Nobunaga's Ambition

[ReluctantSamurai]

But, ehm, what did Hideyoshi do in your first battle?

You mean because he only has 24 men left?

BFN........Tokugawa had 4 or 5 of them in this attack. While I was paying attention to another part of the battlefield, two of his BFN were paying particular attention to my heir

Got him out of there just in time, too

My apologies for not having more in-battle pics. I know that makes things more enjoyable but I don't have an i-net connection at the moment and have to put everything on disc and then transfer everything off. A real pain in the butt..........

[ReluctantSamurai]

The Takeda have been struck a mortal blow. The time has come to do the same to the Tokugawa. First their stronghold in Mikawa must be eliminated........
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The battle is bloody, but the cowardly dogs flee when the tide turns against them............

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Another son! May he grow to be strong and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies!

The end comes for the Tokugawa.......

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And now to strike the Uesugi.......

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But the Uesugi prove to be no better then the Takeda or the Tokugawa and they flee before battle can be joined......

The Mori are weak, now, and must be eliminated.......
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A worthy foe who took many of our brave warriors heads.....but in the end, the Oda have gained another step to the Shogunate.......
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One of our spies found a Shimazu general of great renown, and son to their Daimyo. He is no longer.....
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The Shimazu are angered by the death of their heir and strike at us heavily...
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They are led by pathetic boys instead of men and most flee before we can give them an honorable death.......
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Tamba is tested the same season and my son shows many Shimazu the way of the warrior.......
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But they prove no better than their brothers at Kawachi and many flee before we can take their heads....
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Again, the same season, the Hojo have decided that the Oda are ripe for the plucking......
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They find out otherwise......
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The Shimazu have returned in the fall in an attempt to gain the port province of Wakasa, defended by another of my sons.....
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And once again the field runs red with the blood of our enemies.......
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The passing of a great warrior. I, Oda Nobutake, will carry on the mission that my father began.......to unite the clans under one banner........the Oda!
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Spring comes clear and cold and with the melting of the winters snows, the Hojo have renewed their assault on Mino.....
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And once again are turned away........
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With the summer rains come the Shimazu to Tamba again.....
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And like the previous year, the Shimazu leave many dead on the battlefield....
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They return again in the fall........
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And are shown, once again, that the Oda are strong.......sending inexperienced generals to lead their troops leads only to slaughter. And still the Shimazu Daimyo refuses to come out and do battle himself. We will have to change that.......
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The Hojo are proving relentless, and return to Mino the same fall.....
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The Hojo Daimyo himself comes to do battle. The slaughter is great at little cost to us......
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The time has come to strike back! Too long have we stood on the defensive. The Hojo have been bled white and must now pay the price.......
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The enemy lines are breached quickly and they flee from the battle. Our cavalry took many heads this day..........
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The Oda clan grows stronger with each passing season and soon our dominance will extend to all of Japan!
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The Shimazu are now to feel the Oda fist..........
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And a great victory is won by my Ashigaru son.......
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The Hojo have marshalled their strength and seek to have my own head in Mikawa.......
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A great victory is won by our warriors and the Hojo have been dealt a mortal blow.....
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The time has come to take the battle to the Shimazu Daimyo himself......
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After a sharp and intense battle, the Daimyo flees the battlefield with the remnants of his army....
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We must be relentless as hounds on the hunt. The Shimazu must not be allowed to regroup........
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An outpost in Awaji has been secured by this victory. Soon we will bring Shikaku under our dominance!
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The battles of the last few years have proven to be too much for the Shimazu Daimyo and he dies without so much as a wimper. Better to die a warriors death on the battlefield. And now my gaze turns to the Hojo..........
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The battles of the last ten years have been many and sharp. Especially the summer 1600 one in Mikawa. Every bullet and every arrow was expended before Hojo quit the field. Up to now most of the campaign has been defensive but all the while I've been building up reserves and increasing my infrastructure. Apparently the Shimazu heir I assassinated in Harima was the only one left. I might not have done that if I had known. But still, with the Shimazu out of the way I can turn my full attention to the Hojo and perhaps bring a swift conclusion to this campaign. The battles in Mino and Mikawa have bled him white. He maintains a strong force in Shinano but he hasn't many good generals left and my armies are technologically superior and led by experienced generals. One of the things that Oda is blessed with in the 1580 campaign is good leadership. I've tried to take advantage of that. Also, it's easier to fight defensive battles for me, and then counter-strike. My koku output has allowed me to replace losses while all the while building new armies. The income from the cathedral and the Portuguese trading posts have helped greatly to overcome the number of poor harvest years I've had. Still, the Hojo have the richer lands and it remains to be seen if I can kill them faster than they can replace their losses.........

Hojo decides to attack come spring.......
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.......and gets himself caught in a cavalry trap.
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The Hojo have been dealt another crippling defeat......
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.......and with it, their faction is no more.
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The Shogunate is finally mine for the taking.
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I guess Hojo saved me the trouble of cutting through his territory to eliminate the last enemy faction. I forgot to set the victory condition of eliminate all other clans, and I don't really want to slog through rebel-held provinces to reach the ending so it's the end of this campaign.
Of the several times I've played this particular campaign, this has turned out to be the easiest. Usually there are alliances on both fronts to fight. Mori and Shimazu in the south, and at least two on the northern front. I think the first time I played this I had to fight a Uesugi/Takeda/Hojo alliance at once. The invading armies in Mino were often in excess of 5000. That they all fell to fighting amongst themselves contributed to the ease of the level of difficulty. I perhaps could have limited myself to the arquebus instead of muskets, but the last time I played this, Shimazu brought his own muskets to the field, and between those and Mori's monks it became quite a handful. I did limit myself to standard units, for the most part. I didn't train monks in Kawachi even though I had the Temple Complex, and I limited the heavy cavalry to just a few units.

A fun, but regrettably short campaign.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Wow, intense. The AI can sure turn out some giant armies in the late game and they're pretty relentless. Pity they don't protect their daimyo better.

[ReluctantSamurai]

The AI can sure turn out some giant armies in the late game and they're pretty relentless.

It is impressive considering I'm playing with normal 60-man unit sizes. And the relentlessness of the AI in 1580 is what makes this time period so fun to play, IMHO.

[patdj]

Impressive, indeed. Both: AI and player.

If you keep hosting so much screens in your reports, you should consider to upload them at photobucket. There you can upload multiple pictues at once. But you should give them propper names to not loose them in the huge album then.