Ashikaga Shogunate mod v1.01

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Potatoman:
I think something that many people may be missing is that Samurai are very vulnerable troops. Without shields and a prot. value significantly less than even standard heavy infantry it is very easy for them to meet death on the battlefield. If you look at other races standard HI, like the Arco Hypaspist, you will see the difference is essentially 4 less protection and no shield to defend against range- this is a very big disadvantage. In order to make them worthy, they must either a) cost less than their adversaries or b) make up for it by having high att, def, or str values.
I'm wary about attribute pumping because there really isn't any way to justify a nonmagical recruit fighter having superhuman strength or skill- 13 is as high as is plausible for foot soldier samurai. Thus, I feel the Samurai's low cost and high stats (13 av, 12 dv, 11 str, 16 gold) are more a counterbalance to his vulnerability on the battlefield (Ashikaga has access to air magic for SoS, but it is expensive) than an unbalancing factor.
In short, this is my excuse for not making him much more expensive.

Genin, on the other hand, are comparable to mini-Vans. They now cost 40 gold.

In v1.02, the samurai is 13 gold, and the archer is 15, a difference of 2. If you have raised the cost of the "plain" samurai to 16, that just makes the cost-effectiveness of the samurai even less attractive (IMO). They are already weaker than comparable HI, as you have pointed out. The Arco Hypaspist is much better protected, and has both 1 higher strength and morale. The 3 resources extra that the Hypaspist costs are cheap compared to the +4 protection they have.

The samurai should have some trait that makes them unique and offsets other nation's HI. One thing that is notable about samurai is the bushido code. Routing would be highly dishonorable, so it should be fairly rare. Hence I suggest the following ...
(based upon stats for the samurai in v1.02)

• Increase strength of all samurai to 11.
• Increase morale of basic samurai to 15 (this will make them one notch better than genin).
• Increase morale of aoi to 16.
• Increase morale of samurai commander to 17.
• Increase morale of taisho daimyo to 18.
• Lower cost of basic samurai to 14.
• Lower resources of basic samurai to 13.
• Adjust the costs/resources of other samurai as appropriate relative to the revised basic samurai.
• Other stats for the samurai are fine as is.

In addition to the above list, if you raise the defense of the samurai from the current 10 to the value of 12 which it seems you are using in your own tests, then I suggest setting the basic price at 16.

With regards to Genin, setting their cost at 40 gold is fine, but they cost too many resources at 9, given the equipment they have. A more reasonable value is 4 or 5.

[ January 29, 2004, 06:41: Message edited by: Arryn ]