Nobunaga's Ambition: BASIC bushido

Rolling a super-Nobunaga.

For this last post, I'm going to try to tackle the hardest difficulty of Nobunaga's Ambition, but I won't play fair. I have save states. I have the source code. And I'm going to do my best to explain how things work. And oh, boy, is it kind of insane!

First of all, let's look at the stats. Everyone's got them, but on anything but the lowest difficulty, pretty much everyone gets better stats than you, especially Tokugawa. So I am savescumming to ensure I get something decent.

I have an IQ of 108 (this might not sound amazing but my last Nobunaga was basically an inbred imbecile), constitution of 98, ambition of 110, charisma of 100, and luck of 93. What does it all mean?

Not much! These stats, as it turns out, are simple combat modifiers, and there is zero distinction between the first four. I'll get into the specifics later, but at a glance, just average them, compare them to the average of the other guy, and that shows you how much of an advantage/disadvantage you are, all other things being equal. Tokugawa, at the highest difficulty, easily has an average of 140 across these stats, so I would need 140% the number of troops in order to match his power. Either that or beat him in other stats.

Luck applies a small combat bonus which does not scale with your army size/morale/training. It's basically inconsequential unless you're very evenly matched otherwise. Even then it's probably inconsequential because combat rolls are a factor, and those do scale with your other stats.

One other factor here is that constitution increases in the spring, but decreases during random plagues. Apart from that, your stats are set.

 

1560 

A plague has hit. Every spring, there is a 30% chance of typhoons, and a 7% chance of plagues (but no chance of both). Either event affects the region as a whole, but not every province; in the event of a plague, each province has a 25% chance of being affected, and mine was. This reduces your rice production to 40%-90% of its previous value, and your army size by the same value.

Not a great start, but I have math on my side.

You need rice to feed your army, and the formula for the autumn rice harvest is deterministic:

[Production] * [Flood control]/100 * [Peasant loyalty]/100 * [Peasant wealth]/100 * [Tax rate]/100

 

This maximizes at 1000. Not important right now, but it will be! 

My values right now are the cyan numbers - 24, 45, 49, and 67. At a base tax rate of 50, I'd get one lousy koku this autumn, and I'm going to need nine to sustain the army as it is, let alone grow it!

At first glance, you might think the best way to get these numbers up is to increase the lowest stat, which is production. This is wrong for a simple reason; production is by far the most expensive stat to raise! One gold raises it one point, while flood control goes up by five points per piece, and also has the benefit of mitigating typhoon damage.

Even better than that, gifts to your people increase both loyalty and wealth by 100/[Production] per coin/koku, or 4.2 each.

But if you really want to get those numbers up, you gotta do it the same way as the 1%. Abuse the tax code!

Taxes adjust loyalty and wealth by this formula:

50 - [new tax rate]

 

See how this might be abused? It's not diffing the old rate and the new. It's diffing the old rate and the baseline of 50! Set it to the minimum of 1, and you increase both numbers by 49. You can do that repeatedly. Then you can set it right back without affecting them at all!

So that's what I do. In the spring, I lower the tax rate to 1, and in summer, I raise it right back to 50 in time for the harvest, which produces 6 koku rather than the 5 I'd get from gifting my gold. But that's just the beginning. Over the next three seasons, I set the tax rate to 1 three times, which does nothing but make the peasants happier and richer, and in the summer, just before harvest, I set it to 100 which makes them a little sadder and poorer. This gives me a harvest of 45 koku, a decent surplus of 36.

1561

I'm still lagging behind Tokugawa, and at this point investing in flood control would be more valuable than tax abuse. So I do both. Provincial wars start to heat up, but I'm left alone for now. The harvest next autumn is 263 koku, which way outpaces Tokugawa, though his wealth and martial growth is starting to be worrisome.

1562

I'm rice rich, but gold poor. Too bad the merchant isn't here right now. I spent what little I have on troops, train a bit, and Kitabatake attacks with a slightly superior force. 

I said I'd explain how combat works, and a roughly even battle is the most interesting one, so this is the ideal place for it.

