The Conquests
- Thread starter choxorn
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tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
The Civ3 AI can indeed use HN units to attack (and possibly take) towns during peacetime. So AI-controlled Ninja and Ronin could both be used for that purpose in the Sengoku scenario.
But the human player can't do that -- just yet more exotic Firaxis programming, I guess...
The Civ3 AI can indeed use HN units to attack (and possibly take) towns during peacetime. So AI-controlled Ninja and Ronin could both be used for that purpose in the Sengoku scenario.
But the human player can't do that -- just yet more exotic Firaxis programming, I guess...
Ah, so the answer is the simple one: that the Computer is Cheating.
Toxicman007
Custom User Title
Civilization AI cheating? Never! 
Chapter 66: Achieving Peace Through Conquest
The Miyoshi were sure to always be prepared on their new Western border for attacks, given the proximity of both the Mori and Urakami there. Sometimes, however, they lucked out and were able to just sit back and watch as their enemies fought each other.
Like in May, 1546, when a unit of Urakami Samurai Warriors near Kurayoshi that had been damaged by Miyoshi bombardment a month earlier attempted to flee back to friendlier territory, but was ambushed by a Mori Yamabushi unit and a Ninja that probably also had been hired by the Mori. Luckily for them, despite their poor fighting shape, they were still able to kill all of their attackers.
The Mori had other units somewhat in the area, but none of them did anything but be vaguely threatening to Kurayoshi.
Elsewhere, the Miyoshi watched as the Hojo convinced the Chosokabe to declare war on the Date, a war that would probably mean nothing with the Chosokabe already having their hands full with the Ichijo, who hadn't seemed to threaten any of their cities seriously but had been sending units of Yamabushi to destroy the roads to critical Chosokabe resources, repeatedly.
They also saw a Takeda Settler group, escorted by a unit of Samurai Spearmen, enter their Eastern border, which they found strange, seeing as how there didn't seem to be anywhere to settle... really, anywhere. The Miyoshi would continue to watch over the following months as they would ultimately go back into Takeda territory and head Northeast to... somewhere, exactly where was unclear.
The Miyoshi got to work dealing with the Mori and Urakami near Kurayoshi in July, turning their cannons on a unit of Mori Samurai Warriors on a hill just to the West of the city, finding that apparently their cannons' aim must be off, since every single cannonball they fired landed harmlessly. They decided to attack anyway, losing one of the two units of Mounted Samurai they sent to attack but eventually killing the Mori Samurai.
They hoped they'd have better luck against the retreating Urakami, given that they'd already taken damage from previous battles, but that didn't really help much- these Urakami proved about as resilient against the Miyoshi as they were against the Mori, killing an attacking unit of Mounted Samurai before another Mounted Samurai unit finished them off.
This pattern of "first Mounted Samurai unit to attack dies, second kills the injured defending unit" continued when two more units of Mounted Samurai went to kill a Ninja in the Mountains to the North of Kurayoshi (the Ninja, presumably, was working for the Mori).
It perhaps could have been a Ninja working for the Urakami, but the Miyoshi hadn't seen any Ninja seeming to work for them in a while, and they soon learned why: the road to the Jade near Fukuchiyama had been destroyed at some point, probably by the Mori, meaning the Urakami had no way of paying for Ninja.
In August, the Hojo decided to stop fighting the Mogami, which probably was bad news for the remaining clans that they were fighting, although the only one they seemed close enough to really hurt was the Date. The Miyoshi hadn't seen them do much of anything to the Urakami or Mori, and hadn't seen the Hojo-Ryuzoji War result in much aside from a bunch of sunken Caravels.
The Urakami and Mori both launched attacks on the Miyoshi rather than each other that month, with varying degrees of success. An Urakami Samurai Warrior unit managed to inflict some serious casualties on a Miyoshi Arquebusier unit, but the Arquebusiers ultimately prevailed, barely. The unit of Mounted Samurai on the hill West of Kurayoshi that had earlier fought Mori Samurai Warriors was not so lucky, succumbing to a surprise attack from Mori Ninja that they were unable to fight off or escape from thanks to having been weakened in their earlier battles.
They would be avenged in October, when a Miyoshi Ninja killed that Mori Ninja.
Around the same time, the Miyoshi also decided it would be a good idea to deal with a nearby Mori Samurai Warrior unit just on the other side of their border, and so they fired some cannons at the Mori and followed up by attacking with Mounted Samurai. Their thinking that it would be a good idea to do this proved to be very, very wrong: a full 4 units of Mounted Samurai failed to do much but inflict some mild scratches on the Mori Samurai. 2 of the 4 escaped with their lives, but the other 2 were completely destroyed. Finally, a Miyoshi Ninja was able to finish the job, but it had come at a pretty great cost, clearly.
To the Northeast, they were getting ready to attack the city of Toyooka, which annoyingly was the only city left under Urakami control protected by its indestructible Walls, making it immune to cannons, but Ninja and Arquebuses could still do plenty. They hoped they could get a better picture of its defenses through espionage before attacking, so they, yet again, tried to have a spy infiltrate Kobe and at least let the Miyoshi know what the total military strength of the Urakami was.
As with all their previous attempts, they failed.
Annoyed at how every single one of their spies was apparently useless at infiltrating anything, the Miyoshi decided "oh for... FINE, let's just try to get spies with the Mori and Mogami, what's the worst that could happen?"
Whatever the worst was, they weren't about to find out: the spies they sent to Hiroshima and Ogachi turned out to actually finally be not terrible at their jobs, and the Miyoshi finally had spies who didn't get caught.
That wasn't quite what they were hoping would happen, but the information was somewhat useful, nonetheless. In particular, they found it good to know that the Mori had a somewhat formidable military, though still a weaker one than the Miyoshi's military. The Mogami, on the other hand, were pathetically weak, consisting of only around 10 military units, almost all Yamabushi, presumably largely just defending what little territory they still had. The Miyoshi found it almost admirable that they weren't even weaker and had somehow managed to hold on to as many as two cities.
But, information or no, they still wanted to continue conquering the Urakami. And they had another way to get information on Toyooka's defenses: Attack it with a Ninja. The Ninja sent to perform this task died in doing so, but was able to reveal that Toyooka had only two units of Spearmen defending it, to the much larger group of Arquebusiers and Mounted Samurai the Miyoshi had brought to attack the city. It proved rather costly in the end- the Spearmen made great use of the strong defensive Walls to send 5 whole units of Miyoshi Arquebusiers to their deaths- but they could not hold out forever, and after the 6th unit of Arquebusiers finally finnished off one of these tough units of Spearmen, a unit of Mounted Samurai attacked, destroyed the other, and claimed the city for the Miyoshi.
The final thing that demanded the Miyoshi's attention that month was a unit of Mori Yamabushi that had wandered all the way through Urakami territory to the Miyoshi border between Kobe and Kakogawa. They couldn't exactly let the Yamabushi continue on and destroy all their roads, so they dealt with them: a unit of Samurai Warriors killed the Yamabushi.
For some reason, the Urakami took issue with the great service the Miyoshi had done for them by killing these Mori soldiers that had traipsed through their territory, and sent their own Samurai Warriors to kill the Miyoshi Samurai in November. The Urakami lost one unit of Samurai Warriors in the ensuing battle, but, exhausted from their last few battles, the Miyoshi couldn't fight off the second Urakami Samurai Warrior unit that attacked them.
The Chosokabe and Mori both decided they could use some more allies in all the wars they were fighting, and so they turned to each other for help: The Chosokabe agreed to declare war on their former neighbors by sea the Urakami, and the Mori agreed to declare war on their not-remotely-at-all neighbors the Mogami.
The Hojo, apparently wanting to seem like they were doing something, contributed one single unit of Yamabushi to fight the Urakami. Their contribution consisted solely of destroying a road to some Furs near Kobe.
The Mori seemed a bit more determined to fight, but their determination seemed aimed more at fighting the Miyoshi than the Urakami, or at least that was the impression the Miyoshi military got when they saw two units of Samurai Warriors and two Ninja approaching from the West, presumably with the eventual goal of attacking Kurayoshi.
The Samurai Warriors would take many months to reach the city, but the Ninja could move more quickly, so the Miyoshi decided to get rid of them before they got anywhere close. Given that they were still fairly far away, all they could do was send their own Ninja to accomplish the task in January, 1547. The good news was that they succeeded, the ensuing 2 on 2 Ninja battle between the Miyoshi and Mori resulting in 2 dead Mori Ninjas to 0 dead Miyoshi Ninjas. The bad news was that this meant those Ninja were exposed to counterattacks, so in February, another Mori Ninja appeared and killed one of the Miyoshi Ninja, and the other was killed by a Mori Samurai Warrior unit.
The Mori also, yet again, built a city in the region of Southern Kyushu that was devoid of cities. The Ryuzoji and their Ninjas would likely prevent it from lasting very long.
The Urakami apparently didn't take well to the Hojo Yamabushi destroying their road, and let them know exactly how they felt about this by writing them strongly worded messages, where in this case, "strongly worded" means "the messages were attached to arrows, which Samurai Archers fired at the Hojo en masse." They seemed to get the message, although only a few of the Yamabushi survived to read it, and it's hard to say how many of them actually read the messages as they were retreating from all the arrows.
Another Urakami Samurai Archer unit headed towards Toyooka, presumably to use similar means to express displeasure with the Miyoshi's occupation of the city.
The Miyoshi decided they weren't particularly interested in hearing this displeasure, and sent their Arquebusiers out to try get a message of their own across, although in the end both the Miyoshi Arquebusiers and Urakami Archers were able to leave an impression on each other, which in this case means "one unit of both died." The Miyoshi were more successful at avoiding losses to the Southeast, though, where their Arquebusiers killed the Urakami Archers that had fought the Yamabushi while taking no significant losses themselves.
With that out of the way, they decided to focus on a target of more interest: Fukuchiyama, and the Jade in the mountains to the South, which they had long wanted for themselves, even after they got Jade of their own from fighting the Saito and Tokugawa.
With no indestructible Great Wall protecting this city, their cannons could actually damage the Spearmen in it. After all 3 of the units defending the city were injured by cannonfire, Saotome's Army went in to kill 2 of them, and the final unit couldn't put up much of a resistance when Arquebusiers shot them and took the city for the Miyoshi.
The Urakami now had only two cities left: Miyazu, surrounded by the Mori, and the capital of Kobe. While the Miyoshi were somewhat interested in Miyazu, they didn't particularly want to let the Urakami live that much longer, and didn't really want to fight through the Mori to get there, so they decided to just leave it to its fate and start preparing to assault Kobe and kill Daimyo Urakami Munekage.
They were also somewhat concerned by the appearance of a Ninja on their Eastern border with the Takeda, assuming it was probably up to no good. While they had no real issue with the Takeda, they weren't about to let them send Ninja to go rampaging through Miyoshi territory, and so they killed this Ninja with a unit of Arquebusiers.
In May, the Ryuzoji destroyed the recently-built Mori city in Southern Kyushu. It existed for such a brief time that the Miyoshi had never even bothered to learn the name of it.
The Urakami still didn't particularly like having Miyoshi units intruding into their territory, and this time, the Miyoshi found their irritation understandable- after all, this time, the Arquebusiers had gone in to kill Urakami instead of Mori. What they didn't really prepare for was that Arquebusiers were pretty formidable on both offense and defense- so formidable, in fact, that the leader of that unit, Watanabe, distinguished himself in his victory against the unit of Samurai Archers that attacked them.
The brief feeling of good news that Miyoshi Nagayoshi felt when he heard he had another Great Military Leader was soon replaced by dread, though: the slight problem that Watanabe had no way of getting out of Urakami territory, and was defended just by the Arquebusiers who he had led in battle... which had taken heavily losses from fighting Archers and probably couldn't last much longer.
Though the Arquebusiers, perhaps motivated to fight hard to protect their leader, fought bravely against the injured Samurai Warriors who attacked them right after this, fiercely enough to actually kill that entire unit, their luck would not hold a second time: A unit of Urakami Samurai Spearmen attacked, killing the Arqubusiers... and Watanabe.
The Urakami had a bit less success when they sent their Yamabushi to attack the Hojo Yamabushi that had retreated into Miyoshi territory to heal, and the Hojo killed the Urakami, though the Miyoshi took this as a pretty weak consolation for having lost their great Samurai General.
The Takeda tried to help out the only way they could: By pillaging some roads with their Yamabushi, though these Yamabushi could only do so much, and after completing their task, they were met by Mori Ninja, apparently determined to help their enemies the Urakami survive a bit longer. The Takeda killed one of the attacking Mori Ninja, but could not hold out against the second one.
The one thing that made the Miyoshi feel slightly better about the loss of their general: They could still train Armies anyway at the Military Academy in Kyoto, and they finished work on another one in June. They would fill it with Arquebusiers, though they really wished Watanabe was still around to lead another army of his own (probably also of Arquebusiers).
It would take a while for this new Army to get ready to fight though, so in the mean time, the existing Arquebusier Army led by Saotome would have to do- in July, they killed a unit of Mori Spearmen that had foolishly come a bit too close to Fukuchiyama. A Mori Ninja to the East was also killed, though by a unit of Mounted Samurai rather than the Army, which really needed to rest up a bit.
In August, the Ryuzoji finally did something that the Miyoshi had been assuming they were going to do for ages: They built a city of their own in the empty area of Southern Kyushu, that had previously been home to a Shimazu city, and then several cities belonging to the Urakami and Mori that the Ryuzoji had destroyed because, for some reason, they were unable to stop the other clans from settling there at all and had to settle for destroying cities with Ninja. Well, now it seemed the Ryuzoji wouldn't have to worry about anyone else settling there anymore.
The Hojo evidently didn't want to fight the Mori anymore, so they pulled out of that war, in a move that the Miyoshi found kind of irritating, given how recently they'd agreed to fight the Mori together. At least this meant they didn't have to pay the Hojo gold for that alliance anymore.
Perhaps the Hojo just wanted to focus more on fighting closer enemies: Shortly before signing the treaty to end their war with the Mori, they captured the city of Hirosaki from the Date.
The Mori also seemed to prefer focusing on fighting their closer enemies: One of their Ninja attacked Fukuchiyama, killing a unit of Mounted Samurai in the city.
As had been the case every two and a half years or so for decades, the Miyoshi were asked the question of whether they wanted to hold elections for the War Council Daimyo. As always, the answer was no.
The Mori's somewhat significant presence near Fukuchiyama again demanded immediate attention in October- in addition to the Ninja that had attacked them last year, there was another Ninja nearby, and a unit of Samurai Warriors a bit farther away in the Mountains. Nothing they couldn't handle, though: Two units of Arquebusiers killed both of the Ninja, and Saotome's Army killed the Samurai Warriors.
Of course, they also had to deal with the Urakami, but luckily, their new Arquebusier Army was more than up to the task, killing a unit of Urakami Arquebusiers that had foolishly left Kobe to go... somewhere, it was unclear where. A unit of Samurai Spearmen that had entered Miyoshi territory near Kakogawa proved a bit tougher to deal with, killing an attacking Ninja, but 2 attacking Ninja was more than it could handle- the second Ninja avenged the first and killed the Spearmen.
For some reason this didn't dissuade the Urakami from continuing to send their military into Miyoshi territory, and for some reason they thought the best things they could attack with were Spearmen, which were far better defensively than offensively. The three units of them that spent November heading in the direction of Kakogawa seemed like they would be much better off just staying in Kobe and trying to defend it. Or perhaps the Urakami had already given up on that, figuring that the Miyoshi Ninja could just sneak past all their defenses and attack Urakami Munekage directly?
It also didn't dissuade them from attacking the Takeda Yamabushi that had been wandering around their territory pillaging roads, even after the Takeda killed two units of attacking Urakami Samurai (probably Warriors or Archers, I couldn't see them)
The Date, evidently deciding that they couldn't finish off the Mogami and hold off the Hojo at the same time, decided it would be best to focus on only one enemy at a time, and pulled out of fighting both the Mogami and Ryuzoji.
This might potentially make the Hojo the Mogami's saviors, whether they were intending to do that or not, although the Mogami weren't out of the woods yet- not with the similarly powerful Takeda also fighting them, and the Takeda weren't going to be distracted by fighting the Urakami at the same time for very much longer if the Miyoshi had anything to say about it.
In January of 1548, the Miyoshi got right back to work fighting against the Urakami and Mori that had come too close to their territory- the Arquebusier Army killed 2 of the aforementioned Urakami Samurai Spearmen units, and the third was dealt with by two units of Mounted Samurai, though the first attacking Samurai unit retreated with heavy injuries.
Their Cannons near Fukuchiyama proved unusually successful in firing on the Mori Ninja and Samurai Warrior Unit that had come too close to the city, with all 6 inflicting at least some damage. With that, it was a piece of cake for a unit of Mounted Samurai and Saotome's Army to finish off the Ninja and Samurai Warriors.
The Date signed peace with the Mori in February, which likely meant nothing due to being on opposite sides of Honshu with other enemies between them, but it did mean the Date went from being at war with over half the remaining clans a few months ago to being at war with just the Hojo and the two Shikoku-based clans now.
The Mori didn't do much in April but get more preparations under way for attacking Kobe, though Saotome's Army did its tri-monthly sweep of Mori units near Fukuchiyama, killing 2 units of Samurai Spearmen in the Mountains.
Speaking of the clans based on Shikoku, the Ichijo and Chosokabe had been fighting each other for some time now, and the Miyoshi had been watching closely to see if one would ever get a decisive advantage on the other, or even do much to the other at all. It proved the answer was no; after having spent their entire war doing little but some occasional pillaging incursions with Yamabushi, the Ichijo and Chosokabe decided to sign a peace treaty in May.
Finally, in July, 1548, the Miyoshi had everything they wanted in place to attack Kobe: 9 Ninja within striking distance of the city, which they felt would be more than enough to kill Daimyo Urakami Munekage, and why bother with anything else if he was the only one they needed to kill? Especially when, unlike some of the past capitals they'd attacked, Kobe didn't have very many other units that could support Munekage with defensive bombardment.
Urakami Munekage proved quite a tough opponent for the Ninja, though. The first two failed to even land a simple hit on them while he cut them to pieces with his sword. The third battled him a little harder, managing to significantly wound and nearly kill him... but not quite finish the job. The fourth fared no better than the first two.
But 5 proved too many for Urakami Munekage to handle- they wouldn't even need the full 9 they could have attacked with. The 5th was enough, stabbing Urakami Munekage to death, and with him gone, so went Kobe and Miyazu, vanishing into piles of rubble. The Urakami, after many years of being a thorn in the Miyoshi's side, were no more.
With the Urakami destroyed, their alliances with the Takeda and Hojo were over (well, the Hojo one was already over when they signed peace with the Mori), and the Miyoshi were free to end their wars with the Mogami and Mori. Seeing no real reason to fight the Mogami, they decided to not fight them, and collected some gold from the Mogami as tribute for not fighting them instead.
They didn't really see any good reason to stop fighting the Mori, though... not when they could conquer them instead.
That would mean they'd need to keep dealing with all the Mori "invasions" of their territory, though. This month, that meant sinking the group of 4 Caravels that had been sailing along the coast near Matsusaka for a while with their own Caravels. The Miyoshi lost 2 of their Caravels in attempting to do this, but sunk 3 out of the 4 Mori Caravels and heavily damaged the 4th.
The remaining Caravel attempted to flee back to the West in August... but it wasn't fast enough, and in October, the Miyoshi caught up with their own Caravel, and sank the last Mori Caravel.
Roughly the same time as this was all happening, the Mori continued trying to attack Fukuchiyama. In August they again killed a unit of Mounted Samurai in the city with one of their Ninja, with the Ninja taking heavy injuries in the process, and in October this Ninja and another Ninja were killed by attacking Arquebusier units, though not before the Miyoshi foolishly attempted to kill the injured Ninja with a Yamabushi unit, only to find that the injured Ninja was still tougher than they anticipated, tough enough to kill the Yamabushi.
This war was clearly far from over, although with the Miyoshi now fighting only the Mori and the Miyoshi clearly the stronger of the two, it seemed like it was only going to be a matter of time.
With all the peace treaties signed recently, the endless, messy wars that had plagued all of Japan for decades finally seemed to be coming towards an end- the only wars that still were going on in October of 1548 were the war between the Miyoshi and Mori, the war between the Hojo and Ryuzoji, and the wars pitting the Date and Mogami against many of their neighbors near and far, with the Date fighting the Hojo, Ichijo, and Chosokabe, and the Mogami fighting the Takeda, Mori, and Chosokabe, for a total of 8 ongoing wars between two clans. Given that that number had been well into the dozens not that long ago, that was certainly many steps closer to peace.
The Miyoshi only hoped that they'd come out as the strongest clan, hopefully undisputed, by the end of all of this.
The Miyoshi were sure to always be prepared on their new Western border for attacks, given the proximity of both the Mori and Urakami there. Sometimes, however, they lucked out and were able to just sit back and watch as their enemies fought each other.
Like in May, 1546, when a unit of Urakami Samurai Warriors near Kurayoshi that had been damaged by Miyoshi bombardment a month earlier attempted to flee back to friendlier territory, but was ambushed by a Mori Yamabushi unit and a Ninja that probably also had been hired by the Mori. Luckily for them, despite their poor fighting shape, they were still able to kill all of their attackers.
