How to win battles on very hard/Legendary

[Blackthorne]

So I have just had to abandon my first attempt at a Legendary campaign, the problem is that every time I had to fight a battle with anything like even odds I got slaughtered. So any tips on how to win on this difficulty setting would be greatly appreciated, specifically how do you get the advantage when the armies are balanced? I can win when I outnumber or outclass the enemy but on legendary most of the time you seem to be fighting agaisnt the odds.

As and example, the final battle that convinced me to give up was a seige defence in a level 1 fort. I had twelve yari Ashigaru, six bow Ashigaru two generals and a yari Samurai plus the Samurai retainers. The enemy had two more yari Ashigaru and two less bow Ashigaru, all at two or three chevrons of experience. I did my usual, bows at the walls, Yari troops behind and generals placed to give maximum morale support. The result was an absolute slaughter. Everything started well enough, my archers did good damage and then once the enemy reached the walls I pulled them back and sent the yari troops forward (as best I could, not being able to give orders while paused is taking some getting used to). Thats when things got bad, even outnumbered and out of formation after climbing a wall his troops got the better end of the fight, I couldn't break them even when I charged in the Samurai retainers and finally my general. I won the battle but all but one of my Yari ashigaru were destroyed and all of my archers were reduced to less than thirty percent strength. The results have been even worse in field battles.

cheers

Edit: For clarity, I'm not after the basics, I'm able to win on normal and hard without too much trouble. Very hard just seems to be a leap too far.

[Gaizokubanou]

I'll copy what I posted on another thread about battle since it addresses your question very directly. Keep in mind that this is an "logistical" approach, mainly about how to efficiently improve your unit stats and what upgrade you should focus on, etc.

If you get the right general skills and upgrades you can even have your ashigaru archers tank most of the melee fights.

Even on legendary difficulty.

The general skill you should beeline for is the infantry leader (the one that gives "stand and fight" ability, then +1 to melee dmg to all units then + 3). What I do for all my generals is to put 1 point into strategist at first lvl, then 2 points into poet on second level up, then 3 points into infantry leader on third level up. That's just a loose guidline but having 3 points into infantry leader is pretty amazing.

With stand & fight ability on, the archers within general's influence circle will get 20+ reload and some extra melee damage... so even your ashigaru archers can have awesome 50+ reloading skill with near 10 melee damage.

The upgrade you should go for is mainly the armor upgrade. Samurai archers can be trained on provinces with fletcher building for extra accuracy, but you want to pump out your ashigarus with extra armor since otherwise they die way too fast. The maximum number of extra armor you can get is +3 from armorsmith (need iron to make it +3, without iron, +2) and +2 from armory varient of encampment building. That can mean 7 armor yari ashigaru or 14 armor naginata samurai. With 14 armor naginata samurai they can take a full volley from archer unit and only lose about 3 ~ 5 men even when they are in tight formation.

Of course elite melee specialists will beat your archers in melee, but they can now buy you enough time for you to make a proper flanking charge.

But why would you want your melee line to be held by mere ashigaru archers? Because if your archers can fullfil the roll of both archers and basic melee unit as a single unit, that means your melee line can get longer than the AI who only uses melee units to melee. Longer melee line = super easy flanking. That and now you can safely field archer-heavy army which is pretty easy to mow down the AI army with while taking relatively low casualty. With the general skill and upgrades I mentioned above, I use armies that have 10+ archers and it's not unsual for a whole unit of katana samurai to be destroyed completely before they make their charge.