[PhilD]

Originally posted by Potatoman:
Yes, my recent playtests have also indicated that Samurai might again be too strong. The problem in balancing them stems from their lack of a shield, making them fragile to enemy archers- their high stats and strong weapon more a result of my attempt to balance that weakness than simply an intent make them uber. I think I unbalanced them slightly when creating equipment; the Yukino****a-Do and Yoroi have a significantly boosted prot value over their old placeholder armor of Lorica Segmentata. The v2.01 Version will significantly reduce the prot of both Samurai and Ninja units.

The thing is, even with lowish protection, they move quickly enough that archer fire isn't that deadly. Against independents, the samurai crash in to the enemy infantry very quickly, while the horsemen rush to the archers and rout them quickly.

What makes the samurai units so deadly, IMHO, is that they have terrific morale (thus can charge under fire without routing), and move very quickly for strong infantry. The Horsemen are extremely fast cavalry with good stats and good protection, AND excellent morale. This means the whole lot can charge blindly toward the enemy lines; even if they suffer some losses, they will very often rout them quickly, and with their high speed, routing units often die during the rout.

Plus, the Daikyu has long range, high damage, and good precision; I find myself suffering from very little friendly fire. And not having to wait for the slow-motion arrows to cross the battlefield is almost a bonus (you don't see the misses, though)

For this much power, I don't think the Samurai are very expensive. 13 Gold for a Samurai Swordsman is only 30% more than a random heavy infantry, and it's way more efficient and durable. At 50 Gold, the Horseman is sure expensive, but it's also very efficient, and its resource cost means you can quickly field large numbers of them after a few turns.

Gibson: Order 3 is always nice... But have you seen the national heroes? Might consider luck 3 a must have after using them for a while...

I like Luck, even though it's supposed to be inefficient.

Anyway - I've found a new favorite nation, at least for my SP games. Thanks a lot for this nice mod Potatoman!