Discharge the Honourable: Chosokabe (Legendary, Domination)

[Maltz]

Chapter 03. Sogo, one clan destroyed by one man

Welcome back, great daimyos.

By exempting Iyo's tax, we only needed to leave two units of garrison there, and started marching the rest of our army toward Sogo clan's Sanuki province in the winter of 1545. By the next spring, we stopped just short of the border of Sanuki. War is not to be declared to Sanuki until the summer, as the army will be able to reach the castle in the same season. There is no point to give Sogo one season to prepare.



Chosokobe's very first Ninja has just obtained his undergraduate degree from Tosa's Ninja College. He is on his way for his first assignment. He reports that most of the Sogo clan's force, which is slightly more powerful than ours, is surprisingly stationed outside the castle. This is actually good news for us, since the castle there has been upgraded to a stronghold. A siege battle is undesirable because we will be inevitably shot by the arrow towers on the top and only level. But how do we deal with a more powerful army?

Dai jo bu (No problem).

Exploit #04. Free save points. Initiating a castle siege creates a new auto-save. However, there is no need to fight the siege battle immediately as we can choose continue to the siege, and create another new save the next time we consider attacking the castle. Since loading each new save generates a different parallel universe, we have infinite opportunities to make whatever our wishes come true as long as we have an army besieging a castle.



Our army reached the castle In the summer of 1946. Our army is in no shape to score a great victory against a superior force like this. What should we do? Well, didn't we already plan for this one year ago?

Thoughts #04. Ninja: Sabotage army I have heard Daimyos advocating that Ninja should not be used on a Legendary world because their shadowy missions are too expensive. Indeed, Ninja missions cost an arm and a leg, especially the sabotage army missions. Sabotaging a full stack costs slightly more than 1000 koku. However, a sabotaged army is unable to move for the current turn. During this paralysis, they are also unable to participate any nearby battle as reinforcement. This can create very dramatic outcomes, saving us more than 1000 koku in return.



That's indeed our plan. Our ninja, although fresh from college, was destined to sabotage Sogo's medium-large force because luck, if there is any involved, is always on our side. Now, the Sogo army was unable to reinforce the castle defenders even if they were just outside the castle. There must be a fire breaking out in their ration storage tent.



The siege battle was fought without my knowledge of the details (auto-resolve). But somehow we managed to pull it off without anybody receiving a scratch even though there were arrow towers in the Stronghold. How did we achieve that is a mystery.

Exploit #05. Auto-resolve. If you vastly outnumber the enemy, auto-resolve usually scores the win with 0 loss, which could be impossible to achieve if the battle was fought manually.



After stealing the castle under the eyes of the Sogo army, both my father and his general become even better strategists, and learned to compose basic poems that consists of inconsistent rhymes, fallen-apart parallel structures, and cliche scenic and emotional words. Good enough for our ashigaru to admire so they discover Bushido slightly faster.



Our researchers first followed the Way of Chi for the Emperors' permits to construct Markets and Temples, both enabling the recruitment of useful agents. We did not have the fund to build any yet, though. Our next goal is to switch to the way of Warrior, Bushido, and grab Heaven and Earth, which gives us more 50% more arrows. Not useful during a field battle, but very interesting when dealing with extremely predictable castle defenders.



Now we have the castle, but the Sanuki force remains. The remaining army of a destroyed clan only vanishes if it is outside their own territory. We are in no hurry to deal with it now, since fighting on the field can be problematic. We will not be able to stop the enemy general bodyguards' charge once our extremely limited melee units have engaged the enemy. Our bow-rich army is optimized against castle defenders or an all-infantry army on the field. Cavalry is bad news.

Dai jo bu.

Thoughts #05. Ninja: Assassination In this world (of STW2), clans no longer go extinct once all of their family members are assassinated. There will always be a randomly adopted distant third cousin. Therefore, family genocide is no longer a meaningful practice. The role of assassination is therefore reduced to remove key general's units in an army to (1) remove the threat of cavalry, or to (2) remove the various bonuses the general would have applied to his units if a battle is about to take place on the same turn. Trigger happy on assassination of any general we see only adds financial burden to the clan.

As there are two generals in the Sogo army, we need to take care of both of them before we fight the field battle. A wounded general is a good as a dead general.

In the meantime, we hired one additional unit of Yari Ashigaru to make the total to 2 (the rest of them were left in Iyo), and started the construction of a Buddhist Temple in Sanuki to plan for something further ahead.



