to break the alliance and trade treaties with both Takeda and Hojo?"
Motonari: "They will have to agree, but that does not mean too much to us."
Hidesato: "What means more to us?"
Motonari: "Japan is now broken down into just a few great powers..."
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Motonari: "The most powerful clan is actually us! The second and third most powerful clan are Hojo and Takeda, and they are allies. If we want to secure our front-runner position, we have to break apart the Hojo-Takeda alliance by befriending just one of them. There are other smaller powers, but none of them could make a significant difference."
Hidesato: "So which one should we pick? Hojo or Takeda?"
Motonari: "Takeda is closer to us, but Hojo is more powerful, it is a hard choice. But there is a one good difference - Takeda has a daughter who has not married yet, making them a lot easier to befriend. Let's go after Takeda!"
Atsuyori: "So we ask Imagawa go break all their ties with Hojo only, and hope that Hojo will attack them?"
Motonari: "Yes. And Takeda will force to choose to lose honor or stay with Hojo. And let's hope Takeda picks Imagawa!"
Hidesato: "And how do we befriend Takeda other than marrying one of our clan's bachelors to them?"
Motonari: "We just lost trading relationship with Takeda because they lost connection to their only port province - yet again... :inquisitive: So we must repair our trade promptly."
Atsuyori: "But they do not have a port..."
Motonari: "Now we have land route - from Totomi!"
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Hidesato: "So we do not abandon Totomi? I thought we already incited a rebel force for a smooth exit..."
Motonari: "That was an oversight. We will ask Admiral Yorinobu to take care of the rebels."
This concludes chapter 8 of our story. :bow:
Naval Tactics #3: The Wall of Arrows
When fighting a fleet from an AI clan in early game, we often see an even mixture of fast and slow ships, such as Bow Kobaya and Medium Bune. Their difference in speed means that we will face the Bow Kobaya first, and the Medium Bune later. The farther back we deploy, the farther apart they are.
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We could still set up traps for kobaya, but traps are rather an overkill on these weak ships. We can easily weaken or rout them with overwhelming arrows from the Medium Bune. They can be boarded quite easily when they enter the gaps between our Medium Bune. Note that it is better to fight the battle during the day, as the shooting sailors' visions are not impaired.
After dealing with the Kobaya, the slower Medium Bune arrive (you might see trade ships, but they are way too easy to kill). The Medium Bune probably will stay back and just shoot at us. We will have to go back to our tactics #2 - surround them and board them in a chaos. The same principles apply.
What we can do to make the commands easier here is to deploy Sengoku Bune on both sides, and while our Medium Bune's line push forward to provide damage support, we flank the enemy's Medium Bune with the boarding specialists and take them out them one by one. Before boarding begins, remember to activate War Cry from a nearby Medium Bune.
Note that you still need to protect your Kobaya - they would die very quickly if you issued a wrong command to let them suddenly sail past the line and become the only target of all enemy's ships. They just need to stay in the back and fire. Once an enemy starts routing, they can be used to board - the target will give up immediately.
Chapter 09. Disappointed sailors
Hidesato: "My lord! Our Metsuke in Kyoto reported that the Ashikaga Shogunate is really nervous about our expansion. If we take any other province, we will be declared the enemy of the Shogun!"
Motonari: "Don't we have a 22-province quota? We have only 21 provinces now."
Hidesato: "Hm... maybe we got the extra fame from battle victories... we do have 2 landmarks for crushing Amako and Matsuda. And we just killed 4600 Imagawa men while losing only 35. Maybe that meant something."
Atsuyori: "So we got penalized for doing well?"
Motonari: "Yeah. If you are doing not so well, you are treated more nicely. If you are doing great, you would like some extra challenge. Friendly world."
Hidesato: "Ok..."
Motonari: "But right now, our tax income is not high enough to support our army and navy. We have to stop and develop."
Atsuyori: "How do we make our tax income catch up?"
Motonari: "We have started the research of Chonindo, which will complete in 5 seasons. Then we can upgrade the farms with Land Consolidation. The construction itself takes another two years. Then our towns wil start growing very fast."
Hidesato: "So we will wait for at least 3 years."
Motonari: "Ha! That's only the start of the town growth! While the rapid growth of towns kicks in, we research advanced Naval arts to upgrade our navy, and Essence of Spirit to build Monastry to train some Warrior Monks. When those are done, even if our towns are not big enough, we should have enough savings to declare war on the Ashikaga Shogunate."
Atsuyori: "Sounds like a long time. I am not suggesting something terrible would happen, but my Lord, you are already 60 years old. Don't you want to become the Shogun in your lifetime?"
Motonari: "If our agents could weaken our opponents quickly, maybe we can start the war a little earlier."
Atsuyori: "We better be careful. Taking on too many enemies at once could be more than we could handle."
Motonari: "We might be able to pick up one more ally. We have already planned to grab Takeda. If we can get just one more, we should be able to tip the balance."
