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***SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR, WARLORD EDITION by Fallon***
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**************************=V2.09L=*********************************
************************20th July 2003******************************
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***************Copyright (2003) (Fallon)****************************
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disclaimer read first!

This FAQ is for private use only reproduction or republication in
CDroms or unspecified websites is not allowed as this is my work
and belongs to me and I worked hard for it. If you want it on your
web site ask me @

[email protected]

Most of the fluff in this FAQ is from experimentation having the AI
do it on me , me do it on the AI , SD do it on me etc where things
have been taken or contributed by somebody else it is noted and
credited accordingly.

I also accept NO responsibility for what happens from use or lack of use
of this short FAQ so use at your own risk.Also please do not ask
stupid questions as these will be ignored .Examples are what s the key
for since its listed in the manual and the key command card , other
examples are what is the average kill ratio between this unit and that unit
on a hill on flat ground on bridges etc that sort of information would perhaps
take me the rest of my life to find out and you only live twice.

if you donot know about copy right then these are good links

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

http://www.nolo.com/lawcenter/index.cfm/catid
/804B85E3-9224-47A9-A7E6B5BD92AACD48

http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/




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#1.Introduction.
 -1.1 version history
 -1.2 System specs

#2 definitions

#3. Japanese troops
  -Infantry units
  -Cavalry units
  -Strategic units

#4.Mongolian intro

#5.The Mongolian forces:
  -Infantry units
  -Cavalry units
-5.1 Map tactics
-5.2 Combat
-5.21 Flank protection
-5.3 Gun combat
-5.31 Arquebusiers vs musketeers

#6 Misc notes - battlefield
 -6.1 Misc notes - map
 -6.2 Ninja Training
#7 Castle attacks
-attacking
-breaking the siege

#8 Bridge Tactics
- holding a bridge
- Taking a bridge / crossing

#8.1 Taking hills

#9 Clan notes

#10 Ways to win the campaign

#11 Mongol campaign
- historical campaign mode mongol battles

#12historical campaigns

#13 Daimyo personalities

#14 Christianity vs Buddhism + notes
-making Koku and keeping it

#15 advisor quotes and notes

#16 Death poems + maxims

#17 Observations

-seen bugs

#18 The chase

#19 cheats etc

#20 Misc questions

#21 Credits and notes + things to come

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#1                             INTRODUCTION

I bought this game years ago but not the warlord edition it always seemed
to lock up regularly on my windows ME system but I changed to a windows
2000 system recently and Nvida 30 something drivers which work well with
shogun ,and from winning the game on normal twice in the past few days
I am here to share what I have discovered to make your new career as
Daimyo easier and to gain the all mighty honour points.(hmm sounds
like Mechwarrior mercs but instead  of C-bill its honour and koku.This
is what I have learnt from several weeks of intense playing.I don't consider
myself the best or an expert player since I have much better things to
do like life this is just my observations and if you spot something not
said here good for you I would also note that I live in the UK and I spell
things in a slightly  different way to Americans.

honour = honor
defence = defense
tyre = tire
metre = meter
4 feet = 1 metre

Also some of my definitions are different , if you hear decimate in modern
speak most people think it means to kill most of , though I use decimate
as the roman punishment for killing 1 of 10 slaves.(Orguss 2 snuck this
in btw with the 10% survival rate implied).My definitions are usually listed
in the definitions section as in all my FAQs past and hopefully future FAQs.

I would also like to point out my system for changing FAQ versions, major
changes such as moving entire sections about are changed in primary
FAQ numbers , minor changes , various edits are denominated by the
number after the decimal point.Though I have no real hard fast rules since
this FAQ grew enormously over the past week (it began at 49kb and is
about 106kb).

#1.1 version history (this FAQ not the game)

#V1.1 completed 17/01/03 +20kb

Added to notes of various units

added some misc notes

Added some kensai data

Added some tactics

Added some castle attack notes

Added some castle defence notes

Added tax rate data

#V1.2 18/01/03 + 15kb

Corrected a few things

added religious +/- bits

did some tidying

#V1.3 + 25kb

Added advisor quotes

added death poems

Added forced suicide notes

#V1.4  +15kb 19/01/03

Added extra unit data

#V1.5  + 4kb 111kb exceeded 21/01/03

Moved things around alot , separating musketeer notes into its
own section Gun combat.Meta thoughts on combat in each
province though this will perhaps be overkill as you ought to
learn this yourself and would probably make the guide more
than a few meg.

#V1.7 skipped over 1.6 added 9kb 23/01/03

Added some Cross bow notes and tactics

Added bridge combat section

Added some observations

#V1.8  28/01/2003 168kb exceeded

This is getting old shogun is an old game (in game terms
er does that make any sense to anybody?) and everybody seems
to be moving over to medieval total war which is a fine game I
suppose so this will probably be my last update unless I find some
awesome undiscovered thing or nasty tactic to use in the game.
Updates people spotting things maybe added if anybody is till
playing but then again homeworld is even older and I know people
who still play it.Its like the homeworld faq it just keeps growing
and growing well at least its cathartic eh?

#V1.9 5/02/2003 185kb exceeded! hurrah!

monstrous this FAQ theres little niggles I keep discovering in
shogun its like those kiddies in the midwich cuckoos they
keep growing at a monstrous rate in gestation and after they
were born.What started as something small about 30kb
has turned into a monster.

added uphill fighting

did some tidying and some corrections

#V2.0 7/02/2003 194kb exceeded

Ha found out the film that gun sequence is in (meantioned in
the muketeers note section) and added a few moot tactics
which you may or maynot notice , somehow I think this will
be the final update for quite some time since I'm getting a bit
bored with this.But thanks to CjayC for correcting the credit
this FAQ was credited to.

#V2.01 14th February 2003 206kb exceeded.

Not that long for an update eh? , just a few moot things added
nothing of significance

#V2.02 16th February 2003 211Kb exceeded

On the path to becoming the largest FAQ at game faqs though
theres lots of fluff , and it sucks up my time like er a vacuum
cleaner and dust?.

Added most troops japan can support at any one time

Added Mongol historical campaign battle walk through

#V2.03 18th February 2003 228kb exceeded

Darn it this is like in keep the aspidistra flying where he can't keep
focus and keeps adding correcting and changing little tiny bits
in his super long poem pleasures of London.Beh the updates
section is getting bigger than entire sections of this FAQ hmm
I wonder how many pages it'd take up to print on paper? , it
it far too big to be used on spell checks on my PC for word.
hmm seems like 39000 words and 108 pages making this
my biggest FAQ to date putting homeworld to shame.
hmmh 211000 charactors I must get out more....

added historical campaign for Tokugawa and oda

#V2.04 21st February 2003 262Kb exceeded

Added some more Tokugawa historican campaign data

Added some extra gun data

This is getting big a bit too big  wonder if on win9X it will actually open
in notepad it does on NT4 and NT5 since its a better system than win9x
but hey this is getting so out of hand that there is little to write anymore
The only thing to write is historical battles but most of the historical
battles are in the historical campaign battles anyway and in the historical
campaign battles cannot be played at differing difficulty!.Therefore if you
can win it at the level it happened at then you ought to be able to
beat it normally like that.Though this maybe updated someday if I have
time and some luck maybe I will update that historical campaign battle
I keep getting stuck at..

#v2.05 24th February 2003

I have no idea as to why gamefaqs truncated this document to 216kb
maybe a mistake perhaps ? , this is just a resent so there isn't anything
shockingly new here.Well except for anexplaination of the introduction
which isn't exactly ground breaking or a super new tactic for beating this
game into submission is it?.

#v2.06 25th February 2003

This is narfed after sending it in several times it is still not right and
apparently its something to do with hotmail things though the problem
is 100% invisible to me (ie if I send it to another hotmail address
its ok).Ah the woes of being a faq writter these days.

#v2.07 1st March 2003 270kb exceeded.

hey ho added a few things not much.

#2.08 7th March 2003 289kb exceeded

Right thats it too much

#V2.09 24th April 294KB exceeded

Another day another update little things which I cannot really remember
where I put since I left a big 2 month hole between updates and haven't
played shogun that much.But its not exactly likely I can name them but
some good news is that somebody who shall remain unnamed till I ask
him permission has offered to beat that battle I can only sometimes beat.

#V2.10 2nd May

Contrary to repeated demands I shall not at least in the near future be
writting
a guide for Medieval Total war , why is this you might ask , scholastic duties
to perform work etc and the thing that happens between the hours when your
eyes are open in till they are closed for several hours.Amd that MTW is so
big and beefy and runs so slowly on my system its not exactly exciting to
watch it chug along.

#V2.10L 20th July

Added solution to that battle I could not win consistantly curtesy of
praisant.

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#1.2 System specs (taken from readme)

System Requirements
MINIMUM CONFIGURATION
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, or Windows ME
(Windows NT is not supported)*
233 MHz Intel Pentium MMX or AMD K6 processor, or 200 MHz
MMX processor with supported Direct3D video card
64 MB RAM
4x CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive
650 MB free hard disk space plus space for saved games
(additional space  required for Windows swap-file and Direc
tX 8 installation) 8 MB video card with DirectX 8 compatible driver;
3D Accelerated Mode requires a 16 MB Direct3D capable video card
using the nVidia GeForce 2, nVidia GeForce  256, nVidia Riva TNT2,
nVidia Riva TNT, ATI Radeon, 3dfx Voodoo5, 3dfx Voodoo3,
3dfx Voodoo Banshee, Matrox MGA-G450, or Matrox MGA-G400
chipset
DirectX 8 compatible sound card
Windows Media Player 6.0 or higher (not on CD; available at
www.microsoft.com)
Keyboard
Mouse

*NT4 is not supported NT5 ie windows 2K is supported at SP2
with an AMD CPU

RECOMMENDED
300 MHz or faster Intel Pentium II processor
128 MB or more RAM
8x or faster CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive
1.65 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games
32 MB or greater Direct3D capable video card with DirectX 8 compatible
driver

My test deck

AMD 1700
Win2K SP2
512mb ram
32MB NVida Tnt2 card
Big speakers
Big 21 CRT screen
lots of coffee

I prefer to use win2K as alot of the time if games crash I can go to
desktop and end the program unlike in win9X where a lock up
nearly always means reset button.Not that shogun crashes that
much for that matter on my system.I have no idea if this game
works on winXP (hack spit) or on any other platforms like linux
so please no emails or demands that I tell you how to work it
(though it worked allegedly on a Amiga PPC something or other
running linux with a emulator version of win9X though it was
ghastly slow).I am not a techie working for dreamtime interactive
or EA games please do not ask me why this video card or custom
PC build does not work! , there are millions of different combinations
of PC parts and I can't possibly know them all.This applies v much
to windows XP  know v little about win XP seeing that I don't use it
or have any use for it.

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#2 definitions

(now in semi alphabetical order)

Ashigaru = conscripts (literal of light foot)

attrition = putting ones resources against another when ones resources
are greater than another that person usually wins even with poor tactics
though with superior resources , troops and tactics the opponent can
be easily crushed , though brilliant tactics and less resources can
mean defeat to the better supplied general.

backstab = to massacre your allies on the field when they rout , though
with daimyo aligned forces it has the effect of declaration of war with
ronin they won't really mind.

Battle field tactics = tactics relating to the battlefield

Bush fighting = fighting in trees exclusively effectively turning
cav into weak units

Cav = cavalry

Choke points = bridges and valleys between impassable ridges

Cover = trees , impassable ridges where arrows can't pass note
single trees donot count as cover nor do loose forests arrows
can still nobble your troops.I would note trees only stop a portion
or arrow fire and not 100% so its not really completely arrow
free zoning so be careful.

charge = double clicked attack which gives minor bonuses when troopers
run towards the enemy weapons raised

coup de tat = sudden change of power (say a revolt) or when a daimyo
dies and has no heirs causing his large empire to collapse into chaos

defeat in detail = where up to 10:1 is used to crush enemy units thus having
barely any losses.

Force retreat = when you enter a province outnumbering or having
high honour troops that the enemy general decides that he cannot
win and abandons the province.

rout = running away with infinite energy in a disorganised manner

retreat = withdraw in an organised manner

rally = stop routing and regroup

friendly fire = hitting or killing your own units

friendly fire(2) = backstabbing

flank = to move around the edges of the enemy formation and attack
from sides or behind

honour = experience

Yari = unit with long spears

pike men = yari units

impassable terrain = high ridges , mountains and rivers and structures
on the landscape.

rear area raid = use of ports to attack non front line provinces

tied up = occupying one or more enemy unit(s) with one or more of yours

koku = the amount of rice needed to feed a man for one year (mis leading
since you can reclaim koku from buildings and therefore really is more like
gold since I don't think Dutch and Portuguese would have that much
use for rice)

overwhelming / swamping = fighting one enemy unit with more than one of
yours eg:

2:1 minor swamp
5:1 major swamp
10:1 Super swamp
15:1+ etc

though Kensai are naturally swamped to really swamp a kensai you need
180 : 1 (with kensai as 1)
for a good chance to defeat him
500 : 1

or you can always use guns

unit = group of 60 men (with default 60 men unit setting) except for battle
field ninja kensai and Daimyo

Squad = a beat up group that has taken heavy losses and therefore is
significantly less than the number of men it started when it came out
of training

map tactics = tactics relating to the big map of Japan

poppers = thunder bombers

melee = hand to hand or close combat (can be forced with ranged units)
ranged units = archers , gunpowder units cav archers thunder bombers
skirmishers

gun powder units = Arquebusiers or musketeers

gunners = gunpowder units

hand to hand = melee

the chase = when entire armies rout and you chase them killing them
before they can leave the map (one of the perks remember its only a game!)

meat grinder = throwing units (cheap or expensive) into the fray and
waiting for who routs first with minimal unit matching , used by Daimyo
with lots of koku to waste

pounder = throwing more troops into the fray much like a meat
grinder effect

sub set into :
-pounder(2) = as in quarter pounder as in lots of meat as in meat
grinder.
-cheap pounder = throwing cheapo units into the fray like ashigaru
or yari samurai (late) where the troops become the meat.

-heavy pounder = throwing in expensive troops with good honour
and upgrades into a battle like a meat grinder effect where they
are the grinder usually.

giant burger = when after a huge battle there is barely any grass
visible where he main site of the battle took place common at
titanic bridge battles , battles where there are cheap pounders
and heavy pounders


through bullets = aquebuses pellets that go through one man then
another , which don't exist in shogun , but did exist in real life like
in the British Zulu wars(but they used the awesome martini Henry
45 cal black powder bullet rifle which the Imperial war museum
tested could go through 3 men at long range).

meat = troops to die

hidden units = units that do not show up on radar or the main battle
screen usually out of eyesight range or in trees.

stealth = battle field ninja ie you can see them but you can't
order attacks on them till they get very close.

stealth 2 = deep in tree so deep that you see enemy units
run around looking for you (can be done with any unit)

lost leader tactic = to use a unit against a unit that it is least
effective against , say Yari on heavy cav while you use units that
are easily killed by that unit say monks or archers , to attack
from the sides or behind

Kensai = sword saint = no datchi but with stupidly high armour
attack and defensive abilities and can run just as fast as horses.

Sun Tzu = Chinese general famed for his skill in battle and of
legend when he did silly things my friend's father keeps telling
me about like the burning of all escape for his OWN troops.

skirmish = small battle

skirmish 2 = small battle in a big battle not of the main battle

pumping = variation of meat grinder , when one unit engaged
then you put another in and another and another.

pumping 2 = produce as many as possible ie set as many
provinces to build the facilities required to train them then
produce them en masse (best done at provinces with ports
to minimise deployment times even better to have them
with weapons and armour upgrades).

rear area raid = sea borne invasion possible only with ports
and spies

sally = to charge out of a castle to break the siege possibly
supported by troops from elsewhere.

upgrades = when units are produced or retrained in an area with
either an armoury or with a sword smith up to a maximum of +3
in armour and weapons .The associated upgrade is added on top
of standard ratings , so a nagnita with std armour of 5 will have 8
and so on.

upgrade 1 = upgraded morale much in the same way as upgrades
but acts upon the honour rating (which is morale rating)

a push = when your unit engages an enemy unit of his engages
yours and they die nearly 1:1

oppertunity cost in that you have to give up one path to choose
another say in a 960 man army you have 16 unit slots , therefore
if you choose kensai as one of your units you lose the oppertunity
to field 59 men and your max is 901 men.Or if you use one unit
cheaply you lose the oppertunity to put more powerful units in
place , due to training time oppertunity lost.

Matching principle = where you match one of your most effective
units against another unit that is ineffective against it ie Yari
vs cav

Rout confusion = when an enemy unit routs but runs the wrong
way from battle into your troops , they do still fight their way
sometimes through your troops.

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Notes:

-Yamashiro (next to the inland sea) gives +1 honour for ever unit
produced there which can be added to legendary production facilities
to give up to +3 honour for combat units built there unfortunately
you cannot tie this with iron sand and armouries so its a trade off
between +1 extra honour or extra armour (good for strategic units
I suppose since extra armour means nothing to them).Also if you
conquer  that province the emperor  will pledge his support for your
clan which means very little as far as I can see.

-Heavy cav and nagnita cav need provinces that can support armouries
and therefore can only be trained in such provinces.

-effect of weapons upgrades and armour upgrades has not be considered
much in the notes and effectiveness of units you can probably work it
out yourself.

-long range units may be able to fire more than the stated ammo limits
I have written into this guide , there are several reasons for this:

A I didn't count it right
B not all men in the unit fire and therefore ammo is not used
at maximum rate
C Some men get killed ,
D arrows amiss via friendly fire in backs of nearby units

-ranged units (archers and gunners) barely get any honour from their
long range attacks even if they kill huge numbers of enemy troops, you
can increase their honour quickly by having them charge after your main
melee units have passed through them (so they act as support units)
or during chase sequences.

I play with fatigue , morale limited ammo and camera restricted so
notes may or may not apply if you play with different settings
settings other than mine are usually total meat grinders since
troops often fight to the dead and don't run off scared and long
range troops cannot be baited to run out of ammo.

Also high honour units can engage anything honour 6 units can
attack yari quite well for example , even though cav are extra weak
against yari units.Though archers are the exception since they
run so fast they can skirmish your forces to death in many
situations.

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                      Japanese infantry

Details:

Training time: (in seasons)
cost: cost in koku , self explanatory**
Value : how much I think they are worth
koku per man (training) : cost of koku for each man in a 60 man std
unit size
Clan that specializes in them: self explanatory
Requirements: buildings needed to train them (+sub buildings)
Maintenance koku : cost in koku per man per year after training*
Provinces with honour bonus: provinces that produce certain units with +1
honour without such things as legendary / famous production facilities.
Best vs : Best unit to use this unit against
Worst Vs: worst unit to use this unit against
March speed : self explanatory
Running speed : self explanatory
Charging speed: self explanatory
Charge bonus : + attack when set in a charge
melee bonus : self explanatory
defence bonus: self explanatory
armour level: self explanatory
honour: (I think this is mistaken for morale in the troop data file)
range(if a ranged unit): my guess is in feet since metres is too far for some
ammo(if a ranged unit): self explanatory
power(of projectile) : self explanatory
availability : the year at which you can get them in ideal conditions ie you
have the facility build times and training times

*I have listed them per man per year since units rarely ever come out of
battles intact even with winning easily status during engagements you
can lose quite a few of your soldiers.

**units are 25% cheaper if you specialise in them (this applies only
to training not maintenance)

Note taisho and daimyo are extra hard depending on how much honour
he had this is not accounted for in this faq and guide so you can just over
whelm him if you want use arrows guns whatever , this does pose an
interesting tit bit to try have a kensai as general with full upgrades
and that kensai being one of your sons = extra hard kensai unit.You
may have noticed this when attacking castles the taisho always seems
to take a while to die after you have cleaned out the castle or when
you can chase him for miles having units slice him many times if
you manage to get him to rout.Still you can always save some arrows
to prevent him from massacring half your army before he goes down...

******Yari Ashigaru******

Training time:1 season*
Cost: 100 koku.
Value :low / medium
koku per man (training) : 1.66
Clan that specializes in them: Oda
Requirements Spear dojo
Maintenance koku 0.5 koku per year per man
Provinces with honour bonus: Tosa, Owari.
Best vs : cav archers , no datchi
Worst Vs: Kensai , warrior monks , naginita
March speed : 7
Running speed : 12
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus : 0
melee bonus : -1
defence bonus: -1
armour level: 2
honour: -4
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
avalibility : from the start


*you get them given to you in the mongol campaign but you can't
train any more it seems.

Notes :

Very cheap to train and very cheap to maintain named Yari due to the
long spears they carry , they are also extremely fast , from their
low morale ease of being killed they seem useless but not at all.Alright
after a few seasons they get utterly slaughtered on any field with modern
armed troops , alright they always get slaughtered , but they do have uses.
They are also one of two units who have no shoes (the other being warrior
monks) , and they are Napoleonic as stated in the manual they will pillage
villages and peasants when not in battle as a perk of their job though
its effect on loyalty is zero since I've had ashigaru armies as garison
and they usually stay loyal.Also Samurai think less of ashigaru and
their morale is not affected by their routing.They do live off the land
and raid peasants (which is why they have 0.5 koku support per man
per year) though this does not seem to affect population loyalty when
I keep them as garrisons.A strange paradox comes about , if you really
want to use them as part of your main forces use them with max upgrades
and a legendary palace at the production facility.The paradox is that if
you can afford all that then why on earth would you be buying them
other than the bait reasons put below but I did say part of your main
forces.But alas with maximum upgrades they are only about as effective
as low morale monks which means its hardly worth the fuss......
Though in trees on a map where the trees are on a hill top
vs cav they might have a good chance.I would also add weight in
numbers is a no no since you can only bring 960 men on the field
at any one time if you had 16 units of yari ashigaru then you can
only get those extra troops onto the field when some get killed
(entire units) or rout.But this then has a cascade effect since those
men were either slaughtered or scared the new folks on the field
get scared and rout pretty quickly and the cycle continues.I've
seen titanic battles like this where 5000+ troops attacked me
all cheapo units all falling at my feet.

Additional they are best used in thick ranks in single file they fair
badly against cav even , in 2 they do better but they do best at least
in my experiments in lines of 4-6 thick formations held.Since they
get no charge bonus defence or melee bonus its best to use them
standing still.

===Uses===

-Absorbing arrows in loose formation

When facing an arrow opponent and he has the highland and you are
stuck in the valley and cannot flank your opponent you can always put
these guys just inside the firing range of archers in loose formation to
suck up enemy arrows , its cruel its cold and its nasty but shogun
aren't in this business to make friends.If you can hide them in forests
while absorbing arrows all the better , those arrows aren't unlimited.
(they don't actually absorb the arrows they die from them but that
serves the same purpose so go figure)Keep a general unit of daimyo
close by to prevent them routing too easily.

-Tiring out other units who chase and kill them

Yari Ashigaru are fast at running about the battle fields probably due to
their virtually non existent armour and light weapons , all other foot
soldiers who chase them will have a hard time catching them if you make
them run .Tired soldiers fight less effectively, try trap enemies by luring
them
with these boys and encircling units and slaughtering them.

-Running over bridges quickly

Again their high speed while running allows this and while they are being
slaughtered by the enemy waiting for you on the other side you can get your
slower troops across the bridges.

-Chasing routed troops

Again their high speed helps them with this , though watch out for when
troops rally they can turn round and easily annihilate your yari ashigaru
groups without much trouble.

-Just about stopping Cavalry

More of a deterrent on an open battle field but they do hold their own even
against heavy cav in forests and other tree outcrops.

