Thanks - praise and chat

[Nakamura Lobato]

Thanks for making this mod. My venerable Shogun Total War bit the dust, and I was delighted to see your clan had developed a mod for Total War Barbarian Invasion. It is my Xmas present this year while I take off a few days before returning to my medical studies.
Nakamura

[Puzz3D]

STWmod is for MTW/VI not RTW/BI. There is a Shogun mod in development for RTW/BI. It's called Ran no Jidai and has it's own forum in the RTW section.

[Nakamura Lobato]

Oh I meant Viking Invasion. Sorry about that. I misspoke.

I reloaded Medieval War and Viking Invasion, and then loaded the mod and patches. It rocks. There are so many clans to chose from, although I doubt the minor clans have the same chances as the main ones.

My only wish is that Creative Assembly gives you some credit for creating such a fine project. I would have been all too happy to send money in for the mod. It's so much fun to pretend I am my Japanese ancestors. Those were days of real honour and courage. Imagine facing down a 3 foot razor. What resolve!

I am an American of of half Okinawan and half European ancestry. My Okinawan relatives were minor retainers under the Satsuma clans. I guess that makes them collaborators. The Nakamuras changed their names from the original name which was Nakandakari, which is a long funny story(too long to relate here). Nakamura is a common as the name Smith. There is a a marker on the ancestral tomb that acknowledges our samurai heritage. On the other side, my family were related to the Lee family of Virginia, a family of many fine warriors, including Robert E. Lee, my namesake. When I visited Japan I introduced myself, and they called me Lobarto instead of Robert.

I also am watching with great interest the mod that is being developed for RTW and Barbarian Invasion. (I get Viking and Barbarian mixed up, they seem synonymous). Perhaps it will be released soon. But Samurai Warlords is fantastic and available now! I can't believe that you can even play Multiplayer. What a joy to get Xmas early.
Nakamura

[Puzz3D]

Interesting family history you have Nakamura Lobato.

If you are using the Beta 7 for the SP campaign, I could make available as a separate download the maps and textures I made which fix the impassable terrain problem since it seems the release of Beta 8 is delayed. Also, the castles have more towers, but they are still too weak overall and we haven't done any further work on that issue yet.

[Nakamura Lobato]

Puzz3D-sama,

My family history is quite funny. My Okinawan mom decided to marry an American serviceman in 1962. It was still controversial at the time, and there were reams upon reams of papers to fill out, mostly due to American security issues. See things do really change. Any way, the Nakandakari were so angry, that they changed their name to Nakamura right when she had completed all the paperwork. Nakamura is a real common name. She had to re-file everything. It was done to create delays in the marriage.

I'm over at my parents for Xmas. My mom is supposed to dig out the Nakandakari genealogy. It was prepared a few years ago. I'm curious to see the relationship with the Shimazu clan.

Thanks for the projectile update.

Peace,
Nakamura

[Nakamura Lobato]

I have some ideas about sieges. It seems odd to imagine that the samurai could cause enough damage just battering the gate. I could understand if they actually were using siege equipment, but just clanging swords or flinging arrows at the door would do squat. It may be far better to leave things as is for game dynamics, but here's some ideas.

My guess is that most sieges were effectively ended by subterfuge (the only authentic use of battle ninjas), or from simply waiting until the water and food run out. Why not have a food and water gauge that runs out based upon the size of the castle? After a certain length of time the modifiers for the defenders gets so bad that the AI choses to come out from the castle. The current times for waiting out a siege seem ridiculously long.

On the other hand, Osprey publishing discusses siege warfare in Japan, so they did have these devices. The attacker could chose to go ahead and harass the defenders with fire and siege engines. Tossing the dead in could add a whole element of infection, or simply large reductions in morale.

Peace,
Nakamura

[Puzz3D]

The size of the castle divided by the number of defenders (cav count as two men) determines how long a castle can hold out. I think the number of turns a castle can hold out for is a holdover for playbalance reasons from Shogun. That time is not something the modder has control over. The idea behind it is to allow time for a relief army to arrive so that you can adopt a strategy of using a single, centrally located army to defend a whole group of provinces.