Winter of 1546 came. The freed Sogo army managed to sabotage their old quarry in the province, and laid siege to their old castle. We would love to see them assaulting the castle, but they were smart enough not to do so. If we don't do anything about it for this winter, they will suffer attrition in the field. However, as soon as our Ninja wounded their second and last general, the time is ripe for a field battle. Why wait for the next season if we can beat them up this season?



The Sogo army had quite a few units of Yari Ashigaru, with a fewer percentage of Bow Ashigaru. Our army has the opposite composition, but with two additional units of general and the 45 Samurai Retainers that volunteered to join the sally. These guys have a lot of brothers and cousins as replacement, so even if they end up all dead, we will not feel any pain.



The Sogo army, led by an inexperienced Ashigaru commander, was naive enough to march towards us. Maybe that's their honorable way to die under impossible odds? This gives us the pleasure to camp on the highest hill, with six units of Bow Ashigaru in loose formation of a little "[" shaped pocket, taking their best view of the field.

When the enemy approaches, my father and his general inspired two units of Bow Ashigaru. They and the remaining bowmen rained endless arrows on the enemy's head. The Sogo Yari Ashigaru tried to charge uphill, but they were soon stopped by our brave Samurai Retainer and Yari Ashigaru half way. They are arranged in a wide and thin formation so that they can stick with as many units as possible. All enemy units in contact of our melee will be unable to charge our archers, so that our archers can continue to harm them. They ended up sticking with five out of the six Sogo Yari Ashigaru units (the Samurai retainers only had 45 men, so they only managed to intercept one unit).



The only Sogo Yari Ashigaru not entangled in melee rushed toward our archer on the left flank. That's why there are generals! My father bravely charged the flank of this unit. He could not remain a good formation since he had to run through the ranks of archers. His general also charged forward towards the Sogo's Bow Ashigaru.



In a short time, all of Sogo's Yari Ashigaru routed, followed by their Bow Ashigaru. The day is ours!

Thought #06. End Battle or Continue? I have heard a lot of recommendations of not ending a battle when the choice is presented in the first time, but manually chase down the routed soldiers. In fact, if you choose to End the Battle in the first opportunity given, you have a good chance to leave nobody alive. If you choose to Continue, you might not be able to hunt everybody down. Killing everybody might not be always desirable, because leaving weakened remnant army alive could provide another 15 EXP for the generals when there is no time pressure.

Indeed, we purposely let some very weak units escape, only to hunt them down immediately after. This enabled my father and his general to gain more experience. We have no time pressure at the moment, because our next opponent will be so powerful that we need one extra year of preparation.

This concludes Chapter 3 of the story.

[Maltz]

Chapter 04. The showdown of Shigoku

In two years' time, we the Chosokabe clan was able to remove the minor factions of Shigoku. What remains is the Miyoshi clan, our loyal, friendly, and powerful trade partner. Miyoshi holds the provinces of Awa and Awaji, a little island connected by a narrow strait. Both Miyoshi's provinces offer something good - the war horses from Awa, and an additional harbor from Awaji. This will bring a total of our future trading ports to three, greatly increasing our sea trade income.

Declaring war on Miyoshi could create strategic difficulties, though. First, the clan starts with a foot hold in Honshu, the main island, so we will have difficulty eradicating them, and their large naval forces would threaten ours. Fortunately, at this time Miyoshi had already lost their Honshu province. As soon as we take over Shigoku, Miyoshi is forever gone.

The second problem is that Miyoshi is allied with the Bessho clan northeast of our Shigoku island. Declaring war on Miyoshi probably will make us the enemy of Bessho, which we will have to deal with later. Besides, the Bessho clan has other allies, so our trouble might grows larger and larger.



On the tactical side, Miyoshi does not have a weak army like Kono or Sogo. Since two years ago, they have been stock-piling units in Awa. While our total force at this moment consist of half a stack, the Miyoshi's force has reached a full stack of 20 units. We cannot beat them even if we exhaust our wits and less-honorable tricks. We must recruit more soldiers to bring the odds to our side.

Therefore, in the winter of 1546, my father returned to Tosa and Iyo to lead new recruits and old garrisons back to Sanuki. We aim for totally 10 units of Bow Ashigaru, 4 units of Yari Ashigaru, plus the starting 1 unit of Yari Samurai for the winter of 1547. That's not a full stack (20 units), but enough to give us a good chance to hurt Miyoshi's full stack plus whatever reinforcement they have.

