- Honor is very important. Together with land holdings, it determines how many samurai you recruit per turn. Even with an abundance of land, low honor can slow recruitment to a crawl. You can also get invaded if you have too few samurai compared to the amount of land you own, in the early phases.

This can also make for a great strategy. If you really need to rid an enemy (or ally) of a lot of troops, dishonor them, then kill their tax collector as much as you like. They'll recover slowly.

The last thing I can think of is high honor makes marrying into rival families easier, though that's of limited importance.

Considering that, I don't think it's important to keep honor high at all times. For me, sometimes it's very low, sometimes very high. It all depends on how convenient it is for me at the time.

- You've never once had a rebellion? What difficulty are you playing? Have you got to the point where all the land is taken, and there are less than 4 rivals in play? Rebellions really start to ramp up at that point.

- Attacking first is better than defending, especially considering you don't instantly lose the game if you fail an attack. Just watch out for nearby rivals that will gladly steal your land in your newly weakened state, especially Aggressive ones.

On that note, keep an eye out for anyone who goes on military conquest, successful or not. For the next turn, they will have reduced troops. It might make for a good opportunity.

After a bunch more games, the following options just don't ever seem worth it:

- Attacking your daimyo with your army. You still have to storm the castle and duel him exactly like an assassination mission, so why not just do an assassination mission?

- Practicing swordsmanship. I have noticed no difference in duels between swordsman ship level two and six.

-Dishonor/assassination night missions. Just meet with the lord and insult him. You either lower his honor or get to kill him in a duel, all with no risk of punishment from your lord.

-Inciting rebellions. I have noticed no visible effect from these. Maybe they reduce a rival's troop total? Not much point in that since openly attacking rival's isn't worth it.

* I don't like attacking the daimyo, but it does make you the new daimyo instantly, without contest. It batters your army too much for the 3rd phase, though.

* I would like to know exactly how swordsmanship works. I want to guess it modifies percentages, like chance to block, maybe.

* Strangely enough, sometimes the new heir is BETTER than their father. Or just as good. It's not a bad way to go, it's just a crapshoot. Also the heir will hate you, if you kill in open court.
When you do a dishonor mission, you at least have a decent chance of not meeting the rival.
Both methods are good.

* Yep, inciting rebellion lowers troops. The 3rd phase is all about attacking your rivals, so it can be useful there. If you're the weakest daimyo, it can enable you to attack, at all. Or sometimes a revolting daimyo shows up with more troops than you. If you do a dishonor/rebellion combo, you can take down a significantly tougher enemy.

Random thing:

There is a rival province to every province, and in it is a leader who attacks your peers and lord periodically. If you venture out with your army, go to his place, attack, and win, you get land, possibly lots of it.

If you go out in disguise and assassinate him, his heir takes over, with a new army and fresh lands to capture.

My strategy mostly using honor duels on everyone until I am #1.. Kidnapping and assassinations are cool at first but get tiresome after a while

I found an interesting way to perpetuate the game at this stage. When you control almost all the provinces and idle around a few turns, these rebellions do happen and can be rather serious. Half the territories will break off and the lord will be adjusted to correspond with the huge amount of territory: i.e., he'll be a mutant monster with maxed-out stats and a full strength army (12,800).

Waiting and doing a defense action against this army will probably be pretty disastrous, but you can opt to attack and regain all the provinces at once.

Alternatively, you can go black ops and assassinate the lord in his three-level castle. If he has no heir, this dissipates the alliance, and most of Japan goes back to neutral provinces. Smaller daimyos start popping up again.

Interesting! I'll have to try that out. Nice to have options. Those maxed armies are a real pain to deal with. My method has been attacking their tax collector repeatedly to get their army down. That works ok, but is buffered by the fact that the daimyo can just raise army on their turn.