I've currently got some real life stuff I'm trying to get sorted... hopefully normal service will be resumed in a week or so.

When you fight a melee army, you really have to look for opportunities to shred their morale. Wipe out their cav with yours (backed up your cav with spears if you're outnumbered) then hit their army in the rear if they get too close to your line. Cav attacks in the rear of a sword unit drop its morale by -6. If you have a single unit with warcry, use that to drop their morale by another -2.

If your troops are on a hill, they apparently get +6 to their morale, so always fight a melee spammer on a hill if you can, as it maximises the amount of time you can fire into melee and charge your line before they crack your line.

Also, look into using the metsuke inspector and the bad omen retainers - these are very useful if you think you're going to be fighting a loan sword spammer. If you hit the enemy units with rear charges, warcry, the metsuke and the bad omen their morale will drop by -10 and you should get an auto-rout firly quickly, especially if you have guns firing into melee.

Retainers do stack, although debuffs usually do not. So, if you got fugu and world weary you would drop enemy melee attack by 4, but if you tried using warcry two times on the same unit, then the debuff value doesn't stack - you only get the penalty from the first warcry.

After fighting your army and Eagles I'd say the thing you guys have to watch out the most for are melee spams in 2v2. They'll roll your spear troops and skirmishers pretty easily, especially if they can defeat your cavalry. If I were you I'd look at beefing up your cavalry arm, taking some cheaper spear units and replacing a few of your spears with melee troops and more guns.

You guys are pretty well placed to take down cav spams and skirmish armies, so I wouldn't worry too much about them.

A more specific question: Do morale, or penalty for enemy (morale or melee) retainers/skills stack? EG if you have a leadership general, is it any use to get morale retainers? Or do world weary and fungu cook stack to give enemy -4 melee attack?

Hey guys, i know its asking a lot, but can those high ranking players give some advice on how to build armies, use strategies, what to expect, what to avoid in high ranking matchmade play? Me and Eagle plan to do some ranked 2v2, and though we are experienced in custom games, we could still learn a lot i guess.

Shame on you Tada, shame on you.. I shall remember this! And it was more so both of the enemies, but in my screenshot, I lost quite a bit because my ally came too late to the party after destroying some poor SOBs hidden infantry. I'll try to play some more games later tonight if I can. I might be going out to the hospital again though~

Good to have you back, I hope your girl is better. :)

Sorry, couldn't resist. Good work. :)

When you say both armies do you mean both yours and that of your opponents? :P

Woot! The matchmaking has decided to grace me with the ability to finally find a game. I played it, and dominated killing both armies. xD~

Yes it's true, the units will cost too much, since numbers give morale bonuses to your troops and lowers the enemy morale having too many highly upgraded units hurts your chances at winning in. I wouldn't recommend using other upgrades than attack and defense until you get clan upgrades. Maybe morale but I find the extra morale to be a questionable upgrade at best. Speed is really good for certain units like bow cavalry, fatigue is a non-issue in most battles if you play like a normal person. I got all but 4 achievements, 94% I think. But I've had a few weeks off, if there's been any radical patches my advice could be off, got pretty tired of playing russians who I cant seem to be able to keep a stable connection to.

Hey guys, me again, from the last remark i take it high ranking players do not spend all their points on vets to limit costs, is this true? Is it good to unspend unit skill points to keep unit cost down? For my infantry i select: attack, defense, fatigue and speed, sometimes morale.
Also my usual 2v2 parther isnt online much, i d like to play w other clan members, if you are afraid to loose ranking we can do custom games. Im usually online 2.00-6.00 europe time, i guess thats like 19.00-1.00 USA time or so. I m okay to follow any advice or tactic.
And i got 86% achievements or so tonight ^^ Im an achievement ♥♥♥♥♥ lol, anyone got more?

Its a bug. I have given up and just put three points in defence, 1 in charge, 1 in warcry and left my monk cavalry at that.

Got another question on Monk Cavalry: i cannot pick the Melee Attack skill when my vet gets level up or i get a new vet. Anyone knows if the tooltip forgets to mention something? Do you need other skills first?

thx for the replies

Exactly as Tadahisa said, they only point i disagree with is the bows, i usually only use 1 in regular matches and i dont use them against lower opponents, the problem is, if you do matchmade, youw ill eventually face players with 9 chevroned bow warrior monks, and since they are so good in most cases (I repeat, most), they will beat your bow components, which renders all the koku you spent on bows pretty useless.

Always adapt to the person you are playing, if you know them, and adapt your army composition.

Try watching this video of one of my battles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Kh75ikmiU

I'd say that you should try to pick a balanced army - get about three bows and no more than two guns. Have some good cavalry too - 3-4 units of vetted great guard and yari/monk/katana cavalry.

With generals, go for either leadership (if you want an infantry-based army) or melee (if you are relying on your cavalry). Spend any spare points in bow skills if you're a melee general, or melee skills if you're a leadership general.

You can play defensively, but camping on the red lines is for newbs.

In low funds, fighting retainers are very useful. Don't us them in larger modes though.

I'd recommend fighting team battles for a while if you feel you havent got the right retainers or units. You should be able to get into 1v1 matchmade if you have a well composed army and if you can use it well. Individual unit types or skills don't necessarily matter if you're a good general.