Atsuyori: "Who should we grab as a second ally?"
Motonari: "Let's take a closer look..."
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(1) Yamana is allied with Ashikaga
We either bribe Yamana to our side, or be prepared to fight them. Yamana is too close to us, so there is no reason to let them live within our territries. Yamana is a primary target for our agents.
(2) Hatakeyama is allied with Honma
Honma is aggressively shipping invasions to Hojo's back. So far I have not seen Hojo taking any action on Sado island - maybe they will never be able to eliminate the pesky Honma. Hatakeyama is our neighbor and needs to go down fast. So we either bribe Honma to our side, or prepare to see annoying sea invasions later. It is quite impossible to eliminate Honma by agents, as Sado island always have a good garrison. So it might be better to bribe Honma to stay on our side as long as possible.
(3) Hattori, Ikko-Ikki, Chosokabe, Imagawa has no friend
It is unlikely these weaker clans will survive for long. Our agents have been working on Chosokabe. Once Chosokabe, Yamana, and Hatakeyama is mostly dealt with by rebellion, our agents can move on to Hattori. Ikko-Ikki and Imagawa could remain as destractions to our primary targets.
Atsuyori: "So many targets for our agents... why not Hojo?"
Hidesato: "I thought Hojo is our biggest threat?"
Motonari: "They are indeed big, but let's look at it this way. Any clan that we do not befriend will become allies against us after Realm Divide. Hojo or others, it matters little. So if we want to weaken Hojo, we want to do it when the others cannot simply fill in the gap. Hojo has no immediate conflict of interest with us, so they are not our primary target. We can even consider allying with them to delay their hostility, if things go bad. But then Takeda's powerful army will have nothing to do."
Hidesato & Atsuyori: "Got it!"
Hidesato: "My lord! Ikko-Ikki has declared war on Yamana!"
Motonari: "When they are fighting almost everyone, they may as well fighting exactly everyone. The pain is shorter that way."
Atsuyori: "So... do we help Yamana or not? We are their allies, but Yamana is our primary target..."
Motonari: "Or we can look at it this way, if Ikko-Ikki makes advances on Yamana, we will simply turn Ikko's provinces to rebel. This clan or that clan, whoever gets close to us, it makes no difference. So we may as well do what is more respectful."
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Atsuyori: "But Ikko-Ikki has two fleets coming our way. And our two fleets are not nearby."
Motonari: "Then block the three entrances of the Seto inland sea with Bow Kobaya, and call back both fleets! Atsuyori - you lead one of them!"
Atsuyori: "Definitely! Finally I get to lead a real battle!"
Ninja: "So we have to clean up the mess we created in Totomi. I took care of their general. The rest is yours!"
Yorinobu: "These peasant rebels are not the match of our professional army!"
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Ninja: "Wow, nice one. Did you er... take a nap?"
Yorinobu: "Nope. I actually enjoy the fight." (manual battle)
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Ninja: "So what did you do to cut down losses?"
Yorinobu: "The usual stuff. They camped on a hill. We first lured all of their Yari Ashigaru into our trap. Then we fish out some of their Bow Ashigaru and routed them in archers' duel. Finally, they launched the final attack. Their cavalry found our spears, and their arrows deflected on our Naginata samurai's extra-thick armor."
Ninja: "Good for you!"
Yorinobu: "Now my job is done, and there is no Imagawa or Hojo invasion from the east. I am going to train in Migawa with rebels. What are you going to do?"
Ninja: "I'll keep an eye on Imagawa. Go and have some fun!"
Monk: "General Takakage, after I incited a rebellion in Tosa, Chosokabe got really mad and declared war on us! Please be careful!"
Takakage: "Ha! We have been waiting for this day for a long time. So I will simply lay an ambush in the forest in Sanuki and wait for them to come."
Monk: "Good luck! I will go scout ahead and see if I can stir up another revolt in Awa. (grin)"
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Motoharu: "Hm... where do these Ikko monks' ships come from? Why are they chasing me? I am just using it as a transport to Shikoku to train with my younger brother! This strait is too narrow! I don't want to become fish food~"
Captain: "You can do it! Just maximize your manuever space!"
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Ninja: "General Takakage, Chosokabe is not coming our way! Instead, their army is heading to Tosa..."
Takakage: "So they declared war on us, but immediately move their army away and leave a defenceless castle in their last province?"
Ninja: "That's pretty much it. Hm... You would expect people have brains in their head..."
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Atsuyori: "We are a little far from the Ikko fleet, but here comes some Wako to catch!"
Captain: "6 trade ships? Easy job! I can handle them for you."
Atsuyori: "No no no, this is my first real battle! Let me do it!"
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Atsuyori: "OK! Let's charge them!"
Captain: "No no no, admiral. We don't win battles by brute force, but by tactics. There is a small island on our left. We can use that as an obstacle and let the Wako slowly approach us one by one."