The Mori had other units somewhat in the area, but none of them did anything but be vaguely threatening to Kurayoshi.
Elsewhere, the Miyoshi watched as the Hojo convinced the Chosokabe to declare war on the Date, a war that would probably mean nothing with the Chosokabe already having their hands full with the Ichijo, who hadn't seemed to threaten any of their cities seriously but had been sending units of Yamabushi to destroy the roads to critical Chosokabe resources, repeatedly.
They also saw a Takeda Settler group, escorted by a unit of Samurai Spearmen, enter their Eastern border, which they found strange, seeing as how there didn't seem to be anywhere to settle... really, anywhere. The Miyoshi would continue to watch over the following months as they would ultimately go back into Takeda territory and head Northeast to... somewhere, exactly where was unclear.
The Miyoshi got to work dealing with the Mori and Urakami near Kurayoshi in July, turning their cannons on a unit of Mori Samurai Warriors on a hill just to the West of the city, finding that apparently their cannons' aim must be off, since every single cannonball they fired landed harmlessly. They decided to attack anyway, losing one of the two units of Mounted Samurai they sent to attack but eventually killing the Mori Samurai.
They hoped they'd have better luck against the retreating Urakami, given that they'd already taken damage from previous battles, but that didn't really help much- these Urakami proved about as resilient against the Miyoshi as they were against the Mori, killing an attacking unit of Mounted Samurai before another Mounted Samurai unit finished them off.
This pattern of "first Mounted Samurai unit to attack dies, second kills the injured defending unit" continued when two more units of Mounted Samurai went to kill a Ninja in the Mountains to the North of Kurayoshi (the Ninja, presumably, was working for the Mori).
It perhaps could have been a Ninja working for the Urakami, but the Miyoshi hadn't seen any Ninja seeming to work for them in a while, and they soon learned why: the road to the Jade near Fukuchiyama had been destroyed at some point, probably by the Mori, meaning the Urakami had no way of paying for Ninja.
In August, the Hojo decided to stop fighting the Mogami, which probably was bad news for the remaining clans that they were fighting, although the only one they seemed close enough to really hurt was the Date. The Miyoshi hadn't seen them do much of anything to the Urakami or Mori, and hadn't seen the Hojo-Ryuzoji War result in much aside from a bunch of sunken Caravels.
The Urakami and Mori both launched attacks on the Miyoshi rather than each other that month, with varying degrees of success. An Urakami Samurai Warrior unit managed to inflict some serious casualties on a Miyoshi Arquebusier unit, but the Arquebusiers ultimately prevailed, barely. The unit of Mounted Samurai on the hill West of Kurayoshi that had earlier fought Mori Samurai Warriors was not so lucky, succumbing to a surprise attack from Mori Ninja that they were unable to fight off or escape from thanks to having been weakened in their earlier battles.
They would be avenged in October, when a Miyoshi Ninja killed that Mori Ninja.
Around the same time, the Miyoshi also decided it would be a good idea to deal with a nearby Mori Samurai Warrior unit just on the other side of their border, and so they fired some cannons at the Mori and followed up by attacking with Mounted Samurai. Their thinking that it would be a good idea to do this proved to be very, very wrong: a full 4 units of Mounted Samurai failed to do much but inflict some mild scratches on the Mori Samurai. 2 of the 4 escaped with their lives, but the other 2 were completely destroyed. Finally, a Miyoshi Ninja was able to finish the job, but it had come at a pretty great cost, clearly.
To the Northeast, they were getting ready to attack the city of Toyooka, which annoyingly was the only city left under Urakami control protected by its indestructible Walls, making it immune to cannons, but Ninja and Arquebuses could still do plenty. They hoped they could get a better picture of its defenses through espionage before attacking, so they, yet again, tried to have a spy infiltrate Kobe and at least let the Miyoshi know what the total military strength of the Urakami was.
As with all their previous attempts, they failed.
Annoyed at how every single one of their spies was apparently useless at infiltrating anything, the Miyoshi decided "oh for... FINE, let's just try to get spies with the Mori and Mogami, what's the worst that could happen?"
Whatever the worst was, they weren't about to find out: the spies they sent to Hiroshima and Ogachi turned out to actually finally be not terrible at their jobs, and the Miyoshi finally had spies who didn't get caught.
That wasn't quite what they were hoping would happen, but the information was somewhat useful, nonetheless. In particular, they found it good to know that the Mori had a somewhat formidable military, though still a weaker one than the Miyoshi's military. The Mogami, on the other hand, were pathetically weak, consisting of only around 10 military units, almost all Yamabushi, presumably largely just defending what little territory they still had. The Miyoshi found it almost admirable that they weren't even weaker and had somehow managed to hold on to as many as two cities.
But, information or no, they still wanted to continue conquering the Urakami. And they had another way to get information on Toyooka's defenses: Attack it with a Ninja. The Ninja sent to perform this task died in doing so, but was able to reveal that Toyooka had only two units of Spearmen defending it, to the much larger group of Arquebusiers and Mounted Samurai the Miyoshi had brought to attack the city. It proved rather costly in the end- the Spearmen made great use of the strong defensive Walls to send 5 whole units of Miyoshi Arquebusiers to their deaths- but they could not hold out forever, and after the 6th unit of Arquebusiers finally finnished off one of these tough units of Spearmen, a unit of Mounted Samurai attacked, destroyed the other, and claimed the city for the Miyoshi.
The final thing that demanded the Miyoshi's attention that month was a unit of Mori Yamabushi that had wandered all the way through Urakami territory to the Miyoshi border between Kobe and Kakogawa. They couldn't exactly let the Yamabushi continue on and destroy all their roads, so they dealt with them: a unit of Samurai Warriors killed the Yamabushi.
For some reason, the Urakami took issue with the great service the Miyoshi had done for them by killing these Mori soldiers that had traipsed through their territory, and sent their own Samurai Warriors to kill the Miyoshi Samurai in November. The Urakami lost one unit of Samurai Warriors in the ensuing battle, but, exhausted from their last few battles, the Miyoshi couldn't fight off the second Urakami Samurai Warrior unit that attacked them.
The Chosokabe and Mori both decided they could use some more allies in all the wars they were fighting, and so they turned to each other for help: The Chosokabe agreed to declare war on their former neighbors by sea the Urakami, and the Mori agreed to declare war on their not-remotely-at-all neighbors the Mogami.
The Hojo, apparently wanting to seem like they were doing something, contributed one single unit of Yamabushi to fight the Urakami. Their contribution consisted solely of destroying a road to some Furs near Kobe.
The Mori seemed a bit more determined to fight, but their determination seemed aimed more at fighting the Miyoshi than the Urakami, or at least that was the impression the Miyoshi military got when they saw two units of Samurai Warriors and two Ninja approaching from the West, presumably with the eventual goal of attacking Kurayoshi.
The Samurai Warriors would take many months to reach the city, but the Ninja could move more quickly, so the Miyoshi decided to get rid of them before they got anywhere close. Given that they were still fairly far away, all they could do was send their own Ninja to accomplish the task in January, 1547. The good news was that they succeeded, the ensuing 2 on 2 Ninja battle between the Miyoshi and Mori resulting in 2 dead Mori Ninjas to 0 dead Miyoshi Ninjas. The bad news was that this meant those Ninja were exposed to counterattacks, so in February, another Mori Ninja appeared and killed one of the Miyoshi Ninja, and the other was killed by a Mori Samurai Warrior unit.
The Mori also, yet again, built a city in the region of Southern Kyushu that was devoid of cities. The Ryuzoji and their Ninjas would likely prevent it from lasting very long.
The Urakami apparently didn't take well to the Hojo Yamabushi destroying their road, and let them know exactly how they felt about this by writing them strongly worded messages, where in this case, "strongly worded" means "the messages were attached to arrows, which Samurai Archers fired at the Hojo en masse." They seemed to get the message, although only a few of the Yamabushi survived to read it, and it's hard to say how many of them actually read the messages as they were retreating from all the arrows.
Another Urakami Samurai Archer unit headed towards Toyooka, presumably to use similar means to express displeasure with the Miyoshi's occupation of the city.
The Miyoshi decided they weren't particularly interested in hearing this displeasure, and sent their Arquebusiers out to try get a message of their own across, although in the end both the Miyoshi Arquebusiers and Urakami Archers were able to leave an impression on each other, which in this case means "one unit of both died." The Miyoshi were more successful at avoiding losses to the Southeast, though, where their Arquebusiers killed the Urakami Archers that had fought the Yamabushi while taking no significant losses themselves.
With that out of the way, they decided to focus on a target of more interest: Fukuchiyama, and the Jade in the mountains to the South, which they had long wanted for themselves, even after they got Jade of their own from fighting the Saito and Tokugawa.
With no indestructible Great Wall protecting this city, their cannons could actually damage the Spearmen in it. After all 3 of the units defending the city were injured by cannonfire, Saotome's Army went in to kill 2 of them, and the final unit couldn't put up much of a resistance when Arquebusiers shot them and took the city for the Miyoshi.
The Urakami now had only two cities left: Miyazu, surrounded by the Mori, and the capital of Kobe. While the Miyoshi were somewhat interested in Miyazu, they didn't particularly want to let the Urakami live that much longer, and didn't really want to fight through the Mori to get there, so they decided to just leave it to its fate and start preparing to assault Kobe and kill Daimyo Urakami Munekage.
They were also somewhat concerned by the appearance of a Ninja on their Eastern border with the Takeda, assuming it was probably up to no good. While they had no real issue with the Takeda, they weren't about to let them send Ninja to go rampaging through Miyoshi territory, and so they killed this Ninja with a unit of Arquebusiers.
In May, the Ryuzoji destroyed the recently-built Mori city in Southern Kyushu. It existed for such a brief time that the Miyoshi had never even bothered to learn the name of it.
The Urakami still didn't particularly like having Miyoshi units intruding into their territory, and this time, the Miyoshi found their irritation understandable- after all, this time, the Arquebusiers had gone in to kill Urakami instead of Mori. What they didn't really prepare for was that Arquebusiers were pretty formidable on both offense and defense- so formidable, in fact, that the leader of that unit, Watanabe, distinguished himself in his victory against the unit of Samurai Archers that attacked them.
The brief feeling of good news that Miyoshi Nagayoshi felt when he heard he had another Great Military Leader was soon replaced by dread, though: the slight problem that Watanabe had no way of getting out of Urakami territory, and was defended just by the Arquebusiers who he had led in battle... which had taken heavily losses from fighting Archers and probably couldn't last much longer.
Though the Arquebusiers, perhaps motivated to fight hard to protect their leader, fought bravely against the injured Samurai Warriors who attacked them right after this, fiercely enough to actually kill that entire unit, their luck would not hold a second time: A unit of Urakami Samurai Spearmen attacked, killing the Arqubusiers... and Watanabe.
The Urakami had a bit less success when they sent their Yamabushi to attack the Hojo Yamabushi that had retreated into Miyoshi territory to heal, and the Hojo killed the Urakami, though the Miyoshi took this as a pretty weak consolation for having lost their great Samurai General.
The Takeda tried to help out the only way they could: By pillaging some roads with their Yamabushi, though these Yamabushi could only do so much, and after completing their task, they were met by Mori Ninja, apparently determined to help their enemies the Urakami survive a bit longer. The Takeda killed one of the attacking Mori Ninja, but could not hold out against the second one.
The one thing that made the Miyoshi feel slightly better about the loss of their general: They could still train Armies anyway at the Military Academy in Kyoto, and they finished work on another one in June. They would fill it with Arquebusiers, though they really wished Watanabe was still around to lead another army of his own (probably also of Arquebusiers).
It would take a while for this new Army to get ready to fight though, so in the mean time, the existing Arquebusier Army led by Saotome would have to do- in July, they killed a unit of Mori Spearmen that had foolishly come a bit too close to Fukuchiyama. A Mori Ninja to the East was also killed, though by a unit of Mounted Samurai rather than the Army, which really needed to rest up a bit.
In August, the Ryuzoji finally did something that the Miyoshi had been assuming they were going to do for ages: They built a city of their own in the empty area of Southern Kyushu, that had previously been home to a Shimazu city, and then several cities belonging to the Urakami and Mori that the Ryuzoji had destroyed because, for some reason, they were unable to stop the other clans from settling there at all and had to settle for destroying cities with Ninja. Well, now it seemed the Ryuzoji wouldn't have to worry about anyone else settling there anymore.
The Hojo evidently didn't want to fight the Mori anymore, so they pulled out of that war, in a move that the Miyoshi found kind of irritating, given how recently they'd agreed to fight the Mori together. At least this meant they didn't have to pay the Hojo gold for that alliance anymore.
Perhaps the Hojo just wanted to focus more on fighting closer enemies: Shortly before signing the treaty to end their war with the Mori, they captured the city of Hirosaki from the Date.
The Mori also seemed to prefer focusing on fighting their closer enemies: One of their Ninja attacked Fukuchiyama, killing a unit of Mounted Samurai in the city.
As had been the case every two and a half years or so for decades, the Miyoshi were asked the question of whether they wanted to hold elections for the War Council Daimyo. As always, the answer was no.
The Mori's somewhat significant presence near Fukuchiyama again demanded immediate attention in October- in addition to the Ninja that had attacked them last year, there was another Ninja nearby, and a unit of Samurai Warriors a bit farther away in the Mountains. Nothing they couldn't handle, though: Two units of Arquebusiers killed both of the Ninja, and Saotome's Army killed the Samurai Warriors.
Of course, they also had to deal with the Urakami, but luckily, their new Arquebusier Army was more than up to the task, killing a unit of Urakami Arquebusiers that had foolishly left Kobe to go... somewhere, it was unclear where. A unit of Samurai Spearmen that had entered Miyoshi territory near Kakogawa proved a bit tougher to deal with, killing an attacking Ninja, but 2 attacking Ninja was more than it could handle- the second Ninja avenged the first and killed the Spearmen.
For some reason this didn't dissuade the Urakami from continuing to send their military into Miyoshi territory, and for some reason they thought the best things they could attack with were Spearmen, which were far better defensively than offensively. The three units of them that spent November heading in the direction of Kakogawa seemed like they would be much better off just staying in Kobe and trying to defend it. Or perhaps the Urakami had already given up on that, figuring that the Miyoshi Ninja could just sneak past all their defenses and attack Urakami Munekage directly?
It also didn't dissuade them from attacking the Takeda Yamabushi that had been wandering around their territory pillaging roads, even after the Takeda killed two units of attacking Urakami Samurai (probably Warriors or Archers, I couldn't see them)
The Date, evidently deciding that they couldn't finish off the Mogami and hold off the Hojo at the same time, decided it would be best to focus on only one enemy at a time, and pulled out of fighting both the Mogami and Ryuzoji.
This might potentially make the Hojo the Mogami's saviors, whether they were intending to do that or not, although the Mogami weren't out of the woods yet- not with the similarly powerful Takeda also fighting them, and the Takeda weren't going to be distracted by fighting the Urakami at the same time for very much longer if the Miyoshi had anything to say about it.
In January of 1548, the Miyoshi got right back to work fighting against the Urakami and Mori that had come too close to their territory- the Arquebusier Army killed 2 of the aforementioned Urakami Samurai Spearmen units, and the third was dealt with by two units of Mounted Samurai, though the first attacking Samurai unit retreated with heavy injuries.
Their Cannons near Fukuchiyama proved unusually successful in firing on the Mori Ninja and Samurai Warrior Unit that had come too close to the city, with all 6 inflicting at least some damage. With that, it was a piece of cake for a unit of Mounted Samurai and Saotome's Army to finish off the Ninja and Samurai Warriors.
The Date signed peace with the Mori in February, which likely meant nothing due to being on opposite sides of Honshu with other enemies between them, but it did mean the Date went from being at war with over half the remaining clans a few months ago to being at war with just the Hojo and the two Shikoku-based clans now.
The Mori didn't do much in April but get more preparations under way for attacking Kobe, though Saotome's Army did its tri-monthly sweep of Mori units near Fukuchiyama, killing 2 units of Samurai Spearmen in the Mountains.
Speaking of the clans based on Shikoku, the Ichijo and Chosokabe had been fighting each other for some time now, and the Miyoshi had been watching closely to see if one would ever get a decisive advantage on the other, or even do much to the other at all. It proved the answer was no; after having spent their entire war doing little but some occasional pillaging incursions with Yamabushi, the Ichijo and Chosokabe decided to sign a peace treaty in May.
Finally, in July, 1548, the Miyoshi had everything they wanted in place to attack Kobe: 9 Ninja within striking distance of the city, which they felt would be more than enough to kill Daimyo Urakami Munekage, and why bother with anything else if he was the only one they needed to kill? Especially when, unlike some of the past capitals they'd attacked, Kobe didn't have very many other units that could support Munekage with defensive bombardment.
Urakami Munekage proved quite a tough opponent for the Ninja, though. The first two failed to even land a simple hit on them while he cut them to pieces with his sword. The third battled him a little harder, managing to significantly wound and nearly kill him... but not quite finish the job. The fourth fared no better than the first two.
But 5 proved too many for Urakami Munekage to handle- they wouldn't even need the full 9 they could have attacked with. The 5th was enough, stabbing Urakami Munekage to death, and with him gone, so went Kobe and Miyazu, vanishing into piles of rubble. The Urakami, after many years of being a thorn in the Miyoshi's side, were no more.
With the Urakami destroyed, their alliances with the Takeda and Hojo were over (well, the Hojo one was already over when they signed peace with the Mori), and the Miyoshi were free to end their wars with the Mogami and Mori. Seeing no real reason to fight the Mogami, they decided to not fight them, and collected some gold from the Mogami as tribute for not fighting them instead.
They didn't really see any good reason to stop fighting the Mori, though... not when they could conquer them instead.
That would mean they'd need to keep dealing with all the Mori "invasions" of their territory, though. This month, that meant sinking the group of 4 Caravels that had been sailing along the coast near Matsusaka for a while with their own Caravels. The Miyoshi lost 2 of their Caravels in attempting to do this, but sunk 3 out of the 4 Mori Caravels and heavily damaged the 4th.
The remaining Caravel attempted to flee back to the West in August... but it wasn't fast enough, and in October, the Miyoshi caught up with their own Caravel, and sank the last Mori Caravel.
Roughly the same time as this was all happening, the Mori continued trying to attack Fukuchiyama. In August they again killed a unit of Mounted Samurai in the city with one of their Ninja, with the Ninja taking heavy injuries in the process, and in October this Ninja and another Ninja were killed by attacking Arquebusier units, though not before the Miyoshi foolishly attempted to kill the injured Ninja with a Yamabushi unit, only to find that the injured Ninja was still tougher than they anticipated, tough enough to kill the Yamabushi.
This war was clearly far from over, although with the Miyoshi now fighting only the Mori and the Miyoshi clearly the stronger of the two, it seemed like it was only going to be a matter of time.
With all the peace treaties signed recently, the endless, messy wars that had plagued all of Japan for decades finally seemed to be coming towards an end- the only wars that still were going on in October of 1548 were the war between the Miyoshi and Mori, the war between the Hojo and Ryuzoji, and the wars pitting the Date and Mogami against many of their neighbors near and far, with the Date fighting the Hojo, Ichijo, and Chosokabe, and the Mogami fighting the Takeda, Mori, and Chosokabe, for a total of 8 ongoing wars between two clans. Given that that number had been well into the dozens not that long ago, that was certainly many steps closer to peace.
The Miyoshi only hoped that they'd come out as the strongest clan, hopefully undisputed, by the end of all of this.
Toxicman007
Custom User Title
Still going strong! You've got this one, Chox. I am impressed by your patience, this scenario is the only one I have never completed (apart from on Chieftain as a kid), I have played countless times but never reached a win or defeat. But the closest I came was with Miyoshi, before that save unfortunately died with an old computer, so your upcoming victory (despite your warmongering eyes looking at the Mori) will make me very happy. Keep it up, I love this, and I can't wait for the next Conquest! (we all know you're going to pick Napoleon, right???)
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Even though Yamabushi are a little(!) broken, Sengoku's still one of my 2 favourite Conquests as well (the other's Mesopotamia).
I haven't played it as often as you, but have won it three times so far (all at Emperor), as the randomly chosen Uesugi, Mori, and Tokugawa (IIRC, assuming the colours in the powergraph screenie above are always assigned that way!). I've lost several games as both the Hojo and the Date (due to initial poor expansion/late acquisition of Iron, which meant I lost the WC-race, and then the vote).
I never rolled the Takeda, but they generally seem to do pretty well under the AI (except when I was the Uesugi!), so might be a(nother) good option if you wanted to try again.
Never started on Shikoku or Kyushu either (if that's even possible?), but would imagine most of those Clans are pretty hard to win with -- especially Shikoku, where few opponents would mean fewer opportunities to farm MGLs. (Because unless you're quick/ lucky enough to drop off a Settler in the former territory of a recently-defeated Clan, an Army is pretty much essential to anchor any overseas invasion)
My main tips for this one are to found towns on Hills (ideally also with freshwater) wherever possible, and fortify strong defenders (Yamabushi!) on all Strat/Lux resources within 6 tiles of a rival's border!
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This one is definitely, of the Conquests, the one that takes the most patience to beat, just because, like it's gone in me playing it, it can devolve into a bit of a slog and it takes much longer than all the others by a lot.