An attack on a castle is a bit of an abstraction. In Shogun, there wasn't even a gate that closed, and walls and towers were indestructable so an assault was just a fight for the open gate except for shooting over the walls with archers. Samurai did use ladders to assault castles, and the destruction of a wall could just symbolize the taking of a wall or the gatehouse. The idea is simply that the attacker should suffer substantially more casualties than the defender in an assault. Right now I think it's too easy to attack a castle, and therefore very little incentive to starve out the defenders. So, basically the walls and towers have to become a lot more resilient or the rate of fire from them has to increase. However, I wouldn't say that walls and towers have to become indestructable.

The AI doesn't know how to use artillery. It makes too much artillery, brings it to open field battles, and then moves its moblile units to high ground leaving the artillrty undefended. I think introducing artillery would damage the gameplay.

[Irinami]

It is so much fun and an honor to pretend that I am your Japanese ancestors too, Nakamura-dono! ;) By the way, did you find out anything on the relation between Nakandakari and Shimazu? I like hearing about people related to famous clans of yore. My wife and I hosted a descendent of Saitou Dousan, she was amazed and I was honored. :D

As for Barbarian vs. Viking... Barbarian is a general term, Viking is more specific. To extend it, Danes would be even more specific. In analogy it's like Canines -> Dogs -> German Shepherds.

[Nakamura Lobato]

In all the zaniness of the Xmas season, and with so many relatives coming in and out of my parent's house, my mother wasn't able to find it, and sit down translate it with me. Nuts! I was really excited. It will be months before I can return home to sit down with her and look over it. She isn't much of a traditionalist.

In the meantime, I'm supposed to be studying for my medical boards, but I've been playing Samurai Warlords for many many hours. It's my one guilty pleasure for the next few months.

I continue to be amazed at nuances of the game. I wonder though at the incredible use of ninja in the game. The AI seem to use them for all of the daimyo...that's something that I want to doubt was historically accurate. It seems highly dishonorable. I just can't make myself use them. The same is true of flintlocks.

I like what they've done with the Geisha. She was unbeatable before. I wouldn't mind if she was eliminated all together. The Uesugi really seem to have too much of an advantage with their Navy. It's almost like they have an unlimited supply of koku for building fleets.

I wonder what people use as effective combinations for sieges and general attacks. Do the FAQs for Shogun still hold true, or has the strategy changed with Samurai Warlords? Is it far more effective to create huge armies of Ashigaru or does it really matter to create heavy cavalry? I wonder too about the upper levels. Do people find that they can effectively build advance buildings in this mod, or do they only get them by using the .deadringer. cheat? I'm thinking about looking over the replays to pick up clues for effective attack and defense. Has anyone done this?

Thanks for making a wonderful game,
Nakamura

[Puzz3D]

I continue to be amazed at nuances of the game. I wonder though at the incredible use of ninja in the game. The AI seem to use them for all of the daimyo...that's something that I want to doubt was historically accurate. It seems highly dishonorable. I just can't make myself use them. The same is true of flintlocks.

That's strange. I haven't seen a ninja daimyo in my Takeda campaign up to the year 1584 using beta_7. I wouldn't mind if the ninja and kensai were not in the game.

The teppo are matchlocks not flintlocks, and they were used in Japan although not until 1543. For gameplay reasons they reload faster than historically. Check out the Battle of Nagashino.

I like what they've done with the Geisha. She was unbeatable before. I wouldn't mind if she was eliminated all together. The Uesugi really seem to have too much of an advantage with their Navy. It's almost like they have an unlimited supply of koku for building fleets.

Uesugi has some rich provinces, but the koku is not unlimited. You want to go after the rich provinces. The AI does since a province's income is a factor used in determining AI attacks.

I wonder what people use as effective combinations for sieges and general attacks. Do the FAQs for Shogun still hold true, or has the strategy changed with Samurai Warlords? Is it far more effective to create huge armies of Ashigaru or does it really matter to create heavy cavalry? I wonder too about the upper levels. Do people find that they can effectively build advance buildings in this mod, or do they only get them by using the .deadringer. cheat? I'm thinking about looking over the replays to pick up clues for effective attack and defense. Has anyone done this?