Atsuyori: "So we can destroy them one by one? Nice plan!"
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Atsuyori: "Buhahaha... these Wakos sailed into our crossfires one by one!"
Captain: "Yes. We only need to surround them from the right. That really made our life easy. Now go board their last ship!"
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Atsuyori: "Ha! We kicked their butt! None got away! But how come there wree still three ships reamining?"
Captain: "That's one of the seven mysteries of the Seto inland sea. Let's just call it a feature."
Atsuyori: "Okay... Let's get the ships repaird and head for that big Ikko fleet, shall we?"
Captain: "Of course! Lord Motonari has actually ordered one Sengoku Bune and one Medium Bune from Bingo. They will reaplce the two Bow Kobaya that's not doing too much."
Atsuyori: "Great!"
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Monk: "Rebellion incited, at their door!"
Ninja: "Army Sabotage, in their face!"
Takakage: "What a quick end of Chosokabe's resistance. What a shame that we never get the chance to face their huge Bow Samurai army."
Ninja: "General Takakage, Sun Tzu's Art of War teaches us that the best victory comes without a battle."
maltz: "But battle is half of the game!"
Takakage: "Kick this crazy retainer out!"
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Captain: "Admiral Kobayakawa, the Chosokabe navy is threatening one of our Seto Strait entrance blockers!"
Atsuyori: "Our first navy is returning from Totomi! They will deal with them!"
Captain: "Likely not. We just received the update of Shikoku. This is going to Chosokabe's last move..."
Atsuyori: "What a pity. We would really love to fight that fleet..."
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Captain: "Admiral Kobayakawa, the large Ikko fleet is attacking us again!"
Atsuyori: "Retreat into the inland sea and let them in! We will take care of them in the spring!"
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Note: But of course the Ikko fleet retreated to far, far away when Admiral Kobayakawa's second fleet got close to them. :furious3:
Hidesato: "My Lord! Ikko Buddhist are here to plead for peace! They are willing to pay 3100 koku!"
Motonari: "Huh? They have only one province left? Must be Hojo's work."
Hidesato: "I heard that we have just incited a rebellion in Echizen, their only province left..."
Motonari: "That means we lost the chance to crush and sink two Ikko fleets. What a pity. Let's take Ikko's money then."
Hidesato: "Wouldn't that make Yamana think we are an unreliable ally?"
Motonari: "So? Our agents will be all over them next year."
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Hidesato: "How sad - our invincible navy has no opponent..."
Motonari: "Let's get them ready for the Black Ship, then. Tell Atsuyori to go back to southern Kyushu!"
Hidesato: "What's the ideal fleet composition against the Black Ship?"
Motonari: "Good question. I have no idea! Fortunately we will have a lot of spare parts to figure it out."
Takakage: "Brother, you have joined us!"
Motoharu: "Good to see you again!"
Takamoto: "Indeed, we three Mori brothers are gathered together, under the castle of Awa, to run away from the rebels!"
Takakage: "They have two units of Light Cavalry, and we have already taken care of one of them."
Takamoto: "Then it will be easy for us three to break the other!"
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Takakage: "Hm... a strange result... killing exactly 1 enemy and won a heroic victory." :dizzy2:
Motonaru: "We had a perfect timing and position to charge into that Light Cavalry unit all together, but somehow the sky turned dark..."
Takamoto: "I guess we will have to kill them again next season..."
Hidesato: "My Lord! The Wako is here to threaten us again! But if we again er... invest in them, we could earn another two years of extra trade profit!"
Motoharu: "The old one has not even expired yet! Of course a big YES!"
Hidesato: "It would be great if they keep coming back to us for this deal~"
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Jaku: "Welcome, Admiral Kobayakawa! I am captain Jaku Subalo. The first navy just got transferred to your command as Admiral Kuchiba is now training in Owari."
Atsuyori: "Great! I heard you guys kicked Imagawa's butt on the sea. So what's our assignment?"
Jaku: "Now that Ikko-Ikki is no more, we have no official enemy on the sea. So all we need to do is to keep the trade routes free from pirates and maybe, and hopefully, fight the legendary Black Ship!"
Atsuyori: "(tears in eyes) I... I have the honor to fight the Black Ship?" :bigcry:
Jaku: "For now, yes. Lord Motonari might take over you once he finished training in Hyuga."
Atsuyori: "Let's hope the Black Ship come soon, then! Oh, and here comes some Wako!"
Jaku: "Let's go!"
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Atsuyori: "Wow... the wind is not favoring us. What should we do, captain Jaku?"
Jaku: "We can hide behind that small island! The wind won't be so strong, and we can probably funnel the enemy to us one by one!"
Atsuyori: "Ok! We will line up the Medium Bune and put the Sengoku Bune outside!"
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Atsuyori: "It worked! The Wako ships are trapped in our mines and crossfire!"