Hey, im doing regurlar custom battles with Eagle Kelly, and we tend to do well. But ofc i wanna do more ranked in the future. I see that we have some pretty good ranked players in the clan. Can you give some tips and advice how to be good in ranked battles? Like what army composition you use? Do you camp? In low funds battles against lower levels, do you take expensive vets or fresh troops? Is it useful to get ratainers to make ur generals bodyguard an awesome fighting unit for low funds games? Should i wait with ranked battles till i got certain retainers? (world weary seems awesome for example). What skill tree is best for ranked battles? (im mainly bow atm). Thx in advance, Ardan

Yep, the hold firm is definitely worth it, they yari ashigaru still keep a pretty decent price, more if you use the cost retainers, and hold firm helps support other units alongside.

The general chevron thing is just a bug, they ony get their normal number of retainers. Another bug like that, is for teammates, the chevrons show their previous rank, at least for me.

Probably just a bug for the first one

With the spear retainer for our clan, all it does is lower the spear casualties in your veteran units. It also doubles the clan influence points that you get for a victory - but seeing as how this group really isn't interested much in the clan competition anymore, it doesn't really matter. Our focus is more on tournaments and challenges with other clans at the moment.

If you want to get good mileage out of the spear specialty, try to get Banzai on some warrior monks or Naginata Samurai, or get "hold firm" on a level 9 Ashigaru unit.

Greetings, i'm a new member, thx for letting me join. I dont know if this is the right place but i got some questions:
- When i meet lower level ppl in ranked battles their general is rqual to mine (two circles), is that intended or a bug? And if its intended, do they get 5 retainers?
- The clan speciality retainer (in our case spear retainer): it says lower spear casualties. Is that during the battle? And if so how much does it offer? Is it worth taking instead of say, +2 defense for all spears? Or is it just lower casualties after battle?

Sorry if this isnt the right spot, i couldn't find a forum or so.

Thats okay Noobert - take good care of her.

They posted an announcement, maintenance, should be back up later

Official Total War forum currently down

Of course you dont have to apologize, tell her your online community is hoping for her recovery too.

Please do not apologise, real life issues are far more important than a game. Odaijini! Get well soon.

Hey guys, sorry for being completely inactive for the past week/s. A certain individual very close to me has gotten so bad that she cannot leave her bed, and I am trying my best to tend to her. I'll hopefully be around sometimes. I'll try to leave Steam on, so if you want a game poke me and see if I'm here. Otherwise, I probably will be with her. Take care guys, and truly I'm sorry. =(

I have seen it before, quite good. :) thanks.

If you got time to waste, watch this 4 parts long documentary about the sengoku Jidai on youtube, here is part 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxAQXTNrnMA&feature=related

Even 1 meatshield unit can be enough if fighting in a bottle neck, if it is a wide open space, then keep moving and look for gaps as they mirror you, what you can try is a naginata meatshield, with cav waling behind, the naginata in loose formation should last long enough for the cavalry to get there when the matchlocks are reloading, or if they are archers, they should eb unable to rout the naginatas, which either forces them to retreat or makes the come into melee.

Yeah, I guess I'll try to bring more meatshield units in the future just in case. To kill the general is always my priority, but I think I've to work on my maneuverability, not just try to catch their archers and fall in their traps with my cavalry... Thanks!

Besides getting a lot of cav and 200 range warrior monks, try using meatshields, I use naginatas and yari ashigaru.
Learn to maneuvre cavalry around them, and always try to kill their rgeneral.

I don't like those hill campers who are focusing on mathlock units and archers... They make me mad! I don't really know how to handle them. Any tips?

Thanks guys, I would not have got the unlock without your help.

Yeah, congrats to Kinjo

Congratulations Kinjo

?

Lol @ 7SAM

Come on guys, play as many matchmade battles as you can!
!!!

I'm looking for someone to do the campaign co-op and vs achievements with, if you are interested contact me please :)

It was up for half a day, but gone again... oh well

Multiplayer server back up and running - normal service has been resumed!

Yep, It was pretty strange seeing tak appear.

Haha, matchmade threw me and andferpa against each other, andferpa won. I didn't know that could happen since we are on the same side but it was fun.

Nice job!

Finally got the blademaster set! **** YEAH! Last few days have been physically really exhausting so I thought I'd play a few shogun 2 games to mentally exhaust myself too but it didn't work since the crest dropped.

Ok Guys, New objective, Yoshihiro and I noticed that the Russions in Noto(peninsula by ikko ikki starting point), is pretty weak right now(200 points), if we try hard, we can take it and see if the russians react.

So please, move your army markers and fight as many matchmade battles as you can on Noto. The clan marker is there.

Got a few games in tonight... we managed to hold Satsuma for about 5 mins before AvantGarde took an interest - but it should keep us above the clans that haven't captured any regions, so if we keep plugging away, we'll stay out of the relegation zone yet again :) ...although it's never over until the fat lady sings...

We should join this Tosa Cup competition here is the link:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?135333-The-Official-Tosa-Cup-Tournament-Thread

Bah. I'm so busy lately, I'll try to get some more games in but if I don't - at least you have the reasoning. >_<