You don’t particularly want to be sandwiched in the middle with no access to the sea. Personally, I felt the harder task was choosing a clan that had defensible territory. The clans, of which I’m not personally familiar with, grant certain bonuses either to a certain unit such as superior katana wielding samurai or all naval units. This is, after all, still Japan and not pitting gunpowder troops on mameluke camels. Unlike recent Total War games, the return to Shogun means more homogeneity amongst all the sides. But with the map of Japan divided into sixty provinces, the developers have applied a lot of lessons from previous franchises to give us a focused campaign set during the time of the samurai. Given that Total War’s scope kept increasing since the Rome edition, Total War: Shogun 2’s revisiting of Japan might feel like a reboot of the franchise.