A Few Questions About Castles

[Tragopan]

Hello! I was wondering a few things..

1) What do you do with castles that are too far from the front lines?

2) How should you deploy your units? (Gunners/Cavalry/Spear/Bow) Should you try to be all melee/all ranged squads or should you go half and half like the AI does?

3) How many officers should be stationed at a castle?

4) Promoting Lords.. when is it a good idea? I wanna do it but at the same time I develop the land better than the AI, plus what happens when their territory is no longer near the front line and it's my good general? Does he stay behind just cause his domain is behind me?

[Vin362]

1) When it comes to castles that aren’t the front line that gives you a good place to build farms/paddies for food along with equal amount of warrior quarters the result will be having a castle with 20k plus troops which you can develop to the castles you wish to attack from, Nijo Palace is where this works best.

2) Deploying units depends on what clan you are using for example the Oda’s intensive firearms upgrade for improved firearms makes the unit stronger when equipped with gunners, Shimazu become stronger if equipped with a cavalry or gunner unit and Date has the Dragoon troops which is a unit that combines gunners and cavalry.

3) Ideally you would want 3 officers stationed at a castle and each officer should have one a high stat in LEA, VAL and INT this way you can defend a castle, naturally you can station more officers if you want to develop it faster but in later scenarios this becomes less of an issue because there are fewer officers and castles (Osaka Campaign comes to mind).

4) Personally, I limit the number of lords I promote due to the buggy A.I, but when I do promote a lord I do only after I have 50+ castles under my banner, now one thing you can do is rearrange the house you create and the lord will be fine as long the amount of castles they control isn’t decreased.

[Tragopan]

Thank you! That's a lot of useful information. :D

Wow 20k troops! Maybe I haven't been developing my castles very well.. most I've ever had was 7k. So castles that are really far back are still useful? As an example.. I like making new clans in the North and as I start to move down Japan I have well developed castles at the top that are really far away.

In regards to the units.. does the unit have to be ALL gunners, or just have at least one? (In the example of Oda's firearms policy). I know there are some traits that improve the power of a unit if the unit is all one soldier type (I think that's how it works).

OH. A final question.. mountain castles.. should I not bother with them because heir district size is so limited or are they still useful? How does one use/develop them?

[Vin362]

If you enacted any of the polices that strength a unit if a certain solider type is required like improved firearms all you need is one squad in the unit.
Moutain castles have more hit points and can be used for defence but some times get in the way, for example in Tosa where the Chosokabe start some of their mountain castles have 0 districts, on the other hand Mino has few mountain castles that aren’t great but they aren’t horrible either and can be used to defend against Takeda so it depends on who you are playing as.

[Tragopan]

Fair enough! Thank you for the help. :)