Overestimation

[Togakure]

In my experience, once an heir comes of age, the next unit trained is that heir. You can hold off if you want, if say, you were about to finish a nice dojo or improvement like an armory or swordsmith. You can tell when the heir has matured by looking on the heirs tab--it will say "Unassigned." This indicates that the next unit trained will be the heir. The way it actually works, if multiple provinces are training units, the city furthest left on the map that trains a unit will produce the heir. I think it has to do with the order in which the game processes unit production. Therefore, rather than cease production for all provinces, I just cease production of all units further left on the map than the province I want the heir to be trained in.

As far as generals go, I don't usually use Cavalry Archers (CA) as generals. It's true that they are very mobile and can usually avoid trouble, but I prefer my generals to have speed and high morale (iirc, CA have a morale of 4). In Single Player (SP) this is not so crucial; honored-up CA work fine, but in Multi-Player (MP) morale is really important and CA above Honor 0 aren't a very good bang for your koku. I think my tendencies in MP carry over into SP now as that's all I play.

That being said, Warrior Monks and No Dachi have high morale (8), but crappy defense, so I rarely make them generals. My favorite is the Naginata Cavalry (morale 8) in mid- to late-game. Purists who don't like using this unit can opt for Heavy Cavalry (morale 6 and good defense) instead.

Heh, contrary to what I just said, I tend to use Yari Samurai (YS) as generals early on. Why? Their morale isn't great unless honored-up (fortunately heir units often are), but they get that wonderful spear bonus against cavalry, and have good armor versus ranged attacks. Speedy Yari Cavalry can make short work of an archer, nod, or CA general, and can even route monks if they get in a good flank attack, particularly if the monk unit is already engaged. But YS tend to shred any cavalry foolish enough to engage them in melee. Even flank attacks against them with cavalry is a crap-toss unless the YS is already engaged with another unit and/or significantly damaged. I just make sure to keep archers between my YS gen and enemy archers, and try not to let monks or nods get close. This isn't so hard to do against the AI. Yeah, they are slow, but I generally maneuver as an army and do my best to keep my gen well-protected (stop chuckling, Sasaki ...).

There was a time in the late 1.02 MP days when one guy started using Honor 7 Yari Samurais (and a bunch of cheap other units to compensate for the expense). Man ... they were a b-word. He pissed everyone off for a couple of weeks before good counter armies (a taste of his own medicine, combined with a lot of CAs, better used) were invented. Those who'd been around for awhile said it was reminiscent of the old Super-Ashi armies (which led to Ashigaru spearmen being traditionally banned from MP).