Discharge the Honourable: Chosokabe (Legendary, Domination)

[Maltz]

Chapter 16. Hunting, hunted

Welcome back, honorable, or not so honorable daimyos. Let's continue the story of Chosokabe. I am Chosokabe Nana.



Let's look at our clan's research plan for the future. We still have about 5-10 years before we finally go all out war. So there are certainly a lot of research items we can complete in the meantime.

Our top priority is to complete the research of Chonindo, the way of townsfolks. Chonindo not only unlocks the ultimate farm upgrade Land Consolidation, which enables us to rapidly develop towns throughout provinces, but also unlocks the Master Bowmaker as the ultimate upgrade of the Artisan line. The Master Bowmaker provides +20% accuracy for bow units.

Next, we wish to complete a set of medium-level Chi arts to enable a 20% discount on all agent actions. Essence of Spirit also unlocks Monastry and the recruitment of Warrior Monks. We will be recruiting the Bow variety in Buzen. These will be the elite Bow units in our army.

Next, we will go after the advanced art for Ninjas, Ninjatsu Mastery. This art allows us to construct the highest-level Sake Den upgrade, the Mizu Shobai District, to provide 25% extra tax income in our richest provinces such as Hizen, and allow us to recruit the most feared assassin, Geisha.

That would be the end of all our research in economy. Next, we will completely shift our focus to the resarch of Bushido, the way of Warrior. We will first complete a number of medium-level arts, then go deep on the Bow path to give us even better Bow units' performance. By then, the most difficult part of our campaign should be over, and we will just make porcupine out of anyone who were not handled by our agents.

[Maltz]

Bizen is the final acquisition of our rapid expansion. My father easily took care of the large rebels in the castle (auto-resolve).



This province has Blacksmiths and Yari Workshop. We can make this one our fourth recruitment center, as this province is right at our border. Other than +5 armor Yari Ashigaru, we look forward to recruit some very good Naginata Samurai. A line of golden armor Naginata Samurai pretty much deflect arrows from the enemy!

[Maltz]

Our Ninja traveled to Etchu, and found that our latest trade partner, Anegakoji, was about to be destroyed the second time. A large Takeda invasion has defeated their main army. If the Takeda army attacks their castle later this season, Anegekoji is done for (again). We will lose a trade partner, but we will also regain Takeda as a trade partner. Maybe Takeda will sell their underwear to trade with us, too.



However, since Takeda is allied with Hojo, and our current objective is to weakend Hojo's power with our agents, we may as well spend 1000 koku and sabotage Takeda's army. By delaying Takeda's attack by one more season, the Anegakoji might have just enough force to repel Takeda's attack.

[Maltz]

As the Takeda army was sabotaged, and their assault on the Etchu castle failed. We expect that the Anegakoji clan would at least appreciate our timely assistance.



However, they repaid us by trying to arrest our Ninja with their Metsuke! This is how they show gratitude?

[Maltz]

And by failing the arrest, Anegakoji is now very embarrassed when they negotiate with us. Our relationship therefore receives a great hit (-48). How is this ever our fault?



We should have received a huge thank, plus an apology from them. But instead now they hate us. What's wrong with this world?

Lesson learned:
(1) Always get rid of an agent when we see one.
(2) Never help another clan, for they are too stupid to say thanks. Or maybe the world is too simple to allow any gratitude expressed. There are tons of ways to express betrayal, though.

[Maltz]

Seeing that my brother Motichika is having some fun with Tosa's rebel, our Ramen general left his army in Awa and joined him in Tosa. Now both of them can enjoy the exercise while there is no enemy to fight.



The first retainer that my brother pick up was a Waka Poet for Honor/Loyalty +1. This will definitely come in handy later. It would be the best if he can have a pet tiger (diplomatic relationships +10), but unfortunatey it is for daimyo only.

[Maltz]

Now my father and his young finance commissioner also decide to setup their own training camp in a nearby province. Our agents have turned this former Hatano province rebel, so they can have the fun, too.



There is a little problem with the rebels here, as they have a Light Cavalry unit that travels faster than our general's bodyguard. However, since we have two general units, we had no problem luring it out and hunting it down with very reasonable casualties (5 men and 7 men, respectively). We will gain those number back during our break in the winter seasons.

[Maltz]

While our agents steadily travel east, we inevitably alearted the local clans, who sent their own agents. Here in Settsu, both Hatakeyama clan Metsuke and Oda clan Ninja made a move on us.



Now we have learned our lessons - all enemy agents will try to destroy us when they see us. So we must do that to them first. That's why we now have two Metsuke joining the action. Their job is to arrest all other agents!

