Picking retainers

Hello everyone,

today's lesson is about picking retainers. A good thing to master as a 1 star and even more so as a 10 star general.

Picking retainers is an art and also a math question. Retainers and veteran upgrades go hand in hand in this game. In order to get the best value out of your army you need to balance out your retainers and veteran upgrades. All starts with you wanting to max out certain stats on certain types of units for certain purposes. Skill and knowledge lets you do this is as efficiently as possible, and gives you and edge over your opponents. Also one thing to note about negative retainers is that they become more powerful and useful in team games. Since most of the retainers, like fuguchef affect the whole enemy team and thus racking up more value and meaning that only one of you has to play it. Freeing up more retainer slots for your team.

I've divided retainers into 3 categories based on how useful and cost effective they actually are.

Category 1:

1. Fuguchef, -2 to enemy melee infantry, pretty much a no-brainer. You don't have to worry about different types of melee units, since this affects them all. Veteran or not.

2. World WearyDLC, -1 morale, -2 melee attack and -5 accuracy to all enemy veterans/heroes. We can all see why this is better than Fugucheff, it gives your opponent disadvantages all around, in cav, in bows and in melee units. The more koku loss and -stats you give your opponent the better. And there is no single retainer or even 2 retainers that could negate the effects of WW. And as you progress through the ranks more and more veterans are being used, so you are likely to get good value with WW.

3. Blade master, +3 melee attack to swords, pretty self explanatory. For swords this is worth 50 koku per unit.

4. Trade post, -5% cost retainer

5. Inspiring Orator, -10% cost to all ashigaru units

6. Way of the Ikko IkkiDLC, +1 morale to ashigaru and monks, +3 melee defense to all ashigaru and monks (including monk cav), but +10% cost to samurai units. Great retainer for those fielding ashigaru or/and monk armies.

7. Reynos teachingsDLC, +2 morale, +4 melee defense, -2 melee attack, -10 reload. If you are using ashigarus and not planning on using many missile units this is a great retainer. Sacrificing 2 melee attack for 4 melee defense is great value.

8. Drill Square, +3 melee def to swords retainer, this is actually quite valuable since it gives +1 more than upgrading melee defense and this effects also samurai units, unlike way of the Ikko Ikki. And it gives you more than 50koku value per unit. You should never underestimate the value of melee defense.

Category 2:

1. Yagu sword instructor, +2 melee attack for swords. Seems good right? Now, lets think about this. If you upgrade a loan swords melee attack you get +3 melee attack! Yes, +3 not +2. So this retainer is not even worth 50 koku per loan sword! So instead using those two -cost retainers will free you more koku to be used in upgrading and thus give you more stats. Some might argue that this would belong to the first category, and its a pretty tough call. I still believe it falls a bit short. Since you do have Blade Master.

2. All those +1 morale to certain types of units like ashigaru or samurais, Infatry Offiver, Productive rice paddy or the best Heavenly Banner. They seem to offer good value, but then again they only give you 50koku value per unit. Yes, ashigaru armies need more morale but in the 1 category you can find couple great retainers for that.

3. Skilled Weaponsmith, +1 melee attack for all melee units. I don't see why anyone would use this. It's 25 value per unit (except loans even less).

4. Bad omen, -1 morale to enemy ashigaru units. When climbing up the ranks this is a very good retainer to use, since it's pretty much guaranteed players will have ashigaru units in their armies.

5. Practise Grounds, +2 melee attack for melee cavalry. Pretty decent retainer, gives you 50 koku per cavalry unit. But since you will probably be fielding 8 cav at max, it's not that great.

6. Then you have all those +5 accuracy to matchlocks/bows, -reload speed for enemy, -10% ammo for enemies. I mean yeah, these retainers are ok at max. They will not do that much of a difference. -10% ammo? If you upgrade your ammo for 50 koku this retainer will be pretty much useless, no bow fight will last for that long. And those +-5 retainers are not something to win bow/matchlock skirmishes for you, at best they give you a tiny advantage, but in the end it all comes down to your micro management rather than your retainer selections.

7. Bandit Horse thieves, -5 charge bonus for enemy cavalry. The cavalry charging is so bugged in this game that this retainer is a waste.

8. Mikoshi Portable Shrine, +2 melee attack for monks. If you want to field armies mostly made out of monks this is the retainer for you. Allows you to put more money into upgrading melee defense.

9. Yari Master, +2 melee defence for spear units. A must have for naginata builds and other spear heavy builds.

Category 3:

All retainers not mentioned above are pretty much useless retainers. I mean those mentioned offer so much better bang for your buck. And then there are also the retainers that are just plain useless, like some less fatigue retainers. A big NO-NO. Some of them are just so useless it makes me want to cry. Not even as 1 star should anyone consider using them.

Now that you hopefully caught my drift we can address the situation from a wider perspective. What I said at the beginning, it's all about balancing out retainers and upgrades to get most value! You basically want to use those 2 -cost retainers in order to gain more upgrade slots for your units. And then to boost the more vital stats with retainers, or to balance out those stats you did not have enough clan tokens to upgrade, or use retainers for those stats that offer more value than the upgrading. Basically all the retainers in the first category give you more value than upgrading.

I mean would you like more koku or less koku to use?

But if using veterans is not the option you need to use some retainers that wont give you as much value as upgrading would give. Then it comes down to the basic question of what do I need and what gives me most value? If you got 4 samurai units and 8 ashigaru units, which one would you give +1 morale retainer and which one do you think needs it more?

Cheerz,

again if you have any topics you would like me to write, please don't be afraid to ask them in the comments below.

][GERUDO][ Harba

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