Trust me, when you're on max difficulty, and you've built a really powerful player character for yourself with high stats, weapon proficiencies and the best gear and you're just carving swathes through literally dozens of enemies in a single siege battle - the music becomes seemingly more and more appropriate
Samurai death metal ftw.
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Speaking of siege battles... I managed to successfully "declare war" on the Date.
It was actually rather easy. I didn't even have to declare war at all. All I did was tax one caravan, then after that, because my disposition with the Date was at -1, I was immediately able to rally all my lords and lay siege to Yonezawa.... without declaring war beforehand.
It was amazing. It took the Date completely by surprise, and my 700 strong army was occupying Yonezawa literally only 4 hours (Sessai has 8 engineering) after I initially laid siege to it.
While I still had momentum on my side, I quickly found the Date marshal, Lord Katakura, and I intercepted and captured him.
The Date couldn't organise any kind of effective response to me after that. Their warbands scattered away from us, and I just looped straight to Sendai - and took that town on the first push too.
I also had another element of luck on my side - the Date were already in a brutal war with the Hojo, and I saw two Hojo lords roaming around trying to burn Date villages. They severely weakened the Date before I struck - I launched my attack as soon as I saw theirs, basically.
Here's a look at the political map as of now - I'm red, the Date are grey, the Hojo are brown and the Satake are green;
In the first image you can see I've taken Sendai and Yonezawa, but Ichinoseki Castle still belongs to the Date. This is good and bad in two ways:
1: I've effectively split the Date forces into two groups - the people north of Yonezawa and Sendai, and the people south
2: THERE ARE ANGRY WARBANDS BEHIND MY F***ING LINES THAT WANT TO MURDER EVERYTHING.
*ahem*
Right now, the Date are also trying to take back Yonezawa. My next course of action should be to crush that attack.
Say hello to my army!
Lord Oba is the one next to me with 215 troops. I don't know WHY he's so awesome, but he looks like one of those epic marshal-grade lords that you're supposed to give all of your fiefs to because they have amazingly high renown and good stats, and lead around several hundred men by themselves.
We're all a bit beaten up right now (besieging towns might SOUND easy, but they DO have massive garrisons after all), so after we beat back the Date and go take Ichinoseki Castle I think I'll call off the campaign and call it a day!