Shimazu 1530 campaign

**Sasaki Kojiro** · 08-09-2006, 22:23

I wanted to try out a campaign without any ranged units because I feel they are unbalanced and ruin the gameplay somewhat. Sure enough, my impression so far is that the game is more difficult and more fun without them.

Start date: 1530. Clan: Shimazu. Difficulty:Expert. Unit size:60.

The start of the campaign. I immediatly destroy the archery dojo and disband my two Samurai Archers (about a third of my armed forces and my only other decent general...oh well). This leaves me with only enough men to attack Higo. I start building a large castle in satsuma and small castles in my other two provinces. Even with Higo I only get 273 Koku as income...I need more provinces so I attack Chikugo.

Loyalty is none to good and I get a couple rebellions. One of these, a defense of Higo, I'll explore in more detail.

Here's the replay:

http://s17.quicksharing.com/v/370302..._Higo.zip.html

In a little bit I'll post screenshots and talk about it.

Defense of Higo

The battle starts and I set up my troops on the back ridge. 2 ashis and my Daimyo. The last rebellion was 2 ashigaru units.

As they get closer I realize that this time one of the rebel units is a Samurai Archer, thus making them far more dangerous. If I sit here they'll shoot my light armored ashi to pieces. I send my daimyo out to the right.

When I judge the moment to be right I send my daimyo charging in behind them to attract the archers fire and move my ashigaru down from the hill.

I run my daimy in a circle to the other side. The archers have to keep turning and don't get off many shots.

Almost a complete circle now. My ashi are almost here.

I double my daimyo back around so that the enemy units turn their rears towards my men :)

Moments before contact. I plan to double up on the archer taisho unit; one hit to the rear or flank should be enough for the enemy ashi.

Sure enough the ashi rout on impact (though you can see them rallying in the background). My daimyo and ashi and making short work of the archers.

My ashi flanking the rallied unit.

The enemy in full retreat. I lose 9 men.

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Now this was a fun battle and all, but the point I really wanted to make was that if I had had one of the archer units I started with it would have been boring and easy. I would have routed the ashigaru with my arrows, and charged in my daimyo headfirst to beat the archer unit. This way is much more fun

**Drisos** · 08-10-2006, 08:11

Wow.. another campaign! And again looks nice Sasaki!!

The Hida defence is a good example.. with your hamamoto and 1 SA you would've killed 75% of them, win, and loose 0 men.. I think. Well you might loose a few hamamoto guys but they come back anyway..

Sounds like another intresting way of making the campaigns harder..

**Martok** · 08-15-2006, 22:57

Nice, Sasaki! I personally can't imagine deliberately forgoing archers in my battles; but then I've never been a terribly good field commander. That was well done.