Matchlock Balance

[Salvator]

Shogun 2 has been out for a quite bit and I wanted to ask how you feel about the multiplayer of Shogun 2.
Shogun 2 boasts a multiplayer aspect new to the franchise with great ideas.
But the more I play the more I feel the imbalance of this game.
It's not the super bow warrior monks, it's not the charge of a Great Guard and it's not the masses of ashigarus overrunning you, it's the matchlocks. In my opinion they are broken, even after the patch which nerfed them quite a lot.
Shogun 2 is based on the Warscape Engine which was used für Empire and Napoleon and therefore trimmed for shooting. Though in Shogun 2 the matchlocks gain through the engine such a huge advantage which is out-right stupid.
All battles I have fought the last days had the same army composition Bow Warrior Monks combined with 3 highly vetted Matchlocks with a few ashigaru as a melee component.
Now because of the skirmish advantage my bowmen are probably going to lose.
There is no problem here because I don't rely on bows to win me the fight. But now the real disaster comes in.
He forces me with his bows to attack him. But while charging the matchlocks just shred me to pieces. But the worst is about to come. He usually sends in one yari ashigaru to fend off my infantry and let is matchlocks do the job.
Through the moral loss my units rout in an instant. It's getting really annoying not to be able to do something against it.
The only counter I see is an Ashigaru Army, where every casuality can be considered as minor. Why is it worth taking a Katana Hero if he just gets shot in one volley? There is no point in Samurai anymore.
I can see my self playing Empire again.

[JCDC]

They are overpowered, but they are avaliable to everyone so it is fair and thus not game ruining. unfortunately those of us who dont want this to be a gunpowder game, which it currently is, and try to play without them, are going to be at a severe disadvantage to the players who are very good at using them. i try and use them in moderation, and have worked out ways to counter them, the primary one being, dont frontal charge them, cause as you say they shred you, and then sit behind the line shooting magically through their own men into yours, doing no physical or emotional damage to their own troops as they pass through their backs, and into the bodies of their enemies in front. which is bizzare to say the least. they desperately need to be reduced to the support units that they are supposed to be, not the battle deciders, it is really starting to ruin the game for me with machine gun monks who can hit a moving man at 150 yards 50% of the time and fire every 7 seconds while they do it, which even a man with a modern bolt action rifle would require some skill to do.

[Knowing Crow]

Not fielding matchlocks is historically inaccurate. The Sengoku Period marked a large push for gunpowder weapons and an arms race to get them. To try to play without gunpowder is to intentially cripple and weaken yourself and play a game that isn't remotely historically connected with the real historical facts of the time period. I know when we think of Japan and Samurai, we think of sword fights. Yet historically the Sengoku Era was about the spear and the teppo, which sounds an awful lot like "Pike and Shot" of European warfare. Hate to break it to everyone, but "Katana Samurai" and other sword troops (Save No-Dachi), those guys are historically inaccurate. All Samurai had swords, yet it was a secondary weapon to the Yari Spear or the Matchlock they typically held.

As for balance, they certainly shift the battlefield considerably, being the only area denial in the game that punishes so hard. However, everyone can field them, and just about everyone does. They have their own meta-game around them and as I play people have gotten smarter in dealing with them. Initially, people would throw victories at me by simply not countering my matchlocks, and charging at my line feeling the full force of my missile troops before I sent my own melee troops to finish off what little was left. Often, no one would reach my lines. Now, people are smarter, they are actually picking targets for their archers and targeting the matchlocks, or are using cavalry to entangle my forces while their infantry move in.

They are powerful, yes, but historically so. There is a reason everyone wanted them. Even so, I field more archers than matchlocks, where matchlocks historically outnumbered archers, so perhaps matchlocks aren't strong enough, or maybe archers are too strong, or maybe I need to stop messing around with archers and field more matchlocks!

Overall, I think they are balanced. They prevent the meta-game from shifting into melee/cav spam by being so effective against them. They need the amount of firepower they have in order to actually be a problem to cavalry, allowing people to deviate away from cavalry focused armies.