The single most important stat here is each unit's strength, a number at the bottom of the hex. These are distributed in proportion to the overall army size, always in multiples of ten, and priority given to the highest rank. My army size is 12, so my hex strengths are 30+30+20+20+20. His is 13, so they are 30+30+30+20+20.

Combat strength is determined by this formula:

[Unit strength] * ([Stat bonus] + [terrain bonus]) * [Random factor] * [Lord bonus] + [Luck bonus]

The stat bonus is the sum of seven stats, divided by 700. IQ, constitution, ambition, charisma, army loyalty, army training, and weapons. His bonus will be 1.21, mine will be 0.98.

The terrain bonus applies a flat bonus from 0-2 based on the terrain the unit is in. 0 for plains, 1 for forests, 1.5 for forts, and 2 for castles. As my strongest units are in a castle and fort, respectively, I'm actually in a pretty good position. And I believe the bonus applies even if you are attacking from a fortified position.

The random factor is a multiplier from 0.6 to 1.6.

The lord bonus is a flat multiplier of 2 if the clan lord is personally leading the fight. 1 otherwise. When you attack, you can decide to have Nobunaga lead or not, but if your #1 unit is lost, then it's game over. When you are attacked, this depends on whether the province attacked is where Nobunaga currently is or not.

Finally, the luck bonus is your luck stat divided by 50.

 

So, let's look at my #1 unit vs. the #4 intruder outside his gate. My combat strength would be:

30 * 2.98 * [Random factor] * 2 + 1.86 = 109-288

His would be:

20 * 1.21 * [Random factor] * 2 + 1.86 = 31-79

 

Whoever's is higher does damage, unless the difference is less than 10. Mine is guaranteed to be bigger, so I will do damage, and this will simply be the difference divided by 10.

An average random factor would mean 13 points. This is exactly how much damage I do.

 

So, this is really my #1 and #2 units' fight, and the best thing they can do is not move from their fortifications. #3 and #5 are stuck on the left side and won't be able to do much but finish off wounded units. #4 is stuck on the right side with all of Kitabatake's stronger units and won't be able to hurt them much even from the advantage of cover in the woods.

I take a few losses but I win and take his province. Unfortunately, Saito immediately invades and takes it from me. But then he immediately invades Owari and loses! Both provinces are mine! But then Tsutsui invades Iseshima, which I cannot possibly defend, and forces me to retreat.

 

1563

 

After that tumultuous winter, I'm still alive, but the weakest clan on the map. Gotta arm in a hurry! Good news, though - the merchants are here, and I have over 300 koku stocked in Owari. And prices are decent! I sell it all, and with the cash, hire 234 soldiers; just enough that I will have money left to pay them - the harvest will bring enough to feed them. From Mino #9, I transport the entirety of its wealth back to Owari; I cannot defend two provinces at this time. Sure enough, Mino is attacked and taken this season by the Tsutsui clan. But the rice arrives in Owari, which I sell and use to cultivate the land, maxing out the rice harvest.

The remaining money, and I will definitely want more of it, goes into the town itself. The formula here is simple; each coin you invest in the town improves the town value by one point. And each autumn you collect cash revenue equal to your town's value multiplied by a random value between 0.5 and 1.5. It's a fast return on your investment, but that doesn't do you much good if you get invaded before you can spend it. But if I put in my entire savings of 523, the worst I can collect from that is 261, which will still pay the soldiers.

 

1564

 

Oh, boy. Miyoshi and Asakura are quickly unifying! And I'm looking like I might be Miyoshi's next territory. But Owari is an economic powerhouse that just withstood a plague and collected 422 ryo and produced 868 koku in one year. Imagine what I could do in another!

I'm not going to invade anyone yet, though - I don't feel confident enough I could conquer a province and then defend it and Owari.

I invest in more flood control, sell the excess rice when the merchants come, and dump the gold right back into the town - all 1646 of it. The rest of the year is peaceful.

