Thank you very much for this Legend :) You did very little different from my first few attempts (mostly shifted the line further to the right than I did and harassed with the general slightly longer), yet the AI behaved wildly differently. Especially the cavalry, they all packed together and charged at you 3 o'clock (despite the fact you had significantly reinforced it compared to me) making them easier to dispatch and letting your left flank deal with incoming Shogitai, whereas with me they always split in two groups and tried to go behind on both side (4-5 and 7-8 o'clock) making my entire line a mess and killing my cannons. Sharpshooters probably being targets of opportunity for cavalry may explain why an entire sharpshooter line send cavalry behavior into complete chaos. I'm definitely spamming Imperial Infantry with 4-6 Armstrong in all my other armies, this one was specifically made to take on fortresses and bleed out the defenders by sniping them from the walls for the meme. I just got very reckless with it since it's the mopping up phase of the campaign and pushed it in territories I had not yet cleared with my other armies. That's compounded by the fact that I forgot how much morale Hard AI Shogitai has, and that sharpshooters don't benefit from kneel fire tech for some reason. Definitely a massive blunder on my part, this is just an achievement completionist campaign and I got everything I could already, so not a big deal. But I'm glad Legend took it because as I was expecting this was a great learning opportunity. :D Cheers and Happy New Year to everyone
Haven't played this game in a while so I don't remember a lot about it. But is it normal for the ai infantry to walk so slowly towards you? I feel like if the melee infantry simply ran they would have taken out the sharpshooters fairly easily.
Sharpshooters make a very good support unit. I usually bring 2 or 3 to each battle. In an open field, they work nicely on the flanks, but I've found they are more effective as a secondary or tertiary rank in a battle line. Their firing arcs overlap with those of line infantry, which works well in creating a more deadly killzone, though it can be overkill in most battles. If you are going against high-quality units, I've found that using them to harass the enemy lines can be quite effective. You can combine this with naval bombardment to force the enemy troops to disorganize themselves. In offensive sieges, they can work well by getting some kills directly on the walls, though on some specific maps they can even shoot over the walls. In defensive sieges, they don't perform very well. Having more range is mostly irrelevant when the AI just stops at their maximum range and tries to outshoot your units stationed at the walls. At best, they can get some very good angles from the castle to support the lower levels, also, having less entities per units compromise their already lacking melee to defend a section of the wall from climbing enemies.
Its kind of ridiculous how good they are. High fire rate, ammo, accuracy, and range is absurd even without stealth at their price and research requirement
@@jeice13 Absolutely god-tier unit. It's kind of hard going back to normal factions after playing with Tosa's riflemen. It's like a never-ending Battle of Roark's Drift.
Ding Ding Ding, all my other armies are Imperial Infantry, this one is for siege, because it's funny to have entire salvo of headshots with 112 accuracy from beyond your opponents range :D I just got reckless while mopping up the campaign.
@@karisvenner3892for sieges I usually get 6 cannons 4 sharpshooters 4 line infantry and melee samurais and kachi to assault. This formation is too much for the AI
@@karisvenner3892 Now you've learned to bring a unit or two of high tier line infantry xD Tbf, I think you were only overwhelmed here because of the lack of kneel fire. Something that makes Sharpshooters either the second or third most OP unit.
"Too much warhammer brain" hell, at the start of the video I even thought to myself "This is just like making an entire army of warplock jezzails. It just doesn't work that way." You've said it countless times with skaven weapons team disaster videos: all too often there's too much emphasis on big numbers on the unit card and not enough consideration to what that unit NEEDS in order to do its job properly.
that's what I love about old total war games and especially Shogun 2 and both of its DLCs, it requires you to think a lil bit more on the contents of your army and what specific role on the battlefield each unit has. Probably the best game in the series
As someone who really like the gun powder tw's, i held my head frustration when i saw the sharpshooter spam. Like in most situations you would be eaten and spat out again.
The role of light infantry is to screen line infantry advance. As well as distrupt enemy forces formation by laying supperession. Rifled units is often a specialized unit and not how standard light infantry often behaved.
Well, technically the main battle rifles during the 1st half of the XX century were not different from the rifles snipers used, apart from the occasional use of scopes. Yes, not every sniper used a scope
The hill was the worst problem. On flat ground that army would work. The cannons should have shredded the first army, especially if they upgrade to Armstrong guns.
yeah, with only line infantry and a couple cannons, that battle would have been a cakewalk. Personally, I like to take a couple melee units (usually Yari but sometimes katana samurai), and use them to force the enemy to either close or stand off, depending on how much artillery I have. A general, 2 melee units, 2 sharpshooters, 3 cannon units, and the rest line infantry is my go-to for mixed armies.
Being on the top of the hill actually hurt you a lot. Setting up most of the way down the hill would get you close enough to the other hill to let the sharpshooters all simultaneously shoot at the first set of heads to crest the hill. Only one line can crest the hill at a time, but each row on the opposite slope can see the hill crest. Closer deployment would also let the artillery set up closer to the main slope so they can still have line of fire - they couldn't line a lot of shots as set up.
