Questions

[R'as al Ghul]

p.s. How did you get the Geisha working at all? I thought agents were hardcoded types? Did you use Inquisitors or something?

Yes, the inquisitor or GI. Basically you change the campmap piece, info text, info graphics, etc, like you would for a unit. You can't change how the agent works, though. That's the problem.

p.p.s. BTW I have just trained a cavalry archers unit and the general is called Mr "Spare Hero Slot".

Yes, known issue. You'll meet more of them. We've more names in beta_8 than in beta_5 but we've still some spare slots.

[caravel]

Yes, the inquisitor or GI. Basically you change the campmap piece, info text, info graphics, etc, like you would for a unit. You can't change how the agent works, though. That's the problem.

I've trained one but the Geisha has no effect as I presume the target has to be catholic (and no factions are).

Yes, known issue. You'll meet more of them. We've more names in beta_8 than in beta_5 but we've still some spare slots.

A non issue, my current Shimazu campaign is going pretty well so far, but the battles are much harder, and I'm playing on the hard difficulty. The good thing is that it's not easy to simply blitz the map (or it's not easy for me anyway as I'm a bit of a turtler).

[R'as al Ghul]

A non issue, my current Shimazu campaign is going pretty well so far, but the battles are much harder, and I'm playing on the hard difficulty. The good thing is that it's not easy to simply blitz the map (or it's not easy for me anyway as I'm a bit of a turtler).

Ouch.
Hard difficulty is really hard. I'm having a hard time on normal already.
If it wasn't for the insane command star boni it would be easier.
Started a Mori campaign and took out Amako quite quickly but then Uesugi did a naval attack on me and is now stuck in Nagato without reinforcements. I may have to get rid of his daimyo there as soon as I recover from the war with Amako. Why did I give ships to Uesugi?

[Puzz3D]

If it wasn't for the insane command star boni it would be easier.

I think the command stars are working better since you reduced them, and, if you use the -green_generals switch, the command stars of the replacement taisho are reduced when a taisho dies. The vices and virtues also affect command stars both positively and negatively. I don't know if further reduction of the command stars would make the game work better. I find that most of my generals in the campaign are 2 to 3 command stars with 4 command stars being a good place to be for a taisho with which you want to go on the offensive. If I get a 5 or 6 star taisho, I find it hard to keep him at that level over a long period of time. The AI is also pretty good at loosing taishos when battling other AI clans, so I don't find that the AI clans accumulate a lot of high command star taishos either.

However, I find the battlefield upgrades to be rather powerful, and your idea of increasing the number of kills necessary for a man to get a battlefield upgrade is something I want to try. I believe that a single battlefield upgrade is giving the equivalent of a 2 command star boost which is a lot because a man can get several of these battlefield upgrades during the course of a battle, and he never looses those upgrades. That's why you can get individual men that are insanely difficult to kill in melee.

Started a Mori campaign and took out Amako quite quickly but then Uesugi did a naval attack on me and is now stuck in Nagato without reinforcements. I may have to get rid of his daimyo there as soon as I recover from the war with Amako. Why did I give ships to Uesugi?

I noticed that the AI will often use the daimyo to command a naval invasion. Initially that invasion will be successful because the AI will strike at a weak province. If you counterattack and win the battle, you can eliminate the AI's daimyo because the invasion force cannot retreat by sea. I've trapped several AI daimyos by purposely leaving a province weak and allowing an invasion, but keeping strong enough forces in adjacent provinces with which to counterattack on the next turn. The main problems with this strategy is that it slows down your expansion, and the AI clan may have plenty of heirs available.

My current Shimazu campaign is the first one where I've used a strategy of building a very strong navy to prevent naval invasions. This has worked since the AI cannot challenge my navy successfully, but it has drawn so much resources away from the land armies that I may not be able to win the campaign because I may not have enough time conquer all the provinces. I'm going to have to be very aggressive on expanding on land from this point on which is going to carry a lot of risk. So, this looks like a good playbalance between naval and land power (I'm using the modified province incomes) since it appears that it's possible to spend too much on naval power and you may have to play the game allowing the possibility of naval invasions.

By far the most difficult problem I have in the campaign is preventing civil wars which are extremely damaging.

[Gregoshi]

Do emissaries have a function other than diplomacy and spying? I ask because for a few years, I had FOUR Oda emissaries hanging out with my daimyo.

[R'as al Ghul]

Do emissaries have a function other than diplomacy and spying? I ask because for a few years, I had FOUR Oda emissaries hanging out with my daimyo.

No, I just need to tweak the agent production.
Atm the AI will rather produce an agent than ruin itself by buying troops it can't afford. Hence it spams agents. It's also difficult to keep the overview of the strategic situation without agents, in that respect it's smart to have some, but four in one province isn't doing anybody any good.

[Raz]

Heh, do upkeeps with agents work?