How do you deal with stack armies in Shogun 2?

[REIbox99]

How do you deal with stack armies in Shogun 2? Playing as Shimazu I can't out recruit the AI on very hard + (battle realism) which is problematic since i'm boxed in on Kyushu, I can only confidently beat an AI army that's 2-2.5x times larger than me in defensive siege battles. Additionally, attacking means the AI will run to a hill with a forest on it once the battle starts.

Are you suppose to only fight defensive battles by running into their territory and sieging them out? Or picking a place to move your army before the end turn and look for land descriptions like "hills" or "forested hills" instead of "plains"?

Even before these considerations, I don't know how to gauge if i'm able to beat an army, or if the AI feels confident it can win as the attacker on a siege and not try to siege me out. On a few instances I deliberately took units from the province capital to convince the AI to attack me, thinking I could win easily, but I'd lose barely since I only needed 1-2 more Ashigaru to win.

Do you have any tips for how to deal with larger armies?

I'm assuming this is a culmination of moving to bridges to force "bridge battles" and counting army ratios. However, at the point I have an option to retreat, I've lost since you can't select where to retreat.

[Hat8]

The Ashigaru spear wall ability is your friend until you can recruit an army of veteran samurai/monks.

You need to focus your armies and rely on fortresses to hold other fronts.

Regardless, on very hard you must be able to win while outnumbered. Kiting, defeating in detail and using every units strengths is a must. Try using slow-mo to get the hang of micro-management.

[Alex]

Have approximately 1/2~5/8 of your army as Yari Ashigarus and the rest as bow infantry with general (cheap and quick to make).
When possible try to draw the enemy to attacking you at favorable locations (especially at a bridge).

On defense
When battle starts, find a good hill with forest cover and make a line with the Yari Ashigarus long enough to prevent the enemies from flanking you; camp at the corner of the map if you have to (of course, choke points such as a bridge will give you significant advantage).
Put your archers in loose formation just in front of your Yaris so they can get a few volleys off while receiving minimal return fire.
Retreat your archers behind the Yaris to draw enemy archers closer, then put Yaris in spear wall and keep general just behind them for morale (while your archers under forest cover prioritize enemy archers).

On offense
Make a long line of Yaris slightly outside of enemy archers range, and set up your own archers in loose formation in a line in front your Yaris, and use your general or cavalry to lure a few enemy archers at a time so your archers can kill them one by one.
Activate spear wall when enemies eventually charge you after losing all of their archer units, and watch them get obliterated as they charge in to your spear wall.

On defensive siege
Put archers on the walls initially while keeping Yaris and general behind Tenshu as cover from enemy archers.
Pull back archers when enemies start to climb the walls, put them in loose formation, and bring out your Yaris in a line parallel to the wall and in Yari wall (do not put Yaris on the walls though).
Focus down enemy archers with your archers first, and watch as enemies get obliterated against your spear wall.

Offensive siege
Draw the enemies out whenever possible, but if you must fight a siege pick a side (preferably near a gate) to attack and use your Yaris in loose formation as arrow fodder while your archers focus fire on enemy archers on the wall on that side.
Climb over wall (make sure that enemy melee units are not nearby and tubing over) or burn down the gate, and get your Yaris (out of loose formation) in a line to protect your archers as they kill everything.
Put Yaris in spear wall as needed when enemy units charge your units.


These tactics and strategy have allowed me to fight against enemies of higher quality and quantity units, as long as they do not have longer range archer units or siege weapons. Upgrade units to bow monks/Daikyu samurais for longer range and better accuracy, and to naginata samurais with full armor upgrades later on.

[BastardSword]

^
good advice from doktor. When you are the attacker and the AI just stands there waiting for you to attack or hides on a hill, when you kill all their bow units they will charge in their melee units. Pull back your bows and set up yari wall and watch the enemy die. It's annoying when they're in a forest on a hill, but you can move your yari ashigaru up in loose formation and when they get close to the enemy bows they'll make them appear and you can rain arrows on them while moving your spearwall through them if you want. The forest will mostly protect your yari ashigaru from arrows, but it will also protect the enemy bows. Having yari ashigaru with high stats will let you move them up through the enemy units, but they will take a lot of damage and may rout if the enemy charges downhill at them.

Right now I'm playing on Very Hard for the first time, playing on Date. I feel like I've basically mastered Hard and I'm using the same tactics but being a bit more cautious obviously. Annoyingly nobody will trade with me.

Anyway this is what I'm doing: setting up a level 3 castle in Fukishima to lure in enemy full stacks and murder them. I have a decent but non-upgraded full stack army in this castle with my daimyo. Takeda holds all the provinces to the west and south of Fukushima, they just declared war on me and I've already destroyed one and a half of their stacks at Fukushima. I'm just worried that they'll charge in with two or three full stacks and overwhelm me, but I can probably hold them off unless they siege me out. Not sure if this happens on VH, on Hard it sometimes happens especially with Takeda since they love sending out two to four full stacks at once.

Also I've just set up a full stack of yari ashigaru, bow ashigaru and date bulletproof samurai, all with max armor upgrade. I'm bringing them down from my home province and I'm going to use them to roam to the south and take useful provinces like Hitachi and hopefully Suruga. I'll keep the Daimyo in Fukushima to ward off any attacks from the West and North of Fukushima.

In general I find that it's useful to make my army mostly yari ashigaru and exploit spear wall. When the AI throws themselves on the spearwall, I then use a smaller group of samurai as shock troops to finish off the enemy and make them rout. It's working pretty well so far in this Date campaign, and relying mainly on yari ashigaru instead of samurai frees up a lot of cash.

[REIbox99]

Originally posted by Herr Doktor:

Have approximately 1/2~5/8 of your army as Yari Ashigarus and the rest as bow infantry with general (cheap and quick to make).
When possible try to draw the enemy to attacking you at favorable locations (especially at a bridge).....

......These tactics and strategy have allowed me to fight against enemies of higher quality and quantity units, as long as they do not have longer range archer units or siege weapons. Upgrade units to bow monks/Daikyu samurais for longer range and better accuracy, and to naginata samurais with full armor upgrades later on.

I will certainly try this, thank you,
I really appreciate it. Do you have any tips on fighting battles against bow samurai armies? While yari ashigaru can beat yari samurai comfortably in 1v1 yari wall. The AI can be particularly annoying in siege battles if it has bow samurai, and will focus on using them effectively.

I was able to beat an Army like this once by corner camping in the fort, charging forward after 75% of the archers climbed, and using katana samurai to charge behind into the enemy melee blob. This was alot more effective than trying to charge through the yari wall which I did in the past.

I always thought generals were instrumental in winning until I took severe losses quickly, even by charging behind and trying to "get out".

[Iron Ben]

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrSmartDonkeyLP


Watch how this guy deals with enemy bows, its easy once you've done it a few times...


Also, if you want to make your life easier, dont attack castles that are well defended; siege them out and wait for them to sally out to you.

[BastardSword]

I was doing fine on VH, not really finding it any harder than Hard, and my mix of yari ashigaru and samurai were doing well.

But just before Realm Divide Hattori declared war on me and killed one of my armies in a siege by attacking with three full stacks. I moved up two of my armies and killed the enemy off, but I feel like I've hit a wall now, enemy units seem way harder to kill off for some reason. Not sure why it's changed so much. I'm into realm divide now and attacking other clans and am finding the same thing. Bow ashigaru are useless now and barely kill anyone. Even bow samurai have fallen off in killing power. Yari ashigaru do ok but take a lot of casualties. Samurai do fine but they aren't the bulk of my armies.