I don’t know which (if any) other total wars you’ve played, but Shogun is a different beast, especially FOTS. The early game strategy is much more along the lines of “get 3 provinces, turtle, and develop them as much as you can.” Just about every single other faction except maybe 1 or 2 near you is gonna DOW you, so you need to batten down the hatches and outlast it until you can afford several stacks and keep one at home just to defend your territory
@@fredrikhelland8194 I always feel like I like the game, but when I play it, and the ship combat comes into the picture, I just feel Shogun 2 is a 4 out of 10. The AI is unbearable, and a conveyorbelt of navys are constantly spammed against you. The entire game is annoying.
Iirc a stack of trade ships with 1 nearby reinforcing bune keeps most things away just on autoresolve power, naval in 2 is either rush it so you’re always making new ships each turn to stack into the trade lane or ignore it til later.
Two things that people neglect to take into consideration when building the kind of army is reload speed and the number of men in the unit. Sharp shooters have the range and accuracy, but they lack close up DPS of faster reload speed and more men firing
Sharpshooters are great at dealing damage, but they don't have enough sustained DPS to take the place of line infantry, who can deal damage *and* hold a position with a solid formation. That extra bit of range they get compared to regular line infantry only counts for so much because they are weaker in melee and can't fire by rank. They are much better, as Legend said, being used as a support unit. Place them on a hill behind your line infantry to get lots of kills from almost total safety, or a better use for them is to force your enemy to move out of an advantageous position with their superior range since line infantry can't shoot at them from their max range they are forced to either advance into your trap, retreat and give up ground, or stand still and get minced up.
Warhammer brain got me to eat shit in fall of the samurai on my first campaign. I played shogun 2 when it came out, first time ever doing fots campaign this week. I got a handle on it now, but that first very hard difficulty campaign smacked me good. Everyone around me switched sides to shogunate for no reason other than wanting to delete me and factions literally sailed the length of the map just to kill me ignoring everyone else.
Sharpshooters, good at weakening opponents in sieges, and good at supporting fire to reduce enemy line infantry. But their low numbers plus their low ammo count, makes them only ideal for supportive roles like that. They can also be used to take out high value targets like Generals, but again, that is more of a supportive role, as the main fight will still happen. But they have weakened the enemy. So if anything can get up close to them, they are screwed, even Line Infantry can beat them quite regularly. So massing them like this, oh boy, its a bad mistake.
In certain instances you can put sharpshooters in loose formation right in front of your Line Infantry and when the AI figures your Line infantry is the bigger threat they keep ignoring the sharpshooters. Only when Melee or Cavalry rush towards you front it might be a problem. Also a good combined volley can break small groups. :D PS: I had very bad luck with my map generations in my ongoing campaign I wonder if there is a seed somewhere thats different for each install or campaign playthrough. Greetings! PPS: I have the same issues with the game sound despite having the right settings. I blame Windows 11 :D
Sure, I'm copying from my other comment, here: Sharpshooters make a very good support unit. I usually bring 2 or 3 to each battle. In an open field, they work nicely on the flanks, but I've found they are more effective as a secondary or tertiary rank in a battle line. Their firing arcs overlap with those of line infantry, which works well in creating a more deadly killzone, though it can be overkill in most battles. If you are going against high-quality units, I've found that using them to harass the enemy lines can be quite effective. You can combine this with naval bombardment to force the enemy troops to disorganize themselves. In offensive sieges, they can work well by getting some kills directly on the walls, though on some maps they can even shoot over the walls. In defensive sieges, they don't perform well . Having more range is mostly irrelevant when the AI just stops at their maximum range and tries to outshoot your units stationed at the walls. At best, they can get some very good angles from the castle to support the lower levels, also, they low entity numbers compromises even more their melee capability, so don't expect then to hold a section of the wall at wall, they get slaughtered really fast.
Is there a practical reason to not use the grapeshot at 10:25~ or was it just missed due to the micro-intensive gameplay? I never really know if I use that ability at the right time
Id guess grapeshot has less range , im not a big shogun player but thats the reaosn in other total war games, it also needs line of sight and for a lot of the battle there wasnt really a direct shot
It was on cooldown until 11:03 when he saw it and I think at that point, the artillery has such good accuracy stats that not using shrapnel to kill a blob didn't matter. Probably was a miniscule mistake though.
It's only really useful when the enemy you're firing at is in a certain position like in a huge blob, or when they're in enfilade, meaning you're firing down their ranks as opposed to through them. It's honestly quite overrated in FotS, I find my artillery gets more kills with the regular explosive shells.
@@moddingmiddleearth no fun fact but in Shogun 2 grapeshot has more range then normal and like other said at this point there so close that normal fire does way more damage anyway
A casualty for Sharpshooters is a larger proportion of the overall unit lost compared to Line Infantry. Line Infantry survive longer so are prefered to Sharpshooters for comprising a modern army.
Yeah unless you're spamming tosa riflemen, 2 sharpshooters is more than enough. You could maybe do 4 if you feel you really need them. They're hard to fit in an army for me tbh. I usually run 8 line infantry, 4 cannons, 4 melee cav and two revolver cav or carbines. That's one slot for sharpshooters unless you drop some cav.
What makes this even worse is that there's no woods, so no way to make use of the sharpshooters' ability to fire from woods without revealing themselves.
