More Ashigaru Infantry Types.

[Coraline]

Personally I'm getting Sick of just Spearman and Skirmishers.  We need branches in the "Common" Troop Branches in all Factions. 

Example Being, Say Oda goes like this.

1: Villager
2: Spearman, Skirmisher
3: Trained Spearman, Trained Swordman, Trained Archer, Trained Gunner
4: Veteran Spearman, Veteran Swordman, Veteran Archer, Veteran Gunner
5: Elite Gunner

Factions like the Ikko could have Unique Naginata Branch for Infantry as well as Swordman for example.   

Issue is Ashigaru came in so many different forms and types that it is annoying we are restricted to so few, but Samurai have so many options per faction.  Issue is Samurai are expensive and very over powered, and for people who kind of want to use common troops kind of have limited options. 

 

[yu]

Factions like the Ikko could have Unique Naginata Branch for Infantry as well as Swordman for example.   

They already have it : it's called naginata monks. They are trained from monks recruited in frotress or in Kanezawa, the monk branch give them the opportunuty to have both bows and firearms for cheap (aka non samurai). Ikko Ikki also can recruit samurai in there only castle : Toyama.

Issue is Ashigaru came in so many different forms and types that it is annoying we are restricted to so few, but Samurai have so many options per faction.

There were probably some Ashigaru that had swords IRL, but I bet not so much : pikes (Yari) is the easiest weapon to learn how to use, and to mass pruduct (think a katana is made out a mix of iron and coal, similar to steel, so requires both skilled smith and precious iron).
I guess an Ashigaru, that picks up a sword after a battle and survived long enough to hold it, if he choses to stay in warfare after being disbanded, would more likely become a bandit or a mercenary (wich is quite the same) rather than being hired again at the rank and wage of inexperienced ashigaru.

Maybee a possible upgrade from trained/veteran Ashigaru to the mercenary tree could be possible, giving the possibility to eventually turn an Ashigaru into a swordman.

Issue is Samurai are expensive and very over powered, and for people who kind of want to use common troops kind of have limited options.

This is not an issue, this is a feature. Their price is high, and they deserve it. It adds tactical choice to your army composition. I do expect than someone trained since its birth to warfare, and equiped with full armor and quality weapon will perform far better and cost far more to equip than a peasant recruited by the age of 20, equipped with partial piece of leather armor, and with pike. And that's just what happens in Gekokujo, and it's really fine.

In the next release, there will be an option to make samurai occupy two party slot, so they will be even more balanced, and player will have the choice between few well trained retainers and lot of armed peasants (because that's exactly what ashigaru are).

 

[Coraline]

But the Ikko Monks are almost as good as Samurai minus a few stats and no helmets if you max their tier in Naginata.  I was referring to more common troops.  In most respects Monks could perhaps be trained through normal Ikko Villagers leaving more room for recruiting Ikko Samurai which as you said only one castle provides. If they'd lost their "Final" upgrade in the Naginata Branch they could easily be turned into common troops vs being recruited from castles with a few adjustments.    Either that or Ikko can have the option to recruit both through castles. 

Also the fact that Archers and Gunners particularly can have a Wakizashi and a primary weapon in my opinion makes the idea of Katana "Only" troops a "Reality."  Being Wakizashi are just short swords.  If Swordman existed they likely be equipped with just that one sword, and likely just a Katana or an older Tachi , nothing fancy and yes Tachi were also used by common infantry in fact a lot of Tachi were converted into Katanas so they could outfit larger armies, being Tachi were considered obsolete at one time. 

Also about Samurai cost.  I didn't say they cost too much as a complaint, personally I think wage wise Samurai are too CHEAP to keep, but just cost a lot of recruit.    As I already said I think Samurai are insanely over powered, if it wasn't for the fact they cost so much to recruit from the get go they would literally be "END ALL BEAT ALL" infantry as Master Samurai cost barely more "Wage" wise than Elite Ashigaru. 

The point of having more variety in the Ashigaru ranks would be to have more affordable infantry which wouldn't be so useless vs Samurai.  An Army of 80 Samurai can often take a castle numbering 300-500 men..... that is the problem.. why?  Ashigaru Spearman suck in Siege Battles.  This is why a Swordman class is really needed.  Spearman are not that bad in open field, or in very steep hilly terrain, but get them closed in a city/village or castle, and they become almost useless and their balance vs Samurai pretty much is thrown in the trash as there is no balance vs Samurai in a Siege. 

