https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nagashino

Oda's use of firearms against Takeda's famous and overpowering cavalry broke said cavalry's dominance, and paved the way for Oda to heights of power.

There is a weakness to ranged units, and that is to give them reason to shoot first and force a reload. That's the window of opportunity to strike. Many a lowly ashigaru were drafted into armies just so they would be the ones to take the bullet or arrow, leaving flanking opportunities open to cavalry or elite shock.

Playing on Veteran's equivalent, Ranged units crumbles in Melee. Throw 100 Infantry vs 100 Archer in Melee and you'll find out why you shouldn't. Cavalry can run through all of your archers very quickly as well. They are glass cannons, keep them backed up by Infantry or they'll take 50% losses by the end of the battle.

The other reason why they're stronger then Vanilla is because units aren't using shields. The Hatamoto in general has the highest stats out of any unit in the game, so using them as a comparison is like using 100 Battanian Fians and asking why the game is too easy.

Compare that to 100 Veteran Yumi Ashigarus, they only start becoming effective around the 80ft/m (or whatever bannerlord uses to measure distance), so they can whittle the enemy's infantry force to about 2/3 or 1/2 but they'll still take tremendous losses if you don't have any infantry backing them up.

Plus, this is just like a "bro you chose how to play" kind of opinion. The Fian Champions are still strong af but we play fine because the AI isn't spamming 300 of them every battle. It's only up to the player whether they want to min-max and then complain why the game's too easy, or just ban themselves from cheesing units.

I'm playing on Shogun difficulty and Ranged units just dominate above anything else. You don't even need the highest tier, just something comparable to the enemy you're facing. 100 Yumi Ashigaru, beat any other type of 100 Infantry Ashigaru. 100 Yumi Samurai, beat any other type of 100 Infantry Samurais. Sakai Teppo Samurai and the Yumi Hattamotos put a bucket of ridiculousness on top of all that, by being able to win against anything. They can take down the best cavalry without even taking any losses in small skirmishes. In bigger battles a few of them die, but you decimate the enemy by such a margin, that you're still on top economically.

And even if the enemy somehow gets into melee with your ranged units, if they are in loose formation, your units will still continue to shoot, while the first rank starts distracting the enemy in melee. You don't even need to issue orders, just make a few ranks deep line and put them in loose formation and you can go afk and win any fight.

I also don't thing that its a "you chose how to play" situation, because bad game balance makes battles trivial. Why even recruit anything else than ranged units (and maybe some cannon fodder in front of them), when nothing can beat the archers/gunners? There's just no counter to it. If the enemy magically would attack you with such an army of elite ranged units, there would be nothing you could do to beat them, except maybe if you outnumber them 2:1 and then you lose the majority of your army while doing so.

Originally posted by Xanth™:

I'm playing on Shogun difficulty and Ranged units just dominate above anything else. You don't even need the highest tier, just something comparable to the enemy you're facing. 100 Yumi Ashigaru, beat any other type of 100 Infantry Ashigaru. 100 Yumi Samurai, beat any other type of 100 Infantry Samurais. Sakai Teppo Samurai and the Yumi Hattamotos put a bucket of ridiculousness on top of all that, by being able to win against anything. They can take down the best cavalry without even taking any losses in small skirmishes. In bigger battles a few of them die, but you decimate the enemy by such a margin, that you're still on top economically.

And even if the enemy somehow gets into melee with your ranged units, if they are in loose formation, your units will still continue to shoot, while the first rank starts distracting the enemy in melee. You don't even need to issue orders, just make a few ranks deep line and put them in loose formation and you can go afk and win any fight.

I also don't thing that its a "you chose how to play" situation, because bad game balance makes battles trivial. Why even recruit anything else than ranged units (and maybe some cannon fodder in front of them), when nothing can beat the archers/gunners? There's just no counter to it. If the enemy magically would attack you with such an army of elite ranged units, there would be nothing you could do to beat them, except maybe if you outnumber them 2:1 and then you lose the majority of your army while doing so.

Yeah but the enemy isn't attacking you with an spam army of elite ranged units, are they? You can make a stronger point if every army was spamming Fian Champions, but they aren't. The only one running around picking up the strongest unit is you.

So you're saying I should self-nerf my army for the sake of enjoyment? If the other options would be actually viable doing something else would be fun, but it isn't due to melee units being rather weak. If balance only exists because players are restraining themselves, then thats not good balance and should be tweaked accordingly. Every troop should have some niche were they excel, having a mixed army would also be much more historical.
And the point about the AI not doing it? Thats more of a technical reason and no justification for not having balance, because it could change in the future, either via a patch or someone doing an AI mod.

And with balance I don't mean that everything should be identical, just that different troop compositions should feel viable, so that you actually want to experiment with them and have fun.

Originally posted by Xanth™:

So you're saying I should self-nerf my army for the sake of enjoyment? If the other options would be actually viable doing something else would be fun, but it isn't due to melee units being rather weak. If balance only exists because players are restraining themselves, then thats not good balance and should be tweaked accordingly. Every troop should have some niche were they excel, having a mixed army would also be much more historical.
And the point about the AI not doing it? Thats more of a technical reason and no justification for not having balance, because it could change in the future, either via a patch or someone doing an AI mod.

You're asking too much from Talesworld. It's been 1.5 years and the AI is still as braindead as ever. RBM balanced out the archers but we don't have that in Shokuho yet.

Yeah there's a reason why I haven't played vanilla in ages. I always used mods, and RBM does a pretty good job, in making other strats viable.
I would love to see some sort of weapon triangle in Shokuho though like for example: Gunners<Archers<Cavalry<Spear<Swords<Gunners
Everything should have its use. Heck I've even saw someone suggesting that Gun units should require a gun for promotion (like it is with promoting a soldier to cavalry, he needs a horse), and I think I like that idea. Guns weren't that widespread early on (except in the south).

