 <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nExcept, you know, one of my ninjas finally<\/i> comes through when it counts \u00e2\u20ac" not by killing some nobody enemy ninja, but by actually sabotaging an enemy army right at the perfect moment. They won’t be able to reach Kai before Nobuhide can reach them, now. This is the first long-shot ninja action I’ve actually had succeed through this whole campaign. And knowing my luck with ninjas, it’s probably the last too.<\/p>\n It must really suck to be the Hojo right now, though. Surging ahead with such an act of defiance against the Oda, and catching us momentarily off-guard too, only to be halted at the cusp of their (momentary) victory by a level one ninja with a 30% chance of success. A “shameful display,” to be sure.<\/p>\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nAt the end of the turn, the Date come to me and ask us to join them in a war against the Uesugi, whom they’ve had some difficulty fully wiping out \u00e2\u20ac" and in exchange, they’ll declare war on the Hojo.<\/p>\n This isn’t exactly an ideal arrangement for us. It isn’t that I’m concerned about upsetting the Uesugi, mind you \u00e2\u20ac" they kind of hate us now \u00e2\u20ac" but they are currently one of our trading partners, and breaking trade agreements can have diplomatic repercussions with other allies down the road. And really, Date, what’s your problem? Your power rating is “terrifying,” and you’re not fighting on multiple fronts, go wipe them out yourselves. I’m busy plotting to take over the country.<\/p>\n And what really drives this home is their other demand. Really? You want me to pay you money so I can come help you finish the war you can’t on your own? Come on!<\/p>\n Naturally, I refuse the request. It’ll put a dent in our relations for a while, but they already love me so much that I sincerely doubt they’ll kill Taneyori before he’s returned to us.<\/p>\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nOh. Also, suddenly the Ikko-Ikki (awesome name, right there) declared war on me for no reason. Despite the fact that we are their only trading partners and everyone else on the entire map hates them. Uh, Create Assembly, you do know that the whole Bushido “seeking death in battle” thing wasn’t really as prevalent at this point as later historians played it up to be, right? Most clans weren’t actually stupid enough to simply attack everyone without any aim or reason \u00e2\u20ac" you know that, right?<\/p>\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nFor kicks, here’s the relational map for the Ikko-Ikki (with their territory shown in white). To clarify, red on this map means “I hope you get eaten by a grue.” <\/p>\n That’s a lot of grues.<\/p>\n I’ll be fair enough to point out that the Ikko-Ikki aren’t really acting out of character here. They weren’t actually a clan, but a religious and socially-motivated rebellion against the Daimyo and Samurai of the period, precipitated by followers of the (then fairly obscure) sect of Jodo Shinshu Bhuddism and the preachings of the monk Rennyo (whom, hilariously, was a pacifist). They also did clash with Oda Nobunaga for a number of years.<\/p>\n And, to be perfectly honest, our relational map…<\/p>\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n…doesn’t look that much better. But still, at least I haven’t thrown away all of my trading partners for no reason. If the AI didn’t get so many generous economic bonuses, playing like this would bankrupt them.<\/p>\n In any case, this declaration of war beings a multi-turn scramble to gather as many of the nearby garrisons and troops to our capital of Owari \u00e2\u20ac" one of the more likely places the Ikko-Ikki will strike \u00e2\u20ac" before one of the several massive armies my ninjas have sighted decides to march south down the road and attack. I even hire another general when the option comes up \u00e2\u20ac" although to be perfectly honest, I really just hired him so I could have someone sit on Kai full time so I don’t need to evacuate the garrison every time a mildly threatening army comes along.<\/p>\n But all of these efforts turn out to be wasted as one such Ikko-Ikki army marches south…<\/p>\n  <\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n…and then abruptly turns west to attack the Hatakeyama instead.<\/p>\n This brings to mind several important questions, such as, “why did you declare war on your only trading partner when you didn’t even have plans to attack them?!”<\/i><\/p>\n I swear, sometimes the only long-term goal this game seems to have is to “confuse the hell out of Josh.”<\/p>\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nOh, and by the way Josh, your peasants are rebelling.<\/p>\n Apparently they didn’t like being barred from migrating to cities and becoming merchants only for me to turn around and give the existing merchants new privileges. <\/p>\n This means that I either have to disperse the garrison at Owari or cut taxes to about half of my provinces for a few seasons in order to keep a proper rebellion from rising up. Though I’m loath to cut taxes when I so need the revenue to continue the training of Nobunaga’s new army, the possibility that the Ikko-Ikki will actually realize they declared war on me and attack is too great to risk. Uprisings won’t start until you have two consecutive turns of unrest, so next turn I’ll cut taxes for three turns for the provinces that don’t have proper garrisons.<\/p>\n Man, between the baffling actions of the AI and my annoyingly ungrateful populace, I need something I can let loose on. Weren’t the Hojo failing to invade?<\/p>\n Yeah, they were. Unfortunately, despite sabotaging the Hojo army on their advance into Kai, I couldn’t quite catch them with Nobuhide when they about-faced and retreated. It took several turns of cat and mouse before our Daimyo’s massive army was able to catch them.<\/p>\n  <\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nI could probably auto-resolve this, but… we haven’t had a good battle in a while, have we?<\/p>\n  <\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nYou know, this is actually the first time I’ll be using the long-yari ashigaru in battle. Have a gander at those spears.<\/p>\n  <\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nAll right, the enemy has a lot of katana samurai, so my strategy here is going to be a little different from normal. All of my normal yari ashigaru and bow units will accompany my general and advance in the open field to the right, while my long-yari ashigaru and katana samurai will advance across the wooded hill on the left, where they will hopefully remain undetected until they can flank around and strike at the enemy’s rear guard.<\/p>\n  <\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nSince the AI can’t see my flanking force, it appears to them as if I have a massively inferior force, which actually spurs them out of their defensive position and into a charge. This is working out better than I had hoped.<\/p>\n  <\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nWith this in mind, of course I manage to screw up the plan. My flanking force gets caught up fighting one katana samurai and a general unit, wasting precious time they could be using by hammering the rear of the enemy main-line.<\/p>\n  <\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nBut the enemy main line falters and breaks in what seems like no time at all, and degenerates into a full rout just in time for my flanking force to finally charge down the hill and round up the stragglers. But what happened? The enemy main line was composed entirely of katana samurai \u00e2\u20ac" how did my yari ashigaru win?<\/p>\n Well, remember a few posts ago how I mentioned that Nobuhide had levelled up and I’d unlocked the ability “Stand and Fight” for him? That ability gives all friendly units within the general’s radius (the blue circle you’ve probably seen in previous pictures) a massive boost to both morale and melee attack. I actually hadn’t realized just how serious a boost this was until this battle, but apparently it’s enough to make even vanilla yari ashigaru capable of beating katana samurai.<\/p>\n It does help that all of my units are high level veterans, too.<\/p>\n  <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nAnd so ends a fairly cathartic fight, if I do say so myself. Small bits and pieces of the Hojo force manage to survive, including one of their generals with only a single man<\/i> left in his unit, but there’s little chance that force will be much of a bother for me again.<\/p>\n So I’ve defeated the Hojo – again – and now, with any luck, I can finally concentrate on finishing Nobunaga’s Shogun Invasion Force. Stay tuned for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And so here we are – once more unto the breach, as it were – as yet another Scary Enemy Army shows up on our doorstep and moves to attack our territory in the seemingly ceaseless border conflict into which we’ve become so entangled. Oh, and this particular Hojo army is composed of seven veteran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |
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