Historical basis for STW etc (split from the Shogun II Thread)

[gollum]

Originallu posted by Karl08
I can only speculate about this, but I assume the no-dachi (or rather O-tachi; no-dachi simply means "field sword") would be used in a similar way to European greatswords or the huge Zweihänder, to push aside pikes. Of course, in Europe Zweihänders were used with support from pollaxes, typically.

Quite possibly so, although it could have many other uses too in the hands of a skilled swordsman apparently.

Yes, but sohei, naginata and nodachi are right up their with cavalry as far as price tag is concerned. I'm not sure how well they compare in upkeep, but this is where the big difference ought to be seen, anyway.

Yes well, Nodachis are @350koku/60men, Naginata @450 (or400? can't remember)/60man unit and the warrior monk @500koku/60men which is the same money paid to recruit Yari cavalry and the Cavalry archer iirc.

All foot units cost 1koku/man/year to maintain other than ashigaru (yaris and gunners) that cost 0.5koku/man/year and cavalry that cost 2koku/man/year. This is because the koku is by definition the amount of rice to feed a man for a year. For cavalry the horse is also counted (as it should).

This makes cavalry quite a drain on maintenance resources as it was. Cavalry heavy armies are expensive and run the risk to underperform in forests, bridges and hilly terrain. In my view cavalry is very nicely represented in STW in all respects.

I never found any MTW units to be redundant.

Really? To begin with there are the peasants - that are there as cheap garissons for the player; unfortunately the AI uses them as if they could fight but they can't. Urban militia quickly become redundant. Lithuanian cavalry due to their requirements. The two types of light horse archer the Turks get (vanilla horse archer is redundant for them). There are many other examples - too many to list here.

I would say that as the eras progress and the new powerful units become avilable the trend is more dominant. For example Chivalric men at arms and arbalesters are so far away from anything else in their class that make a large number of units redundant/obsolete - so much so in fact that they were the backbone of a typical multiplayer army for the most part.

Its not that you cannot use the redundant units in battle - its that you can play and win the game by completely ignoring their existence - something that doesn't happen all that much in STW.

Thanks for the analysis and the nice print.