Are Ashigaru OP?

[THE_RaBiD_CanuK]

Are Ashigaru units over powered? I couldn't find any discussions on this. I remember the last campaign I played I won easily by spamming Ashigaru. Powerful en masse against smaller samurai armies, and very cheap to build and maintain. Have other people found this to be the case? Does the difficulty of the campaign effect the potency of this strategy (that is, if I played on legendary would I still be able to spam ashigaru effectively?)
Finaly, if Ashigaru are overpowered, then what purpose do samurai have in a samurai game?

[.O.]

ashigaru are great value for money but they're not OP because generally speaking they are quite weak. Beating elite samurai armies by spamming superior number of ashigarus is basically what the Russians historically did to the Germans. They sent countless poorly trained (or untrained) peasants, sometimes with no weapons to fight against the elite german army. Sure a single German soldier can beat a single Russian "soldier" with little effort, but they do get tired and they do make mistakes and eventually they were just overrun by superior numbers.

[Erika]

In all actuality, after playing a while, ashigaru are only there as ''buffer''.

I've seen 3-4 ashigaru run away from a single katana samurai, they have absolutely no morale.
If you get to play as oda, and get the temple to the west and get ashigaru with morale, they do become quite a danger. But in any other case, you send 2 katana samurai, 1 bow samurai, followed by 2 ashigaru spear + 1 bow ashigaru, and you win most generic skirmish.

They retreat from anything that isn't an instant victory. You only send them to reinforce battle, that are etiher winning, or even ish, anything else and they just die anyway.

[Harpuea]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ are easy to beat if you know how: Ashigaru is succeptible to chain rout. If one start running, the rest will be severely demoralized. A domino effect. To do so, I just focus all my archers at a single ashigaru at the enemy center. If that one runs, there is a chance that their entire rank will collapse. This can also happens if their general is killed.

Samurai are not succeptible to chain rout. Their families will be most upset with them for such a shameful display.

[need.more.brain]

You need to watch out, any kind of gunpowder unit like the early bomb throwers or matchlocks will make them mass rout almost immediately. Also units with high morale like warrior monks and kisho ninjas scare the heck out of them. No-dachis, correctly used, can be devastating as well, but the beforementioned options are far easier to use as you will need constant kiting of the no-dachis. Quite much micromanagement. I say it is safe if you bring 1 samurai unit for 2 ashigarus without counting the first 2 ashigaru units in.

Also they are very bad when taking fortressess. Make sure you bring some headstrong samurai units as first line to climb the wall.

[Supermarine]

Perhaps you can tell us which diffculty you were playing that last campaign.

My personal experience tells me that a mixed army or a full samurai army beats ashigaru every time. I have also observed that near the mid-to-endgame almost all AI armies are made of samurai units almost entirely, and even with some heroes every now and then.

By any chance were you playing Oda on very easy?

[Green Raven]

Ive seen armies of Ashiguru break and rout when they nearly tripeled me in number. That said,get a really good monk embedded in your army,have your general acquire the Ashiguru Commander trait,and recruit the men from high level castles taht start them off with good training,and you have a very dangrous weapon...

[THE_RaBiD_CanuK]

Well, first keep in mind that I would never spam Ashigaru in a multiplayer battle - strictly speaking about the campaign.

I started as the Shimazu on normal (which is probably too easy for me to begin with). I pursued an economic strategy down the way of chi, but also defensive/experience boosting strategy down the bushido path. And of course, morale boosting generals. This gave my units more survivability.

The real advantage I found with the Ashigaru was manueverability on the campaign map. I used ninjas to scout ahead, and a solid navy to manuever my troops. Because ashigaru are so cheap, I could have 3 armies for every 1 samurai army to oppose me. Using my boats and ninjas, I could outmanuever any powerful army, withdrawing or advancing where I saw fit in order to target any weak/undefended territories, taking them quickly, and weakening my opponent clan. Finally, I could converge all my armies together on any particularly menacing army using superior mobility.
I established territory in both the north and the south Japan, and then closed in on kyoto.

If I used a mixed or purely samurai army, I wouldn't of been able to afford the multiple armies which gave me the advantage in manuevering. I felt like, if I had used samurai, I would of had to slug my way through difficult battles, not being able to engage the enemy on multiple fronts, rather than gracefully manuever.

[BleedingRose]

my friend had an entire yari ashugari horsemen army i only had 1 yari shurgari i formed a wall and i won the battle... yeah they are abit to op :3 i still tease him about it lol

[Supermarine]

Originally posted by <GAGG> Sweetie Belle:

my friend had an entire yari ashugari horsemen army i only had 1 yari shurgari i formed a wall and i won the battle... yeah they are abit to op :3 i still tease him about it lol

Where can you find ashigaru cavalry? Does that exist outside the mods?

[BleedingRose]

Originally posted by Supermarine:

Originally posted by <GAGG> Sweetie Belle:

my friend had an entire yari ashugari horsemen army i only had 1 yari shurgari i formed a wall and i won the battle... yeah they are abit to op :3 i still tease him about it lol

Where can you find ashigaru cavalry? Does that exist outside the mods?

yes it does its a vanilla unit i found it mostly from the people next to chesokobe they are very cav based.

[Supermarine]

Originally posted by <GAGG> Sweetie Belle:

Originally posted by Supermarine:

Where can you find ashigaru cavalry? Does that exist outside the mods?

yes it does its a vanilla unit i found it mostly from the people next to chesokobe they are very cav based.

Nice! That means you can have a fully-functional balanced pure-ashigaru army.

Odd I've never seen them before. I'll keep my eyes peeled. Gotta experiment some tactics.

[Long Staff]

I am almost 100% sure there are no ashigaru cavalry units

[BleedingRose]

huh well i mgiht be getting it confused with another cav unit with spears

[Long Staff]

Originally posted by <GAGG> Sweetie Belle:

huh well i mgiht be getting it confused with another cav unit with spears

yea you might be thinking of yari cavalry

[Emperialist]

I hope my post could be of some use here. I have played the campaigns of this game for a little while now, and the only new discussion I can add to this thread is that auto-resolve can certainly make ashigaru units seem OP. Many a campaign I find myself fighting every battle in which I am outnumbered on the field myself. I understand that this is probably nothing new, however if you want to exploit this shortcoming it is completely worth it for the goal of conquering all of Japan. Auto-resolve has a funny way in this game of not paying much attention to many factors besides the numbers on both opposing sides...