Also hiring Mercenaries is out of the question in my opinion.  They're not Uniformed Troops, or Faction Troops.  For people like me "Who" want to use faction troops, you're given little options really. 

 

[Tuidjy]

I do not know as much about Japanese sword forging as I wish I did, so I hesitated a bit before posting, given that there are people on this forum who know a lot more than I do.  I watched a friend work on a Damascus saber in MIT's basement, but when I asked about katanas, the professor looked as if he wanted to kick me out.  So I am extrapolating, here, don't go too hard on me.

But I would guess that a wakizashi requires a lot less effort to make than a katana, not just because it is significantly shorter, but also because it doesn't need all the qualities of a katana.  I am sure that there were wakizashis which were just as well made as a high end katana, but I would bet that on average wakizashis were held to a much lower standard.  Hell, it was legal for merchants to carry them.  Furthermore, even a samurai's wakizashi did not need to have the flexibility and reliability of a katana.  After all, he had his katana.

So I would expect that most wakizashis were folded fewer times, would be heat-treated a lot less intricately, would not be made of two parts (soft core/hard edge), and even would be made of lesser quality steel.  That's what an ashigaru would have as a last resort weapon, in my opinion.  Not all that much more expensive than his yari.

So when I play Gekokujo, I always think that any ashigaru carries a one piece wakizashis of inferior steel, that has been folded only a few times and quenched without heat-treatment, while every hatamoto has paid one-two years of his salary for tachis made by a smith with a decent reputation.  And of course, my companions all strive to get their hands on a balanced Masamune blade.

By the way, I completely agree with Coraline that samurai are way, way too cheap to promote and employ.  I also think that ashigaru have equipment that is too good at the low levels.  I have no problems with elite ashigaru having great gear and stats, but they should be rare.  How to achieve this?  Require a lot of experience and cash to promote, i.e. raise their level, including the level of the next to last ashigaru.

 

[yu]

I'm under the idea that most monks received their training while young, so it does not make sense for me to integrate them in the commoner tree.

In my play style, ashigaru infantry is just meat shield for my ranged unit, so I don't bother having only ashigaru spearmen. If I believe the game Cossacks, that's how european wars ended up, with pikes and guns, and with guns and bayonets later on. Pikes and guns are two weapons easy to handle and is the logical choice for massive armies of valueless soldiers. But that's one century and thousands of miles away.

I guess it makes sense to add some short swords to spearmen, and maybe some swordsmen. Their equipement should be worse than the samurai equipement, but I can't say how much worse. But they still should be outclassed by professional soldiers. By the end of the 16th century, european armies consisted mainly of mercenaries and noblemen, this must be for a reason.

I like the idea of efficient but expensive soldiers and inefficient and inexpensive soldiers. It may be polished, but I find it already really good.

About the raririty of Elite Ashigaru : elite ashigaru are already designed to be harder to train than master/officer samurai : considering samurai start one tier higher than villager, an ashigaru will be three level higher than the correspondant samurai (but will perform the same or worse due to proficiency and equipement). The difference could be bigger, but then, the ashigaru would cost even more to upkeep. There should be a multiplier to their wage just like the multiplier for mercenary (but smaller than 1) or a multiplier to the samurai wage.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

snip

The katana/wakizashi/nodachi trichotomy is one that was invented during the edo era and accentuated by modern historians and archaeologists. A european smith wouldn't be thinking, "okay, now I'm making an XIII A type arming sword", he'd just make a sword. Similarly, the sengoku era would've seen swords of drastically varying qualities, made according to the smith's wiillingness to waste time on something that's going to be a sidearm for a spearman.

Wakizashis are just short katanas; there's not much to distinguish them given the variance within the weapons themselves. Like most other pointless social codes in japan, it's the edo era that sees the short katana become a symbol of status.

 

[Tuidjy]

The question is not whether there was a wakizashi of as high quality as the finest katana, or whether there ever was a katana as poorly made as the crappiest wakizashi. 

The relevant question is, how much effort was spent on the average katana brought to a battlefield, and how much on the average wakizashi.  The effort is a pretty good reflection of cost.  If the average 78cm katana costs about a third more than a 59cm wakizashi, then I would agree with the "Wakizashis are just short katanas." statement.  My guess is that the real number differs by an order of magnitude.  I wish someone who knows tells us.

