Which infantry units are really worth it?

[m4ce_windu]

I am wondering if all of units in this game are actually worth their price. For the sake of simplicity and because I am an outspoken enemy of DLC-whoring I want to stick to the basic units only.

Let''s take a supposed army of 5 yari ashigaru for anti-cav and cannonfodder, 5 bow ashigaru for ranged damage and 5 katana samurai for the actual killing.
If we ignore cavalry here, can this army be made significantly stronger while keeping the cost in mind, by replacing the ashigaru units with samurai? So for example would it make sense to exchange some bow ashigaru with bow samurai to strengthen the army (at an upkeep neutral conversion rate)? Bow samurais are better in melee and have higher accuracy but bow ashigaru have a higher troop number and are cheaper, so I think the ranged damage should roughly be even. And if your bow troops get into melee you are doing something wrong anyway.
Same for yari ashigaru. The yari samurai are better in infantry combat but cost more, need an additional building and they even have less bonus against cavalry so the ashigaru would not fare that much worse against cavalry.

Another aspect is troop diversity. Having different types of troop classes is obviously important but do you really benefit for example by replacing some of your katana samurai with no-dachi and naginata samurai? No-dachis have a superior charge so would be better in the open field but their stats are worse otherwise, therefore in extended battle or sieges they should lose against katana samurai. Naginata samurai are powerful for sure and can handle most situations well. Their defense even allows them to survive arrows pretty well, but since they are extremely expensive ashigaru seem to be better used as cannonfodder. For both cases you also have to get the appropriate research and buildings to get the troops. Are they therefore really worth it, or could you just run with a very basic core army like I described in the beginning and be just as effective?

What are your thoughts?

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

I routinely win battles against larger armies with only (veteran) ashigaru units. Just because they're cheap doesn't mean that they're junk. If you can get your yari ashigaru in spear wall formation and keep their morale up with friendly units nearby, they can hold the line for a long, long time. Putting them in spear wall just behind the walls in a castle defense, they will rout almost any attacking unit.

If you really want to push the advantage, you can play as Oda. Keep your savings for when you want to complement your core peasant army with a few samurai units.

[Xsonic]

I'm ashigaru all the way. Pushing the limits of tactics with weaker units.

[abcd]

Naginata with armor upgrades will regularly outperform katanas in extended melee, especially in tight quarters like a siege. They're also nearly-immune to ashigaru bow, meaning you can fire on any melee they're in with impunity.

Nodachi are like cavalry for attacking spear walls. They're hard to use and most people prefer yari samurai for the same purposes owing to their greater survivability. They have other uses, but it's kind of a generalist unit that is also very niche.

Generally speaking, the only reason to field samurai is their superior morale. Wedges of samurai at your flanks can make your front line functionally invincible, as you can use them to stop an advance and then reinforce from the center. It can also allow them to do suicidal deep strikes to make openings for the rest of the army. Their upkeep is absurd anyway, so getting them killed ASAP will save you enough to make more.

[Ashina]

Yari ashigaru all the way, cheap and easy to recruit, also a low risk high reward unit.

Yari samurai needed upgrade like attack or armor, that's the time when they become quite versatile and good.

Katana Samurai is easy to use, heart and soul of the army.

Naginata Samurai is for pure power.

Bow Samurai with attack upgrade for the old school style.
You basically have a katana samurai that can shoot arrows.

[Ashina]

Also the bow tier 3 dojo don't need special resources, unlike spear and sword dojo.
Tier 2 also already gives experience bonus.
So you can pump some good bow samurai.

[Ashina]

Bow samurai isn't a perfect melee unit, but they're the strongest melee bow unit in the game

[BastardSword]

We had a topic about this not long ago. As usual most people here basically said you can win every battle by putting yari ashigaru in spear wall with guard mode on and going to make a sandwich.

I've tried this on Hard and it just doesn't work. At a certain point fairly early on the AI will start spamming yari samurai and bow samurai. Yari ashigaru will do well but eventually suffer morale shocks and melt away. Instead I always go for naginata samurai with maxed out armor. Zero morale issues, the threat from cavalry is completely neutralized, and the naginatas can kill any melee unit the AI throws at me. Sure they're expensive but at least they work.