 

1565 

 

It's time to start thinking about invasions. Tempting as it might be to eliminate Tokugawa, any force I might send his way either leaves Owari inadequately defended from Miyoshi, or is itself inadequately large to defend itself from, well, everyone. Besides, my army could stand some improvement before I go all-in. I buy weapons; 9000 points worth of them (which is all I am allowed), give all of my rice to the army for a nice loyalty boost, and spend the rest of my cash on more soldiers.

Only then do I invade, and I target Mino #9 to the north, bringing 247 well-armed soldiers to engage the 109 stationed there. And the fight is over before I can even issue an order.

 

1566

Well, crap. I expected Mino to fall easily, but I didn't expect this would get me the whole Miyoshi territory!

While optimizing the newly conquered realms, I continue to push into Hida #6 from Mino. They won't have the same weapons advantage that they had coming from Owari, but they won't need it; my force outnumbers them 3:1. This converts the entire Asakura territory to me. With them out of my way, Owari can, quite safely, invade Tokugawa's realm with their entire army. Sayonara, old friend.

 

And honestly, the rest of the game just isn't all that interesting to write about. So I won't. I isolate the rest of my rivals and conquer them one-by-one with overwhelming invasion forces by the end of the year.

The last, hilariously stacked battle against Uesugi in their little alcove.

 

 

Some additional notes:

A non-aggression pact costs both lords 10 gold and sets a diplomatic relations value to 70. It will always be accepted as long as this value is not negative, but it does not guarantee non-aggression! Essentially, it means that if the lord decides to attack you, there's a 70% chance of changing his mind. This value trends 10 points toward zero every spring, and I'm not sure what makes it go into negative.

Typhoons, like plagues, have a 25% chance of affecting each province on the map. The effect is to reduce productivity to [Flood Control]/220 of its original value. It also reduces peasant wealth by 1-5 points.

The AI has a routine to evaluate potential invasion targets, and part of it is estimating the regional strength. If a region has more rice than soldiers, then it evaluates the strength as [Soldiers]². Otherwise, it is evaluated as [Soldiers]*[Rice]. This is doubled if the lord is present. They tend to attack weak provinces if they have a stronger adjacent province.

Ninjas will do damage to a target provinces' army loyalty, training, peasant loyalty, and wealth. The amount decreased is five points per ninja. 

Nobunaga's Ambition: Won!

Three times I was snuffed

Two embers still burn within

One Shogun will rule 

 

1560

Tokugawa's stats, not mine

Even on the second-lowest difficulty, Tokugawa is still the one to be wary of, and yes, his stats are still a lot better than mine. Funny that his constitution seems to be the one random variable; everything else is fixed by difficulty.

I begin with familiar actions. Put everything I've got into the town. The next year, rice prices are high, and following Scribe's advice, I put my entire collections into dams, in the hopes it will bring a better rice yield.

And it is a good investment. This time, only one soldier deserts after his comrades eat everything! Next season I distribute coins to the peasants to boost wealth and loyalty, and the harvest becomes a surplus; no more desertions.

 

Now that my little province is self-sufficient, it's time to grow. The harvest can support 16 soldiers, but I'll need to pay them too; I put my gold into town and gift the rice surplus back to the peasants. War starts breaking out by 1564, and territories change hands, but I'm left alone, and the year's tax season brings in 54 ryo and 24 koku.

Let's see how I stack up against my neighbors.

 

Province	Owari #17	Iseshima #13	Mino #9	Mikawa #8
Clan	Oda	Kitabatake	Saito	Tokugawa
Age	30	23	39	22
IQ	39	78	62	120
Constitution	67	60	68	61
Ambition	59	89	89	120
Charisma	58	96	71	120
Luck	50	56	80	120
Gold	58	4	1	6
Rice	24	25	87	34
Debt	0	0	0	0
Towns	2	2	2	2
Productivity	40	20	64	35
Flood control	89	153	172	185
Peasant loyalty	127	87	67	86
Peasant wealth	146	80	90	110
Army size	9	7	12	11
Army loyalty	83	82	59	104
Training	177	75	129	120
Arms	100	87	87	60

 

I am not worried about Kitabatake at all. In fact I'm pretty sure I could march in and take their land if I didn't care about leaving Owari completely exposed. I'm not too worried about Saito either as long as I can match his army size and avoid a repeat of the last game (and I can). Tokugawa is a bit more intimidating.

