Bows Are Kinda Bad in Shogun 2 

This is gonna be ancient, but when the game came out in 2011 (10 years ago), bows were super OP - the chosokabe more so. The singleplayer balance was so off - even though the game was good - that a patch came out soon after.

I still don't understand why the solution to "the game is too easy" is just to buff the crap out of the opponents, rather than give them more meta strategies on the campaign map, and much higher response time and tactical awareness on the battlefield. It's just a crutch for terrible AI design, and it's why I generally quit all my harder campaigns. Only so many times I can stomach losing to uphill charges through forest. And instead of the AI being cunning or opportunistic regarding undefended provinces, you just have random DoW's from across the map.

I dunno, missile superiority can force opponent to attack you even if you technically an attacker. Also, there is much easier to defend a forested hill, than attack up hill. Matchlocks are great, but they difficult to use effectively because of short range, low armor(except Portuguese fellows), low fire rate, line of sight requirement, not to mention that only first row can shoot(Fire bu rank ability is trash)...

My most recent campaign as the choskabe on hard mode I had 8-10 bow units per army and I rarely had to engage in melee at all because my bows absolutely shredded the enemy army. In defensive sieges I was getting 300+ kills per bow unit

To use bows effectively, one needs to learn the armour values of units. Bows are best against lightly armoured units. The better the accuracy they have, the better they are against more armoured units. Bows are great counter against the yari wall. Also, if for some reason, one's opponent decides to dismount his cavalry, one can "scare" the horses, by firing at that unit (the arrows must hit the horses for this to work).

I came to Shogun 2 from Empire, and your units simply not firing drove me mad. Having played Medieval 2 too I wanted to blot out the sun with reliable archers. I miss Medieval 2 archers…

Maybe unit experience matters, but my Bow Ashigaru seem to cripple Bow Samurai in a stand up fight, which forces the enemy out of defensive positions and often makes them charge me. Playing on hard.

I would imagine Light Cav (fastest unit in the game) would be the obvious counter to early Bow Samurai spam. Or if you can keep the enemy distracted a bit Yari samurai if need be (since most clans start with a Yari dojo).

I use both guns and bows, guns are for main fire power while bows (especially bow warrior monks) are the suppressing fire and counter enemy archers.

I used to play online battles casually, and I always replaced my bow units with cavalry units. I found out that I could just engage all of their cavalry with mine, then flank and engage their bow units with my light cav reserves. They couldn't shoot any arrows because they were in melee, making them useless (and soon dead). The rest of the battle would just be cleaning up. It's pretty hard to lose when their frontline is flanked, and all of their archers are useless. Replacing archers with extra cav just seemed like the obvious move.

Yeah, Fire Arrows not working on structures is kinda lame. It is a limited resource, so I think it is ok to use on buildings instead on units.

They are amazing for getting kills in auto battles or after finishing a field battle. I always have like 2 bow units in my modern armies in the mid game cause they will rack up 300+ kills every time the game simulates fleeing units being killed, leaving enemy armies tattered.

Seems like the real choice would be to just play on medium where the A.I. doesn’t get arbitrary buffs

Early game the best counter to AI archer stacks is Yari Samurai. Their Rapid advance ability lets them charge taking fewer volleys better if you soak the first volley with ashigaru. Then once you get decent cav you disband them as they are worthless.

Yes, tell that to the yarı wall and the cavalry unit running around

Yari sam are high in armour but useless against katanas even yari wall!. It seems on higher difficulty you may as well recruit more cav and katana sam

Yeah on legendary, only because the enemy gets so many buffs. Bows used correctly are very good. The pros are they are much easier to use than guns. Can decimate enemies when you have high accuracy and or high reload. They are fantastic at hiding and ambushes. On defence you get the screens, and you can use them to control the battlefield and force choke points. On legendary enemy bows will almost always beat yours in a 1v1 unless you have well levelled bows. You don't need bow samurai unless you are choskobe or own a fully upgraded fletchers and want to build a doomstack. Bow warrior monks also excel is used correctly. But the big thing on legendary is creating kill zones and using forests. You get a fully upgraded accuraxy bow unit in the woods. Peek and fire, then hide again, wait a bit then do it again. They decimate.

I think the biggest problem with bows in this game is their inability to fire on units engaged in melee. They have other problems, but that one means it's completely up to your enemy how much time your bows have to inflict damage. After the melee starts, they're worse than useless, they're a liability. They have to be defended as their loss can inflict morale and army strength penalties. They're also way too expensive for a support unit. When CA nerfed them, they should have drastically reduced their price to reflect the support units that they were turned into (like they are in rome 1). I get the love for this game, but it's still a CA game (a mess). They just didn't know what they were doing in a lot of regards.