Jaku: "Some of our Medium Bune are too far away from the Wako ships. We should push forward our line!"
Atsuyori: "And we can now swing out the Sengoku Bune to board their routing ships!"
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Hidesato: "My Lord, the aliance between Takeda and Hojo is broken! Hojo declared war on Imagawa, and this prompted Takeda to side with the latter. So Hojo and Takeda is at war now!"
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Motonari: "That's exactly what we wanted by cutting Imagawa's tie with Hojo but not Takeda, isn't it?"
Hidesato: "So Takeda and Hojo will fight! This gives us a lot of breathing room."
Motonari: "Unfortunately, Takeda's large army are all staying in the Kinki area. We have to encourage them to return to the east."
Hidesato: "How?"
Motonari: "It could be difficult, as they are not as smart as us. We can start by forcing their generals in Kinki to retire, or return to Kai on a stretcher. Then they will probably call up some army to lead there."
Hidesato: "My Lord, thanks to the Kyoto monks, we have trained a Metsuke who is very specialized in Town Management! (4 stars + 6 stars in skill tree + 2 stars from retainer = 12 stars)
Motonari: "Good, send him to our richest province Iwami!"
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Hidesato: "My Lord, Takeda Shingen has been returned to Kai on a stretcher!"
Motonari: "Nice! Now let's clean up their provinces in Kinki after their army leave."
Hidesato: "Will those stacks be shipped back to Kinki?"
Motonari: "They are probably not this smart... so it is reasonable to assume they will either stay idle or try to claim some nearby rebel provinces. Of course, we want the latter to happen, as their army can be sabotaged half way to their destination."
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Hidesato: "My Lord, Hatakeyama grabbed one province from Hojo, and now they have a trading port!"
Motonari: "Hm... we have to be careful here. Hojo has a powerful navy, and they can easily blockade Hatakeyama's new port."
Hidesato: "But then Hatakeyama agrees to pay us 2670 koku."
[B]Motonari[/B}: "Are you trying to argue with me?... Ok, let's hope Hojo's navy does not blockade their port, or takes back that province to interrupt the trade (note: which is the case later in the season.)"
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Hidesato: "My lord! Our town-management freak Metsuke has reported to duty in Iwami. He brings us 1590 koku of extra income!"
Motonari: "Great! Our research in naval arts will still take a while. Let's upgrade all of our other town management Metsukes."
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Note: A 6-star town management Metsuke gives 30% of tax bonus (further subject to admin cost). A 11-star town management Metsuke gives 55% of tax bonus (another 5% comes from the 5-star financial commissioner). So we can hypothesize that for every star in town management, there is a 5% increase in effect tax rate. But the tax bonus are also subject to reduction from admin cost. At 21 provinces, the admin cost is sligtly less than 50%.
Hidesato: "My lord! Our ninja reported that Hojo has launched a... weak invasion to Imagawa! But Imagawa is weaker, so they probably can't survive."
Motonari: "Hm... direct contact with Hojo could be trouble. Can we ask our ninja to sabotage Hojo's invasion?"
Hidesato: "We did that last season and made them suffer from winter attrition. But Hojo sent a Metsuke after us, so our Ninja had to take that Metsuke out this season."
Motonari: "Ops. That means Imagawa is going down. Let's... sell our infinite military access to them."
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Hidesato: "They have more than 3000 koku... so why don't they hire more army? They had quite a few years to prepare after they made peace with us."
Motonari: "Good question. Remember they are crazy, so we might not find reasons in their actions..."
Hidesato: "My lord! Now Takeda has broken up with Hojo. What's is our strategy for diplomacy?"
Motonari: "Hojo is the common enemy of everyone except Ashikaga. But since they have twice broken up some kind of treaties, probably alliance agreement, they have extremely poor relations even with neutral clans like us. So Hojo will become our enemy immediately after Realm Divide."
Hidesato: "So Hojo is out of our potential ally list. How about the other clans?"
Motonari: "Takeda and Hatakeyama both have provinces very close to us. So we might have to declare war on them soon after Realm Divide, if our agents fail to uproot them with rebellion. But if our agents succeed, we may as well ally with them."
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Hidesato: "How about Honma? They have been a pain in the butt for Hojo."
Motonari: "Apparently the other clans are completely unprepared for naval invasions. And that's all Honma does. It would be the best if we can ally with Honma, but they are an ally of Hatakeyama, and they are at war with Takeda."
Hidesato: "Can we avoid declaring war on Honma while taking out Hatakeyama?"
Motonari: "Possibly, if we ask Hojo to let us join their war against Hatakeyama."
Hidesato: "But then we still cannot ally with Honma."
Motonari: "Correct. We have to ally with Honma first. But then Honma will have to make a choice whether to stay with Hatakeyama or us... anyways, let's not worry about those for now. Our Land Conslidation farm upgrade is not even complete yet... the situation might be very different later. The only thing we need to worry about in the short term is that Hojo would declare war on us and launch a major invasion. So tell Admiral Kuchiba to be ready in Totomi!"
