STW campaign AAR: The way of Takeda

Fincuan · 06-30-10, 05:40 PM

The year is 1530, in the middle of Sengoku Jidai, and the daimyo of the Takeda-clan is just starting his quest to become the Shogun.

Map courtesy of www.totalwar.org(Click to enlarge)

Takeda's starting position is pretty poor in my opinion(black provinces on the map), divided in two areas and surrounded by enemies, so they can't afford to remain passive at the beginning. Especially lord Mori, in red, is usually very anxious to take over the western Takeda-lands. Offense is the best defense as they say. Except for Sagami the provinces are outright poor agriculturally, and the the silver mine in Aki and the gold mine in Kai, once built, will be the only true sources of income. Unless... we take advantage of Takeda's biggest asset: cheap(-25%) cavalry and the ability to build more right away. The province of Shinano, famous for its high honour cavalry, is just beyond our lands and in the hands of Uesugi at the start, but this is easy to fix: We take it from them. That won't be the first thing to do though. Our poor income directly affects our ability to build the vast hordes needed to take all of Japan, so we form three point strategy:

Hold Aki at any cost to use it as a platform for later expansion
Secure our financial situation by taking the rich Uesugi lands to the east as soon as possible
Use the new sources of income to expand the our armies and roll over the other clans

Besides these there's a fun vs. function decision to make: After taking the Uesugi provinces should we secure an easily defendable front somewhere in central Japan and tech-up a lot, certainly leading to a situation where the enemy also builds HUGE armies(10.000+, which is a lot in this game)or should we just continue the blitzkrieg to west/south-west as soon as we're done in east/north-east? I'm still undecided on this, so we'll see how the beginning goes. This is after all my first campaign on hard difficulty, so it's entirely possible I screw up somewhere and Takeda just disappears off the face of the earth

Hwg...

06-30-10, 05:40 PM	#1
Fincuan Admiral Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Suomi, sauna, puukko, perkele Posts: 2,346 Downloads: 39 Uploads: 0	STW campaign AAR: The way of Takeda The year is 1530, in the middle of Sengoku Jidai, and the daimyo of the Takeda-clan is just starting his quest to become the Shogun. Map courtesy of www.totalwar.org(Click to enlarge) Takeda's starting position is pretty poor in my opinion(black provinces on the map), divided in two areas and surrounded by enemies, so they can't afford to remain passive at the beginning. Especially lord Mori, in red, is usually very anxious to take over the western Takeda-lands. Offense is the best defense as they say. Except for Sagami the provinces are outright poor agriculturally, and the the silver mine in Aki and the gold mine in Kai, once built, will be the only true sources of income. Unless... we take advantage of Takeda's biggest asset: cheap(-25%) cavalry and the ability to build more right away. The province of Shinano, famous for its high honour cavalry, is just beyond our lands and in the hands of Uesugi at the start, but this is easy to fix: We take it from them. That won't be the first thing to do though. Our poor income directly affects our ability to build the vast hordes needed to take all of Japan, so we form three point strategy: Hold Aki at any cost to use it as a platform for later expansion Secure our financial situation by taking the rich Uesugi lands to the east as soon as possible Use the new sources of income to expand the our armies and roll over the other clans Besides these there's a fun vs. function decision to make: After taking the Uesugi provinces should we secure an easily defendable front somewhere in central Japan and tech-up a lot, certainly leading to a situation where the enemy also builds HUGE armies(10.000+, which is a lot in this game)or should we just continue the blitzkrieg to west/south-west as soon as we're done in east/north-east? I'm still undecided on this, so we'll see how the beginning goes. This is after all my first campaign on hard difficulty, so it's entirely possible I screw up somewhere and Takeda just disappears off the face of the earth Hwg... Last edited by Fincuan; 07-02-10 at 01:06 PM.