Kisho Ninjas? Useless?

[Rinzler]

Is anyone actively using them? I usually have one unit (at most) for fun only, but I find them comparatively useless, especially considering unit size, price, and necessity to micromanage.
Even when attacking a castle, a good bow unit will do much more damage to the enemy troops than those poor bastards in black.

[[TUUONCUOGB]BothChicken]

Yah, they're not supposed to be used like a traditional unit i.e. on 1v1 fights. For me what makes them attractive for me is that they don't take any casualties from climbing walls. This is great for when I want to minimuze casualties when taking a settlement (I usually soften up the target with archers, at which point the Kisho Ninja have more than enough men to take everyone out).

If I were to guess their main use is to sneak them up on the enemy where they least expect it, then drop a bunch of firebombs on the enemy. I think one use was to drop it on the general. The problem is that firebombs suck in Shogun 2 and barely do any damage, they don't even do that much morale damage which would make up for it. It stucks because they're so entertaining to use. Without that all you have is a really good melee unit of what 25 ninjas? If forgot the exact unit size, which can be useful as I've mentioned previously.

[Mile pro Libertate]

They are best used to create opportunities for your other units, not to attack themselves.

They have enough power to defend themselves, but if everything goes right, they should be involved in melee little to at all.

They are really not offensive in the normal sense: even their bombs are "blinding grenades," not fire bombs.

As BkthChicken said, most players use them to take out generals.

But what I like to do is use their grenades to disrupt enemy units that are already engaging my regular melee units. Their grenades do not kill enemy or lower morale so much as they lower the target's melee ability.

Once the enemy flank is weakened, they can also be used to charge the rear of the enemy unit and start a rout.

For castles, they are used to approach unseen and capture the tenshu. If you try to use them like a normal unit in castle assaults, they'll come up short.

It also doesn't work as well for smaller forts, because the enemy is too close. But for fortresses and castles, they can get to the tenshu while most of the enemy is down in the lower levels distracted by your other men.

[Zonda Zecarius]

what i dislike about their grenades is that even the "blinding grenades" does nothing. You're able to throw them at generals and they'll ride off or turn around and shoot you within seconds.
So normally i just buff Ninjas up in multiplayer and have a bunch of melee troops charge the frontlines of my enemies while they attack from the flank/rear once the battle began.
Usually that, or have one of them try to kill off artillery or generals if possible, Hanzo Shadows are also pretty useful at taking out cav, buffed ninjas are also reasonably well as long as the enemies dont cycle charge.

[General Income Tax]

I have exactly one success story with kisho ninjas.

I was attacking a tier 1 castle and had all of my troops on one side, so naturally the defenders had stacked that side heavily. With my main army marching towards the door I sent my 3 kisho ninja units over the wall on the other side.

Just as my main force breached the wall and started to charge, my kisho hit them from behind and caused a huge morale drop and routed half their army almost instantly. I foolishly kept them around and so I ended up losing 1 unit and the other two were heavily wounded but besides that I had relatively low losses because half the defenders routed immediately, and the other half quickly followed.

If I had of micro'd the ninja a little better I could see them getting away with next to no casualities but I was more concerned with what the rest of my army was doing to really pay much attention.

It was a very cool moment, but not so cool that I wanted to use kisho again.

[Zonda Zecarius]

I'm afraid that story was apparently a dream, since as far as I remember, Tier 1 castles only have 1 Tier, meaning everyone inside the castle cannot route as they're near the Tenshu/on the final tier.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Zonda Zecarius:

what i dislike about their grenades is that even the "blinding grenades" does nothing. You're able to throw them at generals and they'll ride off or turn around and shoot you within seconds.
So normally i just buff Ninjas up in multiplayer and have a bunch of melee troops charge the frontlines of my enemies while they attack from the flank/rear once the battle began.
Usually that, or have one of them try to kill off artillery or generals if possible, Hanzo Shadows are also pretty useful at taking out cav, buffed ninjas are also reasonably well as long as the enemies dont cycle charge.

The trick is to use their special ability so they can run while staying hidden.

You use that to cover the last bit of ground so he doesn't have time to ride away, then get him engaged in melee. Pairing the ninja with a yari samurai works well to: the kisho hit the general with grenades and hold him in place, and the yari comes running in to finish the job.

[Zonda Zecarius]

yeah i often use the skill to avoid detection, it just annoys me that some gens can be put on skirmish mode and notice them in time for that to kick in and have him go running away before you get into melee.
normally noticed on gun gens (though that's pretty much the only type of gen you see camping alone) maybe the increased spot range upgrades from the leadership branch can help cancel the ability to some degree?

[General Income Tax]

Originally posted by Zonda Zecarius:

I'm afraid that story was apparently a dream, since as far as I remember, Tier 1 castles only have 1 Tier, meaning everyone inside the castle cannot route as they're near the Tenshu/on the final tier.

So units inside a tier 1 castle will never route?
If that were the case then tier 1 units would be the best castles in the game, no?

[Zonda Zecarius]

They're not, because it simply means your opponent will camp outside with a army of archers and rain death upon your units before sending their melee troops to cut down what is left.
Either that or they'd be FOTS and do something similar but with more explosions.