So I Might Be In A Bit Of A Situation Then, I Wanted To Test If A Bow Only Army Could Work, With Bow Samurai In Campaign, Sure Enough It Works In Auto-resolve Somehow But Man, I Tried A Battle And It's Pure Agony. The Amount Of Guerrillia Warfare I'm Having To Do Is Making Me Realize Just How Bad The Viet-Cong Must have Felt, Sure Any Siege Is Kinda A Piece Of Cake But Open Field battles Are Pain And Suffering, I Need To Micro Everything, Every Single Tree Must Hide A Bow, I Thought This Would be Fun

I thought that i sucked at the game, then i stopped recruiting early game archers and the game becomes fair. Hahahaha

Someone: Bow are useless Chosokabe: What did you just say

Imo bow samurai are some of the best they do perform poorly without upgrades but if you turn melee on and have a good charge they can fight decently on campaign For multiplayer with direct upgrades they can be op I personally run 2 bow monks daikyu and a bow hero,and mounted bow hero I dismount at the beginning. They are fully upgraded and they shred ANYTHING like 4 volleys maybe for every unit when focused on one unit

Been wondering this myself over some time. Great vid

But if the AI got the hill advantages, there's no other way rather than cheese the AI or rush them with fully aggresive army and expect heavy casualities possibly losing one or more unit (if you have fully melee army with cav of course).

Just today, my matchlock ashigaru scored 1000 kills in a siege defense. Matchlocks are the king of wall defense.

Things like damage bonuses are why i prefer to raise campaign difficulty and leave battle difficulty close to normal. It lets you use more of the mechanics while still getting some challenge from the angry ai factions

I normally recruit 6 bow ashigarus at early, mid and even late game, while the rest being Yari Ashigarus and 2 light cavs or none at all. The way i made them work pretty well on very hard difficulty, is by leaving gaps between my yari walls, so that my bowmen can shoot at my oppenents' back to incur morale loss. Becuz they were bogged down by the yari walls, and would proceed trying to outflank them. Thus leaving their backs vulnerable to missile atk. My Yari walls can hold a huge samurai horde for long enough for them to route, due to missle attacks from my bowmen. Also i used my Yari walls to flank around the weak spot of the opp line, which dealt further morale loss to them. Having matchlocks shooting at the enemies bogged down in the gap also works exceptionally well too.

ok but I'd argue unlocking a matchlock line takes longer, and by the time you get them you would have probably gotten bow warrior monks at that point, rendering most gunpowder units obsolete to begin with in the campaign. also, if playing on stuff like legendary, every turn counts as it could mean the difference between being overwhelmed or managing to survive, so further down goes the priority for gunpowder units, the exception to this being the otomo because of their bonuses and the fact that you can recruit matchlock ashis straight up

I wonder why devs gave such strong cheats to ranged units on higher difficulties while they did good job with melee difficulty, at this point it's better to just recruit another stack of spear ashigaru and place them in front of the enemy to tank or flank.

I like to have 4 bows or 2 guns/2 bows in my army and the rest melee mixed with 2-3 cavalry. I am also always the attacker to force them to camp a hill or etc. I can then force pull 1-2 archer units out and shatter them while having and option of have a few ranged units to help in sieges.

I like to get a trebuchet just so that I can force the enemy to move out of their defensive position

I dunno about you. But as soon as you activate fire arrows on a charging unit of any samurai not matter their armour values they will melt instantly on a scale of lower armour to higher armour accordingly. Something is broken with the fire arrow volley as it should not do extra damage to units. In Legendary difficulty the AI gets a lot of buff to their bow units as well and coz cheaper upkeep they will field bow samurai a lot. Technically you could just field Cavalry instead to mob them up. But I noticed to really be able to ignore arrows a) dont run into a fire arrow volley b) have a minium armour threshold, and there comes the tricky part the treshold seems to between yari samurai and naginata samurai with add blacksmith or better encampment armour. On the other hand. Yari Ashigaru wall will hold the line perfectly at higher morale levels and with higher melee attack values but will melt even to bow ashigaru. However when you give them armour to resist bow units they will perform worse and wont hold the line anymore. So yeah you could ignore bow units and just make melee infantry or cavalry instead or buy matchlocks from nanban port because in the non modded tech tree rushing the matchlock just not realistic. Another surprising unit I learned its value cause I actually tried it out were the Bow Samurai Cavalry Units even without encampment or fletcher bonus (I think it was Chosokabe bons on them though) they have a high accuracy value and more important high reload value and they can do this mongol circle fire thing but thats only good when you dont want to waste ammo as the throughput is not as high. Its all in the details and context. However Legendary just puts yari ashigaru on top place what value per cost is. Be it attacking or especially defending, having a yari unit instead of a bow unit (ashigaru) is mandatory. Bow Monks are a special case cause they have low armour but high accuracy, high reload rate, high morale and longer range. PPS: Dont get me started on Charge Bonus and Damage its just OP. However it can be buggy when both sides are charging or one sides charges earlier than the other. Guess you need to some deny the charge and have a counter charge. :D Sorry for long text wall :D

