Well speaking as someone who took great pride in being one of the few players to win Shogun Totalwar without declaring war on anyone, I would argue that 'The Player' should be given the choice of how he wants to play the game, and that the game should be designed to allow him to make that choice, not railroad him into 400 turns of meaningless conflict.
ETW is supposed to be a strategy game, that in itself implies that the player should be able to use some level of strategy in order to prevail.
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