I am playing Takeda and have taken all provinces except Tosa (held by Shimazu). I have huge production capability and superb troops available. Just for grins, I gather the ultimate Takeda assault force: I have my Daimyo, 2 gold shield/3 sword archers, and a mix of HC and NC... **ALL** gold shield with 2 or 3 swords. Most are honor 5 with a few 4s.

I deploy for the ultimate cavalry charge and simply blow Shimazu off the map. With unit size of 60, my worst-hurt unit was still in the mid-50's with no enemy left. Most are still at 59 or 60. Since reinforcements appear anywhere now, I scatter my units around the entire (huge?) map. Shimazu had about 4 thousand troops available (I only brought the original 16 units.) Shimazu units keep popping up EVERYWHERE... even on the beach!! The game gets REALLY boring as I am forced to board my Medieval Japanese AWACS aircraft and begin a ceaseless patrol of the borders... round and round we go. Wherever I spot somebody, I sic a nearby HC or NC on them and blow them away. It goes on... and on... and on... and when the timer runs out... I LOSE!!! Somehow, somewhere there has to be a small surviving unit. I kill over 1800, losing about 100 and I LOSE???

OK, since I **AM** the "horde", I reload, recombine, mount up again, and IT HAPPENS AGAIN!! I effing LOSE!

OK, since I **AM** the "horde", I reload, recombine, mount up again, and IT ALMOST
HAPPENS AGAIN!! Near the end of the battle period, I finally spot some enemy hidden in a spot on the beach behind a rock at the far upper right of the map. (Note this directly BEHIND my original position, and on a peninsula. These guys must be a SEAL team landed in rubber boats!) It looks like only one or two sprites but it says "60"??? Apparently the AI has dropped all of the men into a tiny area making them essentially invisible when viewing from a distance. This time I have time to get a unit of HC over there just before the timer runs out and watch the count of sprites rapidly count down to zero.

OK, NOW I win!

I hereby state my opinion that the current reinforcement method is seriously, seriously f*****d, errrr, flawed. These are HUGE maps and there simply would be no way to pull it off at all if you play with a restricted camera. Sometimes it seems the AI unit simply holes up at the edge of the map and does not move.

It has now become necessary to fan out and sweep the whole board, especially woods. Oh yeah: and if the enemy has some battlefield ninja "hiding in plain sight" ... you're totally screwed... grumble, grumble.