Nobunaga—stouthearted, audacious, and autocratic—is quick to seize on any promising new invention.

He is the first of the daimyo to organize units equipped with muskets.

He has also brought under his control the agricultural production of the fertile Owari plain, as well as the rising merchant class of the city of Nagoya in the center of the plain.

Feeling that he has secured his rear flank, he moves his base of operations north to the city of Gifu.

With an economic base thus assured, he plans to advance on the Kinki district, the prosperous area surrounding Kyoto, long the center of Japanese power.

Recognized as a military genius, he is in 1567 invited by Yoshiaki, the brother of the murdered shogun, to the capital city of Kyoto to restore order, broken by bloody feuds over the succession of the shogun.

The killers of Yoshiteru, the thirteenth Ashikaga shogun, have already set up a puppet shogun, Ashikaga Yoshihide.

Nobunaga agrees to Yoshiaki's request, seizing the opportunity to enter Kyoto.