8 Tips For Defending Your Castles - Battle Tactics Guide - Shogun 2 

Tip number 9, use guns. No really, putting guns on your castle's most innerwall is amazing. The onslaught is just a display of beauty. In offensive sieges, if there's no archers or arrow tower to shoot at my men, I will put matchlocks next to the entrance of the castle simply because whatever decides to poke it's head out of there is getting turned into swiss cheese. Guns and archers are also very useful if you have an AI that decides to keep a castle gate open by continuously letting one or two troops run in and out of it. I can't chase them, I can't burn the gate down because it's open.... but I can shoot whomever is standing there! TLDR: I love guns.

These short videos are Yarimazing!!!

Bombs throwers unit are quite practical to heavily weaken strong melee units before they reach your walls, I tend to use two of them in my castle defense before retreating them, and use them to annihilate units stuck in choke points like gates when the ramp is on the inside part of the level, like at 0:08.

Another Tip is when the enemy has explosive dont put your troops all in one place and spread them so they dont get hit by explosive mangonels.

Thanks mate. It's annoying. As soon as you play "hard" difficulty, the AI spams his full stack armies and attacks you non-stop.

Yari wall is just insanely cost effective in castle defence, but they're very vulnerable to missiles so I find if you can have 2 or 3 units of cav that helps a lot. You don't have to kamikaze them. Just having units outside the walls distracts the enemy AI a lot & will tie up units chasing your cav around & most importantly slow down how quickly the enemy trickles over your walls etc, so your soldiers in the castle can trade much more efficiently. Then as the game goes on keep an eye out for chances to get free archer pickoffs. Assuming you have a lot of yari ashigaru, its good to let them do most of the fighting & dying & then use whatever elite units you have to smash into whats left of the enemy to break them. Even if you're just defending with crappy garrison forces the samurai retainers can do a surprising amount of work charging them into already-weakened enemies. Don't waste them on the front lines taking the brunt of the damage. The moment one section of enemies rout at the defence on top of the wall, charge your freed up units into the side of the next lot of enemies. You can often cascade & roll up their entire line. And when you're in situations where the enemy begins in 3 or 4 separate groups, it can help a lot to immediately smash one of those groups. Pay attention to enemy unit composition as I find sometimes they put 4 groups of archers defended by 1 group of melee infantry, easy pickings for 2 groups of cav. You want to get rid of that archer attrition and reduce how wide the section of wall you need to defend is as much as possible.

just started playing this game 3 days ago ang I am addicted to watching your guides

I'd add that generaly the most effective method when the ennemy starts spread out is to sally out and defeat each unit in detail using the terrain and local superiority as opposed to camping in the forteress.

Most important feature is shift clicking/dragging the wall with gun units so you can make them 1 layer thick, as the second row doesn't fire, maxing their effectiveness. I agree and disagree with placing melee on the wall. Mostly because often there isn't a way to focus down archers, and the wall gives significant defense to your own units. Also, if your units are superior, like katana vs yari coming up the wall, then they will get shredded quickly anyway, and can save micro management or miss clicks during the heat of battle

Sallying out and distracting is probably the single most effective method of defence. The longer it takes for the enemy to access and climb your walls, the stronger your chance of victory. One particular thing I like is to do is lead the enemy around near the wall, chasing your cavalry while your guns and arrows pepper them.

Awesome, thanks. That wall reload bonus is amazing for matchlock units. Are ninjas and bomb throwers useful defending a castle? I know I'm still not using those units the right way when defending or attacking in siege.

Especially with the Takeda, I’ve won entire defensive sieges that were not in my favor by having a good force of cavalry that I sallied out early, and using them to wreck havoc and stall the enemy from even getting to my walls. Those that made it were too isolated to do much and overwhelmed very easily.

Can confirm, Quite the good tips you have there. Also, having atleast 2-4 missile unit when defending castle were quite useful to support the melee unit fighting inside the castle. Make sure they are on the deeper part of the castle wall, that way, it'll reduce chances of the friendly fire. Cause they are firing the enemy from the higher ground.

I usually always trying to force enemy archers to climb, then just put yari ashigaru in yari wall and battle pretty much over. It's very difficult or even impossible in small castles though

Ur archers on castle is more cost effective than their attacking archers

Tip 1: YARI WALL

Im glad u are back:)

I’m playing darthmod. I hated it when the AI starts getting smart by starting all in one location and then suddenly covering the entire castle

I know garrison can't leave the province but cana they keep the XP they earned from the battle?

love how compact your vidoes are and it doesn't take an hour or half to watch it

if you had a stronghold, let them climb to first wall and defend the second wall

Fantastic video, used these tips (and your matchlock videos) to help me hold a T2 Keep against a force twice my size!

kereenn bangggg..

Matchlocks, use matchlocks.

I rarely leave the castle, due to the fact the castle's giving morale boost / fight to the death. If you hold the center especially if you have very few troops to defend a small castle against many enemies. I love positioning my yari ashigaru below the walls so my archers and gunners can perform well. While the yari wall is making those enemy infantry stuck and getting shot at.

Those free garrison units of yari ash and samurai retainers have saved my ass so many times it's not even funny.

Tip 5 I did not know. I swap missile troops on the wall and have the melee troops take their place. Ok good to know but I thought it was better because the higher the wall, the easier it seems that you push climbing troops off.

My first vid if yours, but i can already tell ill be back. Havent played this game in 5 years but its fun to review, and im glad someone made good quality guides on this title. Youve done a good service! These will be go to guides in the future.

Well if i have gun i will put my meele unit on wall so the enemy will be shot without much risk of friendly in the way

I've already been doing the stuff that you said for years now and I still think I'm a noob. Especially the gate thingy and routing hahahaa

I watch this for tips as I defend from the ikko ikko horde of 7k

How much reload boost do the archers and matchlocks get when placed on the wall? I don't see any stat changes when placing them there. Very Helpful video :)

Can you cover usage of siege weapons in defensive siege? They can't be mounted on wall, while some of them, like the european cannon, must shoot with line of sight. Is there anything as intentionally breaking a segment of your wall to let the european cannon shoot through?

Do you have tips about attacking chosokabe castle that have about 15 samurai archer in it? The rest is the general and some yari

Fantastic tips in all your videos. I've been playing since it came out and I have 800+ hours. Yet, I have learned new stuff from your videos.

Never defend your castles it's easier to take it back later also it's hard enough to afford to maintain one or two armies no way can you afford to garrison your castles with enough troops to hold them. In most cases the attackers army will move on leaving one or two units behind to defend and can be retaken easily

Its good to have a small to medium sized army(without general your willing to lose) and just defend until your all dead. The ai will susstain way to many casualties to defend when you send in your real army to retake control.

why your units have 200 bro?My game have only about 50

most important tip: download a castle mod

Any total war game: walls defends soldiers Shogun 2: soldiers defends walls