Which troops go into battle?

[Jef Costello]

I lost my daimyo (again) with only two provinces left to capture. So I face massive rebellions and the re-emergence of three clans, including Shimazu with 19 provinces!

I thought I'd have fun defeating them but I just quit my first battle in anger because it started me out with archers and no dachi to defend a province and then gave me (really late) my naginata as reinforcements. I'd killed the resurgent Shimazu's daiumyo and I would have won the battle but I was too annoyed to carry on :)

How can I control which troops fight in a battle and when they come in? I used to break my stacks up into smaller groupings because it seems to speed up reinforcements. Often when I have withdrawn two units I won't get reinforcements until I've taken 6 or 7 off the field which is pretty dangerous in a big battle. I've also noticed that after I've got carefully balanace stacks the computer sometimes breaks them up so my heir ends up commanding a really unsuitable selection of troops because the AI has stripped the army of naginata in defence battles or has decided to changed the balance of the army in the field to 3:1 archers to the rest.

Is there a way to make it send in the stacks as I have actually set them up?
Is there a way to control the order in which units are used as reinforcements? moving them to the territory in the order I want them to fight fails as well.

[ReluctantSamurai]

At the deployment screen, you will see a black button with a red, semicircle arrow, that says 'Next Unit'. You select a unit you wish to replace by clicking on that units' card at the bottom of the screen and now you can scroll through units that are available to you and they will appear in your unit cards replacing the one you selected. Be aware that the replacement unit will be in the formation of the unit you replaced. For instance, if you replace an archer with a cav unit, the cav unit will be in three lines instead of the semi-square formation cav usually has. You can, of course, change that formation using the 'draw-out' method. If your Daimyo is present, he will always be the commanding general. Otherwise, the highest ranking general is chosen to lead.

I wouldn't count too heavily on reinforcements. They rarely come when you need them or where you need them. The timing of your reinforcements is strictly random. They could come relatively soon after you withdraw some units, or much later. That's why I never count on them except in very long (1 hour+) multi-stack battles.

[A Nerd]

Picking your reinforcents is a great option. Nothing worse than being tightly engaged when you recieve a reinforcement piece of 20 honor 0 ashigaru!