I hire three soldiers, negotiate a non-aggression pact with Tokugawa, and put the rest of what I've got into cultivation, because my production stat feels a bit left behind. Rice goes to the peasants.

 

1565 

It's time to start thinking about conquest. The clans are already fighting, and some players have been eliminated. I assemble a strategic map, annotated with the controlling clans and their total army sizes.

Takeda is looking a bit intimidating, and makes Saito a risky take, but those 26 armies are spread between two provinces.

My first target will be Saito. I will want to have at least 26 armies to take it with, and at least 10 to leave behind. I'm going to need more money, and thankfully, I'm rich in rice and the merchant is here. Rice becomes gold, gold becomes soldiers, gold goes into more cultivation... and a typhoon immediately wrecks whatever good that did. No matter, I invade Mino to the north, and win very easily.

1566 

While I was fighting, Takeda was wiped out! And most of the regions to the east have strengthened. Imagawa is looking very dangerous. Tokugawa is not.

My plan will be to continue expanding north, split Japan in half, and prey on my neighbors to the west first. Owari is not vulnerable. Mino is. I move there, leaving a vassal in charge of Owari, and propose a non-aggression pact with Imagawa. With me goes Owari's entire rice surplus, which I exchange for gold and dump into the town center for more gold.

A few more turns of building up these provinces, and the map now looks like this.

 

1569 

Slight change of plans - I realize that if I invade Asakura from Mino, this will leave Mino vulnerable to its neighbors. But if I expand westward from Owari, I can fully commit; Owari has no hostile neighbors except Tsutsui. Iseshima #13 falls very easily indeed, and then we go onward to Iga #12 and Yamato #10, crippling the clan.

Sheer numbers, not skill, carry me to easy victory.

 

I'd show screenshots but it's just not all that interesting; I beat them with sheer numbers, not skill.

 

1572

Asakura have gotten quite strong in their sequestered, not-so-little province! I consider them my only threat right now, and focus on building up my territories and sending troops and rice to Mino #9 so that I can invade, while making sure that Tsutsui and Azai can't hurt me.

In 1573, Azai attacks me at Iga #12, and they're able to inflict some major damage on the troops despite my best efforts to match them for army size and skill, but I hold out in the relative safety of my castle as they starve to death outside.

Omi #11 is mine, and Asakura's army size in Echizenwakasa #5 mysteriously shrank from 1005 to 62, so I march in and take it.

 

1574

Tsutsui is all that remains to be conquered in the west, and I do with the greatest of ease.

They basically commit seppuku on our spears.

 

I start concentrating my wealth and soldiers east to Mino #9 and begin chipping away at the Honganji empire - to my surprise, the whole place falls in one stroke, and we push on to take Kaishinano #16 from Imagawa by the end of the year.

 

1575 

Hojo is having trouble feeding all of those soldiers! No problem; I can feed what's left of them. I do that, and win the game by summer. I honor my non-aggression pact with Tokugawa Ieyasu and kill him last.

 

GAB rating: Average. Nobunaga's Ambition was a tolerable experience once I survived long enough to defend myself, but not an especially interesting one. I can't say much that wasn't already said by Scribe; there isn't anything quite like this in 1983, and later incarnations definitely influenced the Total War series, but here, the various systems just aren't deep enough to interact in non-trivial ways. War is a major weak point; there is no tactic for dealing with a +10 strength doom stack other than digging in and hoping your provisions outlast his, and otherwise, you can win pretty much any encounter by holding out in advantageous terrain or by swarming the lord's position. The economic layer is where games are won and lost, and it seems to me that there is definitely an optimal way to play it, which I intend to explore in my next (and final) post on the subject.