Amazingly, people seem not to understand it though. Ground is EVERYTHING in line infantry warfare. Any good line infantry game will take this into account.
i tried going all sharpshooters once and found out the hard way they are not as great as line or even shogun/impiral/republic and like legend says should be used sparingly
This is like a having a spam of warplock jezzails lol At least in historical titles you can have a unit formation one row long, this reduces the effectiveness of enemy artillery by a great amount. Of course in this battle enemy artilery wasn't the problem
As someone who’s new to Shogun 2, can someone explain a bit more explicitly why sharpshooter spam is bad? I get that they fill a role but like what is that vs what line infantry so
Line infantry have 2/3 more men per unit than sharpshooters, and can benefit from a tech called "kneel fire", allowing you to put them into multiple lines instead of just one. This means that line infantry can cover a more compact firing line with significantly more firepower than sharpshooters, giving them much higher overall killing power. The extra men also make them more durable if anything gets into melee. Sharpshooters have better accuracy and more range, making them great for taking out high-profile targets and harassing enemies before they can respond.
Sharpshooters get extra range for much less dps because of the lower reload skill and lower unit count. That DPS boast that even basic line infantry gets is critical to stopping charging Calvary and melee infantry without taking any or little return damage. They just are not as good dealing with attacking armies in field battles. In siege battles the extra range allows you kill defenders without return fire so i always include them in a balanced army but to replace all line infantry with light infantry is not optimal.
In my experience, Line Infantry is generally stronger (more men to shoot), cheaper (both to recruit and to maintain), and more expendable (can soak up more damages due to number of men). They also benefit a lot from Tech tree, giving them abilities to make their firepower even deadlier. They're pretty much spammable, I'll say.
OK this one was a bit painful to watch... Putting sharpshooters in loose formations would have vastly improved their performance, because it allows them to all fire at the same time while maintaining some depth of formation, preventing them from being overwhelmed too easily by a melee charge. Also it makes them way more resilient against gun fire, though that's not a issue in this battle.
I uses 4 today rifleman with my army and they were amazing in woodland battles they'd steal the show and in open field they'd be my base/crossfire elements while I used most of my line infantry as my maneuver elements. Worked like a charm
I hope @Legend will play my disaster battle as well in medieval 2 , sent him I think a few days ago 😅 really can't figure it out how to win that battle , hopefully legend can win it so i can continue my campaign 🙃
Sharpshooters are a noob trap. Their unit size and reload skill are just too low to be effective as your main line. The (slightly) shorter range of proper line infantry is completely negated by just having a few units of artillery in the army.
If I had to guess, it's the accuracy. Line Infantry don't hit anything ever when on your side, and bullets always instantly kill any unit they hit, so a unit capable of easily reaching 100 accuracy makes you think you're gonna get 90 kills per volley. Probably worse if they tried to use a worthless unit like katana kachi in the past who get deleted in 1 volley by enemy line infantry (I'm still salty, I thought melee had use), suddenly that extra range and 100 accuracy looks like a doomstack.
sharshooters make for excellent second line, their range means they'll be able to provide supporting fire against enemy line, you'd still want some line infantry in the front. more men=more guns=more dakka
They do not have kneel fire. Also they have fewer number of men per unit. They got shit melee defense and attack. Therefore they cannot hold the line as well as line infantry
Legend you should play either Sid Meier's Civil War Gettysburg orTake Command: 2nd Manassas or Scourge of War Gettysburg or Ultimate General Civil War. I'd love to see you take on historical sim linear rifled warfare.
LEGEEEND!! You say, "Not an impossible battle"... Made me wonder, have you faced impossible battles? Not referring like 1 unit vs 100, but realistically impossible battles (not situations).
Yeah they aren't really that useful at all, in my experience it's better to actually take Bow Kachi if you want some light infantry to go with your line. Unless you have something like Tosa Riflemen or Yugekitai then I go with those.
yeah they have a lot of flaw, low model, bad reload skill making them just as effective as normal line infantry unit but any loss is more costly due to their low model, the only place they are worth more than normal line infantry is siege which their higher range make sense, but most of siege are autoresolve and those manual ones can just use artillery to do all the work. Also them doesnt have kneel fire hurt a lot, 1v1 they will definitely lose against line infantry or even levy infantry
My armies are usually 12 to 15 units of Line Infantry, usually Imperial Line. Then there's 2 to 4 units of Parrott or Armstrong Guns and my general. For Cavalry, I will rarely bring more than two units of Cavalry and they rarely get to do anything.
My tactics involve making a really long line with my infantry, toggling kneel fire, and then popping suppression fire when the enemy gets into range. The Artillery I focus on clumps of troops, enemy artillery, Generals, things of that nature. I like to also keep a fleet nearby.
Not even close. They are a good unit to have more range and snipe out specific targets, but they don't shoot all at once, their proyectiles don't hit multiple enemies (like the jezzails), and they don't endure well in a crossfire (jezzails have silver shields and 80 armor). Like legend says, they are a good support unit, but not the backbone.
In older Total Wars gun units were actually using guns. The whole regiment can't fire at once because the guy in front of them is obstructing the view and guns don't "lob" their projectiles at such a ridiculous trajectory. Thus they lack the punching power Jezails have.
Disagree entirely. The internet edgelord looks was nothing but trouble, and always ends with having to escalate in to more extreme nonsense. That doesn't go well, and really didn't for legend.
Ah yes, the non-warhammer IQ would be to ... do the exact same thing but with line infantry instead of Sharpshooters? Very smart. Much wow. Funnily enough, spamming all the same armies with the most powerful and versatile unit is exactly a warhammer IQ move, and the Shogun 2 equivalent would be Line Infantry. I picked the clearly inferior and less versatile Sharpshooters because I wanted to pop heads in siege battle, this is army is specialized for sieges and fun-factor, exactly what you don't see with deliberately generic doom stacks.
