Hey again Mori, (are you on right now? should play a game of Shogun, lol)

This is actually the first time I've had EVERYONE (but 1 clan) against me like this, and a situation in which it is nigh impossible to make peace. Personally, I don't like being at war. In most campaigns my domain is at peace for as long as I can hold it, and I'm rarely fighting more than 1 (2 at most) daimyo at a time, not couting ronin. When I do attack, it's generally in a blitzkrieg style, rushing huge numbers of troops suddenly into a small area, then pushing them across my enemies' borders as fast as I can without creating loyalty problems, destroying his infrastructure, then falling back to defensible provinces.

I have read your post about your Takeda campaign and I just had a similiar thing happen to me in my 1550 Shimazu campaign. I had conquered all of western Japan and had pushed up to the center where Uesegi, with much more land and larger armies, had taken control of . We had some savage battles over our borders but eventually we both grew tired of it and made peace. Suddenly, clans started reappearing all behind his borders, and he made an alliance with me (whilst we tried to eliminate each other through espionage). Eventually, my ninja and geisha prevailed over his (was mighty close though) and when the Uesugi clan fell almost ALL of his samurai joined me, after only being allies a few years, and I immediately gained central and eastern Japan with huge armies to crush the few remaining feeble clans that had tried to rise again.

As for the Oda campaing I'm playing now, winning on the battlefield is the only reason I'm alive. Though I'm always severely outnumbered my enemies repeated attacks have actually trained my armies, as I take little losses each time whilst they take massive. My large number of high honor, well equipped gunners blow any advancing army to pieces before they even reach my wall of ashigaru spearpoints. Somehow, I've managed to get up a Geisha house way before my enemies so assasination is currently my only hope for offence unfortunately at the moment.

- The General

UPDATE: Five years later, I managed to assassinate into extinction all the remaining clans but two (whose daimyos fell in battle) using only 3 unopposed geisha. Not the most noble or glorious way to conquer a nation, but hey, it was easy...