Also, as the temple in Sanuki is completed, we hired a monk. He will assist in our struggle against the powerful Miyoshi.

In the meantime, we have sent out 4 units of Bow Kabuya to occupy as many trade nodes as we can. We ended up taking two out of the four western trade nodes. The other two was reserved by no other than Miyoshi. That means if we beat Miyoshi, we will have all of the four trade nodes west of Kyushu.



Soon, our Ninja detected that Miyoshi was upgrading their Awa Fort to a Stronghold, which has arrow towers that can kill a lot of our men. Therefore, we must prevent the completion of their Stronghold. Fortunately, we can easily do that by Sabotaging their Castle Gate with our Ninja. I do not understand why they can't continue working on their Arrow Tower while only the gate is broken. Besides, each time we break the Gate, the work on the Stronghold would be delayed by two turns even though Miyoshi must have infinite funds to hire so many soldiers so quickly. As a result, we can easily keep Miyoshi's Stronghold one turn from completion, while in the meantime, some of Miyoshi's generals would suffer a bad, or something fatal diarrhea from drinking poisoned tea.



We were ready for war by the winter of 1547! Miyoshi's defence had swelled to 25 units of soldiers. (Luckily, their generals are all lying in the hospital or cemetery.) There is no way to avoid a fierce siege battle. This is going to be our final exam of Siege 101: Attacking enemies in a Fort. We need to be able to predict Miyoshi's every move, and use various techniques to trick them to behave in the ways we desire.



Stage 1: Deployment to lock in on wall defenders

Miyoshi is going to have reinforcements. We predicted that their reinforcement is going to come from the west side of the Awa castle, so we deployed everything to the west in order to kill each reinforcement as they enter the battlefield. This would happen later, as the defenders in the castle is already at full capacity. The reinforcement would only arrive if they started losing units.

By deploying everything on the west side of the castle, we attracted all Miyoshi's wall defending Bow Ashigaru to the west and south sides of the castle. (All Bow Ashigarus are pointed by arrows.) There are four units of them. They will not move away as long as our bulk army does not move too close to another side of the castle.

You must have observed that two additional units of Miyoshi Bow Ashigaru remain mobile in the castle. We need to take them out to create a safe shooting spot to the other defenders.



Stage 2: Lure out the mobile shooters

Luring out the mobile shooters is easy. All we need to do is to initiate an archers' duel, and then pull back the duelling unit. The defenders will happily give chase and exit the castle. Soon, they will hope that they were smarter.

Since currently there are no wall defending shooters on the east side of the castle, we marched both generals, one Yari Samurai (in rare cases, Light Cavalry would come out of the castle), and one Bow Ashigaru unit all the way to the east side. Once we started the archer's duel, two Miyoshi Bow Ashigaru units joined the shoot-out.



We quickly pulled back our Bow Ashigaru, and Miyoshi's two Bow Ashigaru units gave pursuit just as expected. Once they were sufficiently far away from the castle, our two generals charged them head-on. (Actually, we kind of screwed up on timing, so my father ended up charging both units before his aids came close. Luckily, no arrow found his face.) The Miyoshi men were quickly routed and hunted down.

By the way, when a castle-defending unit routed outside the castle, they will not attempt to flee back into the castle. Instead, they try to retreat to the edge of the battlefield.

Once an existing unit dies off or flees, the reinforcement will arrive.



Stage 3: Dealing with the reinforcements

Miyoshi's reinforcement showed up on the side we expected, from the western edge of the battlefield. Thanks to our Monk, these soldiers have been contemplating about Zen, and doubts their meaning of life as a cannon-fodder Ashigaru. So we expect them to wave the white flag fairly quickly.

As the reinforcement appeared, my father quickly rushed back from the east to defend the path to the castle along with four units of Yari Ashigaru. Miyoshi's leading Light Cavalry was quickly routed when they ran into spears. Their Yari Ashigaru units suffered a similar fate, outnumbered, surrounded and destroyed in order.



Then two units of Bow Ashigaru appeared. We pulled back our melee units, and used our own Bow Ashigaru to duel them. With height advantage and the daimyo's personal inspiration, we took very reasonable losses when the opponent ran for their lives.

However, since they routed quite quickly, they will remain active on the field after this battle, but probably won't have enough time to cause any problem.



