<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n…And increase their retinue with new retainers.<\/p>\n
Since both the rebels and the Tokugawa are in full retreat, and the Saito army isn’t big enough to challenge us directly, we’ve finally secured some breathing room. And I think now is a good time to discuss our grand strategy, since it will play directly into what I’ll be doing soon.<\/p>\n
The Oda specialty lies in their superior ashigaru \u00e2\u20ac" conscripted peasant troops. These are actually a rather new concept in Japanese warfare \u00e2\u20ac" for a very long time, battlefields have been dominated by the samurai warrior caste \u00e2\u20ac" each samurai was trained from birth to be a warrior. In prior wars, the land-owning samurai would supplement their forces with conscripts from their own land. But in this period of constant and often-total warfare, many daimyo were forced to supplement their samurai with much larger masses of conscripted and hired peasants with no direct ties to their lands, and these ashigaru armies would go on to become the backbone of warfare during the Sengoku period.<\/p>\n
Ashigaru are weak, but cheap to train and maintain compared to samurai. To give you an idea of how they fare compared to samurai, let’s compare the important battle stats of an Oda Yari Ashigaru \u00e2\u20ac" our primary peasant-melee unit \u00e2\u20ac" versus the stats of a katana samurai, the primary samurai-melee unit.<\/p>\n
Yari Ashigaru:<\/p>\n
Attack: 5
\nDefense: 4
\nMorale: 6
\nArmor: 2
\nCharge Bonus: 1
\nCost: 200
\nUpkeep: 50<\/p>\n
Katana Samurai:<\/p>\n
Attack: 12
\nDefense: 4
\nMorale: 10
\nArmor: 5
\nCharge Bonus: 15
\nCost: 750
\nUpkeep: 150<\/p>\n
Doesn’t look so inspiring, does it? Even though you can field three of them for the cost of a single katana samurai, their combined stats would only just barely come out on top. And their reduced morale will really start to cause problems as the battle drags on.<\/p>\n
And yet, the Yari Ashigaru is the best unit in the entire game.<\/p>\n
And that leads us to the key to my entire strategy: Blacksmiths. A blacksmith is a special building that certain provinces posses that can be upgraded to add either melee attack or armor to all units recruited in the province. At its maximum level, a weaponsmith-specialized blacksmith will add a hefty +4 melee attack to units. And if that’s not hefty enough an upgrade, you can augment that additionally by building a Jujutsu-Dojo, adding an additional +2 to melee attack. Suddenly the disparity seems a bit smaller, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n
Yari Ashigaru:<\/p>\n
Attack: 11
\nDefense: 4
\nMorale: 6
\nArmor: 2
\nCharge Bonus: 1
\nCost: 200
\nUpkeep: 50<\/p>\n
Katana Samurai:<\/p>\n
Attack: 12
\nDefense: 4
\nMorale: 10
\nArmor: 5
\nCharge Bonus: 15
\nCost: 750
\nUpkeep: 150<\/p>\n
Now of course, someone with a weaponsmith and a Jujutsu-Dojo could upgrade a katana samurai in the same way, giving them a whopping 18 attack. But this is where the cost becomes significant. For the same cost of two upgraded katana samurai, with a combined attack of 36 you could field six<\/i> yari ashigaru with a combined attack of 66!<\/i> Six ashigaru is more than enough to completely encircle two samurai, which would significantly disrupt their morale.<\/p>\n
And there are more advantages to this strategy. Samurai-heavy armies typically require a large bushido-tree investment, at the neglect of the chi arts, which significantly boost economic power. Our investment into bushido will probably end as soon as we unlock the encampment building (which is the prerequisite to building a Jujutsu-Dojo \u00e2\u20ac" this will also give us access to another Oda special spear unit which is even more powerful). The rest of our time can be devoted to mastery of the Chi arts, and since yari ashigaru require no specific buildings to recruit, we can fill all of our non-blacksmith provinces with economic buildings to further boost our economy.<\/p>\n
There are two provinces with blacksmiths within our reach. The Hojo-controlled Sagami province to the east:<\/p>\n
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