Hidesato: "Right away!"
Takamoto: "Ah... it feels so good to finally finish the trainings. So I am responsible for Harima now?"
Metsuke: "My associates have turned Settsu to rebels when Hatakeyama's army moved away to attack another rebel province. Settsu is our step stone to Kyoto. So please somehow prevent Hatakeyama from taking it back!"
Takamoto: "Hm... how do I do that? If we grab one more province, we will trigger Realm Divide."
Metsuke: "Pretty much the same thing you did to Yamana. Lay siege to Settsu with anything, and lure the Hatakeyama army here. Then my associates can freely incite rebellions in their back."
Takamoto: "But the rebels have Light Cavalry in the castle. I can't take out a unit of Light Cavalry on my own."
Metsuke: "You have two Cavalry units in Harima, right?"
Takamoto: "Oh yes... I forgot. Argh, I will simply take the entire Harima army with me and purposely let some rebels get away in the sally battle."
Metsuke: "Sounds like a plan!"
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Hidesato: "My Lord! We are now able to upgrade our Pirate's Den and our Warehourse!"
Motonari: "The upgrade of Pirate's Den is useful in Bingo as we want to get the best advanced ships. How about Warehouse?"
Hidesato: "It upgrades to Red Seal company and... a 1% reduction in trade tariff from 6% to 5%. What the... somebody made a mistake?"
Motonari: "We are not using the port in Hizen to trade anyway, so there is little difference. But why would anybody pay to get a reduction in income? The Red Seal trade ships do not even bring back more trade goods..."
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Note: The Red Seal trade ships have more crew on board, so one does not need to protect the trade fleets anymore. But we could always use 1 Bow Kobaya to protect them and wait for the real fleet to dispatch the threat. Besides, at this late point in the game, all trade nodes should have been filled with full stacks of regular trade ships anyway, and the Wakos always leave a full stack of trade fleet alone. So there is really no point to replace them with Red Seal trade ships. Red Seal Company should go bankrupt.
Hidesato: "My Lord! Imagawa is history! Hojo easily defeated their garrison."
Motonari: "Fortunately Hojo's army is not very powerful in Suruga, so there is nothing for us to worry about yet. We just saw Hojo's huge army in the north, trying to wiping out Hatakeyama. Let's hope they get distracted by Honma's infinite sea invasion in that area."
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Note: Game successfully updated! Now V1.1.0 Build 5346
Jaku: "Admiral Kobayakawa! I am afraid I have a bad news to you."
Atsuyori: "What? We are still waiting for the Black Ship to appear..."
Jaku: "Unfortunately, Lord Motonari feels that it is pointless for a budding admiral like you to keep waiting for the Black Ship. So he will replace your spot. You will go back to Hyuga to train."
Atsuyori: "NOOOO~~~~"
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Motonari: "It is good to be on the sea! The world feels a little different, don't you think, Captain Jaku Subalo?"
Jaku: "Yes. There a number "build 5346" written on our ship!"
Motonari: "Ok, here comes a group of Wako. Let's finish them!"
Motonari: "I have read all the previous naval battle reports you wrote, Jaku. So we only need to wait for the enemy to approach, right?"
Jaku: "Yep. They will come. And we can actually lay some mines in the middle for them to step on."
Motonari: "Ha! Let's do it!"
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Motonari: "Hm, strange, they are not coming."
Jaku: "They... have become smarter! Something has changed in this world! I also noticed that there is no more battle timer even if we set it on 20 minutes!"
Motonari: "Wow. So nobody can use Bow Kobaya to run around for 20 minutes, huh? Anyway, now we will have to go to them. But we are against the wind..."
Jaku: "How about we try to circle to their back?"
Motonari: "Sure... if they remain stationary, they will probably just watch us slowly get to their upwind..."
***20 minutes later***
Jaku: "Brilliant, my Lord! The Wako did not move at all! We can attack from the upwind!"
Motonari: "But ship moving is now a pain in the butt. There is bound to be a few ships confused of orders and keep turning in circles! It is even more stupid than before!"
Jaku: "Looks like the new build fixed something and broke something..."
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Motonari: "There is nowhere to hide! Come to your grandpa. Haha!"
Jaku: "A glorious victory, my lord! Your 6-star command is worth its name! ... hm wait, how come you only have 1 star?"
Motonari: "Oh-oh..."
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Motonari: "Well, 1 star or 6, at least we now do not have to worry about ships mysterious getting away. Let's hope the Black Ship come soon."
Jaku: "Yes. And since we have two fleets here, we can easily capture any Wako pirates spawning right in the middle of us."
Motonari: "Yes. They are so predictable..."
Note: One fleet parks west of Satsuma, one fleet parks just ouside the port of Osumi. When the Wako pirates spawn, they spawn right in the middle of the two fleets, making them very easy target within the same turn.