@@karisvenner3892 line infantry is not the most powerful infantry, it's a basic unit like ashigaru, basic tier 1 units are useless in late game warhammer
@@meepo1862 That's only because Shogun 2 is much shorter, it doesn't have the stupid general limit and logistics, and you're thinking of auto-resolve. in FOTS line infantry will dominate Ashigaru spam any day, in fact a full army of Line Infantry would probably inflict army losses on ANY number of Ashigaru full stacks, without a single casualty, simply because the yari would break before even fighting. And in Vanilla Tercos will eat entire stacks of Samurai for breakfast. Single Entities are definitely meta breaking in Warhammer, but elite units also dominate in Shogun 2, the only difference is that by the time you have Tercos armies in Shogun 2 you've already won the campaign. In Warhammer you have Tier 4 or 5 doomstacks by turn 50.
I disagree, sure a full yari ashigaru spam will lose against a full line infantry stack, but an early game shogun 2 stack with 2 or 3 light cav and some bow units can absolutely dumpster a line infantry "doomstack" even if they have artillery, just by playing correctly Also, how do you do so well in sieges, after you get past the first wall your advantage ends, you could get the same effect with at most 6 sharpshooters, and then have some good melee units to actually climb up and finish the siege
![แค่บอก - Atom ชนกันต์ [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kgwhtg8bAxY/mqdefault.jpg)
Congrats on getting big enough to start attracting regular bots Legend
Huh
@@Bakarost a reference to all the bots showing up in the comment section here & there.
@@Garret007 oh i guess they were already deleted thus my confusion
Thanks
The bots show up everywhere. No matter how many subscriptions or viewers. My guess is they advance in alphabetical order. :D
@@kleinerprinz99 don't think that's true, I'm subbed to a lot of small channels I've never seen a comment bot on them
When you get into the TF2 server and find you've been put on the side with 5 Snipers.
tf2 is shit
average 2fort experience
Every side of every FPS without a role limit I've ever experienced going back to the 90s.
Thank you very much for this Legend :)
You did very little different from my first few attempts (mostly shifted the line further to the right than I did and harassed with the general slightly longer), yet the AI behaved wildly differently.
Especially the cavalry, they all packed together and charged at you 3 o'clock (despite the fact you had significantly reinforced it compared to me) making them easier to dispatch and letting your left flank deal with incoming Shogitai, whereas with me they always split in two groups and tried to go behind on both side (4-5 and 7-8 o'clock) making my entire line a mess and killing my cannons.
Sharpshooters probably being targets of opportunity for cavalry may explain why an entire sharpshooter line send cavalry behavior into complete chaos.
I'm definitely spamming Imperial Infantry with 4-6 Armstrong in all my other armies, this one was specifically made to take on fortresses and bleed out the defenders by sniping them from the walls for the meme. I just got very reckless with it since it's the mopping up phase of the campaign and pushed it in territories I had not yet cleared with my other armies.
That's compounded by the fact that I forgot how much morale Hard AI Shogitai has, and that sharpshooters don't benefit from kneel fire tech for some reason.
Definitely a massive blunder on my part, this is just an achievement completionist campaign and I got everything I could already, so not a big deal. But I'm glad Legend took it because as I was expecting this was a great learning opportunity. :D
Cheers and Happy New Year to everyone
Legend is the AI whisperer.
Haven't played this game in a while so I don't remember a lot about it. But is it normal for the ai infantry to walk so slowly towards you? I feel like if the melee infantry simply ran they would have taken out the sharpshooters fairly easily.
@@MrMighty147 They walk as much as they could until they are under fire by something or if there's a target nearby
Sharpshooters make a very good support unit. I usually bring 2 or 3 to each battle.
In an open field, they work nicely on the flanks, but I've found they are more effective as a secondary or tertiary rank in a battle line. Their firing arcs overlap with those of line infantry, which works well in creating a more deadly killzone, though it can be overkill in most battles. If you are going against high-quality units, I've found that using them to harass the enemy lines can be quite effective. You can combine this with naval bombardment to force the enemy troops to disorganize themselves.
In offensive sieges, they can work well by getting some kills directly on the walls, though on some specific maps they can even shoot over the walls.
In defensive sieges, they don't perform very well. Having more range is mostly irrelevant when the AI just stops at their maximum range and tries to outshoot your units stationed at the walls. At best, they can get some very good angles from the castle to support the lower levels, also, having less entities per units compromise their already lacking melee to defend a section of the wall from climbing enemies.
That lingering smoke effect is something WH3 could really use. Looks really nice
And hopefully sound rework for gunpowder weapons in new DLC
There's mods for that I believe but I do agree
But it makes it hard for the normies to see
FOTS gets the atmosphere of 19th century battles so right.
The only acceptable sharpshooter spam is Tosa Riflemen.
The best autoresolve unit in TW history. 3 of them beat entire early game stacks.
Its kind of ridiculous how good they are. High fire rate, ammo, accuracy, and range is absurd even without stealth at their price and research requirement
I fucking love Tosa Rifleman.
@@jeice13 Absolutely god-tier unit. It's kind of hard going back to normal factions after playing with Tosa's riflemen. It's like a never-ending Battle of Roark's Drift.
