How to win as Oda?

[ReluctantSamurai]

With this rules, 1580 Oda is like impossible to win. But the fun is definite!

With rules like those, you are certifiably crazy

Just kidding, of course

Actually, of the rules you laid down for yourself, the only one I don't hold myself to is the training of HC. I tend to not use them much anyway, but still, I usually train a small number of them once I reach Shinano.

As always, Takeda and Imaawa attacked Mino and defeated me.

That's the very first battle that you must win, although you seem to have eventually recovered from your loss. I strip everything else to the bare bones to ship troops to Mino and you absolutely have to maximize the damage to them from your guns because they will keep coming, season after season until you kill one...or both of them. The only respite you will get is by devastating the attacking armies so badly that it takes them several seasons to amass enough troops to continue. This is your primary goal, at the start. Bleed them in one defensive battle after another while you slowly build new armies in your hinterlands for the eventual counter-attack.

That first battle is one of the few times I do not defend Mino from the big hill to the right of the valley. That hill doesn't offer an immediate line-of-fire for your guns. You have to wait for the enemy to crest the edge. If Imagawa leads the attack, his BFN will get into your guns rather quickly and rout them. The battle is as good as over, at that point. If Takeda leads the attack, his cavalry will get into your guns before you can do much damage to them. And again, you can kiss Mino goodbye.

But from the hill in the far left corner, your guns have maximum line-of-sight, and because it's a steep hill, you can place your YA directly in front of the guns as the teppo will be able to shoot over them. The other advantage is that one or the other will reach you before their ally, allowing you to defeat them, piecemeal. In my experience, Imagawa is most often the initiator, so you can concentrate on taking out his BFN first. Once they are gone, he has nothing but YS & SA and becomes less of a threat than Takeda's approaching cavalry.

I'm sure there are other ways to do it. I've tried various tactics, but the one I've described always seems to net me the most kills for the least damage to my own. I'll have to spruce up my last Oda campaign (Nobunaga's Ambition) as some of the links to screenies seem to not work...but you can look there to see some of the kill ratios I managed to achieve.