hardest faction to fight against

[Seasick]

In your various campaigns, which faction gave you the most trouble in conquering Japan?

[wealthyempire]

S2 it's the Ikko Ikki. If they survive the early game then they just won't die despite being at war with everyone around them. Then I end up having to deal with them personally. Even then their fairly tenacious.

[grumhie]

yeah, the ikko ikki are probaly the most annoying faction to take out. problem is they start out with very good provinces so you can often get super accuary bow ronin/monks stacks marching at you that inflict heavy casualties. also, their rich provinces give them a good aerly income so they grow fast initially and take more rich provinces. i've seen some campaigns with ikko ikki shogunate's and a 30 province ikko empire to take out and convert. the shoni suck as well as they often turn cristian and start out very rich and are a pain in the *ss to take out late game because they often have trade nodes, about 4 stacks, and you need to invade them by sea. i useally wait until the end before i take them out, block their ports, destroy their navy and then go on a looting spree across the island until they cave in to the pressure.

[GuardianOfBlind]

Whichever grows to 14+ provinces in given campaign

[Tyer032392]

In Shogun 2, I have noticed that the Ikko Ikki, Oda, Usuegi, and Shoni clans develop pretty fast and turn into a pain to defeat. Especially the Ikko Ikki as their Ronin are superb and they have great accuracy versus Bow Samurai. The only faction that I can think of that can give the Ikko Ikki a hard time is the Chosokabe as their archers are also pretty good. Though now that I have Darthmod installed, many other clans are also begging to expand as much as the major clans are. For example, when I was playing as the Date, the Homna clan was making landfall in my enemy lands and were going to siege their castle; quick thinking by using my Ninja prevented the Homna from taking that settlement. Oddly enough too is that the Homna entered my battle with the Mogumi clan, and just waited in the pre-deployment phase of the battle-map and did not even come into the battle, the only thing they did was kill some routing troops that I had chased to them. Without a doubt that was the oddest thing that I have ever seen, and wished I had made a video of it to show my friends of how useless the AI ally is when you are winning. lol

[Sacred Band]

I really was surprised that nobody didn't say Takeda. In my campaigns (played about dozen times) Takeda and Hojo always ally and really kick ass in middle Japan, unless you play with clans which start around the same region. I've found that defeating Takeda at harder difficulty levels really demands some skill in diplomacy.

[Secuter]

Takaoka! sometimes Hatano. also Takeda. although the first and the last were huge I was allied to them and ended my campaign as me in between them. No other clans were left

[Colonel Mallard]

Hatekayema. I don't want a war with them, but I need their regions in the early game, and they say no to peace and come back to bite me when I least expect it. I cannot be expected to jog all the way to their next province from Iga just because I needed Settsu. Not that they typically are a significant threat, just a persistent annoyance.

[yoshisuke]

Hatekayema. I don't want a war with them, but I need their regions in the early game, and they say no to peace and come back to bite me when I least expect it. I cannot be expected to jog all the way to their next province from Iga just because I needed Settsu. Not that they typically are a significant threat, just a persistent annoyance.

Your best hope is to ask their neighbour to join the war so they also lose their other provinces..

[Skyress1000]

Takeda and Hojo, in my games they usually they end up allying and creating around a 20-30 province land mass east of Kyoto, one time they ended up fighting each other and Hojo ended up owning the whole entire area in that region.