How do you compose your armies?

[Dodge]

In the singleplayer game, of course, and with which clan.

[Maizel]

A general, 8/10 Ashigaru archers, the rest yari Ashigaru, or further along the campaign a mix of Ashigaru and samurai.

[Dodge]

10 Ashigaru archers? Do you not like to give them the cold steel?

[adecoy95]

10 Ashigaru archers? Do you not like to give them the cold steel?

its probably because they are inexpensive, and easy to mass produce, plus effective. seems like a standard economy focused game strategy to me

[rob-a-dogg]

Ashugaru for garrisons, 3 yari, 3 bow. Them plus the fort/stronghold/castle defence spawn units can stop most anything in its tracks, or at least bloody their nose. use these garrisons for defence, take them from their cities and pool them together with a general. So always 50% spear, 50% bow.

Once i can recruit samurai I only use 1 stack of pure samurai for offense. This is the only place you will find samurai in my clan, unless they are on their way to replace lost units in this army.
General, 4 katana, 4 naginata, 6 bow, 4 bow cavalry.

Found cavalry to be pretty useless with the proliferation of yari ashugaru, but now with the unit speed reduction mod on will give cavalry another chance. Before 80% of the time my cav got eaten alive by spearmen even if i micromanaged the crap out of them to avoid spear units, once i was engaged the spears could just sprint over at cocaine speeds to waste my horsies. So just used bow cavalry because it was fast to distract/kite enemy units and if i was lucky park them up out of harms way to shoot arrows. Bow cavalry magic ability to almost never shoot on the move severely limits their effectiveness, so yeah distraction duty and chasing down routing units is what they do most of the time. Can also melee at a cost exposed bow ashugaru.

Katana for eating other infantry, basically auto win button with a bit of extra armor and exp.
Naginata for cavalry, they do slightly better than yari in melee and naturally their high armor + bonus armor (from smithing province + encampment-armorer = +5 armor) is good for soaking up a bit of enemy missile fire. Especially during siege assault.
Bow in loose formation out front, fire as much as possibel untill enemy cav/inf gets too close then fall back behind the melee line and keep firing at whatever isnt engaged in melee. Prefer samurai over ashugaru for their high armor (natural +5 again) makes enemy bow fire much less effective. Piss weak in melee still. Ashugaru might get more shots, but my samurai stay around longer so each guy has a much better individual value as they endup sticking around to shoot many more arrows.

General sits around doing nothing, inspires a unit if they need it. Just there to get command exp to increase campaingmap movement speed and get stars for auto resolve. May become useful with slowed down units like other cav.

yari - i feel is inferior to naginatas armor and versatility
no-daichi - katana is better. good for charges and thats it, any decent scrap and they get grinded down pretty quick.

[Thefallenhun]

Bow monks and Katana sams trained a legendary kenjutsu school + jujutsu encampent + master weaponsmith.

[cheekymonk]

Rob-a-dog, that is the most useful, concise, and straightforward post on this topic I have seen so far. Thank you!

One question: do you modify that mix at all with consideration to taking advantage of the clan benefits when playing different clans?

[newguy]

garrisoned forces doesn't need to be 3/3. 1/1 is enough. and if you have enough castles to add repression to the other provinces, you can make do with just metsukes specializing in overseeing towns.

back to the main army, including the general, there would be 3 cavalry. usually katana cavalry since they even out better than yari who's effectiveness effectively ends after the charge.

infantry would be split between 6 units of archers, 6 units of melee(katana samurai) and 3(daichi guys) more for shock, and the last 2 would be matchlock.

usually if the battlefield gives me a forest-y side, i would place the gunners in ranks of 2 on both sides of the main road (but hidden by trees) where my army would be and turn off auto fire. I would use my archers to bait their archers and a couple of melee into the middle of the gunner's target range and when they're far enough in, i let the guns do their jobs and let the archers finish off the running guys. by this time, their melee would have caught up so the guns get pulled back (auto fire off) and the shock troops runs out to meet their charge headon with katana samurai following close behind. after the charge, the shock troops gets pulled to the side and charges the general unless there are still archers left and the cavalry will run ahead to cut off any routing bodyguards.

[Leesin]

Started a new campaign with Oda and my armies consist pretty much of just Yari Ashigaru, it's not often I have even one unit of Bow Ashigaru in my offense, I just zerg the enemy with a mass of YA, soon I will add Katana Samurai to face off against the enemies stronger units before I send in the zerg.

[SonOfOdin]

Usually : General - 4-6 Bow Ashigaru, 2 Bow Samurai, 4 Yari Ashigaru, 4 Shimazu Katana Samurai, 2 Yari Samurai, 2 Light/any other cavalry.