Takamoto: "Ah! Last night I had a very bad dream!"
Monk: "What is it? Maybe I can interpret for you."
Takamoto: "I dreamed that I was in the middle of a square formed by my bodyguards. Then there was a group of Samurai retainers challenging us."
Monk: "30 vs. 45? You are a 6-star general, they are nothing. You have the best Samuari, and they have the basic samurai. You are highly experienced, they are not. You are under Stand and Fight, they are not. You are both sword infantry. It must have gone well?"
Takamoto: "No! We were slaughtered - I think we barely kill more of their guys than they killed ours! I was surrounded by like 5 of their guys! I cut a few of their head off, but then I got killed! Then I woke up."
Monk: "Hm... I have an interpretation of this dream now."
Takamoto: "What is it?"
Monk: "Just... don't use Stand and Fight to actually fight. It is more of a battle buff... but thanks to build 5346, now it incurs a penalty on ranged attack."
Takamoto: "But what will happen to me?"
Monk: "You will have nothing to do in Harima while our clan is still researching Master of the Waves."
Takamoto: "Oh..."
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Jaku: "My Lord, finally we have finished upgrading all farms!"
Motonari: "And there is a two-year 25% boost of farm income, too! Let's start the recruitment to get ready for Realm Divide!"
Jaku: "But we are still researching the naval techs, and then we need turns to build the Dry Dock, and then turns to build the ships..."
Motonari: "Yes... well, I guess we will have to use whatever ships we can build right now!"
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Jaku: "My Lord, here comes more Wako!"
Motonari: "Let them come! Hm... you know what I have been thinking?"
Jaku: "Your missing command stars in naval battle?"
Motonari: "Ha... who cares as long as we can win. I have been thinking about that since the enemy does not care about our pre-engagement menuever anyway, can't we circle to the side of their formation?"
Jaku: "And eat them alive one by one? Brilliant, my lord! Let's try that!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4853&d=1332684167
Motonari: "It worked! They are idiots!"
Jaku: "All thanks to Build 5346, now naval battle is brainless..."
Motonari: "Yeah, come one by one to grandpa Mori! Wahaha..."
Jaku: "You would think the ship behind it would do something, but all they did was turn to us..."
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Motonari: "We won! Lost only 6 men!"
Jaku: "That's great, my lord..."
Motonari: "Now we have an easy formula to defeat Wako. We can leave a minimal garrison here in this water, and no command from an Admiral is necessary. We can then direct our real fleets elsewhere."
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Jaku: "So where are we going to redirect our main fleet?"
Motonari: "Let's trigger Realm Divide earlier than we have planned! So we can use two fleets to battle the Hojo Horde on the water!"
Jaku: "Ok! Let's order some Heavy Bune from Bingo!"
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Jaku: "My Lord, Hojo has declared war on us!"
Motonari: "Haha, They finally noticed our agents are eating them alive. Prepare two full stacks of fleets! Get the two admirals in Hyuga on water! And tell Admiral Kuchiba to get ready to fight in Totomi!"
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Ninja: "Admiral Kuchiba, Hojo has declared war on us! Please get ready to defend!"
Yorinobu: "Ok! But we have just turned Suruga to rebel. It would be a pity if we just give them right back..."
Ninja: "So what are you suggesting?"
Yorinobu: "I say we lay siege on rebel's Suruga castle and see if we can attract a Hojo crowd here - doing nothing but just wait in the line. This way our defending Totomi mission can also be accomplished!"
Ninja: "Sure. Oh watch out, the rebels are going to sally!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4858&d=1332684167
Yorinobu: "That was easy!" (manual battle)
Ninja: "We had to purposely let some run away, so we can stay away from accidentally taking the castle."
Yorinobu: "Headquarter moves forward the countdown clock of Realm Divide. In two years we will have to fight the big battles!"
Jaku: "My lord, we finally finished the resaerch of Master of Waves! We can now build a Dry Dock!"
Motonari: "Let's do it!"
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Jaku: "NOOOO! My lord, we don't have find Wood!" :wall:
Motonari: "We did have wood last season. What's wrong?"
Jaku: "Our wood is supplied from Hojo! But they just declared war on us! What a good timing..."
Motonari: "Lucky bastards! Hm... what's our next closest access of wood?"
Jaku: "Tosa!"
Motonari: "Ok, tell Takakage to be ready to take Tosa anytime - we have to move forward Realm Divide for another year!"
Jaku: "OK!"
This concludes chapter 9 of our story. :bow:
Chapter 10. Dishonorable heroes
Takamoto: "Father! It is good to have you here in Harima. But sorry, we do not have an army for you yet, just half a stack. We were planning for Bow Warrior Monks, so we did not produce extra Bow Ashigaru."
Motonari: "No time to waste. Place the order of Bow Ashigaru in Hoki now. And... I will borrow your army and you wait for the new stack."
