Well, excuse me!...
Ashigaru useless? Cheap? Bridge fodder?
Excuse me, gentlemen, but you are way out of line here. Once upgraded and battle-hardened, they're a force to be reckoned with. They're fast and flexible, they eat Cavalry for breakfast and yes, they are cheap so there's always more where they came from. The key to using YA in SP effectively is not sitting back and training huge, low valour and low morale YA armies before you start expanding, let alone letting them grow fat on garrison duty, for God's sake. The key is playing in the most aggressive fashion to upgrade their valour and morale and increase their generals' stars, then mixing them with fresh units to compensate for the inevitably huge losses you incur in the opening stages. Sure it's a delicate balance, but the benefit of massing YA and attacking from the word "go" is you keep your neighbours on the wrong foot and prevent them from rushing to their high quality troops early in the game, whereas you are carving out the territory (and amassing the funds through economizing on your troops) to do just that.
I'm sorry, I won't stand any nonsense about YA ever since I fought a most memorable campaign (Early, Expert) as Lord Oda, an Ashigarus' Ashigaru if ever there was one. After having been chased barefoot (and continuously pregnant as far as Wife Number One was concerned) from my home province of Owari by the combined forces of the merciless Hojo and ever treacherous Imagawa, I literally slashed and burned my way through Western Japan, destroying all buildings and farming upgrades except for short breaks during which I replenished and upgraded my tired and huddled peasant armies. My Long March ended in Satsuma where I re-erected my ancestral altar and from whence I fought my way back across the isles, eventually to return to Owari triumphant. Gah! And as for bridge fodder, I used those sluggish Naginata!
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Good charge though, huh?
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