... didn't go as well as expected. He had just a few militia in his bordering province and I wasn't expecting much of a fight. But the province was reinforced that same turn by a lot of archers plus a bunch of other TOUGH national troops. Shinuyama have some armored longbow guys who inflicted quite a bit of damage from afar (and up close), not to mention a bunch of stealthy goblin troops armed with shortbows. Plus they had 3 big giant-type national troops which took a little while to take down, which meant more turns getting raked by arrow fire.

Some of my own archers meanwhile wandered out in front of the main battle lines trying to shoot at the armored longbowmen. Lost a few in hand-to-hand combat but it wasn't as bad as it could have been as the AI frontline troops remained 'bee-lined' on my own frontline troops. I may have to position my archers a bit further back.

The battle itself took place on the red dot on the map in the province of Northwest Valenwood. We have to regroup for a bit as we lost quite a few troops in that battle (something like 45). Our chariot group was devastated (down to 3 out of 12) although they did a LOT of damage. More troops from home are on the way.

I'm not sure how much reinforcements I'll need to take their castle. They have a Manticore pretender and I bet their home fortress has towers that shoot longbows (I better check). We did do a good amount of damage to their army last turn although I think actually we lost more troops in the battle than they did. I'd better watch the replay again before deciding what to do.