Takamoto: "NO~~~~"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4918&d=1332848618
Takamoto: "So are we ready to trigger the Realm Divide?"
Motonari: "No, but we will do it anyway to give us the fine Wood in Tosa, so we can build the Dry Dock!"
Takamoto: "Why do we want to rush for the Dry Dock?"
maltz: "Because... building Dry Dock takes so long..."
Takamoto: "It's the crazy retainer again!... so which ally will we grab?"
Motonari: "Well, well don't have too much choice now. The most powerful of the remaining clan is Honma. And we can ask them to break alliance with Hatakeyama."
Takamoto: "Nice!"
Takamoto: "Father, are you sure you want to march toward Kyoto alone? Our army is not very advanced. It could be dangerous."
Motonari: "Maybe you are right. I will first take some surrounding provinces like Settsu and wait for your reinforcement to attack Ashikaga Shogunate together. Come quickly, though. Don't wait for a full stack."
Takamoto: "OK! To Realm Divide!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4919&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "Father, should we ask for help from Honma to battle Hojo and Hatakeyama?"
Motonari: "Huh? Have Hojo and Honma not been fighting for decades? It is hard to believe Hojo signed a peace deal after they lost almost all of their northern provinces to Honma while they still had a larger army than Honma..."
Takamoto: "Maybe Hojo wanted to declare war on us?"
Motonari: "Hm... anyway, if Honma agrees to help for free, why not?"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4920&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "Father, the Ashikaga Shogunate has joined our enemies!... a season after they declared ourselves the enemies of the Shogun."
Motonari: "Yeah. This is like pulling down their pants before farting - unecessary. Anyway, is your reinforcement ready to go?"
Takamoto: "Yes!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4921&d=1332848620
Fisherman Yoshi: "Hey Nobu! How are you?"
Peasant Nobu: "Hey Yoshi! Not bad. Any catch today?"
Fisherman Yoshi: "Nope, there is something wrong with the world... the sea level has dropped for at least 10 meters! Now all of our ships are stranded on the beach."
Peasant Nobu: "Hm... maybe we need to start cutting down more trees to accelerate global warming."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4922&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "Father, here I am! Let's do this!"
Motonari: "OK! Let's start the siege!"
Takamoto: "Wait, father! I have a question. Since you already have a full stack army, why do you still want me as reinforcement?"
Motonari: "Have you not heard the news, Takamoto? We can now field up to 40 units on the battlefield!"
Takamoto: "That means I can join the fight, too? Great!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4923&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "Ha, nice. I am on the battleifled, too!"
Motonari: "Takamoto, here is your assignment - find a weakness of the Citadel!"
Takamoto: "What do you mean by weakness?"
Motonari: "Find somewhere that your Bow Ashigaru can fire at the defenders without being shot by arrow towers."
Takamoto: "But wouldn't the defenders shoot at me?"
Motonari: "I will come up with a distraction. Good luck!"
Takamoto: "The ditraction better works..."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4924&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "Ha, here is a good spot!"
Bow Ashigaru Captain: "General Takamoto, are you sure we can shoot fire arrows while standing in waist-high water?"
Takamoto: "Yeah, just hold the arrow bag with your mouth!"
Note: This problem exists before the latest patch: our Bow units have a tendency to take a small step forward every time they are ordered to fire at a target. So we will need to manually pull them back a bit after every 4 shooting orders or so.
Takamoto: "Father, we are in position! How about your distraction?"
Motonari: "Done."
Takamoto: "But you are marching everything to my side. Wouldn't this attract the enemy over?"
Motonari: "As long as we leave at least 1 unit on the same side of their original deployement, they will not move."
Takamoto: "So... one Light cavalry grabbing the attention of 2/3 of the defenders?"
Motonari: "Yep. Now keep shooting from that weakness spot!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4925&d=1332848620
Note: The Citadel is in the shape of:
w = water
c = citadel
b = blind spot
wwwwwwwwwww
wwwcccccwww
wwbcccccbww
wcccccccccw
wcccccccccw
wwwwwwwwwww
The blind spots are quite small, holding one unit max. Here our Bow unit can fire safely without being shot at arrow towers. The defenders tend to parade inside the Citadel just like any castle. From time to time, we will have one defending unit stopping right in front of our Bow Ashigaru. 3 volleys! Fire arrows' power seems to have been increased by the 5346 patch, too.
Motonari: "Look, another unit marches into our range!"
Takamoto: "But there are under the trees."
Motonari: "We have 12 Bow Ashigaru units! Just fire!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4926&d=1332848620
Note: Apparently the trees inside the castles are just for the aesthetic look. They don't hide units like a forest does, and they do not provide any noticable coverage for arrow fires."
Takamoto: "The enemies are routing... and they are fleeing OUT of the Citadel!"
