For those who have played Europa Universalis III, combat will look familiar. The terrain of the battleground is picked from one of the terrain types available in the province. The more of the province a certain terrain type cover, the higher the chance of that terrain being picked. Each terrain type comes with a penalty towards the attacker, the worst being impassable mountains. Crossing a river when entering into battle gives an additional negative effect as well as the large negative effect you get when crossing a strait. Since there are no ships in Sengoku, this large penalty represents the difficulty of doing a naval landing and going straight into battle. This can be quite nasty to attack across, so holding and fortifying provinces at a strait can be a very effective strategy.
There are however some new features and changes in Sengoku. One of them is that the battlefield can have different combat width depending on terrain. So while a large army can use its full advantage in plains or in farmlands, it will be much harder to realize that potential in a narrow mountain pass where only a handful of its units can participate at any moment. This will give a small but qualitative army a better chance to withstand a large army of inferior quality.
There are three unit types in Sengoku: samurai cavalry, ashigaru spearmen, and arquebusiers. The last one only becomes available later in the game after westerners have arrived and brought the technology of manufacturing arquebuses with them. This can happen sometime after 1520, usually in the 1530's or 1540's. Once a province has gotten western technology, you can construct a gun manufactory that produces a number of these arquebuses each month. Once you have 250 of these saved up you can recruit a retinue unit. These units are weak during a battles shock phase, but to counter that they have a few useful abilities. A battle always start with a fire phase and during this first fire phase arquebusiers deliver a volley of double effect. After that, if you have enough cavalry and infantry to cover them, they withdraw to the protection of the second rank.
Once back in the front rank they are, as said above, vulnerable in the shock phase, but can still fire at normal rate during the fire phase. One plus is that they, like cavalry, can attack not only the unit in front of them but also the ones to the side, which makes them somewhat useful in flanking a numerically inferior enemy.
To augment your personal retinue you can call up the levies from your and your vassals' provinces. But it is you as clan leader who pays for keeping them raised, and war is never cheap... If you as clan leader slip below zero gold, all sorts of bad things will start happening. The first thing that happens is that the maximum morale for the clan's units is lowered. For all units. Even those that belong to the vassals. Losing money when already in the negative will also increase the revolt risk in the clan's provinces. Again, this means even in the vassals' provinces. The vassals themselves will of course not be very happy about this and will get a negative opinion against the clan leader. This in turn leads to the clan leader being weaker when compared to any potential plotters which means that internal plots like breaking free or usurping the clan leader title are more likely to succeed...
There are however some new features and changes in Sengoku. One of them is that the battlefield can have different combat width depending on terrain. So while a large army can use its full advantage in plains or in farmlands, it will be much harder to realize that potential in a narrow mountain pass where only a handful of its units can participate at any moment. This will give a small but qualitative army a better chance to withstand a large army of inferior quality.
There are three unit types in Sengoku: samurai cavalry, ashigaru spearmen, and arquebusiers. The last one only becomes available later in the game after westerners have arrived and brought the technology of manufacturing arquebuses with them. This can happen sometime after 1520, usually in the 1530's or 1540's. Once a province has gotten western technology, you can construct a gun manufactory that produces a number of these arquebuses each month. Once you have 250 of these saved up you can recruit a retinue unit. These units are weak during a battles shock phase, but to counter that they have a few useful abilities. A battle always start with a fire phase and during this first fire phase arquebusiers deliver a volley of double effect. After that, if you have enough cavalry and infantry to cover them, they withdraw to the protection of the second rank.
Once back in the front rank they are, as said above, vulnerable in the shock phase, but can still fire at normal rate during the fire phase. One plus is that they, like cavalry, can attack not only the unit in front of them but also the ones to the side, which makes them somewhat useful in flanking a numerically inferior enemy.
To augment your personal retinue you can call up the levies from your and your vassals' provinces. But it is you as clan leader who pays for keeping them raised, and war is never cheap... If you as clan leader slip below zero gold, all sorts of bad things will start happening. The first thing that happens is that the maximum morale for the clan's units is lowered. For all units. Even those that belong to the vassals. Losing money when already in the negative will also increase the revolt risk in the clan's provinces. Again, this means even in the vassals' provinces. The vassals themselves will of course not be very happy about this and will get a negative opinion against the clan leader. This in turn leads to the clan leader being weaker when compared to any potential plotters which means that internal plots like breaking free or usurping the clan leader title are more likely to succeed...