Frankly I doubt the Japanese had organized groups of katana wielding warriors fighting on the battlefield in the period portrayed in Gekokujo, so I would rather not see katana wielding ashigaru. 

As for Elite ashigaru being rare in Gekokujo, are you kidding?  Veterans are trivial to train, and elites are not that much harder, especially skirmishers.  When you consider the skills and gear of an Elite ashigaru's and the five-six days and 150 mon he takes to train, it's hard to see why you should allow anyone but Veterans and Elites to ever see the enemy.  I certainly do not.

But anyway, I am a believer in much higher costs for high level troops, and have no real hope of convincing anyone.  Frankly, I think the balance is fine.  Especially with home rules to enhance realism - for example, with one of my characters, I only upgrade right after a payday, only use one Samurai per 10 ashigaru, and use no companions.

 

[yu]

As for Elite ashigaru being rare in Gekokujo, are you kidding?  Veterans are trivial to train, and elites are not that much harder, especially skirmishers.  When you consider the skills and gear of an Elite ashigaru's and the five-six days and 150 mon he takes to train, it's hard to see why you should allow anyone but Veterans and Elites to ever see the enemy. I certainly do not.

Well, they may be not rare, but they definitely are harder to train than master archer/officer (and weaker).

As for being more numerous than trained Ashigaru and under, it is more a problem of native warband in my opinion, where the training mechanism can be abused. In early game, it does is a pain to train Elite Ashigaru, and it feels balanced. Later, it's easy, just like it's easy to train anything but top tier in native, and not that hard to train top tier either. Training should be nerfed in some way or an other (it could become a party skill). Raising Ashigaru's level might be the only practical solution, but I don't find it elegant. An other side effect of raising Ashigaru's level, is that you increase their value at the slave market, and the experience they give when beaten.

What's more, having a party full of Hatamoto doesn't mean Hatamoto is a common sight. I have ever seen AI with more than 1/3 of it's party made out of top tier, and I guess one can do better, but I more often see Lords with very few of them. How hard (/easy) is it to train Elite ashigaru with your home rule?

As for the cost of elite unit : if you always cowardly attack ennemy when you outnumber him by 2 vs 1 like I did when I started to play, you will hardly cover your expense. If you got so mad skills that you can take a castle with only your companions, then money isn't a matter.
Would you find that the samurai are not expensive enough if you did only auto fight? The balance should be independant of the player's skill.
Then, there will still be the scale problem : if a player is given the choice to recruit and train 4 Ashigaru or 1 samurai, he may choose the ashigaru. But if he can afford 100 samurai, he will take them, because his party size won't let him recruit 400 ashigaru. Especially if he has one companion with high surgery.

Off topic :I like your self restrictions, it addresses all the issus of being overpowered compared to AI lords, except on battlefield. Did you write about him? Is he a warrior or a leader? or a tactician?

 

[Tuidjy]

Off topic :I like your self restrictions, it addresses all the issus of being overpowered compared to AI lords, except on battlefield. Did you write about him? Is he a warrior or a leader? or a tactician?

He's a she, goes by the name of Hotaru   And no, I have not.  She's a nun with a gun, 9/9/27/20 right now, a loyal general for the great leader Sennyo, and his best recruiter.

By the way, I think that monks are awesome.  The elite naginata monks are a match for anyone in hand to hand, the veteran monk archers are the most cost effective bowmen, and the samurai gunners complete the set.  All ashigaru are pretty much fodder.  As you may guess, with my rules, I try not to lose any monks or samurai.  I almost never fight without other lords on the battlefield, and since I have Kyoto, I do not mind the controversy from being a marshal, i.e. in command.

 

[Articulo34]

Monks are melee monsters. Whenever I see the AI going into a straight fight with them I cannot help but cringe as I watch the casualties piling up. However the lack of helmet makes those Elite Naginata Monks easy prey for ANY gunner and/or bowman.

 

[Coraline]

*sighs* I don't see why anyone would think a Ashigaru would have a quality sword if they were a swordman.  Mainly why even in Veteran and Elite forms they would only be using a basic Katana or Tachi.

As someone already stated Katana's varied in quality, a smith isn't going to make a Masterpiece for a Common soldier. 