Not sure yet, could go for Napoleon, could go for the British, could go for one of the others (France and Britain would for sure be the most interesting ones to play, though)
They're more irritating than outright broken, because if you don't do anything about them, the AI will use them to pillage absolutely everything, and that's not impossible to deal with but it sure makes them a PITA.
None of the Shikoku or Kyushu clans are playable by default, the 8 you can play are the Mori, Miyoshi, Oda, Imagawa (I assume you must mean them, not the Tokugawa, who aren't playable), Takeda, Hojo, Uesugi, and Date. I guess if you wanted to you could go into the editor and make one of the others playable.
Toxicman007
Custom User Title
France is of course the most overpowered civ in the Napoleonic wars conquest as their unique units are the strongest in their classes IIRC. But picking either France or Britain is always a risk, as permanent war inevitably creates military alliances against both. However, the AI doesn't seem to use VP tiles properly (at least from my own experience), so getting enough points to win is fairly easy. I have won as EVERY playable nation on Monarch by abusing this, as I don't think there is a limit to how many units can occupy a VP tile and receive points. I remember one game as Spain where I joined the French side, conquered all of Iberia and Italy, then just stacked units on all the VP tiles I could (some cities were even razed by the AI, leaving one unit on the VP tile, which I easily removed and then stacked units on those VP tiles too. Despite Napoleon defying history and actually conquering all of Great Britain, I was still thousands of points ahead when I won. I have never tried this, but in theory one could play an entirely peaceful game and win just by mass stacking the VP tiles you start with. Although that would be a *bit* boring...
Chapter 67: Pushing Onward
The Miyoshi's main goal for the near future was going to be pushing West and conquering the Mori. A bit easier said than done, though- fighting so far from their core regions made it a bit more difficult to get reinforcements to the front lines than it had been when they'd been fighting all their previous opponents, and the Mori were also a bit tougher than most of the clans they'd faced before- they'd end up often having to just slowly pick apart the Mori units that occasionally ventured out of their territory to attack them. Luckily, their cannons and armies were well-suited for that job. When a unit of Mori Samurai Warriors got a bit too close to Fukuchiyama in November of 1548, it was no trouble for Saotome's Arquebusier Army to kill them at the start of 1549. In time, they'd be able to keep pushing on to the West and start conquering the Mori.
Another goal for the Miyoshi was to continue their ongoing task of resettling regions vacated by other clans' destroyed cities, or at least regions that they'd never built cities in but that seemed underutilized. By January of 1549, though, they'd run into a problem of lack of creativity on their own part: They'd already built so many of these cities that they ran out of ideas for what to call new cities. Oh well then, they could always just reuse the ones they'd already used in the past, and given that they were new, adding "New" to the name seemed like a good way to mix things up.
And so they named the city of New Kyoto, in territory formerly controlled by the Imagawa, somewhat close to the Hojo city of Shirakawa. It perhaps would have had more space available a bit to the Northwest, but the mountains in the region made placing cities in desired locations a bit more difficult.
One nice thing about New Kyoto being where it was, though, was that from its elevated position, it offered a good view of Shirakawa- where they could see the two units of Arquebusiers that the Ryuzoji had landed near the city two months earlier, who were now poised to attack the city.
And attack they did in February. The two Hojo Arquebusier units in the city did all they could to fight back, but they weren't quite strong enough- both of the ensuing combats resulted in victory for the Ryuzoji. All that was left to defend the city now was a unit of Yamabushi. That was enough to stop the Ryuzoji land units from taking it- but the Ryuzoji could still attack from the sea with their Ninja. A Caravel carrying 2 of them came to Shirakawa from the South, and when the 2 Ninja attacked, the Yamabushi were able to kill one of their attackers... but not both of them, and the Ninja took the city for the Ryuzoji. Surprising, that the Ryuzoji could launch a successful amphibious invasion of an area so far from their own territory, against a strong Hojo opponent when they'd never managed to take any cities from the Mori and never gained a permanent foothold on Shikoku, but perhaps the Hojo were just spread thin from their many wars and the Ryuzoji constantly sending Caravels that way eventually took its toll.
Back to the West, the Mori again tried sending a single attacker towards Fukuchiyama- but this time it was a Ninja, so they could reach the city before the Miyoshi would have a chance to attack them. Not that it would matter- the Arquebusiers in the city were more than capable of handling a single Ninja, and handle the Ninja they did.
The Mori also rebuilt the ruins of the former Urakami city of Miyazu, calling their new city Nimi. The Miyoshi would be sure to conquer it for themselves soon.
Saotome's Army wasn't quite in fighting shape in April, but the Miyoshi's other Arquebusier Army was, so it killed one each of units of Mori Samurai Warriors and Spearmen in the Mountains near Fukuchiyama, and Mounted Samurai, also in fighting shape, killed a Mori Ninja that was on its way towards Fukuchiyama but hadn't gotten there yet.
To the South, the Miyoshi started preparing to advance towards the Mori city of Shimonoseki by scouting ahead with their Ninja and Mounted Samurai until their Cannons and Arquebusiers could ready to bombard the city from afar, but this advance wasn't met without resistance- in May, a Mori Ninja attacked a Miyoshi Ninja in the hills near the city. Luckily, this particuar Mori Ninja proved not very good at Ninjutsu, and the superior Ninja skills of the Miyoshi Ninja won out, although he took heavy damage in killing the Mori Ninja and would have to retreat.
3 more Mori Ninja were still hanging around the hills near Shimonoseki, though, so in July the Miyoshi went right about killing all of them- 2 with their own Ninja, the 3rd with a unit of Mounted Samurai.
Being careful not to neglect their other goal of filling in the gaps that now existed in Urakami territory mainly on account of Kobe's destruction, they built their first of several cities in said territory: New Maizuru, on the coast to the North of Kobe's ruins.
But of course, they were much happier to push further into Mori territory than to just formally claim the territory they already mostly had anyway, so when Saotome's Army charged into the city of Ube, killed both the units of Samurai Spearmen in the city, and captured it for the Miyoshi, they were even happier than they had been from the other news of that month.
In August, the Hojo, still unable to reclaim Shirakawa- something they'd apparently never be able to do- had a brief moment of success in their war against the Ryuzoji when one of their Caravels sank 2 attacking Ryuzoji Caravels, but the good news came with much worse news: The Ryuzoji convinced the Hojo's powerful neighbor, the Takeda, to join their side in the war.
On one hand, the Hojo were probably a bit stronger than the Takeda were (even if both were not quite as strong as the Ryuzoji and significantly smaller than the Miyoshi), but the Hojo were a bit more stretched thin between fighting off the Ryuzoji naval invasions to the South and attacking the Date to the North, so having another enemy to fight to the West couldn't help things any.
Speaking of West, much farther to the West on the Miyoshi-Mori war front, the Mori Samurai Warriors again attacked the Miyoshi units hanging around near Shimonoseki. They did kill a Miyoshi Ninja, but a unit of Miyoshi Mounted Samurai killed a unit of attacking Mori Samurai Warriors.
They also had a Caravel sailing near Matsusaka and Yokkaichi that had been menacing the Miyoshi's Southern coast for many months now, but in October, the Miyoshi finally attacked it with a Caravel of their own and sank it.
Interested in continuing their skirmishes in the area around Shimoneski and Hiroshima, the Miyoshi killed the unit of Mori Samurai Warriors that had survived the battles of August with a unit of their Mounted Samurai, and after trying and failing to have one of their Ninjas kill a Mori Ninja, killed the Mori Ninja with another unit of Mounted Samurai.
They finished out the month by continuing to resettle the empty space left by the Urakami, building the city of New Nara on the ruins of Kobe.
The Hojo started off their time of fighting a three-front war on not the best foot in November, sending their slightly damaged Caravel that had survived two Ryuzoji attacks in August to attack another Ryuzoji Caravel, but it seemed that third time was the charm for the Ryuzoji, or perhaps it was just reeling from the damage from earlier combats, as this time the Ryuzoji Caravel emerged victorious.
Not much else seemed to happen on that front, though, while in the West, the Mori continued their slow, trickling pace of counterattacks by attacking a Mounted Samurai with one of their Samurai Warriors, making the Mounted Samurai retreat.
As much as the Miyoshi would have liked to fight back against this, the Mori kept annoyingly fighting battles in locations that didn't really suit themselves to that, so they spent January of 1550 continuing to move their forces into position to attack Shimonoseki and just tried to fight off whatever attacks came their way the following month.
Which proved mostly enough- two more units of Mori Samurai Warriors attacked their Mounted Samurai in February, the Mounted Samurai were able to kill one and retreat from the other one.
The Miyoshi continued slowly advancing in the face of this in April, stopping briefly to have a unit of their Arquebusiers kill a Ninja they saw near Shimonoseki.
The Mori finally seemed to have, at least for the moment, run out of units to counterattack with in May, which made the Miyoshi so happy they decided to once again not hold elections for the War Council Daimyo.
Or rather, if they did have units to attack with, they didn't have the speed or time to get them to attack- 3 units of Mori Samurai Warriors were lying in wait near the battle lines. In July, the Miyoshi decided to just attack first, having the Arquebusier Army kill two of those units and a unit of Arquebusiers kill the third unit.
And on the Southern coast, after much time spent travelling slowly through hills, they finally had their forces in position to attack Shimonoseki- or at least the faster bits of their forces, the Ninja, who weren't slowed by the hills. Cannons rained fire upon the city from afar, and then 2 Ninja, seeing their choice of attacking two units of Samurai Spearmen, one of Samurai Warriors, and one of Yamabushi, opted for killing the Spearmen who had been most damaged by the cannonfire and the Yamabushi. The one that tried to kill the Spearmen succeeded. The one that tried to kill the Yamabushi was... less successful, where "less successful" means "skewered by the Yamabushi's polearms"
To the North, Saotome's Army, going to fight its own battles, ran through Mori territory- and they were briefly puzzled when they were attacked while entering seemingly empty land, then realized they'd unintentionally wandered into a Ninja. No matter- they just shot at their invisible opponent until they were confident they weren't being attacked anymore.
The Mori went back to sending a few attacks at the Miyoshi's Ninjas and Mounted Samurai in August, once again sending their Samurai Warriors to do the job. As was fairly typical, owing to Mounted Samurai being much better at defense than Ninjas are, the Samurai Warriors killed a Miyoshi Ninja, but the Mounted Samurai unit that was attacked fairly easily killed all of its attackers. One of these attackers had also come out of Shimonoseki to attack, further weakening the city's defenses.
Apparently confident on account of their recent victories over the Hojo and unimpressed with the Miyoshi's ability to push into Mori territory, the Ryuzoji decided to press their luck a bit and threaten the Miyoshi.
Miyoshi Nagayoshi's first instinct was to tell the Ryuzoji to shove it, but then thought about it a bit more carefully- the amount they were asking for was of pretty trivial worth, and while they certainly could fight the Ryuzoji, having to deal with their constant streams of fast-moving Caravels and seemingly unparalleled mastery of the sea, perhaps now was not the time to fight them. Ultimately, Miyoshi actually decided to give them what they wanted... this time, at least.
The Takeda, in the meanwhile, had a much more direct way of getting something they wanted from the Miyoshi: upon seeing that the Miyoshi had, far too trustingly, left some workers undefended near Takeda territory to get some work done, the Takeda kidnapped all of them with their Ninja, taking quite a few of both the Miyoshi's native workers and workers they'd taken from other clans over the course of their wars.
"How dare they kidnap what we've rightfully stolen! Well, they're asking for it now. Two can play at that game."
And so, in October, the Miyoshi started what would become a several-years-long campaign of kidnapping Takeda workers with their own Ninja, starting with some of the ones the Takeda had just stolen from them. They also, of course, found the Takeda Ninja that had stolen all their workers two months earlier, and killed it with their Mounted Samurai Army.
Their other two armies proved more active against the Mori, with Saotome's Army killing a Ninja and the unnamed Arquebusier Army killing a unit of Samurai Warriors.
They also had one more gap in former Urakami territory they wanted to fill- really one on the Urakami-Mori border that for some reason neither clan had ever bothered building a city in despite ample room for one, with the Miyoshi decided to make use of by building the city of New Tottori, a bit before their Armies attacked.
Just to the South, at Shimonoseki, after the Miyoshi's cannons and Arquebusiers again bombarded the city, now held only by a unit each of Yamabushi and Spearmen, not really capable of withstanding such an assault. A unit of Mounted Samurai immediately killed the Yamabushi. Having not been significantly damaged by the Yamabushi, they decided to try to finish the job themselves by killing the Spearmen, but this ended up being a bad choice- the Spearmen instead killed them. Oh well- the Spearmen still were just barely alive between the Cannons and the Mounted Samurai, and when a Ninja showed up to finish the job, they didn't even see it coming. Shimonoseki was now Miyoshi.
In November, the Takeda's way of dealing with the Miyoshi stealing their workers was to send some of the workers they captured from the Miyoshi through Miyoshi territory from one part of Takeda territory to another part... right into a Miyoshi Ninja that they couldn't see. The Ninja hoped to capture them but instead the workers all tried to "attack" and... died?
(Apparently when a worker runs into a Ninja the worker dies, who knew? My Ninja even promoted from this! I wonder if I could have gotten an MGL if they did this enough times?)
The Miyoshi continued their worker-stealing campaign against the Takeda in 1551, capturing 4 workers from them in January, some stealing back the ones they'd lost to the Takeda before, some stealing ones the Takeda always had.
Back to the West, the Miyoshi started slowly trekking through Mori territory to reach the cities of Okayama and Nimi, but at Okayama, they were heavily slowed down by all the hills in the area and the fact that Okayama was quite far from Shimonoseki. They could have solved that last problem by going to Hiroshima first, but they weren't that interested in destroying all the Mori cities... just yet.
Still, in advancing, they ran into Ninja to kill- two units of Mounted Samurai killed two Ninja as they walked through Mori territory.
And of course, they also never ran out of chances to attack the Samurai Warriors the Mori were slowly sending at them- Saotome's Army killed another unit of them.
The Mori, for their part, never seemed to run out of chances to attack with those Samurai Warriors and, from time to time, Ninja- in February, one such Ninja attacked a Miyoshi unit of Mounted Samurai, which fought bravely against the Ninja, ultimately being forced to retreat to avoid death... at least, seemingly avoid it, but shortly after retreating, they were attacked again by a unit of Samurai Warriors. The battle at first seemed hopeless with how much strength they'd lost fighting the Ninja, but they resolved to get fierce and not go down without a fight- or as it happened, not go down at all, since they, against all odds, managed to actually kill all the attacking Samurai Warriors.
February was also evidently "get the Mogami to join some wars" month, as the Ryuzoji decided to get their help in fighting the Hojo. That likely wouldn't matter too much besides maybe slowing the Hojo down a bit in the North, but of more consequence, the Mogami also declared war on their neighbors the Date at the request of the Ichijo.
The Date weren't all that strong, but the Mogami's military strength was pathetic, and the last time the Date and Mogami fought it hadn't gone well for the Mogami at all. Perhaps this time the Date would be able to finish the job?
In March, the Miyoshi built another Army in Kyoto, again filling it with Arquebusiers. In order to avoid confusion with their other Arquebusier Army, they named the older one the First Arquebusier Army and this one the Second Arquebusier Army, with later Armies sure to follow sequential numbering when not led by a named great leader.
The Takeda worker-stealing campaign continued in April, with the Miyoshi taking 3 more Workers from the Takeda.
Their campaign against the Mori went a bit more slowly that month on account of the terrain, with the Miyoshi really unable to do anything but kill the Ninja that had made their Mounted Samurai retreat. A unit of Yamabushi tried their hand at this first, figuring that the Ninja had taken a few hits from fighting the Mounted Samurai and could be easily beaten- which proved to be wrong when the Ninja killed all the Yamabushi. Luckily, a unit of Samurai Warriors proved much more capable of killing this meddlesome Ninja.
In May, in a seeming rehash of every other month for the last several years, the Mori attacked a unit of Miyoshi Mounted Samurai with their own Samurai Warriors in the vicinity of New Tottori, making the Mounted Samurai Retreat.
To the East, the Takeda finally seemed to take note of all the Ninja stealing all their workers and decided to put a stop to that by killing 2 of the Ninja with their Mounted Samurai.
Perhaps they shouldn't have focused on the Ninja, though- Mounted Samurai fighting the Ninja couldn't fight the Hojo, and the Hojo were able to take the Hojo's Easternmost city, Maebashi, that month, putting them fairly close to the Takeda's capital and also uniting their isolated Northern city, Nagai, with the rest of their territory.
Undeterred by their Ninja losses in May, Miyoshi Ninja captured two more Takeda workers in July.
The month also proved active in many different areas on the Mori front. First, there was the Samurai Warrior that had recently fought near New Tottori. Having been weakened slightly by the battle with the Mounted Samurai, it was somewhat vulnerable... but could easily be more vulnerable with some Arquebusier bombardment, so the Miyoshi did just that, before having another Arquebusier unit charge at the Samurai Warriors and kill them all.
There was another Mori Samurai Warrior somewhat close to Shimonoseki, but it was sitting on an elevated position, and bombardment from Arquebusiers failed, making them fairly tough to get rid of... so the Miyoshi decided to just not attack them.
Saotome's Army, running ahead of the rest of the Miyoshi attack force, killed a Ninja near Okayama after it was spotted by Miyoshi Ninja.
And finally, to the North, the First Arquebusier Army began to assault the city of Nimi, confident they could now take it without destroying it, and killed a unit of Samurai Spearmen there.
A Ninja near the Hojo-Miyoshi border had been trailing a Hojo group of Yamabushi and Settlers for a few months when the Hojo, taking note, decided to just kill this Ninja with their Samurai Archers in August- or at least try to, except these Archers ended up being pretty bad shots and the Ninja killed them all without taking so much as a single scratch from their arrows.
The Mori counterattacks that month proved a lot more successful, though. An Arquebusier unit about halfway between Ube and Nimi that was preparing to provide bombardment support for the First Army at Nimi never got the chance to help at all when Samurai Warriors killed them. The Arquebusiers that had recently fought near New Tottori proved a bit hardier, killing the unit of Samurai Warriors that attacked them, but taking enough hits in the process that a Ninja was able to finish the job. Lastly, the Samurai Warriors near Shimonoeski, figuring they alone couldn't do much to the city's defenses, just destroyed the roads outside, and were joined by another unit of Samurai Warriors in some nearby hills.
With all of their losses of that month and how much the Mori war was seeming to stall out, it really shouldn't have come as that much of a surprise to the Miyoshi when some of their cities, specifically Toba and Maizuru, broke out in riots in response. Evidently some of the Miyoshi's citizens were weary at all the years they'd spent at war with the Mori, seemingly for reasons they weren't really sure of why they were fighting. Bah! Miyoshi Nagayoshi resolved to just pacify them for now by spending more money on some luxuries to keep them entertained, and just focus harder on killing the Mori as quickly as they could.
Their efforts at Nimi to go quickly didn't go as well as they hoped- In October, the First Arquebusier Army killed a unit of Yamabushi defending the city, but still Samurai Spearmen remained, and the Army had suffered too many casualties from its attacks to continue, so it turned around and retreated to recover, making sure to kill the Samurai Warriors that had killed their Arquebusier support as they were retreating- this they managed easily, since the Warriors had themselves suffered heavy damage from fighting the Arquebusiers.
Thankfully, their efforts at Okayama proved much more fruitful, in part because their forces were a lot more numerous there. After it was bombarded by Cannons and Arquebusiers, Saotome's Army was easily able to kill a unit each of Samurai Spearmen and Warriors. The 3 units of Yamabushi in the city proved a bit tougher to deal with for the attacking Ninja and Mounted Samurai, each one managing to kill one attacking unit of Mounted Samurai (or in one case, a Ninja), but the Miyoshi had a lot more Mounted Samurai where that came from, and they killed all the Yamabushi with no further losses to themselves, and capture the city.
How long they would hold it, though, was another question. They were totally surrounded by Mori territory (at least on land- on the sea, they partly bordered the Ichijo), and the city's massive population gave rise to a similarly massive resistance. They'd hold onto the city as best as they could, but that might not be good enough.
But they had other things to do elsewhere- like deal with the Ninja near New Tottori that had killed their Arquebusiers. A unit of Mounted Samurai proved more than up to the task.
To the East, they continued capturing workers from the Takeda with their Ninja, and tried to do the same to the Hojo when a Ninja, aided by poor roads in former Imagawa territory, caught up with the Hojo Yamabushi/Settler group... but the Yamabushi unit was able to, just barely, fight off the attacking Ninja, allowing the Yamabushi and Ninja to escape. Ah well.
The Takeda were evidently getting pretty tired of losing all their Workers, since they tried again to kill the Miyoshi Ninja in November. "Tried" being the important word there, since a single Miyoshi Ninja was able to fight off a Takeda Ninja and another unit of (admittedly, heavily injured) Mounted Samurai before finally succumbing to their third attackers, a full-strength Mounted Samurai unit.
The Mori counterattack came soon after... but at Shimonoseki, not Okayama, where their 2 Samurai Warrior units attacked the city, killing both the Miyoshi units of Mounted Samurai there. This gave the Miyoshi great cause for concern, with only Ninja left to defend the city. Luckily, one such Ninja was able to hold out and kill a unit of attacking Yamabushi, but they only were just barely holding on. They'd need to strongly reinforce the city as soon as they could.