Motonari: "Ha, just like what Yorinobu reported from Totomi. Our Yari Cavalry will run them down."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4927&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "The enemy Daimyo's bodyguards have been killed off by our arrows! The Shogun is fleeing - out of the castle!"
Motonari: "Wow... let's run him down!"
Takamoto: "He is too fast! He is... running directly toward us!"
Motonari: "Tell the infantry to charge him!"
Takamoto: "He ran into our thick infantry line!"
Motonari: "What a bizarre death for the Shogun... he fled right into death...""
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4928&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "Hm, father, there are no more defenders parading inside the castle. Most of them fled out of the Citadel and got mowed down. But some of them is hiding in alleys between buildings."
Motonari: "Hm... their arrow towers prevent us from finding good angles to shoot at them. It looks like that we will have to storm in..."
Pirate Captain Yoshi: "Wait, my lord!"
Motonari: "Huh? What do you want to say?"
Pirate Captain Yoshi: "We can hide anywhere on the battlefield as long as we remain walking. Please let us try! We can destroy the arrow towers for you!"
Takamoto: "Hm... these Wako Raiders do have Kisho training. Maybe they can escape the detection of arrow towers?"
Motonari: "Worth a try. Good luck!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4929&d=1332848620
Pirate Captain Yoshi: "No problem! We remain undetected by the arrow towers! Hahaha! Burn! Burn!"
Motonari: "Ha... if we knew about this, there is no need to find any weakness spot!"
Pirate Captain Yoshi: "Arrow Tower destroyed! We only lost 2 men!"
Takamoto: "These guys are like professional thiefs! Well, they actually are. Why are we fighting with thieves..."
Motonari: "Now the arrow tower has been destroyed, we can freely shoot at the cowards hiding in the alley. Go go go!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4930&d=1332848620
Takamoto: "Father, we have routed all the units hiding in the alley! Now again we run out of targets."
Motonari: "Hm... if we charge in, the defenders might rush to defence. We will suffer greatly if this happens. But maybe the defenders will not rush to defence because they are so distracted by our Light Cavalry."
Pirate captain Yoshi: "Lord Motonari, please let my men test them!"
Takamoto: "You mean you will walk inside the Citadel alone?"
Pirate captain Yoshi: "Exactly! If undetected, we will burn down more gates and towers for you!"
Motonari: "Sure, but just run when they are coming at you, OK?"
Pirate captain Yoshi: "You bet!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4931&d=1332848620
Pirate captain Yoshi: "It worked! We have occupied all gates and towers on the north side!"
Takamoto: "This is too easy! Maybe we will just let them sneak into the town center and win..."
Motonari: "Ha, Stepping on the town center will certainly trigger an alarm. But maybe we will do just that. Let's move our second pirate unit there and wait for the signal. All other units, prepare to storm in the Citadel!"
Takamoto: "Father, why do we need two pirate units there?"
Motonari: "One unit occupies the town center, while the other locks the gate, so the defenders have to take the longer route in. This should buy us the time. We only need to hold the town center for one minute. But we will rush in all of our units as a huge distraction for the defenders."
Takamoto: "Got it!"
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4932&d=1332848620
Pirate Captain Yoshi: "The gate is ours! The defenders are locked outside of their own gate!"
Motonari: "Naginata Samurai, charge their Bow Samurai!"
Takamoto: "Hm... how come the Bow Ashigaru is not firing... ops I forgot to tell them to fire at will!"
Motonari: "Just 9 more seconds!"
Fascinating - just about to embark on my own Mori legendary domination campaign.
And in multiple campaigns I've never actually played out the assault on Kyoto on the battle map as its almost always safer and you get a vastly better casualty ratio using autoresolve for castle attacks (often I suffer no casualties at all) - but these pictures have inspired me to try it.
Takamoto: "Victory! We lost just 111 men!"
Motonari: "Yes. The moment we captured the Town Center, the Ashikaga soldiers gave up fighting. But too bad we still had to kill them all."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4933&d=1332848620
This concludes chapter 10 of our story. :bow:
And I have defended citadels but IIRC have never seen those extra buildings - is that a mod that allows multiplayer maps or is it a patch feature I've not see yet?
Chapter 11. Elusive great catch
Hidesato: "Admiral Kobayakawa, we now have two powerful fleets completed with Heavy Bune. Let's go crush the Hojo fleet!"
Atsuyori: "Certainly! There is a large Hojo fleet in Seto Inland Sea. We should be able to capture it!"
Jaku: "They seem to know that we are coming, so they are fleeing north!"
Hidesato: "Let's chase after them! So close this season..."
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=4934&d=1332848671
Jaku: "Apparently, they are just as fast as us! If we just chase them from behind, we will be unable to catch them... forever."
Atsuyori: "Don't we have the Strategist +30% movement range buff?"
Hidesato: "That only works on land..."
Atsuyori: "So we wasted two points on that skill? NOOOO~~~"
Hidesato: "The Admiral skill tree should be able to increase naval movement range..."
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