-Tiring out kensai

Oh yes , the most powerful warrior on the field CAN be stopped with yari
ashigaru after  extensive testing with 2-3 (units of 60) vs 1 kensai the kensai
will be beaten with only 50-80%* losses to your yari troops.Killing and
swinging
that massive sword tires them out  quickly so you can swarm kensai with 3
units of them in wedge formation so he quickly becomes attacked on
all sides 9-12 men thick.Sometimes single units get lucky and can kill your
kensai too.At higher difficulty level (in custom battles) a single yari
ashigaru
unit at 1 honour can kill 2 kensai.

*at higher difficulty levels a kensai can only take out 10-25% of a yari
ashigaru
unit before biting the dust.

-human sheilds

Yari ashigaru are cheap , but since through bullets don't exist you can march
them infront of your more expensive units to absorb bullets fired by christian
enemies.In essence acting as sheilds but since they do actually move so
fast and have better melee combat stats than the gunners you can beat the
17 second fire trap I describe later , even if they rout your troops behind can
massacre the gunners.Though they don't do too bad against gunners anyway.
But you can always use them as sheilds for kensai as well .Though to provide
good cover you need 2-3 units to really plug up the holes in the formations
since sometimes my gunners have completely missed the first unit.But had
the bullets hit the units behind that unit though this is rather rare some
bullets
may slip through.

-support units

When a good unit is engaging another you can move them quickly
to the sides to attack the enemy from 2 sides ,or keep them just
behind to backup the attacker from one side and to prevent enemy
from doing the same to you.

-Honour baiting

As described in the map section where they are used to beef up
enemy general stats so you can assassinate them for more
honour.

-buying time

If you know a battle is hopeless you know when you rout you get
chased and lose even more men , if you keep a few groups of
these guys on a hill standing firm , you can withdraw your expensive
troops to a far back position then rout them.The yari will buy you
and extra 15-30 seconds thus saving plenty of your better troops
lives.This can also be applied to engagements since troops
engage things within a radii of themselves you can move them
in and in effect vacuum enemy to engage them while you position
troops in an advantageous spot.Sacrifices for the greater good
are sometimes necessary in shogun total war.

-teasing out enemy troop concentrations in trees

When an enemy is in the trees you can exhaust their arrows using
these guys and also if you park them at the rim of the forest and march
them slightly in and engage then rout .Enemies can seldom resist the
chase and when they come out for the kill you can crush them yourself
though it is seldom needed for foot units unless you have lots of guns
and arrows for extra lethality.

-garrisoning

Due to their cheap 0.5 koku per man per year cost they are good for
garrisons since they acheive the same effect though with lower
maintenance costs.Still on your front lines and ports keep something
stronger to prevent enemy incursions since even giant armies of
yari ashigaru are easy to win against.

-fake routs

Using the rout button when near the enemy can start a chase (your samurai
won't be affected) they turn and run hell for leather where the enemy engages
in a chase his units are less ordered and in slight disarray.You can use them
to breakup large enemy formations and counter attack with other units or wait
till your ashigaru are some way up a hill turn and counter attack.That is after
a sucessful rally.Their high speed means they can out run most infantry though
against horses they will fair less well when running.

-waterlooing

Waterloo yes , putting gunners behind them either on a slope or in micromanaged
lines so you can have your guns fire through the gaps , at waterloo muskets had
bayonettes on them , here their spears combined with guns can sometimes make
a nasty combination.

===Killing them===

Archers (though wasteful) are effective they also die from archers in melee
too , though esp on easier levels with a large army they rout after a charge
is initiated.However donot engage them on hills this is where they are quite
effective when coming down the hills , you may be winning but you'll be
losing quite a few men so many it may make victory a bitter one.

******Yari Samurai******

Training time:1 season
Cost: 200 koku
Value : medium - low high
koku per man (training) : 3.33
Clan that specializes in them: -
Requirements Spear dojo
Maintenance koku 1 koku per year per man
Provinces with honour bonus: -
Best vs : cav (all types though naginita and heavy will hassle them) no
datchi
Worst Vs: archers (slow speed) , monks . naginita
March speed : 6
Running speed : 10
Charging speed: 10
Charge bonus: 0
melee bonus : 2
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 2
honour: 2
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability : from the start

Staple diet of the early Daimyo , they are much more useful than the
ashigaru much much useful purely because they do not rout as easily and
can stand up to heavy cavalry without too many losses , they team up well
with archers and although weaker than naginata they make up with their
better speed lower cost and chasing routed troops.At full upgrades they
become really useful.

===uses===

Stopping cavalry

Other than naginita cav and heavy cavalry (though in forests they
do this extremely well) at 2:1 vs they will win against all cavalry

Serving as a distraction

They are staple troops to begin with and they become quite useless after
a while but they can engage other more powerful units (and get slaughtered)
keeping them busy until your main forces arrive (or you can retreat your
Daimyo and his guard if you are losing badly!)This is a tactic you are
forced to use many times in historical battles.

waterlooing

See above.

===Killing them===

These boys are a tough nut to crack with cav but use other yari samurai
against them from high ground , if they have just charged through a group
of allied archers then have the archers support them also.

They also seem weak to high ground archer charges as in training it is
possible to eliminate the yari samurai group with the smaller archer group
with <5 casualties (use lots of arrows and running wedges sacrificing the first
few front guys in the wedge)

******Samurai Archers******

Training time:1 season
Cost: 300 koku
Value : low high
koku per man (training) : 5
Clan that specializes in them: Uesugi
Requirements: Archery Dojo
Maintenance koku : 1 koku per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus: Totomi
Best vs : monks , naginita (considering melee is harder to kill them)
no datchi , kensai
Worst Vs: cav
March speed : 6
Running speed : 10
Charging speed: 10
Charge bonus:2
melee bonus : 0
defence bonus: -1
armour level:  1
honour: 0
range(if a ranged unit): 5000
ammo(if a ranged unit):28
power(of projectile) : 0.5
availability : from the start

Notes

Long range units , disappointing after reading English history about
lethality of long bow armies (where Yeomen could fire 12 arrows a minute
into approaching hordes  of pike and swordsmen with 1000 men = 12000 arrows
in a rough area per minute winning extremely unlikely battles) these guys
just don't compare much though they CAN hold their own against yari foot
troops  with melee ability and their speed is useful in chasing down routed
troops but as always beware of rallying troops who may turn on your archers
during the chase. Firing into forests wastes arrows though firing out is only
slightly better.Though as always it seems the CPU can get up to 3 men
per salvo if he is in the trees but when you try it , it doesn't work half
as well .Best you can EVER expect of them is 8 units per salvo
(single line) but with low honour and basic weapons you can expect 1-3
per 2-3 salvos.* You may want to withdraw them when they use all their
arrows but I use  them much like super light cav , withdrawal isn't too
bad if you have replacements that will reinforce your army though they
may not be in position to be useful.Archers also fire in arcs so they
can go over your troops into the enemy and enemies behind their
front line troops as well as over impassible objects such as castle walls
They work ok in lines of 2 in lines of 3 sometimes the 3rd row fire
sometimes they do not , rain snow and wind affect their accuracy
and range.They seem to lose their effect at about 1560 when cav
can run them down easily , and baby sitting them with yari takes
up vital unit slots which could be used for something else.They auto
stop firing at their targets when your men engage that unit that was
being fired at , but theres nothing to prevent you from reassigning
them to fire at those same units , you might get some friendly fire
though so its your choice.

V2.01 update

be very careful using them facing up a slope especially if you
have them in deep ranks in short lines (squares) since you get
some insane things that happen like archers firing into each
others backs.They will keep doing this rearranging the formation
to take the place of the killed archer and then the guy who walked
in to replace that man gets killed , with 28 shots and it happening
in 2-3 places you can lose up to 25 men doing this keep your eyes
open and check.If it happens reformate them if you are not pre
occupied.

high value targets : (descending order)

Warrior monks & troops inside castles
No datchi
cav that stands still
yari samurai
taisho
daimyo when he is the only one left

Low value targets

Anybody standing in a forest**
Naginata
Charging cavalry


*They carry 28 arrows each when used in a single file line.

**some arrows will get through but not many

===uses===

-Support fire

-reducing numbers before melee begins

-Bridge massacres when its blocked by your troops you can fire
over the heads of your own men killing the enemy enmasse.

-Killing slow units naginita and monks to some extent can't
run as fast as archers so you can have them skirmish in 2 units
so that there is a leap frog effect on each unit attacking it.

===Killing them===

Use anything fast yari ashigaru supported may help but if they are firing on
your unit  open up into loose formation though this can also be a trap also
to prep your unit to be charged by cav so keep those eyes peeled.You can
also use other archers if you have more it just becomes a slugging match
and dependant upon luck.

It might seem obvious but the AI at least on normal and easy are slow to
open their formations when under archer fire even in archer vs archer
situations and you can open up your archers well in advance of being
under arrow fire.

Though note yari cav and cav are good against them they donot run under
arrows as advertised in the tutorials the archers just compensate by firing
at a lower angle the head of the column runs under it and it hits the guy
behind him.So expect losses even if they are the best vs against them.

Keep loose as possible and do not have massive crowds as this makes
it easier for archers to hit something at least its the same principle as
guns in the scenario of super deep no room to move ranks they will hit
something.When units are loose or by themselves in tight formation they
have room to avoid arrows and there is more empty space where arrows
will go and do nothing but deplete archer ammo.

+Additional Note archers are not capable of supressive fire therefore they
must target one unit at a time , so if you are under attack from a single
group to avoid archers scoring on another group have them walk round
the unit under fire.As you will suffer less losses this way.

******No-Dachi Samurai******

Training time:1 season
Cost: 300 koku
Value : medium
koku per man (training) : 5
Clan that specializes in them: Shimazu
Requirements :Sword dojo (and legendary swordsman event)
Maintenance koku : 1 koku per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus: Satsuma
Best vs : units losing badly , ashigaru units , kensai
Worst Vs: any unit with good morale
March speed : 7
Running speed : 12
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus: 8
melee bonus : 6
defence bonus: -2
armour level: 1
honour: 8
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability :1533

Only decent on the offensive and then only against yari troops , gunpowder
and archers  (if you can get to them without too many losses) naginata ,
monks and cavalry will slaughter them easily.In fact after a little testing
their low cost reflects their usefulness , the manual states that they
are useful for use against wavering enemy troops and this is
completely true.When you charge an enemy unit you will get
winning easily for a few seconds then losing badly on almost
all units.Their power and survival rating depends heavily if enemy
troops rout it they do , they are spectacular and a unit can take out 4-5
enemy per second , if they don't rout the enemy they will lose 2-3 men per
second.I would also consider them to be expendable and least useful
of all troops since they rely too much on the routing thing and they
die far too easily.They loose their usefulness after a few seasons
though they are great for the chase sequences.If somebody attacks
or starts charging towards your no datchi counter with your own
charge so it is counted as an attack rather than a defence in a
defence situation (which you should never use no datchi for unless
its against ashigari) and quickly get some support.But if you can
produce them with +3 attack and +3 armour they fair alright but I
would probably be tempted to train other units instead..

===uses===

Chasing routed troops

Breaking nasty archer + yari combo lines

down hill attacks

killing kensai

Normally kensai cut through your men like a government spending a
budget surplus.But against no datchi they seem weaker they'll take 2-3
no datchi down then go down themselves.Maybe its the high attack
factor multiplied by the unit size but they are great against kensai.Even
against groups of 4 kensai they can cut them down to size losing less
than 10 men.

===Killing them===

Try keep your distance and use arrows musket balls , if you have to get into
melee with them try using monks cavalry or have them approach your
naginita lines they will die quickly.

Also try to catch them standing still so You attack them which causes
them to be killed horribly since they defend so badly.

******Warrior Monks ******

Buddhist or renounced faithist or just trade with dutch
instead

Training time:1 season
Cost: 500
Value : V high
koku per man (training) : 8.33
Clan that specializes in them:  mori
Requirements: Buddhist temple (and tranquil garden before that)
Maintenance koku : 1 per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus: Kii , kaga
Best vs : Infantry units
Worst Vs: Archers , cav archers , naginita cav
March speed : 7
Running speed :12
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus:4
melee bonus : 5
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 1
honour: 8
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability :1534

Ever see those Chinese films where monks can get hit over the head
with iron bars scalded with fire and absorb swords without being hurt ,
these are them , albeit slightly less invincible than those you see in
films, they are highly useful for meat grinder tactics since barely
anything can beat them , also Buddhist troops will rout fast against
them Christians do not , however due to the trade (you lose monks
production for gunpowder units) this is barely a matter of concern
since you can just attack in the rain instead rendering gunpowder
useless haha.Pump them out and have your 16 unit armies contain
8-12 of them and you can sweep the map , without any trouble ,
it also seems that they regain their energy faster than other units
so you can march them all over have them charge fight , and a minute
or two later march them fight etc (this happens lots in reinforced
battles).They are utterly untouchable when used in trees
ok you will lose some but not many.When you have a legendary
armoury and legendary sword smith at the production facility
they are unstoppable unless of course the enemy also has troops
with such armour and weapons.They do however fill a middle
ground between no datchi and naginita in that they don't defend
as well but attack better than naginta but the opposite is true
with no datchi.The main weakness as shown above is their
terrible armour which means arrows guns and naginita cav
have a field day.(you may notice in pictures monks weak cloth
shaws to cover their bodies and face which if you ask me isn't
armour).

===Uses===

Everything , bar long range death and holding off masses of cav

==Killing them===

Use arrows lots of them naginita cav also are successful against them
other monks are also effective against them.Naginita will stop them in their
tracks , though it takes monks to kill monks , yari and no datchi combos
are good too , so is yari samurai down hill against them , don't even
consider using ashigaru against them they die far too quickly even to
serve as bait or a distraction or a delay tactic.

******Naginata******

Training time:1 season
Cost: 400 koku
Value : Medium / high
koku per man (training) : 6.67
Clan that specializes in them:
Requirements: famous spear dojo and armoury
Maintenance koku :
Provinces with honour bonus:
Best vs : Cavalry , infantry
Worst Vs: Cav archers , archers
March speed : 4
Running speed :8
Charging speed: 8
Charge bonus: 4
melee bonus : 0
defence bonus: 6
armour level: 5
honour: 4
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability :1535

Dum dum dum dum dum dum captain scarlet! excuse that these guys are nearly
unbreakable I had 3 lines of these and they were charged with heavy cav no
datchi and by warrior monks .Though also rather rare in campaign use it seems
the CPU never uses them on easy normal and rarely on hard (1-2 units per army
and only in a few armies too),maybe its the high needs of armoury , legendary
spear dojo etc hmmp.The status said  winning easily losing badly then winning
easily flicking from one extreme to the other , but each time the enemy unit
losing
a few troops with only  5-10 losses after causing attacking units to
rout.However
they have a terrible weakness they are so incredibly slow and get tired its
even
worse when  it snows and rains but since you never move them (unless you
chase routed  troops) it is barely a matter of concern.(against mongol cav
however it is a very different story they get slaughtered in droves when they
go up
against them as bridge blockers standing on high ground against them
etc)Naginita can also be denied from the enemy by holding any area
with iron sand deposits much like heavy cav can , if you also do intend
any heroics with them ie holding bridges against insurmountable odds
try get the max upgrades it really helps.But really they are only useful
in a defensive role when you are attacked and as the cliche goes the
best defence is a good attack.Team them up with no datchi and you have
the best of both worlds extra defence and extra attack. Unfortunately
they seem to barely ever get any extra honour at least in custom battles
where I have had 10 units of them (backed up by 2 archer units 2 gunners</pre><pre id="faqspan-2">
and 2 ninja bitchu as defender) against 5 armies of 960 yari samurai barely
anybody there got an extra honour point except for a few which got
honour 3 when they had been in the thick of the fighting for such a long
time that they were reduced to 23 men.I have no real solutions to this
since you can't train them in yamashiro due to lack of iron sand deposits
though you could have a legendary spear dojo and legendary sword
dojo to give them a miserly +1 extra honour point.Still they are quite
tough without extra honour anyway.If they could run faster and not
get so tired so quickly they would probably be my main strike force
instead of monks.



===uses===

They can tie up troops 1:2 for a very long time , they should replace* yari
samurai when you have a stable economy and teamed up with archers
especially if you have other units to chase routing troops.

*though keep some around for cav defence purposes.Also their
restricted avaliblity may not make this easy.

Absorbing arrows if you have nothing else to do it as their heavish armour
means they take less damage from archers though archers can run and walk
faster and skirmishing archers can devastate your men since they can fire
close up and run away.

===Killing them===

Ugh this is hard kensai can just about kill them , though he will be
exhausted after killing 15 of them and can easily be killed in return!.
Occupy them with weak troops and flank them with something else
monks do well against them with major losses.Guns also work
very well on skirmish mode as do arrows on skirmish mode , arrows
in the rain do even better since they get tired even faster.

******Arquebusiers ******

requires foreign alliance.

Training time:1 season
Cost: 100
Value : high low
koku per man (training) : 1.66
Clan that specializes in them:
Requirements: trading post portugal / dutch
Maintenance koku : 1 per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus:
Best vs : slow units
Worst Vs: fast units fighting in rain.
March speed : 7
Running speed :12
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus:0
melee bonus : -6
defence bonus: -3
armour level: 2
honour: -4
range(if a ranged unit): 4000
ammo(if a ranged unit):40
power(of projectile) : 16
availability :1543

The yari ashigaru of guns , still guns barely do anything to your troops
since they never seem to achieve high honour they never get more than
3 of your troops (usually because any cavalry unit will annilate them)
and because the computer seems to use them poorly ie in short lines
and in firing at maximum range too which is a no no of guns in this
game.They seem worse at hand to hand than archers when testing
them in custom battles , and they seem to carry butter knives instead of
swords.Now if you could get bayonettes and have them stand waterloo
style in squares they might be useful but they are not.At their
maximum range I could put a (heavy damaged from a previous battle)
12 yari ashigaru and waste all their ammo without being hit.If it is
raining or snowing they cannot use their weapons other
than their butter knives.(you will see this in a training session) they
carry about 40 shots each (in a single line formation).They can fire
through castle walls and fire on line of sight.(I expected much more
since seeing ajapanese film where there is a clan who is called the
mountain and the Daimyo is injured badly but hides this fact with a
double whos son double crosses the double and expels him and
attacks an enemy castle losing everything and the double comes
out of the tall grass with white hair after seeing the slaughter , as
the enemy castle fired repeatedly with muskets through the slits
in the walls oh yes.)If you read the gun tactics section and you
want 2 shots from the you want to play with a 25 second gap
between your gunners and the target enemy group ,though this
is impractical since nobody except possibly exhausted naginita
goes that slow.

===uses===

Defending maps with bridges with at least a 2 units as long as
too many units DO NOT approach at the same time..

NEVER EVER EVER use them in automatically resolved attacks
they die in droves when you do this and never take more than
1/3 of their number in heads , I've sent huge armies of them
7000+ and they only seem to get one shot per auto battle this applies
to musketeers as well.

You may also want to use them instead of Yari ashigaru for the purposes
of bait , absorbing arrows etc , though they are v poor in hand to hand
even worse than yari ashigaru and have no bonuses vs cav.So they are
not exact perfect substitutes so use your descretion.This is because
they cost exactly the same take the same time to train though they
do require different production facilities.But with guns they can deal
out some damage while being arrow sponges.(also if there is a major
charge you might be able to get a single volley in before they are
slaughtered and single volleys can take up to 25 heads beats yari
ashigaru.

===How to kill them===

March ANY unit up to them and engage in hand to hand , archers can kill
them with their arrows at maximum range without losing ANY in their squad.
Its even better in the rain stride right in with any samurai unit and you will
win
with barely any losses.You can also sit at maximum range and run them out
of ammo , also you can attack them non line of site fashion.Since gunpowder
units fire in a straight line they cannot fire at things where a hill masks
the enemy unit presence.Unlike arrows.You can also fight them in light
rain without any danger from them .. well ok they will use their swords but
these are extremely ineffective.Beware of using slow and or tired units against
them since they move slowly and can be skirmished to death by these men
or rather lose many many men before hand to hand can begin.Cav due to
its high speed is obviously the best unit against them though do bewary
although I have not seen the CPU do it or not noticed it, if super close range
shots (as seen in the gun combat section) is used with multiple ranks your
60 cav or units engaging them may vanish after the the volley arrives.This
gives
way to a dilema open formation or close formation?.The reason for this is
when attacking them in open formation your line is longer therefore you are
in range of more gunners (often gunners at the edge of single lines cannot
fire since they are too far away).But with a closed formation your men are
much more bunched up , though bullets cannot be evaded like arrows anyway
the choice I suppose is yours.


******Musketeers******

requires foreign alliance

Training time:1 season
Cost: 175
Value : high low
koku per man (training) : 2.9167
Clan that specializes in them:
Requirements: Dutch trading post or Portuguese with cathedral
Maintenance koku : 1 per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus:
Best vs : slow units
Worst Vs: fast units
March speed : 7
Running speed :12
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus:4
melee bonus : 5
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 1
honour: 8
range(if a ranged unit): 4000
ammo(if a ranged unit):40***
power(of projectile) : 16
avalibility : 1551

See above , just as useless except they can fire in light rain though
they still carry 40* shots and after tests they can kill up to 8 units
in a salvo though only at high honour and max weapon upgrades.
note as in the manual - musketeers is misleading these are just upgraded
Arquebusiers and still ashigaru troops armed with them at that.I would also
note that they are ashigaru units , therefore they still rout pretty easy
when things get hairy.Somehow I would have thought cav musketeers would
exist but they don't.I also wish the lines you organise them in could be
much much tighter al la British imperialistic red coat formations
(shoulder to shoulder) so you could cram many many more of them
in the same space and therefore increase firepower heavily.At present
lining them up they end up in formations so big that the men at the
ends of the formation are either out of effective range or are at max
range therefore inaccurate.The cpu can fire through its own troops hitting
yours only which is strange it can also fire in heavy rain
when in castles which is even more strange.Though very heavy rain
makes them just as useless as the cheaper gun units.

*I cannot accurately count the number of shots they have as in single
lines sometimes not all of them fire , in ranks they don't all fire also
so I cannot count the number of shots 100%

*v1.5 update - I moved these tactics to the gun combat section as it
was getting quiet large and ungainly and though it ought to deserve its
own section.

v1.7 update - You can get guns without agreeing to trade you wait
for an enemy daimyo to convert then send in spies to see where he
has built (hopefully) a ducth trading post or less prefered a
portugese trading post.Its usually at a province with a port ,
if you capture it and the facility is not destroyed then you can
produce gunners as if you were christian but still build temples
and train monks , excellent... portugese will still try to convert you
so no hard feelings I suppose.

***40 shots may seem alot and it is considering how long it takes
to reload but in some titanic custom battles which can last up to
2-3 hours (gametime) they can run out of ammo

===uses===

Killing kensai , as kensai seem extremely vulnerable to them *


*to do this have a rank of gunners in 2 then have them hold fire until
he (the kensai) gets extremely close then then click the fire at will
button and they wil llet loose seconds later and extreme close range.
At this range something will hit the kensai since even if you have a
1 in 10 chance of hit multiply that by 60 and that kensai will go down.
Unfortunately you need to be Christian to be able to use them and
therefore buddhist daimyo cannot use this method , unless they
agree then renounce later after various units are produced.Or you
wait for the dutch which come a while after kensai can be produced
Also it might not be exactly clear where the kensai is in the heat
of a huge battle.Though to demonstrate:

4th kanakawa 2 lines of gunners as enemies have 5 or 6 kensai
line your boys up in 2 double lines and watch as the kensai
approach let loose close and you have 6 dead kensai in 25
seconds.