Use combined arms if you can. That would mean some archers, spears, swords and cav. The strategy FAQ's for Shogun are probably not valid for STWmod. However, Shogun battle tactics are still valid. Large ashigaru armies might be successful at first, but they'll be crushed when they go up against no-dachi, naginata or monks. You can get to the advanced bulidings. It just takes a while. I don't try to get every advanced buliding. I never use cheats.

The MP replays are fun to watch, but humans don't play like the AI and the starting armies are always of equal value. Even so, you would be able to observe the strengths and weaknesses of the unit types and how to use them. The heavy cav is definitely a powerful unit as you can see in those replays, and you need the yari unit types stop it.

[Nakamura Lobato]

Puzz3D-sama,

Thanks for the info on the matchlocks. Now that I remember Seven Samurai, the gun had to stay lit, or they had to keep a fuse going. Thanks for clearing that up. I watched the Hidden Fortress on IFC this morning, and they were using them too. I know that the Portuguese introduced them to Nippon but I wonder about how common they were. I thought that they would have the advantage in wet weather versus archers, but now I'm not so certain. The loading times seem to be prohibitive, so maybe just dealing with the initial shock and confusion would give them an advantage versus their foes?

The Kensai should be extraordinarily rare. I think they should be a special unit that happens to appear only once in a while versus creating them from a building. That would make them wonderful. Ronin samurai were plentiful at certain points in history, but ronin kensai are all too common i.e. easily hired.

You know what would be cool? What if you don't hire ronin in your cities? Wouldn't that cause trouble to the province? All those loose cannon would breed banditry in a location. I wonder if that's why they got bought up, just to get them off the streets. It would make the use of Shinobi more important to a town.

Just for fun I played a game of MWBI last night as Spain. It was funny to see the mix of Japanese sons with Hispanic names! And crusades as geishas!

Have you seen many times that marrying off a princess caused you to inherit the lands of another clan?

Thanks for the tips on Samurai Warlords.

Nakamura

The only info I have found...and it's tenuous at best is that the Nakandakari made certain stylistic changes in the karate kata, and that a certain Nakandakari went to Satsuma to learn the art of pottery. He returned to found the art in Okinawa.

[Puzz3D]

Thanks for the info on the matchlocks. Now that I remember Seven Samurai, the gun had to stay lit, or they had to keep a fuse going. Thanks for clearing that up. I watched the Hidden Fortress on IFC this morning, and they were using them too. I know that the Portuguese introduced them to Nippon but I wonder about how common they were. I thought that they would have the advantage in wet weather versus archers, but now I'm not so certain. The loading times seem to be prohibitive, so maybe just dealing with the initial shock and confusion would give them an advantage versus their foes?

A unit suffers a temporary -2 morale penalty when it sustains one or more casualties inflicted by archers. This morale penalty is -6 when the casualties are caused by teppo. There is an additional temporary morale penalty for the ratio of the number of men lost in a combat cycle compared to the number of men in the unit in the previous cycle. There is also a permanent morale penalty for the ratio of decimation of a unit compared to its original size (-2 for 10% casualties, -8 for 50% casualties and -12 for 80% casualties). In addition, teppo have more penetrating power vs armor than archers, so are better against heavily armored units such as naginata and heavy cav than are archers. Teppo also take 4 hitpoints off the tashio if he gets hit whereas archers only remove 1 hitpoint. Taisho's have 6 hitpoints minimum + additional hitpoints for good health. I think 25 is the maximum number of hitpoints for a very healthy tashio.

The Kensai should be extraordinarily rare. I think they should be a special unit that happens to appear only once in a while versus creating them from a building. That would make them wonderful. Ronin samurai were plentiful at certain points in history, but ronin kensai are all too common i.e. easily hired.

They should be rare I would say.

You know what would be cool? What if you don't hire ronin in your cities? Wouldn't that cause trouble to the province? All those loose cannon would breed banditry in a location. I wonder if that's why they got bought up, just to get them off the streets. It would make the use of Shinobi more important to a town.

I don't think we can model that effect in this game.

Have you seen many times that marrying off a princess caused you to inherit the lands of another clan?

