What's your preferred army composition?

[gauch0]

Interesting. I'm currently operating two full-stack armies, and I went with pretty much all samurais--no ashigaru. (One or two warrior monks in each stack, and a ninja unit.) Any reason that this isn't a good idea? So far, I haven't run into money troubles.

[Lemur]

Any reason that this isn't a good idea?

Hey, if you've got the income and don't have any cash flow problems, an all-samurai army makes sense. However, I find mid-campaign that anything less that three effective forces is problematic. Not including any ashigaru minders you leave behind to keep an eye on things. And most folks would have a hard time supporting three all-samurai stacks marauding around the middle of Japan.

[Lord Benihana]

Once you get north of Kyoto, there is a really nice bottle neck that - if you can hold it - allows you to only have to worry about enemies to the south of Kyoto... My 2 super armies are doing really well once I consolidated the southern 1/2 of Japan :)

[nafod]

I generally roll with the following

Shimazu

General
4x Katana Samurai
2x Yari Samurai
Naganita Samurai
No-Dachi Samurai
2x Bow Samurai
3x Bow Ashigaru
4x Yari Ashigaru
2x Light Cavalry

Date
General
4x No Dachi Samurai
2x Katana Samurai
2x Naginata Samurai
2x Yari Samurai
2x Yari Ashigaru
3x Bow Ashigaru
2x Light Cavalry
Yari Cavalry
Katana Cavalry

Early armies regardless

General
4x Yari Ashigaru
3x Bow Ashigaru
2-4 melee samurai (whatever I can muster).

[quadalpha]

Just finished a Tokugawa campaign. The strategic position required more stacks than I can finance if I went all samurai, so my armies are based on an expendable core of about 5 yari ashis and 4-6 bow ashis, with a mix of light/yari cav and flavour-of-the-month foot samurai.

The Date AI fields some rather terrifying stacks of half katana and half bow samurai.

[MCM]

I exclusively use yari ashigaru and bow ashigaru (well, and generals), usually with 10 bow ashigaru and the rest generals and yari ashigaru.

Once I capture an ideal province - one with a Blacksmith, upgraded Castle, and some buildings, I replace the Yari Ashigaru with Naginata Samurai, but only as necessary. I typically have my Generals make a beeline for Ashigaru Commander skill.

Investing in building my own Naginata Samurai town would just be a waste. Building an encampment is pretty much the most I'll do, once I get the right province.

This is pretty much regardless of which clan I'm playing as. Even as Takeda or Date or Uesegi, I would still go for Naginata Samurai as the idea. Everything else is just too situational, weak, slow, etc. Would like to find a good way to incorporate a lot of Matchlocks, but hasn't worked out yet

[Zarky]

In early game I never "rush" for samurai units due to recruitment time and cost. But later on I opt for balanced army of katana+yari samurai, but usually keep my archers as ashigaru, giving emphasis to the number of arrows rather than firing speed or accuracy (accuracy is of course improved by encampments and fletchers).
Then to top it all off my superior army composition, which I spend time acquiring and use to capture Kyoto, has 2-4 units of finest yari cavalry with incredible charge bonuses. These are just for the reason that I circle around my enemies and then charge through their archers. Their charge is actually so good that I can make them run through enemy archer unit with little to no casualties, enemy is left with more than 35% losses and I'm already preparing for the next charge.
Wedge formation is of course a must for this strategy.