Let's start with these two Hatakeyama Metsuke and Oda Ninja. Our goal is to train these Metsuke by arresting every single new agent from these local clans. Eventually, when our Metsuke becomes famous cops, they could bribe bribe armies at a cheaper price.

[Maltz]

There has been a while since we last fought Wako. But here comes a new opponent. The European traders have dispatched a Back Ship to patrol the coast of Nihon! Are they here to trade with us, or are they here spank us with cannon balls?



The Black Ship is the most powerful naval unit in this world. Its side cannon has a long range of 700, and can easily destroy any approach ship. Can we capture this ship and dominate the water?

Exploit #23: Capturing the Black Ship

On manual combat, the ship can easily destroy a full-stack fleet. However, in auto-combat, the Black Ship is only as powerful as their limited melee crew number. (It is still a large crew of more than 300.)

It is actually possible to capture the Black Ship by a large number of the worst naval unit - Trade Ship with auto-combat, although in manual combat this feat could be extremely unlikely. We will end up losing a lot of Trade Ships and therefore suffer a temporary large hit in trade income. But who can resist the temptation of having the most powerful ship?

If uninterfered, the Black Ship travels around Japan on a high speed, faster than conventional Japanese navy. Any clan that sees the Black Ship probably only has one turn to capture it before it sails away, and has to wait for its return many years later.

The Black Ship tends to avoid any contact in its first encounter, even if they hold the advantage. Depending on which direction the attacker approaches the Black Ship, it will retreat to the opposite direction by a certain distance.

This predictability enable us to capture it in the second encouter in the same turn, where they will be forced to stand and fight. However, from experience, if the Black Ship is approached at its full crew and condition, it is extremely unlikely (never worked for me in over 20 attempts) to capture it in auto-combat. It will simply sink.

Therefore, in such case, we need to weaken, but not kill, the black ship in our second encounter, so we can capture it in the third encounter of the turn.

[Maltz]

Ideal spawning place for capture: It would be ideal if the Black Ship appears close to the western trade nodes, as we would have a large number of trade ships nearby for a coordinated effort. In this case, we have full-stacks of 1 Bow Kabuya + 9 Trade Ship in each trade node. We also have a full stack of regular navy nearby, consisted of 1 Sengoku Bune, 7 Medium Bune, and 2 Bow Kabuya.



Our first move is to force the Black Ship to move further west and therefore into our crossfire of three fleets neraby. This way we are certain that we can capture it with quantity over its quality in auto-resolve combat. We first attack from the east so the Black Ship escapes west. The attacker from the east is simply a Bow Kabuya split from the southern trade node (pointed out by the arrow).

[Maltz]

Now if we simply attack the Black Ship with all three fleets nearby, the ship will be defeated and sink 20 out of 20 times. We need to weaken it first, but without sinking it.



How do we weaken it without sinking it? We used our main naval fleet to engage it alone with auto-combat. Our fleet lost and one Medium Bune was captured, but the Black Ship was also weakened.

Then we move in for the capture with the two trade fleets with a total of 1 Bow Kabuya and 18 Trade Ships.

[Maltz]

Success! A heroic victory on the sea and the Black Ship is ours!



Who wants to convert to Nanban's lord, if our agents are always as effective as missionaries and we will easily get the Black Ship anyway?

[Maltz]

Taste the power of (underground) Law Enforcement! Odas Ninja stumbled in the street chase and fell by our Metsuke's feet.



This is probably the quickest way to train a Metsuke. It would take ages for them to become better supervising towns.

[Maltz]

As our ninja travelled further east, we found that Anegakoji has emptied its defence in order to counterattack Takeda. Since both of them are down to just one province, whoever takes the other's empty castle wins! What a risky and... exploitable behavior. It seems that Takeda had missed their opportunity.



Nah, we are not going to interfere this time.

[Maltz]

There are certain a lot of hostile agents in the capital area. One of our best Ninja was not careful and he was arrested by Oda's Metsuke!



Fortunately, we hired the best lawyer and reduced his charge to "vandalism of historical site". He did burn down a lot of castle gates, but he certainly had not killed anybody (important). He will be freed in Bungo in the next season.

[Maltz]

In the meantime, we constantly check back dating services to see which clan has a daughter to marry into us. Currently, only the Hatameyama clan has an available daughter. But only an idiot wants to make friends with them, as they are pretty much the public enemy of all Japan, and they are on the blink of elimination.



But we noticed something big - Oda and Hojo, the two most powerful clans after us, have become allies! This is quite a shock, as we saw Hojo betrayed and destroyed Satomi not so long ago. It is shocking that Oda would put their trust on Hojo.