I think it's alliances that result in you getting provinces if a clan is eliminated.

[Nakamura Lobato]

How did you realize all of the nuances of the source code? You must of spent a huge amount of time assimilating all of the calculations? Did you get the chance to discuss the strategy with the game designers or did you just figure it out when the code was released. Did the designers write their thoughts down somewhere?

The matchlocks make absolute sense. It's elegant.
Nakamura

[Irinami]

Nakamura-dono,

You wonder about how common firearms were in Sengoku-jidai. They became a tool of growing importance throughout the era, although as I recall they were not the backbone of any Sengoku army. Sengoku-jidai more or less ends about the same time of the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire (Germany). Count Tilly stuck to the old 3:1 pikemen:musketeers used in the 1500's; something between 3:1 and 1:1 was the norm, while the Swedes were pushing a 1:2 to 1:4 ratio or more. My point is, even in contemporary Europe firearms were only the backbone of just one major army, which was still reliant on the pikes. So I doubt they would be any more utilized in Nippon.

The historical advantage to firearms, as I recall, is first and foremost their simplicity of operation. A "gonne" (the old term for gun, I use it as a catchall for muskets, teppo, etc. etc.) requires just the training of loading and firing. With a bow, the operation gets more complex--there's some bit of aiming in there. Yes, you can aim a gonne too, but it's not reliably accurate. So you need either a gonne capable of firing several shots at once, or several gonners firing at once.

The stronger the bow, the stronger the archer; if you need to deal with armored opponents, your archer is going to be a significantly trained soldier, and will need more than a diet of gruel. The bow itself is somewhat complex, and each one is something of a work of art--the bow is not a flaw-tolerant system. The gonne, on the other hand, lends itself more easily to mass production, and gains much less from training (other than discipline) compared to the bow. The gonne is more tolerant of flaws for two reasons: The operator is a replaceable peasant, and as long as the weapon makes a little ball go out the same end the operator is looking every time the operator makes it go "bang," then it's working.

You know what would be cool? What if you don't hire ronin in your cities? Wouldn't that cause trouble to the province? All those loose cannon would breed banditry in a location. I wonder if that's why they got bought up, just to get them off the streets. It would make the use of Shinobi more important to a town.

As I understand it, you've described the origins of (some of) the yakuza. In Edo period, the samurai families of the Sengoku-jidai of course haven't stopped. And they haven't stopped having children either, of course! So between the peace and the natural growth of clans, there are a great number of samurai with really no purpose. Called kabuki-mono ("raving ones," some sources translate it as) or more properly hatamoto yakko ("servants of the hatamoto/shogun), some would dress wildly and use their position to justify extreme actions. Basically overpriviliged brats who never had to learn to control themselves. So, in some places, the local roughs and toughs (and plenty of drunks ;)) banded together calling themselves machi yakko ("servants of the town"), as a sort of vigilante/grassroots control on these nobles.

OK that much rememborizing hurt my brain. ;) Hope this helps give you a wider understanding of stuff. Oh, cool on Nakandakari about the potential bringing of a pottery style to Okinawa. As for stylistic changes to karate (ask about karate some other time), it's entirely believable. It has been said that if the master hasn't changed the martial art he practices, then he's not a master--just a talking book.

[Puzz3D]

You wonder about how common firearms were in Sengoku-jidai. They became a tool of growing importance throughout the era, although as I recall they were not the backbone of any Sengoku army.

I don't think they are dominate in Samurai Wars. The samurai archer unit is better than the Portuguese teppo unit and approximately equal to the Japanese teppo unit when those units exchange volleys. The teppo are also vulnerable to cavalry.

How did you realize all of the nuances of the source code? You must of spent a huge amount of time assimilating all of the calculations? Did you get the chance to discuss the strategy with the game designers or did you just figure it out when the code was released. Did the designers write their thoughts down somewhere?

