Fall of the Samurai Clan specialization

Just of my own sanity I am writing this out, hoping to give some or get some ideas on how this all works.

Samurai 2: Four choices with separate specializations (cav, bow, yari, sword) and maybe most important four different starting places on the personal game map. I say most important because the map bonuses were slim and almost never used to my knowledge. Even though they provided 5 extra points if you uses the game clan retainer on the contest map with its transparent positioning from the personal game map. The only upgrade bonus situations I ever heard anyone raving about were bow and cavalry (for range and speed respectively), and all that kind of melted away when they added 20 more levels to the avatar ranking.

Rise of the Samurai: To my knowledge (which means absolutely nothing) this addition had no changes for the avatar map games, only adding clans to the game.

Fall of the Samurai: Literally a new game that allowed access to players of the first game, so that there would be plenty of players on the contest map. New with this was the choice of two Samurai and two Imperial starting positions on the contest maps. Again these locations were really only important to game-clan members as placing them in the same quadrant without having to complete the whole personal map to be able to work together on the same province targets. I do not think (again which means absolutely nothing) there were any further relationships to retainers or upgrade bonuses. This seems true as you can switch avatars and not affect the rest of your game.

So not sure (as you can tell) but because you can elect to have only opponents from one or the other, Imperial or Samurai, or mixed, that there are no other differences except the avatar you are using, and the starting position you elected at the beginning, which if you have fully navigated the personal map makes no difference at all.

Wow, I said all that

Final thought on which to choose; my opinion is never bring a bow to a gun fight!