I should have kept better notes for the earlier stages but for the last part of the game I have stage writeups. This will take one more post later in the week.

This part of the game is a mix of historical and ahistorical content; the historical content goes up to stage 24.

Stage 21

This is the first stage without Motonari, although Terumoto inherits all his equipment. The stage begins with a few enemies to the right and a wide open space on top; of course reinforcements will come in there. There are two groups, one to the left and one to the right, plus sea units. I sent my main force right to deal with the initial enemies, and then had them go up while the backup units sat near the main castle to deal with the sea guys and some of the left units, although I was able to wipe out the right units and bring my main force to the left side of the map before they seriously threatened the castle.

Stage 22

This is based on a historical sea battle that took place as part of the Ishiyama Hongan-ji war. In the game you have to protect 3 supply units that are getting food to Honganji. They start out in the sea but will end up on land. There are a ton of sea units but the Wave ability is so powerful that I was able to kill them all with 4 pirates, losing only one. I sent one ninja SW for the villages, two bandits into the mountains for the mines, and everyone else just went forward. There’s one set of reinforcements near the end but they can be easily dealt with.

Stage 23

So far we’re still following history, this is the Siege of Kozuki Castle. Hideyoshi starts with some guys at the NE and they will have endless reinforcements until you take him out so that’s the first target (although I didn’t realize this so had to split my team). After that there’s an annoying middle section with cannons and gun units, but once they’re all dealt with it’s smooth sailing after that.

The tactician units have a very useful heal all units tech; it costs 90 points but that’s enough for two uses even without heal TP items.

Stage 24

The beginning of this stage has the last of the historical content. Oda Nobunaga is killed by Akechi Mitsuhide in the Honnoji Incident, and Hideyoshi makes peace (more of a partial surrender) with the Mouri clan so he can go after Mitsuhide. Terumoto accepts the terms. In history the Mouri clan then became one of Hideyoshi’s most loyal supporters and even joined in the failed invasion of Korea. After Hideyoshi’s death, Terumoto opposed Tokugawa Ieyasu and after Ieyasu’s victory, Terumoto surrendered to him and was reduced to the Choshu Domain, where the Mouri clan remained for the rest of the Edo period. Like other domain heads, the Mouri clan leader became a “duke” in the post-Meiji system. The current head of the clan is Mori Motohide, who works for Hitachi Metals (which became Proteria earlier this year).

In this game, Terumoto decides to take advantage of the confusion surrounding Nobunaga’s death to attack Hideyoshi from behind as he’s leaving to deal with Mitsuhide. Hideyoshi flees for Himeji Castle — I don’t think it’s possible to stop him from reaching the castle and you have to deal with reinforcements along the way. The second group started going for the home base; I sent out some trash units to guard it but they didn’t end up reaching it soon enough before Hideyoshi was killed. So much for his dream.

Stage 25

Next up Terumoto decides that the best thing to do is to enter Kyoto (being allowed to enter Kyoto as a warlord means you have the direct support of the Shogun and thus the Emperor); he gets the support of Shogun Yoshiaki. On the way he meets Akechi Mitsuhide, and this is the first of two fights in this chapter.

There’s not much to it — two sets of reinforcements appear but they are strangely light (I assumed endless reinforcements would come out of the forts but they didn’t — given how few units are in the reinforcement castles I wonder if this is a bug). Akechi’s castle has a lot of cannon units which are dangerous, but you get 80 turns to beat the stage so it’s easy just to approach slowly and use healing from the tacticians and supply carts.

The second part of the stage has Terumoto going after Mitsuhide after establishing himself in the capital. This stage only has some water reinforcements, but after getting across the water with the help of pirates, the rest of the stage is much easier than the last few. Now Mitsuhide is dead (in history he was killed in a different place by an attack of Hideyoshi’s).

Three more stages, hopefully I can have the last post up by Tuesday.