If you like using guns, best to use small ozutsu with explosive teppo ammo. In the defense chokepoints where enemies get crowded, shoot them and you´ll be killing 10+ per shot.

@OP: you can command the melee troops to stand ground (F1F6 i think it is) , switch off auto-command (F3F4) or command them at a certain position.
also in melee you can make a lot more kills when you have high atlethics (>200)

@diomendes: Where do you get EXPLOSIVE ozutsu ammo? i only ever found/manufactured up to legendary (alsonever seen an ozutsu available besides beein promoted by a lord) and the long aiming animation makes that gun unhandy in particular but with explosives it would be nice

Same, I've checked multiple cities several times but i can never find a ozutsu for sale. I've found the ammo it uses, but not the gun itself.

@choilaung: Ah, I keep forgetting there are more commands than just charge and follow. I might experiment more with that.

If you go West all the way every city got guns pretty much. Hinoe got a bunch of them

I'm assuming this is a question for a 'Hero defense' type siege, where you're counting on the PC's contribution to be what tips what should be a loss....If that's the case, then any ranged weapon won't do enough damage. The only way to meaningfully impact a losing siege as a player, is with a two-handed sword, massacring the enemy as they come inside...usually while running back and forth between siege ladders and the gate. Typically, you start out slaughtering the ones who come in through the first battering ram attack (by slicing them from behind while they engage)...Then you run to where the siege ladders are. Then you try and one-shot kill every enemy as they climb over. After that, there'll be a period where they fight their way towards the keep while often ignoring you, and you can rack up about 50+ more kills during that phase.

Provided your Athletics/Weapon skill is over 200, you can get about ~150 kills. Doing that a few times was enough for me to help the starting Rokkaku defeat Oda.

Originally posted by ajaxjs:

I'm assuming this is a question for a 'Hero defense' type siege, where you're counting on the PC's contribution to be what tips what should be a loss....If that's the case, then any ranged weapon won't do enough damage. The only way to meaningfully impact a losing siege as a player, is with a two-handed sword, massacring the enemy as they come inside...usually while running back and forth between siege ladders and the gate. Typically, you start out slaughtering the ones who come in through the first battering ram attack (by slicing them from behind while they engage)...Then you run to where the siege ladders are. Then you try and one-shot kill every enemy as they climb over. After that, there'll be a period where they fight their way towards the keep while often ignoring you, and you can rack up about 50+ more kills during that phase.

Provided your Athletics/Weapon skill is over 200, you can get about ~150 kills. Doing that a few times was enough for me to help the starting Rokkaku defeat Oda.

Awesome tips for my later campaign! At the moment my character is not very strong (early game.) But what confused me was how I the ally AI seems to make suicidal mistakes in sieges. Defending or attacking, my side just seems to die in droves. I can understand when assaulting a castle, but when defending, the numbers were almost even.

The attacker had maybe 130 more troops than us (630 to 500.) I would imagine that would be a win for the defenders. But I lost every time no matter what I tried. I think the AI would send groups
of guys to attack the enemies that made it inside and get slaughtered. As the enemy progresses up to the keep, the AI keeps sending troops out of fortified positions to attack them. Should they just be given the order to stand and fight?

Originally posted by PurpleMonkeyDishWasher:

Originally posted by ajaxjs:

I'm assuming this is a question for a 'Hero defense' type siege, where you're counting on the PC's contribution to be what tips what should be a loss....If that's the case, then any ranged weapon won't do enough damage. The only way to meaningfully impact a losing siege as a player, is with a two-handed sword, massacring the enemy as they come inside...usually while running back and forth between siege ladders and the gate. Typically, you start out slaughtering the ones who come in through the first battering ram attack (by slicing them from behind while they engage)...Then you run to where the siege ladders are. Then you try and one-shot kill every enemy as they climb over. After that, there'll be a period where they fight their way towards the keep while often ignoring you, and you can rack up about 50+ more kills during that phase.

Provided your Athletics/Weapon skill is over 200, you can get about ~150 kills. Doing that a few times was enough for me to help the starting Rokkaku defeat Oda.

Awesome tips for my later campaign! At the moment my character is not very strong (early game.) But what confused me was how I the ally AI seems to make suicidal mistakes in sieges. Defending or attacking, my side just seems to die in droves. I can understand when assaulting a castle, but when defending, the numbers were almost even.

The attacker had maybe 130 more troops than us (630 to 500.) I would imagine that would be a win for the defenders. But I lost every time no matter what I tried. I think the AI would send groups
of guys to attack the enemies that made it inside and get slaughtered. As the enemy progresses up to the keep, the AI keeps sending troops out of fortified positions to attack them. Should they just be given the order to stand and fight?

The siege AI has never been that complex, but from what I can tell...The AI identifies a certain number of strong points, and then they will send troops there from reserve as needed to reinforce those strong points, and there's no more thought paid to it than that.

And yes, once the enemy gets too much of a foothold, sending dribs and dribs to fight them just gets them slaughtered. Basically, once the enemy is inside the first line of defenses, what happens next depends on a few factors:

* Some maps are very forgiving, in that after the outer line of defenses falls, there's only one well covered chokepoint remaining, so it helps their defense immensely. Some are less so. The terrain will determine whether the defenders emerging from the keep or those coming from the overrun walls are more advantaged.

* There's a crucial period during which the outer defenses are (eventually) overrun and when the enemy troops begin filtering towards the inner keep to hack down that inner gate and where the second stage of the siege defense begins. It is very important during this part of the siege to kill as many attackers as possible. They'll be very vulnerable and mostly ignoring you.

* Some of the factions start out with more advanced and high tier armies, because they're intended to win in the early game. The Oda especially start out with big stacks of high tier nodachi samurai (basically their entire army) that will easily kill twice their number in opposing armies.

So if the AI is losing what you think is an even battle, then three things are going wrong in greater or lesser proportion:

- The map is a more unforgiving one (so the AI reinforcements seem to run into bigger blocks of besieging troops instead of vice versa).
- The besiegers have a higher quality army.
- You're not killing enough enemies to swing the balance and break their morale.

I think what's happening is a combination #2 and #3. The besiegers have better troops, and you're simply not killing enough of them to swing the balance. (And again, this is because some AI factions have vastly more elite armies at start than others...and it'll be the factions who are doing a lot of sieging in the early game.)