===how to kill them===

Attack one unit per one unit of gunners , if you focus your attack
on one on one say like C&C tactics sure you will kill them faster
but other units nearby will have ample opportunity to fire 1 2 or even
3 shots into your attackers , which can serious deplete your forces.
If you are outnumbered by them force move your troops inbetween
their ranks so that both units are enaged at the same time , gunners
can only really win in hand to hand when at 3:1 esp against cav
and monks.I wouldn't bother too much about running them out of
ammo at long range with yari ashigaru since they take so long
per shot it can seriously eat into the battle timer and I hate losing
to that.Donot even consider Napoleonic wars where you go muzzle
to muzzle since if you do this you are going to lose the person who
walks into the standing gun line dies much like the real thing
when gunners walked into English gunner lines.They have to walk
into range , then prepare to fire then aim then fire , which will give
the standing enemy a few seconds advantage.


******Kensai******

Training time: 4 seasons
Cost: 600
Value : high
koku per man (training) : 600
Clan that specializes in them:
Requirements: Legendary sword dojo
Maintenance koku : 1 koku per year
Provinces with honour bonus:
Best vs : yari units  , archers , cav , monks , naginita
Worst Vs: mongol cav , cav archers , poppers , guns when they
have a clear shot space and , no datchi , large units
March speed : 10
Running speed :16
Charging speed: 16
Charge bonus:8
melee bonus : 18
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 8
honour: 8
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability : 1542*

*I have seen ronin have them at 1534

Kensai , huge bloke with a huge sword the ONLY unit in the game you can
use in melee to fight non attrition battles , although they are powerful
they can easily be defeated it may not seem so but they are easily swamped.
A case of can dish it out but can't really take it , a clue to this is
in the manual can engage many units winning often coming out untouched,
due to their ability to defend they have no need to get hit though this
as before has limits with one sword you can only block so many swords
and spears.And that is why swamping works so well against them arrows
do too (though during the credits sequence I think you get to see a hand
drawn kensai with 8 arrows in his back still fighting) .Their power lies
as much as the power lies with no datchi as in if the enemy routs by the
time the kensai gets exhausted then its ok you can continue killing,
but say if the enemy has a legendary palace and therefore excellent
morale he might be swamped and in trouble.Though they run
nearly as fast as cav don't rely on them too much , they do gain honour
extremely fast though.The time is rather long though and you can get
4 warrior monks for the time it takes to train this guy.DONOT attack kensai
1:1 kensai vs Kensai you ALWAYS lose if they are equal armour and weapons
skill and still lose even if honour is higher by up to +3.Also never have
your sons become kensai as they can die suddenly and you lose 100% of the
unit wheas if he is say a heavy cav unit he becomes Daimyo you lose 1
horseman and keep the other 59 , esp if he dies suddenly which can happen
randomly.I would also state that if you have no datchi samurai in your armies
then
you mix them in with your kensai they seem to wear the same colour uniforms
and in the heat of a battle are hard to distinguish. In a castle siege they
are perfect for defence and attacking.Beaware of gunners kensai are extemely
vulnerable to them even when he is in the thick of it and killing them in
droves
since other gunners in their group can back off to a firing position and he is
pretty much dead (well no matter how tough you were being hit with a 3 inch
ball of hot steel that would shatter after going into you you would die).2
shots
will kill him (this I found out when he ran into my rank from behind and killed
40 of my units until I had them hold position and allowed them to fire at will
when he approached the end of my column two of my men turned reloaded
and fired about 1.5 inches on my monitor at him killing him)If you see his
stats
say evenly matched quite a long time rout him or have him rest he is probably
going to die soon.Also I would note he isn't the end all of units he is just
one man
and in battles (titanic 5000+ battles) he'l kill 1-200 whereas a monk unit or a
gun
unit well controlled will kill over 900.


V1.8 addition

I would also note Kensai honour is differently calculated else it is a bug
in the game , kensai in a battle can gain up to +5-6  honour points
but when you get onto the big map it registers as 1 extra point or
something equally annoying.In my guestimation is that kensai gain
+1 extra honour points every 6 honour points they gain on the field.
Else they would become utterly lethal killing machines far too
quickly , which they are to a certain extent , just train them in
yamashiro for that extra honour point that province gives any unit
trained there though this has a disadvantage of no extra armour
benifits so its a trade off (as retraining is a waste of time) I
personally prefer them to earn their honour and to have +3 weapons
and +3 armour using them near exclusively in non gun battles or
to clean out castles with normal troops following in support can
get them to +8 honour in no time.Also surprisingly you can get
them extremely early even earlier is a ronin province happens
to be producing them I have seen them about as early as 1535
at which I tried to bribe one but they didn't take it at which I
conquered the province and with luck the facilities survived.

You can also get them quite quickly after 2 years you really ought
to have gotten the legendary swords man event then another 4
years building up sword dojos and another year to get armouries
and sword smiths which make them extra deadly.Ronin will also
produce them which surprised me the other day when I invaded
the 3rd smallest island in the south.

The accordion or the compactor

Also there is a terrible tactic you can use with kensai when you have
2 or more when you have 6 or more with +3 weapons and +3 armour
a high daimyo leading them you can have just these 6 kensai defend
a bridge and enemy columns can throw themselves at these kensai
(keep those archers away) and they fold like an accordion men run and
nearly instantly die.Its even worse when enemy are routed when as
an experiment I had 8 kensai and the enemy crossed the bridge to
engage me as I had 177 men (daimyo heavy cav and kensai only) while
he had lots of no datchi and naginita, I kept my kensai as a flanking
tool and blocked off the bridge at the far end , my daimyo came out
(and he was ranked +5) and all the enemies routed.Which was
a surprise since his army was well in excess of 2800 men , this
was the nasty bit they ran into my kensai wall and were near instantly
killed by the kensai and there were so many bodies the bridge was
not even visible.Some enemies got smart and decided to run away
and they ran into my cav units utter slaughter.

===uses===

Spear heading assaults

Chasing routed troops

Tying up troop formations

Distractions , on normal and hard in defence missions sometimes there
are outcrops of trees ahead put a few kensai in them and wait , as they
are hidden they won't be noticed , then you can run them out into the
enemy.Attacking from behind killing plenty of enemy , the AI will think
blimey and turn many of his forces (on easy normal and hard) to face
these kensai , at the same time you can flank the enemy formations
for a 3 sided attack.Which has super benifits in that the enemy defence
is inverted ie its weakest units are those you encounter first and get
trapped between his strong units for a few moments leading to slaughter.

===killing them===

Naginita is the first choice combined with another unit attacking so that he
is swamped in a massive circle of troops he can't escape you will loose many
troops but you may prevail (thats a big MAY).Though as said in the ashigaru
section a lucky hit can kill them quickly.Guns as meantioned before are
another excellent tactic.

Trap them with hold formation and hold position stand firm your line and if he
attacks the middle of your line he'll keep going in and in and go up against
more and more men first its 3-1 then 5-1 then 6-1.

misc notes:

*this is kensai alone vs said unit on a 1:60 also tested over a 10 second
period multiple times (why you get halves etc) with kensai starting off
as fresh as the attacker on a standing unit.Also depends on the random
nature of attacks sometimes they retreat back a little the go back into
the fray sometimes they continually attack so this data is not absolute.

V2.06 Update

I've been experimenting with larger unit sizes as unit sizes go up kensai
become weaker as kensai numbers and strength does not increase
as with other units even a single yari ashigaru unit can defeat 3 kensai
when they are at 1 honour and your kensai are at 2 honour and +3 attack
and +3 armour.This makes it no datchi power as in if the enemy units
are impetious and do not rout pretty soon after attacks they die quickly
so they ought to be supported.To better the odds attack from the sides
of enemy rectangles the CPU likes 4-5 men thick formations which
puts 12-15 men in a line at the front.It reduces the number the kensai
has to take on at any one time.But then no unit can survive completely
surrounded anyway.Note that they are ALWAYS 1 man in custom
battles or sengoku jidai even if the unit size setting is at 120.

VFinal update

On the gamefaqs boards it has been said the kensai unbalances the
game , I disagree unlike many others , in the 4 seasons it takes to
train him you can get 4 more units of your choice if one of those are
no datchi and they face off kensai he is dead.As said easlier gun units
really take this guy down and when completely swarmed with even a
single unit he goes down fast.He can even go down to yari ashigaru if
you can keep their morale up enough , they will keep reforming their
lines and do tiny amounts of damage each.Even worse if they get a
lucky hit you could lose a kensai after only a taking a few yari.

******Battlefield Ninja******

Training time 4 seasons
Cost: 600 koku
Value : High
koku per man (training) : 50
Clan that specializes in them:
Requirements:battle field ninja dojo (with sword dojo and
infamous ninja house)
Maintenance koku : 1 per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus:
Best vs : all foot units , generals , daimyo
Worst Vs: cav
March speed : 8
Running speed :18
Charging speed: 18
Charge bonus:4
melee bonus : 8
defence bonus: 4
armour level: 4
honour: 8
range(if a ranged unit): 1200
ammo(if a ranged unit):100
power(of projectile) : 1
availability :1543

Notes :

A group of 12* men who in the manual carry bows but the animation suggests
throwing stars or knives of some kind , you can get 4-6 troops with each
salvo fired from samurai and they can also hold their own when outnumbered
240 : 12 though only against no datchi and yari units and with up to 10
losses.Don't use them often due to the time needed to train them you can get
lots
of warrior monks , they are also poor in chasing routed troops.However they can
remain  hidden on open terrain via stealth unless a unit gets fairly close
to them , there is a nasty tactic you can use with them , hide them in trees
during a defence battle.They are darned impossible to find , the computer
does this with ordinary units during defence battles.You can try it out
against human opponents but the computer always seems to know where
you are and can kill them before the time limit runs out.They carry 100
throwing stars.The disadvantage is that they are easily overwhelmed being
12 men much like the kensai problem , but if you keep 5 units of them
put them in lines you can reduce enemy columns to near nothing on
their approach its even nastier in trees since their archers can't get you
back and units can't see your ninja until they are extremely close.Much
better investment than kensai in my opinion but they take far too much
infrastructure (elite ninja houses then another dojo , when kensai take
legendary sword dojo etc).nice unit if you can afford it.Also they seem
to need to be manually targeted even with fire at will they seem reluctant
to fire at enemies.

*if you increase unit sizes in the performance menu the unit size will
increase up to 24 at 120 men unit setting

V1.9 update

I cannot be certain about this but higher honour ninja seem to be able
to remain unseen up close when I tested some honour 9 ninja against
some monks the monk had to get extra close to be able to see and
engage my ninja.Also they take more heads per volley of ninja stars
at higher honour , which can make them quite deadly in that enemy
units will come under fire from the longer before they can "stumble"
upon your units (stumble as in the CPU knows darned well where your
units are).



===Uses===

killing generals and Daimyo on the field

occupying enemy troops while reinforcements arrive

Killing kensai (3-5 stars kill them)

===killing them===

Try to cut them down with monks naginata or cav of any kind no datchi they
seem to cut easily through no datchi archers and gunpowder units.Guns
also work well if they are engaging your unit and you fire at them , you'll
lose quite a few men but hey you get most of the ninja.

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Japanese cav

notes:

#1 Cavalry count as 2 units when retreating into a castle though the koku
support is the same though horses eat grass and I suppose there is lots of
that though rice is actually a grass but then so is wheat.

#2 Cavalry are weaker when in trees apparently they are avoiding the trees
and not so much focused on combat.

******Yari Cavalry******

Training time :1 season
Cost: 500
Value : medium
koku per man (training) : 8.33
Clan that specializes in them: Takeda
Requirements: Horse dojo (with spear dojo also)
Maintenance koku : 1 per unit per year
Provinces with honour bonus: Shinano
Best vs : cav archers , archers , gunners ,
Worst Vs: yari samurai , heavy cav , naginita cav,monks , naginita
March speed : 10
Running speed :24
Charging speed: 24
Charge bonus:8
melee bonus : 2
defence bonus: 3
armour level: 3
honour: 2
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability :1535

I love these you can get them extremely early and they utterly raze archers
gunpowder units even no datchi and naginata cav , they also come in
extremely useful during the chase against routed units.They are weak (as
most cav units are) against yari units , though in a supporting or flanking
role
they are good. They also act well as bait when you have a beat up unit with
only a few left to bait those yari troops hiding behind enemy archers.

===uses===

Breaking archer formations

Chasing routed units

used to flank engaged units


===Killing them===

Bait them with archers and when you hear the charge horn move your yari
infront of your archers at the last moment and use those archers in support
they will get massacred , you can also chase them about with other yari cav
and other types of cav.Naginita also stop them in their tracks solidly
allowing you to flank them.Also if you can lead them into trees you can
kill them  easily since cav are weaker in trees.

******Cavalry Archer******

Training time : 1 season
Cost: 500 koku
Value : medium
koku per man (training) : 8.33
Clan that specializes in them: Takeda
Requirements: Archery dojo , horse dojo
Maintenance koku : 1 koku per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus:Shinano
Best vs : Anything their arrows can hit
Worst Vs: fast units.
March speed : 8
Running speed :20
Charging speed: 20
Charge bonus:1
melee bonus : 2
defence bonus: 3
armour level: 0
honour: 0
range(if a ranged unit): 5000
ammo(if a ranged unit):28
power(of projectile) : 0.5
availability :1533

Faster due to mounted on horses I'm not 100% sure but they seem to have
either the same or just a little more range than their foot counter parts they
do
however seem less accurate in getting max of 3 units (in my own tests) per
salvo and that is up close. They carry 28 arrows , with their swords they
make good to chase routing troopers but they get killed easily by yari cav.
Excellent for use with skirmish tactics since they can back up fire back up
and fire to all but other cav units and ashigaru units.I like to use them
to run down no yari units when they run out of arrows.projectile.txt
suggests a shorter range than that of foot archers.I personally hate them
the CPU always uses masses on me on skirmish so they are hard to catch.

===uses===

Harassing enemy units

Chasing routed troops

Skirmishing to death powerful units such as monks

===Killing them===

Its hard to catch them except with yari cav but you can box them in on
impassable ledges and the edges of the map don't try to catch them with
std foot units they'll rout well before your troops can effectively enage
them if the enemy commander has set them to skirmish (I once
lost 2 troops of monks to this tactic).

******Naginata Cavalry******

Training time :1 season
Cost:  450 koku
Value : high
koku per man (training) : 7.50
Clan that specializes in them:  Takeda
Requirements: Horse dojo , famous horse dojo and spear dojo
Maintenance koku : 1 koku per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus:Shinano
Best vs : Foot units
Worst Vs: heavy cav , yari units
March speed : 8
Running speed :16
Charging speed: 20
Charge bonus:4
melee bonus : 5
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 4
honour: 8
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability :1538

Cav with naginata swords they are powerful and useful against almost
anything but they are somewhat slow and die easily when attacked
themselves , they CAN actually attack yari units quite successfully
but they will take some losses more than in normal combat.

===Uses===

Chasing routed troops

Breaking yari formations (just)

Breaking naginita and monk formations

===Killing them===

They seem vulnerable to yari cav and 1:2 combat of yari and combined
naginita

Also you can lead them into trees of hide in trees to get them its even
better if they have to march uphill to get your troops in trees.


******Heavy Cavalry******

Training time :1 season
Cost: 600 koku
Value : V high
koku per man (training) : 10
Clan that specializes in them: Takeda
Requirements: Famous horse dojo and armoury
Maintenance koku : 1 per man per year
Provinces with honour bonus:Shinano
Best vs : Anything you want
Worst Vs: yari , cav archers (skirmish mode is too fast for them)
March speed : 8
Running speed :20
Charging speed: 20
Charge bonus:8
melee bonus : 2
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 3
honour: 2
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA
availability :1538

most dangerous unit that can frontal assault anything and win though only in
1:1 situations as when they go up against 2:1 or 3:1 odds you will lose
them.Pump out lots of them and enemies will fall at your feet easily
awesome in chasing routed troops also.An effective method is to just use
the charge bonus as in attacking in rotating waves , walk a unit near the
enemy unit charge then rout and disengage ASAP then seconds after
lead another charge in , to distract the enemy units to let your first unit
go.Then charge your 3rd unit in to distract away from the second unit
then back to the first , just make sure you have enough room to accelerate
your men to max speed for max charge bonus.

Daimyo are 10 heavy cav guards and 1 Daimyo on heavy horse , they seem to
get replaced for free if any but the Daimyo die.If the daimyo dies from illness
or is killed on the field then this unit becomes standard a standard heavy cav
unit.The daimyo is extra tough but isn't that tough so don't go assaulting
600+ ranks of yari he will take 20 maybe even 50 with him but will eventually
go down.But at honour level 8 he has these abilities (his unit vs).

4 Archer groups*

OR

3 Yari samurai units*

OR

6 Ashigaru units*

OR

mix of cav archers and yari*

*note that although him and his guard can take on so many enemies on higher
difficulty (other than easy normal and hard) he may take less and die faster
due
to the rout factor.Also the rout factor may be decreased if the enemy general
is
at high honour also , use good judgement and don't be doing wild charges
against
rank 6 generals or 8 honour daimyo! .Your own daimyo may well die doing so.

Btw horses
and daimyo don't cost you anything to feed each year (the riders of the horses
not in the daimyo unit don't cost anything though in life or death)

The extra advantage of daimyo is that when his troops die they get replaced
for free and you can attack with impunity losing all but the daimyo in each
battle increasing his honour massively making him and all he commands
unstoppable.Still be wary that he will die sometime after 40 years old from
illness age or ninja blades.So be sure to keep your troops trained up so if
he dies they donot instantly become jelly in battles.

===uses===

Everything except rooting out units from inside forests and assaulting large
columns of yari , unless its ashigaru since they often get scared easily
and run off.

===Killing them===

Overwhelm them or attack them from above .Push yari samurai at them
or lead them into trees.

**********************************************************
Japanese strategic units

Notes - these units require no koku support per year once you have built
them they are yours until the day they die and you don't even have to
feed them.

******Ninja******

training time :1 season
Cost: 200 koku.
Clan that specializes in them: Imagawa.
Production building: Ninja house.
Provinces with honour bonus: Iga.
Best vs : emissaries , low generals , opening castle gates
Worst Vs: geisha , daimyo , heirs , border forts
availability :1531

Useful but only at high honour it seems that it is highly dependant upon
your random number generator in your CPU since I once had a
1 honour ninja kill a Daimyo  butthere you go....You can also open
castle gates with them which is not documented in the manual which
I discovered after laying siege to a citadel and wanted  to assassinate
the enemy Daimyo inside , which = castle garrison dead.NEVER EVER
EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER finally EVER neglect them
have some practicing on emisaries priests and low generals.As if you
do negelect them and you are super superior in battle then enemy
may turn to stealth tactics namely geisha tactics which means you
can't stop her when she comes.


******Shinobi******

training time :1 season
Cost: 100 koku.
Clan that specializes in them: Imagawa.
Production building: Teahouse.
Provinces with honour bonus: Tajima.
Best vs : Christian daimyo
Worst Vs: any where with border forts.* **
availability :1531

*high honour shinobi can evade border forts easily

**in regions with counter spies and border forts you can lose more
than 1 shinobi per season I once lost 5 when I put one into shinobi
production province and border forted area.

Ninja without the assassination ability they act well only really as counter
spies and you can stack them up and have loyalties of over 1000%
(max I have ever  seen is 1399%) so you can produce many of them
keep 2 in each province  and keep the tax rate at punitive without
civvies getting roudy.Beware border forts and other  counter spies
kill them easily even at high honour.Or incitement of revolts.I also
much prefer to use them rather than border forts since :

A you can't see them (if you are enemy but then again the CPU
knows all and sees all)

B it doesn't take up building space

C It can't be used against me if the province is conquered.

V1.2

I kept getting messages that peasant revolts came about either
due to unhappy population natural disaster poor harvest or
shinobi action and I always wondered how you made a revolt.
When one of my provinces with lots of shinobi was taken
by defeat in detail the province just kept revolting against
the enemy.o have a shinobi incite revolts you just move them
into enemy provinces (owned by daimyo as ronin are revolters)
and have them sit and wait stacking them 5-6 for peasant revolts.
Its even better if the daimyo is christian as you can incite
ikki ko buddhist revolts when you use 10-15 shinobi.If you
invade they sometimes side with you but rarely with the
enemy daimyo , sometimes they even come under your
command.If you do this combined with rear area raids
then you can tie up units on the map by making them
have to crush rebellions in their rear areas or suffer
losses in koku.Which ties units up by their movement
back and forth , another side effect is enemy often tries
to garrison provinces to keep them happy.This also ties
up units , and if daimyo are involved in the crushing of
rebellion they can be killed in battle (as each turn you keep
20 shinobi in enemy turf the rebel buddhist army keeps
getting bigger) beware though as you may have to
face them yourself.Also another downside is that if the
revolts are mostly peasant revolts enemies can crush them
easily (usually ashigaru units and archers) and gain
fame and rank as generals making them extremely
deadly on the field.

V2.02 update

I like to have my daimyo unit , with 3-5 shinobi in support
to prevent ninja attack and to prevent other shinobi attacking
them or investigating the army he commands.It may also
stop geisha for a few turns.You may also want to do this with
your high honour generals , which is semi more important
since generals (as long as you don't get them killed in battle)
live forever daimyo age and die from diseases.

******Emissary******

training time : 1 season
Cost: 100 koku.
Clan that specializes in them: -
Production building: Tranquil garden.
Provinces with honour bonus:
Best vs : NA
Worst Vs: NA
availability : from the start

Unit for negotiation ie bribes to enemy armies , and make treaties , though
I bribed a unit once he took the koku and then instantly turned his back
on my to become ronin then became hojo a season later.You ought to
have the throne room turned on later when you have crushed most of
the enemy forces and have him surrounded on all sides with shinobi
and border forts on all sides too.The enemy emissary saves face so much
he says troubles between you and him were caused by ronin and bandits
rather than you crushing his armies and punishing him.Oh and by the way
if you are at war with an enemy daimyo you have to call a ceasefire first
then you can send a request for an alliance.If you are winning heavily
against him he will always agree to both , when he is even or stronger
he may agree then disagree , but you ought to remember alliances
and ceasefires are non binding so if you want to invade right after then
you can this also applies to the enemy treatment of you.


******Jesuit Priest****** (Christian only)

training time :1 season
Cost: 50 koku.
Clan that specializes in them: -
Production building: Church.*
Provinces with honour bonus: -
Best vs : Christian daimyo
Worst Vs: Buddhist daimyo
availability :1545

Same as emissaries but cheaper also they never die when used against
other christian daimyo.Also if you use them you can train them at +2 honour
if you use a cathederal which is a bit pointless since you need major
infrastructure to be able to get that.

V1.8 update
bribing Christian soldiers with a priest is actually more successful than using
a Buddhist priest , you might think how do I get one then? simple:

>1 invade a Christian province you think there is a church which can be
researched with spies , though the church maybe destroyed by your
invading troops

>2 Bribe the ocupying army so no damage is done

>3 Assassinate over and over to clean out the province and move minimal
troops in to prevent damage

>4 Ally with Portuguese then build a temple immediately after renouncing
Christianity


*church requires alliance with Portuguese though it can still be built if you
renounce your faith , though this still affects your population religions.

******Legendary Geisha******

training time: 8 seasons
Cost: 500 koku.
Clan that specializes in them: -
Production building: Geisha house, with legendary tea house and legendary
ninja house
Provinces with honour bonus: -
Best vs : weak generals , emissaries , daiymo heirs
Worst Vs: geisha , daiymo (due to failure rate)
availability :1540

geisha , sometimes good sometimes bad , if your CPU random number
thing is having a good day she can kill ANYBODY easily and no ninja
can ever touch her , but if your CPU number generator has a poor day
she will never kill anybody (in  that she can never find a suitable time
to make her move) and ninja with 0 honour will get her each time though
her usefulness is that borderforts and counterspies don't do anything in
stopping her and her odds in killing Daimyo and his heirs are better.8
seasons is insane though  you could have 8 monk  units 8 heavy
av units , 8 naginita cav units 8 archers or 8 yari no  datchi or 2
kensai or 2 battle ninjas.Consider this before you produce any of them.