I see a lot of similarities to Hamurabi and Santa Paravia, and the more I think about it, the more sure I become that Hamurabi, at least, must have been familiar to designer Yoichi Erikawa. The turn-based kingdom management, the simple resource management model, fluctuating rates of goods, and random disasters are all here and work so similarly that it doesn't seem like a coincidence. I can't find any record that David Ahl's seminal BASIC compilation was available in Japan at this time, but as I understand it, magazines like ASCII, which regularly printed type-in programs, were the main resource for computer hobbyists at the time, and it seems only natural that Hamurabi would have reached an audience this way. Somebody tell me if this sounds crazy, especially if you're more knowledgeable on this subject than I am!

Game 470: Nobunaga's Ambition

I'm still playing catchup with Wargaming Scribe - see his AAR/review.

Nobunaga's Ambition was the obvious next choice of the Koei ancestors. Between it and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you've basically got half their library right there.

Thematically, this one's almost a sequel to Battle of Kawanakajima, with the same setting and both clans of that game accounted for. But Nobunaga has more, you could say, ambition. Kawanakajima simulated a battle. This time we're going for Sengoku-era unification.

 

Historically, Oda Nobunaga did not live to see his dream fulfilled. And that's been my experience too; as of this writing, I have yet to survive a game longer than a few years! Poor Nobunaga is weaker than his neighbors, diplomatic options are limited, building up your military strength takes money, money takes time, and pitiless daimyo have a taste for weak neighbors with money.

For this initial post, I'm going to make five attempts, starting at the maximal difficulty, and decreasing on each failure. There will be no savescumming, and no privileged knowledge of the game's workings apart from the things I've already learned.

Interestingly, the game features a two player mode, but I'm not going to subject anyone else to it. 

Attempt #1: Difficulty 5 

Like Kawanakajima, this early BASIC Koei title was never officially released in English, though its sequel was one of the first that was. Unlike Kawanakajima, this was never unofficially released in English either. But Google's translation ability is much more powerful now, and at this point I basically understand what's going on enough to not need it.

It's the spring of 1560. Central Japan, which is as far as Nobunaga's ambition goes, consists of 17 provinces, each ruled by one of 17 clans. There won't be 17 clans for long! But for now, I'm concerned only with three; #17, Owari, is ruled by the Oda clan. #13 to my west is Iseshima, ruled by Kitabatake, whose leader is just a kid. To the north, #9, Mino, ruled by Saito. And to the east, #8, Mikawa, ruled by Tokugawa, whose stats are formidable.

My own stats are as follows:

Age: 26

IQ: 80

Constitution: 52

Ambition: 92

Charisma: 39

Luck: 58

 

I have no idea what any of that actually means! But next, in yellow/gold, we have wealth-related stats:

Gold: 10

Rice: 10

Debt: 0

Towns: 1

 

These are straightforward, although the "towns" stat is misleading. We don't care about the number of towns; we care how the town's commercial value, and that stat isn't shown on this screen.

 

In cyan, province stats - I'm taking these from the 1986 edition rather than Google's translation of the 1983:

Productivity: 40

Flood control: 48

Peasant loyalty: 62

Peasant wealth: 49 

 

All of these stats contribute to how much rice you harvest. Raising any of them is expensive!

 

Lastly, red numbers are military stats:

Army size: 10

Army loyalty: 52

Training: 56

Arms: 100

 

We are small, but well armed.

 

Each year lasts four rounds corresponding to the seasons, but autumn is the most important. Taxes are collected, rations and pay are given to your soldiers, debts are collected, and things generally get reset. You have fifteen commands, most of which dedicate the season to the action:

