Conquest Mode

same like in life....
small fish are easier to take.
But great that someone tried, marked and remembered.

For your first part, no. I believe it is theoretically possible (if not tedious) to do a "Shogun" run where you subjugate every non-ambitious clan in the game. Just beware of the case where your prestige isn't high enough so they break free of you. I wouldn't really recommend focusing on subjugation though (even though I do it) since it's easier to kill some small ones like Anegakoji and Kiso, both of whom having the misfortune of being in the middle of the map. I wouldn't rely on subordinates or allies for fighting your wars either.

For the second part, whoever deals the final blow to Akechi loses 100? relation points with all these factions (not including themselves): Hashiba, Oda, G.Oda, Shibata, Takigawa, Tokugawa. This only occurs to whoever defeats them: so if you're playing Oda and Hashiba defeats Akechi, you'll suddenly hate Hideyoshi and will be pushed towards war against him, but Katsuie will still remain your best friend. I don't think it matters that much though, given most of these large factions will probably be a thorn in your side, alliance or no alliance. Especially Hashiba, as for some reason Hideyoshi starts with a ton of prestige and they have the strength to continue growing unlike the Shogun in Battles in Owari, so more likely than not to get a hegemony victory you'll need to deal with them. I'd say don't worry about who kills Akechi and instead focus on conquering more castles and increasing your prestige, as most clans will fall in line (even Tokugawa with a few small gifts!)

Ah, I didn't explain my example scenario well enough, whoops! Essentially this acts pretty similarly to what happens when a faction defeats the Shogun, what happens to you will transfer to them. So when Hashiba kills Akechi while you're playing Oda, only Hashiba will get the relation drops and not you (you only get it with Hashiba). If you kill Akechi, then Hashiba, Oda, G.Oda, Shibata, Takigawa, and Tokugawa will drop 100 points. It's not instant war often, but it'll bring you closer to fighting.

But you do raise a good point about G.Oda, Takigawa, and Oda. Hashiba gets away with it very easily and everyone Hideyoshi angers are in his natural expansion route anyway. I believe Shibata can take the heat as well, and even Oda with some good management. But G.Oda, yeah they shouldn't kill Akechi, the pressure will probably kill you. I haven't done a run of them, and honestly Oda Nobutaka seems like a challenge in his own right even if you don't anger the other successors to Nobunaga.

I’m starting to really reconsider the idea of putting the vast majority of your generals on special units. It’s pretty obvious with teppo since every special teppo unit except one that barely exists is nowhere near good enough to warrant their price over the good ol’ Teppo Ashigaru.

But it’s rarely worth doing with the other unit types too, surprisingly. Even if the Mounted Archer is awesome and every special cavalry unit is much much better than Cavalry Brigade. At some point the difference of a general on a special unit and a regular unit is just nowhere near as significant as the boost that the retainers give you. I mean, +20% damage on EVERY unit you have is busted, and so are the upkeep and resource boosts once you’re pretty big. And I just don’t think colleges pay back quickly enough to make that investment worthwhile. So it’s probably only worthwhile if you DO have a good special unit in the early game available, and kinda in the late game because you’ll have tons of knowledge even with 5 retainers. (Though this doesn’t matter for most people).

So yeah, the last two runs have been like 90% of my guys on 3x Teppo Ashigaru/Cavalry Brigade/Archer Ashigaru. Some even were on 2 stacks. The only one I’m kinda iffy on is the regular infantry Ashigaru since its damage is just way too bad for generals imo. I did manage to use SOME infantry whenever I had a bit of knowledge and it made sense to make them though. And the ninja is very cool in the mid/late game since it’s the only (worthwhile) unit that can innately ignore interrupt and is very cheap and has surprisingly good stats. Like at lv.17 it has higher attack than the Elite Samurai for some reason. (Elite Samurai is still stronger though because of Berserker)

I guess I should maybe try to use the Naginata Cav too since it’s got a damage boost against infantry unlike the Cavalry Brigade. It’s just not feasible at all for me since mine is pretty low level and there’s just no good way to get tons of horse harnesses like with flags and arrows.

3 hours I think. And it’s more like 60-80 units past turn 22 or so since a lot of guys just had no chance of contributing anymore after they were done with their jobs. I only did it since I wanted to see how far I could push the turncount down. If I didn’t care for doing that I could have autoed on like turn 17.

My run also took me roundabout 3 hours (can't tell exactly because I did it in two sessions). I recall repeatedly checking the prestige tab - it took way too long to reach >700 points. Next time I'll try to be more aggressive using your approach of putting generals on "inferior" units. Being too low in prestige doesn't allow for effective gifting and we'll have to reach Zenith/Formidable anyways.

I have same feeling, now is the time to finish as many as possible in the 3rd round.
I ve just finished Mori, and it looked as AI went somewhere and never returned.