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What difficulty are you playing at? First thing you need to know is TWS2 and especially FoTS are very hard games. I've got over 300+ logged hours in FoTS and many more unlogged hours and only recently won a campaign on VH/VH difficulty. I've got multiple campaign victories under my belt with all the clans though but I can tell you that the game requires a lot of patience and practice to get good at.
FoTS is particularly brutal as if any rival clans, whether they are Shogunate or Imperial sense weakness, they will pounce. The biggest problem with Nagaoka if my memory serves me correctly is they are in the middle of the map and have a lot of rival clans that can attack you and they will attack you.
A successful strategy I've used in the past is to take the island off the coast with the gold mine (Sado Province) and make it my new defacto capital. Ignore fighting on the mainland as you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed by many adversaries. I then plan to move an Army to the very Northern tip of Japan and take the entire island of Sapporo from Matsumae which contains Coal and Iron. Very important for Nagaoka as they get a -15% cost bonus for using modern units so you combine that with reduced artillery costs you are looking at -30% artillery costs once you get a Tier 3 Iron Plant on that province which will be very helpful to you as Artillery is decisive.
Once you've done that, you have a source of gold which will give you ample money, coal for cheap ships and iron for cheap artillery. You've also got a solid base to begin turtling and building up your economy to slowly begin working your way back down the mainland. Try to get some Alliances with Aizu and/or Sendai and keep very good relations with them. Split your Navy in to two fleets to protect your territory as you begin expanding.
Anyways, at the beginning of the game, you will be attacked a lot and expect to fight a lot of defensive battles. Levys and a few spearmen garrisoned in a city can be very helpful and can hold off waves of attackers. Don't just blindly attack and expect to steam roll in this game, the computer will make you pay dearly doing that. Come up with a strategy and stick to it. Don't be afraid to be unconventional either. A good way to capture territories without triggering wars is with Ishin Ishii/Shinsengumi agents who can cause rebellions in rival clan territory. Make one of those agents and focus its skill tree at inciting rebellions, use to incite a rebellion in an enemy province and then take the rebelled province with your Army. You receive no diplomacy penalty that way and don't start a war. It also works great on Allies.
Good luck!
In FOTS I find that the best way to be defensive is to build a cadet school in my home province right at the beginning of the game, I'll upgrade my home city then build the cadet school. This lets me easily pump out several line infantry units each turn, which are the best units in the game for their cost. Also I find that the AI seems to put a priority on trying to invade and conquer your home province, so having local line infantry there is a good defense.
Once you start expanding and taking more land, start thinking about which of your provinces are the most vulnerable. Which ones border hostile clans, and which ones would be easiest to be conquered. Try and position your armies so that they can cover more than one castle within one movement turn.
To defend any castle all you really need are about 5 or 6 line infantry units. Put them on your walls and they will decimate anything the AI throws at them. Usually the AI will send levy infantry and samurai units which die easily to line infantry. Later in the game the AI will start using cannons which are quite deadly against castle defenders but by this point you'll have so many strong armies that you'll be the one attacking instead of defending anyway.
Also in general try to get to modernization level 3 ASAP so you can get kneel fire, which turns all line infantry into machine gun units. The AI doesn't use kneel fire 99% of the time so a small army of line infantry (say 10 units) can easily destroy a full stack of anything the AI throws at you, assuming you know your way around the battle map.
As for specific tips for Nagaoka, I'd say try to expand west to Kaga to get the blacksmith which gives your units higher accuracy. Owari to the south also has a blacksmith, and you can blockade its port by putting several ships at the southern entrance to its bay, that way annoying enemy ships won't keep blowing up your ports every turn. Matsumae are probably the single worst clan at backstabbing, they always seem to flip to imperial and attack me, so I like to send a shinsegumi up to Hokkaido and cause rebellions in all their lands. Sendai, Aizu and Jozai all will often flip too, but not as often. It seems like the game will always make at least one major clan on your side flip and declare war on you, just to inject some extra challenge. But I've found lately that if I avoid building a foreign trade port, this doesn't seem to happen. I think the foreign trade port makes you look too rich and powerful and the game starts to try to take you down.
Personally I would avoid trying to fight the AI with a navy most of the time, it's like whack-a-mole and you'll spend more money repairing ships and buildings than you'll lose on destroyed buildings. I've covered this in other threads.
To counter this, I will keep 5 line infantry in all of my provinces that are bordering other clans. Having that cadet school in my home province helps me defend that province and lets me pump out units. You won't have much money but at least you'll be safe, just keep building financial districts and craft workshops everywhere you can for more money.
