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I'd rather be anything but ordinary please
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Shogun tactics

In no particular ordering, some of the tactics I used to win a total war campaign.

Shogun provides a lot of different units with various abilities and costs. While they can be fun to explore their recruitment often involves specialist buildings and resources that could be better used. I stick to a limited roster of cheap easy to recruit basic units:-

  • yari ashigaru (peaseant spearmen) - recruit anywhere. Improve stats with yari drill yard or naginata dojo.
  • katana samurai (skilled swordsmen) - sword school or no-dachi dojo.
  • bow ashigaru (bows)
  • light cavalry/yari cavalry (horses) : stables, yari drill yard.

Battlefields

A typical army was the general along with one or two cavalry, five or six bows and the rest yari ashigaru. I’d swap in some katana samurai in some circumstances. They can be great as shock troops against more lightly armed units. On a battlefield use the cavalry to work around the rear of the enemy. Frequently this would draw off units attempting to chase the cavalry who can easily stay out of harms way while constantly threatening to charge into the back ranks. Do as much damage with the bows as possible before the armies clash. Setup a defensive line of yari in tight wall mode to absorb incoming charges or use to create a spike wall to push at the opposition.

Once armies do clash, keep the bows out of the way and peppering any unengaged enemy ~ you don’t want to be shooting at enemies in melee since your just as likely to hit your own troops.

Apply your forces to just about hold most of the line, but at one point to overwhelm quickly. A cavalry charge into the back of a melee or wriggling some katana samurai into the flanks of battles should cause an enemy unit to rout. Once it does use the newly victorious units to attack into to side or rear of neighbouring fights causing them to rout in turn…

Use the cavalry to chase down and massacre routing units.

Some provinces give bonus stats to troops so aim to build these areas as the recruitment centres where possible. Not everywhere has to be recruiting. Anywhere that isn’t needs to be economically focused with farms and markets prioritising the fertile areas. Recruit constantly as you can afford and trickle them towards the front lines. They can refresh armies, start new armies or provide distraction or raiding parties.

Ideally you want to have one army attack and occupy a settlement while another goes straight onto the next. The momentum is hard to counter since a defender can’t move much faster than you.

Settlements

Patience. Attack with bows finding the points where they could shower units in the castle without getting too much heat themselves. Keeping the larger portion of the army out of range on another side of the castle could sometimes ensure any defending bows were stationed ineffectively waiting. Sometimes a quick rush in with bows and fire arrows could burn a tower to gain an undefended position to shoot from.

When defending the goal is to have the attackers arrive with a staggered timing so they aren’t dealt with all at once. Station any cavalry outside to try and draw off units or catch bow units in a charge. If they start reaching the wall get any bows away from the wall and place yari in wall formation so the enemy climb into a surround of spears. If one side of the trap is katana samurai all the better.

Mostly cheap and fast bow kobaya with fire arrows. Some fire bomb kobaya and sengoku bune. Typical tactic was to navigate all the kobaya to hit a ship at the end of the enemy line with fire arrows and then charge in the fire bombers. Most ships routed or burnt. If needed delay further combat until the kobayas get their fire arrow ability recharged.

Use fast things with sails eg trade ships, bune to race past close to the enemy and hopefully draw off or split their forces. Much like the cavalry.

Definitely repair captured fire bombers to get past the allowed five limit(?), repair other units at discretion or use to blockade ports or scout around. If they are already badly damaged it’s no great loss.

Jump armies along the coast to attack or capture provinces beyond the front line. Often they have no nearby forces other than the automatic garrison and are easy prey. Occupy, burn everything down and then get back on the ship. Yes, war is nasty.

Capture or disrupt trade routes, blockade ports and try to get deals with those your not about to attack soon! I didn’t realise initially that more than one trade ship could be on a trade point for greater income. Bah.

Diplomacy

I couldn’t really get this to work for me. It makes choosing your fights way too complicated and any action ends up with everyone hating you anyway.

Marry off daughters to the generals to keep them loyal.

My daimyō survived till the very end and the grand age of 67.

Agents

These have various abilities, but I used them in quite specific roles and didn’t embed them in armies. Ninja to work ahead of the armies as scouts, assassins and saboteurs. They quite rapidly become top rank death machines so that incoming armies rarely had a general.

Metsuke either stayed at the richest towns to maximise income or worked alongside the front lines to help catch and dispose of enemy agents and stabilise newly captures provinces.

Monks mostly stayed in provinces that needed converting back to Shinto from Christianity.

Summary

There is plenty of room for improving, I dont think I really got the trade thing working, and some of the battles turned a bit chaotic - I can see on replays where cavalry have just stood still while spearmen caught them because I didn’t notice in that chaos. There are also units that might be more useful if used appropriately such as fire bomb throwers.

There are a lot of options and moving parts in the game. Which is very much part of the challenge. But simpler units applied smartly in numbers seems to defeat more advanced units even in the later parts of the game.