V1.1 update

Geisha can miss the tea ceremony (geisha vs geisha) and you can
increase enemy geisha fail rate by use of huge armies (I kept 9000
troops in a provice once) saw geisha attempting to kill my daimyo.
She kept failing and failing eventually turned to my weaker generals
instead.

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                         About the Mongol Campaign


I haven't played this campaign through thoroughly though I have used the
units in some tests in custom battles and here are my general observations
It is supposed to be what the war would have been like if the mongols had
actually landed in japan rather than be destroyed in a giant typhoon named
kamikaze.

I would also comment meat grinder and quarter pounder tactics work
great on the mongols at a logical level at least , because mongols do
not train on the japanese map they are reinforced each winter you can
beat them in attrition by taking as many heads you can till his armies
can be crushed easily.Oh also you can prevent reinforcements by
surrounding the mongols and outnumbering them heavily since mongols
can only get reinforcements by sending loot back to kubai khan and they can
only get this conquering your provinces you can keep them at bay for a
while at least.Though keep garrisons in your northern provinces
that face the sea.

V1.9 Update

Weapons upgrades and armour upgrades apply mostly to custom battles
since you can't actually control how and what condition you get units in
from kublai kahn.It makes it rather a red herring compared to units that
are trained on the japanese main land.



Mongolian invasion infantry

NOTE since you don't actually train your units in the mongol invasions
things such as cost training facilities specialised clan and honour bonuses
is not applicable for these troops.Also there is no diplomacy in the mongol
campaign as hojo or as kublai khan , well there is but its only hojo ninjas
cutting the necks of mongols though rather than ratification of treaties.

******Korean Spearmen******
Cost : NA
Value :NA
koku per man (training) : NA
Best vs : same as Japanese counter part
Worst Vs: same as Japanese counter part
March speed : 6
Running speed :10
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus:0
melee bonus : 0
defence bonus: 1
armour level: 2
honour: -1
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA

Notes
The manual says trained better than ashigaru but less well trained than yari
samurai , they seem to be nearly identical in my view maybe they rout
slightly easier and suffer slightly heavier losses in engagements.

******Korean Guardsmen******
Cost : NA
Value :NA
koku per man (training) : NA
Best vs : same as japanese counter part
Worst Vs: same as japanese counter part
March speed : 5
Running speed :8
Charging speed: 10
Charge bonus:4
melee bonus : 2
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 4
honour: 0
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA

Naginata but in Mongolian uniform and therefore to be deployed and used in
the same way

******Korean Skirmishers******

Cost : NA
Value :NA
koku per man (training) : NA
Best vs : Slow units
Worst Vs: fast units
March speed : 7
Running speed :12
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus:0
melee bonus : 0
defence bonus: 5
armour level: 0
honour: 4
range(if a ranged unit): 1500
ammo(if a ranged unit):4
power(of projectile) : 6

These are nasty they carry about 4* spears but they do have a terrible
weakness they have terrible range but this leads to greater accuracy ,
of a 120 man unit firing on a 60 man unit after 3 tests they get
from 20 up to 40 troops at a time which can utterly destroy enemy
lines , best saved for use against those  pesky kensai and naginitas.
Though beware of using them against cav since they travel
so fast your skirmishers have little chance to loose off their spears before
the cav have them.Also they seem to carry little more than butter knives if
even those at all so they die in huge numbers in melee so keep them
protected.Up to the 3rd row can fire with skirmishers though expect
reduced accuracy though as always with ranged units.Still the beat
skirmishers in AoE2 in which they were truely awful A final note is that
friendly fire can be nasty with them since they DO fire in arcs their
spears can go over friendlyheads , but its not particularly high or far so
you can destroy your lines if you keep them behind other units.

*manual says 3 but in tests its 4

******Thunder Bombers******
Cost : NA
Value :NA
koku per man (training) : NA
Best vs : Anything that is standing or stopped either through being tied
up fighting or in a castle
Worst Vs: fast units good at melee , archers during their own attack
March speed : 6
Running speed :8
Charging speed: 10
Charge bonus:0
melee bonus : -6
defence bonus: -3
armour level: 2
honour: 4
range(if a ranged unit): 1300
ammo(if a ranged unit):4-8
power(of projectile) : 6.0


Ha ha I love these , ever remember in command and conquer in red alert as
the soviets when you made a huge group of grenadiers or flame thrower
infantry? when a allied soldier or emplacement shot your grenadier while
he was just about to toss his grenade he would drop it causing a massive
chain reaction wiping out your entire group.This too can happen to your
thunder bombers if they are in the swinging animation which is quite
amusing .A good use is to tie up an important enemy unit say heavy
cav kensai etc then have your thunder bombers throw grenades into
the melee you WILL take losses but so will the enemy but thats the
life of a simple soldier.I also noticed that when the forget to put
the pin back in whenthey die the chain reaction will take out units in
close proximity friend or foe which can take out important units in
their death throes cruel yes.They do not even seem to carry a
bladed weapon so they die in droves when fighting them hand
to hand , unit sizes are 20 grenades are about 4-8 though I have
never had them survive long enough to make a more accurate count.
In some historical battles you can get units of 100+ of them which
makes them extremely dangerous(mostly to allies)

V1.2 addition

In flat terrain ranks of 2-3 are ok in close formation , wedge is
dangerous to themselves , when using them up hill or into castles
have them in loose formation in no more than ranks of 2 since
they can hit each other in the back or hit the hill infront of them
and have it explode in their faces.Though wedge often limits them
so that only a few can fire at a time which is good since enemy
ranks standing will reorder themselves into neat lines.So you can
keep having 2-3 men throw grenades at the same spot killing
many many enemy.

V1.6 update

using them to fire into blocked bridges into the rear of enemy columns
will score massive casualties and therefore they are most effective in
this role since there is nothing to hide behind , and they will
hit something though potential for friendly fire is medium to high.
Unfortunately you need to under write the risk of using them in a recent
bridge battle between hojo and me with me holding the bridge with
korean guards men and korean spearmen with 4 groups of poppers
behind them throwing bombs at the middle of the bridge they carried
the day.unfortunately bombers often missed their mark and hit my
men or aimed too close , each group had 250+ kills about 70%
enemy 30% friendly fire and suffered -3 honour penalty for that.I
very nearly had that battle lost since he had reserves he didn't put
into the meat grinder but they routed just in time.Test it in custom
battle you'll see obsene results holes where infantry were just
appear after a grenade attack nasty that is.

V1.9 Update

Their grenades are as far as I can tell are linear radii based which
means to you that they have a damage radii which is about 1.5 inches
on a 17 inch screen.All units in this radii seem to suffer the same
damage as if it was hitting them directly.Unlike in UFO enemy
unknown where grenades would be blocked by the bodies of your
troops and enemy troops.And in UFO there is diminishing damage
from the centre of the blast this doesn't happen in shogun to save
CPU time I suppose.

V2.0 update

Grenades are impact explosives and donot bounce and donot
have a timer if they can be thrown they will go off no misfires
like in myth the fallen lords.

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                        Mongolian Cav

******Light Cavalry******
Cost : NA
Value :NA
koku per man (training) : NA
Best vs : Anything but yari
March speed : 10
Running speed :26
Charging speed: 26
Charge bonus:4
melee bonus : 2
defence bonus: 2
armour level: 4
honour: 4
range(if a ranged unit): 5000
ammo(if a ranged unit):28
power(of projectile) : 0.5

Notes

Think of japanese cav heavy cav that is , then give them a bow that
more or less describes them a little weaker perhaps in melee but
enough to take down anything but yari.This in effect makes them
even more annoying than cav archers (japanese) since japanese
cav archers get slaughtered by yari cav and yari units if you can
get them close but they don't do half as well against these.Excellent
against troops on skirmish if you have somewhere to run back to
to prevent engagements though.


******Heavy Cavalry******
Cost : NA
Value :NA
koku per man (training) : NA
Best vs : Anything
Worst Vs: Yari samurai just about
March speed : 10
Running speed :20
Charging speed: 24
Charge bonus:6
melee bonus : 4
defence bonus: 4
armour level: 5
honour: 8
range(if a ranged unit): NA
ammo(if a ranged unit):NA
power(of projectile) : NA

Darn unstoppable things put them in any formation you like charge them</pre><pre id="faqspan-3">
against anything and 1:1 they will tear them apart yari samurai 1:1 will take
them down but when a mongol dies one of you men in that group usually
dies also.Though with any upgrades they do much better.Btw they cannot
be stopped via naginita or heavy cav (in 10 tests 60 naginita then separately
heavy cav they lost 3-6 men while I lost 58-60 depending on if they caught
men who routed at the back), and trample your kensai easily.Wedge seems
extra effective with them.Strangely they are actually yari cav units in mongol
dress though they are much much much more powerful.Grenades work ok
against back runners if thick and long lines are used.



Ashigaru Crossbowmen (Mongol Invasions)+ historical campaign enemy
NOTE these are SAMURAI forces and not Mongol


Training time 1
Cost: 100 koku.
Value :low
koku per man (training) : 1.67
Clan that specializes in them: hojo only
Production building: Archery dojo.
Provinces with honour bonus: Tosa, Owari.
Best vs : Slow units , standing units
Worst Vs: Melee units , fast units cav , archers (due to superior range)
March speed : 7
Running speed :12
Charging speed: 12
Charge bonus:0
melee bonus : -6
defence bonus: -3
armour level: 1
honour: -5
range(if a ranged unit): 4000
ammo(if a ranged unit):16
power(of projectile) : 3
availability :from the start

Terrible terrible units think of musketeers they are nearly exactly the same
but they can fire in the rain and fire in arcs* but they shoot slow take
years to reload and are also ashigaru after all therefore they rout easy.
They carry 16 cross bow bolts they can fire off more than 2 rounds typical
firing time is 10-15 seconds per volley.Also their range is poor compared
with archers.Also I noticed that the CPU can fire through its own troops
and hit yours which is rather strange .

*very very very shallow arcs , the manual says they can't fire over the
heads of their own men but they can to a very limited extent and
you can always try the ofsetting solution so they have a gap to fire
between your own men.

Update - you can use them much the same as gunners so see
the gun combat section for shared tactics.

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#5.1 Map tactics

(these relate almost exclusively to the full campaigns but make of them
what you will)

#1 He who controls the spice , if you ever read Frank herbert's Dune
or seen the film (the original with sting as feyd) there was a bit where
spice is explained , he who controls the spice.... (it might have been
in one of the games spun off the film).But here it is he who controls
the koku controls Japan.Why is this? , well with masses of koku say
at least 10000 profit per year you can produce units with impunity and
pump them out endlessly and throw tactics out of the window , your
main tactic will be 4 heavy cav units 2 yari cav , 8 monk units and
two other units of your choice (I still like archers or kensai).In a battle
you lose you may take 1500+ heads losing 960 yourself in the long
term the poorer daimyo cannot win.(this is a badly frowned upon
tactic called pounding which Napleon and monty did many many times
and cost many lives , since lives in this are not real its ok!).Daimyo
often play the pounder with cheap troops like ashigaru which works
early but is truly deadly with monks and advanced units.

#2More more more!

This relates to tax rates , once you have a stable economy pump out
shinobi (which are free to support anyway) and put 3-4 in each province
and you can set taxes to punitive without rebellions.

#3 Kursk

I name this tactic after the WWII tank battle where superior panzers were
destroyed by larger numbers of inferior T34s , if you move a huge army
or even multiple armies of 16 units (say 960 men in 60 default size units)
on easy and medium 7 out of 10 times the enemy will retreat .Though the
3/10 times they do not can be messy especially if they have over 1500
troops the more the worse , not because you can't take them on but due
to time limits and the random positioning of enemy reiniforcements.Which
the CPU loves to hide in forests miles away so you would be defeated
in that manner rather by losing in the normal way or being slaughtered or
routed.

#3.1

Unfortunately when enemies do retreat and you control the province its
nice , but you do one day have to face this growing army and this can grow
into the high thousands (worse case when I controlled most of the japanese
islands with 3 provinces still held out by hojo by forcing his retreat he
had 4000+ troops against my 9000+ troops).With the time limits set on
attacking side you can lose often in this way.There are ways out of this :

*1 automatically resolving the attack - I hate this since I loose too many
troops vs kills

*2 Having mostly heavy cav and warrior monks so they can march quickly to
each part of the maps and destroy enemy reinforcements that usually only
come in single units until you rout another unit.

*3 Send in ninja geisha etc to assassinate enemy generals (or even Daimyo
and his heirs) then attack since this makes enemy units rout easier
shortening
the time needed to dispatch units

*4 not chase enemy units who rout and keep an eye out for reinforcements
keeping troops in a massive diamond shape so they can kill reinforcements
and support each other in times of need.

*5 use Emissaries to bribe the enemy armies to a reasonable size.

#4 Rear area raid , send in an emissary or ninja or geisha to an enemy
held province on the other side of the map then the next season send
in a large number of troops often rear areas are not garrisoned
or have small garrisons , this only works on provinces with ports.
You can burn the port to prevent the enemy from quickly moving troops to
recapture the province and protect yourself from it by heavily defending
your own ports or burning them.

#5 Rear area raid sacrifice , if you have an opponent who uses the above
tactic you can protect yourself for up to 5 seasons , repeat as above but
after you capture the province evacuate all but a cheap unit. When the
province is attacked burn the port , have the skeleton crew fight to the
death and you are safe  from tactic #4 for up to 5 seasons.Or if the
enemy does not rebuild then for much longer.

#6 Barbarian denial , if you keep getting traders request an audience and
you have lots of koku without the port bonuses burn your ports.

#7 try keep a shinobi or ninja with your famous / legendary / Daimyo
generals since they will nobble any ninja trying to get them most of the
time anyway.

#8 mine complexes require at least a fortress

#9 ports are excellent in koku bonus and cost nothing to maintain so if you
are not too afraid of rear area raids then build them in all costal
provinces.

#10 Have 3-6 ninja on a diet of emissaries and weak generals (or train
them with + honour facilities or provinces or both tactics) as even with
95%  chance of success against the enemy you can still lose your
ninja since they cost nothing to maintain its ok to keep a few around.

#11 Start aggressively since weapons are pretty weak to begin with ,
generals are inexperienced and you can easily wipe out 2 or even 3
Daimyo before they start to have sons or conquer more provinces
and get much stronger units. (my record is wiping out takeda
oda , hojo, Imagawa ,and lots of ronin regions.)Also my record to finish
the game is 1573

#12 if you have lots of koku build castles in each province so you have fall
back positions and backup training facilities should you need lots of
replacements in a short time , they cost nothing to maintain and you
can reclaim about 40%the cost of building them if you know a province will
fall.

#13 Cheaper unit support if you clan specialises in a unit is false
it is only the cost of training that costs less.

#14 You can see who owns what in the throne room map
on the close up map provinces you are not adjacent to you
cannot see who owns them unless you have spies in them.

#15 the amount of red shows how big the army is without spies
though this can be skewed by daimyo , kensai and ninja since
they are full units but less than 60 men significantly.You can use
this as an early assessment of if you can win or not , if you can't
burn all your facilities reclaim some koku.

V1.7update

#16 You maybe unbeatable in battle but geisha especially hostile
ones are nasty very very nasty , I always seemed to win battles
even at 1:2 (me 1) and I held major blockades all around enemy
daimyo provinces , so what does he do he makes geisha and
kills all my heirs on by one then kills me = game over . So the
lesson? , keep heirs safe , accompany some heirs with shinobi
to safe them from ninjas more often than not.When a geisha
comes she will have to work her way through all your heirs or
if she goes for you first then you have heirs to take your place.
Even better you can make your sons sub generals so they are
safer , since only the higher ranking general seems to be
targeted.

But then how do you stop her once she goes on her rampage?
well try train as many ninja as possible especially from
yamashiro and the province above (one in between) and have
these honour 1 ninja attack her she gains honour up to 3 for
surviving assassinations, and you may get 14%<-> 1% chances
but if you throw enough at her luck will eventually run out.You can
keep you daimyo semi safe by surrounding him with troops
whenever there is a full army or more she always can't find a
suitable opportunity .But as said eventually your luck will run
out.You could also cash in your forces ie since geisha come
in so late in the game you can go hell for leather and conquer
the daimyo she is loyal to once he dies she vanishes.
Another is port safety if you have a port transport your
daimyo to the furthest part of the map and burn the port
on the next turn , she will have to walk , which can buy
time enough to throw more ninja at her.

But the best cure is prevention , if you start spying provinces
with legendary tea houses or even geisha houses then attack
that province you probably have 7 seasons to do it in if there
is a geisha house , more if there isn't.But the CPU seems to
cheat now and again I've had geisha come at me when the
enemy has no geisha houses , perhaps he had trained one
earlier and kept her in cold storage till she was needed.

It might be a bug or something but sometimes when you kill
off a faction their ninja and their geisha vanish after a turn (I
controled provinces surrounding takeda once killed him
and all that were left were ronin).Takeda's geisha was still
alive and I was still capturing ninja and would still relentlessly
persue my daimyo and his heirs.So killing a faction isn't
always 100% sucessful in wiping out enemy geisha though
ronin do not seem to train them more rather they gain them
when a faction dies.

Tactic for teams of shinobi to force revolts can be reversed
with horrific effects , I played once and had about 49 of the
provinces several were ronin ,I was going for a record time to
complete the game and therefore left my rear area somewhat
exposed , but left minor garrisons and shinobi at my ports with
ninja support to prevent rear area raids.Now hojo had a port free
and he crammed hundreds of shinobi through that port through
my port losing lots in the process , which led me to think haha
can't do that on me.Unfortunately with one in the net a few extra
go through and after 3 turns , (I didn't keep an eye properly on
the loyalty ratings due to trying to save my last daimyo from 2
geisha stalking him.) 42 of my 49 provinces ally oop'd and revolted
against me lots of ikko koku revolts as well which really ruined
my day since I thought it was in the bag.The counter for this is
when you start aggressively very aggressively slow down if you can't
win by 1555 and start garrisoning your rear areas with at least 2
units and keep an eye out with shift on areas that look shaky.
At major ports (I like to keep 6 major ports with have iron sand
with citedels , and production facilities for most units so I can
quickly train units of 3 armour upgrades and 3 weapons upgrades
at +2 honour and put them in areas that need help) keep 3-4
shinobi maybe more and never leave them unguarded unless
you land lock all your enemies.

This may apply (the garrisoning and shinobi) if you decide to
side with the Portuguese.

Time is precious ok I have fought all the way up to 1623 before
without winning but it is precious in one respect you need to kill
everybody before geisha start to become common later on real
late enemy CPU daimyo think its funny to use 4-5 of them.While
keeping huge armies that can't easily be attacked in all his provinces
and picking off your men (and clan sons) one by one , oh and
it is possible to kill an entire army with 1 geisha it took me 60
seasons to do this but she does not conquer provinces the
province stays aligned to the daimyo it was before but without
any troops in it.

To gain honour for your troops either:

#1 train them in better facilities

#2 have them fight more

#3 Bait siege

Bait sieges mean that you attack a province with a castle with
equal size army as that of the enemy , try defeat them with good
tactics and minimum losses forcing them to retreat to the castle
as usual.Then leave the province on the big map and wait until
that province is reinforced and repeat as often as necessary.
You don't want the enemy army to retreat immediately which is
what they do if they are massively outnumbered , just remember
to let all your men have a slice of the battle to increase honour
collectively.


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#5.2 Combat

Note these are only opening moves and basic tactics that can be
developed  and as combat is random these tactics may or may
not work for you and the ever changing battlefield.

note 2 I also never use group formations if anybody can comment
on their uses then feel free to mail me and credit will be given ,I
just find that line formations combined with close loose and
wedge are effective enough.

X = melee unit (non cav)
o = cav unit
H = archers


The sweeper:(attack and defence)

Requirements :

at least 6 melee units not cav or ashigaru
some archers
some cav

With your 8 units you can form a line of squares 4 men thick almost all
the way across the map if you have more units then you can keep them
behind in reserve to support any enemy action , if enemies have archers
keep in loose formation or bait arrows to any ashigaru units you have
or send in cav to deal with them.





X   X   X   X   X   X

 o        o       o


your intent is to march slowly across the map so that their line meets
with yours best to use monks as the Xs and charge at the last moment
as lines meet , if enemy forces are smaller or archers are pulled back
from the battle then your melee units can support each other and put
up to  3:1 from 3  directions which can make enemies rout easily.If enemy
formations are  much smaller than yours you can even work is as a
giant pacific island wedge being:


X                         X
 X                    X
   X X          X X
o                           o


Your intent is to lure them to attack or be rounded up into the dip in the V
shape and encircle , when this happens they CANNOT run away and it
becomes a slaughter fest if your encirclement is correct very few enemy
troops will survive and your archers can fire into the middle of the circle
from close range and your cav catch any troops who escape.


The funnel (defensive)

Requirements :

Daimyo
heavy cav
some sort of cover at the sides of the battle field
some melee units other than cav

This is a dangerous baiting tactic , Daimyo make extremely tasty targets
for the CPU keep him with 2 cavunits (just not to make it too good
to be true) and wait for the enemy to advance wait till the enemy formation
is ahead of your hidden lines and attack them completely from behind
when they turn to engage from the ambush send in the 2 cav units and
the Daimyo to crush the enemy formation from all sides.This does
require that the enemy units are not 100% yari samurai or naginita
however and doesn't work always since the CPU KNOWS your troops are
there cover or no cover.The Daimyo can also be replaced by a single
archer unit or gunpowder unit.

Chicken (defensive)

I don't like this the CPU tries it on with me all too much , but against a
small  slow force if you have a group of yari cav just have them run in
huge circles around the enemy formation until the time runs out or lead
them into small monk ambushes in trees.

The meat grinder (offensive and defensive)

If you are the richer than rich Daimyo with over 25000 koku per year you
may want to train armies of 12 monk units and 4 heavy cav units , have
them 6 wedges with squares of monks behind them and heavy cav at the
sides and one in the centre.Press ctrl+a click on the nearest enemy
unit , with a force of that size they WILL almost certainly be crushed.
Kill archers that are getting into position to shoot into your monk
formations with your cav units .You want to try to do a leap frog if you
want to be tactical the wedges move then the squares which keeps your
monks rested , PREVENT FLANKING by horses at all costs or you may
lose the entire army.The meat grinder can also be done early on after
2-3 years with yari samurai allowing you to play the big powerful unit
meat grinder.

pelting

Pelting is a horrible tactic I find hojo keeps using on me he has
2 archers units for every melee unit , a melee unit is set to engage
my unit then he moves archers close to the sides and fires into my
melee formation , usually I prevail but lose plentyof troops this is
a variation of the bridge block tactic.Its nasty and annoying try it
yourself.Its even worse with gunners and xbows since they do so much
more damage.It can be done on a massive scale too when entire armies
do this on your army.

Pawns all of them

You need several yari ashigaru units have them proceed out gingerly to
attack the enemy units , hide your more powerful units in trees or keep
them well back , approach an enemy unit then click rout after a very
short fight.The CPU (and many other players) can't resist to chase
them which the probably will do , chasing will tire them out (while
routed troops can run endlessly more or less) and they will meet
your powerful formations and be too tired to fight properly
, though beware this can be reversed many times in battles ,
just don't be too eager to chase routed troops.