If you do this the AI will see your strength and be less likely to attack you, and if they do you can wait for them to attack your castle and you will easily decimate their full stack of crummy levy infantry with your uber line infantry. If they have no more military units you will probably be able to ask them for peace. If they only have one province you can ask them to become your vassal. They'll probably get wiped out by another clan but at least they are dead and you don't have to worry about them attacking again.
Also yes use shinsegumi a lot to cause rebellions in other clans' provinces. Use them to expand without declaring war, and to weaken other clans.
I disagree about Navies. Mastery of Naval Warfare is critical in this game. If you are able to dominate the seas, you will have a strong economy which will greatly help you. My Tosa victory on VH/VH was solely down to me focusing solely on Naval Warfare.
Key for Navies is to get explosive shells early and build only Kaiten Class. They pack almost as much punch as a Kasuga but are way cheaper. I don't even bother building Kaiyo Marus until later in the game. A fleet of 4 or 5 Kaiten Class with explosive shells that is properly managed can deal with any thing the AI throws at you. It is even better once you get Kotetsu Ironclads which have an Armstrong gun that is basically a gigantic long range sniper rifle that can one shot kill ships.
A good tactic is to move your Kotetsu forward just enough to begin firing at the enemy fleet and then set it to full astern propulsion. The enemy fleet will begin to chase the Kotetsu who will continue to fire while driving backwards. Drive the Kotetsu through a line in your fleet battle line and when the enemy ships are in range having chased your Kotetsu, they will rapidly rout/sink under very serious cannon fire.
The AI mostly only builds wooden ships so if you use explosive shells, you will quickly kill their fleets. It's even better once you have Explosive-Armour Piercing Shells and Iron plated ships.
During my Tosa Campaign I had a small army but built three fleets and the AI kept sending Ironclads at me. You can only build a maximum of 6 Kotetsu in SP but I managed to capture an additional 5 Kotetsu in my Tosa campaign and ended up with 11 Kotetsu and 2 Roanoke Ironclads by end game. As you can imagine, most battles were quickly ended via massive amounts of Naval gunfire.
Like I said above, Nagaoka is in a really bad position and can basically be attacked from all sides. Tough clan to play as.
Well that's just your opinion, just as I have mine. It's mainly down to the way auto-resolve for naval battles is completely messed up. I can use a single foreign ironclad with HE shot and destroy an entire AI navy of kaiyo maru without taking any damage, yet if I auto-resolve this I will lose every time. Naval battles take way too long to deal with playing all of them out. Life's too short to waste on boring FOTS naval battles. Even if you destroy all the AI ships they just pump out more and go around your ships and blow up your ports and coastal buildings with salvos from tiny garbage ships. Once I started ignoring the AI's naval spam I started enjoying the game a lot more.
Usually I find Tsu, Obama and Jozai to be the toughest clans. Tsu and Obama are hard because they're right next to a bunch of hostile clans. Jozai always seems to have all the other shogunate clans flip to imperial and invade it. But in my last Jozai playthrough I avoided the foreign trade port, and nobody ever flipped on me, and I brought a massive coalition into realm divide which made finishing the domination campaign very easy. Did the same thing with Sendai and it's turning out the same. I'd be curious if other people find that avoiding a foreign trade port reduces faction treachery, or if it's just a fluke.
I'm also doing this thing lately where I don't focus on pumping out full stacks of max accuracy armstrong guns and SIR infantry, and instead I use small armies of line infantry. Kneel fire destroys everything so I never lose. My armies are much more mobile and I can defend castles much more easily because I have several small armies instead of two or three big armies. Plus I save a ton of money on upkeep.
I don't think it is a fluke per se, I have never heard of the mechanic but I can imagine it might trigger some sort of AI calculation that you are too strong and need to be attacked.
As for Navies, absolutely you are certainly entitled to your opinion about them and they can definitely be very tedious. A good strategy to deal with this is to build some gun boats and use them to blockade ports and destroy them. I usually park my fleets at choke points so no ships can pass through and send raiding parties of gunboats to enemy ports and keep them damaged to prevent the enemy from building ships. You are right though, Autoresolve with Navies is broken.
Jozai is a lot of fun. The Yugekitai unit is a very fun until to play with. I like using them and Kisho Ninja to flank enemies from hidden positions on the map. You set them up away from your main body of troops, sometimes even deploying them behind the enemy and when the enemy engages your main line, bring them to bear and the enemy army will rout very quickly. Also very handy for sieges. Jozai is also great for using railroads, once you get railroads up and running, and can move troops all along the rail line, the campaign becomes a steam roll.
I am going to try and do a VH/VH Republic Campaign next. I am probably going to pick Satsuma as Republic is pretty hard and I have never done it before.
I laughed