Some things we figured out by running tests. I figured out how the Benny Hill effect worked by running tests on my LAN, and my results were later confirmed by the designer who then started posting to this forum. Using tests I designed to quantify the morale effects, I also determined that +12 morale had been accidentally added to all the units in the Mongol Invasion Expansion's multiplayer. I quantified many morale effects during this time, and the designer both confirmed those results and provided additional info on the combat system. Other players ran tests as well, and gradually over a two year period a good understanding of the battle engine was developed. Both the morale and combat systems were later documented by the designer in two chapters of the Official Medieval Total War Strategy Guide, and with some additional info provided by him in the forums during the MTW/VI period, a full understanding of the battle system was eventually achieved.

[Nakamura Lobato]

So when the Teppo or Archers run out of ammunition, do their combat stats change dramatically? I'm curious since once overrun, they were forced to hand to hand fighting. Of course the mounted archer units would be armed samurai, so they would be switching off to yari or katana.

What's the Benny Hill effect? I know the English comedian.

My library is in storage. I don't recall if Turnball explained if Teppo were available unless you had access to Portuguese traders. If the only way to get them was constructing Cathedrals, it seems like having the ability to create warrior monks and Portuguese teppo is unfair.

I'll bet that the rifling wasn't present inside off the barrels (the long spiral that guides the ball), but they still would have been somewhat accurate at close range. I doubt that the samurai would let just anyone get access to the matchlocks, particularly peasants. They were probably poor farmer-samurai ashigaru who got upgraded instead. It would have been dangerous to allow commoners weapons, hence the banning of weapons in Okinawa.

What program do you use to edit the source code? Are there programs so that you can change rules on the fly, or make additions?

Nakamura

[Puzz3D]

So when the Teppo or Archers run out of ammunition, do their combat stats change dramatically? I'm curious since once overrun, they were forced to hand to hand fighting. Of course the mounted archer units would be armed samurai, so they would be switching off to yari or katana.

Their stats don't change. They switch to their melee weapon when out of ammo or if overrun. You can also force this switch by pressing ALT when you order a ranged unit that still has ammo to attack.

The ranged weapon stat is separate from the melee weapon stat. The ranged weapon is a true vacuum physics model with range modified by height and accuracy modified by height, fatigue, weather and line of sight (LOS) of individual men while the melee is handled by a robust statistical model weighted by situational combat factors such as height, fatigue, striking at a man's flank, pushback, overcrowding, etc.

What's the Benny Hill effect? I know the English comedian.

That was what the designer called the effect where constant retreat would trigger a unit into an unrecoverable rout. In original STW, this would happen after about 5 consecutive moves away from enemy units within about 75 meters. The purpose of the feature was to prevent players from winning battles by constantly retreating from the enemy until the timer expired. Feint tactics with units such as cavalry archers were thus very limited. The Benny Hill effect was changed in STW/MI so that ranged units were not affected until they ran out of ammo. As I recall, the number of consecutive retreats needed to trigger the rout was also increased.

My library is in storage. I don't recall if Turnball explained if Teppo were available unless you had access to Portuguese traders. If the only way to get them was constructing Cathedrals, it seems like having the ability to create warrior monks and Portuguese teppo is unfair.

Original STW was set up like that. STWmod apparently can't duplicate that. I don't think it's unfair because the ability is available to all the clans.

I'll bet that the rifling wasn't present inside off the barrels (the long spiral that guides the ball), but they still would have been somewhat accurate at close range. I doubt that the samurai would let just anyone get access to the matchlocks, particularly peasants. They were probably poor farmer-samurai ashigaru who got upgraded instead. It would have been dangerous to allow commoners weapons, hence the banning of weapons in Okinawa.

There is no rifling and accuracy of teppo (0.12 and 0.16) is very low compared to the bow (0.6). The teppo are ashigaru units while the archers, both mounted and unmounted, are samurai and have better melee capability. Samurai do not suffer a morale penalty when they see ashigaru rout.

What program do you use to edit the source code? Are there programs so that you can change rules on the fly, or make additions?

We can't edit the source code. An editor called the Gnome Editor is useful for editing the unit stats. The projectile stats can be easiy edited with the notepad program. Samurai Wars was a group effort that took several months and many man hours to balance. The whole idea of the stat is that there isn't any one unit that dominates.

[Irinami]

... Benny Hill Effect for the FAIL. I wondered why my Taicho would flee if I used him to drag an enemy unit across the battlefield willy-nilly. Guess I just have to have him charge them a couple of times.

