Sooo... what happens when you (sort of) abuse save-scumming?
This.
I started a very hard campaign (with mods) quite a lot of time ago and I've just finished it.
At the beginning, I set a few rules for myself: play every single battle on the battlefield
(yeah, that was insane), no inciting revolts on ungarrisoned castles/provinces (I ended up
provoking 5 in total, of which 4 in mid-late game), no blocking an enemy army with ninjas for
more than 1 turn, no assassinating lone generals when their army was near my troops or borders
(i.e., if I their army was left without a general in a critical situation), no honour hits (so no
looting or backstabbing ever) and no alliances (not counting the forced vassallage to the
Imagawa at the start).
I avoided declaring war on the Imagawa altogether, so, without the ability to declare war on
anyone else, I spent the first 30-ish turns improving my economy by selling military access.
With the money I got, I made Hojo and Takeda break the alliance and the trade agreement with
the Imagawa, and since the former two were allied, they ended up declaring war on the latter
(and on me, of course). During the war I stayed back and used my ninja and monk to damage the
Imagawa's armies as much as possible, and they eventually died. Then I had no masters, so I
started taking back Imagawa's provinces from the Takeda, who, as usual, had other wars going
on and lost the stack they had in the southern coast in a siege against me. Long story short, I
killed off the Takeda, expanded to the east, made peace with the Hojo and then declared war
to a couple minor clans. The Satomi and the Mori got quite big, so I started turtling and
building up armies and economy. At turn 72, this was the situation:
I got all my armies in place, attacked the Satomi and triggered Realm Divide. In 2 turns, I
conquered 8 provinces:
With half Honshu in my hands, I started repelling stacks around Echizen and Omi. I soon got to
Kyoto and started to bulldoze throught the western half of Honshu, while keeping two big fleets
on the northern and southern coast to block naval invasion (losing men to attrition to control
all of the stretch of water from the coast to the limit of the map and repairing every turn was
a real pain).
These are the results:
100% agent success, 100% battles won, 0 units lost, 0 agents lost. All my monks and ninjas are
level 6, I have a level 6 metsuke and a level 6 general. Every single province had land consolidation
in the end, so the income was insane.
Just two words: never again.
Mods used:
- DarthMod v4.4+++ (with increased unit sizes and garrisons)
- Yarkis' Reduced AI Cheating
- Vragos' Skillpoints
- Radious Food Mod v1