Who to hit, the archers or spearmen?

[Anjin-san]

Quick question. You have say, three yari and three groups of archers and so does the the enemy. Now, who do you concentrate your archer fire on, the enemies archers or their yari? I know certain situations call for different tactics, but given my question, who do you concentrate your fire on?

[kaltes]

First I would say, if you could, get all 3 of yours firing at 1 outlying unit of theirs so they cant use all 3 of their archers to fire back.

Otherwise, I'd say target the spearmen. When everyone is out of arrows, the spearmen decide the battle anyway. I have to admit, though: I am biased. In the campaign I abhor samurai archers, and in online play I only use muskets because they're so cheap.

The fact is that archers will not damage an attacking army much if it breaks into a run on flat terrain upon entering their range. I only use archers on the defense when I am on high ground so that an attacker can not fire at my stationary troops with impunity. I can use archers to duel him from a distance without having to shift my yari lines.

If your opponent does this (screens his melee troops with archers/gunners) you either wont be able to fire on his melee troops at all (out of range) or in doing so you deliver minor casualties to his melee troops while you take much more severe casualties to your archers.

The difference is how close he keeps his archers to his yari. If theyre close together, shoot the yari, but if he keeps the archers further up, you wont have much of a choice.

[Steeleye]

yes, it really depends on how your opponent plays it. If you think your opponent is going to sit like a turkey and just pound you with musks, then target your archers on one of his musk units and try and get it to rout - with any luck the others will go too.

In Single player, I always target the AI's HtH units - bring these down to size while they advance, then send in your HtH units to clean them up and then smash into his archer units when they rout. This way your archers will probably get quite a lot of missile casualties, but overall, your losses should be less.

Kyodaispan

If his units are monks or nods, archer fire would decimate them quickly...

use this tip is mp when using ca...
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[Maltz]

I think missle weapons are more of an aid to hand-to-hand engagement. Few samurai or high-honor peasants will rout purely because of the rain of arrows.

Most of the times I am just lazy and busy at other troop movement, so I let them fire at will - it works pretty well.

For attacking a well-defended enemy, we better break the defender's formation and morale first - else we will probably suffer very heavy losses due to the disadvantage of height or other factors like a bridge. Therefore, concentrating the fires on whatever our YS will run into will probably be good - in this case it will probably be enemy YS, too.

For defenders, I guess we need to bring down whatever brings us the most threat first - if their wall of YS come forward, shoot them and flank them, if their archers come forward, shoot them using numerical advantage, otherwise march the YS forward to push them back. Ignore ashigarus maybe, since even if we shoot and rout them the next second, they will rally and come back soon, a big waste of arrows. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

[This message has been edited by Maltz (edited 06-22-2001).]

[BanzaiZAP]

Anjin-san: Are you attacking or defending?

Attaking, I'd use one yari unit to drain enemy arrow supplies (being careful of morale), then have my archers take out his yari. Then move in when he's tapped out.

Defending, I'd pull back under my own umbrella of arrow-fire, and pelt anyone who comes near me, being careful not to waste all arrows on only one unit. Spread the love around. If he starts raining arrows on one or two of my units, have those units fall back a bit. That will often lure his archers in too close, and you can rush them.

-- B)