Bows are trickier. I've tried using armies that were nothing but naginata samurai with no bows, and my guys actually had morale problems. I put bows back into my army and did better, I think because they thin out the enemy bows and can withstand (and let loose) a flaming arrow barrage then withdraw, letting the naginatas rush in and mop up.

Unlike naginata samurai vs. yari ashigaru, I don't really see a big difference between bow ashigaru and bow samurai that makes the extra cost really worth it. I replace bow ashigaru with samurai if I can afford them, but it's a much lower priority for me than replacing yari ashigaru with naginatas.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by m4ce_windu:

I am wondering if all of units in this game are actually worth their price. For the sake of simplicity and because I am an outspoken enemy of DLC-whoring I want to stick to the basic units only.

Let''s take a supposed army of 5 yari ashigaru for anti-cav and cannonfodder, 5 bow ashigaru for ranged damage and 5 katana samurai for the actual killing.
If we ignore cavalry here, can this army be made significantly stronger while keeping the cost in mind, by replacing the ashigaru units with samurai? So for example would it make sense to exchange some bow ashigaru with bow samurai to strengthen the army (at an upkeep neutral conversion rate)? Bow samurais are better in melee and have higher accuracy but bow ashigaru have a higher troop number and are cheaper, so I think the ranged damage should roughly be even. And if your bow troops get into melee you are doing something wrong anyway.
Same for yari ashigaru. The yari samurai are better in infantry combat but cost more, need an additional building and they even have less bonus against cavalry so the ashigaru would not fare that much worse against cavalry.

Another aspect is troop diversity. Having different types of troop classes is obviously important but do you really benefit for example by replacing some of your katana samurai with no-dachi and naginata samurai? No-dachis have a superior charge so would be better in the open field but their stats are worse otherwise, therefore in extended battle or sieges they should lose against katana samurai. Naginata samurai are powerful for sure and can handle most situations well. Their defense even allows them to survive arrows pretty well, but since they are extremely expensive ashigaru seem to be better used as cannonfodder. For both cases you also have to get the appropriate research and buildings to get the troops. Are they therefore really worth it, or could you just run with a very basic core army like I described in the beginning and be just as effective?

What are your thoughts?

Not speaking of DLC units, or Naval units, there are definitely some units that are not cost effective.

Imo, ones that come to mind:
- Bow Monks
- Matchlock Monks
- No Dachi samurai
- Hojo Hand Mortars
- Bow Cav
- Hero units (any and all of them lol)
- European cannon/bombard
- Catapults

In terms of cost effective, obviously there is yari ashigaru, and katana samurai, as your regular standouts.

Imo, the following units are also very cost effective, but are often overlooked by people:

- Matchlock samurai
- Fire Bomb Throwers
- Yari samurai (especially Hattori Yari Samurai)
- Light Cavalry

Just for fun:

"Most overrated units"
- Yari ashigaru
- Kisho ninja
- Naginata samurai
- Naginata Monks

"Most underrated units"
- Yari ashigaru ;)
- Kisho ninja ;)

"Most misunderstood/misused units"
- Katana Cav
- No Dachi Sam
- Matchlocks of all types

"Units that can be extremely effective, but require so much micro, specific context, and/or faction development, that they simply aren't worth the effort, or, 'too much pain in the ass to justify."

- No Dachi Sam
- Bow Cav
- Bow Sam
- Bow Monks


"Most cost effective unit of all"

- Metsuke with bribery skills maxed out ;)

[BastardSword]

The Saints and Heroes DLC is pretty useless. The only hero unit I ever manage to get is the tetsubo club monks. They're ok but take forever to unlock and by that time I'm usually practically finished with the game. The other hero units that come with that DLC take even longer to get, or they're cavalry which I don't like.

The default hero units are also pretty worthless for similar reasons. By the time you can get them you're done with the game or are so powerful that you are steamrolling everything anyway. Their small unit size makes them pretty meh compared to an army full of naginata samurai with max armor.

The Sengoku Jidai DLC on the other hand is pretty good, though most of the units fall into the same trap of taking so long to unlock that they might as well not exist. Date bulletproof samurai, Oda long yari and Mori wako raiders are all quite decent. Most of the others either kinda suck (looking at you Hattori peasant bowmen) or come so late in the game as to be useless.

And Hojo hand mortars look amazing but really don't do that much damage. Get fire rockets instead, which don't need DLC.

