/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Myouren Temple
Myouren's warrior-monks start off wielding polearms, and can optionally be upgraded into gunners. The gunners can be decent, mostly because it only takes one upgrade for the rookies to become gunners, and they're very cheap troops, so it's an easy way to amass an entire army of musketeers if you're so inclined. The pole-arm wielding warrior-monks are flat-out inferior to the Hakurei Shrine's mikos: they're both less versatile and less powerful, despite wielding a pretty good weapon.

The temple's elite troops consist of...more monks wielding the same polearms. They can be upgraded into cavalrymen, but they're pretty awful either way by elite troop standards. The Hakurei Shrine's mikos outperform them even without being fully upgraded.

So, basically, Myouren Temple sucks. The AI doesn't make very heavy use of their gunners and everything else they have is awful at siege warfare, so it's really easy to eliminate the Myourenji from the game (though Byakuren and Shou are very good at fighting open-field battles.) I've been meaning to make some of their lord's unique specialty troops recruitable through normal means: some of them are powerful and fun to use without being overwhelming.

Senkai
Senkai's daoshi can be upgraded as melee infantry or crossbowmen. The melee infantry are sturdy thanks to their relatively heavy armor and large shields, and their swords will tear through lightly-armored opponents, but they perform poorly against high-armor foes. The crossbowmen are armed with repeating crossbows, which are extremely good weapons, and they're also decent at melee combat.

Senkai's elites are onmyoji. They're a bit fragile for elites, and they can't be upgraded, but they have the equipment and skills to fight well either in melee or at range. Additionally, if you have onmyoji in your army, then they will occasionally supplement your forces with jiangshi (I forget the precise mechanics behind this, but you do need to have room in your army to recruit more troops.) Jiangshi start off weak, but when upgraded they become very durable "cavalry," though their offensive power remains pretty low.

Senkai's lords lack any unique specialty troops, which hurts them quite a bit, and Miko is the weakest of the faction leaders. They still tend to be harder to fight against than Myouren Temple, though, because Senkai's basic troops kick the ever-living shit out of those of Myourenji.

Mercenaries
In general, mercenaries are substantially weaker than similar fully-upgraded faction troops, particularly those of the major factions (Hakurei Shrine, SDM, Underworld, Youkai Mountain, and the Netherworld.) They're also pretty expensive for what they are. However, all of them are a lot stronger and better equipped than new recruits. Even lower-tier mercenaries often have pretty good armor and weapons, so they're very useful when you need troops in a hurry.