[Puzz3D]

... Benny Hill Effect for the FAIL. I wondered why my Taicho would flee if I used him to drag an enemy unit across the battlefield willy-nilly. Guess I just have to have him charge them a couple of times.

According to the designer, attacking an enemy unit resets the Benny Hill counter. I was never able to conclusively verify that in tests.

[Tomisama]

Some thoughts

Originally Posted by Nakamura Lobato
My library is in storage. I don't recall if Turnball explained if Teppo were available unless you had access to Portuguese traders. If the only way to get them was constructing Cathedrals, it seems like having the ability to create warrior monks and Portuguese teppo is unfair.

Guns were being manufactured by the Japanese themselves in the thousands, no traders required

Originally Posted by Nakamura Lobato
I'll bet that the rifling wasn't present inside off the barrels (the long spiral that guides the ball), but they still would have been somewhat accurate at close range. I doubt that the samurai would let just anyone get access to the matchlocks, particularly peasants. They were probably poor farmer-samurai ashigaru who got upgraded instead. It would have been dangerous to allow commoners weapons, hence the banning of weapons in Okinawa.

It is my impression that only Samurai class or above actually owned weapons of any kind. In fact I remember reading one account where there was a list of basic weapon requirements for a Samurai under a particular Lord. He had to have so many spears, so many guns, etc.. I am guessing that there are many variations on this, but essentially peasant soldiers (Ashigaru) were only allowed arms as needed. But in any case, I am certain that thousands of ordinary peasants were trained and given guns (just not to take home).



Edit: When Chinese matchlocks (mostly handguns) were all that were available, I am sure these rare weapons were highly prized by Samurai who owned them. And those guns never saw more than private use. But when the sword smith traded his daughter for the training on how to properly close the arquebus barrel end, the availability the gun, and history of Japan were forever changed

[Tomisama]

I’m sorry if I appear confrontational, that was not my mission.

I only seek to spur controversy to provide a platform for the exchange of knowledge.

Ancient Japanese firearms has become of special study of mine, and I could not resist jumping in to the conversation, but never intended to kill it

[Nakamura Lobato]

I never that you were confrontational, Tomisama.

I started my last semester of basic sciences in med school. I'm studying for boards. Not enough time for sleep, much less Samurai Warlords.

No rest for the exhausted.

I guess the confusion comes in from James Clavel's Shogun. I thought that he based it on historical fact, and that Turnball confirmed the 1st use of firearms at The Battle of Sekigahara by the Tokugawa army? But that doesn't sound right at all. Didn't Nobunaga use them earlier?

Four hours of sleep in tow dasy maeks ti hadr to thnik.
Nakamura

[Irinami]

No worries mate. What you mentioned jives well with what I'd read. Have nothing more to add. :)

[Puzz3D]

I guess the confusion comes in from James Clavel's Shogun. I thought that he based it on historical fact, and that Turnball confirmed the 1st use of firearms at The Battle of Sekigahara by the Tokugawa army? But that doesn't sound right at all. Didn't Nobunaga use them earlier?

From Wikipedia: "The first arquebuses were introduced in Japan in 1543 by Portuguese traders (Fernão Mendes Pinto), who landed by accident on Tanegashima, an island south of Kyūshū in the region controlled by the Shimazu clan. By 1550, copies of the Portuguese arquebus were being produced in large quanties, and they were often seen on the battlefields all over Japan."


STW begins in 1530 and has the Portuguese arrival scripted to occur in 1543 if you have the required options in place. Somewhat later the Dutch arrive with the musket, but my understanding is that the musket wasn't used in Japan during the Sengoku Jidai. The Japanese manufactured copies of the Portuguese arquebusier (teppo). The Japanese teppo was of better workmanship and that is reflected in STWmod by giving them higher accuracy. Since we don't have seasonal turns in STWmod, the campaign starts earlier than 1530 and we don't have the availability of the teppo tied to the arrival of Portuguese traders. As a result, it may be possible to get teppo earlier than 1543. I think barocca had to choose a compromise solution because of the differences between STW and MTW.