Luckily, a pretty significant amount of help was on the way: In January, 1552, the 2nd Arquebusier Army reached the front lines, and killed one of the Mori Samurai Warrior units near Shimonoseki, while a unit of Arquebusiers outside the army killed the other one. Shimonoseki was safe... for now, at least.
Less could be said about the safety of Okayama. While they had plenty of military there, all their forces could be reduced to nothing in an instant if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the city's resistance overcame them, so they carefully stayed outside the city, and used all their cannons to bombard nearby Mori units, which let a single unit of Mounted Samurai kill a unit each of Samurai Warriors and Yamabushi. The much bigger problem was that Saotome's Army was in a pretty vulnerable state, but couldn't safely heal in Okayama and couldn't easily retreat or be covered by smaller units, so the Miyoshi would have to surround the Army to cover its escape in a manner that it couldn't easily be attacked by the Mori.
In the meantime, they kept right up with their worker kidnapping, with a Ninja taking yet another Takeda worker, and the Takeda, in February, again getting sick of this and killing this Ninja with their Mounted Samurai.
But for all their unhappiness at dealing with losing their Workers to Ninja attacks, they at least had better news on another front: They retook the city of Maebashi from the Hojo.
The Mori proved unable to many any similar progress in retaking any of their own cities, able to do nothing but kill a Miyoshi Ninja with a unit of their Samurai Warriors.
Said Samurai Warriors didn't last that long- in April, the Miyoshi killed them, along with a Mori Ninja, with their Mounted Samurai.
And while they weren't able to organize any kind of advance, they at least held what they had, and Saotome's Army could escape to safer territory to recover.
Towards the start of May, The Date and Chosokabe signed a peace treaty, ending a war that for sure meant nothing to either of them in the first place.
As they always did, the Mori attacked the Miyoshi Mounted Samurai with their Samurai Warriors that month, and as was typical, the Mounted Samurai retreated from this attack.
Also as was typical, in July, these Samurai Warriors were attacked an killed by a Miyoshi unit of Mounted Samurai.
In news that wasn't something that happened seemingly every month, The 1st Arquebusier Army, recovered from early battles, started attacking Nimi again, and killed a unit of Samurai Spearmen there.
In response to this, in August, the Mori once again tried killing their Arqebusier Bombardment support... but this time proved not up to the task, their Warriors able to deal some damage to the Miyoshi Arquebusiers but not able to finish the job before the Arquebusiers killed them all.
They didn't have much more luck fighting the Miyoshi near Okayama- A Ninja did at least make a unit of Mounted Samurai retreat, but the attacking Samurai Warrior unit didn't even manage that, just all dying in a fight with Mounted Samurai.
About the only thing they succeeded at was having 2 Ninja near Okayama in October... which were so easy for the Miyoshi to deal with that they only needed a single unit of Mounted Samurai to kill both of them.
They also had a Caravel somewhat worryingly close to Matsusaka... which also meant close to a bunch of Miyoshi Caravels, which sunk the Mori Caravel, although it took one of the Miyoshi Caravels down to the bottom of the sea with it.
And in the best news of the month: Even without any bombardment support, the 1st Arquebusier Army was more than capable of handling the two remaining units of Spearmen in Nimi, taking the city for the Miyoshi.
The Mori had no real response to this in November, other than to have a unit of their Samurai Warriors kill a unit of Yamabushi that had been heading to Okayama to help defend it from threats both outside and inside.
These Samurai Warriors didn't last long- in January of 1553, a unit of Miyoshi Arquebusiers killed them.
Somewhat miraculously, despite the immense size of Okayama's resistance, it hadn't actually managed to overcome the Miyoshi units defending the city and return the city to the Mori as the even the Miyoshi themselves had figured would happen before too long.
And so, the Miyoshi felt comfortable pressing on, farther to the West that month, hoping to take the last few Mori cities in Western Honshu before turning around and finishing them at Hiroshima. On their way towards Tokuyama, they ran into an invisible Ninja... no problem, a Mounted Samurai was more than capable of killing them.
Some mildly interesting news from the other clans came at the start of February when the Chosokabe ended their pointless war with the Mogami- they certainly weren't fighting that, but it did, notably, mean that the Chosokabe were no longer at war with anybody, a distinction they shared with the Uesugi. Outside of the Miyoshi-Mori War and (pointless) Ichijo-Date war, every other war involved either the Hojo (who were fighting the Date, Mogami, Takeda, and Ryuzoji) or the Mogami (who fought the Hojo, Date, Takeda, and Mori)
In mildly more interesting news, the Hojo, continuing to fail to hold their farther-out territories, lost the city of Hirosaki, as it was recaptured by the Date, making it the second time they'd recaptured that city after losing it.
The Mori, in their usual "small counterattacks with Samurai Warriors" mood, sent a single such unit to try to do something about the Miyoshi in their territory- they did, at least, manage to kill a Ninja.
As happened every two and a half years, the issue of "should the War Council hold elections" came up in March, and as with every time the issue came up, the Miyoshi continued to say "no."
In April, Somewhat tired of how long it was taking to go through the hills between Okayama and Shimonoseki, the Miyoshi decided to speed things up a bit by claiming all that territory on the coast for themselves, with the city of New Kasuga. It was in a somewhat cramped space, but having all that new territory made it well worth it.
And back near Okayama, they sent their units to deal with the Samurai Warriors that had attacked them in February, killing them with a unit of Mounted Samurai, then sent another unit of Mounted Samurai to kill a Ninja, succeeding so amazingly at killing the Ninja, despite all the Ninja's fancy tricks, that the leader of that unit, Hiyoshi, distinguished himself enough to be capable of leading a much bigger Army.
(I wish I'd remembered to get a picture of this MGL generation)
That name seemed familiar... perhaps this Hiyoshi was related to the Hiyoshi that had led a Bushi Army for the Miyoshi all those years ago? Whether or not he was, he was well suited to lead an Army of Mounted Samurai.
Hopefully all their armies would mean it wouldn't take too much longer to take those last few Mori cities and have complete control of Western Honshu.
The Miyoshi's main goal for the near future was going to be pushing West and conquering the Mori. A bit easier said than done, though- fighting so far from their core regions made it a bit more difficult to get reinforcements to the front lines than it had been when they'd been fighting all their previous opponents, and the Mori were also a bit tougher than most of the clans they'd faced before- they'd end up often having to just slowly pick apart the Mori units that occasionally ventured out of their territory to attack them. Luckily, their cannons and armies were well-suited for that job. When a unit of Mori Samurai Warriors got a bit too close to Fukuchiyama in November of 1548, it was no trouble for Saotome's Arquebusier Army to kill them at the start of 1549. In time, they'd be able to keep pushing on to the West and start conquering the Mori.
Another goal for the Miyoshi was to continue their ongoing task of resettling regions vacated by other clans' destroyed cities, or at least regions that they'd never built cities in but that seemed underutilized. By January of 1549, though, they'd run into a problem of lack of creativity on their own part: They'd already built so many of these cities that they ran out of ideas for what to call new cities. Oh well then, they could always just reuse the ones they'd already used in the past, and given that they were new, adding "New" to the name seemed like a good way to mix things up.
And so they named the city of New Kyoto, in territory formerly controlled by the Imagawa, somewhat close to the Hojo city of Shirakawa. It perhaps would have had more space available a bit to the Northwest, but the mountains in the region made placing cities in desired locations a bit more difficult.
One nice thing about New Kyoto being where it was, though, was that from its elevated position, it offered a good view of Shirakawa- where they could see the two units of Arquebusiers that the Ryuzoji had landed near the city two months earlier, who were now poised to attack the city.
And attack they did in February. The two Hojo Arquebusier units in the city did all they could to fight back, but they weren't quite strong enough- both of the ensuing combats resulted in victory for the Ryuzoji. All that was left to defend the city now was a unit of Yamabushi. That was enough to stop the Ryuzoji land units from taking it- but the Ryuzoji could still attack from the sea with their Ninja. A Caravel carrying 2 of them came to Shirakawa from the South, and when the 2 Ninja attacked, the Yamabushi were able to kill one of their attackers... but not both of them, and the Ninja took the city for the Ryuzoji. Surprising, that the Ryuzoji could launch a successful amphibious invasion of an area so far from their own territory, against a strong Hojo opponent when they'd never managed to take any cities from the Mori and never gained a permanent foothold on Shikoku, but perhaps the Hojo were just spread thin from their many wars and the Ryuzoji constantly sending Caravels that way eventually took its toll.
Back to the West, the Mori again tried sending a single attacker towards Fukuchiyama- but this time it was a Ninja, so they could reach the city before the Miyoshi would have a chance to attack them. Not that it would matter- the Arquebusiers in the city were more than capable of handling a single Ninja, and handle the Ninja they did.
The Mori also rebuilt the ruins of the former Urakami city of Miyazu, calling their new city Nimi. The Miyoshi would be sure to conquer it for themselves soon.
Saotome's Army wasn't quite in fighting shape in April, but the Miyoshi's other Arquebusier Army was, so it killed one each of units of Mori Samurai Warriors and Spearmen in the Mountains near Fukuchiyama, and Mounted Samurai, also in fighting shape, killed a Mori Ninja that was on its way towards Fukuchiyama but hadn't gotten there yet.
To the South, the Miyoshi started preparing to advance towards the Mori city of Shimonoseki by scouting ahead with their Ninja and Mounted Samurai until their Cannons and Arquebusiers could ready to bombard the city from afar, but this advance wasn't met without resistance- in May, a Mori Ninja attacked a Miyoshi Ninja in the hills near the city. Luckily, this particuar Mori Ninja proved not very good at Ninjutsu, and the superior Ninja skills of the Miyoshi Ninja won out, although he took heavy damage in killing the Mori Ninja and would have to retreat.
3 more Mori Ninja were still hanging around the hills near Shimonoseki, though, so in July the Miyoshi went right about killing all of them- 2 with their own Ninja, the 3rd with a unit of Mounted Samurai.
Being careful not to neglect their other goal of filling in the gaps that now existed in Urakami territory mainly on account of Kobe's destruction, they built their first of several cities in said territory: New Maizuru, on the coast to the North of Kobe's ruins.
But of course, they were much happier to push further into Mori territory than to just formally claim the territory they already mostly had anyway, so when Saotome's Army charged into the city of Ube, killed both the units of Samurai Spearmen in the city, and captured it for the Miyoshi, they were even happier than they had been from the other news of that month.
In August, the Hojo, still unable to reclaim Shirakawa- something they'd apparently never be able to do- had a brief moment of success in their war against the Ryuzoji when one of their Caravels sank 2 attacking Ryuzoji Caravels, but the good news came with much worse news: The Ryuzoji convinced the Hojo's powerful neighbor, the Takeda, to join their side in the war.
On one hand, the Hojo were probably a bit stronger than the Takeda were (even if both were not quite as strong as the Ryuzoji and significantly smaller than the Miyoshi), but the Hojo were a bit more stretched thin between fighting off the Ryuzoji naval invasions to the South and attacking the Date to the North, so having another enemy to fight to the West couldn't help things any.
Speaking of West, much farther to the West on the Miyoshi-Mori war front, the Mori Samurai Warriors again attacked the Miyoshi units hanging around near Shimonoseki. They did kill a Miyoshi Ninja, but a unit of Miyoshi Mounted Samurai killed a unit of attacking Mori Samurai Warriors.
They also had a Caravel sailing near Matsusaka and Yokkaichi that had been menacing the Miyoshi's Southern coast for many months now, but in October, the Miyoshi finally attacked it with a Caravel of their own and sank it.
Interested in continuing their skirmishes in the area around Shimoneski and Hiroshima, the Miyoshi killed the unit of Mori Samurai Warriors that had survived the battles of August with a unit of their Mounted Samurai, and after trying and failing to have one of their Ninjas kill a Mori Ninja, killed the Mori Ninja with another unit of Mounted Samurai.
They finished out the month by continuing to resettle the empty space left by the Urakami, building the city of New Nara on the ruins of Kobe.
The Hojo started off their time of fighting a three-front war on not the best foot in November, sending their slightly damaged Caravel that had survived two Ryuzoji attacks in August to attack another Ryuzoji Caravel, but it seemed that third time was the charm for the Ryuzoji, or perhaps it was just reeling from the damage from earlier combats, as this time the Ryuzoji Caravel emerged victorious.
Not much else seemed to happen on that front, though, while in the West, the Mori continued their slow, trickling pace of counterattacks by attacking a Mounted Samurai with one of their Samurai Warriors, making the Mounted Samurai retreat.
As much as the Miyoshi would have liked to fight back against this, the Mori kept annoyingly fighting battles in locations that didn't really suit themselves to that, so they spent January of 1550 continuing to move their forces into position to attack Shimonoseki and just tried to fight off whatever attacks came their way the following month.
Which proved mostly enough- two more units of Mori Samurai Warriors attacked their Mounted Samurai in February, the Mounted Samurai were able to kill one and retreat from the other one.
The Miyoshi continued slowly advancing in the face of this in April, stopping briefly to have a unit of their Arquebusiers kill a Ninja they saw near Shimonoseki.
The Mori finally seemed to have, at least for the moment, run out of units to counterattack with in May, which made the Miyoshi so happy they decided to once again not hold elections for the War Council Daimyo.
Or rather, if they did have units to attack with, they didn't have the speed or time to get them to attack- 3 units of Mori Samurai Warriors were lying in wait near the battle lines. In July, the Miyoshi decided to just attack first, having the Arquebusier Army kill two of those units and a unit of Arquebusiers kill the third unit.
And on the Southern coast, after much time spent travelling slowly through hills, they finally had their forces in position to attack Shimonoseki- or at least the faster bits of their forces, the Ninja, who weren't slowed by the hills. Cannons rained fire upon the city from afar, and then 2 Ninja, seeing their choice of attacking two units of Samurai Spearmen, one of Samurai Warriors, and one of Yamabushi, opted for killing the Spearmen who had been most damaged by the cannonfire and the Yamabushi. The one that tried to kill the Spearmen succeeded. The one that tried to kill the Yamabushi was... less successful, where "less successful" means "skewered by the Yamabushi's polearms"
To the North, Saotome's Army, going to fight its own battles, ran through Mori territory- and they were briefly puzzled when they were attacked while entering seemingly empty land, then realized they'd unintentionally wandered into a Ninja. No matter- they just shot at their invisible opponent until they were confident they weren't being attacked anymore.
The Mori went back to sending a few attacks at the Miyoshi's Ninjas and Mounted Samurai in August, once again sending their Samurai Warriors to do the job. As was fairly typical, owing to Mounted Samurai being much better at defense than Ninjas are, the Samurai Warriors killed a Miyoshi Ninja, but the Mounted Samurai unit that was attacked fairly easily killed all of its attackers. One of these attackers had also come out of Shimonoseki to attack, further weakening the city's defenses.
Apparently confident on account of their recent victories over the Hojo and unimpressed with the Miyoshi's ability to push into Mori territory, the Ryuzoji decided to press their luck a bit and threaten the Miyoshi.
Miyoshi Nagayoshi's first instinct was to tell the Ryuzoji to shove it, but then thought about it a bit more carefully- the amount they were asking for was of pretty trivial worth, and while they certainly could fight the Ryuzoji, having to deal with their constant streams of fast-moving Caravels and seemingly unparalleled mastery of the sea, perhaps now was not the time to fight them. Ultimately, Miyoshi actually decided to give them what they wanted... this time, at least.
The Takeda, in the meanwhile, had a much more direct way of getting something they wanted from the Miyoshi: upon seeing that the Miyoshi had, far too trustingly, left some workers undefended near Takeda territory to get some work done, the Takeda kidnapped all of them with their Ninja, taking quite a few of both the Miyoshi's native workers and workers they'd taken from other clans over the course of their wars.
"How dare they kidnap what we've rightfully stolen! Well, they're asking for it now. Two can play at that game."
And so, in October, the Miyoshi started what would become a several-years-long campaign of kidnapping Takeda workers with their own Ninja, starting with some of the ones the Takeda had just stolen from them. They also, of course, found the Takeda Ninja that had stolen all their workers two months earlier, and killed it with their Mounted Samurai Army.
Their other two armies proved more active against the Mori, with Saotome's Army killing a Ninja and the unnamed Arquebusier Army killing a unit of Samurai Warriors.
They also had one more gap in former Urakami territory they wanted to fill- really one on the Urakami-Mori border that for some reason neither clan had ever bothered building a city in despite ample room for one, with the Miyoshi decided to make use of by building the city of New Tottori, a bit before their Armies attacked.
Just to the South, at Shimonoseki, after the Miyoshi's cannons and Arquebusiers again bombarded the city, now held only by a unit each of Yamabushi and Spearmen, not really capable of withstanding such an assault. A unit of Mounted Samurai immediately killed the Yamabushi. Having not been significantly damaged by the Yamabushi, they decided to try to finish the job themselves by killing the Spearmen, but this ended up being a bad choice- the Spearmen instead killed them. Oh well- the Spearmen still were just barely alive between the Cannons and the Mounted Samurai, and when a Ninja showed up to finish the job, they didn't even see it coming. Shimonoseki was now Miyoshi.
In November, the Takeda's way of dealing with the Miyoshi stealing their workers was to send some of the workers they captured from the Miyoshi through Miyoshi territory from one part of Takeda territory to another part... right into a Miyoshi Ninja that they couldn't see. The Ninja hoped to capture them but instead the workers all tried to "attack" and... died?
(Apparently when a worker runs into a Ninja the worker dies, who knew? My Ninja even promoted from this! I wonder if I could have gotten an MGL if they did this enough times?)
The Miyoshi continued their worker-stealing campaign against the Takeda in 1551, capturing 4 workers from them in January, some stealing back the ones they'd lost to the Takeda before, some stealing ones the Takeda always had.
Back to the West, the Miyoshi started slowly trekking through Mori territory to reach the cities of Okayama and Nimi, but at Okayama, they were heavily slowed down by all the hills in the area and the fact that Okayama was quite far from Shimonoseki. They could have solved that last problem by going to Hiroshima first, but they weren't that interested in destroying all the Mori cities... just yet.
Still, in advancing, they ran into Ninja to kill- two units of Mounted Samurai killed two Ninja as they walked through Mori territory.
And of course, they also never ran out of chances to attack the Samurai Warriors the Mori were slowly sending at them- Saotome's Army killed another unit of them.
The Mori, for their part, never seemed to run out of chances to attack with those Samurai Warriors and, from time to time, Ninja- in February, one such Ninja attacked a Miyoshi unit of Mounted Samurai, which fought bravely against the Ninja, ultimately being forced to retreat to avoid death... at least, seemingly avoid it, but shortly after retreating, they were attacked again by a unit of Samurai Warriors. The battle at first seemed hopeless with how much strength they'd lost fighting the Ninja, but they resolved to get fierce and not go down without a fight- or as it happened, not go down at all, since they, against all odds, managed to actually kill all the attacking Samurai Warriors.
February was also evidently "get the Mogami to join some wars" month, as the Ryuzoji decided to get their help in fighting the Hojo. That likely wouldn't matter too much besides maybe slowing the Hojo down a bit in the North, but of more consequence, the Mogami also declared war on their neighbors the Date at the request of the Ichijo.
The Date weren't all that strong, but the Mogami's military strength was pathetic, and the last time the Date and Mogami fought it hadn't gone well for the Mogami at all. Perhaps this time the Date would be able to finish the job?
In March, the Miyoshi built another Army in Kyoto, again filling it with Arquebusiers. In order to avoid confusion with their other Arquebusier Army, they named the older one the First Arquebusier Army and this one the Second Arquebusier Army, with later Armies sure to follow sequential numbering when not led by a named great leader.
The Takeda worker-stealing campaign continued in April, with the Miyoshi taking 3 more Workers from the Takeda.
Their campaign against the Mori went a bit more slowly that month on account of the terrain, with the Miyoshi really unable to do anything but kill the Ninja that had made their Mounted Samurai retreat. A unit of Yamabushi tried their hand at this first, figuring that the Ninja had taken a few hits from fighting the Mounted Samurai and could be easily beaten- which proved to be wrong when the Ninja killed all the Yamabushi. Luckily, a unit of Samurai Warriors proved much more capable of killing this meddlesome Ninja.
In May, in a seeming rehash of every other month for the last several years, the Mori attacked a unit of Miyoshi Mounted Samurai with their own Samurai Warriors in the vicinity of New Tottori, making the Mounted Samurai Retreat.
To the East, the Takeda finally seemed to take note of all the Ninja stealing all their workers and decided to put a stop to that by killing 2 of the Ninja with their Mounted Samurai.
Perhaps they shouldn't have focused on the Ninja, though- Mounted Samurai fighting the Ninja couldn't fight the Hojo, and the Hojo were able to take the Hojo's Easternmost city, Maebashi, that month, putting them fairly close to the Takeda's capital and also uniting their isolated Northern city, Nagai, with the rest of their territory.
Undeterred by their Ninja losses in May, Miyoshi Ninja captured two more Takeda workers in July.
The month also proved active in many different areas on the Mori front. First, there was the Samurai Warrior that had recently fought near New Tottori. Having been weakened slightly by the battle with the Mounted Samurai, it was somewhat vulnerable... but could easily be more vulnerable with some Arquebusier bombardment, so the Miyoshi did just that, before having another Arquebusier unit charge at the Samurai Warriors and kill them all.
