Overestimation

[caravel]

Anyway, this topic might not be too intresting, sorry for that! :P I just felt like sharing my stupidity, and wonder if others have made the same dumb mistakes?

It's an interesting thread.

The only difference between the eras is the start dates, the unit/building placements and the province ownership. STW has set heirs that come of age at set dates so you have to extra careful. It does not generate random ones as with MTW - it's a wholly different heirs system to that game.

The trick is to ensure that when your heirs come of age you have no units being trained whatsoever. Then train a Cavalry Archers unit as your heirs unit. These units are fast enough to stay out of trouble and very useful. Later in the campaign you may want to risk training some heavy cavalry heirs. The worst thing that can happen is if your heir comes of age as something like a unit of Yari Ashigaru, Nodachi, Samurai Archers or Yari Cavalry - as these units are too front line or vulnerable. If it comes down to it, I would go with Naginta or Yari Samurai heir units as a second choice as at least they're quite defensive.

The real problem is actually watching your heirs and making sure that you prepare for their coming of age. This can be difficult and it is very easy to slip up and see your 7 star boy wonder appear at the head of an Ashigaru unit.

If this annoys you enough to be a game breaker then I can only reccomend that you try the Samurai Warlords mod if you have MTW. This mod is essentially Shogun running on the MTW engine. It's arguably a big improvement over Shogun but it can be very challenging. The main thing is that you get the random heirs of MTW and princesses. You also get a lot more factions and general's units that are almost identical to the ones in STW but are equipped with bows to give them greater survivability.

Welcome back econ21.