1. Move - Transfer soldiers and/or yourself to a neighboring fiefdom.
2. Attack - Invade a neighboring province.
3. Tax - Change the tax rate. This affects rice harvest, not cash collections, and also affects peasant loyalty and wealth.
4. Send - Transport gold or rice to a neighboring fiefdom.
5. Dam - Spend gold to increase the province's flood control level.
6. Pact - Spend 10 gold to ask another Daimyo not to attack you.
7. Cultivate - Spend gold to increase the province's productivity.
8. Hire soldiers - Spend gold to increase your army size.
9. Trade - Not always available, but if the merchant is in town, you can purchase/sell rice, buy arms, or borrow gold.
10. Hire ninjas - Spend gold to destabilize another province, lowering their peasant and soldier morale and loyalty.
11. Train - Costs nothing, increases soldier training.
12. Status - View the stats of any province/daimyo. Does not cost you the turn.
13. Develop town - Spend gold to increase the town value, which determines annual cash collections.
14. Give - Offer gold or rice to your soldiers or peasants, increasing their loyalty/wealth.
15. Pass. Why do this when you can train? 

So, right away we have a problem. The army eats a lot of rice. The land does not grow a lot of rice. Improving the land costs a lot of gold. We don't have a lot of gold. We have two turns until tax season - I use them to improve the town value and land productivity, 50/50.

Autumn 1560

Tax time, and the soldiers have eaten my entire rice reserve. The harvest only yielded 3 koku - not nearly enough to feed them next year! I train and wait for rice prices, currently at 3.6/koku to drop a bit, but they do not, and I spend my tax collections on cultivation.

Autumn 1561 - invaded!

I'm all out of food, some of the troops deserted, and Tokugawa attacks with an army nearly three times larger than my own.

Holy moly. Look at that kid's stats!

Instant game over.

 

Attempt #2: Difficulty 4

Never mind my stats, let's look at Tokugawa's.

 

He's down about 10 points across the board compared to the last run, but still beats me soundly in every category, and I'm still in big trouble if he gains soldiers while I lose them, which is what I can expect. And my land stats are a bit worse than before!

This time I put all of my money into the town, and am immediately hit by a typhoon that brings my rice production down to a pathetic 9 points. In the fall, the soldiers eat all the rice again, and the peasants produce none at all, but hey, I collected more taxes! Eight gold instead of seven. And rice is actually cheap, so I buy as much as I can afford; 4 koku.

Experience has taught me to never borrow. The interest is absolutely insane, and is collected on the next tax season. A rate of 1.2 means that for each coin borrowed, you're paying 2.2 in the fall, and this is low! Your income will be nullified next year and you'll just be broke again. Also, you can only do one merchant transaction per turn, and he might not even be around next turn to sell you anything.

I'm left with one coin which I give to the peasants, but this doesn't help. The next tax season brings no harvest, and half my soldiers desert, but gold income is 27, so I buy some surprisingly cheap rice considering the region just had a typhoon. And Tokugawa attacks before I can hire more soldiers.

Yeah... this ain't good. His army is twice as big as mine, and all of his stats are way higher. I already know this battle is lost, but let me explain what's going on.

My units are white, his are yellow. Unit ranks are the numbers on the right of the hex, with #1 representing the daimyo himself, and unit strength is the number on the bottom. Nobunaga is the white #1 hex in the northwest inside a castle hex, surrounded by three allies and two enemies. Unfortunately, the enemies' unit strengths are twice what mine are.

Nobunaga hides within the castle's defensive bonus, his men attack to absolutely no avail, and by turn 2 the enemy breaches the castle walls. On turn 4 they kill me.

 

Attempt #3: Difficulty 3

I'm attacked before I even get a chance to do anything, but this time it's Saito. And they only slightly outnumber me. Unfortunately, their stats are better, and "Yoshi" is an unstoppable 30-point doom stack. I can handle the minions okay, but attacking him would be foolish - so I try to delay.

My tactic of blocking the sole entry point does indeed delay, but not long enough.

Game over.

 

To be continued!

Game 469: Battle of Kawanakajima

Wargaming Scribe did this one before me - see his review and AAR too.

Here's a personal fact - Sid Meier's Civilization is one of my all-time favorite computer games, but the version I played first and by far the most was Koei's SNES port. You see, this was in the days when DOS compatibility was sketchy, but DOSBox didn't exist yet, and console emulation was often the more reliable way of playing games of the era.