Originally posted by JustKazuma:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nagashino

Oda's use of firearms against Takeda's famous and overpowering cavalry broke said cavalry's dominance, and paved the way for Oda to heights of power.

There is a weakness to ranged units, and that is to give them reason to shoot first and force a reload. That's the window of opportunity to strike. Many a lowly ashigaru were drafted into armies just so they would be the ones to take the bullet or arrow, leaving flanking opportunities open to cavalry or elite shock.

duuude, plz, no need to make the game a meat factory just because of the true history
now you can walk around with an army of lvl 6 300+ samurai archers, or even better with 300+ samurai teppo and calmly destroy an enemy army of 1000+ units
the interest of the game should be in the challenge and in the using of tactics and maneuvers - not in historically defeating everyone

Originally posted by Xanth™:

I played a bit of the campaign and while conquering feudal Japan is great, ranged units kinda destroy the balance in battles. Its like the Battanian Fians, with that the Yumi Hatamoto or the Sakai Gun units beating everything thats send at them. 100+ of these ranged units can beat 100 of the strongest infantry units as easily as they beat the best cavalry in the game. So currently the only troop type you need are ranged samurai units. They do excellent damage at range and in case the enemy actually reaches melee their stats and equipment are decent enough that they win the melee fight.

Ranged units should have their damage or their accuracy tweaked a bit, to make cavalry as well as infantry a more viable option. Especially on high skill levels (around 180+) archers and gunners have pinpoint accuracy, so they do a lot of headshots.

stop crying, and stop using cavalary againt ranged units, if you dont know some info about sengoku jidai, stop playing this mod

Nothing stopped smart wealthy generals from doing this in real life. I don't get the issue, there are better units then others? Oh my God. What happened in real life? The Ottomans were doing the same thing, guns are better than swords and bows. Go figure. The Sengoku Jidai had the same issue, the Samurai realized guns were superior to most other stuff. Wow. CRAZY. Not like that happened in real life.

My favorite part of world history is during Operation Barbarossa the Soviet Army used axes and cavalry charges because, and I am quoting Stalin directly here "I find that guns, tanks, artillery, and modern air power are for punk ass morons who don't like a good challenge".

You can always overrun enemy with massive amount of low tier troop. Range troop are trash in melee.

Originally posted by Fezfezpasha:

Nothing stopped smart wealthy generals from doing this in real life. I don't get the issue, there are better units then others? Oh my God. What happened in real life? The Ottomans were doing the same thing, guns are better than swords and bows. Go figure. The Sengoku Jidai had the same issue, the Samurai realized guns were superior to most other stuff. Wow. CRAZY. Not like that happened in real life.

Guns at the time had their fair share of drawbacks, they were without a doubt powerful, but you couldn't just do line infantry combat like 150 years later. Armies during the Sengoku Jidai still needed Pikes, Cavalry to protect the Gunners.
That there's better units than others is not a bad thing, but as it is right now Sakai and Tokai ranged units just overpower anything else. And the most OP unit isn't even a gun unit, but using a bow. Armor at the time could reliably deflect arrows, guns were the things that were a problem, except maybe if you worn certain armor like the Oyoroi, who could protect you against gunshots.

Originally posted by Wither:

You can always overrun enemy with massive amount of low tier troop. Range troop are trash in melee.

Would be cool if that would work, but the maximum amount of troops in your army is limited and the best ranged units are better in melee than most other melee units. It doesn't really matter, because even if you get melee units close they get weaked so much on approach that the ranged units still win.

This is the issue with the mod breaking the typical RPS. Shield infantry SHOULD beat archers but this game doesn't have shield infantry so the thing they counter is left unchecked.

What I've found funny is how invincible sakai pistol cav are. I myself pretty much never die to anything that isn't a gun headshot suddenly doing 250 damage but often times like 5-10 of these cav harass 300+ units while I slowly beat them all down and still live. Get a decent amount of kills over the course of a drawn out battle too. I wonder how the AI would even attempt to fight like 100+ of these units.

The other slight issue here is that hatamoto units are too available. IMO they shouldn't even be possible from the normal recruitment pool. Samurai units of other cultures are also probably a bit too available as well. Just my opinion though.

yeah i disagree. i play on realistic damage settings and i had my saikai gunner and archer heavy army demolished by an army that was heavy on elite melee troops. it was about 300v300 and we managed to kill about 240 of them, the 60 that reached us completely demolished my gunners in melee, we lost pretty closely.

after that battle i went with more balanced composition and that hasnt been beaten yet.

they had 20 katana ashigaru that got about 120 kills while only taking 5 losses when they meleed my high tier archers and gunners.

i find the battles in this mod decent and i hope they mostly keep them the way they are. tbf if i had still been alive at this point i could have probably tipped the balance by killing their melee units, but a stray bullet to my head obliterated me shortly after the battle started and my units ended up being commanded by one of my companions (playing on realistic damage which you should if you want the game to be somewhat challenging)

Originally posted by itaipava:

yeah i disagree. i play on realistic damage settings and i had my saikai gunner and archer heavy army demolished by an army that was heavy on elite melee troops. it was about 300v300 and we managed to kill about 240 of them, the 60 that reached us completely demolished my gunners in melee, we lost pretty closely.

I'm also playing on realistic and that is not my experience. 300 of the best Sakai gunners just obliterate 300 infantry units (doesn't matter which one), before the lines even clash. The only unit that can beat an army of these gunners are the Veteran Yumi Hattamoto from the Tokai region.