Edit: And before someone brings up that they fire too quickly and kill too much to be realistic, all kill rates are increased, including melee troops, archers, and matchlocks. Everything. All to make games shorter, rather than the realistic several hour affair that we would otherwise have if we fought realistic battles.

[The Sword 88]

Kill them with bows or cav or surprise use your own matchlocks

An all matchlock force is not very good, just like most spam armies arent very good. Taking 3-4 units of matchlocks would still be a balanced army and is historically accurate, not sure what the problem is.

[dako93]

they are still a bit overpowered... most the monks, ashigary matclosk are not so deadly even at level 9 they are bad ass but not out of this world... but the monks damm

[bushranger]

I dont see how there anymore powerfull then high vet swords or cav.
There is only 2 problems with them.monkguns guns are to cheap when you compare them to sam guns.The second one is that there counter(bow)has been nerfed in avatar mode and unless you have sigh lvl9 bow monks or high vet sambows archers are pretty useless.

[lamefellow]

I'll be happy with them being accurate when they do more moral and physical damage to their own lines. Arguing that they are accurate in the game is pointless without the above. Not to mention it's 'historically inaccurate' to sit in a box all day since in a real scenario, armies would march right pass and head for whatever objective they were heading for

[AlfonsoVIII]

inbalanced as they dont cause enough FF, but easy counter is bows.

[GeoEng]

I agree. Although I don't like using them (but forced to do so since almost everybody does) the only real problem I see is the friendly fire issue. If this is fixed, I think they will find their rightful place amongst other units.

[FARFAR~AWAY]

I always love using them even back in STW 1. I just enjoy watching them do the fire by ranks drill as they mow down the enemy with lead balls. I am just not very good with them.

[JCDC]

Edit: And before someone brings up that they fire too quickly and kill too much to be realistic, all kill rates are increased, including melee troops, archers, and matchlocks. Everything. All to make games shorter, rather than the realistic several hour affair that we would otherwise have if we fought realistic battles.

I can bring this up because if a lvl9 melee unit is charging a lvl9 matchlock unit, the melee unit takes a realistic ammount of time to reach the matchlock unit to engage it, but the matchlock does a non-realistic ammount of casualties during that time due to increased rate of fire and increased range. in a real charge you would expect to take one volley, in game you can take 3. yeah sure once the lvl9 melee unit reaches the matchlock it kills quicker than is realistic, but its the bit before that that makes the matchlock overpowered. this is amplified if you put a melee unit between the matchlock and lvl9 attacker and you get the lack of ff effect problem. all in all the advantages all go to the matchlock unless you use clever tactics, but saying you can beat them if you use clever tactics doesnt make them not overpowered, it shows that they are not evenly matched if you have to outwit your opponent to win.

saying everything kills quicker to make the battles shorter is totally correct, but when two archers/cav/melee/matchlocks meet, and kill each other quickly, there is no advantage to either side, the fight is just over quicker, but when matchlocks meet melee head on with a meatshield in between, thats where the system breaks down with multiple unwarranted advantages to the matchlocks. historically, if you put matchlocks behind ur men in melee and started shooting, you would kill and de-moralise you own men, and very few of the enemy.

as for the historical accuracy of using them, yeah i know that they were used a lot, but they were used for the same reasons as in europe, they were cheap because they were easy to train people to use them quickly, and effective if used in large numbers protected by flanking inf, they were not uber elite monks with crazy powers. matchlock muskets of the period had really limited effectiveness in small numbers. i beleive, altho i may be wrong because im not an expert on the history of the period (my knowledge is based on firearms themselves), melee weapons and bows still were still the primary weapons until the reforms of the 19th century, matchlocks were a supporting weapon to demoralise and kill a few men before they dropped them and charged with melee, altough this is the bit im least sure of admittedly.