Noobie here, just got into this game with the Otomo. I'm thinking that even Yari and Matchlock Ashigaru can have a workaround by hitting loose formation. Granted, won't work that well when they get hit with more infantry but hey, I guess that's something

I think the problem comparing Matchlocks to Bows is that unless you are playing Otomo you are not really going to get your hands on them.

Many a Uesegi Campaign has been ruined by Takeda Shingen showing up with 4 armies of Yari/Bow Samurai on turn 20.

In campaign, if you've properly buffed your units accuracy, as you should be doing, bows are a great component in an effective army. I don't make much use of bow ashigaru, sure, but bows are extremely useful in siege defenses and pay their way in field battles. Now, you can build an army entirely without bows fairly easily, and you can't say the same about melee infantry or cavalry, but to say they such is a bit of an exaggeration imho And in MP, bows are of course perfectly viable and usable.

I have never really used bow samurai. When I use bow units I only use bow monks as they can be effective especially with Choskabe and whistling arrows can be good against moral if you don’t cause it on yourself like I do.

Bow units always seem seriously underestimated by people and it honestly mystifies me. Matchlocks are more lethal but bows have longer range and the ability to set fortifications on fire. They’re extremely good at softening up the enemy before the lines clash or you attack a castle. With some bonuses to their armor/experience they can hold the enemy in melee while your specialized melee infantry drive the enemy off elsewhere. They single-handedly render assaults on castles into one-sided affairs for the attacker

I didn't believe it as a player who usually plays on normal, then I tried a very hard campaign... yeah, bows suck ass in the player's hands. It's quite obnoxious haha

You know why they have increased range for bow units in Shogun 2, only so to nerf gunpowder units and buff bow units. Without cheats the armoured Matchlock Samurai would shred everything, like they do in MP. :) But irl the Samurai would ride on horseback into battle, their squires carrying all their equipment for them, fielding all the weapons available, spears, naginata, nodachi, matchlocks, pistols, bows, Katana or Tachis were sidearms not main weapons, same as Europe. A Samurai didnt specialise in any one weapon as this would make him become reliable on one weapon and a liability, instead they practiced all weapons throughout the year as they were free from labour, that is the nature of specialised knights and mercenaries. There are great contemporay depictions and the partly autobiographic book by Miyamoto Musashi, ironically famously known for his sword duels with two swords, much like duelling was a sport in Europe. However in battle you can imagine they ride onto battlefield and either dismount or stay on horseback and use bow opportunistically, then ride back pick up musket use that , pickup yari , etc, use their pistols in close range and in close melee use the katana/ tachi. Their is wrong misconception and romaticising of Katana, because in civilian life all people but Lords and Samurai class was forbidden to carry weapons, only Samurai were allowed to carry a Katana etc. and strike down anyone even a rich merchantman if they even so in the slightest looked at them funny not to speak of lowly peasants who were despised by their own lords and Samurai alike. Sorry had to get this off my chest :P

So... The most optimal way to play as non-Chosokabe faction is to just ignore bow units?

I find that bows are super important in this game. You NEED 4-6. Anything less than that and you're taking major losses. The only TW game I find bows to be useless is ToB, in which its much better to have 4-6 cav and only 1-2 bows.

Well, this was the whole problem with bow and arrow to begin with. Why else would people choose to use extremelly accurate and unreliable early gunpowder weapons over bows? cuz armor was becoming so advanced as to make bows and crossbows ineffective