With the Shimazu, I had 2 of these(identical) one for fighting the Ito and one for the Sagara. I conquered half the island with them
Takes up a bit of the economy though, at a point I only had a profit of like 300 koku a season

[Dodge]

Usually : General - 4-6 Bow Ashigaru, 2 Bow Samurai, 4 Yari Ashigaru, 4 Shimazu Katana Samurai, 2 Yari Samurai, 2 Light/any other cavalry.

With the Shimazu, I had 2 of these(identical) one for fighting the Ito and one for the Sagara. I conquered half the island with them
Takes up a bit of the economy though, at a point I only had a profit of like 300 koku a season

But the Shimazu are really GREEN !!

[pulpnonfiction]

My only real rule is an absolute minimum of 6 ashigaru archers as they completely rape everything, and at least two spear units (although I usually have a lot more).

I've been playing Takeda on legendary, and my main assault force looks something like this (not really sure of the numbers, but you get the idea):
6 Ashigaru archers, 6 katana samurai, 2 naginata samurai, 4 yari ashigaru, 2 yari horsemen and my general is maxed out with the stats that make his body guard unit really powerful in combat.

I usually just line up with archers in front row, naginata in second row, katana and yari ashigaru in 3rd row, then try to flank with my horses and general.

I shoot away with the archers, then let the naginata draw enemy archer fire, and then charge with all my melee in an even, spread out line. My horses then come crashing in from the side or behind of one side of the enemies line, and this almost always sends that side of opponents side running. Then I pull horses off and send them after archers and send the rest of my melee units to finish off the other side of opponents melee line.

Something simple like that seems to work just about every time for me. Then spread horses out and chase after fleeing units.

[Thefallenhun]

As a rule I like to have at least 4 units of archer, 3 of spear, and 2 of no dachi to be truly balanced, also remember only the FRONT LINE of no dachi get the charge bonus, so spread them into a 2- rank line when charging for best effect.

[Mikelus Trento]

5 spearmen up front in the middle, flanked by a unit or 2 of cavalry on each side. Second line has the general in the middle, and extending out from him on both sides, a swordsman, 2 archers, and another swordsman.

[Emilio Aguinaldo]

A Balanced army I do; 8 melee, 6 archers, 5 cavalry. It keeps my tactical options balanced for me

[Kraut]

Garrison: 2-3 Yari Ashigaru and 2-3 Yari Archers

Early game armies consist of course mostly of Ashigaru, some 5-6 Spear and 4-5 Archers (alwasy one more Yari than Archer unit to give front cover) with a few Samurai units (mostly Katana) as the offensive hammer.

Form a Yari Ashigaru line, let the Archers shoot from behind, and use the Samurai to flank and cut down the enemy once in contact. Does not work always, though, the Battlefield AI seems to have improved.

Later game, once I can afford it, I replace Ashigaru Archers with Samurai Archers, and Yari Ashigaru with Naginata Samurai. Not Yari Samurai, but rather Naginata. I am a Naginata addict, a wonderful all-around unit they are.

Offensive hammer part still sword Samurai (Katana or No-Dachi) or Cavalry.

[gord96]

General, 4-5 Yari Ashigaru, 4 Bow Ashigaru, 5-6 Katana Samurai, 2 Matchlock Ashgaru, 1-2 units of Katana Cavalry.

[Harry Lime]

Moved to Shogun: Gameplay & Strategy

[Olligarchy]

I mostly play with Oda since they give me a decent challenge. No other clan is capable of doing that as of yet. Except the Tokugawa... but I am not that insane. My standard "all purpose" army consists of the following:

• General (Typically above rank 3)
• 6 Oda Yari Ashigaru
• 6 Oda Ashigaru Bowmen
• 4 Oda Muskets
• 2 Katana Samurai
• 1 Katana Cavalry

However my defensive army is pretty standard:

• Fortress Units (Usually level 2-3 fort)
• If the province is in my "inlands" and safe from harm they have 1 Yari ashigaru and 1 bow ashigaru each.
• If it is border territory or contested land it is filled with 4 yari ashigaru and 4 ashigaru bows.

In addition I use the following combination for scouting. Their main purpose is to reveal the map and remove any "stragglers" the enemy might've left around:

• General (Ranks 1-3)
• 2 Light cavalry
• 2 Samurai archers

Any suggestions for improvements? So far this combination has worked wonders.

[Gallus]

3 generals ftw. Their influence zone will cover your whole army. This allowes you to use ashigaru heavy armies late-game.