Stage 4: Targeting Practice

All reinforcement has been taken care of. We can focus on the defenders in the castle by shooting just outside the east wall, one Bow Ashigaru at a time. When one unit exhaust their ammunition, they walk back to join the rest of the army on the west side, while the next unit walks up. Our two generals take turn to inspire the shooters, making them think they are Bow Samurais.

Each unit kills more than 200 men, sometimes 300. We had 10 units of Bow Ashigaru. So we should have enough arrows to get them all.



The targeting practices started with the closest wall-defending Bow Ashigaru. We were able to kill all but one man in the Bow Ashigaru unit defending the south wall. That lucky guy was hiding behind a pillar.

For safety, we next disabled the Light Cavalry units. The trick is to only shoot at most two volleys at a unit that has just become stationary (usually after the second volley, they will start running).

After about six units of Bow Ashigaru used up their arrows, the once heavily populated Awa castle has been littered with corpses. The remnants of the melee units are no longer any threat. But we still have not cause any damage to three units of wall defenders, who are on the other side of the wall and is out of range. They have to move for us to shoot.



Stage 5: Reposition the wall defenders for elimination

We need to reposition the wall defenders so they actually enters our range. Ideally, they should face the south side, since the walls on the west and east sides of the castle are not very tall. We successfully tricked them to move when we relocated our idle army to the south side of the castle, close enough but still outside of their range.

Now both the west and east sides of the castle are safe for shooting. However, there too many wall defenders, so when they spread out, they were able to cover a little section of the west and east wall.

After some careful marching (actually not very careful, we lost about a dozen of men who accidentally walked into their bow Ashigaru's fire range), we were able to find a small area on the east wall for our Bow Ashigaru to shoot most of the wall defenders down. Some of them are untouchable due to distance and building protection.

We have to make them move again.



So we moved all of our idle units back to the west side. The defenders follow. Now our shooters could use the south wall for some more easy kills.



But some Bow Ashigaru are still sheltered by the gate house. The only side of the castle that does not have a gate house is the south side. Why not move them back? Their number has been cut down so much, so they will all fall into the range of our arrows.



That's exactly what happened. Can't hide this time! All three wall defenders eliminated.



The last Bow Ashigaru were targeted by an entire unit and had dozens of arrows going through his chest. Really poor guy.



Oh here is a smart guy. Can you tell which one? He is the one hiding just under the little shrine. The battle ended before our Bow Ashigaru ran out of arrow, because they had to run inside the castle to get this smart guy.



Finally, the battle is over. 2800 of Miyoshi's men lost their lives, but only slightly less than 200 Chosokabe men were killed. Apparently we passed the final exam of Siege 101! It is the power of knowledge and patience (this battle took a long, long time even on fast forward replay).



Now Miyoshi's main army is destroyed in Awa. Just a tiny province remains. Shouldn't be any problem... Unfortunately, we have a situation here. Miyoshi's ship is parked on both sides of the narrow straight between Awa and Awaji, so our army cannot pass! All we could do was to quickly queue a Medium Bune from Tosa, and pull back the Bow Kabuya that we sent to explore along the east coast of Japan. Together they should be able to get rid of the two Bow Kabuya.

Strangely, Miyoshi voluntarily moved away both ships in the following two seasons. In the spring of 1948, the second and last ship moved away to attack our Bow Kabuya returning from the east. We had no intention to fight, so we just dragged them in large circles to end this meaningless encounter.



Exploit #06: Battle Timer. A Legendary world does not prevent us from changing the time limit of battles. For small-scale defensive naval battles that we wish to avoid, simply change the battle timer to 20 minutes, and run in great circles on the map. The enemy also does not seem to use the "Battle Speed" ability. So we can even slowly increase our lead off the enemy ship.

By the way, a similar exploit can be used to win siege battles - by laying a siege with just one general unit. Every time the defenders sally, just circle the battlefield while the enemy cannot catch up. After 3-4 fights, the castle defenders will starve out. This works against an all-infantry army. If the enemy has cavalry, though, they might be able to catch up our general when the battle timer is almost up. Maltz-san tried that to the Miyoshi's Awa garrison and his general died miserably at the end.



With the Miyoshi navy gone, our army in Awa quickly laid siege to Awaji and stormed the castle. I am unclear about the details of the battle (auto-resolve), but I do know that we only lost 70 men to kill all of their 700 plus. That's really good.



My father became a really experienced army commander after this battle, so he picked up the ability Stand and Fight, which provides a huge boost to nearby units. He also learned to become more honorable such as by swearing less often, so the other clans will show him more respect.