There was another Mori Samurai Warrior somewhat close to Shimonoseki, but it was sitting on an elevated position, and bombardment from Arquebusiers failed, making them fairly tough to get rid of... so the Miyoshi decided to just not attack them.
Saotome's Army, running ahead of the rest of the Miyoshi attack force, killed a Ninja near Okayama after it was spotted by Miyoshi Ninja.
And finally, to the North, the First Arquebusier Army began to assault the city of Nimi, confident they could now take it without destroying it, and killed a unit of Samurai Spearmen there.
A Ninja near the Hojo-Miyoshi border had been trailing a Hojo group of Yamabushi and Settlers for a few months when the Hojo, taking note, decided to just kill this Ninja with their Samurai Archers in August- or at least try to, except these Archers ended up being pretty bad shots and the Ninja killed them all without taking so much as a single scratch from their arrows.
The Mori counterattacks that month proved a lot more successful, though. An Arquebusier unit about halfway between Ube and Nimi that was preparing to provide bombardment support for the First Army at Nimi never got the chance to help at all when Samurai Warriors killed them. The Arquebusiers that had recently fought near New Tottori proved a bit hardier, killing the unit of Samurai Warriors that attacked them, but taking enough hits in the process that a Ninja was able to finish the job. Lastly, the Samurai Warriors near Shimonoeski, figuring they alone couldn't do much to the city's defenses, just destroyed the roads outside, and were joined by another unit of Samurai Warriors in some nearby hills.
With all of their losses of that month and how much the Mori war was seeming to stall out, it really shouldn't have come as that much of a surprise to the Miyoshi when some of their cities, specifically Toba and Maizuru, broke out in riots in response. Evidently some of the Miyoshi's citizens were weary at all the years they'd spent at war with the Mori, seemingly for reasons they weren't really sure of why they were fighting. Bah! Miyoshi Nagayoshi resolved to just pacify them for now by spending more money on some luxuries to keep them entertained, and just focus harder on killing the Mori as quickly as they could.
Their efforts at Nimi to go quickly didn't go as well as they hoped- In October, the First Arquebusier Army killed a unit of Yamabushi defending the city, but still Samurai Spearmen remained, and the Army had suffered too many casualties from its attacks to continue, so it turned around and retreated to recover, making sure to kill the Samurai Warriors that had killed their Arquebusier support as they were retreating- this they managed easily, since the Warriors had themselves suffered heavy damage from fighting the Arquebusiers.
Thankfully, their efforts at Okayama proved much more fruitful, in part because their forces were a lot more numerous there. After it was bombarded by Cannons and Arquebusiers, Saotome's Army was easily able to kill a unit each of Samurai Spearmen and Warriors. The 3 units of Yamabushi in the city proved a bit tougher to deal with for the attacking Ninja and Mounted Samurai, each one managing to kill one attacking unit of Mounted Samurai (or in one case, a Ninja), but the Miyoshi had a lot more Mounted Samurai where that came from, and they killed all the Yamabushi with no further losses to themselves, and capture the city.
How long they would hold it, though, was another question. They were totally surrounded by Mori territory (at least on land- on the sea, they partly bordered the Ichijo), and the city's massive population gave rise to a similarly massive resistance. They'd hold onto the city as best as they could, but that might not be good enough.
But they had other things to do elsewhere- like deal with the Ninja near New Tottori that had killed their Arquebusiers. A unit of Mounted Samurai proved more than up to the task.
To the East, they continued capturing workers from the Takeda with their Ninja, and tried to do the same to the Hojo when a Ninja, aided by poor roads in former Imagawa territory, caught up with the Hojo Yamabushi/Settler group... but the Yamabushi unit was able to, just barely, fight off the attacking Ninja, allowing the Yamabushi and Ninja to escape. Ah well.
The Takeda were evidently getting pretty tired of losing all their Workers, since they tried again to kill the Miyoshi Ninja in November. "Tried" being the important word there, since a single Miyoshi Ninja was able to fight off a Takeda Ninja and another unit of (admittedly, heavily injured) Mounted Samurai before finally succumbing to their third attackers, a full-strength Mounted Samurai unit.
The Mori counterattack came soon after... but at Shimonoseki, not Okayama, where their 2 Samurai Warrior units attacked the city, killing both the Miyoshi units of Mounted Samurai there. This gave the Miyoshi great cause for concern, with only Ninja left to defend the city. Luckily, one such Ninja was able to hold out and kill a unit of attacking Yamabushi, but they only were just barely holding on. They'd need to strongly reinforce the city as soon as they could.
Luckily, a pretty significant amount of help was on the way: In January, 1552, the 2nd Arquebusier Army reached the front lines, and killed one of the Mori Samurai Warrior units near Shimonoseki, while a unit of Arquebusiers outside the army killed the other one. Shimonoseki was safe... for now, at least.
Less could be said about the safety of Okayama. While they had plenty of military there, all their forces could be reduced to nothing in an instant if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the city's resistance overcame them, so they carefully stayed outside the city, and used all their cannons to bombard nearby Mori units, which let a single unit of Mounted Samurai kill a unit each of Samurai Warriors and Yamabushi. The much bigger problem was that Saotome's Army was in a pretty vulnerable state, but couldn't safely heal in Okayama and couldn't easily retreat or be covered by smaller units, so the Miyoshi would have to surround the Army to cover its escape in a manner that it couldn't easily be attacked by the Mori.
In the meantime, they kept right up with their worker kidnapping, with a Ninja taking yet another Takeda worker, and the Takeda, in February, again getting sick of this and killing this Ninja with their Mounted Samurai.
But for all their unhappiness at dealing with losing their Workers to Ninja attacks, they at least had better news on another front: They retook the city of Maebashi from the Hojo.
The Mori proved unable to many any similar progress in retaking any of their own cities, able to do nothing but kill a Miyoshi Ninja with a unit of their Samurai Warriors.
Said Samurai Warriors didn't last that long- in April, the Miyoshi killed them, along with a Mori Ninja, with their Mounted Samurai.
And while they weren't able to organize any kind of advance, they at least held what they had, and Saotome's Army could escape to safer territory to recover.
Towards the start of May, The Date and Chosokabe signed a peace treaty, ending a war that for sure meant nothing to either of them in the first place.
As they always did, the Mori attacked the Miyoshi Mounted Samurai with their Samurai Warriors that month, and as was typical, the Mounted Samurai retreated from this attack.
Also as was typical, in July, these Samurai Warriors were attacked an killed by a Miyoshi unit of Mounted Samurai.
In news that wasn't something that happened seemingly every month, The 1st Arquebusier Army, recovered from early battles, started attacking Nimi again, and killed a unit of Samurai Spearmen there.
In response to this, in August, the Mori once again tried killing their Arqebusier Bombardment support... but this time proved not up to the task, their Warriors able to deal some damage to the Miyoshi Arquebusiers but not able to finish the job before the Arquebusiers killed them all.
They didn't have much more luck fighting the Miyoshi near Okayama- A Ninja did at least make a unit of Mounted Samurai retreat, but the attacking Samurai Warrior unit didn't even manage that, just all dying in a fight with Mounted Samurai.
About the only thing they succeeded at was having 2 Ninja near Okayama in October... which were so easy for the Miyoshi to deal with that they only needed a single unit of Mounted Samurai to kill both of them.
They also had a Caravel somewhat worryingly close to Matsusaka... which also meant close to a bunch of Miyoshi Caravels, which sunk the Mori Caravel, although it took one of the Miyoshi Caravels down to the bottom of the sea with it.
And in the best news of the month: Even without any bombardment support, the 1st Arquebusier Army was more than capable of handling the two remaining units of Spearmen in Nimi, taking the city for the Miyoshi.
The Mori had no real response to this in November, other than to have a unit of their Samurai Warriors kill a unit of Yamabushi that had been heading to Okayama to help defend it from threats both outside and inside.
These Samurai Warriors didn't last long- in January of 1553, a unit of Miyoshi Arquebusiers killed them.
Somewhat miraculously, despite the immense size of Okayama's resistance, it hadn't actually managed to overcome the Miyoshi units defending the city and return the city to the Mori as the even the Miyoshi themselves had figured would happen before too long.
And so, the Miyoshi felt comfortable pressing on, farther to the West that month, hoping to take the last few Mori cities in Western Honshu before turning around and finishing them at Hiroshima. On their way towards Tokuyama, they ran into an invisible Ninja... no problem, a Mounted Samurai was more than capable of killing them.
Some mildly interesting news from the other clans came at the start of February when the Chosokabe ended their pointless war with the Mogami- they certainly weren't fighting that, but it did, notably, mean that the Chosokabe were no longer at war with anybody, a distinction they shared with the Uesugi. Outside of the Miyoshi-Mori War and (pointless) Ichijo-Date war, every other war involved either the Hojo (who were fighting the Date, Mogami, Takeda, and Ryuzoji) or the Mogami (who fought the Hojo, Date, Takeda, and Mori)
In mildly more interesting news, the Hojo, continuing to fail to hold their farther-out territories, lost the city of Hirosaki, as it was recaptured by the Date, making it the second time they'd recaptured that city after losing it.
The Mori, in their usual "small counterattacks with Samurai Warriors" mood, sent a single such unit to try to do something about the Miyoshi in their territory- they did, at least, manage to kill a Ninja.
As happened every two and a half years, the issue of "should the War Council hold elections" came up in March, and as with every time the issue came up, the Miyoshi continued to say "no."
In April, Somewhat tired of how long it was taking to go through the hills between Okayama and Shimonoseki, the Miyoshi decided to speed things up a bit by claiming all that territory on the coast for themselves, with the city of New Kasuga. It was in a somewhat cramped space, but having all that new territory made it well worth it.
And back near Okayama, they sent their units to deal with the Samurai Warriors that had attacked them in February, killing them with a unit of Mounted Samurai, then sent another unit of Mounted Samurai to kill a Ninja, succeeding so amazingly at killing the Ninja, despite all the Ninja's fancy tricks, that the leader of that unit, Hiyoshi, distinguished himself enough to be capable of leading a much bigger Army.
(I wish I'd remembered to get a picture of this MGL generation)
That name seemed familiar... perhaps this Hiyoshi was related to the Hiyoshi that had led a Bushi Army for the Miyoshi all those years ago? Whether or not he was, he was well suited to lead an Army of Mounted Samurai.
Hopefully all their armies would mean it wouldn't take too much longer to take those last few Mori cities and have complete control of Western Honshu.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Challenge accepted (actually, shortly after your post)!
I enabled the Ichijo and the Ryuzoji in addition to the Honshu clans (along with various other nerfs/buffs of my own devising), and then played 2 test games, one on each island, both at Emperor, and both of which I lost to a WC-vote (having narrowly failed to build it myself — both games!).
Don't want to sidetrack this thread (any further!), so if anyone here is interested in the .biq, PM me and I'll ask a Mod to move/copy this post to start a new thread somewhere in the C&C forum, and attach it there — or I could also just attach it to a PM.
That's weird. Especially since, if there is a Worker in a town when a Ninja kills the last D>0 unit, then the Ninja cannot capture the town!
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Challenge accepted (actually, shortly after your post)!
I enabled the Ichijo and the Ryuzoji in addition to the Honshu clans (along with various other nerfs/buffs of my own devising), and then played 2 test games, one on each island, both at Emperor, and both of which I lost to a WC-vote (having narrowly failed to build it myself — both games!).
Don't want to sidetrack this thread (any further!), so if anyone here is interested in the .biq, PM me and I'll ask a Mod to move/copy this post to start a new thread somewhere in the C&C forum, and attach it there — or I could also just attach it to a PM.That's weird. Especially since, if there is a Worker in a town when a Ninja kills the last D>0 unit, then the Ninja cannot capture the town!
It's probably just caused by the game's broader difficulties handling what happens when you run into an invisible unit, and normally Workers shouldn't be able to run into any opposing unit because they have 0 attack.
Toxicman007
Custom User Title
Challenge accepted (actually, shortly after your post)!
I enabled the Ichijo and the Ryuzoji in addition to the Honshu clans (along with various other nerfs/buffs of my own devising), and then played 2 test games, one on each island, both at Emperor, and both of which I lost to a WC-vote (having narrowly failed to build it myself — both games!).
Don't want to sidetrack this thread (any further!), so if anyone here is interested in the .biq, PM me and I'll ask a Mod to move/copy this post to start a new thread somewhere in the C&C forum, and attach it there — or I could also just attach it to a PM.That's weird. Especially since, if there is a Worker in a town when a Ninja kills the last D>0 unit, then the Ninja cannot capture the town!
I might just be remembering nonsense but I swear someone played this scenario as the barbarians, using Ronin to actually destroy several Daimyos. I can't seem to find it, must be in this subforum somewhere.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Yes, that happened. It's here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/revenge-of-the-ronin-sengoku-mod.353867/
Unfortunately it cuts off abruptly after only 3 pages, with the job only half done
Also amused to note that our esteemed thread host participated in it himself, as a callow(er) youth
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Chapter 68: How the West Was Won
The Miyoshi's long series of wars with their Western neighbors finally seemed to have an end in sight: In mid-1553, The Mori only controlled 4 cities on Western Honshu, and once those fell, the Miyoshi would have control of nearly half the island's land area and population, and nearly a third of the area and population of Japan as a whole. The decades-long series of civil wars could perhaps finally come to an end.
But, of course, easier said than done, and the Mori sure weren't going down without a fight. In May, a unit of their Samurai Warriors attacked and destroyed a unit of Miyoshi Mounted Samurai near Okayama.
And the war between the Mori and Miyoshi was far from the only war going on- the Hojo were involved in wars against nearly all of their close neighbors, and the Miyoshi occasionally witnessed battles between the Hojo and Takeda, such as a unit of Takeda Yamabushi wandering into Hojo territory to destroy the roads to their Sake and then fighting off the attacking Hojo units who tried to get their Sake back.
In July, the Miyoshi were ready to attack the Mori again, to mixed results. A unit of Mounted Samurai did avenge their fallen brethren at Okayama, killing the Mori Warriors, but the Mori took down a unit of Miyoshi Arquebusiers in the process. Their success at the city of Tokuyama to the West, though, was more unequivocal: The Miyoshi's 3 armies of Arquebusiers combined their firepower to wipe out all 5 units defending the city- two of Samurai Spearmen, one of Warriors, two of Yamabushi, taking the city and the nearby Jade deposit, ensuring that the Mori could no longer afford to hire Ninja to attack the Miyoshi with.
Hiyoshi's Army of Mounted Samurai headed to the South to take Yonago, running into a Ninja along the way that soon became an ex-Ninja. Another unit of Mounted Samurai similarly ran into and killed a Ninja to the Southeast of Tokuyama.
The Mori could do little in August but make one single counter-attack, again a unit of Samurai Warriors attacking a unit of Mounted Samurai near Okayama. This time, unlike in May, the Mori were not successful in their attack.
It certainly wouldn't do much to stop the Miyoshi at Yonago in October: The only thing that could stop them there was the limited amount of Mori that Hiyoshi's Army and their cannons could kill in one month of battle- just one unit each of Samurai Warriors, Spearmen, and Yamabushi- but Yonago's sheer number of defenders couldn't hold out forever.
Indeed, they could only hold out three more months. Though November of 1553 did have the Mori's every-three-months "attack Mounted Samurai with Warriors near Okayama" operation be successful for the Mori, that didn't do much to help out at Yonago, and after more cannon shelling caused heavy damage to the lone remaining unit of Spearmen in the city, Hiyoshi's army finished them off and captured the city in January of 1554.
By the calculations of the Miyoshi's census-takers, bringing Yonago into their domain put them as ruling over about 35% of the population of Japan, but only around 25% of its land area. They'd have to do more to bring that second number up.
Killing the Mori Samurai Warriors near Okayama with Arquebusiers was a good start, and to the West, the Arquebusier Armies advanced towards Matsue, on the Western edge of Honshu, killing a Ninja on their way.
The Mori decided to mix up their counterattacks a bit in February, with their Samurai Warriors attacking Arquebusiers instead of Mounted Samurai near Okayama, and one of their Ninja ambushing a unit of Arqubusiers outside the Armies near Matsue. Neither of their counterattacks worked out, resulting in only more dead Mori.
In April, much like at Yonago, Matsue presented the challenge of their being just a few too many defenders for the Cannons and Arquebusier Armies to finish them all off, though they made their best effort- the 1st Army killed a unit each of Spearmen and Yamabushi, the 2nd Army a unit of Yamabushi, and a unit of Mounted Samurai outside the Armies another unit of Yamabushi. Still remained a unit of Samurai Archers, and when attacking Ninja failed to kill the Archers, the Mori held off on further attacks, hoping to capture the city in July.
And working quickly was rapidly becoming more and more necessary- the long slog that the war had become was starting to really grow weary on the populace. The Miyoshi could absolutely afford to spend plenty of money on luxuries to keep them happy and occupied despite their misgivings about the war, but spending 30% of their economy on this wasn't exactly something they wanted to do for too much longer.
The Hojo and Ryuzoji signed a peace treaty in May, with the Ryuzoji seemingly content with their military having the capability to take and hold one city far a way from their own island, while the Hojo seemed to want to focus more on fighting their closer neighbors, the Takeda, Mogami, and Date.
The Miyoshi doubt the Ryuzoji will remain peaceful for too long, given their historical aggressiveness, and made sure to keep an eye on all the Caravels they could see for now- perhaps the Ryuzoji will attack Shikoku again after having made several previous failed attempts to invade the island, but perhaps they'll attack the Miyoshi again.
The Mori again mixed up their every-three-months counterattack that month, this time attacking Mounted Samurai near Okayama with Archers instead of Warriors, which sadly they succeeded at, and having a unit of Spearmen disembark from a Caravel near Yonago to threaten it... somehow. It wasn't clear exactly how Spearmen were threatening.
Matsue's lone unit of Samurai Archers defended Matsue well against impossible odds in July- despite being reduced to half strength by cannon bombardment, they still were able to turn an attacking unit of Mounted Samurai into a bunch of human pincushions (and horse pincushions), but they stood no chance against the 2nd Arquebusier Army.
The Western tip of Honshu was now under Miyoshi control, with the Mori down to just their capital of Hiroshima on Honshu.
They did have their attacking Spearmen and Archers in Mori territory from previous months, but would not for much longer, not once the Arquebusiers fired at them. The Archers proved very tough to get rid of, taking down a unit of Arquebusiers with them, but a unit of Mounted Samurai finished them off. The Spearmen proved to have no such luck taking out their attacking Arquebusiers.
Saotome's Army, meanwhile, took its first crack at Hiroshima, killing two of the units of Spearmen in the city. This one would prove a much tougher nut to crack than any of the Mori's other cities- the Miyoshi's excellent espionage work meant they knew the Mori's total military strength, and while it was possible some of it might be on Onomichi, a city on an island the Mori controlled to the West (built on top of the ruins of many other cities of long-destroyed clans), most of the 6 units of Spearmen, 3 of Warriors, and 6 of Yamabushi were probably in Hiroshima, defending the city and Daimyo Mori Motonari.
But it couldn't hold out forever.
It certainly wouldn't help its cause to keep sending units outside the city on small counterattacks that never got anywhere- certainly wasn't going to help if those units were Spearmen, as with the two units of Spearmen that wandered out of Hiroshima into the mountains to the Northeast in August.
Perhaps the Spearmen were up to something nefarious and to be concerned about, but well, the Miyoshi weren't ones to look a gift horse in the mouth. If the Mori insisted on weakening Hiroshima's defenses, the Miyoshi would be all too happy to take advantage. The 1st Arquebusier Army and Hiyoshi's Mounted Samurai Army reached and attacked the city in October, wiping out two units each of Samurai Warriors and Spearmen between them.
Elsewhere, the wars between the other clans continued... or ended, in some cases. The Takeda and Mogami agreed to stop fighting in November, a wise choice for both of them, as it meant the Takeda were free to focus all their attention on the Hojo, while the Mogami were now fighting only two close neighbors- the Hojo and Date- instead of three, a much more tenable position for a clan with only two cities to their name.
They'd definitely need to be able to focus on the Hojo more, since the Hojo were pretty clearly winning at the moment- before the ink on the Takeda-Mogami Peace Treaty even dried, the Hojo captured the Takeda city of Joetsu.
At the end of the year, the Kyoto Military Academy trained another Army, the 3rd Arquebusier Army it had managed to construct. It would head West to Hiroshima, perhaps fighting the Mori Spearmen wandering into the Mountains in Miyoshi territory near Ube and Fukuchiyama if needed. They'd probably be more needed at Hiroshima, though. Hiyoshi's Army killed 2 of the units of Yamabushi in the city in January of 1555, but then a stalemate ensued for several months, with the Mori too weak to do anything but hunker down and the Miyoshi Armies too weak to attack the city, while also too lacking in Ninja to confidently be able to fight Mori Motonari.
The Spearmen continued heading East in the meantime, and in July, they came a bit too close to the approaching 3rd Arquebusier Army, which figured those two units of Spearmen would make some good target practice. They figured correctly.
A bit farther West, the Miyoshi had recovered from previous battles enough to attack Hiroshima again... but only once, with the 2nd Arquebusier Army killing a unit of Spearmen. But Hiroshima didn't have much left, and they had plenty of armies. They vowed that by the end of the year, the city would be theirs.
In August, the Mogami once again pulled themselves out of seemingly certain doom by ending their war with the Date. You'd think the Date could easily enough just conquer them if they really tried hard- they were more than twice as big as their tiny neighbor and probably had a similar mismatch in their military size- but the Date again let them off the hook.
