Exploration kills?

[Jacobin]

Just tried my first Mori campaign at legendary having read Maltz's excellent AAR.

Took Iwami from the Amako and vassalised them in their last province, did some serious military access selling and used the money on economic infrastructure development (mine, markets, trade ports) and sent out bow kobayas to explore the coasts and find unoccupied trade nodes.

I negotiated trade deals, did marriages whenever available, gave out gifts and made sure every new clan discovered was at worst indifferent.

I also kept half stack garrisons in both towns and upgraded them to strongholds as soon as I could afford it so no one would be tempted to attack.

And then about 15 turns in Sakai land their daimyo and a full stack of yari and bow samurai outside Iwami and declare war - followed in the same turn by Hojo and Oda.

Iwami fell and I gave up in disgust.

So is this a case of diplomacy broken by the patch - or has being unwise enough to systematically explore the coasts always resulted in clans from the other side of the map attacking you without warning?

In pre-patch legendary campaigns as Chokosabe and Shimazu I generally ended up being attacked by just one clan from the east (for some reason this was always the Satake who seem to be fixated on the western trade nodes) and as post-patch Hojo I eventually got attacked by the Shoni from the west.

But I never had three big clans (Sakai had 4 provs, Oda 5 and Hojo 3) gang up on me this early before.

Also had major problems maintaining trade deals with even very friendly clans cancelling the turn after I negotiated them.

[Maltz]

Not sure what changed in the new patch's campaign AI aggressiveness. In my current campaign as Date, I have not been landed by the usual offender Imagawa like before (probably because they got destroyed early on). Maybe the game randomizes each clan's personality a bit (like the game Civilization), so if you are really unlucky, you could get multiple AIs landing on you.

But after the patch it is extremely difficult to sign and maintain trading deals. So exploration to the east matters very little now.

[Jacobin]

My next campaign as Mori went very differently

I allied with Bessho (who are still allies 130-odd turns later) so I could focus on the Amako - but when I reduced Aki's garrison to two units and rushed up everything to defend Iwami against a near full Amako stack my original ally the Ouchi instantly went from Very Friendly to Hostile and attacked and took Aki and killed my Daimyo in a dastardly sneak attack

I then devoted every effort to exterminating them but it broke my original plan of eliminating the Amako and then keeping the Ouchi and Bessho as buffers while invading the rich NW corner of Kyushu by sea and as a result its now the late 1570s and I've only just hit Realm Divide.

So overall diplomacy just seems a lot more random than it was - however I am certainly not exploring the coasts again.

[Maltz]

It seems to me that the AI will not hesitate to break alliance if they are surrounded by allies, epsecially if you are one of their allies. This is probably your case with Ouchi, who are allied with Shoni and Mori. So if Ouchi do not start fighting Otomo (or Otomo dies too fast), you might become the victim of their script routine.

When AI is surrounded by AI allies, they will either break one alliance and get the "dishonor treaties -45" modifier with every clan, or launch a naval invasion to somewhere far away. Which way the AI chooses is probably controled by personality. Imagawa seems to always go for the latter. While Hojo loves to backstab.

Another very mean feature in the game is that when an AI clan breaks an alliance with you, there is no message. You have to manually check the diplomatic status to know the alliance is broken and an attack could be imminent.

[Jacobin]

You're right - I am pretty sure Otomo were destroyed almost instantly by the Sagara so Ouchi's options were to attack either Shoni or me - and at legendary they are obviously going to attack the human faction if it is unwise enough to leave its capital almost undefended.

Pity the clan records don't go far enough back and it being legendary I have no saves from that far back so I can't check when they broke their alliance - however I certainly didn't get the message that they are plotting against me.

This Mori campaign has been so epic (largely because of that early betrayal and the prematurely triggered RD I mentioned in another thread) that when it is finished I am thinking of doing another one again rather than moving on to the next faction on the menu.