The alliance of the two signals the bad news for Ikko-ikki and Hatakeyama, as Oda and Hojo should be able to get rid of them rather quickly. We might be able to bribe them to break the alliance just before the Realm Divide, but doing so now is meaningless, as they can simply re-ally on the next season. Now our biggest diplomatic fear has come true - we have to be more careful.

That concludes chapter 16 of our story.

[Maltz]

Chapter 17. Infiltration

Welcome back, great daimyos. I am Chosokabe Nana.

After we capture the Black Ship, we were eager to test its power on the water. It happened that a Wako fleet approached our coast. And they don't even try to escape when our massive Grim Repear apporaches. Taste cannon balls!



We positioned our Black Ship on the far corner of the deployment zone, with the wind blowing against the approaching enemy. This greatly slowed them down, and we were able to destroy that entire Wako fleet before they even fired an arrow at us!

[Maltz]

Since our Metsuke has been active on the field arresting other agents, we were given a mission to bribe any army in order to receive a boost of Metsuke's success chance by 10% for 6 seasons.



This is pretty pointless, as our Metsuke will always succeed anyway. And we certainly don't want to bribe other clan's armies to make unecessary enemies.

[Maltz]

While we infiltrated all our available monks and ninjas into Hojo's territory, our two Metsuke watch out the development of Kinki and arrest any agent who just graduated from their respective temple/market/sake den. For example, that fresh Hatano ninja is about to be trialed and executed.



Oda has amassed a huge army of almost four full stacks. They will have no trouble taking the Settsu province from Hatakeyama, who does not even bother defending the castle. Our Metsuke reported that Hatakeyama's full stack of army in the south. They were smart not to defend the caslte, as they had no chance.

Interestingly, although Oda has this extremely powerful army, they were not in a hurry to take the castle right away. Oda's stacks have been standing there for a year now. Also, Oda is leaving most of their provinces lightly defended. If that Hatekeyama's one full-stack army wants to steal any city from Oda, they can. But strangely, they are not doing it.

Also joining the party is Hatano's one stack and half. Since Hatano is at war with both Hatakeyama (they are pretty much the enemies of all Japan) and Oda, Hatano has no chance to take the province. So why are they even here, only waiting to be crushed by Oda? (Indeed, that's what happened later this season.) It would be reasonable if Hatano sets up an ambush in the forest in their own territory.

Exploit #24: Probing the weakness the Horde

The above observations on our future opponent clans give us valuable insights of their way of thinking, and allow us to come up with powerful strategies to exploit their weakness.

For example, since the opponent clans really like to have one giant but slow group of stacks but leave other provinces relatively defenseless, we can easily turn their other provinces to rebel when their horde is far and away.

Also, if we are able to sabotage one stack, are the other stack going to wait for them to catch up? In all these turns Oda was standing in Settsu, they seemed to be waiting for more units, although they already had far more than necessary.

Even if the horde does attack us, on the battlefield, only one stack shows up at a time. The only thing that we need to worry if that we will run out of arrows before they run out of reinforcement. With 50% more ammunition, we can probably rout two full stacks. But if we are the defender, we can always use the battle timer to restrict the length of the battle so at most two stacks show up. If we had to sally from a castle, we can use our savings and two Metsuke nearby to instantly bribe away two of their full stacks. Now we have a spectacular fortune, there are limitless possibilities.

[Maltz]

Let's verify our theory. While our agents' main objective is to weaken Hojo, we happen to pass by some more distant Oda provinces, very far away from the Horde in Settsu.



Ops. One less province for Oda. Now if we turn another province to rebel, we will be able to sever the land trade between Oda and Hojo.

[Maltz]

One less province for Hojo, too.



The northeastern provinces are very far apart from each other, so even if we will have 4 monks and 5 ninjas working together, we need quite a few seasons to effectively weaken Hojo. Maybe we will keep going until they only have one province left - the province that they use to trade with us.

By the way, the Honma clan seems to be very content with their two full stacks on Sado isoland. If they sail out, they can easily capture a few provinces nearby. Maybe they are just not ambitious enough.

[Maltz]

There are certainly a lot of agent activites around Kyoto. The Ashikaga shogun is particularly fond of monks. Every time we arrest and secretly executed one, they train another immediately.



Excellent training facility for our Metsuke. After a few arrests, our Metsuke gets the trait "Vicious".

[Maltz]

Our agents engaged in heavy combat with Hojo's agents. Of course, we won. We killed about 5 Hojo's agents here. This Metsuke will be the last.

It seems that each clan has a different pre-set rule of hiring a certain agent. As soon as one dies, they will hire another one. For example, Ashikaga (Kyoto) always hires Monk. Anekagoji and Hojo always hires Metsuke. Hojo has a lot of Metsuke.



