The first steps
Otomo is not a sizeable clan in western Japan - a thing we intend to change. Its leader is uninspirational in the sense that he has no strong points. He even has a weakness - namely, his martial attribute, which is important for warfare. However, he is also old and his son - Otomo Doronosuke - will surely make a better leader.
Chikashige's demesne is small and consists only of two kuni. He has several vassals and one of them even has more kuni than him, which will prove to have immense consequences in the near future.
Diplomacy is an important aspect of the game. If you make wrong decisions early on, you will quite surely be wiped out by one or several of your neighbours. The nature of the game demands expansion, but it must be done in an intelligent way.
My biggest and most powerful neighbour is Clan Ouchi. They are currently busy with their wars, so they probably won't bother us ATM, but I want to make sure that we are on friendly terms so that they will be less inclined to eat me as soon as they conclude their conflicts. Therefore, a first marriage is arranged. Otomo Hisa will be married with Sue Hiromori as soon as he will reach adulthood. Sue is the Kokujin of Kumage.
My western neighbour is the Shoni Clan and I do not plan to wage war with them ATM. Therefore, I'm more than happy to exchange hostages with Shoni Noriyori in order to make any belligerent actions less likely to happen. At the same time, I order my Master of the Guard to sow dissent in Takaku, which is controlled by one of the Noriyori's vassals - Saigo Hisayoshi. Their relations are already tense and I intend to keep them that way. IMO Sow Dissent often takes too long to produce any effects, which makes it of limited usefulness, so one of the changes I made was to decrease the base mean_time_to_happen from 120 to 90. It still won't be very quick, but this change should make it a bit more tempting to use.
The other Masters are improving my villages and castles, which is a standard procedure in the early game. I intend to focus on the castles especially, as it's one of the few ways to stop large armies of the bigger clans.
One of the random events fired and I had to spend some gold in order to prevent a big delay of the construction of my castle. It put me into negative treasury. Since I had a deficit, my provinces were more likely to rebel. However, at the same time my inn was constructed, which soon put me into positive income again. I need to increase my treasury if I want to do some early expansion.
Meanwhile, I continue my diplomatic efforts with the Ouchi. I want to create a dynasty composed of Ouchi and Otomo members in order to keep the relations high and maybe even gain some land by peaceful means. Otomo Masachika will marry Ouchi Furni as soon as she comes into adulthood. Ouchi Masahiro is a young leader, so I will likely see him for quite a while. Some gifts probably will be in order. Ouchi is THE clan in the region, after all.
I plan to attack the Kikuchi soon, so I order my Master of Ceremonies to squeeze more income from Oita. I chose Oita because I already built an inn there, so it has a higher base income than Hayami. Here you can see another little change I made - Collect Taxes give +60% tax income instead of +50%, but at a cost of 4 revolt risk instead of 3 revolt risk. Nothing drastic, but I just wanted to make it a bit more risky without using Restore Order option (it's a nice little synergy) and at the same time a bit more rewarding. As you can see, I use Restore Order, too, so that revolt risk is a non-issue.
Preparations for the war continue. I already mobilised most of my levies and trained my retinue. I have 39 gold in the treasury and a monthly deficit of -0.02, which is a safe position. I also have 46 honour, while DOWing the Kikuchi will cost me 16, so I will still be far from the dangerous <= 25 honour threshold.
Moreover, Ouchi wants to keep it safe by exchanging hostages frequently. I concur. It's best for both of us, but especially for me. In fact, his timing couldn't be better!
War with Clan Kikuchi
The war is declared. As you can see, the region is rather mountainous and heavily forested, but coastal provinces consist mostly of plans, which make them poor for defence. Both armies are quite evenly matched, but the Kikuchi are more scattered. The AI will most likely play the cat and mouse game with me by avoiding early battles, merging their armies and attacking provinces which I cannot defend. I intend to outmanoeuvre my opponent and destroy the bulk of his force quickly while advancing near the coast, so that I both retain the initiative and keep expanding.
As expected, the Kikuchi merged their armies in Takuma and attacked the undefended Hita. I faked an attack on Hita and they escaped back to Takuma, where they combined their armies to create an even larger force.
Now comes the important part. They attacked Aso, which was besieged by a small army of 1000+ men. I knew that I couldn't win this battle, but at least they couldn't escape while my troops were nearing their positions. As you can see on the second screenshot, Shoni don't want to bother with us ATM, so he offered to exchange hostages with me. Obviously, I agreed.
I attacked the enemy and won, but it was a costly and evenly matched battle. However, the enemy has no almost reserves, so I moved my army to Takuma, where my vassals were already besieging the enemy castle. We will be safe together.
I conquered Takuma, reorganised and attacked the enemy in Mashiki while still besieging Tamana. The enemy was escaping to isolated Ashikita, which was absolutely perfect, because he will suffer from crossing penalty if he dares to attack me in Mashiki. Since I controlled the north, too, at this point I was certain of my success. The Kikuchi had only two provinces that were safe and they were far from each other. I could deal with all their potential reinforcements easily.
I started thinking about my post-war situation and invested in Court Rank. Not for the current leader, because he is old, but for his son. On this screenshot you can see one of the changes I made - the benefits of the ranks are halved. I did it for balance purposes, because they were too powerful IMO.
The uncertain future
Just when I was celebrating my nice early successes and was thinking about my future actions, something bad happened. Kamachi Yoshihisa was bold enough to break free from my clan. I lost half of my provinces and was still at war with the Kikuchi. So, here comes the big decision. Should I allow the Kamachi to leave peacefully, continue my conquest of the Kikuchi and decide what to do with the Kamachi later? Or maybe should I attack the Kamachi now, when I still outnumber them, but risk the attacks of the Kikuchi?
What will it be?