Bridge baiting

Often say bitchu there is one bridge lots of enemy forces (say archers cav
and yari or worse) send in a squad of fast troops say yari cav and enemy
troops will move forward often to protect their archers retreat , if your bait
is still in good morale do it again it will waste enemy arrows.If they are
not or you can't be bothered to wait that long send in yari cav while the
yari troopers are turning around to go back to the positions they
occupied earlier you may catch many off their guard.Then pour
your troops  across the bridge head and flank and encircle.

Daimyo death

Daimyo without heir can die on the field , in a battle if you kill a Daimyo
you can end the battle right there and then his forces turn into ronin
and although sometimes cooperative are easy to take apart one by one.
You can also force suicide him by attacking him in a portless province
where he cannot escape to a friendly area (ronin and other daimyo
owned areas do not count as friendly provinces)

He who runs away

Lives to fight another day this is especially true since the CPU rarely
destroys his own beat up units so if enemies rout , and you know
there are no reinforcements destroy them.If the entire army routs
then ctrl+a then hold alt and double click the furthest unit and the
chase will begin .If you want even nastier surprises try to flank
early so you have encircled entire armies there will be very
few to tell the tale.

Waterloo

Since musketeers with bayonettes do not exist a huge group formation
with naginita archers and cav inside can work wonders if you have the
koku its nearly impossible to break into the square since naginita
are so deep and archers can fire at fairly close range into the hordes
who cannot approach.Unless a huge heavy cav and combined monk
force is sent in to break one side of the square at which you are
doomed.


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5.3 Gun combat

(*) <- this denotes a tactic you can use with crossbows

I would note many tactics where relate to musketeers only since they
repeat much faster (12-15 seconds compared to arquebusiers which have
a repeat of about 20-27 seconds so modify these tactics for those
cases when you can't afford that extra 75 koku or trade with the dutch
instead)Also I would note that body counts when large formations
approach my gunners are conducted after the main meat of the battle
I remember where the enemy formation was and count the bodies there
without chasing , it works since I often retreat my gunners behind my
melee units behind my gunners.

(*)Your main aim is to fire at deep targets that is units behind units and
units overlapping and crowded which means they utterly cannot miss
they will hit something.The deeper and more crowded the target area
the more kills , try this experiment.

bitchu defender

(*)3 daimyo vs you with 10 naginita units and 4 units of musketeers
2 yari cav for bait and maybe some no datchi good weather no rain ,
enemy is 48 units (2880 men) of yari samurai a simple battle which
you can barely lose though on paper its very poor odds so many of
them so few of you.But its not so simple the bridge acts as a funnel
choke point and the start of a horrendous meat grinder that if in real
life you saw the river would turn red al la than film I saw once and your
hair would go white.

You want to line your musketeers to the left and right of the bridge
in double row with the 3rd unit on the left side double rank above
on the slope the front gunners.Now wait , enemies will come a
chargin' at you (keep gunners on fire at will , hold position and
hold formation and naginita at the mouth of the bridge).With so
many enemy daimyo they often attack together and overlap
each other and crowd each other massively.Now draw an imaginary
line 25% across from the bridge (from your side) now let them come
keep your naginita fighting altogether (all 10 units) on the first 10%
of the bridge and charge only at the last moment.Watch how many
men gunners take down you can get near 1 gun = 1 man with the
crowds and if you keep this up (and bait enemies to keep
coming at you never chasing and never moving your units
past the 10% marker) and look at the stats at the end I have
had stats of each gunner unit taking 3 casulties from friendly
fire and each unit taking 500+ enemies each a mamoth 2000
+/- enemy killed just by them since my total kills was 2462 only
512 kills were from melee.Still this is a special case since its
obvious this can only be done on bridges but it demonstrates
why you need to go after crowds.Though some of my gunners
decided to be snipers and took some good long range pot shots
which missed their initial targets but hit something behind that
target ha.Which demostrates the depth principle on a normal
field of battle sans river 2-3 units working in partnership or
choke points you form yourself can be used this way.A good
example is yari and archers they are often together which is
a fair gun target.With 4 gunners you can take around 60-120
men per full volley (if you have synchronised their firing).Each unit
has the potential for 2400 kills you can get up to 30-40% of this
potential in giant battles such as the above , or even more if
you consider that they don't actually fire off all their shots.

The counter point to this is that when near the end of the battle
when enemy units rally and come at you in drips and drabs
(unit sizes of 3-15) your gunners miss quite often and you
will only get 3-5 men per unit per unit volley.

There is another demo shown here in that you should try your
gunners at different honour levels when they are at 0-2 after the
battle the concentration of enemy dead are around the end and
span of the bridge.At 5-9 honour the enemy dead are scattered
further away from the bridge at the opposing end rather than before
on the bridge (although there are lots of dead on the bridge and close
to it).Although the range of the guns does not change it is the
honour that affects the accuracy and confidence of their shooting.
As with fire at will high honour units will fire at longer range since
they are much more confident of hitting something than lower honour
units.So you may have to order your lower honour gunners to
fire manually when at longer range to get the 22 second shot
gap.(note this assumes that you donot chase the enemy and
never cross the bridge itself as a static defence , though you can
have your melee units charge enemy units on the bridge you
hald them once the enemy resolve fails).


I would also like to note that in rain muskets can fire but depending on
the severity of the rain a number of your men will misfire , watch them
in a 2 man rank during the rain.Only about 5-15 men will be able to
fire in the rain which seems to be confirmed by the amount of ammo
depleted.

(*)I actually experimented with these guys they work well with yari ashigaru
if you have 2 gunner units and 1 ashigaru unit then you use the yari as
bait , and form a giant V shape :

   FFFF
 G        G
G            G
G            G

F = yari ashigaru
G = gunners

The logic of this is that the yari are a tempting and weak target which the
AI goes after alot in a charge skirmish setting ashigaru formation the enemy
will berak rank and become a swarm.Your gunners can fire in ranks of 2-3 and
take out up to 23 troops per volley.Since they are at very close range and
are caught in a cross fire and the approaching formation has no open space
to avoid the shots , this also works well with arquebusiers .However there
are fundamental disadvantages to this , for a start you need 3 units at
least to do this tactic in a 16 unit army 3 monks or 2 monks and some
cav will serve you much much better.Also it does not work in rain and
needs somewhat flat terrain to succeed , also you may need defenders
for the gunners which tie up even more of your units , just in case the
approaching unit turns on your gunners in which case you are in serious
trouble.In single line they can manage a shot from 12-17 seconds.Multiple
lines I can never tell since enemies always seem to engage them before a
second shot is fired.

After careful experimentation against all troop types in a 1:1 basis (foot
troops not cav) they are actually useful if you can get them to at least
to honour 5 and with 3 weapons upgrades , to use them hold them from
firing until they are about a river apart (measure the river in bitchu on
your screen) then let them rip in single line (it is better on bitchu since
there is a horrible choke point of the bridge) and you can take out 23 units
on the first shot.On the second shot (which even with enemy charging
at you) will come just before hand to hand is engaged (remember to
turn off skirmish to hold formation and hold position) you can take
out up to 35 troops.The way to use them is to stop them firing until
the enemy is 17 seconds away to fit in a long burst and a super close
burst.Much of the time the enemy routs (who wouldn't when you are
suddenly surrounded by your comrades most of them die).Though
the conditions for this sort of use is the enemy stays bunched up
in close formation , wedge or a bridge crossing column , when ever
an enemy changed to loose formation I got about 9 per volley , then
13 max on the next which still leaves many to engage your gunners.
Still I prefer warrior monks and cav.Also your gunners will not gain
honour for this but they do still have 38 shots left which means if you
rotate gunners you can (say 3 units single line fire , run back , have
a line just behind them sort of a manual line rotation when you use
ranks of 2-3 you can utterly take down approaching enemy lines)
though cav WILL destroy your gunners and archers will also outrange
them..

I have changed my mind , though I do still prefer monks they have
their uses , and can be extremely nasty to the enemy ,though you
need 2:1 and a relatively slow unit (any cav will still cut them to bits)
turn on hold formation , turn on hold position and turn off fire at will.
have them in single file , if there isn't room or you have support from
more gunners have them in a 2 man thick rank , fire at the 18 second
gap.Have your other group fire at the same time , the next volley will
come in about 5-7 seconds from the back row waterloo style , and
you can take out 45-59 units in these 18 seconds only suffering 1-2
losses if you are careless in their placement or your men shoot
each other in the back, though somehow whenever I did this the
enemy did not rout.Still if they are engaged you can sacrifice your
men by having them fire at will , some will target the strays you
missed on the 4 volleys , some of your men will target other
approaching columns.I have to note though it has extreme power
it has extreme vulnerability as before to cav unless you can catch
them in a 3:1 (3 gunners units all 2 man deep rank
in a huge V and you will create a giant trap which anything in the
crossfire will not survive except a few lucky (or rather unlucky since
they will have to engage enemy units alone and they aren't kensai).
Also it relies heavily again upon not being attacked with more units
than you have gunners , in 1:1 (unit 60vs60) you will take a huge
number of heads but you will most probably lose your gunners
unless you have extreme luck.

But it doesn't work in rain and as said before is vulnerable
dependent upon your luck of the CPU number generator so
best have some naginita / yari samurai defend them.Which
is bad since it ties up units.

(*)With gunners and melee units after the first exchanges and with
melee units if you can move your gunners round to the side
or better the rear of the rabble fire at the enemy from behind.
Often the enemy is tied up and cannot disengage and queues
up behind the front line folks and you can pick them off easily
though you may lose a few troops it is terrible for enemy morale.

(*)NEVER EVER EVER put units amongst or ahead of your gunners
I once did this in the heat of battle and misclicked , they can
devastate your own forces , units may try to shoot through the
gaps between your men but they often fail , since it is so close
you can lose 40+ units in a single volley and it can really spoil
your day.the only exceptions to this are height differences between
your gunners and front ranking units and when your gunners
have high honour (at about 5 which is pretty hard to get to
in reality but that is what custom battles are for)where they
have great accuracy.

(*)But you can do this if there is a height difference a the bigger
the better put a defensive unit in front of it to absorb the charge
and your gunners can fire over the heads of your defending units
but it works best usually on a unit waiting behind the fighting
unit (enemy) since there is a bigger elevation angle and there
is less chance of friendly fire.With those huge differences on some
maps you can keep musketeers super close and take 30+ per
volley and your defence team can clean up.If they rout you can
chase with the gunners.An example is Bitchu where there is a
slight hill to one side of the bridge (if you are the defender then
looking down the bridge it is on the right hand side) you can keep
a small squad of gunners up there and fire into the crowd just
behind your defence team.Just make sure that your defence team
isn't flanked so they go for the gunners , which is double trouble
since they attack from a height advantage AND attack your
weaker units first.The way around that is a possible complete
line across the map though your mileage may vary on this
since not all maps are perfect.

(*)With height difference if there is a slope that means a 2 or 3
rank deep gunner unit is standing on it sometimes the gunners
behind can fire at the same time as the front runners , this
does mean than you can't keep a constant rate (ie one line
runs to the front fires , runs to the back reloads while another
line runs to the front and fires etc) which means you can cram
more firepower into much less space.On the defending side
of Bitchu the edge of the bank (on both sides of the bridge) is
just enough of a incline to allow some of your troops on the
rear ranks to fire at the same time.

In rain if you are pretty confident you have enough melee units
to protect your gunners or can keep them out of harms way the
keep them on the field.use them for the chase when the enemy
routs , since they are ashigaru units they can move quickly and
take many many heads , which is an excellent way to gain
honour for them since shooting doesn't really earn too much.This
extra honour can make them lethal.

(*)There are exceptions though when you can have skeleton crews
of dedicated melee units , when your men get high honour (the
gunners) you can really play 16 men deep lines its better as
always on hills since you get extra safety.have 12 units of
gunners in single line with the 4 extra units in the wings for
support and prevention of flanking.And you can have them hold
position fire over and over over each others shoulders which
means you can have an horrible kill zone in front of your men
one entire unit long , you will lose a few but hey that is the
price of kill zones.If enemies come in 2-3 units they get
shot to pieces and often rout , if enemies come in force
and attack with huge numbers of units you get the chance
to fire into huge crowds and take massive head counts.When
the get close you can rotate the front row to the back and
have a backwards moving waterloo type line.With such
losses the enemy will be seriously weakened and your 4
units can fight quite effectively.At which you can move your
guns round to the sides and fire into the enemy sides and rear
awesome , and hard to do.A note is to keep ranks straight
have hold position and hold formation turned on and when
people start to walk halt them.

(*)Using them again with bridges you can have them at 45 degrees
to the bridge away to the sides , if you put troops in to fight and
block the bridge you get a huge traffic jam.With your gunners
firing into this mass of men your gunners cannot miss and will
score huge casualties on the enemy , you maybe surprised how
much the green bar grows if you get it right , don't use free fire
mode though you may kill your own manually target the middle
and rear of the column, archers are good in this way too.

Guns on cav , this is a difficult one you just want to go 2:1 or
3:1 vs cav firing a couple of seconds after they come into range
and gambling on if you can get a 2nd super close shot.With
multiple lines you can waterloo , that is to have 3 units ranked
2 men deep.Of this you fire twice (once for each rank) then have
them run behind your next line , have them fire repeat with the
last line , the problem is that cav are so powerful vs gunners
that even a few left can seriously damage your forces .

There is a minor tactic that sometimes works and sometimes
does not with high honour daimyo on the field (yours) it might work
well.Or could fail badly , its the English gun line combined with
the highland charge , you want a single line fire once at max
range then once at close range then charge , since both shots
will reduce numbers of the enemy heavily you will win on weight
of numbers.Which is quite sucessful all units have trouble when
they are heavily outnumbered. (on the training mission where you
have a group of archers on a hill top and yari samurai approaching
you , you can defeat them by reducing their numbers so you get
3-2 odds and therefore win marginally).

Multiple ranks on hills seem able to fire over the heads of units
infront of them , either that or it was a lucky miss since I have
not tested this conclusively. I have done this only once on that
large province on the right of the map after which I was routed
(they had as a counter attack 8 heavy cav and 2 monk squads
while I had 2 gunners and a rank of monks)

You can experiment on line formations of 2 men thick and put
men in-between each other so that they do form a near solid line
and do not hit each other , this needs patience to form up and
often they donot stand on the same place after a few shots.But
it can be extra devastating since you get the full firepower of
a single burst (ie 50% x2) but a fast repeat when the men from
behind do the same.All this is in the same area of effect rather
than spread out when you use separate ranks standing independent
of each other.Gives a shot once every 8-10 seconds at full power
, and makes these boys nearly impossible to approach , just
remember to have hold formation and hold position on and manually
adjust the fire at will button , you can also do this staggered
to have a 50% power shot ever 4 seconds which is quite effective
but I suppose I enjoy it when my men fire and 40+ men fall

example is:

X = gunner

X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X
X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X
  X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X   X

However don't stack them too close or have 2 units in the same space

etc

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

When I say this I mean a melee unit in the x space since some of the
gunners will think I haven't got a clear shot and will not fire reducing
the effect of each volley though this only seems to be troublesome
in 120 man unit sizes.

Guns on guns is an iffy one if you are standing waiting for gunners
to come into range you will win , if you are approaching and want
to fire on a unit watch his men.The second the kneel and aim , open
formation and stand firm they'll fire at maximum range taking at most
10 men.Run forward and take your shot and you'll get it closer and
have deadlier effect.Since I'm assuming (dangerous) that you will
use muskets that have a higher cycle rate and well ordered troops.

OR

Stop just outside maximum range to goad the enemy into walking
forward a few steps therefore being in range , you shoot first , many
of his men fall therefore those dead cannot shoot.Run back a bit
to stay out of range then repeat.

Same as the C&C tactic those who are dead cannot hurt you so
get the first shot if possible.Though remember this is guns vs guns
with any supporting enemy units the outcome is unpredictable.Though
with more enemy units you may score more but there will be more
of them left to massacre you.

The fuse , I name this the fuse , when faced with small units say
ninja or daimyo or beat up units .After the customary shots and they
surviving enemy engages your troops you want to turn the formation
into a 2-3 man thick line with the thin part facing the enemy unit.
They will be busy killing your men at the end this buys the time
for the rest to reload , and either shoot up close or get a shot in
when the man next to him falls.Which will slowly reduce the enemy
formation to nothing.Though this is extremely wasteful but its better
than losing the entire unit , especially when you have no options.


Rout lines

This is an interesting tactic I tried once when I was really being
battered on all sides had little koku to spare to invested heavily
in guns I held 9 provinces (Western Japan) all with ports which
were conquered from Hojo.All had ports and all had guns each
port had 6 shinobi and many had border forts and I was poor.But
to my advantage was masses of guns and many many rank 5
generals.

Thing is the other side (takeda I think) had lots of troops ready to
pounce , since he could not sea attack me he had to come through
the small island to the west.He also had a rank 6 general and
lots and lots of foot soldiers.So here is something to try (adapt
to your own situations) (works best on foot troops cav is v hard to
keep rank and file and destroy large groups).Also note you have
to sacrifice territory for this (sort of like NATO vs WARSAW pact)


Defence battle

1xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                  DDDDDDDDDD
2xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
3xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
4xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
6xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
7xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
8xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
9xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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11xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
12xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
13xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
14xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
15xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Legend

x = gunner
DDDDDDDDDD = daimyo / high general

What you want to do is start like the diagram with all units at hold fire
and the high general (make sure it is a fast unit daimyo is on horse
therefore fast enough).First line fire two shots one max range (have high
honour gunners at front for longest range).Then rout that unit move the
high general behind line #2 infront of line #3 .Have line #2 fire ASAP
rout line #2.Repeat the enemy will have 16 volleys of hot lead fired at
them which causes massive damage.

now if you have room on the map try to reform this line again with the
daimyo / high honour general you get easier rallies and reform as
many lines as possible.Fire as many as possible till the enemy is near
then sacrifce 2 lines of gunners (one infront of the other so the rear can
fire while the front line is being massacred)

If possible reform again further back , if not run like the wind off the map
you should have done major damage to the enemy forces paid ideally only
2 units and one province.And gotten 600-1300 heads which makes a counter
attack easier , true the enemy general will get +1 battle win but with less
troops it might be easier to take him on in a later counter attack.


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5.31 Arquebusiers vs musketeers

When going about my daily business I heard somebody once say
arqebusiers are more lethal at close range than musketeers because
once at close range I let loose a volley and 30+ heavy cav units
fell at my feet and routed."Yeah" he said ," but musketeers have
much better ability to shoot at long range"."The assumption
being that enemy will never get close to enemy units"
<snip>

So what did I do I tested it here are my results based on the map
4th kanekawa on the flatish bit of land just to the left of where you
start in a custom battle vs 1 unit of heavy cav.All units 0 honour
no weapons upgrades and no armour upgrades.At the range when
heavy cav have the status of attacking when they run up to your
units.All gunners had hold position and fire and hold formation and
were allowed to fire at will when the enemy status was on attacking
played at normal all without rain.


Arquebusiers double ranked men

Test:

>1 = 17 kills
>2 = 14 kills
>3 = 18 kills
>4 = 18 kills

average = 16.75 kills
0.2791 kills perman

Arquebusiers single ranked men

Test

>1 = 19 kills
>2 = 11 kills
>3 = 12 kills
>4 = 14 kills

average = 14
0.2333 kills per man


musketeers double ranked men

Test:

>1 = 22 kills + taisho and rout
>2 = 21 kills
>3 = 19 kills
>4 = 20 kills


average = 20.5
0.3416 kills per man

musketeers single ranked men

Test

>1 = 22 kills + taisho and rout
>2 = 21 kills + taisho and rout
>3 = 19 kills + taisho and rout
>4 = 20 kills + taisho and rout

average = 20.5
0.3416 kills per man

So in my tests I find on average in 4 tests that musketeers are
deadlier at long and short range though these are no way 100%
conclusive tests and such situations may or may not be repeated
in battle.This sort of makes musketeers deadlier since they can
shoot with ok accuracy at long range and due to their shorter
turn around time get a close up shot.


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#6 Misc notes - battlefield

Don't always chase routed troops there maybe reinforcements on the
way check  troop numbers before each battle even just with a passing
glance , it could be a trap.

Outnumbered troops fight very poorly , try defeat in detail tactics

Remember shogun is an attrition combat game not a loss less combat
game such  as homeworld where your fighter squads can fight kill the
enemy and be barely damaged , Losses are normal even when troop
status is at winning easily , unless the enemy routs almost instantly.
When I first began to play I was over protective of troops and withdrew
them at critical moments losing battles let them fight it out.

Ronin can actually fight as allies for you though after the battle you will
have to fight them.

When fighting with allies let the allies attack first no matter what the
status of your units neglect that extra head count and honour , let the
enemy get  tired killing your allies , as eventually allies break apart
and you will have to face those troops yourself one day.If you don't
like your ally or if they are stated as neutral and may fight anyside
you can alt click them to kill them also.I would note who has the most
men standing at the end of the battle takes the province.

Unless a general is seriously demoralising his troops never destroy
units use them as scouts , bait or suicide troopers.

I cannot vouch 100% for this but winning battles seems to = heirs when I
first started to play I was highly defensive and kept mostly to myself
and got a heir after 9 years when fighting and winning I got a heir after
one year.

Unless there are too many enemy troops (5500+) command attacks and
defence personally you will almost always take more heads than the
computer auto resolving will and possibly even win (by cheap tactics
like the timer perhaps note I used to have this at 1500 but it seems I
got better)*though you can try

*during a recent massive massive massive battle my 1752 troops went
up against 9800 troops and it was an utter massacre , I think maybe the
CPU gets busy or something but in that huge battle enemy reinforcements
often stood around doing nothing , even getting pelted by my arrows,
in front of my units,If you spot this you can get an easy massacre by
using a mutlidirectional attack 2 , 3 or 4 side attack and you will
barely lose any men.But when in titanic battles yari cav are useful
to chase routed troops while your main force engages reinforcements.

When it says reinforcements have arrived it means your reinforcements ,
enemy reinforcements do not announce themselves they march onto
the map.

When armies are divided and the camera cannot reach double click on the
unit banner (the bar at the bottom of the screen) and it will fly to that unit

To speed up the flight movement press any of the arrow keys and the
transition is instant though sometimes disorientating.

daiyamo should not really be led onto a battle field unless you are short on
troops their unit is of 11 heavy cav which is signifantly weaker than a full
unit.Also on the field they can die somewhat easily an arrow here an arrow
there a surprise attack and you are toast , taisho are much more disposable.

morale states-

Impetous
Steady*
Uncertain
Wavering
Running away
[withdrawing]

The presence of warrior monks usually makes units start at steady
rather than impetous.

Combat states

Winning easily
Winning slightly
Evenly matched
losing slightly
Losing badly

Though these should not be taken at face value when attacking with naginita
it often swings from both extremes.

Energy states

Fresh
Quite fresh
tired
quite tired
exhausted
competely exhausted

It can take up to 6 minutes for any unit to recover from complete exhaustion
to quite fresh , I don't know the full effects of energy states but charges
can't
be maintained and I think attack defence and speed would be affected.

There are errors on the beach maps an in kublai khan maps , where enemy
units can get into places where your troops cannot , this can cause losses
through timer which is cheap.try to approach the stuck enemy unit from a
different angle if they are stuck or use archers to reach out and touch those
units.

That also applies to map edges units stop the chase after they get to near
the edge of the map , you can catch a few more units with arrows in the
back.

In massive massive massive battles where every daimyo (rare) is against
you and there are ronin also positions may change.Normally on each map
there is a defender starting area and an attacker(s) starting area , in these
huge battles the computer sometimes runs out of space to put all these
enemy and put them on your side of the map.This can really knobble tactics
like at bitchu normally you are defending against a bridge crosser but with
huge battles sometimes they start on your side to the left and the right.
Which makes it just that bit harder.



