Oda guides, hints and tips

[Jacobin]

Useful guide.

This was actually the first TW game I've played (and I've played every one except Empire since STW1) where Hard really means Hard.

Every other game I've started off at VH/VH and after a few false starts have won with almost every faction - the only exception I can remember is Austria in NTW which would always be swamped by hordes of enemies attacking from all sides.

The Oda may STW2's Austria - strategic position which makes it hard to expand beyond a handful of provinces without ending up at war with everyone on the map, too far from trade nodes and too resource-strapped to build a proper navy and AFAICS lacking distinctive late game elite units (though this is less of an issue in STW2 admittedly).

Anyway I've tried at least half a dozen campaigns at Hard and always been destroyed before the mid 1550s - the nearest I got to success was when I did follow the south and then east expansion axis to destroy the Imagawa but that just resulted in my being piled onto by Hojo and Takeda from the east and a whole bunch of minor clans from the west.

Vassalising rather than destroying Tokugawa led to an interesting turtle campaign - they went off and conquered the Imagawa and left me free to build stuff in Owari and send out trade ships - I managed to build up my income and a good set of dojos rapidly but came unstuck when I got 'a take an Ikko-Ikki province' mission - taking Echizen eventually embroiled me with every clan in the centre of the map.

Even at hard I have noticed that the Saito can be also peace treatied and vassalised immediately which does free up forces for a couple of turns to focus on the Tokugawa - but they then quickly get destroyed by the Hattori who are much more dangerous enemies.

So at hard every strategy seems to fail - blitzing makes you too many enemies too fast, turtling and surrounding yourselves with vassals and allies just seems to avert disaster for a few more turns.

Which is I suppose good campaign design and AI - certainly better than I expected - although so far I am still not impressed by the battlefield AI.