How early you can unlock them has to be an error tbh.
Im guessing he used this army to seige and just out range wall implaced defenders
Ding Ding Ding, all my other armies are Imperial Infantry, this one is for siege, because it's funny to have entire salvo of headshots with 112 accuracy from beyond your opponents range :D I just got reckless while mopping up the campaign.
@@karisvenner3892for sieges I usually get 6 cannons 4 sharpshooters 4 line infantry and melee samurais and kachi to assault. This formation is too much for the AI
@@karisvenner3892 Now you've learned to bring a unit or two of high tier line infantry xD
Tbf, I think you were only overwhelmed here because of the lack of kneel fire. Something that makes Sharpshooters either the second or third most OP unit.
"Too much warhammer brain" hell, at the start of the video I even thought to myself "This is just like making an entire army of warplock jezzails. It just doesn't work that way."
You've said it countless times with skaven weapons team disaster videos: all too often there's too much emphasis on big numbers on the unit card and not enough consideration to what that unit NEEDS in order to do its job properly.
that's what I love about old total war games and especially Shogun 2 and both of its DLCs, it requires you to think a lil bit more on the contents of your army and what specific role on the battlefield each unit has. Probably the best game in the series
As someone who really like the gun powder tw's, i held my head frustration when i saw the sharpshooter spam.
Like in most situations you would be eaten and spat out again.
It’s almost like there’s a reason that no army in the past 200 years has ever equipped all of its infantry only with sniper rifles.
The role of light infantry is to screen line infantry advance. As well as distrupt enemy forces formation by laying supperession. Rifled units is often a specialized unit and not how standard light infantry often behaved.
Gewehr 43 tries to enter the chat
Well, technically the main battle rifles during the 1st half of the XX century were not different from the rifles snipers used, apart from the occasional use of scopes. Yes, not every sniper used a scope
The hill was the worst problem. On flat ground that army would work. The cannons should have shredded the first army, especially if they upgrade to Armstrong guns.
AT THE DOUBLE
LET THEM TASTE STEEL
ENGAGE THE ENEMY
yeah, with only line infantry and a couple cannons, that battle would have been a cakewalk.
Personally, I like to take a couple melee units (usually Yari but sometimes katana samurai), and use them to force the enemy to either close or stand off, depending on how much artillery I have.
A general, 2 melee units, 2 sharpshooters, 3 cannon units, and the rest line infantry is my go-to for mixed armies.
When Japan goes full Skaven.
Being on the top of the hill actually hurt you a lot. Setting up most of the way down the hill would get you close enough to the other hill to let the sharpshooters all simultaneously shoot at the first set of heads to crest the hill. Only one line can crest the hill at a time, but each row on the opposite slope can see the hill crest. Closer deployment would also let the artillery set up closer to the main slope so they can still have line of fire - they couldn't line a lot of shots as set up.
so a reverse slope position.
After watching your videos I’ve finally decided to get shotgun 2, hope I don’t end up sending any games in for you to save!
Oh you’re gonna get your fair share of trouble. The Shogun 2 AI does not mess around like the Warhammer AI. You’re gonna love it though! :)
check out mr smart donkey's channel if you like shogun 2 content, he has a lot of campains and tips and such!
I don’t know which (if any) other total wars you’ve played, but Shogun is a different beast, especially FOTS. The early game strategy is much more along the lines of “get 3 provinces, turtle, and develop them as much as you can.” Just about every single other faction except maybe 1 or 2 near you is gonna DOW you, so you need to batten down the hatches and outlast it until you can afford several stacks and keep one at home just to defend your territory
@@fredrikhelland8194 I always feel like I like the game, but when I play it, and the ship combat comes into the picture, I just feel Shogun 2 is a 4 out of 10. The AI is unbearable, and a conveyorbelt of navys are constantly spammed against you. The entire game is annoying.
Iirc a stack of trade ships with 1 nearby reinforcing bune keeps most things away just on autoresolve power, naval in 2 is either rush it so you’re always making new ships each turn to stack into the trade lane or ignore it til later.
Two things that people neglect to take into consideration when building the kind of army is reload speed and the number of men in the unit.
Sharp shooters have the range and accuracy, but they lack close up DPS of faster reload speed and more men firing
Sharpshooters are great at dealing damage, but they don't have enough sustained DPS to take the place of line infantry, who can deal damage *and* hold a position with a solid formation. That extra bit of range they get compared to regular line infantry only counts for so much because they are weaker in melee and can't fire by rank. They are much better, as Legend said, being used as a support unit. Place them on a hill behind your line infantry to get lots of kills from almost total safety, or a better use for them is to force your enemy to move out of an advantageous position with their superior range since line infantry can't shoot at them from their max range they are forced to either advance into your trap, retreat and give up ground, or stand still and get minced up.
Warhammer brain got me to eat shit in fall of the samurai on my first campaign. I played shogun 2 when it came out, first time ever doing fots campaign this week. I got a handle on it now, but that first very hard difficulty campaign smacked me good. Everyone around me switched sides to shogunate for no reason other than wanting to delete me and factions literally sailed the length of the map just to kill me ignoring everyone else.
I find sharpshooters really shine during sieges, not so much in the field
Just discovered your channel recently, love your content and extensive knowledge
Man, that army setup was just painful. It was a shooting gallery if the submitter had line infantry!