The Mori, once again, could do nothing but fortify in Hiroshima, and hope that was enough.
It wouldn't be.
They'd managed to quickly train a lot of new soldiers in Naginatajutsu, having one unit of Samurai Warriors and 6 of Yamabushi at the start of October, but that all proved little more than a speed bump to the Miyoshi's overwhelming military might. Saotome's Army killed the Warriors and one Yamabushi unit, the 1st and 2nd Arquebusier Armies 3 Yamabushi between them, and Hiyoshi's Army the last two Yamabushi. Mori Motonari now stood alone against an immense number of Miyoshi soldiers, wielding just a sword.
He looked out at his surroundings, figured his odds were slim, and said only three words: "Bring it on."
And then that's when he started hearing explosions, as the Miyoshi Cannons and Arquebusiers bombarded him from a distance.
"Is that all you've got?"
The Miyoshi could only watch in awe as dozens of cannonballs and arquebus shots failed to so much as graze him, as Mori Motonari rapidly spun around, dodging most of the shots and slicing others in half with his sword. At the end of it all, he stood unscathed.
Well, guess we're doing this the hard way, the Miyoshi thought.
With bombardment proving ineffective, a unit of Arquebusiers charged into the city and just decided to shoot Motonari up close. This ended up working better than they thought it might- they actually landed quite a few hits on him, but not enough to bring him down, and they could only watch in horror as he charged through them and cut them all to pieces. The Mounted Samurai that followed proved even less effective, failing to land even a single hit on Motonari- in fact, he seemed like what didn't kill him only made him stronger.
But no matter- the Miyoshi still had more reserves to attack with. When they attacked with Arquebusiers again, Motonari's immense skill at dodging shots finally failed him, the Arquebusiers mortally injured him, and with his death, Hiroshima spontaneously turned into a pile of rubble, along with the Mori's island city. The Mori were no more.
The Miyoshi would get right to work rebuilding it, but not before solidifying their hold on their territory to the West with the city of New Otsu, in a gap between Yonago, Tokuyama, and Matsue that the Mori had for some reason never bothered building a city in.
The end of the War against the Mori brought much rejoicing throughout Miyoshi territory, as they had finally ended their wars to the West and conquered the entire Western half or so of Honshu. The Miyoshi government was, of course, happy to both be done with all that war, and happy to be able to cut their spending on luxuries for the citizens down to nothing, no longer needing to use that as a distraction.
More broadly, it meant that Japan was the most peaceful it had been for as long as anyone could remember- the only remaining wars now were the Hojo's war against what was now a completely allied Takeda, Mogami, and Date, and the Date's long and phony war against the Ichijo, if that even counted for anything.
There were once again calls for the Miyoshi to hold elections for the War Council Daimyo, with this seeming like the first time in forever that the clans could maybe all meet in a room and not try to kill each other (with some exceptions), but the Miyoshi, as always, said no to elections.
To them, of course, they didn't really see the point in voting on it when they'd already made it clear that they were the boss, the largest, most powerful clan by a lot. After finishing the rebuilding of Hiroshima in April, 1556, or as they now called it, New Obama...
...they had their census-takers examine the data again and find that they now controlled just under a third of Japan's land area and just over a third of it's population (32% and 36%, respectively).
And yet, that still wasn't enough. Not quite.
They'd still have just a bit more conquering to do before they could settle, once and for all, that they should be the rulers of Japan.
The Miyoshi's long series of wars with their Western neighbors finally seemed to have an end in sight: In mid-1553, The Mori only controlled 4 cities on Western Honshu, and once those fell, the Miyoshi would have control of nearly half the island's land area and population, and nearly a third of the area and population of Japan as a whole. The decades-long series of civil wars could perhaps finally come to an end.
But, of course, easier said than done, and the Mori sure weren't going down without a fight. In May, a unit of their Samurai Warriors attacked and destroyed a unit of Miyoshi Mounted Samurai near Okayama.
And the war between the Mori and Miyoshi was far from the only war going on- the Hojo were involved in wars against nearly all of their close neighbors, and the Miyoshi occasionally witnessed battles between the Hojo and Takeda, such as a unit of Takeda Yamabushi wandering into Hojo territory to destroy the roads to their Sake and then fighting off the attacking Hojo units who tried to get their Sake back.
In July, the Miyoshi were ready to attack the Mori again, to mixed results. A unit of Mounted Samurai did avenge their fallen brethren at Okayama, killing the Mori Warriors, but the Mori took down a unit of Miyoshi Arquebusiers in the process. Their success at the city of Tokuyama to the West, though, was more unequivocal: The Miyoshi's 3 armies of Arquebusiers combined their firepower to wipe out all 5 units defending the city- two of Samurai Spearmen, one of Warriors, two of Yamabushi, taking the city and the nearby Jade deposit, ensuring that the Mori could no longer afford to hire Ninja to attack the Miyoshi with.
Hiyoshi's Army of Mounted Samurai headed to the South to take Yonago, running into a Ninja along the way that soon became an ex-Ninja. Another unit of Mounted Samurai similarly ran into and killed a Ninja to the Southeast of Tokuyama.
The Mori could do little in August but make one single counter-attack, again a unit of Samurai Warriors attacking a unit of Mounted Samurai near Okayama. This time, unlike in May, the Mori were not successful in their attack.
It certainly wouldn't do much to stop the Miyoshi at Yonago in October: The only thing that could stop them there was the limited amount of Mori that Hiyoshi's Army and their cannons could kill in one month of battle- just one unit each of Samurai Warriors, Spearmen, and Yamabushi- but Yonago's sheer number of defenders couldn't hold out forever.
Indeed, they could only hold out three more months. Though November of 1553 did have the Mori's every-three-months "attack Mounted Samurai with Warriors near Okayama" operation be successful for the Mori, that didn't do much to help out at Yonago, and after more cannon shelling caused heavy damage to the lone remaining unit of Spearmen in the city, Hiyoshi's army finished them off and captured the city in January of 1554.
By the calculations of the Miyoshi's census-takers, bringing Yonago into their domain put them as ruling over about 35% of the population of Japan, but only around 25% of its land area. They'd have to do more to bring that second number up.
Killing the Mori Samurai Warriors near Okayama with Arquebusiers was a good start, and to the West, the Arquebusier Armies advanced towards Matsue, on the Western edge of Honshu, killing a Ninja on their way.
The Mori decided to mix up their counterattacks a bit in February, with their Samurai Warriors attacking Arquebusiers instead of Mounted Samurai near Okayama, and one of their Ninja ambushing a unit of Arqubusiers outside the Armies near Matsue. Neither of their counterattacks worked out, resulting in only more dead Mori.
In April, much like at Yonago, Matsue presented the challenge of their being just a few too many defenders for the Cannons and Arquebusier Armies to finish them all off, though they made their best effort- the 1st Army killed a unit each of Spearmen and Yamabushi, the 2nd Army a unit of Yamabushi, and a unit of Mounted Samurai outside the Armies another unit of Yamabushi. Still remained a unit of Samurai Archers, and when attacking Ninja failed to kill the Archers, the Mori held off on further attacks, hoping to capture the city in July.
And working quickly was rapidly becoming more and more necessary- the long slog that the war had become was starting to really grow weary on the populace. The Miyoshi could absolutely afford to spend plenty of money on luxuries to keep them happy and occupied despite their misgivings about the war, but spending 30% of their economy on this wasn't exactly something they wanted to do for too much longer.
The Hojo and Ryuzoji signed a peace treaty in May, with the Ryuzoji seemingly content with their military having the capability to take and hold one city far a way from their own island, while the Hojo seemed to want to focus more on fighting their closer neighbors, the Takeda, Mogami, and Date.
The Miyoshi doubt the Ryuzoji will remain peaceful for too long, given their historical aggressiveness, and made sure to keep an eye on all the Caravels they could see for now- perhaps the Ryuzoji will attack Shikoku again after having made several previous failed attempts to invade the island, but perhaps they'll attack the Miyoshi again.
The Mori again mixed up their every-three-months counterattack that month, this time attacking Mounted Samurai near Okayama with Archers instead of Warriors, which sadly they succeeded at, and having a unit of Spearmen disembark from a Caravel near Yonago to threaten it... somehow. It wasn't clear exactly how Spearmen were threatening.
Matsue's lone unit of Samurai Archers defended Matsue well against impossible odds in July- despite being reduced to half strength by cannon bombardment, they still were able to turn an attacking unit of Mounted Samurai into a bunch of human pincushions (and horse pincushions), but they stood no chance against the 2nd Arquebusier Army.
The Western tip of Honshu was now under Miyoshi control, with the Mori down to just their capital of Hiroshima on Honshu.
They did have their attacking Spearmen and Archers in Mori territory from previous months, but would not for much longer, not once the Arquebusiers fired at them. The Archers proved very tough to get rid of, taking down a unit of Arquebusiers with them, but a unit of Mounted Samurai finished them off. The Spearmen proved to have no such luck taking out their attacking Arquebusiers.
Saotome's Army, meanwhile, took its first crack at Hiroshima, killing two of the units of Spearmen in the city. This one would prove a much tougher nut to crack than any of the Mori's other cities- the Miyoshi's excellent espionage work meant they knew the Mori's total military strength, and while it was possible some of it might be on Onomichi, a city on an island the Mori controlled to the West (built on top of the ruins of many other cities of long-destroyed clans), most of the 6 units of Spearmen, 3 of Warriors, and 6 of Yamabushi were probably in Hiroshima, defending the city and Daimyo Mori Motonari.
But it couldn't hold out forever.
It certainly wouldn't help its cause to keep sending units outside the city on small counterattacks that never got anywhere- certainly wasn't going to help if those units were Spearmen, as with the two units of Spearmen that wandered out of Hiroshima into the mountains to the Northeast in August.
Perhaps the Spearmen were up to something nefarious and to be concerned about, but well, the Miyoshi weren't ones to look a gift horse in the mouth. If the Mori insisted on weakening Hiroshima's defenses, the Miyoshi would be all too happy to take advantage. The 1st Arquebusier Army and Hiyoshi's Mounted Samurai Army reached and attacked the city in October, wiping out two units each of Samurai Warriors and Spearmen between them.
Elsewhere, the wars between the other clans continued... or ended, in some cases. The Takeda and Mogami agreed to stop fighting in November, a wise choice for both of them, as it meant the Takeda were free to focus all their attention on the Hojo, while the Mogami were now fighting only two close neighbors- the Hojo and Date- instead of three, a much more tenable position for a clan with only two cities to their name.
They'd definitely need to be able to focus on the Hojo more, since the Hojo were pretty clearly winning at the moment- before the ink on the Takeda-Mogami Peace Treaty even dried, the Hojo captured the Takeda city of Joetsu.
At the end of the year, the Kyoto Military Academy trained another Army, the 3rd Arquebusier Army it had managed to construct. It would head West to Hiroshima, perhaps fighting the Mori Spearmen wandering into the Mountains in Miyoshi territory near Ube and Fukuchiyama if needed. They'd probably be more needed at Hiroshima, though. Hiyoshi's Army killed 2 of the units of Yamabushi in the city in January of 1555, but then a stalemate ensued for several months, with the Mori too weak to do anything but hunker down and the Miyoshi Armies too weak to attack the city, while also too lacking in Ninja to confidently be able to fight Mori Motonari.
The Spearmen continued heading East in the meantime, and in July, they came a bit too close to the approaching 3rd Arquebusier Army, which figured those two units of Spearmen would make some good target practice. They figured correctly.
A bit farther West, the Miyoshi had recovered from previous battles enough to attack Hiroshima again... but only once, with the 2nd Arquebusier Army killing a unit of Spearmen. But Hiroshima didn't have much left, and they had plenty of armies. They vowed that by the end of the year, the city would be theirs.
In August, the Mogami once again pulled themselves out of seemingly certain doom by ending their war with the Date. You'd think the Date could easily enough just conquer them if they really tried hard- they were more than twice as big as their tiny neighbor and probably had a similar mismatch in their military size- but the Date again let them off the hook.
The Mori, once again, could do nothing but fortify in Hiroshima, and hope that was enough.
It wouldn't be.
They'd managed to quickly train a lot of new soldiers in Naginatajutsu, having one unit of Samurai Warriors and 6 of Yamabushi at the start of October, but that all proved little more than a speed bump to the Miyoshi's overwhelming military might. Saotome's Army killed the Warriors and one Yamabushi unit, the 1st and 2nd Arquebusier Armies 3 Yamabushi between them, and Hiyoshi's Army the last two Yamabushi. Mori Motonari now stood alone against an immense number of Miyoshi soldiers, wielding just a sword.
He looked out at his surroundings, figured his odds were slim, and said only three words: "Bring it on."
And then that's when he started hearing explosions, as the Miyoshi Cannons and Arquebusiers bombarded him from a distance.
"Is that all you've got?"
The Miyoshi could only watch in awe as dozens of cannonballs and arquebus shots failed to so much as graze him, as Mori Motonari rapidly spun around, dodging most of the shots and slicing others in half with his sword. At the end of it all, he stood unscathed.
Well, guess we're doing this the hard way, the Miyoshi thought.
With bombardment proving ineffective, a unit of Arquebusiers charged into the city and just decided to shoot Motonari up close. This ended up working better than they thought it might- they actually landed quite a few hits on him, but not enough to bring him down, and they could only watch in horror as he charged through them and cut them all to pieces. The Mounted Samurai that followed proved even less effective, failing to land even a single hit on Motonari- in fact, he seemed like what didn't kill him only made him stronger.
But no matter- the Miyoshi still had more reserves to attack with. When they attacked with Arquebusiers again, Motonari's immense skill at dodging shots finally failed him, the Arquebusiers mortally injured him, and with his death, Hiroshima spontaneously turned into a pile of rubble, along with the Mori's island city. The Mori were no more.
The Miyoshi would get right to work rebuilding it, but not before solidifying their hold on their territory to the West with the city of New Otsu, in a gap between Yonago, Tokuyama, and Matsue that the Mori had for some reason never bothered building a city in.
The end of the War against the Mori brought much rejoicing throughout Miyoshi territory, as they had finally ended their wars to the West and conquered the entire Western half or so of Honshu. The Miyoshi government was, of course, happy to both be done with all that war, and happy to be able to cut their spending on luxuries for the citizens down to nothing, no longer needing to use that as a distraction.
More broadly, it meant that Japan was the most peaceful it had been for as long as anyone could remember- the only remaining wars now were the Hojo's war against what was now a completely allied Takeda, Mogami, and Date, and the Date's long and phony war against the Ichijo, if that even counted for anything.
There were once again calls for the Miyoshi to hold elections for the War Council Daimyo, with this seeming like the first time in forever that the clans could maybe all meet in a room and not try to kill each other (with some exceptions), but the Miyoshi, as always, said no to elections.
To them, of course, they didn't really see the point in voting on it when they'd already made it clear that they were the boss, the largest, most powerful clan by a lot. After finishing the rebuilding of Hiroshima in April, 1556, or as they now called it, New Obama...
...they had their census-takers examine the data again and find that they now controlled just under a third of Japan's land area and just over a third of it's population (32% and 36%, respectively).
And yet, that still wasn't enough. Not quite.
They'd still have just a bit more conquering to do before they could settle, once and for all, that they should be the rulers of Japan.
Chapter 69: All According to Plan
The Miyoshi knew that they'd have to keep fighting, but the question was, who? They could fight the Takeda or Hojo, but those two were among their strongest remaining rivals, and nearly all of their military was in the West of their territory and would take a lot of time to cross Honshu to reach them. Invade Kyushu? Doable, but the Ryuzoji were also very strong and would be difficult to make much headway against. Invade Shikoku? Probably much easier, even if there was little to gain there. Hopefully, "little" would still be enough. They made plans to attack the Ichijo as soon as they could get enough Caravels ready for transport.
While they spent much of 1556 making these preparations, they also could see a bit of how the Takeda and Hojo were fighting each other near their border- they fought a bit at Yokohama in May, with a Takeda unit of Samurai Warriors making Hojo Yamabushi retreat from near their city, and fought at Maebashi in August, with the Hojo capturing the city from the Takeda.
The Miyoshi were ready to invade the Ichijo in October, gathering a large invasion force in New Kasuga ready to attack Saijo. They decided it would be wise to check the city's defenses before attacking, and investigated the city accordingly:
They wondered if their amphibiously-invading Ninja could be sufficient to take the city, but seeing the strength of its defenders decided that wouldn't work, and they'd just land an invasion force near the city and attack in a few months.
Before declaring war, they also tried to get some more... detailed espionage knowledge than just city investigations, and tried to get a spy to infiltrate Matsuyama.
"Again?" said Miyoshi Nagayoshi, "Why do all our spies always fail all the time?"
The Ichijo weren't offended enough by this attempt to declare war themselves, so the Miyoshi would have to do it. Noting that the Date were also at war with them, they figured they could maybe get a bit of gold from signing an alliance, so why not?
With the formal declaration out of the way, the Miyoshi had their large invasion force disembark near Saijo, and waited for the Ichijo to respond.
The Ichijo's response was... nothing. They seemed completely off-guard and unable to do anything about an invasion force that size.
The Takeda-Hojo war continued in November, with the Takeda capturing some Hojo Workers and the Hojo rebuilding a long-ago-destroyed city on the Hojo-Uesugi border.. The Miyoshi couldn't even remember who had originally controlled what the former city had once been, but found it odd nobody had built there until now, there was clearly space for a city there.
With no other Ichijo threats to deal with, the Miyoshi focused their fire on Saijo in January, 1557. Literally, fire, coming from their Fire Cannons. They didn't do much, but with all the Armies they had, they didn't need to. The Armies killed all 6 of the Yamabushi units in the city, with most of the five taking out 1 each and the 1st Army killing a 2nd. 2 Armies of Archers remained, and they proved easy pickings for Hiyoshi's Army, as it trampled them over and triumphantly rode into the city. A quick survey after it was captured showed the Miyoshi now controlled a third of the area of Japan- they were close to enough, but not quite there yet.
There was still a bit more to deal with, though, in the area surrounding the city- wanting to leave as much of the military as possible in the city to quickly quell rebellion, the Miyoshi didn't do too much, but did have Saotome's Army kill a unit of Yamabushi and a Mounted Samurai unit kill an Archer unit.
The Ichijo apparently must have just had all their units on the Southern end of Shikoku instead of the Northern end for some reason, because in February, they were ready to mount a response: And what a response it was, featuring dozens of units of Archers and Yamabushi coming towards Saijo. They were even able to somewhat go on the offense, pillaging the road to the Gems outside the city and attacking Miyoshi Yamabushi with their Archers, albeit unsucessfully.
The Ichijo units may have been less advanced and weaker than the Miyoshi units, but they made up for that with their sheer, overwhelming numbers- 33 units in total that the Miyoshi could see in April. The Miyoshi did have plenty of their own- 10 Ninja, 8 Mounted Samurai, 5 Arquebusiers, a Samurai Warrior and Yamabushi unit, and their 5 Armies- but that was still slightly smaller than the Ichijo's numbers, unless they counted their artillery in their numbers or counted their armies as more than one unit, which both would have been somewhat defensible accountings.
Then again, for as much as the artillery did count, they proved not at all helpful in weakening any of the surrounding Ichijo units. A shame, but they could still kill some of the Archers anyway with their Ninja and Mounted Samurai. Attacking the Archers proved something of a mixed bag; A large group of attacking Ninja were able to kill all 4 of the Samurai Archer units on the Gem mountain, but at the cost of 6 Ninja, 4 of whom died trying till kill one very stubborn Archer unit. Two of the Arquebusier Armies followed and killed 2 of the Yamabushi units to even the Ichijo and Miyoshi to 6 lost units each, but that still didn't quite go as planned.
They did a bit better on lower ground, with Mounted Samurai combining to kill all 4 of the Archer units in the Desert to the West of the city with no losses to themselves, though 4 of the Mounted Samurai units did have to retreat to avoid dying.
Fighting the Ichijo around Saijo would take plenty of time, but the Miyoshi were thinking longer-term than that already, where to attack next. They could try conquering other Ichijo cities before taking Matsuyama, but they were so large and prone to resistance that it seemed like a bad idea to try that. No, it would make more sense to just head to Matsuyama and kill their Daimyo as soon as possible, and then quickly resettle the Western end of Shikoku. To that end, they started spending large sums of money on getting the citizens of Saijo to organize into Settler groups for future resettlement. Given how the conflict surrounding their city was making it very hard for them to get enough food, it wasn't that hard to convince some of them to "join a Settler group so you don't starve"
The Ichijo gathered their forces together in a more compact way in May, also bringing a few more reinforcements along, to occupy the entire mountain range to the South of Saijo. They also, rather annoyingly, ended their war with the Date, which meant the Date were no longer paying the Miyoshi a once-every-three-months payment to be at war with the Ichijo.
"Seriously, Date? We just agreed to that alliance, and now you're pulling out?"
Back to the war front, in July the Miyoshi counted a total of 30 Ichijo Units in the mountains to the Southwest, South, and Southeast of Saijo, plus another Archer unit on the other side of the mountains. Slightly fewer than a few months ago, and with a mix that had more Yamabushi and fewer Archers, but still not exactly what the Miyoshi wanted to see.