*****************************************************************************

#6.1 Misc notes - map

Geisha are expensive in time terms don't use geisha against geisha you'll</pre><pre id="faqspan-4">
kill the enemy geisha but lose yours also , use a ninja or something.

You can keep your ports semi safe by garrisoning them or keeping ninja /
shinobi or border forts in them when an emissary ninja or shinobi (enemy)
comes to try instigate a rear area raid you can assassinate emissaries
and capture enemy shinobi and ninja.

Heirs , daiymo and famous generals cannot be bribed no matter how much
koku you try to give them.Still , if you use a ninja to kill the heir then they
may or may not sucumb to your pots of gold.

It is possible to make a general , like manufactured bands , if you just
combine weak armies into bigger ones the status of generals becomes
better as the army size increases so you gain honour bonuses without
having to fight.Though it is rather hit and miss.

You can deny enemies heavy cav and naginita cav by conquering provinces
with iron sand deposits.

Diluting isn't as serious a deal as the manual makes of it mixing 0 honour with
5 honour units will reduce the overall honour but I find honour doesn't make
that much difference the major factor being numbers and koku.

Never let heirs become ashigaru heirs are useful when a random event kills
you this also applies to kensai.And ashigaru die so easily in battle , they
are much better as heavy cav monks or naginita since there are good honour
bonuses for troops under them.

Never let ashigaru become generals either have them as support units let the
samurai be the commanders , so you don't get the "your general is doing you
a great dishonour and is running away like a dog" as this may not turn the
battle but causes morale to fall.

When going up against an evil ninja favoured daiymo pump out shinobi and
build border forts to keep your best generals alive.Or invade provinces
where there are advanced ninja facilities , this also applies to geisha
though  they are less of a problem due to their training time of 8 seasons.

Enemy units cannot be starved to death outside castles , when you lack koku
units are destroyed since you can't feed them I assume they starve to death.
late in the game I forced major retreats to the hojo capital and surrounded
a province with 5 960 man armies in each.His retreats consolidated all his
troops into a 220 koku area with a mine complex potentially giving him 440 koku
from improved farm land and 800 koku from mines and 500 from trade.that is
about 1500 koku = 1500 max troop support per year, (I exhausted his spares
through forcing him to produce units to defend against my raids I
think).However
he kept over 12000 troops in that single province only a few hundred being
ashigaru units.After 23 seasons of this stalemate none of his troops died
from lack of koku , maybe they are cannibalistic against the peasants of the
region.

Once you have land locked an enemy clan you can build castles and
ports at all of your coastal provinces beefing up your income heavily
even if you reduce the tax rate.

tax rates

Very low = 75%
Low = 90%
normal 100%*
high = 110%*
punitive 120%*

*I'm not really sure how somebody would pay 100%+ of his income I
suppose it includes labour though a low tax being 75 and 90% are
pretty insane anyway.But at punitive you get 10 koku more than the
farm income and at 5 at high tax levels.Though tax isn't really a way
to effectively control the peasants in my view shinobi and garrisons
are much better.

on maps where the description says it is easily defendable with you
as an attacker ALWAYS attack personally since the computer gives
this as a massive advantage often putting 5000+ men into a region
vs 900 and automatically resolving the attack with me losing 2000+
and the enemy losing less than 200.The inverse is true though.

You can see what areas have what specialities by just looking at the
map a bucket indicates minerals either ironsands or something that
you can mine for extra koku.A horse represents better cav al la
shinano.

A cheap(ish) way to gain extra honour for you ninja and or geisha (up
to 6 I think correct me if I am wrong) is to attack a ronin province
(ronin is better since they donot reinforce each other as much as
daimyo do) with 1 yari ashigaru unit then you can do two things:

have the computer auto resolve the attack where you will most
likely lose , repeat until the enemy general gets high in rank and
practice you geisha and ninja against this general , repeat over
until you have +4.Or look for super high ranked generals at a
max of 6 which will boost your geisha stats up considerably.
And make her impossible to stop even with other geisha since
sh (yours) can evade the enemy geisha's tea ceremony. At +4
your ninja (if he survives that long) and geisha can go after
bigger targets to attain the +6 rating.

Go into battle and immediately rout your general will get -1 but
who cares its only yari ashigaru and he leads no units but his
own and eventualally you won't even have to rout them they will
run scared themselves.This counts as a win and you can repeat
over and over (at the expense of time only) and use your
ninja and geisha on them to beef up their honour levels.Ninja
for countering geisha , geisha for kills.As the message :

even loyal retainers sometimes cannot be trusted

is annoying and pretty scary since it can mean game over
no matter how many troops you have on the field about
to inflict that killer blow on that last enemy daimyo...

Still against daimyo you can assign more than one geisha
for assassination mission.On expert mode I have had 3 chase
my daimyo sometimes.

alliances with portugese and the dutch are also worth 200
koku units per year.

You don't actually have a capital as I first thought your sons
are born wherever and they become generals when they mature
at the place where a unit is next produced I think from the left
of them map to the right.Though do make him a general as if
you donot then when you (daimyo) dies your heir will not take
over your position.

You might sometimes see clans come back from the dead
unfortunately when your last daimyo dies the game is over.

Be swift when you have no heirs left and it is past 1590 since
I never seem to get heirs after then , if you can certainly die
from old age and lose the game , if you are the only daimyo
left all of japan becomes ronin.Sort or much like the 1580
start where about 52 of all provinces are ronin.

Its a lie ronin and bandits can act in in unison and will gang
up on different provinces acting almost like daimyo but
without the strategic units.Though rear area raids seem
rare still though.

Ninja are a big pain especially when the enemy has a high
honour ninja and eh is killing off your generals one by one
although the CPU knows where your shinobi are you can
stop ninja by putting high value targets relatively alone in
an area full of shinobi.Unlike towers they cannot be seen
by the enemy and you can execute any ninjas they send to
you .Targets that the CPU always seems to go for are my
emissaries heirs and high ranked generals.

There is an excellent cheaty way to get troops of all types
for very little investment , on your front lines put up to 25
shinobi (2500 koku + 1000 odd for the facilities to train them)
Then if an enemy attacks and conquers the province (which
you can leave it skeleton crew'd if you want to act as bait)
they easily revolt and turn into troops under your command.
At which you can fight or rout them to a nearby province with
enough shinobi you can get 600+ troops of varying kinds
for free each turn.Until the enemy puts in many shinobi of
his own or is killed and does not try to hold the province.
Though I have yet to get kensai heavy cav or gunners.If you
retreat them into a friendly province you can build up huge
numbers of them so quickly that it would take years to train
them all (some of them sometimes come with upgrades
as well) that you can do this for 8 seasons then move your
own troops in to force them to retreat.At that you can clean
up his provinces by force retreating.

A general at -4 ranking will automatically commit suicide oh the
shame the shame.....

#6.2 Ninja Training

I've been asked repeatedly on how to build up your ninja since they
die so easily , I'm not a huge fan of ninja myself but I'll run you through
what I know , this is from a basic ninja house but you can adapt
them to beef them up even more.They start out really fragile and
they need some more real life training as the stuff they learn in
the ninja house just doesn't cut it (excuse the pun).

First ninja are a game of numbers ever play roulette or lottery? well
if you decide to go ninja you want to make lots of them about 30
since we expect most of them to die (put aside the 6000 koku
for them).Now we can go two routes :

>1 lucky
>2 Long haul

>1 Lucky

I'm not a firm believer in luck I prefer skill to luck but find a high
honour general / high command general or diplomat or priest and
keep attacking him with ninja eventually one will get him and earn
rank according to the target rank.Though this is wasteful and very
dependant on chance you often play 1%< on odds of getting a
good kill and still have to escape detection after you get the kill
nothing quite as annoying as that.

>2 Long haul

Ok you have your ninja so lets wipe out weak targets like diplomats
and low general (ronin generals are excellent since they don't often
build border forts).Now a few will die in this process and steadily
keep attacking for a year or so (keep producing ninja) as more will
die (yours and theirs) and you will get several survivors, now you want
to use these survivors on higher generals.

So this means going to the enemy but wait border forts can really easily
kill your ninja so lets see make a diplomat and a shinobi.Put a diplomat
into an enemy (or allied) province. End your turn and check if there are
border forts , if there are not and the emissary does not get murdered
there is probably no ninja there either.Send in your shinobi to check on
shinobi presence if he dies quickly then don't send in your ninja as
he will probably be caught and die.Target another province and repeat.
Steadily work up to more generals trying not to get % odds of less
than 60% (remember it might be 50% odds but that also means 50%
odds of getting your man killed).In the mean time keep training up
ninja to repeat the cycle and eventually you will have several 5-6
star ninja , but that does not make him invincible.Keep several around
to take out geisha.For the time of one geisha you can make 8 ninja
so go figure playing lucky on her for quick rank gains.

>3 Logistics

Ie get +2 honour ninja from Geisha houses though when you have
one of those you might want geisha , then use the tactics as
described above to get them to +3> honour.

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#7 Castle attacks

Castle attacks are pretty easy and extremely unrealistic (see
Ran for some castle attacks) in that they are tiny castles with
pathetic walls which you can't set fire to or use siege weapons
against.

Note castle attacks are all the same* they are always one of the
maps you can choose on the custom battle map choosing screen
so you can practice attacking and defending them with different
combinations of troops.I personally think a castle with many naginita
cav archers and 2 kensai with monks filling in any of the spaces or
yari to stop your horses is a tough combination.Yari ashigaru are
slightly more dangerous here too as they cannot rout and they
must fight , normally in an ashigaru engagement after killing 10-20
of them they rout but here they fight to the death as rout is not
an option.

*in historical battles and campaigns castles are different from the
default few that you see in sengoku jidai.Still the castles in the
historical missions are much the same or even easier to overcome
and defend since they are built on flat ground and not always a
plateau.

Ending a siege by storming the castle:

Essentially you want to wait until archers and other long range units are
dead through attrition of waiting.When you do this you can use your own
archers to fire into the castle , on easy you can sit just outside the gates
and exhaust all your arrows depleting a major number of troops inside
before putting your melee units in.Kensai (2+) are almost perfect for this.

If there are archers behind the men at the gates exhaust their arrows(since
they are particularly lethal due to the choke point effect of the gate)
with yari ashigaru units at maximum range it may take 5 minutes off your
attack timer (this does not work for unlimited ammo settings) then charge
in.You have to remember the siegees cannot rout except back into the castle
if you have them send in ashigaru units to tire out the defenders , then
match units and charge in once you have a foot hold ctrl+a and charge in
and overwhelm enemy units.Ideally this only works if you have many many
more troops than they have in the castle , though you can reduce their
numerical advantage through waiting extra seasons.

At higher difficulty levels enemies will charge out to meet your forces
so you need to defend those archers as they fire into the castle, if you
haev multiple armies you can even self rout (or with draw rout is faster
but = -honour) and have more archer reinforcements arrive if time allows
it.There is also no real need to target the general since that only reduces
their morale and since they fight to the death (defenders) they won't rout
anyway.

Gunpowder units should be attacked in the rain or baited with ashigaru
units at maximum range to exhaust them and their ammo or even wait for
rain.

a really easy way to get a castle is to use a ninja to open the gates
you lose 0 men but the enemy suffers 100% casualties.

If you are rich rich rich and have kensai lots of them that is have them
in the thick of it as much as possible too beef up their experience
points and have them with 3 armour and 3 weapons upgrades ,
alone they can handle up to 900 men if you use about 5 of them
since alone they are strong , but they synergise and become even
more lethal.

Keep your eyes open also , often I've seen the CPU do this it doesn't
keep all its troops inside the castle and tries to do a two way attack
on you surrounding your frontal units , as a counter keep a few back
if you can spare any or anticipate that.Or if you have time kill them
first then attack the castle.

Breaking a siege

This is actually quite tough especially if you have a small army in the
ideal world you have archers naginita etc , keep naginita in tight
formation around the gate (loosen them if arrows start a flyin') and keep
archers firing at the gate , you want to produce a funnel effect.A kill
zone if you will naginita hold position while enemy have to run the gaunt
let of massive arrow barrages walk up the hills and get tired.You only need
to hold out for 35 minutes max.Though your arrows may not last that long
have your archers hold fire unit they are very close as you get a better
hit ratio.If the enemy is a meat grinder your naginita can hold the front
off and a huge queue will develop behind the front liners which is easy
meat for archers as every arrow will hit somebody if not kill them outright.
Whatever you try don't just stand there and get pelted to death by arrows
remember the castle is built on high ground so you have an attack bonus
outside the castle but not inside (except the attackers will be tired
climbing up the hill into your castle).

A extra effective funnel effect is much the same as bridge defence in that
you let them get tired running up the hill and let them come slightly into
the gate so you can attack the enemy unit(s) that gets through from
at least 3 sides and use arrows.

Units right next to walls of the castle (from the direction arrows are
coming from) also seem to take less casualties from arrow induced death
I suppose the walls act as a barrier that can't be arced over when they
are so close.

If you don't have the units to form a kill zone march out your troops onto
the field and take them on as normal , with maximum unit matching and use
of trees to hide your units and reduce cav advantages.You want to try kill
generals to reduce morale since attackers can be routed.yari units can also
be sacrificed to buy a few minutes from enemies chasing them around the
map.

If you have units to spare then use another army to break the siege this is
fought exactly as if it was an attack on a province and may or may not
make it easier to take the province back.Though potential losses are
more potential kills are more too.

extra notes:

If you play a custom battle and have thunder bombers attacking a castle
they are incredibly effective against anything inside , since inside
most of the smaller castles (<fortress) men can't really move much.And
therefore are horribly vulnerable to their grenades , 70-95% losses
in the grenade recipients is not uncommon.Though your experience
may vary as some may hit the walls.

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#8 Bridge Tactics
- holding a bridge

This is quite easy I call it causing a corinary or even constipation
tactics you want to be a beaurocrat and create a perpetial blockage
in the pipe as it is in your best interests .If you have gunners
use them as described above to hold bridges same with archers , though
archers are less effective than guns or cross bow bolts.You want to
keep lines of long range units just infront of strong melee units You want
to exchange long range projectiles until the enemy is close then when enemy
is 60% of the way across the bridge charge your defensive units out to
greet the enemy .This in effect creates a huge traffic jam as your troops
block the paths of the enemy troops and there will be intense fighting
somewhere on the bridge.Though its also good to fight at one end of
the bridge if you think about it on the bridge itself the enemy can
be attacked by multiple units from one direction maybe two , but at
the edges where it moves into a plain if you give up a few metres.The
enemy can be attacked from at least 3 sides (left right and center)and
spaces inbetween these attack columns as well.Attack from 3 sides
is very very bad for an enemy.Now you want to take advantage of this
if you have archers or gunners or long range units (poppers are excellent
for this) you want to move them to the sides al la:


X = bridge edges
o = banks
L = long range units

Your side
    LLLLLLLLL    LLLLLLLLLL
oooooooooooooo    oooooooooooooo
            X    X
            X    X
            X    X
            X    X
            X    X
            X    X
            X    X
oooooooooooooo    oooooooooooooo
Enemy side

To fire into the rear and middle of the enemy column that is stuck there
since there is no room to move they have to get his and you will score
heavily in taken heads with arrows , even more with gunners since they
must hit something they cannot miss and their shot is deadlier than
arrows.With poppers you can cause MASSIVE death in the rear of the
crossing column you just want to replace the troops blocking the bridge
when they begin to wavier or their numbers are getting low(naginita
and monks are thebest units for this) so keep some in reserve.If the
front line men of the enemy routs they can't escape since they are
blocked by their supporting troops and its a massacre.Enemy archers
from the other bank may fire at you in a similar fashion if so use
counter archer fire or counter gun fire to try reduce this but keep
the main archer force on the enemy column .Also donot aim for the head
of the enemy bridge column since you could score heavily on your own
men fighting there.With guns in 60 seconds (2 units in 2 man deep rank)
can take out 250+ enemy + your melee units killing the front troops
you can get horrendous kills per minute.If there are 2 bridges to hold
you just have to do this on a smaller scale at both bridges waiting
for the attack to come and moving troops to which one the enemy is
attacking with most troops .Also as the defender you can put troops
right on the banks usually in fighting formation , it might be nice
to put some cav near or on the other bank to do a 2 way attack or
act as a distraction so they don't even manage to cross the brigde
which you can turn again into a two way attack.But at all times
prep for a chase sequence since even samuai seeing their comrades
all around them getting killed in droves can't help getting scared
and rout though this maybe hard with daimyo with golden palaces.

Method 2

X = bridge edges
o = banks
L = long range units
D = defensive units

Your side
dd     LLLLLLLLL dd   LLLLLLLLLL dd
dd     LLLLLLLLL dd   LLLLLLLLLL dd
dd     LLLLLLLLL dd   LLLLLLLLLL dd


oooooooooo    oooooooooooooo
              X    X
              X    X
              X    X
              X    X
              X    X
              X    X
              X    X
oooooooooo    oooooooooooooo

Let the enemy cross the bridge you want to keep at least 4 units of
archers or gunners quite a long distance from the bridge itself
this is tempting fate.If a single enemy unit approaches send in
something highly defensive yari or naginita though monks are good
they will get pelted by some arrows (manually hold fire on archers
to save ammo) and meet your troops toe to toe , with the huge arrow
barrage they will probably be heavily depleted and rout , donot follow
them over the bridge as that means death.If the enemy sends over
everything to pound you into submission then you want to keep
archers firing until the enemy has crossed then send in your troops
to greet them on a wide front in a triangular fashion so that
the head of the enemy column is attacked from 3 sides.

You can also let them approach further in though this is dangerous
as in makes the kill zone larger and you can't cover it as well.
Either way keep your archers firing where there are a mass of
enemy troops and it is impossible to miss.The important thing is
to not waste your arrows if he gingerly sends in his troops to
test the water.As you run out of arrows you want to move your
archers to the sides and have them engage hand to hand if there
is any space to gain extra honour and to put more pressure on enemy
troops the worst thing to happen would be that the enemy gets more
tired killing your archers.Breaking this sort of defence is pretty
difficult and the enemy needs lots of lambs to sacrifice to waste
your arrows , especially if you manage your ranks to fire only 2
at mid range then to stop you can repeat it 16 times.

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- Taking a bridge / crossing


This is actually quite hard reflected I guess in the way automatic
battles in bridge zones take so many men since you lose lots of
men.This is a bait battle made all the harder with the timer there
are usually three paths the battle can take.

path 1

This is where the enemy waits on the opposite bank quite close
and does the tactic as described above on you this is hard as hell
and you want something fast or ashigaru to absorb as many arrows as
possible.Repeat counter attacking with super close arrows of your
own until you are 50% ammo.Since when you cross enemy will greet
your forces with their own and follow your forces far even to meet
your forces on the opposite bank in small numbers never more than 3
units.Check the situation if the enemy is weakened badly you want
to play meat grinder and charge fast units like cav over the bridge
rout them before they hit enemy spears (or have them run towards
the opposite shore) and have your troops hit the enemy with a charge
so you don't fight on the bridge itself since that is what causes
all the heads you lose on bridge maps.

path 2

This is much less predictable enemy stay back quite far and react
to you , usually tying up your men with yari with many archers
firing at your units while they are fighting.You want to get as many
men across as possible and try catch those archers fast as you can
ignoring for the most part melee units or tying them up with some
you can sacrifice.If he had cav archers you maybe in trouble.There
is a key weakness he relies heavily on arrows and does not control
strictly the numbers fired (if you play with unlimited ammunition
then you are on your own I am afraid) he can fire up to 5 per
bait crossing depending on the numbers and how deep you get in.
At 5 arrows from each archer per group 6.5 crossings with bait
say ashigaru (or yari cav since arrows usually miss them) their
core tactic of keep away and fire support is demolished and you
will mostly have to worry about his melee units and can massacre
his archers if you have units to spare.I have a nasty tactic for
this.

dd     LLLLLLLLL dd   LLLLLLLLLL dd
dd     LLLLLLLLL dd   LLLLLLLLLL dd
dd     LLLLLLLLL dd   LLLLLLLLLL dd


oooooooooooooooo    oooooooooooooo
                         X    X
                         X    X
                         X    X
                         X    X
                         X    X
                         X    X
oooooooooooooooo    oooooooooooooo


d will usually come and meet your forces L is nullified since it
has no more ammo you want to run as far ahead as possible in close
formation or wedge d will come and meet your forces or run away.
You want to get a small beach head clear , once you do you want
to put cav or fast foot units behind your front units and try to
run behind the enemy line and encircle them , if the enemy archers
have a few shots left which they usually do you can run behind
them and they will be busy firing and turn into a giant noose.
You want to do this in at least 2 places or you can try a zulu
bull charge with two horns.Archers are trapped and poor at hand
to hand (relatively) they are also being attacked from 2 sides
which also reduces their fighting ability.Your melee units may or
may not be winning as said easier have archers support that column
or peel a melee unit away from the horns to support it.Its most
important that the melee units defending are killed quickly
archers are just a extra prize for extra honour (since you can
take so many heads).

Path 2.1

Same setup but since he has majority archers which are poor
at hand to hand you can meat grind him losing lots of men in
the process of crossing but after you cross those archers are
less useful , some units may rout many of yours will stay steady
and you can hack slash and kill with impunity.

Path 3

Unusually quiet battle you arrive and see only a skeleton force
defending the bridge theres often trees and less men than you saw
on the big map.This is a trap but you can spring it and break it
easily , you want to meat grind the first units defending the
bridge itself then form up loose columns on melee units attacking
from 2 sides into any nearby forests not using cav since they are
weak but keeping them nearby the rear of the forests for any routers.
Monks are obviously best men for the job but beware massive forces
can hide in these forests , but its ok to keep close formation
on approach since archers can't fire out very well of the forests
You want to do this quickly to trap any cav hidden in the forest
actually in the forest so they can be killed easily and you want
to form up very quickly on the opposite bank so that you are
less vulnerable to counter attack.

I would note it doesn't always work (putting guns and archers) on
the banks of one side and baiting enemy to counter attack (then
you run back to safety).This is because a few maps mostly in
the historical battles custom maps the bridge is far too long for
arrows and guns.So when you have them fire at will they walk
across the bridge and shoot from there.Though this is a korean
map , and you can always bait them actually on to the bridge
though your firing window opertunity is much reduced.

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#8.1 Taking hills

Sun tzu would hate you for this he said fight going down hill
not up but sometimes there is a need to do just this so here
is my advice.(just be thankful there are only 2 maps which
combine hills AND a single bridge span) This is sometimes
insanely hard and just unfair  even more unfair when trees
are involved , since :

#1 hills tire your units going up them

#2 gives a (as yet unknown) penalty for troops fighting up the hill

#'3 gives a bonus to troops fighting down hill (unknown though
it ought to be large when yari ashigaru can kill your monks
easily)

#4 Trees block flanking paths

#5 Trees prevent cav which can quickly get up hills to effectively
attack.

#6 slows up units climbing these hills so they are arrow bait and
gun bait

When you send armies of 960+ reinforcements and they get defeated
easily it becomes a hard nut to crack there are several solutions
however:

>1 not fight in hill areas

Which can be delegated for quite some time and works with the
CPU sometimes , (a battle where he had 500+ yari samurai
me with 3 units of archers and 2 naginita he ran to try find a
hole but I countered and he just routed after a while)

>2 force retreat by putting say 30,000 troops into an enemy
province forcing the enemy to run away.

Which can be quite effective though you need to find 30K
koku to feed them all and you maybe neglecting your
defence somewhere else.

