Unit Speculation?

[O'Hea]

Personally, I reckon it'll be mostly like the original STW rosters, but with more tiers, and with unique units rather than cost reductions. So instead of having just one type of archer and one type of swordsman and one type of light cavalry, and they just get experience bonuses as you tech up, there would be separate units representing improvements in armor and weapons. I also don't doubt they'll have at least two periods unit-wise, with one being the more classical samurai armies and another showing the post-Nobunaga one that more closely resembled Western armies of the time (Ashigaru armed with pikes and teppos, followed by teppo samurai, etc). Because honestly, the oldschool STW roster was probably more the result of avoiding a lot of unnecessary work making sprites, text entries, and the like for units that are functionally the same as their basic forms than some kind of Zen-inspired design decision. It's only the experience of Empire and Napoleon that's persuaded CA to cut back on unit variety.

[Tsar Alexsandr]

Hmm. Yeah that sounds right. Some Samurai used some pretty old fashioned gear in the begining of the Sengoku jidai. And in the latter Sengoku we saw masses of muskets and cannon used in battle. (With plenty of hand to hand soldiers still in use.)