STW Mori

'fixme: insert in-game description here

Geography & Economics

The Mori territories are strung out in the western part of Honshu, where provinces are rich in iron yet poor in crop. Initially, after feeding the few troops you start with, you'll have a surplus of like 400 koku -- you absolutely have to squeeze out the Takeda or you won't be able to secure your borders. Even after establishing a (relatively) safe foothold, you'll be chronically short on funds. Psychologically, the Mori are the nastiest faction: you control more iron deposits than all other factions combined, yet lack the means to make something of it. Considering your income, Monks will be fiendishly expensive even at a discount. Then, when suddenly things fall into place, you may sweep your oppontents from the map at virtually no resistance.

Gameplay Advice

Securing the Takeda lands is a no-brainer. It's recommended that you start from the river province; for some reason or other, these provinces don't need much of a garrison to supress revolts, so you can quickly move on and have the job done within like six seasons. It's recommended that you send an Emissary to scout out Aki before invading, if Lord Takeda is already building a mine, you may want to wait until it's done: mines usually aren't razed, so that's 1000 koku you don't need to spend yourself. Also kick the Shimazu out of Nagato.

You then have three border provinces to screen your empire, may get along with relatively few troops, and start an extensive harbor construction programme -- after a decade of constantly re-investing your money, you'll have a halfways decent income. Or you may want to conquer more lands, however, this requires considerably more troops you need to levy and maintain -- these will, necessarily, be mostly plain old Yari and Archers and in the end, all the easy grabs will only yield little revenue. Again, it will be about an decade until you get something like a budget.

Accepting portugese trade certainly is tempting -- after all, you won't miss out on anything if you can't afford monks anyway. Or you may build trading posts only to spend the then lavish income on buddhist temples...