A few more questions

[Brian_]

Okay, I had a bunch of questions but here's a few off the top of my head:

1. At present I face an enemy clan with a good cadre of high level generals, while I have very few in my own ranks. With that disparity in mind, should I attempt to minimize his advantage by constructing higher quality individual units? The alternative would be masses of low quality units but that seems destined for failure in my mind.

2. What is the best way to use weather when attacking? For instance, say I choose a day with heavy rain. I know my own forces will suffer from a reduction in morale but then--so should his. But does it make sense to go into battle with that in mind? Will the reduction be worse for me since I'm the one attacking?

3. Large armies on the battlefield: I've seen some really odd things happen and I suspect there is a limit to how many units can be displayed on the battlefield. I've seen successful river crossings take place, only to have enemy units mysteriously appear out of nowhere on my side of the river.

Worse, I look at my own army and realize that important units never made it. Is that because they entered the enemy province from different directions? And if I attack an enemy province from different directions (2-4 different provinces) how should I handle this limitation on the battlefield? Does it make sense to wait around, delaying my attack, hoping for them to appear later?

4. Invading behind enemy lines: Is this cheating? I notice the AI never tries it. In my present game, I was getting my @ss kicked and I tried a ploy of sending a single unit deep into enemy lines (via seaborne invasion) to capture a valuable province and destroy his infrastructure. This not only deprives him of years of efforts in building up those structures but also nets me a quick bundle of koku as the buildings are destroyed. I can only imagine the AI cuss words emanting from their clans but I wonder if I'm taking advantage of the system.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Okay, I had a bunch of questions but here's a few off the top of my head:

1. At present I face an enemy clan with a good cadre of high level generals, while I have very few in my own ranks. With that disparity in mind, should I attempt to minimize his advantage by constructing higher quality individual units? The alternative would be masses of low quality units but that seems destined for failure in my mind.

You don't want ashigaru, that's for sure. But yari samurai and sam archers are good units. I would send some spies and build my army to match up well against them. Uesugi will have lots of archers so build cavalry, takeda cavalry so spears, oda ashigaru so archers.

2. What is the best way to use weather when attacking? For instance, say I choose a day with heavy rain. I know my own forces will suffer from a reduction in morale but then--so should his. But does it make sense to go into battle with that in mind? Will the reduction be worse for me since I'm the one attacking?

Fine day is good, foggy can let you outflank the enemy sometimes but is a bit annoying. If they have way more archers than you or you are attacking a bridge then rain is nice.

3. Large armies on the battlefield: I've seen some really odd things happen and I suspect there is a limit to how many units can be displayed on the battlefield. I've seen successful river crossings take place, only to have enemy units mysteriously appear out of nowhere on my side of the river.

Worse, I look at my own army and realize that important units never made it. Is that because they entered the enemy province from different directions? And if I attack an enemy province from different directions (2-4 different provinces) how should I handle this limitation on the battlefield? Does it make sense to wait around, delaying my attack, hoping for them to appear later?

You only get the first 16 units, I don't remember how it's determined exactly, but in the deploy screen there should be a black and red button that lets you swap out your current troops with your reserves. In MI/WE anyway.

4. Invading behind enemy lines: Is this cheating? I notice the AI never tries it. In my present game, I was getting my @ss kicked and I tried a ploy of sending a single unit deep into enemy lines (via seaborne invasion) to capture a valuable province and destroy his infrastructure. This not only deprives him of years of efforts in building up those structures but also nets me a quick bundle of koku as the buildings are destroyed. I can only imagine the AI cuss words emanting from their clans but I wonder if I'm taking advantage of the system.

The AI doesn't usually go behind your lines, at least I've never seen them do it. They don't really try and raid at least.

[Brian_]

Okay, two more:

1. On the battlefield, is there any hope of hiding from AI eyes, say in fog or behind hills? Or...does the computer have 20-20 god-like vision that it can see your units no matter where they are?

2. Is there a way to get your archer units not to fire? So they won't waste arrows?

[gollum]

1. Yes there is. As far as i can tell the AI does not have any supernatural sight and the player can surprise him. The most common hiding places are forests but fog and hills also provide visual cover from certain ranges.

2. Yes there is. Toggle fire at will off. Group your archers and when an enemy unit(s) you'd like to shoot at is/are in range (check that the cursor is green) either: toggle fire at will on, or if you want them to rtarget a specific one order them (as a group) to shoot by clicking on it with the cursor. However if you choose the latter remember to be ready to cancel the order (using backspace the shortcut for cancelling orders) if the enemy unit moves out of range as this will cause your archers to follow it in order to keep shooting it. This won't happen with the fire at will - they will just switch to a different target or you can set them back to fire at will off to save ammo.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Shogun has one of the few AI's that will actually play under the FOW, even though, of course, it has to know where every unit on the battlefield is or there's no game.

I remember the first time I found this out in a Hojo camp where I had set a trap for an archer-heavy Uesugi army that had invaded Hitachi. I had all of my cavalry secluded in a big patch of woods to the side of the direct approach to my Daimyo. I watched the YS march by followed by all those archers. I kept expecting the spearmen to turn at any second into the woods and decimate my waiting cavalry......but they never did When my own infantry had tied up the Uesugi infantry, my cav burst upon all those helpless archer units from the rear, and the rout was on.

Learning how to conserve ammo will become a very useful skill when fighting multi-stack battles against several thousand enemy troops. Beware of one of the AI's favorite tactics.......using depleted units (in particular Cavalry Archers) to draw arrow fire. Do not, repeat....do not waste your ammo on units like this. Chase them off or kill them with cavalry.

You will run out of arrows eventually anyway, but conserve them as long as possible. If the battle is large enough, and the AI is persistent enough, even teppo can be run out of ammo......although this doesn't happen very often.