But it also doesn't mean Katana equipped Ashigaru are out of the question.

 

[Tuidjy]

Mainly why even in Veteran and Elite forms they would only be using a basic Katana or Tachi.

As someone already stated Katana's varied in quality, a smith isn't going to make a Masterpiece for a Common soldier.

This is the point, though.  How much would a low quality katana cost, and did anyone actually set out to produce low quality katanas and tachis, at all?  (As opposed to swords that simply turned out crappy)

I think that you simply could not make a long, flexible sword that would be of much use in combat without an awful lot of effort, not from the iron available to 16th century Japanese.  Furthermore, the katana, as a weapon of war, is quite suboptimal - not small sword levels of ****tiness, but close.  Why would anyone set out to make a large number of low quality katanas, which I bet would be still pretty expensive to produce, to equip large numbers of soldiers who then would be still not all that useful on the battlefield?  I'm speaking from a lot of personal experience (nearly as much as you can have with medieval weapons in the 20/21th century)  Two-handed weapons do not works well in formation, and rather short two-handed weapons would be even worse.  Speaking about the Gekokujo mod, weapons named katanas are really, really short. 

 

[Coraline]

In that respects perhaps Spearman need to have a mix of random weapons then?  Spears primary, and a random assortment of other one and two hand short range weapons for engagements which are so close that a spear would be useless. 

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Why would anyone set out to make a large number of low quality katanas, which I bet would be still pretty expensive to produce, to equip large numbers of soldiers who then would be still not all that useful on the battlefield?

I think you're treating ashigaru like peasant farmers. They weren't. Modern historians misleadingly refer to them as "farmers" as if someone who tills fields during peacetime is incapable of fighting. They were more like standing mercenaries, and were well-equipped. Towards the end of the jidai ashigaru and samurai were nearly indistinguishable in equipment and status.

Katanas were churned out like french fries during the sengoku jidai. Most of them don't survive, and blades and hilts were often reused or melted down, but cheap swords were a common sidearm.

 

[Coraline]

I think you're treating ashigaru like peasant farmers. They weren't. Modern historians misleadingly refer to them as "farmers" as if someone who tills fields during peacetime is incapable of fighting. They were more like standing mercenaries, and were well-equipped. Towards the end of the jidai ashigaru and samurai were nearly indistinguishable in equipment and status.

Katanas were churned out like french fries during the sengoku jidai. Most of them don't survive, and blades and hilts were often reused or melted down, but cheap swords were a common sidearm.

Exactly.  =3

 

[Tuidjy]

OK, I just spent 30 minutes looking for any half-way reliable information supporting what Coraline and jocobhinds are saying, and I could not find anything, anything at all.  I found plenty of references about mass-produced katanas much later, and plenty of references about 16th century long swords being too expensive anyway for anyone to try to do anything but his best to produce one.  After reading all this, I am thinking that even having massed elite ashigaru with a wakizashi each is a bit too much.

Is there anyone reading this who actually knows something about the cost and quality of katanas in the period portrayed in Gekokujo?  How common were bad steel, one piece, barely folded, single quenched, not heat treated pieces of **** in a long sword form?  And frankly why would you bother? 

Until I see a link to something saying that ****ty katanas existed beyond failed attempts to make a good one, I will refrain from commenting on this.  Because I really do not know, and my intuition is loudly screaming the opposite.

 

[Ichimonji Hidetora]

OK, I just spent 30 minutes looking for any half-way reliable information supporting what Coraline and jocobhinds are saying, and I could not find anything, anything at all.

Yeah, finding info like this requires advanced knowledge, you won't find anything if you don't know the right words, in this case you're looking for the words "kazuuchi mono" (as mass produced swords were called).
Ashigaru were equipped with a pair of them, katana & wakizashi, as can be seen in period artwork:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/The_Siege_of_Osaka_Castle.jpg and yes, they wear the katana with the sharp edge facing downwards, that's what they did at the time.

I found plenty of references about mass-produced katanas much later, and plenty of references about 16th century long swords being too expensive anyway for anyone to try to do anything but his best to produce one.  After reading all this, I am thinking that even having massed elite ashigaru with a wakizashi each is a bit too much.