>3 Assassinate generals then  force retreat by putting say 30,000
troops into an enemy province forcing the enemy to run away

To reduce their morale first then blah blah

>4 Bait small sub armies to invade nearby ungarrisoned provinces
till the enemy force is tiny compared to yours so you can try
options 1,2 or 3.

Which means losing and recapturing a province over and over
though make it an easy one to take don't want to double your
problems do we?.Also enemy could retreat easily back into
orginal province so you need to fight these raiders on equal
terms else they won't fight quite alot of the time.

>5 Flank

Find a spot where the enemy isn't and take a long walk around
so that you are on equal or even better higher ground and plan
your attack from there , which should make it easier.It takes
time to reform armies especially giant armies so you should have
sometime to exploit the reformation of the defensive lines.

Now if you like Rommel can't flank (the quatar depression
impassable to all but camels and locals)there isn't a spot
avalible you want to look for a weak point where there are
few or no archers so you can put in some cav archers to
harrass that area repeatedly weakening it to put a hole in it.
You want to blitzkeig this area and attack from
two sides , if there are lots of archers then you will just have
to sacrifice many of yours to create this hole.no datchi make
good places to put holes in.

>5.1

But you could always Zulu bull charge to help your
flankers get into position ,since you attack with two horns and
one head the enemy cannot just move extra troops to where
he sees your flank move.Still that needs sacrifices to go down
the middle into the kill zone , gunners and ashigaru anybody?

Still like this if your middle force is a weak force some enemies
may charge down which allows you to attack from 3 sides and
from behind those charging units.If you use guns as bait in the
middle he has to attack one side or get cut up.

>6 bait

That yari ashigaru trick again send in many to exhaust their
arrows grit your teeth , and wait for them to use up their arrows
then send in a reasonable sized force to advance slowly
up hill , nearby you want some powerful units say monks or
cav to stand far behind those units.There is an engage radii
of every unit which I have not included on this FAQ. but when
you get close enough run or skirmish (archers are excellent)
and try to get them close to your forces in waiting.There is
another bait method which is to have your units engage and
fight till they rout often enemy units will get tired killing your
unit and will chase when your unit routs (beware as it may affect
the morale of your other troops).Find a suitable place to
intercept and slaughter away , there are problems with these
though enemies don't aways take your bait , guns are nigh
inexhaustible in 40 minute battles but you have a 17 second
gap between shots for muskets and 25 seconds for the other
kind of guns.Though guns can be used in exhange since
arquebusiers cost the same and at least have some limited
ability to fire back.


>7 Pounding

I hate this , it is so wasteful , in each battle you always take
away some of his troops in fighting so keep fighting that battle
over and over taking lots of losses killing more and more , he
will get weaker in terms of man power , unfortunately he will
also probably become famous and gain rank which can make
his forces stronger via honour bonuses , which should be prevented
by assassination.

>8 Ninja method

You want 3-4 units of ninja and have them advance first they are
hard to target and can hold their own , tieing up units fighting
them.Use this to put a hole or buy some time to flank them
and either pour troops around the sides of enemy formations
or tempt them down to the flat ground.

>9 Arrows and guns

Guns are best for this since men with guns are ashigaru and run
ever so fast compared to all other troop types , you want to sit
at the bottom of the hill firing whatever you have at the forces its
a very tempting target for anybody.but if they send any troops down
your men can often run faster than the enemy which leads several
units down into a flat kill zone where things are more equal since
running down the hill tires their troops and all things being equal
unit armour and honour this will be a deciding factor in the flat
land battle. The thing is if the enemy decides to stay at the top
of the hill he will get cut to bits by guns and arrows , with only his
own arrows as a exchange.If he comes down you have him in your
trap.Much like in 7 samurai you want to engage them with defeat
in detail units.Also often units get scared seeing your men massacre
his men with defeat in detail which can lead to two things:

-> enemy routs or - morale falls

Which is good kill some more and enemy may rout soon

-> enemy sends units to help

which means he comes onto the flat ground which makes him
lose his advantage

You'll be wanting 6 units in 3 teams so that there are 2 lines in
each team of 2 men ranks.fire off a shot from each rank run the
men behind the next rank then let loose a closer shot.Hell I have
seen heavy cav lose 34 men in a defence like this and they often
rout.Arquebuses will do but aren't as good as muskets alas this
also does mean than it depends upon the weather so bring some
archers just incase it is bad weather.

>10 Shinobi method

Cram in as many shinobi you can to make the area revolt this ought
to deplete his forces quiet a bit without costing you too much in the
process.Though this won't work on ronin provinces nor will it work
well in areas with borderforts.

*****
8.2 Flank protection
*****

This is important since encircled forces or forces that are not protected
at the rear are vulnerable to being flanked and being flanked is bad on
morale and reduces the effect of your forces.I mean if you were having
to look over your shoulder and have to keep turning to fight then you'd
be more distracted and lose heart as your comrades die or you die!.

There are several methods:

>1 Protection

Keep units in reserve to attack anything that seems to be attempting to
flank.

>2 Long lines

That is to ocupy the length of the map of at least the length of the enemy
forces this might be difficult in battles more than 3 way or against allied
enemies , but is the most simple , you can even use the map for this
you can occupy a corner of the map and have a section of the map
to yourself which cannot be flanked.

>3 Prevention

If you are outnumbered then you can put 1 to 1 combat to tie up the
enemy and prevent flanking of your other units , which is quite simple
but if you are outnumbered then it is different.But we have AI weakness
on our side , there is a vacuum effect in play here when you move near
an enemy unit often your unit is sucked into combat.Even if you did not
order it.If you send a unit towards a flanking unit they get sucked in and
compelled to fight therefore flank danger is gone from that unit at least.

>3 Prevention 2

When outnumbered you can still use the vacuum effect to good use
like this:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx     A   xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

                   oooooooooooooooooooooo
                   oooooooooooooooooooooo
                   oooooooooooooooooooooo


Legend :

X = enemy
o = your forces

If you march your men towards A both enemy units will engage in the
vacuum effect , ok your unit will be outnumbered 2 to 1 but if you have
superior troops or can hold out until help can come you have prevented
a two sided attack on your forces.If you can hold out another unit may
annilate an enemy unit and you can have them flank both units sort of
like this:

                   oooooooooooooooooooooo
                   oooooooooooooooooooooo
                   oooooooooooooooooooooo
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx          xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                   oooooooooooooooooooooo
                   oooooooooooooooooooooo
                   oooooooooooooooooooooo


Legend :

X = enemy
o = your forces


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#9 Clan notes

sengoku jidai (std not the 1530 - 1550 or 1560 starts)

Mori -
cheap warrior monks
start with:
5 Archer units
6 Yari Samurai
3 yari ashigaru
1 emissary

Notes

I think that mori are the most powerful clan in the game due to the
fact that their monks cost only 375 they start relatively isolated
with many easy provinces to conquer and the capital mimsaka
starts with iron sand so you can produce +3 attack and +3
armour units there easily.After a few seasons you can pump
out monks and conquer lots.Unfortunately if you decide to start
at 1530 then you cannot choose mori as they are part of imagawa
clan territory.Though the sengoku jidai starts at this time strangely
,nearby in takeda lands you can grab a mine to the east you can
also grab another mine province and a sea province for excellent
shinobi.

Shimazu
cheap no datchi
start with
3 Archer units
2 Yari Samurai
2 yari ashigaru
1 emissary

Notes

I don't like these they are a bit isolated but the advantage of no
datchi is minimal since I barely ever use them and they begin
with a tiny army.Though since kensai is actually no datchi maybe
they get kensai cheaper? , though kensai aren't particularly expensive
anyway.Also they are isolated somewhat which is good for a bit
except there isn't much easy land to expand into and they start
with only one province with ironsands and those are right next to
Mori and takeda lands too , finally all their provinces are more
or less sub average ie no iron sands no mines etc.

Oda
Cheap ashigaru
start with
7 Archer units
9 yari ashigaru
1 emissary

Notes

I don't know if cheap ashigaru applies to gunners as well but I also
don't like them since ashigaru lose their use after a few seasons
unless you are a baiter but ashigaru units have a bad oppertunity cost
in that better units can be fielded.Their army to start is also weak and
they begin more or less surrounded.Maybe if ashigaru were produced
faster it might have an effect.But ashigaru lose their power after a few
years so you might want to invade extremely agressively to begin with
to start producing more effective units.

imagawa
ninja + shinobi cheaper
Start with
6 Archer units
6 Yari Samurai
2 ninja
1 emissary

Not bad but the advantage is somewhat poor ninja and shinobi are
cheap anyway .And that these forces never really turn the tides of
battle anyway.


Takeda

cheap cav
start with
1 Archer units
4 Yari Samurai
4 Cav archers
1 emissary

Good advantage but they start with very few provinces and they lack
easy territory to expand into and you will almost certainly be attacked
early.If you can survive you can pump out heavy cav later on and
be quite powerful.Sub note there was a film recently about Takeda
remenants in the C21 (21st century) where the last decendant of
Takeda tried to kill his enemy Kinjin.Stars Christopher Lambert
and is called Hunted (not that good a film but its a B-movie repeated
ad infinitum on late night TV).

Hojo

cheaper castles
start with
4 Archer units
2 Yari Samurai
2 yari ashigaru
1 emissary

I like this guy bar the fact he changes to Christianity most of the time
cheap castles may or maynot be a advantage (seeing as I build them
in almost every province anyway) but castles are pretty cheap
anyway and expansion early on depends on units not castles , heh
maybe if you play as him you need them for constantly falling back.

Uesugi

cheap archers
start with
4 Archer units
3 Yari Samurai
2 yari ashigaru
1 emissary

V good archers are a staple diet in the early stages and if you expand
super aggressively you can build up to monks in no time.

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#10 Ways to win the campaign


Fighting well

But it is deeper than that you must concentrate on fighting the
strongest of your enemies to prevent super powering where an
enemy holds 25+ provinces when he can match your armies
equally which turns into a stealth game which reflects the USSR
and the Western powers of the 20th century.


The cold war

Which involves raiding a few areas around you up to about 15-25
provinces (hopefully wealthy) garrisoning them heavily in all except
those areas that are blocked off port wise or by other provinces
occupied by you.Then build tea houses and castles to support
them then ninja houses up to max and send large numbers of
geisha after all enemy daimyo .Ninja can also be produced as a
stop gap between geisha and them , shinobi too to be produced
so you can maximise taxes without populations getting stroppy
I hate this imagawa seems to do it quite often to me ie hold
the far eastern provinces and then keep me out by keeping his
ports safe (with shinobi and border forts I suppose) then conquering
all the way up to yamashiro.And staying still and then I seem to
capture at least 4 ninja or shinobi per turn.I can't easily attack
him due to his huge garrisons in neighbouring provinces and I
can't move my huge garrisons for fear of being raided the second
they leave.Then it becomes a race for geisha and who can
get high honour ninja to get rid of geisha , he who gets geisha
first and the other side has no ninja usually wins.This is a
nasty cheap tactic and thankfully you won't lose friends over
it since campaigns are you vs CPU, lesson? keep some ninja
handy.A geisha at honour 6 is nearly unstoppable ninja at
honour 5 (the highest I can get them to without them dying)
only have a 1 in 4 chance of killing them.

Also a good reason for high honour geisha is that it ties
up an enemy geisha especially if she is low honour as
your enemy will try to take her out with his geisha and with
large honour differences its near impossible and keeps
that geisha off your back.

Also you may get fish that slip through the net especially
ronin ones , you attack their province and they retreat into
one of your unguarded provinces, when you move to attack
they move into another unguarded province then another.
Which can lay havoc to your rear areas a small group of
archers after getting hammered to 2 men ran through my
line once and managed to run all the way across the map
and I had 2 units chasing him converting provinces back
from ronin to mine.

Also if you get into a stalemate situation with a superb
enemy general that pounding just can't defeat or even good
tactics and skill in battle cannot defeat send in an assassin
then send an emissary (buddhist for buddhist enemy christian
for christian enemy) and try to bribe them into joining you.You
can spend YEARS trying to defeat rank 6 generals at river
provinces with giant armies (since they will train up 60 more
per year and recieve constant reinforcements).The only points
to really note with this are that you should not really go after
troops inside a castle as it turns those troops into sieged
troops though if its a big army or you feel confident you can
always sally your troops to break the siege.Its ideal since
it when in a super power deadlock you often have lots of
koku and many armies but its like two exact cars pushing
against each other.One needs to get a way to break the
dead lock somehow.A secondary advantage of this is that
in these super powers that only the front lines are heavily
garrisoned.And therefore you can walk into the enemy
territory behind (sort of) without much real opposition and
it will take 2-3 turns for the enemy to organise a proper
defence.A way to defend against this is the CPU puts heirs
into the front lines which makes the vulnerable to geisha
attack.This also applies to you too.

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#11 Mongol campaign


As Kublai khan

This is stupidly easy on easy or normal you start with several
large armies , invade provinces systematically and try to get
1000 koku per season and kublai will send you more troops.

The essence is speed , since the longer you take the more
advanced hojo becomes and can kill you slightly easier.

Though speed is easy keep pushing and you can often
force hojo to retreat in nearly every battle but this is bad
you want to be engaging the enemy so that you face them
in their small units rather as a huge collective army.

The major problem you have is that provinces love to hate
you and the second you turn your back (ie move your forces
out into another province) they like to revolt and spoil your
party.So keep two units in each province for at least 2 years
to change loyalties.Units to leave behind are thunder bombers
and skirmishers , I suggest these because personally I use
them least in battle and they get killed easily.If you are fast
enough you won't even face up to anything more than a 5
unit army except when they retreat all into one province.

As hojo

This is actually extremely difficult since the mongols are quite
tough have large landing armies and even when you use best
units against them they often reduce your armies to dust in
the process of dying.Your main unit of use is yari samurai
as detailed above they are the ONLY unit capable of standing
up to heavy cav of mongols.Though they will probably be taken
down to 10-20 men in the process.So what does this imply?
it implies that you should produce yari over any other unit
with other units such as archers being suplementary .Since your
Samurai are better trained than his korean spear men you ought
to keep them and korean guards men at bay.Though poppers
should be delt with with arrows.What is difficult is mongol cav
they annilate your troops at long and short range so try find some
trees or use cross bows as bait (or even better have them attack)
and flank with yari.You may also want to hold firm in loose formation
to exhaust their arrows or counter arrow fire mongols though this
is extremely wasteful since mongols always seem to kill
more archers than your archers can kill his cav.

Each time I have played as hojo I have had to keep falling back
to buy more and more time until I can get a credible force
to counter attack so its normal to lose some turf to mongols.

Though you can hold them back for a long time in any of the
provinces with rivers with simple yari blockades.Heck you can
probably be reduced entirely up to your river provinces build hold
them stiff and build mighty castles and start the expand out of
those areas.Areas you know there are plenty of trees are also
good areas to hold on to , as trees reduce the effect of their
cav archers and cav and also nullfies their poppers to some
extent (they hit the trees).While the korean spearmen and
guardsmen ought to be delt with in the same manner you deal
with yari samurai and naginita.I suppose the difficulty of this is
that you have no monks , usually with no monks you have
guns which can fire over your men's heads.Here you just have
bows.

As hojo you might want to know what mongols say and what
they mean (since an order is announced and 2-3 seconds
later the order is carried out gives you a minor advantage)

(phonetic and the brackets indicate what you should prepare
to do)

Sha tihn = advance
cha chen = advance
tong yee = yes (afirm to an order)
zenk kang = attack (at which you should prepare to die)
benko tai shing = change formation</pre><pre id="faqspan-5">
do shay = charge (at which you should hold formations or
counter charge)
doh de da shen = close ranks (close formate ie use arrows)
gen she teng she twing = form wedge (your line is in trouble
double it up and form two deep lines or a square)
deh keh = halt
am peh doo duhg = hold positions (use arrows)
sha heng = fire (open up your formations be ready to close where
there is an exploitation of your open formations)
dow chun = rally (halt your chase form up into defensive posture)
ja twai = retreat (prepare to chase)
pow = run
san kai = open formation (exploit with a quick charge)
miou chung = take aim (prepare to lose many troops to arrows!)


extra tactics (27th July 2003)

I notived while playing at a friend's house that there some extremely
nasty tactics you can employ to keep most mongols at bay the AI
version that is since humans will nearly always find away around your
tactics.

crossbow wall A

(x = crossbow man)

mongol attack direction

xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx

The logic behind this is that the first 2 rows get a shot at the mongols
at super close range , and while they are killing the folks at the front
(usually cutting a wedge shape through your formation) , and the rows
behind , get to shoot at point blank range , then while others die time
is bought to reload and everybody crams in at least 1 shot.These shots
are at super close range so misses are not a thing to worry about
and each volley eats up 5-10 mongols.The problem is that you just need
to take masses of care to prevent your square from routing and it
is only effective in a one unit vs one unit formation and is HIGHLY vulnerable
to arrows. (being that loose formations reduce morale and cav charges
will annilate crossbowmen when they are loose formation even worse
than in close formation).But not that vulerable to grenades or foot
soldiers since they have to get withing range of your bowmen.
(hold position and hold formation manual firing)

crossbow wall B

Same thing but you have a huge line of 10 units with the other 6 as support
units (cav is good) and each wall can mutually support each other as if
there is a charge at least 3 crossbow units can fire at the mongols which
can cost them dearly! , I've see a 60 heavy cav unit be reduced to 15 men
in the space of 2 seconds) , its even more effective if you have thin lines
behind
these walls they WILL hit your own men but hey thats what koku is for.
But will also score on mongols heavily too due to them being still targets
attacking your men.Problem is that they are also highly vulnerable to
arrows , but praise your lucky stars that mongols only have 28 arrows per
quiver of light cav man.This also has an effect on the AI in that it doesn't
like to approach you period so you can move your entire line creeping at
the mongol army and they will be almost allergic to attacking you.Just
be wary of flank attacks espcially from reinforcements and be ready to
use support units to fend them off (sacrifice units so others can get good
shots at the attackers)


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- historical campaign mode mongol battles

In this one you only get to play as Kublai's generals and therefore
in all battles except for the final battle at mount fuji you must stay
alive as the general unit.I would also note that these are the tactics
I used to win which may or may not work for you and I have not
played each battle thousands of times to ensure what happens
(more like 12 times).So it might work out differently.

WARNING SPOILERS

Pt1

Hata bay
weather - light rain

Meat grinder you can barely lose enough said

Pt2

Fushimi

weather - fine day
Objectives - Rout or destroy all enemies
keep 50% of your forces alive (thats 300)

I hate this one took me 3 attempts to do it maybe more from sessions
I can't quite recall , you are a bunch of heavy cav and light cav , you begin
surrounded on all sides and you have a breathing space of about 40
seconds before the first wave reaches your troops.You have awful troop
matching here cav against some no datchi (good odds in your favor) ,
lots of yari samurai (bad odds in your favor) , about 2 units of cross bows
(in your favor) and many many archers.The matching principle goes out
of the window here and you need to make up the deficiencies in other
ways hills and outnumbering units is good.

You want to approach the nearby edge of the map hills where there are
hundreds of hojo forces , send a heavy cav unit to kill his no datchi else
they cause problems later.Now you use your light cav units against any
of those yari samurai units on the hills reduce them as much as possible.
Then turn your light cav to the crossbows it will be a massacre , you want
to move your heavy cav 2-1 at least on any yari units and capture the small
flat bit in the corner of the map.The part nearest where you start , if you
are fast enough you should lose about 75-100 men attacking those hills
(live with it if you lose less well done).Now you wait , you have the advantage
of hills and semi equal numbers , you want to use your cav archers to go out
and skirmish in rotating lines the yari lines as much as possible.Keep it
up till you are near the hills run your men up the hills and wait until you
come under archer fire.move your light cav units down the hill with a way
point that allows you to move down the side of the enemy column that
approaches.two things can happen now , the enemy turns his units to
guard against flank.If this happens charge your heavy cav down the
hill and catch them in the back climbing up the hill.It becomes a massacre
from then on.Try to attack tari units from 2 directions and coming down the
hill and this more or less cancels the yari vs cav advantage move your light
cav units as bait for archers off your cav.Or to approach closely then run off
to attract yari units off so your heavy cav can maintain 2-1 at least.Splinter
off spare units to go around enemy formations and you can get the archers
either.

But if the enemy does not turn his column to fend off your light cav you can
send in your light cav for a rear raid and massacre lots of his archers , at
which the yari will probably turn round.Which is your queue to charge those
heavy cav down the hill into the backs of the enemy yari units who turn to
support their archer fellows.

A third possibility is that they stick in super close formation and box out
their archers and try to meat grind you , at which you will have lots of
trouble.Engage on the slope and if you have arrows left fire into the
middle of the melee.You have to play chance here as you will lose many
men and if you lose more than 300 you lose , if you haven't already done
so go for his taisho to make them rout easier.

Pt3

Naru (castle)

weather - fine day (snow)
Objectives - Destroy every enemy*
keep your general alive

*no routing due to the castle effect.

This is a fun mission that shows the power of grenades very much so you
have 2 units of 120 poppers some guardsmen some korean spearmen and
some skirmishers who are somewhat useless.Several light cav units and
a heavy cav unit.There are some notes to point out , inside the castle
are units outside as you may have noticed are units , where the units (enemy)
are outside is a arrow kill zone.Don't venture there , poppers cannot throw
their grenades over the wall there if they could it would be extremely easy
battle and over in minutes.

What you want to do:

You want to move your light cav and pelt the naginita , yari and archers
outside the castle keeping your skirmisher group and spearmen at the
base of the castle hill below the door.This is to prevent a 2 way attack
or at least to reduce the effects of them.Once pelted they come and
usually attack , this is your cue to line up your poppers in a line 2 men
think and watch the fire works they can kill entire formations like that
though try keep them at the top of the minor hills where you begin.
You want naginita , yari then archers you'll barely lose any men to this
part keep an eye out for any sallies from the castle though.Now comes
the fun bit.Stick your poppers in a thick square formation and march
slowly up the hill and grenade as many no datchi as possible.Next
try finish them off with arrows , once you have an open door get a
popper unit this is a sacrifice.Put them in wedge and move slowly in
attacking the heavy cav unit which you can kill in a single volley.Next
turn on anything nearby try to get those kensai , repeat with your other
group , have your skirmishers and light cav outside in a semi circle.
This is to destroy anybody who chases your men when they rout ,
if there is no chase you have to meat grind though expend your arrows
first and use them on the kensai.It from there on becomes a massive
grinder of meat which if you can get a foot hold into the castle you
ought to go after easy units like archers and their naginita with your
cav.And tieing up their yari and any cav units left with spearmen,
and guards , you ought to prevail maybe....

Mount Fuji

weather - fine day
Objectives- destroy the enemy / rout them

This on paper looks really bad he has in the range of 1800 troops
and not all of those are on the field.Attacking from the off is a non
after experimenting with your meat grinds you always lose.
What you want to do is move your units to the left hand side (from
the start looking at the enemy)enmasse which will cause the enemy
to rotate his entire army to face yours on the high ground to his left.
This is semi good , wait for it to be complete then move where he
started and he will move to a position near where you began ,
this is good since there is a flat bit where nobody has terrain bonuses
Move your spearmen to the sides of the forrest where you are now
reinforcements come from these places and you will be surrounded
on both sides when you destroy one of his units.Your own units
that reinforce you are less important they are weak skirmishers
anyway.

There are two ways about this :

>1 meat grind but use your poppers to the left and right and throw
grenades into the mess  which will cause HUGE death but on
both sides which makes it a big gamble a very big gamble.

