Ashikaga Shogunate mod v1.01

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Potatoman:
After having a group of 23+ Samurai wiped out to the Last man by 11 Pangea Revelers (cheap berserking satyrs) I also have decided that they were underpowered. At the moment I'm experimenting with raising their attack up to 13 and seeing how that works.

Samurai should have 12 or even 13 attack and defense as well as cost more, IMHO. Plus I think it's ludicrous that Ninja fight better than them -- even without taking into account Glamour.

[LordArioch]

I didn't play this mod for too long, but I'd say samurai archers need more cost over normal samurai. Paying 5 gold for composite bows on all your core army troops makes for some deadly arrow volleys. Just keep in mind that a samurai archer is almost as good as a samurai + an archer, maybe even better. I seemed to have pretty good sucess with my samurai archers.

[Potatoman]

The Samurai Archers only cost 3 more gold a pop than normal samurai, but they have reduced attack and defense (especially after standard Samurai were boosted.) I think that the change leaves archers in a support role and still allows the player to amass enough to do some good as pure archers.

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.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
I didn't play this mod for too long, but I'd say samurai archers need more cost over normal samurai. Paying 5 gold for composite bows on all your core army troops makes for some deadly arrow volleys. Just keep in mind that a samurai archer is almost as good as a samurai + an archer, maybe even better. I seemed to have pretty good sucess with my samurai archers.

Personally, if I'm going to spend that much gold & resources, I'd rather have the troops use their swords, which are more effective than arrows in the same quantity, considering how hard it is to hit foes with missiles. And given that preference, I may as well save the bit of gold (or not so small a bit as it adds up over time) and buy the plain samurai. Bows only seem to work decently against enemies with virtually no armor, and those same enemies hack up rather nicely, assuming said weak enemies don't rout (which is the likeliest result).

[Arryn]

I've noticed that the names given to commanders with this mod don't seem to correspond to chinese, much less japanese, names. Not having played T'ien Ch'i (of any flavor) I don't know if this naming convention is normal for the underlying nation. I had been under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that each nation in Dom had its own names list that the game uses to randomly select from. At least the names I've seen for the many games I've played as Jotunheim and R'lyeh do not have those two nations use any of the same names (so naturally I assume that other nations likewise have their own lists).

[LordArioch]

Admittedly bows don't do much against better armored troops, but driving away the fodder and even lightly armored but dangerous units such as elephants, etc. is very useful. The archers do have somewhat lower stats, but IMO, not enough to counteract the power of their bows. The recent boosting of other samurai stats might make them more competative, but since I think you boosted the prec of the archers to 12 as well, they still seem very close in overall usefulness.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
The archers do have somewhat lower stats, but IMO, not enough to counteract the power of their bows.

The extremely high resource cost of the Samurai archers is enough of a limit on their usefulness. To make them have a different resource or gold cost than other units with similar capabilities you must have a particularly good reason.