My father was also able to hire a second retainer. After numerous interviews (which is why the siege of Awaji is auto-resolved), he picked up a... sword as his second retainer. The Sword of Amaterasu, the Okami! (Echo: Okami! Okami! Okami...)



News travels quickly. The Emperor in Kyoto has noted our successful conquest of Shigoku. What lies ahead? Only one thing is certain - we will be facing tougher and tougher challenges.

That concludes Chapter 4 of our story.

[Maltz]

Chapter 05. Good things happen

Welcome back, wise Daimyos.

Notice: It seems that our chapters are getting long, that even the first page of thie war story stretches from the front gate to the out house. Many of you could experience slow load time. Therefore, we are going to have one picture per entry until we get to the next page.



It is the year of Nanban's Lord, autumn 1548. A great harvest arrived, and we decided to stockpile the food so we could have 4 seasons of 5 food surplus. This would translate to +20 growth in the castle town's commerce. At 20-30% of tax and 5 provinces, this means 25 extra koku per season to the end of the campaign. Not so much, but good to have in mind.

Note: Events like these (great harvest, Nanban trade port, etc.) are random. But if this season's auto-save file is loaded, the event is forever lost as if it never happened. The closest solution is to initiate some kind of battle in the turn in order to have a new save that perserves the good event. On the bright side, if we get bad news, it can be easily fixed, too.

We the Chosokabe clan gained controlled of all Shigoku. But in order to compete with other clans of Nihon (Japan), we still have a lot to do.

[Maltz]

Thoughts #06: One enemy at a time

Nihon's #1 "Daimyo" magazine published its latest military power ranking of all clans. Our clan unfortunately ranks very poorly, down to the Weak category, although our economic power is ranked in as Moderate. Therefore, we score quite high on the fat meat index.

Aggressive and ambitious clans would think that Chosokabe is a loose passive fish and declare war on us as soon as they run out of enemies. But in fact, we probably will stay high on the "fat meat" index forever, since we are the only clan in Nihon that does not print its own money and recruit self-replicating soldiers.

We have to be careful not to make multiple enemies, or we will be overwhelmed by their wealth and number. Therefore, the hostility of the Bessho clan, who honorably joined Miyoshi's side against us, must be discharged before we find another enemy to fight.

[Maltz]

Thoughts #07: Cheap Marriage

After Bessho succumbs to our power, our next target of conquest could be Kyushu, literally the nine provinces in the western island, for its isolation and vincinity to our successfully reserved trade nodes. Currently, Kyushu is divided among three clans. The two clans in the north, Shoni and Sagara, are allies. Shoni in addition is allied to Ouchi on the west end of Honshu the main island. Sagara has converted to the religion of the southern barbarian (Nanban). We call them barbarian because their chests are so hairy. The third clan Kyushu clan is Ito to the south, which has no allies.

Attacking Shoni or Sagara will make us enemies of multiple clans. In order to make a successful invasion on Kyushu, Ito would be the best target. Then we can slowly work on the rest.

Shoni is now surrounded by allies, so they must be looking for somewhere to expand. Maltz-san recalled that in his last attempt of this world, Shoni declared war on us Chosokabe despite being a trade partner with us. If this happens again, we will be in deep trouble. So we must do something to prevent it.

One of the ways to befriend Shoni is to propose a marriage between the two clans. Both clans have unmarried daughters. Why waste me if they have a daughter, too? Plus I do not wish to marry to somebody who is going to die in a few years. At least let me finish narrating Chapter 10.

In this Honor-bound world, Daimyos do not cherish their daughters and can sink the virtue-less ones into the bottom of Nihon Sea at any time. In fact, the Shoni clan agreed to marry his daughter to our clan - strangely, to whom we do not know - for merely 50 koku. You have a deal! I really feel sorry for her.

[Maltz]

Now that we have friendly clan to our side. Let's look at Shoni's diplomatic relations. It seems that Shoni has just gained a new enemy - the Mori clan to the east, whom we have not met. This is great, so we know that now Shoni's armies will be directed to Mori.

[Maltz]

Thoughts #08: Imbalanced Trade

We would like to have a stronger army, but we need to find more income. Our first Trading Port is completed, in Tosa, in the winter of 1548. We are ready to sign our first sea trade agreement. Since our clan now has three exportable resources: horses, stone, and wood, it will be a little hard for us to find comparable trading partners.

