/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Eientei
Eientei's basic troops are earth rabbits, which can be upgraded into either melee infantry or archers. The melee infantry carry shields, one-handed blunt weapons, and throwing daggers, while the archers have longbows and blunt weapons. None of them are especially powerful, but they're serviceable and practical troops. They're also good at taking prisoners, which is a great way to gain income. Significantly superior numbers of earth rabbit infantry can overwhelm almost anything, since their blunt weapons are good against high-armor targets and will occasionally knock foes down.

The elite troops are lunar rabbits, equipped with muskets. They have extremely long range and high accuracy, and under the right conditions they can devastate foes wielding shorter-ranged weapons like bows. They can also inflict a surprising amount of damage in melee; those bayonettes hurt.

Kaguya inexplicably appears to wield a large aluminum baseball bat in combat., which amuses me every time I see it.

Youkai Mountain
The Youkai Mountain's tengu can be upgraded into melee infantry, archers, gunners, or cavalry. The melee infantry carry a wide variety of possible equipment, but tend to favor polearms and two-handed swords. The archers and gunners are both fairly typical: the archers tend to fare better at short ranges due to their higher rate of fire, while the gunners do better at long range. The cavalry are quite good, because their weapon can be couched like a lance, but it's also a serviceable melee weapon once they get stuck-in.

The Youkai Mountain's elite troops are priestesses, who can be upgraded into melee fighters, archers, or mounted archers. The melee fighters are initially terrible, but once fully upgraded they become very tough melee units that favor two-handed weapons. The archers are basically a slightly weaker version of the Hakurei Shrine's archers. The horse-archers are a bit less skilled than the foot-archers, but they have a horse, so they can run around and be generally obnoxious as horse-archers are wont to be.

Youkai Mountain also has a lot of strong specialty troops that can't be recruited through normal means. If you find them as prisoners, recruiting them can be very worthwhile.

The Netherworld
The spirits of the Netherworld use samurai-ish equipment, and can be upgraded into either melee fighters, archers, or cavalry. Most of them are pretty fragile due to their lack of shields, weak armor, and low ironflesh. The highest-tier melee fighters do have extremely high armor values, though, enough so to make them nigh-invulnerable to a lot of attacks. The AI lords tend to field a ton of the archers, and their high firing speed can make them hard to deal with. The cavalry are pretty standard lancers.

The elite troop line consists of...more ghostly samurai. These can be upgraded into gunners or cavalry. The cavalry are largely identical to the non-elite cavalry, just with much higher stats and a bit better equipment. The gunners have very high stats and are well-armored compared to most of the alternatives, but their guns are somewhat inferior to those used by Eientei's lunar rabbits. They're still possibly the toughest recruitable gunners in the game, though.

The Netherworld's shikigami patrols look weak for an elite faction patrol, but they have a very nasty trick. Troops killed by them are immediately ressurected as Netherworld troops. This means that if an arrow flies over your shoulder and kills someone wielding a two-handed sword right behind you, you have a problem. The kitsune are also amongst the best archers in the game, so it's hard to avoid taking some casualties.

The Netherworld's forces look weak on paper, but in practice they perform farily well. The sturdy elites and rank 5 swordsmen tend to draw a lot of fire away from the more fragile troops, who can then inflict a lot of damage with bows and two-handed swords. Many of the troops also have extremely good helmets even if the rest of their armor is lacking, which seems to make a big difference during siege assaults. The Netherworld's territory is also very defensible, and they have several capable lords. The Nehterworld often ends up quickly carving through Youkai Mountain.