Rock, Paper, Scissors

[foofad]

So I'm fairly new to Total War, and have a couple of basic questions that weren't addressed as fully as I would like by in game documentation.

The first is on the rock/paper/scissors gameplay. Using spears against cavalry is obvious, but I'm confused with regards to swordsmen, archers, and naginatas. What am I supposed to be deploying sword samurai (and I guess sword calvary as well) against? Naginatas seem to be jack-of-all-trades with the helpful addition of extra armor, so I have a pretty good handle of what to do with them. But katana units mystify me. Also, I see a lot of people posting their usual army compositions which seem to be 50/50 spears and archers. Which means spearmen must be at least somewhat useful against infantry.

I guess what I'm looking for is for someone to set me straight on what counters what in Shogun.

Also, I dearly love comparing unit statistics but the documentation on what each statistic does is vague at best. My basic understanding is that most units have one hit point, and attack is compared to defense to determine if an attack hits. But then there's something about glancing or partial blows, and I can't figure out what armor actually does...

Alas.

I've tried searching various wikis and forums for this and now I turn to you all. Have mercy, I desperately want to understand the game mechanics better.

[Andy06r]

Ashigaru - Meat, bullet catchers, swords catchers ... bulk that gets in the way and dies for you, taking some with you.
Spearmen - Kill horses, better than archers in melee
Archers - Kill low armor targets (spears) and large targets (horses have a wider hit box) if the cavalry make mistakes. Samurai archers are significantly better and can beat ashigaru in melee.
Swords - Kill spears in particular
Sword Cav - Kill everything that doesn't use a spear - Sword Cav beat Sword infantry 1v1. Same charge as Sword infantry
Spear Cav - Kills sword cav, 2nd best charge in game
Bow Cav - Good at picking off specific high value targets (accuracy 110 when you use swooping crane), doesn't have volume for weak hordes
No-Dachi - Best charge in game but low armor = shock troops
Nagainta - Jack of all trades, master of none - highest armor in game

Stacks aren't 50/50 spear, bow ... its probably a few 'good' spears, a lot of meat yari ashigaru, and then archers.

[foofad]

Thanks for that. Swords against spears wasn't immediately obvious to me.

Does anyone have a better rundown of the unit statistics?