Most difficult faction?

[Nowake]

Welcome to the .Org Tixan

Regarding the Oda, don't turn your nose at their Ashigaru -- you can easily hold your domain against the most vicious AI opponents by creating army corps comprised of Oda Ashis up to ~80%. This perk trivializes their conquest of Japan a great deal.

[Vladimir]

The Oda are a favorite of mine. I love super peasants and that they go against the Samurai elitists. Their opening game is difficult and relies on some luck; However, their strategic position gives them easy access to Kyoto and when I played them I became incredibly wealthy. Focusing on a peasant army core allowed me to research Chi arts leading to a great diplomatic game. I held off realm divide until the end because I was so happy with the diplomatic situation.

[faker01]

I have played Oda several times. Diplomatic situation is much depending on luck. Sometime i had war with every faction, some time i could choose my opponents, like in my last game, till a insignificant battle triggered realm divide (in incredible circumstances).
So sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's very easy.

[edyzmedieval]

Oda, and it all boils to luck. Tokugawa too.

Uesugi is sheltered and Echigo is a gold mine in every aspect when it comes to economy. Ports, farms, roads, easy access to trade nodes.

[Xehh II]

So far, I've played as Shimazu, Date, Chosokabe, Uesugi and Tokugawa. I'd say for me Tokugawa and Uesugi were the hardest, well my tokugawa campaign is actually still going but it's not easy. For easiest I'd have to definitley say Date.

[Jarmam]

Easiest is obviously Chosokabe, but discounting this pseudo-faction I'd say Oda is the easiest faction (made a bit harder with the fix to the -20 diplomacy trait, but this didnt bother me too much, clans will ally with you out of necessity if you choose your partners correctly and your early game is such a joke that you dont even need allies that much) followed by Shimazu and then Date (due to their starting positions mixed with speciality mixed with blacksmiths off the bat - all 3 are areas where Shimazu is slightly better off). Then it gets hazy. Uesugi can be a bear but they arent that hard once you get the hang of it - I disagree that expanding with them is hard, you just have to have a lean, crisp 5-6 turn opening targeting Homna instantly and once this succeeds you can fend off Takeda easily while expanding eastwards. Monks are also brutal as all hell in the lategame - apart from Choso's Sniperkyo Samurai Archers, Bow Monks are my most feared enemies and War Cry scares me more than Giger's worst nightmares.

Takeda can be between troublesome and ghoulish and, before the Loan Swords, Ikko could be a nightmare. Now its just hard, prolly cuz it takes such a different approach to play the faction correctly. I havent played Hojo yet (boring specialization and they start in the same area as 3 other factions start, zzz) so cant say about those guys, but I would label Mori as being the toughest out of a personal disgust for non-cannon based naval warfare and a mediocre starting area. I guess you could just abandon your starting area entirely (its worthless), take Chosokabe's island and play as Choso with better nanban "trade" ships, but apart from this method I struggled the most with Mori. Well... if you autoresolve constantly on Legendary, you *will* lose, and I cannot be arsed to use the bloody ships in combat, so this might be my problem. I will probably settle on Ikko due to being poor at playing the faction, or Hojo due to their general worthlessness.

Tokugawa can be pretty brutal but if you dont care about being a Vassal you can completely ignore the southern border, which lets you blitz the Hattori nutjobs (who will declare war on you in a bilisecond so the ability to declare war is not one you will miss - they'll find you anyway), and if this succeeds, Tokugawa is a cakewalk. The ninja provinces are hard to assault, but easy to hold once you have the whole Kyoto-area up to Hatano, and the income from Burakumin villages is ludicrous. I think I stayed a Vassal for 90ish turns and just riced up my provinces until I could field 3 deathballs of high tech fully upgraded units from Ikko's archer/blacksmith starting provinces. Thanks, Imagawa, for your loyal protection - idiot. From there I just toyed around and tested the game out, it was my first real campaign and I couldnt know that Geisha and Kisho ninja are practically worthless.

[GoldenToad]

Well it definitely isn't the Shimazu or Chosakabe. I have found all of the other clans reasonably hard, I haven't spent a lot of time playing the campaign though. I find multiplayer much more interesting.