Many daimyos wonder why the larger clans have to pay the smaller clans to trade. Well, trade treaties in this world is more like free trade treaties - once it is signed, we can sell as many products as possible. If I can use an analogy 460 years later, we will be like the United States of America pushing for Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership, or TPP, among smaller countries in the region, so that we can export a lot of products to them for great profit. The smaller countries's smaller local industries could be overwhelmed and die off, so they might not be really better off. So in thesee treaties we might need to compensate them a little, so everybody is benefited.

But of course the United States can always make up dishonorable excuses like weapon of mass destruction or nuclear threats to invade those who does not obey. Unfortunately, we are not powerful enough to threat smaller clans to trade with us. I am not sure whether it will work at all.

Interestingly, in this world, the profit of trade outweighs the income of actually occupying those lands. This is probably because people only use 30% of their income to pay tax, but use 70% of their income to buy things - hopefully they like to choose our Chosokabe products.



Our new best friend Shoni asks for 2500 koku to sign a trade agreement with us. that's a little too much. They must be one of those bastards who charge more to their friends and relatives. After some shopping around, we go to the Imagawa clan, who only demands 1100 koku. This clan has stable alliance with its neighbors, so it is unlikely that our trade partnership will end any time soon. Our trade with Imagawa turns a profit of almost 300 koku. Why not 493 koku, as shown in the picture? If we don't trade with them, the unsold products is sold for 190 koku, so the net profit is 490-190 = 300 koku. In any case, this is a great deal, as we will start earning a good profit a year later.

Exploit #07. Cheaper Counter-offers

Negotiating clans tend to lower their requirement in a counter-offer, sometimes even making it lower than your initial offer. For example, when we offered to pay Imagawa 300 koku for 5 turns, for a total of 1500 koku, Imagawa said "1100 koku cash at once". Perhaps these clans cherish cash a lot more than per turn income.

Looking back, it might be a better idea to build the trading port earlier and look for a trade partner when they would sign the treaty for free. But we did not have enough koku to invest in ports at that time.

Thoughts #09: Markets and Metsuke

A conventional way to make money is to build economic infrastructures such as Farms and Markets. At this moment, all of our Farms have been upgraded as much as possible, but we only queued one Market. Market increases town growth by about 4 per turn (which translate to 1 extra koku income this turn, 2 extra next turn... so after 10 turns it is extra 55 koku, after 100 turns it is extra 5001 koku), and allows us to hire Metsuke. These secret polices can supervise castle towns and cut down corruption. They are both good investments to be made early.

Thoughts #10: Profit from War?

The fastest way to make a lot of money is actually to have war aimed not to destroy enemies, but to cripple them to extract maximum profit from Peace Treaty, and selling military accesses to any temporary new neighbors (we will then abandon unwanted provinces to rebels). Since the other clans are all so rich, we will be able to get a huge income from it, which can be used to upgrade our infrastructures. We have a perfect candidate for that - the Bessho clan.

Let the battles resume!

[Maltz]

We cannot find a battle blind-folded. Our Ninja and Monk, who excellently disguised as, respectively a Monk and a Ninja , crossed the Seto Inland Sea. They reported Bessho has one and half stacks of army, and three units of navy - two Trade Ship in a trading port, and one Medium Bune patrolling th shore. If we want to make a perfect landing with our fleet intact, we have to take care of Bessho's navy first. So we queued a new Bow Kabuya in Awaji. By winter 1548, we are ready to take on to Bessho navy!



Each side has three ships. The main ship from both sides are both a medium bune. But we hold a very good advantage - the enemy's reinforcement appears in the back. So we can quickly take care of their Medium Bune, then come back to handle the trade ships.

[Maltz]

We let my father's trusted general to lead this Naval battle. The Bessho Medium Bune bravely rowed toward us. We surrounded it with our Medium Bune and two Bow Kabuya. They suffered heavy losses by the arrows, and our Medium Bune's War Cry was just in time for the melee stage.



Our men bravely defeated the Bessho sailors and captured their main ship! We also managed to capture their two trade ships, but they mysteriously ran away. Must be a feature.

Exploit #08: Agreesive AI in Naval Battle

On the sea, the opponent always row all ships toward us as soon as the battle begins. Since they are so predictable, we can deploy accordingly to maximize our advantage. For example, we can easily lure the enemy into the down-wind. In this battle, if we deploy to the far south of the sea, we allow ourselves even more time between the first encounter and the second, making it possible to use War Cry on both melee stages.