Chapter 4  Western Takeda

Finally it came to the time to face the western Takeda. Roughly estimating the Takeda troops of Bingo and Bichu, the number is between 400 and 600. If all of them concentrate in Bichu, it will be very hard to cross the bridge. If attacking Bingo first we might also face a large retreating army ended up in Bitchu, making Mimasaka and Bizen defendless.

1535 Summer

Crossing the Bridge

The solution seems odd. We decided that we would attack both Bingo and Bitchu at the same time. The main force led by Oda Nobuhide attacks the bridge province Bitchu, while about a 1/2 sized army will go for Bingo.

The plan was that if AI Takeda decides to put all forces into Bitchu, we will call off the attack from Bitchu while occupy Bingo with ease. The daimyo Nobuhide's army is still at the east, and therefore not worrying the defense issue. Later on we will just decrease the garrison in Bingo a bit and lure the Bitchu army to attack Bingo, and we would take Bitchu from behind (trying it every month, if they don't go just call off the attack).

If CPU decides to defend Bingo, then at least part of the Bitchu defense force are distracted. For attacking a bridge province, the difference between 600 and 900 men are not that high. However, this way the CPU might decrease its army from 500 to 300 or 400, which will make a relatively large differences.

The AI Takeda decies to protect Bingo. Facing 250 men, the fake-attack team of Bingo with 300 men withdrew. This leaves Nobuhide a 622:387 army ratio at Bitchu.

The first thing we did was to count the number of flags on the black army. Much to our surprise, the rank 5 general is not here! Wuhu! A smaller surprise to us was to find out that the Bitchu army are archers in majority - 5 out of 6, while half of them are not mounted.

The first attept was to deplete their arrows using humen flesh - the last 2 groups of Ashigaru that follows Oda Nobuhide to the west. The result was better than expected at first. One group of enemy archers even came forward and challenge the four groups of ours on the other side of the river. However, much to our disappointment we inflicted very little damage on this unit, and now our own arrows are almost depleted! (This whole expert level system is unfair!)

Instead of sitting and see our archers run out of arrows, we decide to risk marching all of our Yari troops forward. The later we do this the more "arrow rain" advantage the AI is going to have. Soon most of Takeda's archers came forward and tried to stop our 6 groups of Yari-s.

The fight on the end of the bridge was chaotic. Although normally Yari prevails against archers and horses (also we have at least 2 more levels of honor), now all the AI troops are "winning" and we are "losing". Some units starts to waver. So.. here again goes the brave Nobuhide, rushing forward to the very front to cheer up his men! He is pretty good at this, but he himself becomes the popular target of AI's never-depleting arrows.

The enemy rout not long after Nobuhide himself came forward. The Takeda taisho was soon killed on the battlefield. The remaining units had several invididual resistance attempt but was all crushed by our brave Mino Yari Samurais.

The victory worths the lives of 212 men; now the bridge province of Bitchu falls. The western Takeda is left with the hilly Bingo and the flat, rich port province of Aki.

Here comes the thing that we all have been waiting for. But the poor harvest this year (mentioned later) destroyed our hope of building a sword dojo anywhere. It is ok, we already got the buddist temple construction going in Kii.

1535 Autumn

Forests

After the victory in Bitchu, Lord Oda decides wait no longer to attack Bingo. The army supply from the east will not arrive too soon, and the AI expand every season. Therefore, the entire available army marched to Bingo. A battle of 738 vs. 454.

The AI Takeda hides all of his men in the forests on the mountain. The slope goes down slower near the map edge, so we decided to march all of our troops to the end of the map, and preparing for a same-height mountain forest fight. Our six Yari Samurai units were still kicking, so Takeda might suffer a great loss from their large calvalry portions.

As we climbed up the mild mountain the Takeda sends a few units of archers to bug us. There was a 1-men CA unit, and he was lucky enough to kill two of our men. As we are almost in position, AI Takeda strangely ordered two suicide actions of its samurai archers. The got surrounded by our 10-times-as-large force and killed to one digit left.

Soon all of the enemies in the forests charged towards us. We counted the flag and happily didn't see numerous flags held by their units. Although being quite tired, our brave soldiers refused to take a rest and hold the Takeda army right on the edge of the forests. Our 8 groups of archers ruthless gave them arrow showers. Not long after their general wavered, the massacre began - because we are blocking their routing path! (Much thanks to patch v1.12).

A great victory, we killed four-fifth of the enemy and suffered only 40% of the casaulty they had. Now there is only Aki left! After this battle, Oda Nobuhide also achieve rank 5 (he got rank 4 after the battle killing Mori Motonari in Mimasaka).

To our dismay, the harvest was poor, and the loyal Takeda peasants revolted in Bitchu! We better handle this issue first as now we really don't like to be the offender of the bridge province again.

1535 Winter

Luckily, the rebel had a size of only 120 - Samurai archer + Calvalry archer (the western Takeda really likes archers, eh?). The angry Nobuhide with bodyguards killed 56 of them, gaining no honour though.

1536 Summer

Birds in the Cage

Finally it comes to the time to attack Aki, fight of 547 vs. 300. To our another surprise is that the Rank 5 general of Takeda is still absent. Where did he go? Travelled to the east?

Our another surprise was to find out that all of the five defending armies were Samurai Archers. They were poorly hidden in the forests sitting on the ignorable little hill at the center of the map. Our archers surrounds the little hill for 90 degrees. As the arrow rain began, the yari samurai marched forward.

The enemy collapsed not long after the intense fights in the forests carried on. Our high honored Yari samurai did not have a great advantage against those light-armoured AI archers in the woods. Most of us are losing slightly or more. But as usual, the enemy rout earlier than us. Guess if the AI becomes even less rout-able, we can then start an expert-plus level to abuse ourselves during the weekend.

Didn't want to see a rediculoously long siege of 40 men again, Nobuhide ordered an assault to the castle on the next season (Autumn). The Takeda archers, though kept firing at us using their never-depleted arrow stock, were eliminated.

Despite the poor-again harvest of 1536, our clan managed on the existing resources to defeat the western Takeda. Should we immediately proceed to the "9-state" island on the southwest?

"Given the economical hardship, we better do some less intensive exercise - such as cleaning the ronins," suggested by the advisor - yeah that will be chapter 5 then. This old man is really wiser than our previous advisers, who are still present, in some form, inside the room. ;-)