Oda Legendary level Campaign guide

[TinCow]

I am wondering now if turtling might work - as long as you stay in Owari castle you can beat any invader for at least the first few turns until they start sending katana or naginata samurai at you (at legendary I've never survived long enough to see any Ikko-Ikki warrior monks) - its only when you send an army away to expand your territory that you become very vulnerable indeed.

I've failed twice at Oda Legendary, despite winning Legendary with three other clans. Oda is much harder now with the Ikko Ikki DLC. In my experience, the Ikko show up very early and always attack. The produce very large armies, and their bow ronin totally annihilate defending bow ashigaru. Having to fend off the Ikko, the Hattori, and whoever else decides to pile on against you is simply too much for a single stack, but the immediate Oda starting area cannot really support more than two stacks. You absolutely must expand south down the coastal corridor to get your economy going, which means you need a stack down there to defend it. Withdraw that stack, and the Hojo (or whoever else is hostile down there) will take your profit centers. Leave the stack there, and your defending army at Owari will eventually get overwhelmed.

Next time I play, I am going to try relocating Oda a bit. Owari castle is too vulnerable... so I shall abandon it after having secured the coastal corridor. I will then try and do either a naval invasion of Shikoku, or continue expanding towards the Hojo/Satomi corner of the map. Once those areas are secured and bringing in more profits, I will then re-take Owari and push towards Kyoto. Will post again in this thread once I've tried this, but it seems like a solid plan to me. The Owari castle vulnerability is really what makes Oda so hard (particularly with the Ikko DLC), so the easiest solution would be to stop trying to defend Owari.

[Arjos]

I just failed a legendary Oda as I overexpanded too early, got to 24 provinces by 1558 and I didn't have enough money to keep as many armies I needed :D
The Tokugawa vassal was very useful at the beginning, I kept an halfstack to help them and they sized provinces 'til Odawara, but then they were destroyed due to mismanagement XD
I retook those lands as mine, but 7k Date army was too much; to the west a Shoni, Chosokabe, Mori alliance kept on sending stacks and stacks; the Takeda still had few stacks hanging around, but I couldn't move from few Ikko provinces as I had to keep order...
I might have mustered a new army but Nobunaga died and I didn't want to keep going lol
Gonna build a decent economy and expand slowly, the Chosokabe backstabbed me way before RD and we were even married :S

[Jacobin]

Vassalising the Tokugawa does seem a good idea and now that my campaign has just frozen in mid-update (it cycles through the clans and sticks at Shoni - and of course there is no earlier save to go back to) I will try that in my next attempt.

Firstly it forces the Imagawa to invade by sea which loses them the opportunity of suddenly appearing out of the fog of war and taking Owari castle.

Secondly it solves the occupied Mikawa loyalty problem.

And thirdly after a few turns the Tokugawa should take Totomi (which is mostly worthless) and leave the Imagawa with just Suruga which I can then take and vassalise too.

As my current campaign had me occupying the Tokugawa and Imagawa provinces one by one only to end up with the Takeda and Hojo invading Suruga with big armies this might well work better.