Given the great defense the mountains offered, they'd basically have to just use their Armies now, with a bit of artillery support that might not help much given how many Yamabushi and Archers there were. But it was enough, and Saotome's Army, Hiyoshi's Army, and the 2nd and 3rd Armies combined to kill the 6 non-Ashigaru units on the Southern Mountain, and Saotome's Army followed by killing the Yamabushi on the Southeastern Mountain while Hiyoshi's Army killed one of the Yamabushi on the Southwestern Mountain. The Ichijo still had a very large force on the Southwestern Mountain- 12 units of Archers and 1 of Yamabushi- plus Ashigaru on the other mountains and Archers on the other side of the Mountains, but the Armies had weakened them greatly.
Deciding there wouldn't ever be a better time to try, the Ichijo attacked Saijo in August with almost everything they had: 9 of the Archer units and both Ashigaru units. It was a massacre for the Ichijo- they were hopelessly out matched by the Arquebusier Armies defending the city. All 11 attacking units were gunned down while inflicting no meaningful losses at all on the Miyoshi. Down to just a few units left to attack with, they opted not to attack any further, and just spread out with their Yamabushi, adopting a scorched-earth approach of destroying all the roads surrounding Saijo, hoping to, if nothing else, buy themselves some more time and make it harder for the Miyoshi to quickly venture out of the city to attack them.
In October, The Miyoshi figured the best response to this would just be to clear out the Ichijo from the surrounding area as best as they could, and then bring some workers to Saijo to rebuild the roads. Problem with that was the 4 Ichijo Caravels in the strait between New Kasuga and Saijo, making it pretty hard for the Miyoshi to quickly transport any workers. They attacked with 8 of their own Caravels, and inflicted heavy damage on the Ichijo fleet, sinking 3 of their ships and heavily damaging the 4th, but lost 5 Miyoshi Caravels in the process. So no reinforcements or workers coming this year, then.
The Miyoshi didn't accomplish much on land that month, the rest of the year having left them with too many injured units to do much fighting, but the 1st Army was healthy enough to do a bit of attacking, and killed one of the units of Yamabushi on the mountain to the Southwest of Saijo.
Realizing that continuing to fight at Saijo was pointless, the Ichijo pulled most of their Yamabushi and Archers away from the city in November, deciding they'd be better off fighting defensively elsewhere, not that they'd ever be able to hold off the Miyoshi forever.
The more troubling news of the month came far to the Northeast, near the city of Tomakomai on the border between the Miyoshi and the Takeda and Hojo. Not because of either of those two, but because of the Uesugi, who had brought a few Mounted Samurai and Samurai Horse Archers near to the city.
"What are you doing here, Uesugi?" asked the Miyoshi at the start of 1558, "You look like you're aiming to fight someone, and given we've conquered everyone to our West, there's not a whole lot of targets you could be going for."
"What do you think?" replied the Uesugi.
"Yeah... that's what we figured."
The Miyoshi weren't about to let the Uesugi get away with declaring war on them scot-free, and they definitely didn't want the Uesugi to bring in any powerful friends to help out, so they made sure to grab some allies before the Uesugi could, and got the Takeda and Hojo to declare war on the Uesugi in return for some gold.
They also weren't about to let the Uesugi attack them without some pre-emptive attacks on their part, but they also didn't really have a ton of units near Tomakomai- they'd left quite a few scattered all throughout their Eastern territories just in case, but mostly not near Tomakomai, specifically. The only ones who were close enough to do much of anything was a Mounted Samurai Army, which rode up to the city and killed one of the Uesugi Mounted Samurai units to Tomakomai's East.
Back to the other war the Miyoshi were fighting, there was still one heavily damaged Ichijo Caravel sailing that the Miyoshi weren't about to let go anywhere, so they sank it.
The Ichijo also hadn't totally vacated the mountains near Saijo- one unit each of Yamabushi and Archers remained on the Southwestern mountain. Saotome's Army took care of them.
With another war started, the Miyoshi thought it would be best to try again to plant spies in Matsuyama, as well as the Uesugi capital of Sendai. Of course, they failed, because their spies continue to be totally awful.
The Ichijo went back on the offensive in February, but a much smaller offensive than the previous year, as they seemed to be nearly out of military units- they had just 2 units each of Archers and Yamabushi to occupy the Southern Mountain.
The decision to bring the Hojo in to fight the Yamabushi paid immediate dividends, when they attacked the Uesugi units near Tomakomai with their own units- their unmounted Archers to no use, but the Hojo Horse Archers did a fantastic job, killing two units of Uesugi Horse Archers before being killed themselves by a unit of Mounted Samurai.
That still left the Uesugi with two units of Mounted Samurai to attack with, and attack the Miyoshi they did, but it was a mixed bag for them, with both sides losing one unit of Mounted Samurai. Tomakomai was still firmly under Miyoshi control.
The alliance with the Takeda, on the other hand, did not give an immediate return, the Takeda instead opting to try (and fail) to kill a Hojo Yamabushi unit with their Samurai Warriors. Fight the Uesugi, not each other, you guys! Come on!
The surviving Uesugi Mounted Samurai unit, and a Horse Archer unit a bit outside of Miyoshi territory, were both killed by the Mounted Samurai Army in April.
The Uesugi no longer had any units anywhere near Tomakomai, but they did have a unit of Yamabushi much farther Northwest, near Komagane. Not wanting to let it destroy any roads, the Miyoshi decided to kill the Yamabushi as quickly as possible, and did so, but thanks to the Yamabushi occupying a mountain, it killed two units of Arquebusiers and one of Mounted Samurai before finally going down.
On the Ichijo War Front, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Arquebusier Armies combined to kill all 4 of the Ichijo units on the mountain South of Saijo, and other forces headed Southwest, to attack either Susaki or Matsuyama.
The Ichijo countered in May with a significant but small number of Yamabushi, Archers, and Ashigaru, clearly being out of resources to try any an attack the size of what they tried a year earlier.
They also declared war on the Hojo at the request of the Takeda.
Speaking of the Hojo, they continued to do battle with the Uesugi around the Hojo-Miyoshi border, losing 2 of their own Archer units but killing 2 Uesugi units in the process, one of Spearmen and one of something the Miyoshi couldn't see.
That left the Uesugi with just a unit of Arquebusiers and a unit of Spearmen anywhere near Miyoshi territory in July, and both of them were pretty easy to kill for a Mounted Samurai Army (killing the Spearmen) and a not-armied unit of Mounted Samurai (killing the Arquebusiers, who had been heavily injured from previous battles with the Hojo)
The Miyoshi again were finding that the presence of Ichijo ships near Saijo made it too difficult to transport any of their own units, and again sought to sink them. They did, sinking 2 Caravels and a Galley, but lost 3 Caravels of their own in the process.
On land, they got to work whittling down all the Ichijo units near Saijo, a task they seemed to need to do once every 3 months these days. An isolated unit of Archers West-Southwest of the city were killed by Arquebusiers, and an isolated unit of Ashigaru Northwest of the city were killed by a Ninja. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Arquebusier Armies charged on the Mountain Southwest of the city, and killed 3 units each of Archers and Yamabushi there, killing most of the Ichijo's attackers but not all of them.
To the Southwest, the armies of Hiyoshi and Saotome had a decision to make: Attack Matsuyama, or attack Susaki? Susaki would for sure be an easier target, but unlike Matsuyama, taking it wouldn't end the war immediately, so they'd have to hold it if they took it, no easy task given how large the city was.
Or... they could just attack Susaki, burn it to the ground, and enslave the population into building roads for them. That would also work. And that sounded like the best idea at the moment, they certainly weren't on their own strong enough to attack Matsuyama and the other Armies were needed to fight off all these piecemeal Ichijo attacks towards Saijo. So go to Susaki they did, and each army killed one unit of Yamabushi there.
For once, the Ichijo didn't have any new units to bring towards Saijo in August. They did, however, have a unit of Yamabushi to bring into Miyoshi territory.... on mainland Honshu... well, well to the North, near the city of Yodo, and they pillaged a road and mine on a hill near the city. What were they even doing way out there, had they been fighting the Date, or something?
The Hojo didn't battle the Uesugi as far the Miyoshi could see, but maybe it was just that the Uesugi no longer had any units anywhere near Miyoshi territory and if they were battling, it was near their own border with the Hojo or Takeda. They did sink an Ichijo Caravel, though.
The Miyoshi were once again asked to hold War Council elections in September, and once again declined. Hopefully it would be the last time anyone would question whether they'd need to vote for this and not just be assured that the Miyoshi were the true rulers of Japan.
Oh yeah, and one other thing: A concerningly large group of Ryuzoji units ventured out of Shirakawa, towards the Miyoshi city of Samani. So that was a thing.
The Miyoshi went to them just as they'd gone to the Uesugi nine months earlier when they'd come in uninvited, expecting about the same response from the Ryuzoji as they got from the Uesugi. They expected correctly.
Evidently, the Ryuzoji assumed that attacking the Miyoshi while they were distracted by Uesugi and Ichijo would make them a softer target. How wrong they were. The Miyoshi started out the same way they started out with the Uesugi: Getting some friends on their side before the Ryuzoji could.
It was certainly true, though, that they were not really in a good position to deal with the big group of units near Samani- 3 of Arquebusiers, 1 of Yamabushi, 1 of Spearmen. Inconveniently, the quickest road from Tomakomai- where a fairly large number of the Miyoshi's Eastern military units were, to fight off the Uesugi- back to Samani went through Ryuzoji territory near Shirakawa.
Oh well, easy solution to that: Just attack Shirakawa first. The Mounted Samurai got to the city first, and hoped to kill both the Arquebusier units defending the city so everyone else could focus on helping Samani. They didn't quite succeed, killing only one unit and damaging the second before having to retreat, but that was enough for another unit of Mounted Samurai to finish off the Arquebusiers and take the city.
As an added bonus, the Miyoshi calculated that the new territory around Shirakawa put them as now controlling slightly more than 34% of the area of Japan.
With Shirakawa taken, the Miyoshi could now use the nearby road to get to Samani faster. Sadly, the Ryuzoji being on a hill near Samani made them hard to attack, as a Miyoshi Ninja discovered when trying to kill the Yamabushi and failing miserably. But they could reinforce the city as best as they could, bombard the Ryuzoji a few times with the Arquebusiers who couldn't quite reach the city, and hope for the best.
To the North, they made sure to not let the Ichijo Yamabushi who had pillaged the hill near Yodo get away with it: a unit of Mounted Samurai killed them easily.
To say things didn't go as well back on Shikoku would be an understatement. Saotome and Hiyoshi's Armies attacked Susaki's Yamabushi defenders. Saotome's Army did alright, killing one unit of Yamabushi but being somewhat injured in the process, but Hiyoshi's Army, despite being at fairly high strength, was completely wiped out by another unit of Yamabushi, doing little damage to them. Clearly, these armies would not be enough to take Susaki.
The Ichijo, perhaps emboldened by this, sent a few units of Archers towards Saijo, but it was a curiously low number, and protected by no Yamabushi. Perhaps they weren't that emboldened.
The Ryuzoji, predictably, attacked Samani with their Arquebusiers, but the reinforced defenders held out fantastically well, with a unit of Samurai Warriors and a unit of Mounted Samurai each killing one of the attacking units. Their first two attacks failed, the Ryuzoji decided to just spread out and do as much damage as they could to the countryside, but other than the Yamabushi pillaging a road to some Dyes, they wouldn't be able to do much.
The Hojo tried their best to help out, but their Horse Archers did little at all to the Spearmen they attacked. The Takeda did not try their best, killing another Hojo Horse Archer with their Samurai Warriors instead.
But on the bright side, they helped out in a different way: By getting the Ichijo to declare war on the Ryuzoji.
The Miyoshi were definitely happy to see two of their enemies fight, and the Ichijo and Ryuzoji were even close enough to fight, or at least annoy each other. The Miyoshi only hoped the Ryuzoji wouldn't conquer the Ichijo before they did.
The first order of business in January of 1559 was to take out the remaining Ryuzoji units in Miyoshi territory. Some arquebusier bombardment helped, but evidently not enough, as the remaining Ryuzoji Arquebusier unit killed 3 attacking units of Mounted Samurai before finally succumbing to a 4th (it did promote twice in the process). Said 4th Mounted Samurai unit tried its luck at killing the Ryuzoji Spearmen as well, but retreated, having done little damage. A 5th unit of Mounted Samurai finished off the Spearmen, and a 6th killed the Yamabushi. Miyoshi territory was now Ryuzoji-free.
Next was fighting the Ichijo, but the Miyoshi couldn't do much on that front but killing 2 of their units of Archers- 1 on the mountain South of Saijo, 1 in the flatlands West of that mountain- and advancing some more of their troops towards Susaki.
Finally, they tried their hand, once again, at getting some spies into the Ichijo capital of Matsuyama and the Ryuzoji capital of Kitakyushu. And for once... they finally succeeded at both.
They would have tried to make it 3 for 3, but didn't have enough money left to get a spy into Sendai, and didn't care that much about the Uesugi military anyway.
The Ichijo, predictably, were pretty weak- an impressive 21 units of Yamabushi for just 3 cities (mostly probably in Matsuyama), but just 5 of Archers, along with 4 Stone Crossbows and 5 Caravels.
The Ryuzoji, also predictably, were much stronger- they had several unit groups that were much larger than the Ichijo's entire Army, even including the Crossbows and Caravels, with 43 Ninjas, 46 Arquebusier units, and 73 Yamabushi units. Their 12 units of Spearmen and 2 of Warriors were comparatively smaller, but still something. And they had 3 cannons and maybe the largest navy in Japan, with 28 Caravels. They'd certainly be difficult to bring down, if the Miyoshi ever decided to invade them.
The Ryuzoji were definitely putting that navy to use, as the Miyoshi could see tons of their ships sail around- one, in the East of their territory, even sank a Miyoshi Caravel in February.
One more development shortly after was perhaps important to the Miyoshi strategy- a rushed Temple in Saijo had grabbed a bit more territory for the Miyoshi, making it easier for them to reach Susaki (at least once their workers rebuilt the road), and brought their territorial control ever higher- high enough, perhaps, that maybe conquering Susaki would make more sense than destroying it, despite their original plan of burning it for workers. Could it get them to over 35% control of Japan, which was, for some reason, an important number?
In April, the Miyoshi certainly gave their best crack at conquering it, but upon seeing from their bombarding cannons that at least 6 Yamabushi units were in the city and they didn't have enough attackers yet to deal with that, they just settled for having the 3rd Army kill 2 of those Yamabushi units, while a Ninja dealt with an Archer unit that was occupying the mountain Southwest of Saijo.
With a bit more money in their purse now, they also decided to try planting a spy in Sendai.
Another success! They only wished they had succeeded at this earlier!
The Uesugi were, to no real surprise, stronger than the Ichijo but weaker than the Ryuzoji, with an army of 18 units of Arquebusiers, 32 of Yamabushi, 8 of Spearmen, 4 of Mounted Samurai, 1 each of Horse Archers, not-Horse Archers, and Warriors, a single Fire Cannon, and 14 Caravels.
The Ichijo tried their damnedest in May to deal with the Miyoshi units poised to attack Susaki, but their efforts were fruitless, 2 of their units of Archers getting totally destroyed by the Miyoshi Mounted Samurai.
The Ryuzoji tried their damnedest to do... something, not clear what exactly, by getting the Date to declare war on the Takeda, adding another war to the great big mess of wars between the clans in Northeastern Honshu. By the Miyoshi's count, the Date, Uesugi, Takeda, and Hojo were almost all mutually at war with each other, except for the currently-not-at-war Date and Uesugi. The Mogami, comparatively peaceful, were at war with just the Hojo... for now.
The Miyoshi attacked Susaki again in July, this time with all their armies available. The city's 5 remaining units of Yamabushi stood no chance, especially after being bombarded- the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd armies combined to kill all 5 of them, and captured the city, along with 5 Ichijo workers and 2 Stone Crossbows that had somewhat annoyingly given defensive bombardment the whole time they'd attacked Susaki. Capturing a few workers definitely made them feel better about not burning the city, which was something they were now pretty sure they wanted...
...Because with that city taken, they now officially controlled over 35% of Japan's Area, along with well, well more than 35% of the Population- more than 40%, in fact.
Figuring it would be wise to hold off any thoughts of a counterattack, the Miyoshi also killed another unit of Ichijo Archers in the Mountains near Matsuyama with some of their Mounted Samurai. They also upgraded their captured Stone Crossbows to Fire Cannons, because hey, why not?
The Ichijo really couldn't do much about this in August but have some of their Yamabushi come towards Susaki and destroy roads in the area surrounding the city and, somewhat hilariously, get the Date to declare war on the Ryuzoji, like that would matter.
The Ryuzoji tried somewhat harder, having some Caravels fight Hojo Caravels to the East of Miyoshi territory with both sides losing 1, and more pressingly, attacked Susaki with some amphibious Ninjas coming out of Caravels, with the Ninjas mysteriously starting out by attacking and destroying the newly captured Cannons, of all things (wait, Ninja can do that? The hell?), not that it really mattered- the Miyoshi had reinforced the city far too strongly for it to be taken, and the remaining 2 attacking Ninjas were less effective when attacking Mounted Samurai, killing on unit of Mounted Samurai but losing a Ninja in the process.
Eleswhere, the Takeda seemed to continue to insist on fighting the Hojo instead of anyone else, battling some Hojo Samurai Archers near Yokahama with their Warriors, and losing said battle.
As October dawned, with the Miyoshi still in control of as much of Japan's area in population as they needed, they came with an announcement to the rest of Japan.
"Attention, all other clans. We have grown to be the strongest by far, and as such, you should recognize as the rulers of Japan and end these centuries of destructive conflict and civil war."
And indeed, they had grown quite large- far larger than anyone else.
Would that be enough to immediately get everyone else to stop fighting, especially the fighting-for-their-lives Ichijo and the Miyoshi's seemingly eternal enemy, the Ryuzoji? Perhaps not immediately, but one thing was clear:
There was no way anybody else could mount a serious challenge to them anymore. Maybe some would try, but if so, they would inevitably fail.
The Miyoshi ruled Japan, and nothing could stop that now.
The Miyoshi knew that they'd have to keep fighting, but the question was, who? They could fight the Takeda or Hojo, but those two were among their strongest remaining rivals, and nearly all of their military was in the West of their territory and would take a lot of time to cross Honshu to reach them. Invade Kyushu? Doable, but the Ryuzoji were also very strong and would be difficult to make much headway against. Invade Shikoku? Probably much easier, even if there was little to gain there. Hopefully, "little" would still be enough. They made plans to attack the Ichijo as soon as they could get enough Caravels ready for transport.
While they spent much of 1556 making these preparations, they also could see a bit of how the Takeda and Hojo were fighting each other near their border- they fought a bit at Yokohama in May, with a Takeda unit of Samurai Warriors making Hojo Yamabushi retreat from near their city, and fought at Maebashi in August, with the Hojo capturing the city from the Takeda.
The Miyoshi were ready to invade the Ichijo in October, gathering a large invasion force in New Kasuga ready to attack Saijo. They decided it would be wise to check the city's defenses before attacking, and investigated the city accordingly:
They wondered if their amphibiously-invading Ninja could be sufficient to take the city, but seeing the strength of its defenders decided that wouldn't work, and they'd just land an invasion force near the city and attack in a few months.
Before declaring war, they also tried to get some more... detailed espionage knowledge than just city investigations, and tried to get a spy to infiltrate Matsuyama.
"Again?" said Miyoshi Nagayoshi, "Why do all our spies always fail all the time?"
The Ichijo weren't offended enough by this attempt to declare war themselves, so the Miyoshi would have to do it. Noting that the Date were also at war with them, they figured they could maybe get a bit of gold from signing an alliance, so why not?
With the formal declaration out of the way, the Miyoshi had their large invasion force disembark near Saijo, and waited for the Ichijo to respond.
The Ichijo's response was... nothing. They seemed completely off-guard and unable to do anything about an invasion force that size.
The Takeda-Hojo war continued in November, with the Takeda capturing some Hojo Workers and the Hojo rebuilding a long-ago-destroyed city on the Hojo-Uesugi border.. The Miyoshi couldn't even remember who had originally controlled what the former city had once been, but found it odd nobody had built there until now, there was clearly space for a city there.
With no other Ichijo threats to deal with, the Miyoshi focused their fire on Saijo in January, 1557. Literally, fire, coming from their Fire Cannons. They didn't do much, but with all the Armies they had, they didn't need to. The Armies killed all 6 of the Yamabushi units in the city, with most of the five taking out 1 each and the 1st Army killing a 2nd. 2 Armies of Archers remained, and they proved easy pickings for Hiyoshi's Army, as it trampled them over and triumphantly rode into the city. A quick survey after it was captured showed the Miyoshi now controlled a third of the area of Japan- they were close to enough, but not quite there yet.
There was still a bit more to deal with, though, in the area surrounding the city- wanting to leave as much of the military as possible in the city to quickly quell rebellion, the Miyoshi didn't do too much, but did have Saotome's Army kill a unit of Yamabushi and a Mounted Samurai unit kill an Archer unit.
The Ichijo apparently must have just had all their units on the Southern end of Shikoku instead of the Northern end for some reason, because in February, they were ready to mount a response: And what a response it was, featuring dozens of units of Archers and Yamabushi coming towards Saijo. They were even able to somewhat go on the offense, pillaging the road to the Gems outside the city and attacking Miyoshi Yamabushi with their Archers, albeit unsucessfully.