[dako93]

exactly, what they need to do is the friendly fire thing, its insame how friendly units take babery a few shoots and their morale suffer no penalty whatsoever, wile the other guy units get cutet down to pieces in a matter of seconds....

[Tajl]

I think that matchlocs are balance with large unit size. Little imbalanced with medium and imbalanced with small.

Matchlocs are needed because of game balance. They are only thing that keep this game from becoming who have best melee retainers allways wins. Without matchlocks balanced army allways lose to melee spam army (strong cavalry and lot of veteran melee units). Even with matchlocs it is hard to counter good player with melee army. Archers just don't kill fast enough and in open map there is not much you can do agains army with 10 sword ashigary with attack 20+ and 8 melee cav including veteran great guards. Without strong matchlocks only way to win against that build in open map would be similar build.

If matchlocks are nerfed we will see even more pure melee armies and even now there is many people in top 100 in 1vs1 ladder who use build like that.

[perablenta]

They are powerful, yes, but historically so.

Edit: And before someone brings up that they fire too quickly and kill too much to be realistic, all kill rates are increased, including melee troops, archers, and matchlocks. Everything. All to make games shorter, rather than the realistic several hour affair that we would otherwise have if we fought realistic battles.

How exactly do you increase people killing each other in melee, you kill two units with one sword swing?
Lol dude, don't make me laugh. Watch some katana vs katana action and see just how many kills per minute it can do compared to matchlocks and 7 seconds volleys(and they can do it faster).

Its the 16th century and you have peasants and monks firing faster then 18th century Napoleon troops,
and not to mention more accurate...

Its hard for 21st century soldiers to kill people with assault rifles at 100 m in full run yet these peasants and monks and doing it while being showered with arrows!

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

I think they just need to address the friendly fire thing and also put a cap on reload speed, ashigaru rank 5-6 can reach like 110 reload speed with stand & fight plus rapid volley.

110 reload speed is so not natural, that you see the models fire, then they lower the matchlock and then raise it and fire again, the reload animation is skipped entirely, because they have no time to reload due to firing speed, lol.

[perablenta]

Haha imagine how that would be like for sword units. A katana samurai looks at you and your head pops off... And then he look at the next enemy... LOL

[The Bobba-Job]

Bow cavalry is an effective counter to matchlocks, just watch the final match of the tosa cup.

[bushranger]

I think they just need to address the friendly fire thing and also put a cap on reload speed, ashigaru rank 5-6 can reach like 110 reload speed with stand & fight plus rapid volley.

110 reload speed is so not natural, that you see the models fire, then they lower the matchlock and then raise it and fire again, the reload animation is skipped entirely, because they have no time to reload due to firing speed, lol.

swords with 25 attack running through pikewalls like there a small speed bump is not natural.
Untill they fix the effectiveness of other units matchlocks are no more unbalanced then anyother class.

[JCDC]

i agree that they are a good counter to other overpowered units, and as such could work well in the game. but that is only if the friendly fire thing is sorted out more.

[Knowing Crow]

How exactly do you increase people killing each other in melee, you kill two units with one sword swing?
Lol dude, don't make me laugh. Watch some katana vs katana action and see just how many kills per minute it can do compared to matchlocks and 7 seconds volleys(and they can do it faster).

Its the 16th century and you have peasants and monks firing faster then 18th century Napoleon troops,
and not to mention more accurate...

Its hard for 21st century soldiers to kill people with assault rifles at 100 m in full run yet these peasants and monks and doing it while being showered with arrows!

Again, the kill rates will be different because Shogun 2 is a faster game than Napoleon, so of course the matchlocks will shoot faster. Trying to base kill rates off hollywood or off Napoleon is not a valid measuring stick, as they are different games that play at different speeds. You are directly falling into the same bit of logic that I just said DON'T DO. They are different games, and realism is different, kill rates are its own design for this specific game and do not compare.

And melee kill rates are significantly larger than it was in Medieval or even Napoleon, so I don't get your question on how do they increase kill rates in melee, they clearly do.