[DragonRider]

I hope it's not considered inappropriate to bump old-ish discussions on this forum, but I've been experimenting a bit with Shinuyama pretender designs and expansion strategies and I found this discussion interesting. It never occurred to me to focus on anything but Dai Bakemono for the front line, and the logic behind using Bakemono Warriors seemed sound, so I tried expanding with them instead of the Dais for a bit. It didn't seem to be working too well, so I did some semi-formal tests to see if I could figure out which unit works better.

I made a bunch of copies of a specific save file and decided to try two different expansion routes with different combinations of units. These are the routes:

Route 1
Round 1: 14 Militia, 5 Light Infantry, 11 Archers, 3 Commanders
Round 2: 13 Militia, 16 Light Infantry, 4 Archers, 3 Commanders
Round 3: 39 Bear Tribe Warriors
Round 4: 42 Barbarians
Round 5: 25 Militia, 7 Heavy Infantry, 4 Archers
Round 6: 28 Barbarians
(Nobody survives past 6)

Route 2
Round 1: 15 Milita, 11 Light Infantry, 5 Archers
Round 2: 15 Militia, 3 Heavy Infantry, 4 Archers
Round 3: 20 Militia, 6 Heavy Infantry, 8 Archers
Round 4: 9 Light Infantry, 6 Heavy Infantry, 3 Crossbowmen
Round 5: 19 Militia, 7 Heavy Infantry, 4 Archers
Round 6: 9 Knights, 19 Militia, 3 Archers
Round 7: 17 Wolf Tribe Warriors, 14 Wolf Tribe Archers
Round 8: 8 Militia, 11 Heavy Infantry, 7 Archers
(This route loops around and I run out of provinces here.)

Route 1 is fairly tough, with 40 tribesman and 40 barbarians back-to-back, and Route 2 is very tame apart from a few Knights near the end.

First, I compared 200 resource armies: 40 Bakemono Warriors vs. 8 Dai Bakemono (I chose 200 here because that's the most Bakemono Warriors you can lead with 40 leadership). For simplicity, I'm not using any archers of either type. Tactics were generally a big blob in front on hold-and-attack, but for the Bakemono Warrior battles against archers, I would set the main group back a bit and put two in front to hopefully misdirect the missiles. The Dai Bakemono have enough defense that I just let them eat it; sending one guy up to get surrounded is more likely to result in a casualty than a stray arrow.

40 Bakemono Warriors:
R1-1: Victory, 5 casualties (35W remain)
R1-2: Victory, 7 casualties (28W)
R1-3: Defeat, 4 survivors rout.

R2-1: Victory, 6 cas (34W)
R2-2: Victory, 2 cas (32W)
R2-3: Defeat, 8 survivors

8 Dai Bakemono
R1-1: Victory, no casualties
R1-2: Victory, no casualties
R1-3: Defeat, no survivors

R2-1: Victory, 2 cas (6 Dai remain)
R2-2: Victory, 1 cas (5 Dai)
R2-3: Defeat, no survivors.

Not very conclusive. Both armies run out of steam at the same point on both routes, and neither have enough success to be considered a good investment. Let's try doubling the resource allotment: 80 Bakemono Warriors vs. 16 Dai Bakemono. Note that the Bakemono Warriors start out at a huge disadvantage here: you need 80 leadership to use them all, which means either recruiting a national commander or using two indie commanders. The Dai Bakemono group doesn't need to worry about this, so the Bakemono Warriors need to seriously outperform them to come out on top here. Not to mention the fact that the warriors cost 50% more gold per resource.

80 Bakemono Warriors
R1-1: Victory, 10 cas (70)
R1-2: Victory, 7 cas (63)
R1-3: Victory, 13 cas (49)
R1-4: Victory, 21 cas (28)
R1-5: Victory, 8 cas (20)
R1-6: Defeat, no survivors.

