So what would you like to see in S2TW?

[Kagemusha]

I haven't posted here in forever, mostly because I stopped following TW after Medieval 1, but I saw they were re-making STW recently so I popped on back.

Anyway, one thing I'd like to see is this time around to have the Yari Ashigaru carry nagae yari (longspears) and function as pikeman/phalanx and the yari samurai carry the shorter version and function more as elite spearmen. That's always bothered me from the first one, where yari ashigaru were just cheap junk troops (until they become cheap overpowered units in MP later, heh) when historically they had their own tactical role on the battlefield.

Although this brings up another point which concerns me now, as I saw they claimed to be making 30-40 units (which will no doubt increase with the obligatory expansion). Give the japanese only really used about 10 weapons at the time period tops I'm not seeing how they are getting that number. There's the long and short yari, nodachi which were rare, katanas which were not carried alone but with another weapon, teppo which *could* be split into arquebus/musket again, naginata, nagamaki which were also not common, and daikyu and hankyu (yumi, bows) which too were not carried alone. For instance cavalry often carried a bow and a spear.

I'm really only seeing a way to get about 8 distinct unit types here:
Yari Ashigaru (longspear, nagae yari)
Teppo Ashigaru (arquebus, teppo)
Yari Samurai (shortspear, yari)
Nodachi Samurai (longsword, odachi)
Naginata Samurai (naginata)
Yumi Samurai (longbow, daikyu & katana)
"Light Cavalry" (shortbow, hankyu & shortspear, yari)
"Heavy Cavalry" (nagamaki or long tachi sword maybe)

...all of which is a long, round-a-bout way of saying what I definitely do *not* want to see, and that's more fantasy BS units like battlefield ninja and kensei. Better it would be to take those 8 basic types and have them have slightly different stats based on training in different martial arts schools and slight variations in weapon/armor style (like fork yaris vs straight yaris) by region. Given this stuff about "hero units" though I suspect we're going to be getting hokum. Hopefully then, which is another thing I *do* want to see, it will at least be easily moddable this time around.

You could add Yumi Ashigaru there as well as Ashigaru bowmen became more and more widespread from very early on. Some say that it was infact the grouped Ashigaru bowmen that made the mounted samurai more or less to change their weapon of choice from Yumi to Yari. During the latter part of the era, mixed Ashigaru units pretty much were the mainstay of armies. You had teppo Ashigarus, supported by Yumi Ashigaru´s when they were reloading, while Yari Ashigaru´s would protect both from mounted and enemy foot soldiers. Or the first two would give support fire, while the spearmen would engage in hand to hand fighting. Also during the latter part of the era many Kachi/ Samurai carried Teppo´s as some Daimyos even wanted that most if not all men should carry firearms, while discarding most other weapons.