The units gain ranks as they battle or you can purchase them at higher rank for extra cost. For Dojo units the lowest rank is Ashigaru, the highest is Samurai. Katana and Naginata Cavalry have a minimum rank of Ronin. Shrine agents have their own rank titles, but their ranks function the same as Dojo units, it's just different names for the ranks to fit their role better.
So it's possible to have Yumi Samurai, or Yari Samurai for example, in addition to Katana Samurai.
With each rank increase you may select a perk that the unit gains. Perks are specific to the type of unit, so Yumi have different perk options to Katana, Katana to Shinobi and so forth.
Yes I would love to add the fortress ships, as well as barge ships, transports and some kind of light scout boat.
Outside of that, there are a few other land units I plan to add. One is a mortar style unit, fulfilling a long-range seige artillery role. Another is the merchant wagon, which is another Shrine agent unit, it acts as a land transport that can secretly dismount Shinobi and Monks as it travels, and "trade" with enemy towns, whereby it steals the opponent players money and gives it to you if you can return the wagon to a friendly village.
I'm still tossing up whether or not I want to add western units that can be trained from an Embassy style building. These would include Arquebus infantry, Howitzers and maybe some kind of Frigate. I do like the idea of keeping it more insular, having just traditional Japanese warfare units, though.
As for the mountains, yes I am going to rework them, see if I can bring them a little closer to the references I linked in my previous post.
EDIT:
Okay here's a bit of an update. Firstly I've reworked the mountain tiles a bit:
I've also done some more sprites:
I've added all the Dock units, which are (from top to bottom):
- Kobaya: Small, fast craft crewed by archers. Scout and harassment role
- Seige Bune: Medium transport ship with lots of archers on it, as well as a tower for them to shoot from. Works best at picking off Kobaya and weakening Heavy Bune
- Heavy Bune: Large, slow ship that can transport lots of units. Has no ranged ability, but can board other ships, dealing massive damage to them
- Cannon Bune: Medium ship that cannot be boarded. Very weak against Kobaya, but deals lots of damage to all Bune ships.
Also added the Caravan unit, which is built at the Shrine, and the Naginata Cavalry and Mortar, which are built at the Dojo.
Here's a newly populated mockup:
Aaaand I started putting a HUD together, here's a mock screenshot:
Greyed out squares are fog of war. Blue squares show tiles the selected unit can move to. Red squares show enemies that the selected unit can attack.
The top-left panel shows current amount of money, which commander character you are using, your team colour and how much special ability power you have built up. I've currently got the blue commander as a ninja character, but in this scenario red would be the ninja character and blue would likely be some kind of Samurai general type character. I just felt like drawing the ninja first.
The bottom-right panel shows information about whatever tile/unit your cursor is over. Currently a Yumi unit is selected. It displays the unit name, what rank it is (Ronin), what tile it is standing on, how much defense that tile gives it (2 stars), how much health they have (10 hearts) and what Perks the unit has gained. Perks are dark if the unit doesn't have them and bright if they do. The Yumi selected has the Longshot perk, which gives it +1 range. The other two perks, Lightning Reflexes and Sharpshot it currently doesn't have.