Hojo lost Izu and its gold mine, an important income source. Or can they hire army without money anyway? (from experience, they actually can run out of money even on legendary)
By the way, our trade with Hojo used to be worth more than 4000 koku, but since we are turning their provinces to rebels, we are selling less and less products, too. That's why we need to develop towns and reduce our reliance on trade income.

[Maltz]

Here we are given a new mission - to assassinate anybody. The reward is increased ninja success chance.



While this mission is very easy to complete, right now our ninja's priority is to sabotage castle gates to prevent a province from hiring new troops, while our monk recite a rebellion there.

We don't need increased ninja success chance anyway.

[Maltz]

Finally, our research on Chonindo is complete. There is now a massive farm upgrade in our provinces. But it will take another two years to finish.

Hm, this world's research and infrastructures are taking way too long compared to the pace of expansion and war.



As planned, our next goal is to complete the 3rd-tier arts of the Way of Chi.

[Maltz]

Here we have our first 6-star Ninja, Takanaga san! He was our very first Ninja, hired in Shigoku in the very first year of our campaign. He is now 44 years old!



And he is our expert on assassination and army sabotage - same as any other Ninja we have. The success chance for opening castle gates are already very high anyway. Hm, why do we care about success chance?

[Maltz]

We were debating whether to incite a rebellion in Hojo's capital, Sagami, which may cancel our trade agreement with Hojo and waste away the positive relationship built up over the past years. But there is no need for debate anymore. Ikko-Ikki has amassed an army of almost two stacks, heading for Hojo's relatively defenceless core region. Hojo's army is really scattered here and there and can't save their capital in time. So we will probably lose our trade with Hojo.

So let's turn all these provinces to rebel anyway.



Thoughts #25: Trade Cancellation

When trading is no longer possible between two clans, the trading agreement is automatically cancelled, and all accumulated positive relationships from trading is forever lost.

For sea trade to happen, a clan must have a LAND ROUTE connection between its capital and a trading (or above) port. The specific trade port then becomes the designated trading port. If that province is lost, the trade is automatically cancelled, no matter how many other available trading ports remain. If that designated port is blocked by a hostile fleet, all trade income is lost for the turn (the trade agreement remains), even if your territory is right next to them and you can easily ship goods to them via the land route. This does not make any sense, but it is how it goes.

Land-trades are not so easily broken, though. If two trading clans already have a land-route connection between their capitals, when the land route is broken, a sea route may be used and trade is not cancelled. Only if no land and sea routes are possible will a land trade route cancel. This happened to us when we relocated from Tosa to Bungo - we were still trading with Miyoshi after the move.

When our capital is base in Kyushu, when we trade with another daimyo on the mainland, sea trade is the default way even if land route is possible (probably because sea trade offers more income).

Note: There is a bug that when we lose a trade partner, we are unable to find a new one until we load a new save.

[Maltz]

The Ikko-Ikki is really serious about aggression - not only did they send two stacks to steal Hojo's heart provinces, but they also managed to steal Oda's capital Owari when Oda's giant stacks were not paying attention. Since all our trading goods were shipped to Owari, our trade with Oda is also lost.



But Oda really like to have a Wal-Mart type (dumping everything to you for $) trading partner like us. Look at how much Oda is willing to pay us to restore our trade! Can you come back every year, Ikko-ikki?

While waiting for our tax income to catch up, our trading network is so well developed that so many clans are willing to sell their sons and daughters to trade with us, even though we will profit much more than they from us.

Since the sea trade routes are so easily broken, it might be profitable to purposely incite a rebellion in the clan's designated trading port province with us, if we will be able to restore the trade immediately after. The loss of a trade partner's province means less trade income for us, though. A short-term gain vs. long-term loss.

[Maltz]

And here we have our first 6-star monk as well. Apparently, the more experienced they are, the less money they need to carry and the less clothing they can afford.



He is am expert of reciting rebellion and spreading the good old Shinto-Buddhism. It will come in handy when we eventually expand into the Ikko-Ikki territory.

[Maltz]

While my father and his young general think they have a private training ground with the rebels, Hatano sent an army to join the fun. Since we have "reserved" this castle by constantly laying siege on the rebel castle (later, we found out that general's bodyguards alone do not suffer from winter attrition, so we can train every season, every year), the Hatano army could only watch.



But they did join one combat as our ally, even if we are not allies. Maybe the fact that we are both at the war with the rebels are good enough reasons. They killed off most of the sally defenders, but we purposely let some of them go so our training can continue. Luckily, the Hatano army did not get that close to "help us" anymore. They just patiently wait in the field, forever.

Maybe they think we will eventually lose and the castle will be theirs to take. Or maybe they are not even this smart - they are simply given the order to take this castle, and will keep waiting until the castle is available to be attacked.