a shamefur dispray indeed. i like matchlocks they go bang bang

I think it comes to personal playstyle. I have played a plenty numbers of legendary campaign and I rarely use matchlock not only they easily get outranged by enemy archer, they also have crappy armor and takes awhile to master the art. Instead I usually fill at least 4 archer units, mostly 6 to 8 archer units, sometime I even go for 10 archer units. You may think I'm doing cheese tactic with that many archer, but I usually don't do that and I just move all my unit up in formation and let archer skirmish in front of my line. Given that I usually give them accuracy buff, they can win the archer duel with ease. If the enemy army decide to charge me in full force, I usually retreat my archers to the back and let them fire at general/enemy archer. Usually their melee would lose 1/4 of their units and I can win the melee engagement pretty easily. I have no idea why you can't even get more than 3 kills in a single volley, anyway you shouldn't expect your archer to do well if there is no unit to defend them. Archer is similar to matchlock in a way that they are long term investment, as they can accumulate kills over time, weakening the enemy force. Edit: on the side note, I disagree that enemy ai have buff on their combat stat, most likely they only have morale buff. If I'm wrong, please proof it though, but I never ever find a situation that 1v1 same unit in legendary difficulty and lose all the time. For example, everytime you start a campaign, I sometime let my bow ashigaru to duel the rebel ashigaru, and many time mines would win the duel despite the fact I'm shooting uphill. It also happens to other enemy clans, where I rarely lose my archer duels.

You can easily win offensive sieges with bow warrior monks alone and taking minimal to zero casualties

Im literally just playing on very hard and even my bow monks suck major ass... They get like 7 fuckin kills throughout the battle, its hella annoying how usless they are. I remember getting like 300 kills per battle with them easily, but higher diffuculties ? Crap as hell...

If you think bows are useless than every unit type other than infantry is useless. You can have like 14 katana sam with max attack and you win against full stacks with ease. But thats not very fun now is it. Bow , matchlock , cavalry makes the more game enjoyable and its not useless.

How do i counter bow units on legendary ? Do I set my yari ashigaru on loose formation and spaced out until they are required to fight ? Do I just cycle charge with my cavalry ?

I like your channel man, do you ever take on battles your viewers cant win?

if you realy believe that then you are using bows wrong

At the end of the day, as far as AI cheats go, I think the way Shogun 2 does combat cheats is the best out of any Total War game perhaps save for Medieval 2 where they're unnoticeable in all realistic circumstances. After all, Rome 1 has the sort of melee cheats that allows peasants to beat hastati, in Warhammer clanrats match Swordmasters of Hoeth, etc. You can still overcome the cheats with tactics in these two games, and while melee armies are kinda a no-go in WH1/2, in Rome 1 you can make even those melee infantries work because morale is such a big deal. Then there's games like Rome 2 where you really even can't, it's all stats (you can make melee work, but only by outclassing the enemy, not on even ground). But it's still obviously nonsense and limits your tactical repertoire, in case on Warhammer to the sort of tactics that feel like just cheese (whereas tactics in Rome 1 or Shogun 2 feel like good generalship). After all, there are obvious ways to mitigate ranged cheats the AI has in Shogun 2: get them into melee where the cheats do nothing, focus fire them (Lanchester's square law applies to ranged combat so local superiority counts for much more), etc, and your own ranged units while weaker do still have vital tactical roles. Indeed, while it's immediately obvious that peasants shouldn't beat hastati, I don't think it's immediately obvious to me that ranged combat even with the cheats is "too good": Total War doesn't simulate the impact of firing angles (particularly, direct fire vs indirect fire: with indirect fire armor becomes more efficient for the same physical reason tanks use sloped armor) and distances, there isn't deployable field fortifications that the Japanese historically used, etc. With that in mind, depending on exact circumstances ranged combat could simultaneously be too weak even for the cheating AI (direct enfilade fire in almost point-blank range against unarmored targets) and too strong for the player (extreme max range, against enemies with cover) so the cheats don't feel "wrong" the same way melee cheats do where it's obvious when an unit of peasants routs an unit of hastati

Why is everyone on the comment section so wrong lol Bows are not good in siege defenses, matchlocks are Matchlocks are not for field battles, they suck comparing to bows, but they are undefeated on the walls

By themselves they are not great but together with other types of units they can give the player the necessary tools to be useful. Its just a pity bow sam are so bad and that the ai army comps make the player choose counters. Better if the ai chose more diverse army comps.

come on man you didn't even mention whistling arrows i'll always love that ability

My bow warrior monks work great for winning the archer battle and then forcing the AI to charge... I'm playing the base game with no mods and on legendary. I win the campaign with very little problems.

Does darthmod fix this? Seems to

What's the best way to counter ai bows?

Dude you clearly didn't play the game on hard and above. Have you ever tried using mass matchlock units? It's a damn nightmare. You think bows are bad? Matchlocks get off ONE volley before being charged and murdered. And if you think archers can't kill enemy units you definitely have not used bow warrior monks.

Ayy I’m in there!

Watch volound play shogun 2 and tell me bows are bad

Omg who the hell uses bow samurai, they are uaeless. Bow ashigaru spam or even better bow monks

You dont know use bow infantry, they ara amazing

Bow are better

👏🙂