>2 Move your archers to the little plateu just before the ground
sinks down deep near the middle of the map and open the formation
up and trade kills with his archers up to 50% of your arrows.
If you are lucky you will make them run away at which they run towards
your formations when they do massacre them and prepare for
heavy cav reinforcements.As you placed those spearmen before
those cav will run right into them in a long column two by two.
Which your spearmen will have a field day , if they want an easier
day move a heavy cav unit to assist.But enage on the flat bit not
right on the hill.There are 2 reinforcement units of 80 heavy cav
at the same time the enemy might be raiding your front line
with his heavy cav which is your queue to massacre them
with your heavy cav.Now if becomes complicated he will either
be silly and put units 2-3 at a time where you can stop them
with your spearmen (make them run to close the gaps) and attack
from 3 sides.When those yari units come in try to attack on 3 sides
and put those grenades into the middle, just watch out for those
naginita cav they can seriously hurt any of your forces , you'll
be reinforced with skimirshers.Keep them to the sides and fire
into the formation of have them deal with kensai which they
do quite well at.Maximise unit matching and you'll pull through
you just need a few men to survive in this battle and you
have won.

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#12historical campaigns

WARNING SPOILERS

Note - These are not really campaigns they are linked battles
in a sort of story mode , you only ever need to keep your general
/daimyo unit alive in each mission and you can get the rest of
your men killed.It is not a proper campaign as said before and
therefore your men are not carried over.I would also add you have
chances to change history many times like it says so and so lost
this one see if you can do what this general failed....


Oda Nabunaga 1534

-The unwilling heir , and the destruction of shingen

This is a fun short campaign non too difficult but it has a few
niggles in it the final battle in this campaign is the one which
is featured at the end of the film kagemusha , though this one
is many many times bigger than the film.

Okehazama

weather - very heavy rain
Objectives - Rout or destroy all enemies , kill the enemy
general
Keep your taisho alive

This one on paper looks really bad you have 120 archers
60 ninja (in two squads) some yari samurai and 2 groups
of no datchi , heavy cav unit and the 12 unit damiyo heavy
cav.When you first arrive you will notice you have split forces
the no datchi are in the trees as are your ninja .On the hill
you have your cav , daimyo unit , yari samurai and archers
, now wait.You want to wait for a while until his general unit
which is 12 heavy cav passes in the gap between the forrest
assign your ninja to kill him.After they do have them run back
into the forest in open formation to avoid arrows , you have half
won this battle already since they now rout easily.

Since its raining badly his guns are worthless but he'll still
charge those supported by yari units and archers up the hill
use your cav to stop the gunners and partly engage the yari
units.The down hill advantage will level the field a bit in yari
vs cav bonuses + your cav units are very large.If he holds back
some of his yari archers or naginta surprise them from behind
with no datchi before they can reinforce the yari line enegaging
your cav units.Put ninja units to engage his archers and no datchi
for anything else , it now becomes a meat grinder of who routs
first and nearly always he does.Just bewary not to put your
taisho unit too close to the front if he dies you lose.The the chase
etc .Easy

Mount Hiei

weather - fine day
Objectives - destroy all enemies letting no more than 1% escape
(he has 550 men so 1% is about 5 men yes its that tight)
keep your taisho alive.

This is quite simple one of your no datchi comes under archer
and gun fire right away charge them in to mop up the gunners
with a supporting unit , keep a cav unit nearby to mop up any
stragglers.2 send somebody in to get killed by monks a bug which
you can just about see.They will chase your men when they rout
prep a counter attack when they come out with your guns then
heavy cav unit and you've cleaned out half the mountain already.


Once you control one side of the mountain , you want
to put all your no datchi at the top and move for a 4 way attack
with no datchi from the top cheapo gunners from the bottom
and your naginita cav around the edges (or cav archers even
better) and meat grind him from 4 sides which you'll lose hundreds
due to monks being in forests being lethal , but wil prevail.more
often than not just keep an eye out for enemies that rout chase
them with cav archers , if they get beyond the area where your
men can go have them use arrows on the rotung troops since
you can still kill them that way.

Nagashino

weather - fine day
Objectives -  withstand the takeda cav charge and destroy
or rout the enemy , your general must stay alive.

This is a horrible battle it is the reenactment of the kagemusha
battle at the end albeit smaller , (in that battle shingen's love
child son moved 25000 troops according to kurokawa).Here
you will face about 2000 troops of which 1800 are cav units
the rest no datchi or naginita.

You begin in a exposed position there are barriers ahead of
your troops and you can fire over them , but you nor can the
enemy move through them they can move through the gaps
but not through them.You have lots of gunners , some ashigaru
spears , some yari samurai some naginita and some no datchi.
also the general unit.

What you want to do.

You want to put a thick thick wedge of gunners to your right
(after playing this battle 8 times they always attack through
centre and right side leaving your left side unharrassed till later
though you can do things to prevent attacks there.

You will see a scout unit to your extreme right do not follow them
with any of your units its a trap and you can never catch them
in time anyway.

Right you want hold position and fire at will for ranks behind them
you want hold position hold formation .You also want one of your
bigger gunner ranks at the top of the hill , put your ashigaru
and naginita behind all of the gunners and between the hill based
gunners.Right now wait , the trees will be full of heavy cav and
soon you will be charged with 3 units of heavy cav , watch out
for the left flank some troops may try to sneak in.Your first line
of gunners will fire as the enemy formates infront of you , run them
to the back pause if needs be and have the next line walk forward
some steps.Have them fire at will one shot then the next and keep
those troops on the hilly bit.They will seriously be depleted by now
well if you are lucky.Now you want to wait till they come to you in
the funnel system of the fences.Have your naginita units hold the
front on the hill or keep them kung fu style (as in they filter through
the gaps in small groups of 2-3 and you can have a 10-1 advantage
on those that come through slowly.When you have space line up
those gunners on the hill for as much height difference as possible.
Then have them fire over the heads of your men which is risky but
if you get it right you'll take lots of heads with your gunners losing
quite a few yourself but such is life.There is no space to fire from
the sides and the units are far too big anyway to do this and
behind the front you'll be destroyed if any of the cav units turn on
you.Eventually the enemy general will arrive this is the turning
point.Assign anything you have to attack him (guns are best) to
reduce enemy morale , fighting will continue but enemy units will
start to flee.When they do be prepared to select all melee units
and run into the forest to deal with his reinforcements cav in
trees are much weaker and you can play 4-1 with them 4 weak
units easily kill 1 weakened cav unit in trees.Tackle his groups
as they come turning away from routed units to any units still
fighting.But whatever you do stay in the trees cav are much weaker
there if you stray you'll lose , you can have any gunners counter
fire inside the forest any arrows that come for you which has
varied results but you ought to win.Its a bit of a red herring this
battle with all those guns and fences it seems like a defence
battle but its a counter attack battle without the counter attack
you can still win but it is more in your favour in hand to hand
in the forest.Because by that time your forces will be so depleted
(the naginita no datchi and yari samurai) that you'll have it easier
hand to hand in the forest.Or you can set up another fire line
to reduce the new units charging at you after the first few waves.
Hurrah you have repeated history and destroyed the takeda clan
and proven shingen right.(ie if we are like a mountain and do
not move then nobody can hurt us)

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Tokugawa Ieyasu 1542

The battle to become sen taisho or shogun...

This is a hard 6 parter well its not actually that hard but its harder
than the rest (before) I suppose so that makes it harder ok?

Azukizaku

weather - fine day
Objectives - destroy or rout ikki kiko army 1

This is extremely easy for some reason , move out your cav archers
and have them in dual lines open formation. Harass the ikko army 2
ally who is just an army of 6-7 no datchi easy meat for archers try to
get his general and you can rout most of them.And kill up to 75%
of his forces so that he os not a problem.

At the same time assemble your troops archers from cav behind
and march slowly up to the outcrop of trees see army 1 ? its almost
entirely made up from archers.Now there are two things you can do
exhaust his arrows (notice lack of time limit) or send a cav unit to
each archer unit he has , keeping your yari samurai and archers
close by.Charge one yari unit per archer unit and have the naginita
cav attack an ashigaru unit or in a super long line for extra yari cav
support.Now you need to deal with those monks , pelt them as much
as possible with archers with 2 groups on each you can skirmish
them to death or pull them appart into separate groups .By this time
your yari cav will have finished their job send in cav archers hand to
hand to kill any remaining archers.Then you can put 3-4 yari cav
units against what is left of his monks ashigaru and any staggler
archers.There is no need to kill the nodatchi armies or rout them
only army 1 is important to rout here , though they patrol in a wide
path when combat begins so that any cav archers with ammo
can finish them off easily.

Kakegawa

weather - fine day in winter
Objectives -  Capture the castle ie kill or rout everything keep
your general alive.

This looks so easy without radar but it isn't that easy inside the
castle are plenty of arquebusiers and archers and it isn't raining.
Look carefully and you'll see hundreds of yari cav behind you.What
you want to do is move your yari samurai to block them off and use
your archers to fire over your men to hit the cav units.Put your naginita
to block any holes.At the same time you want your naginita cav
your general unit and your yari cav to attack the castle alone.
Have your gunners form an L around the corner of the castle
nearest to you and you can offer fire support into the archers behind
the front rows of gunners in the castle.

With yari vs cav outside and cav vs guns and arrows you should
win , now will come a heavy cav unit from the forest opposite
the gate of the castle.Move your guns to a V shape and put your
yari under them , they won't charge your yari but will get cut to bits
by the guns.Keep your eye out for the castle battles since straglers
with guns can do lots of damage given time.Once you start to see
monks come for you charge your remaining yari units on the cav to
finish them off quickly , you want to setup a giant trap for the 2 monk
units who come for you.

Set your guns much the same as the cav trap but put them on
skirmish and tie them up with naginita moving guns behind the
monk line to attack from 2 sides keep pumping units into the
melee from higher ground and they pose no problem.You ought
to win this easily.

Mikata Ghara

weather - fine day winter
Objectives -  Change history beat takeda keep Ieyasu alive

This is a nasty mission I thought wow look at all the troops I had
then noticed that they were takeda.Nasty you begin somewhat
outnumbered and surrounded , opening moves are to select
all yari and naginita units that do not have a tree icon.Since
your forces are divided have them attack the general unit nearby
and run your general into the trees where your other yari samurai
are.This is where you make your stand , trees + hill + yari = many
dead cav units , stay deep in the trees and let units come into
the trees once your other army is destroyed.Prevent flanking at
all costs charge in and out of the trees , when cav archers come
your general unit will be able to take them on by themselves.
But stay in those trees until the final few units where you can
fight on open ground and win easily .There are about 2300 enemy
on this battle field you can kill about 2000 of them with 600-800
losses.It is important to note that even though you have yari vs
cav in the opening stages he outnumbers your forces heavily
has arrow support.Also he attacks your forces from 3 sides
which is impossible to win in so you shorten the odds by fighting
differently on good terrain where you hold all the cards.

Yoshida

weather - fine day
Objectives -  keep your general alive
destroy or rout the enemy

This is extremely easy move 2 groups of gunners to the back
in single line to fire at the troops behind your castle they have
no arrows or guns and cannot fight back.Next move archers and
remaining gunners to the side where the enemy is coming from
when they start to approach the gate move them in dual line
open formation to each side of the gate.Reinforcements should
arrive soon , use all your yari to block the gate , if you don't move
your reinforcement yari cav you can get more shots at the army
massed behind your castle.

Move your yari to deal with any archers outside and if you are
fast enough move inside the castle and create a blockage for
enemy monk reinforcements then naginta reinforcements which
you easily out number your enemy your general doesn't even
need to move for this battle.Replace gunners on the gate with
fresh gunners when archers take their toll and relieve your melee
units at the gate with arrows fired over their heads.

Temmokunzun

weather - varied
Objectives -  Kill the enemy general unit (the triple kensai)
and rout the rest of the enemy

Oda is your ally so let him fight you can sit and wait and he
will win the battle for you but you can support him.The enemy
is over the ridge past the cliff on the map which is impassable
and you need to do lots of uphill fighting .Just get those kensai
ASAP then meat grind everybody else.

Sekugahara

weather - fine day
Objectives -  destroy enemy

Same as before let oda attack first them clean up watch out for
the many many reinforcements though its difficult because its
hard to see what is going on due to the trees and massive
gunner smoke.But you can play defeat in detail against everything
here.

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Togotomi hideyoshi 1536

A battle for leadership (a hard one too)lots and lots of ashigaru
battles (since you are a sub clan of oda) many guns as well
surprisingly since in the full campaign there are barely any
guns.This is the hardest historical campaign in the game hell
to me it seems harder than the sengoku jidai but there you
have freedom of choice and can decide where to fight and when
most of the time.Also its nearly all attack very little defence
so hedgehogs won't enjoy this one , unless they do what I
do turn an attack into a defence.

Pt1

Yamazaki

weather - fine day
Objectives -  destroy enemy

This isn't easy you start off with 3 gunner units ninja some no datchi
some ashigaru and some yari samurai , these are not good odds
against what the enemy has.

First move your gun units into a longish line from the waters edge
right up to the path on the hill , that ought to provide a measure of
defence.At the same time have your ninja engage hand to hand
the cav archer , then the monks and ashigaru spears to get them
out the way.Position all your men slightly behind your gunners
yari ashigaru first.Now you want to set ninja on skimish to attack
the approaching naginita formation take down as many as possible
with death stars than using hand to hand , less losses.You should
be able to reduce the naginita formation to at least 50% before your
ninja are destroyed.Now comes the tricky bit red troops start to come
from the trees , wait for it and fire 2 shots into them with your gunners
and charge your yari ashigaru into them , supported by a yari samurai
group.You want to take the high ground attacking in a sweeping
pattern over the enemy gunners to prevent them counter firing.Once
you get a clear shot or clearish fire into those gunners to maximise
casulties.Those naginita yari samurai and heavy cav of green will
be close now turn your guns on them with skirmish and you should
get 4 shots performation , charge those no datchi into them and then
keep an eye out for his cav set a gunner unit aside to deal with them.
Move any gunners left to the sides to shoot from the sides into the
naginita and yari.It'll be messy and you lose many many many men
but your yari ashigaru should be done by now , (remember go
for taisho as a priority) and they can attack from behind the remaining
enemy cav naginita and yari units and you should just about win
in a pounding session.Though if at all possible use your guns from
the sides rather than using them in direct hand to hand and watch
out for anybody who rallies.

Shizugatke

weather - fine day
Objectives -  destroy 70% enemy , own the field.

This is hard infact very hard infact so hard I can never win this one
the odds are heavily stacked against you for a start you have 3 groups
of archers a 45 man ashigaru spear formation to defend them from
2 ninja groups and 200+ yari cav.If you run away the ninja get you
if you stand firm the yari cav get you , though you can use the
yari to buy some time for your archers abut 30 seconds or so.So
2 groups can barely get away.Though those yari cav soon catch
up with them and kill them.

Also you start off with your general under 2 groups of ninja attack
which can end your battle in 23 seconds.You have several yari
cav units who get overwhelmed by the numbers of enemy
a naginita cav which has the same luck and 3 groups of yari
samurai who do well for what are seconds against enemy cav
then get encircled due to the massive cav numbers.They cannot
go into the trees since they get overrun by archers and gunners
They can run back only to be flanked by yari cav or be picked off
by the 4-5 groups of gunners at distance.Or eat arrows and bullets
then get overrun by cav encirclement.

This is a hard battle that cannot be won by meat grinder it has
to be won by sacrifice distraction and lots of luck.Press begin battle
pause instantly , have your archers hold position and attack the
nearest yari cav unit , have yari ashigaru spears nearby in a rank
of 2 to help out.

You now want to run you yari samurai and other units into the trees
on their right as fast as possible put your no datchi general at the top
of the hillock at the end of the forest.Now comes the painful bit.If it
goes to plan the enemy yari cav should be tied up killing your archers
you can take 2 units of those yari cav with you btw.Its the ninjas that
attack their rear that kills them the most. Leave that unit to die you
cannot save them.Now you want your yari samurai in the forest and cav
to the side of the forest.Now you wait , if the enemy charges ashigaru
spears at you , then you are lucky it happens rarely , put a yari samurai
and yari ashigaru against them you ought to crush them easily.

Now comes the tricky bit , the enemy will move his forces around and
through the forest and you need to engagethem while still in the trees.
Use defeat in detail to quickly destroy groups but donot get flanked!.
By now your archers will be around 1-10 men routing , you still have
some time before the cav charge.You need to just grit your teeth and
take the gunfire (since they can skirmish your yari samurai easily),Unless
you have some ashigaru yari.Which can keep up with gunners.You
want to keep an eye out for enemy no datchi which is the general
unit the key to this.When he comes close you want to charge all
your cav from an uphill direction into his archers and gunners ,
tieing them up., by now his yari cav and ninja are in the melee.
Now comes the hard bit dependant upon luck , your naginata
cav can hold off gunners and ninja losing many men , but you
want to bait if you can the cav into the trees if they don't you still
have advantages of spears vs cav and downhill.Now you want to
destroy any yari ashigaru units approaching your general , charge
them in the trees.You should marginally be winning right now
or losing either way put ALL forces on the enemy no datchi
you will suffer massive losses from turning away from enemy units
that were being attacked.But the no datchi count (enemy) will
go down slowly you need to pound it out till the general goes
down and you win , since he has massive ashigaru forces.Being
that his guns are ashigaru and many of his spears have ashigaru,
and you have massacred most of his cav units and many of his
yari samurai they should rout.If they donot rout you'll lose which
is a shame because this counts completely on luck.If your CPU
is with you you win if not you lose , horridly frustrating and took
me 9 tries to get it right .The conditions are not always there
to win often the yari cav units turn on your forces immediately
sometimes the ninja get your general unit.But on that tiny strip
of hill and trees is where you stand , since you can't be flanked
there.That area is up hill to the enemy which gives another
advantage and the trees prevent major losses from guns which
is a bonus.

Negoroji

weather - fine day
Objectives -  put 100 men into the castle before 15 minutes is
up

This is a new one time limit on one of these battles its hard its
tough and it is horribly unfair , you are upagainst so many troops
powerful troops as well:

4 80 man units of Heavy cav (might be 3)
2 100 man gunner units
2 monk squads of 80
some archers
2 groups of 4 kensai (yes thats 8 kensai)
and lots and lots of yari samurai.

On the home front you have:

2 no datchi
2 30 man heavy cav units (one is general)
3 groups of 80 yari samurai
3 groups of archers
2 units of yari cav

Not much against what he has which is lots of powerful units its an
army people dream of what you face.Your 3 archer groups begin
at the castle gate with 2 cav units to destroy them and your
yari samurai nearby , your no datchi are miles away and your
2 heavy cav units are right in the firing line of the enemy gunners
thank goodness for small favours eh?.

To start with set a yari cav and both heavy cav unit to destroy
the gunners nearby.At the same time run your archers away to the
trees next to your yari cav and yari samurai.keep your no datchi
close to the trees and near your yari samurai.This gets tricky now
Enemy will be pouring from out the castle and from the edge of
the map ,You want to get as many archers as possible away from
the action use one unit as bait and a sacrifice if you want.When
the kensai attack put your no datchi teams on them and they go
down fast.(donot use anything else against them except maybe
archers and cav to ocupy them while no datchi run into the fray).

Now the enemy heavy cav , yari samurai and monks will have formed
up , any archers you have target monk formations its best if they
are crossing each others paths so you get more kills.Theres lots
of them and few of you.But now your cav would have annilated the
gunner groups or at least routed them run them to the front to give
your troops a morale boost and move your archers just infront of
the trees with you yari samurai behind.This is a trap to catch the
masses of enemy cav , most of the time they fall for it and try eat
your archers alive.Once they charge run your archers back into the
trees and they'll meet your yari samurai.Keep archers targetted
on monks and hold monks up with your yari units or bait them
away whatever keep them busy.Once the heavy cav are dispatched
with turn the yari samurai in the trees to the enemy samurai yari
for a two way attack.Turn your cav to attack the monks and if you
have arrows left fire into the enemy.If not move them around the
side or better to the rear and have them engage hand to hand.
Once you kill his taisho this is your chance charge into fort when
you get 100 past the gate you win.Even if there are enemies still inside
fighting or in a far corner you win.The important point is that the
kensai are not unstoppable they need to be dealt with immediately
or you will be in big trouble taking down a man a second for each kensai.
You'll lose too many troops and get defeated badly. A word of caution
keep your general in a safish place and donot allow him to engage
any yari units since if he dies your game is up.


Takajo

weather - cloudy day
Objectives -  inflict 95% casulties in 7 minutes

This is tricky very tricky in fact but not all that hard , you have some
cav some guns and lots of ashigaru spears.You are also supported
by somebody or other who provides ohh 2 units to help you , some
help...

Your aim in life here is to get 1 (or better 2) units across the bridge
to massacre the enemy gunners and crossbows (yes they do have
cross bows here in 1534).And destroy the few units on your side
of the map.Bunch up all your cav immediately and walk down to
the hillock infront of the yari cav , select your yari samurai and
nose to nose his cav with your yari samurai and one unit of yari cav.
Wait for the passing of his monks and either slip a unit behind them
to the bridge , and use another 2 to tie it up put your guns into
single line and fire into the monks and cav.Put in the naginita
you have to pin down those monks or else , once you have a yari
cav unit at the bridge open formation and charge a unit you want
remembering to turn and reassign when his units part so you
don't get crossfired.After a few more seconds your yari should
have run to the bridge and joined in the killing across the river.
Have your forces on the starting bank clean up and let the ally
do his job , you can just about get 95% before the timer runs out
95% is 948 kills btw and they can be taken by you or your ally.

Sendaigawa

weather - cloudy day
Objectives -  Destroy or rout all the enemy forces

OR

Hold the marked area on the map for 12 seconds with
50 men

This is ridiculously easy to win maybe its a bit of a break from
the massacres of before .

Move your ashigaru unit running away from the naginita about
to massacre them and move most of your forces up the hill to
where your no datchi general is.Now have your naginita cav run
into the nearby trees and set waypoints to the marked area.
Move your yari cav to intercept the enemy cav archers and
move your other no datchi into the trees as well.Follow the yari
cav with your yari samurai as you want to form a wall where cav
archers start.The rest of your troops are a sacrifice distraction
and just move them to a spot where you think they will hold out
longest.Run units into the circled area and surround it with other
troops 2 minutes is up before enemies can engage you after they
have been busy killing your sacrifice deception trap.

Odawara

Weather: good
Objectives - kill 95% of the enemy
while keeping 40% of your troops alive.

This is quite tough even tougher than the past 4 battles so much
goes on and you can't lose too many troops and you have 7 minutes
to acheive this miracle.There are a group of 4 kensai , 3 gunner
units , lots of enemy ashigaru , lots of yari samurai and lots of enemy
no datchi and a few monk squads.A very tough nut to crack , btw
it says castle in the initial briefing the castle much bigger than normal
and you can see a wall go all the way across the map behind the enemy.
It has a single entrance.

2x 60 Heavy cav (I guess it has +3 attack and +3 armour since it can
kill my yari easily)
x4 kensai
2x80 no datchi
1x 120 yari ashigaru
1x 100 yari ashigaru
3x120 guns
2x100 yari samurai
1x100 monks

You have

No datchi 50
No datchi 90
Yari cav 50
Naginita cav 60
Naginita x2 60
x2 100 yari samurai
x1 120 yari ashigaru
x3 100 guns
3 kensai


I cannot beat this battle at rough count enemy is about 1164 strong
and you need to kill 90% of them in 7 minutes 90% is 1048 men
without losing more than 615 of your men.The biggest problem is
that your forces are split up very badly as well in a big thin line
which isn't very good.Some of your better units for dealing with
enemy units are far away from where they are needed and there is
no time to move them in place to defend properly.My best is 861 heads
taken to 616 men lost after 3 minutes , which falls short of what is needed

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