"When your dog licks it's balls, recruit a stack of Sharpshooters."
-Sun Tzu, excerpt from the Art of War
Around 8:42 you can see that one stray cavalry unit get absolutely executed by your sharpshooters 😳
Me looking at that second blob come over the hill: "A single Skaven Doomrocket will solve this".
Those won't be seen in Japan for another 76 years.
Amazing counter to the first calvary flank.
That would have gotten a lot better if the guy recruited at least a couple of iron breakers instead of spamming thunderers.
Dont spam sharpshooters mfs when they find a defensible hill:
Real men play FOTS as the Tsu; the masochist experience.
Sharpshooters, good at weakening opponents in sieges, and good at supporting fire to reduce enemy line infantry.
But their low numbers plus their low ammo count, makes them only ideal for supportive roles like that. They can also be used to take out high value targets like Generals, but again, that is more of a supportive role, as the main fight will still happen. But they have weakened the enemy.
So if anything can get up close to them, they are screwed, even Line Infantry can beat them quite regularly. So massing them like this, oh boy, its a bad mistake.
I had to learn that lesson the hard way as well 😢
Still can't get over how the subtitles correct your intro to 'I tripped on a wall here."
sharpsharter
In certain instances you can put sharpshooters in loose formation right in front of your Line Infantry and when the AI figures your Line infantry is the bigger threat they keep ignoring the sharpshooters. Only when Melee or Cavalry rush towards you front it might be a problem. Also a good combined volley can break small groups. :D PS: I had very bad luck with my map generations in my ongoing campaign I wonder if there is a seed somewhere thats different for each install or campaign playthrough. Greetings!
PPS: I have the same issues with the game sound despite having the right settings. I blame Windows 11 :D
Any tips using sharpshooter?
I tried using one but it usually just gets down into half because of enemy line infantry...
Sure, I'm copying from my other comment, here:
Sharpshooters make a very good support unit. I usually bring 2 or 3 to each battle.
In an open field, they work nicely on the flanks, but I've found they are more effective as a secondary or tertiary rank in a battle line. Their firing arcs overlap with those of line infantry, which works well in creating a more deadly killzone, though it can be overkill in most battles. If you are going against high-quality units, I've found that using them to harass the enemy lines can be quite effective. You can combine this with naval bombardment to force the enemy troops to disorganize themselves.
In offensive sieges, they can work well by getting some kills directly on the walls, though on some maps they can even shoot over the walls.
In defensive sieges, they don't perform well . Having more range is mostly irrelevant when the AI just stops at their maximum range and tries to outshoot your units stationed at the walls. At best, they can get some very good angles from the castle to support the lower levels, also, they low entity numbers compromises even more their melee capability, so don't expect then to hold a section of the wall at wall, they get slaughtered really fast.
Great video, as usual! Makes me want to go buy Shogun 2!
you really should everything about it is great hahaha. might wanna wait for the next sale u might get a good discount on the next sale
"Warhammer brain" lol good one Legend
Is there a practical reason to not use the grapeshot at 10:25~ or was it just missed due to the micro-intensive gameplay? I never really know if I use that ability at the right time
Id guess grapeshot has less range , im not a big shogun player but thats the reaosn in other total war games, it also needs line of sight and for a lot of the battle there wasnt really a direct shot
It was on cooldown until 11:03 when he saw it and I think at that point, the artillery has such good accuracy stats that not using shrapnel to kill a blob didn't matter. Probably was a miniscule mistake though.
It's only really useful when the enemy you're firing at is in a certain position like in a huge blob, or when they're in enfilade, meaning you're firing down their ranks as opposed to through them. It's honestly quite overrated in FotS, I find my artillery gets more kills with the regular explosive shells.
@@moddingmiddleearth no fun fact but in Shogun 2 grapeshot has more range then normal and like other said at this point there so close that normal fire does way more damage anyway
another legend hood classic
can you do more early game battles in fall of the samurai?
Sharpshooters are good for defending castles with melee as backup
A casualty for Sharpshooters is a larger proportion of the overall unit lost compared to Line Infantry. Line Infantry survive longer so are prefered to Sharpshooters for comprising a modern army.
Yeah unless you're spamming tosa riflemen, 2 sharpshooters is more than enough. You could maybe do 4 if you feel you really need them. They're hard to fit in an army for me tbh. I usually run 8 line infantry, 4 cannons, 4 melee cav and two revolver cav or carbines. That's one slot for sharpshooters unless you drop some cav.
This one was a real nail-biter. These battles are way more exciting than WH.
What makes this even worse is that there's no woods, so no way to make use of the sharpshooters' ability to fire from woods without revealing themselves.
The enemy AI spamming Shogitai
The best generals used 3 kinds of cheese for every battle.
This was a somewhat more interesting version of "line up on a hill and wait for the AI to walk into your bullets"
Amazingly, people seem not to understand it though. Ground is EVERYTHING in line infantry warfare.
Any good line infantry game will take this into account.
Snipin's a good job mate!
Not going to lie though, the Sharpshooters did a good job on that cavalry flank, even though they had no defense
quite literally the bitt3rsteel of total war
It's almost as if combined arms warfare is a great idea
i tried going all sharpshooters once and found out the hard way they are not as great as line or even shogun/impiral/republic and like legend says should be used sparingly
This is like a having a spam of warplock jezzails lol
At least in historical titles you can have a unit formation one row long, this reduces the effectiveness of enemy artillery by a great amount. Of course in this battle enemy artilery wasn't the problem
Don't need more than two in any army.
