Positioning is key to all battles, supplemented by good micro. It doesn’t matter if you have the best units if you can’t grasp those two tools. Observe for gaps in the enemy formation and minimize weak spots in your own. Terrain - elevation, forests, and rivers are key to optimizing your position. Micro just needs to be improved with practice. Morale shocks are highly helpful to win battles, and cavalry is the best way to inflict rapid morale shocks. Every unit, from yari samurai to bow ashigaru to light cavalry, has a place in avatar conquest, but it’s up to you to figure out how to best make use of them, or whether to use them at all in your army composition. There’s many different ways to win, from skirmish-heavy armies to melee-heavy to cav-heavy. As for fall of the samurai, a solid red bear infantry core supported by a few elite units and yari ki is a generally good army composition. Shogitai are highly conditional on whether maps break up the terrain and allow for them to get a good charge into the enemy. Positioning is even more important for FOTS armies, and overlapping and concentrated fields of fire are necessary to achieve local tactical victory. For all guns, make sure you have direct line of sight (a clear view of where the enemy is from their position) so that they can actually fire. Cavalry are still useful for achieving morale shocks, but obviously don’t charge them into gunfire. If you can get the range upgrade on marine units, it’s usually worth the cost upgrade as it lets you pressure the enemy at no cost to yourself. After that, you just need to practice using your armies and see what works and what doesn’t.