You've been misinformed, not all smiths always put in all of their best efford to produce a sword, many sue koto blades (15th & 16th Centuries Sengoku jidai blades) show signs of the great workload smiths had at the time of the Sengoku jidai, they look somewhat lacklustre and they occasionally have small openings in the blade or have a small section of of the sharp edge remain unhardened.
The quality of swords varied greatly, kazuuchi mono were typically of single piece construction, their course surface steel indicates a low number of folds, it looks similar to the core steel of better blades, so I suspect that they were folded about 5 to 7 times (cores were folded that many times), instead of 15 times as with better blades.

Is there anyone reading this who actually knows something about the cost and quality of katanas in the period portrayed in Gekokujo?  How common were bad steel, one piece, barely folded, single quenched, not heat treated pieces of **** in a long sword form?  And frankly why would you bother? 

So many questions at once...
I have once come across a highly valued katana that still had an antique appraisal paper with it, if I recall correctly it had a price tag of about 520.000 mon (4000 mon is one koku, enough to live for a year).
If I compare this to appraisals of the beginning of the Meiji-jidai, a low quality sword would be about 5% of that or so... I realize that this is a bit vague, but it's all I got right now.

Mind you that the steel was actually not bad at all, it can compete with modern homogeneous steel, but the steel used for kuzuuchi mono would be the same as that was used for knives, so it wasn't the best of the bloom, but it's still quite good, it wasn't plagued by many large slag inclusions as seen in antique European blades (slag makes blades brittle, modern blades do not suffer from this).

Kazuuchi mono were mostly made by apprentices, while the master focussed on the expensive high end orders, a good quality blade of the Soshu tradition could be made of as much as seven separately folded pieces of steel, with most of those pieces having different carbon percentages for extra durability.

People would bother with making kazuuchi mono because they were faster to make, and they were cheaper, that made them perfect for ashigaru.

Until I see a link to something saying that ****ty katanas existed beyond failed attempts to make a good one, I will refrain from commenting on this.

Use Google books, search for "The connoisseur's book of japanese swords kazuuchi mono" (page 186).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the way, elite ashigaru is an oxymoron, they were common soldiers, the polar opposite of elite.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I'd disagree with that last statement. Once the sengoku jidai was in full force the only thing separating ashigaru and samurai was status and role in the fields (although some ashigaru might have been landowners or chōnin). By the Edo era there were hundreds of thousands of samurai, most of whom were probably just promoted ashigaru who'd fought in all the unification wars from nobunaga to ieyasu.

 

[Ichimonji Hidetora]

the only thing separating ashigaru and samurai was status and role in the fields

There's actually a lot more that separated them, like crude wrought iron loan armor for ashigaru, steel loan armor for low ranking samurai, the samurai loan armor had a greater body coverage and would have been considerably more expensive.
Then there was the fact that an ashigaru's martial arts training was very basic (hence why ashigaru swordsmen units are an invention of the Creative Assembly's game: Total War Total Fantasy Shogun 2, sure, you can give them swords and show them a few basic moves and tell them to avoid hitting armor as their kazuuchi mono were not as durable as samurai swords, but that didnt make an ashigaru a swordsman.
Their swords were inferior, their mass produced guns were of a cheaper single layered barrel construction, unlike samurai guns that had double or tripple layers of steel plate.
Ashigaru pikemen were given the very long (about 5 meters give or take some) nagae yari to keep the better trained enemy samurai spearmen at a safe distance.
And even low ranking samurai looked down on ashigaru, ashigaru were common soldiers from town, quite a few of them were given menial tasks as attendants for high ranking samurai like sandal bearer for a daimyo, carrying their spare weapons, or running supplies like extra arrows or ammo to gunners and archers, or taking care of the ponies or carrying the large nobori flags into battle on their backs.

Of coure, whenever an ashigaru did something amazingly outstanding on the battlefield (like keeping Oda Nobunaga's sandals warm or whatever), they could be promoted to samurai and recieve their benefits like better equipment, better training, and more pay... but then they would no longer be called ashigaru anymore, so that wouldn't make them elite ashigaru either.
Absolutely nothing about all of that sounds very "elite" to me, fact is,  they were never considered elite troops or anything even remotely close to that.

 

[Coraline]

You can blame Japan more than anything for Katana swinging Ashigaru, their Kessen and Samurai Warrior games had entire hordes of Swordman Ashigaru.