The Ichijo units may have been less advanced and weaker than the Miyoshi units, but they made up for that with their sheer, overwhelming numbers- 33 units in total that the Miyoshi could see in April. The Miyoshi did have plenty of their own- 10 Ninja, 8 Mounted Samurai, 5 Arquebusiers, a Samurai Warrior and Yamabushi unit, and their 5 Armies- but that was still slightly smaller than the Ichijo's numbers, unless they counted their artillery in their numbers or counted their armies as more than one unit, which both would have been somewhat defensible accountings.
Then again, for as much as the artillery did count, they proved not at all helpful in weakening any of the surrounding Ichijo units. A shame, but they could still kill some of the Archers anyway with their Ninja and Mounted Samurai. Attacking the Archers proved something of a mixed bag; A large group of attacking Ninja were able to kill all 4 of the Samurai Archer units on the Gem mountain, but at the cost of 6 Ninja, 4 of whom died trying till kill one very stubborn Archer unit. Two of the Arquebusier Armies followed and killed 2 of the Yamabushi units to even the Ichijo and Miyoshi to 6 lost units each, but that still didn't quite go as planned.
They did a bit better on lower ground, with Mounted Samurai combining to kill all 4 of the Archer units in the Desert to the West of the city with no losses to themselves, though 4 of the Mounted Samurai units did have to retreat to avoid dying.
Fighting the Ichijo around Saijo would take plenty of time, but the Miyoshi were thinking longer-term than that already, where to attack next. They could try conquering other Ichijo cities before taking Matsuyama, but they were so large and prone to resistance that it seemed like a bad idea to try that. No, it would make more sense to just head to Matsuyama and kill their Daimyo as soon as possible, and then quickly resettle the Western end of Shikoku. To that end, they started spending large sums of money on getting the citizens of Saijo to organize into Settler groups for future resettlement. Given how the conflict surrounding their city was making it very hard for them to get enough food, it wasn't that hard to convince some of them to "join a Settler group so you don't starve"
The Ichijo gathered their forces together in a more compact way in May, also bringing a few more reinforcements along, to occupy the entire mountain range to the South of Saijo. They also, rather annoyingly, ended their war with the Date, which meant the Date were no longer paying the Miyoshi a once-every-three-months payment to be at war with the Ichijo.
"Seriously, Date? We just agreed to that alliance, and now you're pulling out?"
Back to the war front, in July the Miyoshi counted a total of 30 Ichijo Units in the mountains to the Southwest, South, and Southeast of Saijo, plus another Archer unit on the other side of the mountains. Slightly fewer than a few months ago, and with a mix that had more Yamabushi and fewer Archers, but still not exactly what the Miyoshi wanted to see.
Given the great defense the mountains offered, they'd basically have to just use their Armies now, with a bit of artillery support that might not help much given how many Yamabushi and Archers there were. But it was enough, and Saotome's Army, Hiyoshi's Army, and the 2nd and 3rd Armies combined to kill the 6 non-Ashigaru units on the Southern Mountain, and Saotome's Army followed by killing the Yamabushi on the Southeastern Mountain while Hiyoshi's Army killed one of the Yamabushi on the Southwestern Mountain. The Ichijo still had a very large force on the Southwestern Mountain- 12 units of Archers and 1 of Yamabushi- plus Ashigaru on the other mountains and Archers on the other side of the Mountains, but the Armies had weakened them greatly.
Deciding there wouldn't ever be a better time to try, the Ichijo attacked Saijo in August with almost everything they had: 9 of the Archer units and both Ashigaru units. It was a massacre for the Ichijo- they were hopelessly out matched by the Arquebusier Armies defending the city. All 11 attacking units were gunned down while inflicting no meaningful losses at all on the Miyoshi. Down to just a few units left to attack with, they opted not to attack any further, and just spread out with their Yamabushi, adopting a scorched-earth approach of destroying all the roads surrounding Saijo, hoping to, if nothing else, buy themselves some more time and make it harder for the Miyoshi to quickly venture out of the city to attack them.
In October, The Miyoshi figured the best response to this would just be to clear out the Ichijo from the surrounding area as best as they could, and then bring some workers to Saijo to rebuild the roads. Problem with that was the 4 Ichijo Caravels in the strait between New Kasuga and Saijo, making it pretty hard for the Miyoshi to quickly transport any workers. They attacked with 8 of their own Caravels, and inflicted heavy damage on the Ichijo fleet, sinking 3 of their ships and heavily damaging the 4th, but lost 5 Miyoshi Caravels in the process. So no reinforcements or workers coming this year, then.
The Miyoshi didn't accomplish much on land that month, the rest of the year having left them with too many injured units to do much fighting, but the 1st Army was healthy enough to do a bit of attacking, and killed one of the units of Yamabushi on the mountain to the Southwest of Saijo.
Realizing that continuing to fight at Saijo was pointless, the Ichijo pulled most of their Yamabushi and Archers away from the city in November, deciding they'd be better off fighting defensively elsewhere, not that they'd ever be able to hold off the Miyoshi forever.
The more troubling news of the month came far to the Northeast, near the city of Tomakomai on the border between the Miyoshi and the Takeda and Hojo. Not because of either of those two, but because of the Uesugi, who had brought a few Mounted Samurai and Samurai Horse Archers near to the city.
"What are you doing here, Uesugi?" asked the Miyoshi at the start of 1558, "You look like you're aiming to fight someone, and given we've conquered everyone to our West, there's not a whole lot of targets you could be going for."
"What do you think?" replied the Uesugi.
"Yeah... that's what we figured."
The Miyoshi weren't about to let the Uesugi get away with declaring war on them scot-free, and they definitely didn't want the Uesugi to bring in any powerful friends to help out, so they made sure to grab some allies before the Uesugi could, and got the Takeda and Hojo to declare war on the Uesugi in return for some gold.
They also weren't about to let the Uesugi attack them without some pre-emptive attacks on their part, but they also didn't really have a ton of units near Tomakomai- they'd left quite a few scattered all throughout their Eastern territories just in case, but mostly not near Tomakomai, specifically. The only ones who were close enough to do much of anything was a Mounted Samurai Army, which rode up to the city and killed one of the Uesugi Mounted Samurai units to Tomakomai's East.
Back to the other war the Miyoshi were fighting, there was still one heavily damaged Ichijo Caravel sailing that the Miyoshi weren't about to let go anywhere, so they sank it.
The Ichijo also hadn't totally vacated the mountains near Saijo- one unit each of Yamabushi and Archers remained on the Southwestern mountain. Saotome's Army took care of them.
With another war started, the Miyoshi thought it would be best to try again to plant spies in Matsuyama, as well as the Uesugi capital of Sendai. Of course, they failed, because their spies continue to be totally awful.
The Ichijo went back on the offensive in February, but a much smaller offensive than the previous year, as they seemed to be nearly out of military units- they had just 2 units each of Archers and Yamabushi to occupy the Southern Mountain.
The decision to bring the Hojo in to fight the Yamabushi paid immediate dividends, when they attacked the Uesugi units near Tomakomai with their own units- their unmounted Archers to no use, but the Hojo Horse Archers did a fantastic job, killing two units of Uesugi Horse Archers before being killed themselves by a unit of Mounted Samurai.
That still left the Uesugi with two units of Mounted Samurai to attack with, and attack the Miyoshi they did, but it was a mixed bag for them, with both sides losing one unit of Mounted Samurai. Tomakomai was still firmly under Miyoshi control.
The alliance with the Takeda, on the other hand, did not give an immediate return, the Takeda instead opting to try (and fail) to kill a Hojo Yamabushi unit with their Samurai Warriors. Fight the Uesugi, not each other, you guys! Come on!
The surviving Uesugi Mounted Samurai unit, and a Horse Archer unit a bit outside of Miyoshi territory, were both killed by the Mounted Samurai Army in April.
The Uesugi no longer had any units anywhere near Tomakomai, but they did have a unit of Yamabushi much farther Northwest, near Komagane. Not wanting to let it destroy any roads, the Miyoshi decided to kill the Yamabushi as quickly as possible, and did so, but thanks to the Yamabushi occupying a mountain, it killed two units of Arquebusiers and one of Mounted Samurai before finally going down.
On the Ichijo War Front, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Arquebusier Armies combined to kill all 4 of the Ichijo units on the mountain South of Saijo, and other forces headed Southwest, to attack either Susaki or Matsuyama.
The Ichijo countered in May with a significant but small number of Yamabushi, Archers, and Ashigaru, clearly being out of resources to try any an attack the size of what they tried a year earlier.
They also declared war on the Hojo at the request of the Takeda.
Speaking of the Hojo, they continued to do battle with the Uesugi around the Hojo-Miyoshi border, losing 2 of their own Archer units but killing 2 Uesugi units in the process, one of Spearmen and one of something the Miyoshi couldn't see.
That left the Uesugi with just a unit of Arquebusiers and a unit of Spearmen anywhere near Miyoshi territory in July, and both of them were pretty easy to kill for a Mounted Samurai Army (killing the Spearmen) and a not-armied unit of Mounted Samurai (killing the Arquebusiers, who had been heavily injured from previous battles with the Hojo)
The Miyoshi again were finding that the presence of Ichijo ships near Saijo made it too difficult to transport any of their own units, and again sought to sink them. They did, sinking 2 Caravels and a Galley, but lost 3 Caravels of their own in the process.
On land, they got to work whittling down all the Ichijo units near Saijo, a task they seemed to need to do once every 3 months these days. An isolated unit of Archers West-Southwest of the city were killed by Arquebusiers, and an isolated unit of Ashigaru Northwest of the city were killed by a Ninja. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Arquebusier Armies charged on the Mountain Southwest of the city, and killed 3 units each of Archers and Yamabushi there, killing most of the Ichijo's attackers but not all of them.
To the Southwest, the armies of Hiyoshi and Saotome had a decision to make: Attack Matsuyama, or attack Susaki? Susaki would for sure be an easier target, but unlike Matsuyama, taking it wouldn't end the war immediately, so they'd have to hold it if they took it, no easy task given how large the city was.
Or... they could just attack Susaki, burn it to the ground, and enslave the population into building roads for them. That would also work. And that sounded like the best idea at the moment, they certainly weren't on their own strong enough to attack Matsuyama and the other Armies were needed to fight off all these piecemeal Ichijo attacks towards Saijo. So go to Susaki they did, and each army killed one unit of Yamabushi there.
For once, the Ichijo didn't have any new units to bring towards Saijo in August. They did, however, have a unit of Yamabushi to bring into Miyoshi territory.... on mainland Honshu... well, well to the North, near the city of Yodo, and they pillaged a road and mine on a hill near the city. What were they even doing way out there, had they been fighting the Date, or something?
The Hojo didn't battle the Uesugi as far the Miyoshi could see, but maybe it was just that the Uesugi no longer had any units anywhere near Miyoshi territory and if they were battling, it was near their own border with the Hojo or Takeda. They did sink an Ichijo Caravel, though.
The Miyoshi were once again asked to hold War Council elections in September, and once again declined. Hopefully it would be the last time anyone would question whether they'd need to vote for this and not just be assured that the Miyoshi were the true rulers of Japan.
Oh yeah, and one other thing: A concerningly large group of Ryuzoji units ventured out of Shirakawa, towards the Miyoshi city of Samani. So that was a thing.
The Miyoshi went to them just as they'd gone to the Uesugi nine months earlier when they'd come in uninvited, expecting about the same response from the Ryuzoji as they got from the Uesugi. They expected correctly.
Evidently, the Ryuzoji assumed that attacking the Miyoshi while they were distracted by Uesugi and Ichijo would make them a softer target. How wrong they were. The Miyoshi started out the same way they started out with the Uesugi: Getting some friends on their side before the Ryuzoji could.
It was certainly true, though, that they were not really in a good position to deal with the big group of units near Samani- 3 of Arquebusiers, 1 of Yamabushi, 1 of Spearmen. Inconveniently, the quickest road from Tomakomai- where a fairly large number of the Miyoshi's Eastern military units were, to fight off the Uesugi- back to Samani went through Ryuzoji territory near Shirakawa.
Oh well, easy solution to that: Just attack Shirakawa first. The Mounted Samurai got to the city first, and hoped to kill both the Arquebusier units defending the city so everyone else could focus on helping Samani. They didn't quite succeed, killing only one unit and damaging the second before having to retreat, but that was enough for another unit of Mounted Samurai to finish off the Arquebusiers and take the city.
As an added bonus, the Miyoshi calculated that the new territory around Shirakawa put them as now controlling slightly more than 34% of the area of Japan.
With Shirakawa taken, the Miyoshi could now use the nearby road to get to Samani faster. Sadly, the Ryuzoji being on a hill near Samani made them hard to attack, as a Miyoshi Ninja discovered when trying to kill the Yamabushi and failing miserably. But they could reinforce the city as best as they could, bombard the Ryuzoji a few times with the Arquebusiers who couldn't quite reach the city, and hope for the best.
To the North, they made sure to not let the Ichijo Yamabushi who had pillaged the hill near Yodo get away with it: a unit of Mounted Samurai killed them easily.
To say things didn't go as well back on Shikoku would be an understatement. Saotome and Hiyoshi's Armies attacked Susaki's Yamabushi defenders. Saotome's Army did alright, killing one unit of Yamabushi but being somewhat injured in the process, but Hiyoshi's Army, despite being at fairly high strength, was completely wiped out by another unit of Yamabushi, doing little damage to them. Clearly, these armies would not be enough to take Susaki.
The Ichijo, perhaps emboldened by this, sent a few units of Archers towards Saijo, but it was a curiously low number, and protected by no Yamabushi. Perhaps they weren't that emboldened.
The Ryuzoji, predictably, attacked Samani with their Arquebusiers, but the reinforced defenders held out fantastically well, with a unit of Samurai Warriors and a unit of Mounted Samurai each killing one of the attacking units. Their first two attacks failed, the Ryuzoji decided to just spread out and do as much damage as they could to the countryside, but other than the Yamabushi pillaging a road to some Dyes, they wouldn't be able to do much.
The Hojo tried their best to help out, but their Horse Archers did little at all to the Spearmen they attacked. The Takeda did not try their best, killing another Hojo Horse Archer with their Samurai Warriors instead.
But on the bright side, they helped out in a different way: By getting the Ichijo to declare war on the Ryuzoji.
The Miyoshi were definitely happy to see two of their enemies fight, and the Ichijo and Ryuzoji were even close enough to fight, or at least annoy each other. The Miyoshi only hoped the Ryuzoji wouldn't conquer the Ichijo before they did.
The first order of business in January of 1559 was to take out the remaining Ryuzoji units in Miyoshi territory. Some arquebusier bombardment helped, but evidently not enough, as the remaining Ryuzoji Arquebusier unit killed 3 attacking units of Mounted Samurai before finally succumbing to a 4th (it did promote twice in the process). Said 4th Mounted Samurai unit tried its luck at killing the Ryuzoji Spearmen as well, but retreated, having done little damage. A 5th unit of Mounted Samurai finished off the Spearmen, and a 6th killed the Yamabushi. Miyoshi territory was now Ryuzoji-free.
Next was fighting the Ichijo, but the Miyoshi couldn't do much on that front but killing 2 of their units of Archers- 1 on the mountain South of Saijo, 1 in the flatlands West of that mountain- and advancing some more of their troops towards Susaki.
Finally, they tried their hand, once again, at getting some spies into the Ichijo capital of Matsuyama and the Ryuzoji capital of Kitakyushu. And for once... they finally succeeded at both.
They would have tried to make it 3 for 3, but didn't have enough money left to get a spy into Sendai, and didn't care that much about the Uesugi military anyway.
The Ichijo, predictably, were pretty weak- an impressive 21 units of Yamabushi for just 3 cities (mostly probably in Matsuyama), but just 5 of Archers, along with 4 Stone Crossbows and 5 Caravels.
The Ryuzoji, also predictably, were much stronger- they had several unit groups that were much larger than the Ichijo's entire Army, even including the Crossbows and Caravels, with 43 Ninjas, 46 Arquebusier units, and 73 Yamabushi units. Their 12 units of Spearmen and 2 of Warriors were comparatively smaller, but still something. And they had 3 cannons and maybe the largest navy in Japan, with 28 Caravels. They'd certainly be difficult to bring down, if the Miyoshi ever decided to invade them.
The Ryuzoji were definitely putting that navy to use, as the Miyoshi could see tons of their ships sail around- one, in the East of their territory, even sank a Miyoshi Caravel in February.
One more development shortly after was perhaps important to the Miyoshi strategy- a rushed Temple in Saijo had grabbed a bit more territory for the Miyoshi, making it easier for them to reach Susaki (at least once their workers rebuilt the road), and brought their territorial control ever higher- high enough, perhaps, that maybe conquering Susaki would make more sense than destroying it, despite their original plan of burning it for workers. Could it get them to over 35% control of Japan, which was, for some reason, an important number?
In April, the Miyoshi certainly gave their best crack at conquering it, but upon seeing from their bombarding cannons that at least 6 Yamabushi units were in the city and they didn't have enough attackers yet to deal with that, they just settled for having the 3rd Army kill 2 of those Yamabushi units, while a Ninja dealt with an Archer unit that was occupying the mountain Southwest of Saijo.
With a bit more money in their purse now, they also decided to try planting a spy in Sendai.
Another success! They only wished they had succeeded at this earlier!
The Uesugi were, to no real surprise, stronger than the Ichijo but weaker than the Ryuzoji, with an army of 18 units of Arquebusiers, 32 of Yamabushi, 8 of Spearmen, 4 of Mounted Samurai, 1 each of Horse Archers, not-Horse Archers, and Warriors, a single Fire Cannon, and 14 Caravels.
The Ichijo tried their damnedest in May to deal with the Miyoshi units poised to attack Susaki, but their efforts were fruitless, 2 of their units of Archers getting totally destroyed by the Miyoshi Mounted Samurai.
The Ryuzoji tried their damnedest to do... something, not clear what exactly, by getting the Date to declare war on the Takeda, adding another war to the great big mess of wars between the clans in Northeastern Honshu. By the Miyoshi's count, the Date, Uesugi, Takeda, and Hojo were almost all mutually at war with each other, except for the currently-not-at-war Date and Uesugi. The Mogami, comparatively peaceful, were at war with just the Hojo... for now.
The Miyoshi attacked Susaki again in July, this time with all their armies available. The city's 5 remaining units of Yamabushi stood no chance, especially after being bombarded- the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd armies combined to kill all 5 of them, and captured the city, along with 5 Ichijo workers and 2 Stone Crossbows that had somewhat annoyingly given defensive bombardment the whole time they'd attacked Susaki. Capturing a few workers definitely made them feel better about not burning the city, which was something they were now pretty sure they wanted...
...Because with that city taken, they now officially controlled over 35% of Japan's Area, along with well, well more than 35% of the Population- more than 40%, in fact.
Figuring it would be wise to hold off any thoughts of a counterattack, the Miyoshi also killed another unit of Ichijo Archers in the Mountains near Matsuyama with some of their Mounted Samurai. They also upgraded their captured Stone Crossbows to Fire Cannons, because hey, why not?
The Ichijo really couldn't do much about this in August but have some of their Yamabushi come towards Susaki and destroy roads in the area surrounding the city and, somewhat hilariously, get the Date to declare war on the Ryuzoji, like that would matter.
The Ryuzoji tried somewhat harder, having some Caravels fight Hojo Caravels to the East of Miyoshi territory with both sides losing 1, and more pressingly, attacked Susaki with some amphibious Ninjas coming out of Caravels, with the Ninjas mysteriously starting out by attacking and destroying the newly captured Cannons, of all things (wait, Ninja can do that? The hell?), not that it really mattered- the Miyoshi had reinforced the city far too strongly for it to be taken, and the remaining 2 attacking Ninjas were less effective when attacking Mounted Samurai, killing on unit of Mounted Samurai but losing a Ninja in the process.
Eleswhere, the Takeda seemed to continue to insist on fighting the Hojo instead of anyone else, battling some Hojo Samurai Archers near Yokahama with their Warriors, and losing said battle.
As October dawned, with the Miyoshi still in control of as much of Japan's area in population as they needed, they came with an announcement to the rest of Japan.
"Attention, all other clans. We have grown to be the strongest by far, and as such, you should recognize as the rulers of Japan and end these centuries of destructive conflict and civil war."
And indeed, they had grown quite large- far larger than anyone else.
Would that be enough to immediately get everyone else to stop fighting, especially the fighting-for-their-lives Ichijo and the Miyoshi's seemingly eternal enemy, the Ryuzoji? Perhaps not immediately, but one thing was clear:
There was no way anybody else could mount a serious challenge to them anymore. Maybe some would try, but if so, they would inevitably fail.
The Miyoshi ruled Japan, and nothing could stop that now.
Well, that took long enough! It's been 8 years, almost to the day, since I started writing about this scenario. I sure wasn't intending to spend that long on it when I started! It's been so long that I've played this on 3 different computers!
Endgame stuff:
Endgame stuff:
Spoiler :
Toxicman007
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Well done Chox! Doesn't feel like 8 years have passed since you started, I didn't realise it was that long ago... Now I am very much looking forward to the Napoleonic wars!
need my speed
Rex Omnium Imperarium
If you pick one of those two, I would assume France is more fun, being on the continent?
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