Good Army Ratios?

[Knightmage Bael]

How many archers/katana/yari/naginata units should you have relative to one another?

Do you want like 1/3 of your army size to be bowmen, or is that too much? Should you use Naginata over Katana? Do naginata sufficiently replace Yari?

Gone are the days when you could just make your entire army nagainata warrior monks :p

[BastardSword]

I find that fire arrows cause a morale shock effect to the enemy, so even just having a few bows firing one fire arrow volley is a good way to start a battle. I've tried delaying researching fire arrows in the early game and using only naginata samurai in the mid/late game with no bows, and I found that AI armies were more difficult to rout and my naginata armies routed more easily as well. You can explain this by saying that fire arrows causes more deaths than a normal volley and thus the AI reacts to guys dying by losing morale, but I think there's a little more to it than that. I also find that whistling arrows don't really cause major routing or morale issues to the enemy.



Early game: 4-6 bow ashigaru, the rest yari ashigaru. If one of my frontiers keeps getting invaded I'll put 2-5 yari samurai in the army just for extra morale and staying power.

Mid game: 6 bow samurai or bow ashigaru (preferably with max accuracy), the rest naginata samurai with max armor. Maybe some naginata monks and katanas mixed in.

Late game: 6-8 fire rockets with max accuracy, the rest naginata samurai with max armor.

[Knightmage Bael]

Yeah I have some naginata samurai I can train at rank 7 (samurai expert giving temporary +2), and trained at an armor Smith with armorer camp for a ridiculous amount of armor. So right now they look like tanks. They deal like 17 or 19 melee damage or whatever, katana samurai at 22 or 24 or something, but far less armor. Naginata samurai also get a cavalry bonus.

I forgot to look at morale, but after a certain point it's very difficult to route units unless you play at higher difficulty levels of course.

So whistling arrows no longer do much morale damage? That sucks. Naginata monks have their warcry ability which is nice to use after your yari samurai charge into the enemy.

But I mean, should I have one bow for every 2 melee unit? Should have 5 naginatas and 3 katanas to 4 bows?

What about unit combinations? Like naginata samurai to tank, then charge in with no-dachi samurai? Though I'm more curious about the ratios. I don't want to have too many bows, and I want to be able to cover for every weakness.

[BastardSword]

a) No I meant whistling arrows just don't cause an immediate obvious morale loss. I'm sure it causes lower morale but I don't see units just melt away and rout when I use them. But I do notice that when I don't use flame arrows, enemy units have higher morale and stay in battles longer. By the time you get whistling arrows you probably have max armor naginatas and high rank generals anyway, so morale isn't really an issue anymore.

b) The AI uses the same army composition most of the time. Some bows up front (usually around 1/3rd of a stack), then a bunch of spears, and some cavalry on the side. So you need to think about how to counter that...the main way to do so is to just copy what the AI does. Katanas and no-dachis are good against melee units but the AI cavalry will make a beeline for them. Sword units with high armor will do ok against cavalry though.

c) the main reason I put bows in armies is for when I defend a castle, so I always keep enough to viably defend a castle...between 4 and 6.

[Egro]

You will want a few monk bows for siege battle. These bois have a ridiculous range and accuracy, they will decimate the defender and good for destroying ashigaru before they can do any damages. I always have 4 of 'em in all of my armies. :D

[Knightmage Bael]

Originally posted by Egro:

You will want a few monk bows for siege battle. These bois have a ridiculous range and accuracy, they will decimate the defender and good for destroying ashigaru before they can do any damages. I always have 4 of 'em in all of my armies. :D

True words.

I got one of them to like 93 accuracy or whatever.

I cannot possibly tell you how fast the enemy archers on the walls were dropping, it was like that wall wasn't even there, it was insane just watching that number fall as rapidly as it did.

Chosokabe Daikyu Samurai have a range of like 175 or 200 or something. No wait, Monks have 200, Daikyu have 175, right?

[Ashina]

Originally posted by Archmage_Bael:

Originally posted by Egro:

You will want a few monk bows for siege battle. These bois have a ridiculous range and accuracy, they will decimate the defender and good for destroying ashigaru before they can do any damages. I always have 4 of 'em in all of my armies. :D

True words.

I got one of them to like 93 accuracy or whatever.

I cannot possibly tell you how fast the enemy archers on the walls were dropping, it was like that wall wasn't even there, it was insane just watching that number fall as rapidly as it did.

Chosokabe Daikyu Samurai have a range of like 175 or 200 or something. No wait, Monks have 200, Daikyu have 175, right?

Daikyu and Monks have 175 Range.

200 Range are only for Hero Units, like Bow Hero and Yabusame Hero.

Daikyu Samurai is when you don't really want to have that "Somewhat" Expensive Bow Monks(Chosokabe Bow Monks have 175 Upkeep, I think), or you want to go for Jesus Route.

Daikyu and Matchlocks works together very well, but works super well when used against the enemy Weebs, Like Samurai and Warrior Monks since they're more expensive, and gets shredded by Daikyu, and finished off by the Matchlock.

An Army focused on Daikyu and Matchlocks should have a mediocre number of Both Daikyu and Matchlocks, perhaps 6 Daikyu and 5 Matchlock, 4 Melee Units, and 4 Cavalry, the idea is to pick off the enemy mainline units like Samurai(only target Ashigaru when there's no other target), weakening them to the point that your 4 melee units can take them down easily, and then using your cavalry to chase off the enemy missile units.