I thought about doing this in my recent campaign, tried it out with a few, then realised they were less in number and no second rank fire ability.
Warhammer brain, I love it lol.
I mean, you can win FOTS with levy infantry spam, the AI is so incompetent in those battles it's not really a challenge.
you know what even worse than spam sharpshooter spam mattock kachi :D.
when you could potentially sort this out by just withdrawing
As someone who’s new to Shogun 2, can someone explain a bit more explicitly why sharpshooter spam is bad? I get that they fill a role but like what is that vs what line infantry so
Line infantry have 2/3 more men per unit than sharpshooters, and can benefit from a tech called "kneel fire", allowing you to put them into multiple lines instead of just one. This means that line infantry can cover a more compact firing line with significantly more firepower than sharpshooters, giving them much higher overall killing power. The extra men also make them more durable if anything gets into melee.
Sharpshooters have better accuracy and more range, making them great for taking out high-profile targets and harassing enemies before they can respond.
Sharpshooters get extra range for much less dps because of the lower reload skill and lower unit count. That DPS boast that even basic line infantry gets is critical to stopping charging Calvary and melee infantry without taking any or little return damage. They just are not as good dealing with attacking armies in field battles. In siege battles the extra range allows you kill defenders without return fire so i always include them in a balanced army but to replace all line infantry with light infantry is not optimal.
In my experience, Line Infantry is generally stronger (more men to shoot), cheaper (both to recruit and to maintain), and more expendable (can soak up more damages due to number of men).
They also benefit a lot from Tech tree, giving them abilities to make their firepower even deadlier.
They're pretty much spammable, I'll say.
Love this 😂
Can you do the hardest/weakest faction in warhammer 3 campaign?
OK this one was a bit painful to watch... Putting sharpshooters in loose formations would have vastly improved their performance, because it allows them to all fire at the same time while maintaining some depth of formation, preventing them from being overwhelmed too easily by a melee charge. Also it makes them way more resilient against gun fire, though that's not a issue in this battle.
Loose formation vastly increases the damage you take from charges
@@driespeeters2349 **decreases
Even though it'll be stretched to one rank AI won't stretch their cav so the square blob would hit less men overall
I uses 4 today rifleman with my army and they were amazing in woodland battles they'd steal the show and in open field they'd be my base/crossfire elements while I used most of my line infantry as my maneuver elements. Worked like a charm
I hope @Legend will play my disaster battle as well in medieval 2 , sent him I think a few days ago 😅 really can't figure it out how to win that battle , hopefully legend can win it so i can continue my campaign 🙃
This makes me want to spam Bow Kachi's 😂..
If I command the AI Army, I would have rekt those sharpshooters with just Sabre Cav lol
Hey I’m having an issue staying subscribed to your channel, it keeps unsubscribing for whatever reason and then I have to dig to find you again
You are lethal with a hill - have you ever got a hill in a battle and lost?
Sharpshooters are a noob trap. Their unit size and reload skill are just too low to be effective as your main line. The (slightly) shorter range of proper line infantry is completely negated by just having a few units of artillery in the army.
jolly good show
I have never played this game due to its campaign map and factions. But, it's dynamics look quite well. This would be great for modding.
How did he get 2 different Upgrade types on his units? Anyone know this?
Who looks at sharpshhoters and thinks "I should spam that". Seriuosly, what is the though process here? Is this an experiment?
If I had to guess, it's the accuracy. Line Infantry don't hit anything ever when on your side, and bullets always instantly kill any unit they hit, so a unit capable of easily reaching 100 accuracy makes you think you're gonna get 90 kills per volley.
Probably worse if they tried to use a worthless unit like katana kachi in the past who get deleted in 1 volley by enemy line infantry (I'm still salty, I thought melee had use), suddenly that extra range and 100 accuracy looks like a doomstack.
@@Cyrus_T_Laserpunch He explained in other comment that it's a siege army
@@pisuoxide Ah, that's fair. I did that with bow kachi before, far less effective than sharpshooters would be. Thanks for letting me know.
Do the Sharpshooters have less models, less rate of fire, less abilities? Why are they not as useful as Line Infantry?
Yes
They’re glass cannon, they can dish out damage very well but can’t take damage like line inf
They can't survive cavalry or melee, and aren't as protected in a gunfight due to no kneel fire
sharshooters make for excellent second line, their range means they'll be able to provide supporting fire against enemy line, you'd still want some line infantry in the front. more men=more guns=more dakka
They do not have kneel fire. Also they have fewer number of men per unit. They got shit melee defense and attack. Therefore they cannot hold the line as well as line infantry
Can you save Rots disaster battles?
Legend you should play either Sid Meier's Civil War Gettysburg orTake Command: 2nd Manassas or Scourge of War Gettysburg or Ultimate General Civil War.
I'd love to see you take on historical sim linear rifled warfare.
Can you get Gettysburg to work on Windows 11?
How about Amstrong gun doomstack ?
Sharpshooters are for the sides or backlines imo
Somebody saw Sharpe's Rifles and wanted an entire army of Sean Bean. Sharpe!!!!! *twich twich twich*
oh noooooo
This is a clear failure to understand the importance of Combined Arms in warfare.
