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View Full Version : Bushido, and trigger happy archers



jas142
11-15-2000, 09:31
Two things:

1. Has anyone noticed that smetimes archers seem to jump to follow the bushido a little early.... I had a few groups of archers and muskets garissoned in a large castle. They were not being effected by enemy archers(as they had none) and the enemies were not in my castle for long (My One warrior monk unit in my castle quickly routed anyone who made it past the volleys of arrows and bullets) so they couldn't have caused it.... But at the end of the battle many archers lay dead.... AND many musketeers... Why?

And While we're on the subject of Bushido, why don't we see this in battle? they always route(whether it's the whole unit or the remaining 10 of them).... I would expect them to fight to the death or, when it's hopeless, kill themselves...

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War is not a crime, it is an art.

Magraev
11-15-2000, 14:39
Maybe it was friendly fire - check the battle log. Muskets are notorious for killing their own.

Anssi Hakkinen
11-16-2000, 05:44
Likely it was FF, the cramped castle wall means a lot of accidental shooting-in-the-back.

As for harakiri / seppuku on the battlefield, STW tends toward historical realism here. The samurai of the Age of War were not very big on the practical application of bushido (with some notable exceptions). Capturing enemy warriors was not considered really worth the effort, except in the case of the enemy daimyo / commander, who, as a consequence, were the most likely people to commit seppuku in order to avoid capture (and do so in STW). The myth of the Japanese samurai holding the lines until the very end is largely based on the experiences of the Second World war. In that conflict, the Japanese fought for the survival of their entire nation against a clearly external threat. During the Sengoku Jidai, the loss of a battle didn't mean the end of everything the samurai had ever known and fought for - at most, it meant the samurai lost his job until hired by another daimyo.

So, the historical battles of the era were basically pretty much like STW describes them, they ended in a withdrawal or a rout rather than a bitter fight to the death. An exception to this were battles on what Sun Tzu describes as "deadly ground", i.e. when there were no other ways out than surrender or death. This is also reflected in STW, in the form of castle sieges and armies vanishing off-map after being cornered in a province and defeated.

And of course, the Bushido barely applies at all to Ashigaru.

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"Carai an Mierendaira!" -- "Glory to the Blue Cross!"

[This message has been edited by Anssi Hakkinen (edited 11-15-2000).]

Tenchimuyo
11-16-2000, 22:48
Hey, watch where you shoot that thing!