[Ashina]

Originally posted by BastardSword:

The Saints and Heroes DLC is pretty useless. The only hero unit I ever manage to get is the tetsubo club monks. They're ok but take forever to unlock and by that time I'm usually practically finished with the game. The other hero units that come with that DLC take even longer to get, or they're cavalry which I don't like.

The default hero units are also pretty worthless for similar reasons. By the time you can get them you're done with the game or are so powerful that you are steamrolling everything anyway. Their small unit size makes them pretty meh compared to an army full of naginata samurai with max armor.

I think Heroes could play a part in Siege Defense, like if you can bait the enemy into climbing the wall and then put your heroes at the capture points they will rack up so much kills, heroes are supposed to fight a lot of enemies and having 2 Health(in the game file) + the inability to rout in siege defense the heroes can do the heroic last stand while chopping everything in sight.

[Garde]

I personally like having a large component of ashigaru troops, and then I have a mix of superior troops, but katana samurai are the most "jack of all trades" samurai I suppose? they are good at most things, like charging and doing all the killing like you said. Do you use spear wall for the yari ashigaru? If you don't, I found out that you can leave them in their regular formation and once you get a few more paces against the enemy, switch to spear wall so they don't get killed as easily against bow troops and they also do the most damage.

[Ashina]

Originally posted by Garde (sens):

I personally like having a large component of ashigaru troops, and then I have a mix of superior troops, but katana samurai are the most "jack of all trades" samurai I suppose? they are good at most things, like charging and doing all the killing like you said. Do you use spear wall for the yari ashigaru? If you don't, I found out that you can leave them in their regular formation and once you get a few more paces against the enemy, switch to spear wall so they don't get killed as easily against bow troops and they also do the most damage.

A Reminder that staying in Yari wall will take some fatigue.
Such Example is in some Early Rebel Battle where the AI just do a Yari Wall at the start of the battle, and when you came close to them, they're already winded without doing anything.

You actually can run while in yari wall, just press the Run button, which is "R" for me.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Ashina:

Originally posted by Garde (sens):

I personally like having a large component of ashigaru troops, and then I have a mix of superior troops, but katana samurai are the most "jack of all trades" samurai I suppose? they are good at most things, like charging and doing all the killing like you said. Do you use spear wall for the yari ashigaru? If you don't, I found out that you can leave them in their regular formation and once you get a few more paces against the enemy, switch to spear wall so they don't get killed as easily against bow troops and they also do the most damage.

A Reminder that staying in Yari wall will take some fatigue.
Such Example is in some Early Rebel Battle where the AI just do a Yari Wall at the start of the battle, and when you came close to them, they're already winded without doing anything.

You actually can run while in yari wall, just press the Run button, which is "R" for me.

Ashigaru have to come out of wall formation in order to run.

[m4ce_windu]

Thank you for your valuable insights! What do you make of the warrior monk troops? I somehow never come around to use them since I go for different tech tree paths.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by m4ce_windu:

Thank you for your valuable insights! What do you make of the warrior monk troops? I somehow never come around to use them since I go for different tech tree paths.

They're not cost effective, imo.

If you can get some through bribery, or by capturing the necessary buildings that an AI clan has already built, they have their uses:

- Naginata monks are great for morale shock
- Bow Monks are good for morale shock
- Naginata Cav are good all-rounder cav (available to Ikko Ikki only)
- Matchlock monks good for morale shock.

All of the monks, save monk cav, are primarily about shattering enemy morale, and can cause chain routs if used properly.

The thing is, all of the monks, again save monk cavalry, are "glass cannon": they are very vulnerable to missiles and prolonged melee (even Naginata Monk), because of their stats and their low armor.

The rub is, these weaknesses can be somewhat addressed, but, that entails a large investment in infrastructure and the relevant parts of the tech tree, so there is very large financial and opportunity costs.

In other words, after you have spent the time and resources necessary to really make monks viable, odds are high that you'll have set yourself back in the campaign game overall.

The amount of koku needed to build the infrastructure and cover the difference in recruit cost for monks versus samurai or ashigaru is equivalent to what you could bribe and/or sabotage several enemy stacks with, which means taking new provinces just that much faster.

Another way of putting it: building up monk-centered armies requires a turtling approach to the campaign, and lots of koku. The problem though, is Shogun 2 doesn't reward turtling, and it has a tight economic system that makes reserve koku precious, especially on VH and Legendary.