Apart from that, I was aware of Koei as a developer, as they churned out a staggering large number of SNES and PS1 strategy titles, but apart from Civ I haven't played a single one of them. They struck me at the time as slow and boring, and even now the Koei brand seems remarkably niche compared to how prolific they were, and thanks to Mobygames I can better appreciate that all of those console games I dismissed in the 90's were localized ports from their true habitat; Japanese personal computers.

It's no surprise that their domestic output is even larger than their export catalog; from 1990 to 1999 they released over 100 games, and nearly half of them never left Asia.

I'm obviously not going to play all of them, but 1985 was the year of their first true whale; Romance of the Three Kingdoms, originally released for the PC-88 and later localized and ported to several platforms including NES, Amiga, and PC.

Before that, though, I will be playing their earliest known game, which translates as "Battle of Kawanakajima" and was never officially localized despite a recent re-release on Steam.

1845 triptych by Hiroshige, sourced by Takahashi Sangyo Co.

 

The battles of Kawanakajima were clashes between the Takeda and Uesugi clans, and the fourth in the autumn of 1561 was one of the bloodiest of the Sengoku period. Historically, these were indecisive, with neither side making gains, but became legendary and brought prestige to Takeda leader Shingen, who became one of Japan's most feared warlords and the biggest thorn in Nobunaga's side until his untimely death in 1573, and with it the decline and fall of the Takeda clan.

PC-8001 version

 

Originally written for a Sharp MZ-80C, this version is likely lost, but two images are floating in the Neo Kobe archives; a PC-8001 tape dump and a PC-8801 disk dump. The Steam re-release, which includes a PC-8801 styled "original" mode is not entirely authentic; crucially, it eliminates one of the game's most obnoxious mechanics, which you will read about (or already know about if you read Scribe's AAR already). Scribe did not suffer through that. I will, but at least I'll be able to play in English thanks to a translation by RPG Codex member Helly, provided to me by Scribe.

Helly's PC-8801 version.

Uesugi is somewhere out there, preparing to attack our position. This is a pretty good defensive position already, but Shingen has grander plans - destroy Uesugi first! Legend has it that Uesugi Kenshin personally lead a charge into Takeda's command post and dueled with Shingen himself before withdrawing, but that won't happen here; both warlords are confined to their immobile castles and protected by similarly immobile rearguards. We'll have to find his and murder him before he knows he's lost!

Crucially, the main visual presents a zoomed-in view of the battlefield; a 400x400 window of a 2000x2000 playfield centered on Takeda Shingen's position. I'm going to call these unnamed units of distance "Chō" (about 360 feet, or 110m) because that feels right. Men can march 200 Chō in a turn, horses 500.

It's really more like this.

 

The other crucial thing, and this is where it gets really annoying, is that the windowed view does not update when your units move! This is a discrete action that a unit spends its turn performing, and causes the view to recenter on the unit, showing any nearby units including enemies. Meaning that a unit can move or report its position, but not both! You look around, you wasted your unit's turn.

19th infantry is so dead.

Even stupider, attacking reveals the location of each enemy unit in range anyway, just not in a graphical manner. You'd never want to use it when an enemy is in combat range.

So I'm going to be relying a lot on Excel to keep track of where everyone is.

I need to know where Kenshin is, and I have just enough units to get a recon on the entire northern half of the battlefield with two reserves to spare, though it will take a few turns to get them into position. Units are moved freeform with a θ/Δs notation, and Excel proves useful in calculating these precisely.

Shingen's view on turn 2. Two gunner units are kept close.

  

In the middle of turn 2, some of my troops reported being attacked.

 

No good visual, but the 10th spearman, who I had moved 200 Chō northwest of his starting position, is under attack, so I rally the other spearmen and gunners to his position while everyone else keeps scouting forward. The 17th infantry also reports running into enemies, so I send the two closest infantry units to lend support.

Turn 2 overview

On turn 3, the horses keep scouting, and the spearmen in the southern conflict take a severe beating before I get the chance to counterattack, and see who is actually there.

Eight companies! Ignore the graphical view; it's completely stale and not centered on the action anyway.