R2-1: Victory, 9 cas (71)
R2-2: Victory, 5 cas (66)
R2-3: Victory, 7 cas (59)
R2-4: Victory, 8 cas (51)
R2-5: Victory, 6 cas, (45)
R2-6: Victory, 13 cas (32)
R2-7: Victory, 7 cas (25)
R2-8: Victory, 8 cas (16 final survivors)

16 Dai Bakemono
R1-1: Victory, no cas
R1-2: Victory, no cas
R1-3: Victory, 2 cas (14)
R1-4: Victory, 5 cas (9)
R1-5: Victory, 1 cas (8)
R1-6: ?????, no survivors (Odd case here...the Dai Bakemono rout and all die, but the Shuten-doji leading them runs up, slaps one barbarian, and the barbarians rout, leaving me in control of the province. I'd count it as a narrow defeat, though.)

R2-1: Victory, 1 cas (15)
R2-2: Victory, 1 cas (14)
R2-3: Victory, no cas (14)
R2-4: Victory, no cas (14)
R2-5: Victory, no cas (14)
R2-6: Victory, 1 cas (13)
R2-7: Victory, no cas (13)
R2-8: Victory, no cas (13 final survivors)

Both gain the same number of provinces in the same amount of time, but the Dai Bakemono suffer casualties at a slower rate in Route 1 and have a much better survival ratio in Route 2. So they cost less, suffer less casualties to attrition, and are much easier to lead. A clear win for the Dai Bakemono.

But let's not write off the Bakemono Warriors right away. What if we mixed both types together, putting some Dai Bakemono up front to absorb arrows and the initial strike with their high protection and then let the Bakemono Warriors swarm around them from behind, defending their flanks and adding more overall firepower? I took the resource allotment down to 300 and tried a few different ratios, with 1/3, 2/3, and 100% resources spent on Dai Bakemono and the rest on Bakemono Warriors.

4 Dai Bakemono, 40 Bakemono Warriors (this is actually dumb, because it's 44 leadership, but whatever)
R1-1: Victory, 1Wcas (4/39)
R1-2: Victory, 1Wcas, 2Dcas (2/38)
R1-3: Victory, 9Wcas, 1Dcas (1/29)
R1-4: Defeat, no survivors

R2-1: Vitory, 1Wcas (4/39)
R2-2: Victory, 2Wcas (4/37)
R2-3: Victory, 3Wcas (4/34)
R2-4: Victory, 5Wcas, 1Dcas (3/29)
R2-5: Victory, 7Wcas, 1Dcas (2/22)
R2-6: Defeat, 7W survive rout

8 Dai Bakemono, 20 Bakemono Warriors
R1: Victory, no cas
R2: Victory, 4Wcas, 1Dcas (7/16)
R3: Victory, 5Wcas, 1Dcas, 3Wflee (6/8) (I'd have lost all my warriors here, but the battle ended before the rest could rout)
R4: Defeat, no survivors

R1A: Victory, 1Wcas, 1Dcas (7/19)
R2A: Victory, 1Wcas (7/18)
R3A: Victory, 2Wcas (7/16)
R4A: Victory, 1Wcas (7/15)
R5A: Victory, 5Wcas (7/10)
R6A: Victory, 5Wcas (7/5)
R7A: Victory, 1Wcas, 1Dcas (6/4)
R8A: Defeat, 2D survive rout

12 Dai Bakemono
R1-1: Victory, no cas
R1-2: Victory, 1 cas (11)
R1-3: Victory, 3 cas (8)
R1-4: Defeat, no survivors

R2-1: Victory, no cas
R2-2: Victory, no cas
R2-3: Victory, no cas
R2-4: Victory, no cas
R2-5: Victory, no cas
R2-6: Victory, 3 cas (9)
R2-7: Victory, 2 cas (7)
R2-8: Victory, 2 cas (5 final survivors)

It's not quite as clear-cut as I would like (the 42 barbarian bottleneck on Route 1 kills everybody), but the general trend seems to be that the more of your resources you spend on Dai Bakemono, the better you do. My tentative conclusion at this stage is that Bakemono Warriors are not an efficient use of gold or resources during the expansion phase, except maybe to fill out the recruit queue when there's less than 25 resources left.

This doesn't necessarily apply to the units' relative worth in a large-scale battle against another player, with archers and magical support and what have you. The Bakemono Warriors might do better there. But they might also do worse, since they may have AoE magic or early routing to worry about. I can't say just based on the data I have. But it seems to be Dai Bakemono or bust as far as early expanding is concerned.