I spam only line infantry 😂
LEGEEEND!! You say, "Not an impossible battle"... Made me wonder, have you faced impossible battles? Not referring like 1 unit vs 100, but realistically impossible battles (not situations).
I never actually use Sharpshooters. I bring almost exclusively line infantry and artillery.
Yeah they aren't really that useful at all, in my experience it's better to actually take Bow Kachi if you want some light infantry to go with your line. Unless you have something like Tosa Riflemen or Yugekitai then I go with those.
yeah they have a lot of flaw, low model, bad reload skill making them just as effective as normal line infantry unit but any loss is more costly due to their low model, the only place they are worth more than normal line infantry is siege which their higher range make sense, but most of siege are autoresolve and those manual ones can just use artillery to do all the work. Also them doesnt have kneel fire hurt a lot, 1v1 they will definitely lose against line infantry or even levy infantry
My armies are usually 12 to 15 units of Line Infantry, usually Imperial Line. Then there's 2 to 4 units of Parrott or Armstrong Guns and my general. For Cavalry, I will rarely bring more than two units of Cavalry and they rarely get to do anything.
My tactics involve making a really long line with my infantry, toggling kneel fire, and then popping suppression fire when the enemy gets into range. The Artillery I focus on clumps of troops, enemy artillery, Generals, things of that nature.
I like to also keep a fleet nearby.
@@nicholaswalsh4462shogun 2 made having a fleet make sense .😂
Do people actually try to spam sharpshooters??? The most I have in an army is two units
Looked like only 3 contact points really for the battle. 4 line infantry was really all that was needed to work. 6 would have been better.
I want my own cannon
Aren't sharpshooters like wh3 jezails ?
Not even close. They are a good unit to have more range and snipe out specific targets, but they don't shoot all at once, their proyectiles don't hit multiple enemies (like the jezzails), and they don't endure well in a crossfire (jezzails have silver shields and 80 armor). Like legend says, they are a good support unit, but not the backbone.
In older Total Wars gun units were actually using guns. The whole regiment can't fire at once because the guy in front of them is obstructing the view and guns don't "lob" their projectiles at such a ridiculous trajectory. Thus they lack the punching power Jezails have.
Imagine Jezails, a unit you already don't want to spam, but only the first rank of them can fire so you have to make them stand in 1-rank lines.
gun fight in shogun 2 is lot better than empire and napoleon. I can't get into those two games but fallen samurai feel great
No wedge on artillery plz. There is no need
Classic reason why i hated total war your units never do exactly what you want your fighting the reason why they wont do something more than the enemy
How much brainrot do you have to sustain to build an army like this
A case of too much warhammer 3
Day #16 of asking Legend to bring back his old outro quote "See you next time... Fuckers!"
The OGs miss it!
No.
@jimbob4447 lmao I bet you're a fun one at parties.
yt's a bitch, that's why he doesn't say that anymore
It was mildly funny years ago, to do it now would be cringe.
Disagree entirely. The internet edgelord looks was nothing but trouble, and always ends with having to escalate in to more extreme nonsense. That doesn't go well, and really didn't for legend.
Average Warhammer player IQ army 😂😂😂
Ah yes, the non-warhammer IQ would be to ... do the exact same thing but with line infantry instead of Sharpshooters? Very smart. Much wow.
Funnily enough, spamming all the same armies with the most powerful and versatile unit is exactly a warhammer IQ move, and the Shogun 2 equivalent would be Line Infantry.
I picked the clearly inferior and less versatile Sharpshooters because I wanted to pop heads in siege battle, this is army is specialized for sieges and fun-factor, exactly what you don't see with deliberately generic doom stacks.
@@karisvenner3892 line infantry is not the most powerful infantry, it's a basic unit like ashigaru, basic tier 1 units are useless in late game warhammer
@@meepo1862 That's only because Shogun 2 is much shorter, it doesn't have the stupid general limit and logistics, and you're thinking of auto-resolve.
in FOTS line infantry will dominate Ashigaru spam any day, in fact a full army of Line Infantry would probably inflict army losses on ANY number of Ashigaru full stacks, without a single casualty, simply because the yari would break before even fighting.
And in Vanilla Tercos will eat entire stacks of Samurai for breakfast.
Single Entities are definitely meta breaking in Warhammer, but elite units also dominate in Shogun 2, the only difference is that by the time you have Tercos armies in Shogun 2 you've already won the campaign.
In Warhammer you have Tier 4 or 5 doomstacks by turn 50.
I disagree, sure a full yari ashigaru spam will lose against a full line infantry stack, but an early game shogun 2 stack with 2 or 3 light cav and some bow units can absolutely dumpster a line infantry "doomstack" even if they have artillery, just by playing correctly
Also, how do you do so well in sieges, after you get past the first wall your advantage ends, you could get the same effect with at most 6 sharpshooters, and then have some good melee units to actually climb up and finish the siege
You're boring and basic
why are the people running into people with guns when they themselves don't have guns
It yaba daba do be like that in this age.
The french used to do this with guns but without shooting them
for honor and glory
Because war…?
Because if you don't close the gap they just keep shooting at you hth
Don't know bout yall, i only keep around like 2 units of sharpshooters Pepega
4 sharpshooters and 6 Armstrong guns are the best walls melter of the game 😂
Legend when you upgrade your PC will you do a collab with Aussy PC yourtubers @techyescity or @hardwareunboxed etc.