 

The turn isn't great. I lose all three infantry in the northern clash, all three spearmen in the southern, and one of the gun companies is nearly destroyed.

Turn 4 isn't great either. Both gun companies are destroyed, and Shingen's guards are fired on from the northwest. But my horsemen have arrived at the north end of the map!

 

As turn 5 begins, and Shingen starts shooting blindly at the horsemen camped outside, I get a curious alert - horse company #8 is being attacked by enemy unit #1! This means I found him - at the north end of the map, which shouldn't have been a surprise at all.

Shingens' guards concentrate their fire on the attackers, destroying one horse company and weakening a gun company, while Kenshin's guards return fire on horse company #8, destroying it.

 

Turn 6 starts. That's... a lot of targets.

Dang.

 

New tactic. Horses stay put, and everyone else moves to Shingen's northwest guard position. We'll wait a few turns, and then my mobile units are to converge 500 Chō south of where I think Kenshin is, and move in for the kill all at once.

Turn 2 start from Shingen's POV

Uesugi horsemen arrive ahead of the main. We waste them easily.

 

They're here!

On turn 6, my tightly clustered troops inflict heavy damage on the Uesugi units who stepped into range on turn 5, and the survivors who didn't step quite as close (which is why they survived) have difficulty hitting me with their return fire. Two of their infantry companies are destroyed by my guards, a third by the horsemen, and as more of them step closer throughout the turn, we easily take out a spearman and a fourth infantry. All they manage in response are some grazing shots on one of my infantry... and Shingen. I'm sure he'll be fine.

Turn 7

Turn 7 is less exciting. A few new Uesugi units step into range but most continue attacking from their combat ineffective ranges, and few of them are hit by us. We only manage to destroy two more infantry unit, and I expect they have seven units left, plus their guards.

On turn 8, I break the standoff and rush them, and this costs me a horseman and a bowman company.

Turn 9

I don't have a lot of time left. The horses and spearmen stay and fight, taking out three of the four units on Shingen's northwest flank; a gunner, a bowman, and another infantry. Everyone else moves due north, and suffer a few potshots en route.

Turn 10

The guards ineffectively shoot at the barely-in-range infantry units, who ineffectively shoot back, but my horsemen chop up one last infantry unit on the northwest flank. Now there's just the four units on the north.

On turn 11, I move my horsemen and spearmen right into the thick of them - this gets one nearly killed and another completely killed, but I still have three healthy units in the middle and ready to cause mayhem. My bowmen, two gunmen, and seven infantry units keep pressing north.

Turn 12

The survivors of the last jump inflict three heavy blows on the north flank, but they finish off my wounded horse company, leaving one horseman and two spearmen.

On turn 13, I have the horsemen disengage to catch up with the company moving north, who are now halfway to Uesugi Kenshin, leaving the spearmen behind to fight four companies, three of them heavily wounded.

Turn 16

Uesugi is reduced to one heavily wounded gun company at my gate, and his guards. My horsemen have caught up, and in one turn we will rally at his gate.

Turn 16 from the horsemens' POV

 

On turn 17, forces at my gate are eliminated, and my forces are stacked up 230 Chō south of Uesugi Kenshin. The southmost guard lands a lucky shot on one of my gunners, nearly killing it. We all move forward.

The guards let loose on turn 18 and kill two infantry, nearly kill a third, and finish off the gunner. But this will not save Kenshin. He dies today.

Again, ignore the stale graphical view. We're all within bashing distance of Kenshin.

 

GAB rating: Below average. I don't hate this game, and I admire it a little bit more than Nihom Falcom's inaugural Galactic Wars for being somewhat original, but this is primitive and shallow. Kawanakajima might as well be one-dimensional for how irrelevant the gameplay map turned out to be - during my second attempt where I had some inkling of what I was doing, I barely noticed the lack of a useful graphical overview at all.

But this was just an appetizer before the grand strategy of Nobunaga's Ambition, which I'll have to attempt in Japanese as it was never translated by anyone. Wish me luck!