Shogun 2 - Not so fast my friend

So I sat down last night to play some Shogun. After doing a little play over the last couple of nights I was thinking that I had figured out the basics and knew what I should have done in my first game. That being said it was a good chance to take my learned knowledge and apply it to a restart.

This time knowing that I was going to need revenue early on I decided that I'd jump at setting up the trade routes by pushing my harbor and not putting as much into my military. In the first game I pretty much ran over all my enemies and the clan directly to my North was my buddy so I felt like I was in a good position to work on some better balance. After a turn or two of improvements and some recruitment, I launched my attack on my neighbor and like in game 1 ran them over. BOOM! I'm sitting at 3 provinces and I've got a nice trade working, I'm doing great!

And then all hell broke loose. Apparently the guy that was my buddy in game 1 didn't really like me this time around and he declared war on me. And then the other guy to the North of him declared war on me, by attacking my trade routes. There I was two against one and my armies spread out over a very large distance. I had to hold off attacks on my Northern boarder, but at the same time the Red guys (I don't know all their names) attacked and took over my home province, in the process killing off my heir. I was able to take the province back on the next turn but the damage had been done. Then in a counter offense my leader was caught behind enemy lines where I fought a terrible battle that crushed half of my units, eventually killing off my leader and losing the province in the process. It was so bad that I didn't have an heir, the leaders wife had to take over until one of the sons was of age to take over the clans rule.

So there it is, I got my butt totally handed to me in this game where I thought that I had some idea that I knew what I was doing, apparently not. In game 1 I was Mr. military, in game 2 I was Mr. economy. Military works much better. I think next time I'll just raise a lot of troops and kick more ass. It's nice to see the game require balance but it's still much more slanted towards military conquest with economy the supplemental element that you need to mix in.