Early TW days

[Martok]

I know but that +1 cavalry bonus is so tempting!

Eh. Imagawa won't be able to hold onto it long enough to take advantage of it anyway.

And the Shinano battle map - it is so beautiful! And defensible - there's a convenient little sunken plateau on some heights to the rear east of the map. The enemy can tire themselves marching there. The ridge line is something of a right angle but just right for about 3 archers and accompanying foot. The sunken plateau can hide your cavalry to hopefully surprise the enemy in a counterattack. An excellent position - but the Shinano map still becomes a virtual Verdun as the Hojo horde and others bleed my men to death there.

Your last sentence highlights exactly why I'm reluctant to move in and take it. It doesn't matter how defensible Shinano is--unless I'm desperate, I don't conquer that province until I know I can hold it. With Takeda still hanging around my western border, I at least have to eliminate him as a threat first.

[Drisos]

I like having Shinano and being attacked there. I could always kill many hundreds of enemies with very few losses, which made attacking a lot easier. (The Imagawa almost sent their entire armies into death in an attack on shinano.. over and over.. )

[matteus the inbred]

I like having Shinano and being attacked there. I could always kill many hundreds of enemies with very few losses, which made attacking a lot easier. (The Imagawa almost sent their entire armies into death in an attack on shinano.. over and over.. )

I agree, inevitably you can lure the enemy daimyo into battle there and then take his head! I once kept a Shogun 'diary' with the Uesegi for a while, and all it said every year was stuff like -
'Defended Shinano vs. Imagawa/Takeda, took 1,236 heads, lost <100 men, killed enemy Daimyo's latest heir...oh, and ran out of money again'
There's more than one good deployment position to defend that map, I'd say there's three...the obvious one on the left centre, the secondary one on the right that Drisos mentions, and the ridge right at the back if you're desperate, which is where the AI usually deploys when it's defending. I did use to hate attacking Shikoku though, some of the eastern provinces there are nasty to assault.
My worst and most embarrassing battlefield experiences, however, usually happened in Kaga vs. the northern warrior monks...!

[Puzz3D]

I agree, inevitably you can lure the enemy daimyo into battle there and then take his head! I once kept a Shogun 'diary' with the Uesegi for a while, and all it said every year was stuff like -
'Defended Shinano vs. Imagawa/Takeda, took 1,236 heads, lost <100 men, killed enemy Daimyo's latest heir...oh, and ran out of money again'
There's more than one good deployment position to defend that map, I'd say there's three...the obvious one on the left centre, the secondary one on the right that Drisos mentions, and the ridge right at the back if you're desperate, which is where the AI usually deploys when it's defending.

I've been able to incorporate all 60 of the original STW maps into the STWmod campaign for MTW/VI using the original ground textures, and new Japanese model pack developed by Barocca. These maps are virtually identical to the original maps. The weather effects in MTW/VI are not as good as they were in STW, but it's compensated by challenging battles. Although maps are grouped according to border type rather than provinces, I did get battles on Shinano 3 out of 4 times when Shinano was attacked in a test campaign. The attacker/defender positions are apparently determined by the orientation of the border over which the attack is made and in these battles I was at the bottom of the map, but still had a good defensive position on the left side. Since there are many more clans represented in STWmod, two of those three attacks were by two allied enemy armies. Unlike RTW, the two enemy allied armies worked together attacking me simultaneously. I was typically outnumberrd by 2 to 1 and in defending 3 times, I won, but only by about 3 to 1 odds despite a good defensive position. In no case was I able to kill the enemy tashio because he's less suicidal in MTW/VI and the hatamoto is slightly better and not as slow as standard heavy cav.

The game does have a crossbow unit that goes away once you can make guns, and it has kensai, battlefield ninja and naginata cavalry. The unit stats are virtually identical to original STW with an adjustment to cavalry charge and archer ammo to compensate for changes in the battle engine between STW and MTW to bring the gameplay closer to original STW. Guns have less, but still adequate ammo. Unfortunately, there are no seasons.

If you want to try this mod, wait for beta 8 which should be out soon. The maps are not right in beta 7.