[Tomisama]

Now this has no bearing on the game, but for those who love to peruse the unsolvable mazes of history, three things have be brought to my attention.

1. The Portuguese considered Pinto to be quite the story teller.

“They gave rise to the saying "Fernão, Mentes? Minto!", a Portuguese pun on his name meaning "Fernão, do you lie? Yes, I lie!"”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern%C3%A3o_Mendes_Pinto

2. The Japanese themselves do not believe that there was a transfer of advanced Western technology to Japan. At least they have no evidence to support it in all of Japan.

http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/e-rekihaku/114/index.html

3. The term used to describe these weapons by almost all Western “expert” documentation is “arquebus”. This is derived from the name harquebus, or German hackbüchse, which means latch gun. In Europe the latch gun referred to a weapon requiring a support rest or wall hook to support it’s “long” barrel. This is not a description of the Tanegashima gun, plain an simple.

Who knows ;)

[Irinami]

The use of the term "arquebus" in reference to the firearms in Japan has always been tenuous. I wouldn't go reading too much into the word. On the other hand, if there is a lack of evidence, then that's interesting. However, it's a sure thing that Dutch and Portuguese traders were active in sengoku-jidai; the Portuguese as Nanban (southern barbarians), bringing coveted Chinese goods in an end run around the Chinese ban on trade wth Japan, and the Dutch as the Kōmō (red hair), though they came in round 1600.

Quite interesting though, certainly something to read up on.

Edit: Which I was doing as I wrote this. I was going to jokingly say, "So maybe the Dutch were bringing Chinese arquebuses!" I was re-reading the Nanban article on Wiki, came across the following:

Strictly speaking, the Japanese were already familiar with gunpowder (invented by, and transmitted from China), and had been using basic Chinese guns and cannon tubes called Teppō (鉄砲 Lit.”Iron cannon”) for around 270 years before the arrival of the Portuguese. The Portuguese guns however were light, had a matchlock firing mechanism and were easy to aim with.

Sounds like the Chinese-tube "Teppo" were a bit more like arquebus, and the name probably stuck from use. I'd wager the Portuguese designs weren't co-opted in toto, but were used as inspiration to upgrade their own.

Also of note:

Within a year (ed: of Pinto's OR WHOEVER'S contact with the Japanese), Japanese swordsmiths and ironsmiths managed to reproduce the mechanism and mass-produce the guns. Barely fifty years later, "by the end of the 16th century, guns were almost certainly more common in Japan than in any other country in the world", its armies equipped with a number of guns dwarfing any contemporary army in Europe (Perrin).

Perrin's a pretty respected source, so I wouldn't doubt that. Guess I was wrong in saying they were never a backbone.

[Tomisama]

3. The term used to describe these weapons by almost all Western “expert” documentation is “arquebus”. This is derived from the name harquebus, or German hackbüchse, which means latch gun. In Europe the latch gun referred to a weapon requiring a support rest or wall hook to support it’s “long” barrel. This is not a description of the Tanegashima gun, plain an simple.

Well I was at least wrong about part, if not all of this. If the Japanese din't have any record, what about other people of the same period?

To try to make some comparisons I started looking for anything on 16th century weapons and their manufacture. In several places I did find reference to arquebus being carried on sailing expeditions (Sir Francis Drake, etc.), and looking at pictures must conclude that there is a marked resemblance between the Japanese and European versions, including size!

For example:

Ralegh's colonists probably had several kinds of foreign and domestic firearms. First among small arms of the period was the arquebus (harquebus, hackbut), a smooth-bore muzzle-loading weapon of fifteenth century origin, with a barrel about 3 feet long.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/fora/arms.htm

I will be continuing to research this subject, and collect data

[Nakamura Lobato]

http://www.goosejuice.com/albums/jap...tsu/index.html
give me a katana, yari, or any other weapon any day.

Nakamura

[Puzz3D]

give me a katana, yari, or any other weapon any day.

The teppo isn't being used as an individual weapon. It's used to volley which multiplies the effectiveness. In the game, a single man with a teppo is useless.

[Nakamura Lobato]

I know, I just jerking your chain.
Nakamura

But I did include the link for you gun lovers.