How to get the most soldiers ?

[Mulfar]

Hello,

I played a game of Shimazu on normal and became quite big rather early on, to the point of no return. I was fielding huge armies that crushed into the mainland of Japan.

Now I'm using the Takeda on Hard and everything is much harder. Following the quests, I conquered the provinces that are part of Shinano but I'm nothing special compared to my neighbors. The Hojo, Imagawa and Date plus Echigo clans, for example, are pretty much stronger than me.

It's a problem because no matter how good my generals are I cant win battles against superior numbers of troops. Like I'd win a fight and then massive reinforcements will come as I run out of provisions and ultimately push me back.

So how do you get the most soldiers from your towns ? It looks like you are better of making gardens and stacking them together. Increasing your number of conscripts in the process. The other types of conscript buildings are so worthless it appears.

2 gardens close to each others are better than 2 drill sites. Like what gives? Why build drill sites at all?

[Imperial]

I've got to test it out some more, but I've been using equal measure crop/drill + castle upgrades that increase population. If you find a better combo let me know

[felinowottgald]

The shimazu has an advantage, they can build churchs early in the game, these building are a little op because a single district almost give more soldiers that two with drill sites, so using that and lot of pupulation can create a really great army

[Revan Tair]

Now i get it, why my last game was oda(all of honshu) vs shimazu(all of kyushu?, never laid a finger on kyushu.... for 10 years.

[felinowottgald]

Also note that some building make districts next to them more efficent, using one that boost conscrips on the center surrounded by conscript disctricts can dramatically boost your army (but of course you still need food for all these soldiers, so please make your maths before building, remember 1-1 is the cost of conscript-food)

[waTTe]

Well dont know if the game is changing somewhat due to which clans you choose, but I´d think that would be great.
If you followed the quests, you are playing somewhat historical - in that case Takeda was never able to field armys to a size other clans could (have - Hojo, Uesugi, Imagawa,Oda) but had very good ones (in traditional warfare), with a high percentage of samurai. But they still suffered bad drawbacks, like the casualties at Kawanagajima, or in that one battle against Murakami.

So I say, be fine with it, step away from the quests or try another clan.

[Alice®]

practicing range/hunting ground is better to improve troop attack, again quality is better than quantity. building rice trade shop will make population pop and also barracks. to max out soldier num u need to tun on policy to make small castles have more men.

[Benjoseph]

When I move to attack I strip garrisons and turn on the policy for fast/more/expanded number of conscripts..... you get less of something else but man do you have fast reinforcements. That alone can win the day