Quote Originally Posted by econ21 View Post
I think 4XP is about twice as good as 4 armor for melee troops: as a rough rule of thumb, you could assess the combat factor of a melee unit in TW by adding up the attack, defence and armor. I'm hoping not to replenish too much. You pay full price for a depleted unit. I'd consoldiate depleted units and may be even disband very low strength remmants. You'd be better off recruiting a new unit, especially if it starts off with 4XP. (In past TW games, you paid per man not full price and the main attraction for holding on to veterans was their higher XP than the 0XP rookies.)

You may have a point on the monk's armor - I've recommended the armory over the jujitsu dojo for them. But the quantity of bonuses for 4XP is just too large. And it would be hard to shoe horn a temple into a smith province (after the sword dojo, spear dojo and encampment buildings).
I have to disagree on this particular point a lot. XP4 is not unachieveable by just using the unit normally. Its actually almost a given with Monks since they are so effective at killing things. But getting +3 armor will never fade away or diminish in usefulness. In fact, outside of the first fights you have, the Monks will almost certainly have more XP on average with armor, since the only unit that can really hurt Monks is Samurai Achers (or lots of weaker Archers) and equally-developed Katanas. The AI will go full-out overboard with sniping your Monks, so unless you keep them so far away from the fight that it'll take them half a minute to close in on the melee, they *will* take casualties from arrows. Its nigh-impossible to avoid. Heck, if you use Monks so defensively that they never take casualties I'd recommend No Dachis instead as they're both faster and deal a lot more damage on the charge. Assuming the attack/defense/armor formula still holds up, it still doesn't address the issue of Archers.

XP is good for attack and defense, but it also provinces morale, which is huge on Ashigaru and decent on Katana and Yari Samurai. Its next-to-worthless on Monks, they never rout anyway. If you were to develop the Holy Sites for anything I'll much more recommend +5 morale and +2 armor and then churn out Ashigaru from a fully developed Castle instead.

Also, XP doesnt give +1 attack +1 defense per rank in Shogun 2. On melee units the bonuses are:
R1: 1 morale, 1 attack, 1 defense
R2: 0 morale, 1 attack, 1 defense
R3: 1 morale, 1 attack, 0 defense
R4: 1 morale, 1 attack, 1 defense
R5: 0 morale, 0 attack, 2 defense