Uesugi hardest clan?

[Maltz]

I have never played Uesugi on Legendary. I used to read people recommending to defeat Ikko-Ikki first, but the religious unrest will tie us up while we don't have enough good monks to shorten the pain.

Here are two ideas:

The New Hojo: As soon as the game starts, beat Jimbo and force a treaty. Then sell military accesses to all our friendly neighbors, gather a good 1/2-2/3 stack of Ashigaru, and rush south to eliminate Hojo. It should be quite easy to do as it is still early game. After Hojo is done, work on Imagawa and Takeda, but maybe consider forcing a treaty with them - since we want to focus on expanding all the way to Iwate and Higo.

The New Shoni: Sell military accesses and use that money to keep hiring Bow Kobaya from Echigo, and sail every ship west as soon as it comes out, but only use 95% of the movement points for later relay purpose. Once a full stack of Ashigaru is achieved, board the ship with everything you have (a Monk + a Ninja is highly recommended) and use the navy relay method to quickly ship every thing you have all the way west to Hizen. Purposely lose Echigo to rebels (raise the tax the turn before you take Hizen) so you can get trade routes better setup later.

[faker01]

Both ideas need some time and that is what you don't have.

[Maltz]

I should be able to get some time a week later and test them out. Sounds pretty plausible to me. And after moving to Hizen it should be very smooth sailing.

[Jacobin]

The problem with loading all your troops on a ship (which I'd only recommend after taking Sado as Echigo is almost as bad a stack magnet as Owari but I've almost never seen anyone land an army on Sado) and sending it to Hizen is that then you might as well be playing the Shimazu.....

Having said this having finally conquered the Takeda, Hojo, Satomi and Ikko Ikki provinces I found myself with very strong allies blocking my expansion to the east and west so I did end up sending all my monks and ninja on boats to Kyushu to raise some revolts from the Christian Shoni followed by an army to take over the new rebel provs - but this process took so long that I only hit Realm Divide in the 1580s and gave up around 1595 as there was clearly no way I could conquer the additional 18 provinces I needed for domination by 1600 without a rather graceless rush.