With multi-tier castles you force your enemy to climb into the castle where you're able to setup guns and archers on the walls to protect your castle.
With 1 tier castles you're unable to do this as melee troops would simply climb up and kill them.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by General Income Tax:

Originally posted by Zonda Zecarius:

I'm afraid that story was apparently a dream, since as far as I remember, Tier 1 castles only have 1 Tier, meaning everyone inside the castle cannot route as they're near the Tenshu/on the final tier.

So units inside a tier 1 castle will never route?
If that were the case then tier 1 units would be the best castles in the game, no?

Units in a tier 1 will indeed rout if they lose the tenshu, but realistically, it's pretty damn hard to ever do that because of the confined space.

This also goes for tier 2 ("stronghold"), because with only a few provinces excepting, forts and strongholds have identical layouts and differ only in the later having ashigaru garrison.

As Zonda Zecarius said, the main danger for troops inside forts and strongholds is getting shot to death because there is little cover, or having the whole place start on fire and burning down 😈

So kisho ninja are, realistically, useless or at least pointless against these lower tier forts:

- If the enemy has few men, like just the spawned garrison, they might be able to sneak in; but it is a lot less risky and time consuming to simply shoot the garrison to death.

- If there are many enemy in the fort, the kisho won't be able to get to the tenshu without running into troops.

Theoretically, you could draw the garrison to the gates and walls by attacking all gates and wall sections simultaneously, and then send the kisho in, take the tenshu, and win.

But you'd probably lose a lot more men doing this compared to simply shooting the garrison down and then mopping up.

PS: But the higher tier forts are different.

They are easier to defend, but also more susceptible to kisho sneaking in unnoticed.

Usually, I've found that it's best when attacking a castle with a strong garrison to simply starve them out. They'll either capitulate or sally for a field battle.

This makes the "kisho are great for taking castles" idea have less weight.

Late campaign, you'll probably have at least one general with siege skills that mean you can starve a fortress in as little as 1 turn. Considering it takes later in the campaign to get kisho, this only makes kisho look even more pointless for sieges.

Kisho ninja can be great in field battles though, because they can deploy all over the map.

In a river battle, for example, they can deploy far outside where the rest of your troops are, so they can secure an alternate crossing, or cross the river totally undetected and then hit the enemy in the rear while you defend or force the main crossing.

[Pumis]

Kisho ninja's can take out pretty much any unit in this game in 1v1 if you micro them well. Go ahead and do some unit testing against A.I.

They have explosives which will take out even hero units, granades that debuff enemy troops (very good ones), and are capable of assassinating units and creating flanking maneuvers with their invisibility skill. Heck they even make great castle defenders, since it takes a while for enemy to notice them and they are able to throw projectiles on enemies that are about to climb.

Not only that but getting province with blacksmith, you can easily increase their armor to the level that bow units won't be that big issue.

I have won campaign games where I made my main army stack full of Kisho ninja's.

"
So units inside a tier 1 castle will never route?
If that were the case then tier 1 units would be the best castles in the game, no?"
No, they are not. Because you can take advantage of multiple layers. Climbing them exhausts them, and you can put ranged units on higher walls while having troops in lower walls holding enemy in good positition where they cannot be flanked. This is generally better in multilayer forts because it forces enemy demount cav, and bring their archers closer to your archers/matchlock troops.

Think it in this way... first hold the lower ones, then retreat in orderly fashion and keep repeating same thing.

[[TUUONCUOGB]BothChicken]

Originally posted by General Income Tax:

So units inside a tier 1 castle will never route?
If that were the case then tier 1 units would be the best castles in the game, no?

In every castle units in the top tier with the flag will never route, thus no unit in tier 1 castles will route.

And yes, in some cases this is true, particuraly if you're facing a huge army and you don't have many archers. Going up against a tier 1 castle makes it far more difficult, not just because of the unbreakable morale but also because in tier 2 and above, it's easier to isolate units and avoid archers while gunning down the garrison with your archers.

[Eat3n]

1) Boost Kisho units with a blacksmith. If you focus on armor you can really boost their defense ability, they aren't 1v1 units but it definitely boosts their survival. Focusing on offense with a blacksmith makes them even deadlier if you know how to use them.

2) Grenades aren't the best in the game but do have an effect. The way i tend to use them is in conjunction with a greater attack; never by themselves.

3) Flank attacking is your friend. Use the special ninja ability to run while sneaking, throw the bombs on the rear of an enemy, then rush in for knife-work. You can route people fairly well.

[MrPurple33]

when I played the Tutorial, in the Castle Siege, it Makes you use Kisho and they are useless (never finished tutorial because of it) In actual games, Kisho are STILL terrible at sieging/sneaking into Castles -- However, on a Field Map, esp with tree cover, a single Kisho can cause great havoc and disruption, I usually back/sneak attack a passing army, greatly wound a unit (try for any good Samurai unit, but even 1/2ing an Ashi Spear unit helps) and then my army hits the charge for the advantage

[Pumis]

Originally posted by MrPurple33:

when I played the Tutorial, in the Castle Siege, it Makes you use Kisho and they are useless (never finished tutorial because of it) In actual games, Kisho are STILL terrible at sieging/sneaking into Castles -- However, on a Field Map, esp with tree cover, a single Kisho can cause great havoc and disruption, I usually back/sneak attack a passing army, greatly wound a unit (try for any good Samurai unit, but even 1/2ing an Ashi Spear unit helps) and then my army hits the charge for the advantage

They are great at taking down enemy archers near walls, since they can be temporally invisible, hence allowing them to surprise them. Hence allowing your main troops to approach with low casualties.