

In the unrest of the Sengoku period, mercenaries and spies for hire became active in Iga Province and the adjacent area around the village of Kōga, and it is from these areas that much of the knowledge regarding the ninja is drawn. Though shinobi proper, as specially trained spies and mercenaries, appeared in the 15th century during the Sengoku period, antecedents may have existed as early as the 12th century.

Their covert methods of waging irregular warfare were deemed dishonorable and beneath the honor of the samurai. The functions of a ninja included espionage, deception, and surprise attacks. Volume six, 1817.Ī ninja ( 忍者, Japanese pronunciation: ) or shinobi ( 忍び, ) was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. So, imo, Tokugawa are the weakest faction since you don't get to make any calls of your own and you need to provoke your lord-clan into attacking you (otherwise you lose honor and as such your diplomacy goes down) having no really useful boni.Drawing of the archetypical ninja from a series of sketches by Hokusai. Read: it is worse than the vanilla version (less ammo and same stats) but unlike the Hattori they don't get forward-deployment on their ashigarus. Like the Hattori their special unit is bugged.

Those being an increased succes chance for metsuke (+2% so nothing to write home about) and increased diplomacy (yay). Not starting as a sovereign clan and only having 2 bonuses that matter in any way. Would be useful for faster army-shipping though.Īnd now we have the Tokugawa. well they are only here because I never found their boni to be very useful. That said: The moment you get past, I guess, ~turn 10 thing should get easier especially since you should be able to flood your enemies with ashigarus if you focused on your economy. well let me say I was afraid to leave my capital. I had games where only 1 clan at a time declared war and ones were. That and the fact that your mid- and late-game armies can be absolute monsters (armorsmith + armorer say hi) and that in early game you can still use monks as long as they are shielded from arrows. However I would rule both of them out because you have a gigantic advantage when it come to research: You can ignore large parts of the war-tree. Ikkos are one the list due to 2 reasons: their ashigarus are weaker iirc and they, just like the Uesugi, specialize in monks aka the most expensive troops. The candidates are imo Ikko Ikki, Uesugi, maybe Oda + Mori and the Tokugawa I will assume vanilla for my reasoning btw.
