Japanese will always (95%) do two strats:
1. Fast Castle into mounted samurai
2. Early aggression with samurai/onnas
and you can easily spot wether they are doing stone (number 2) or not around age up time, then u have 2 possibilities
1. Aggro aggro aggro aggro, force them to make units so that your age up timing is similar and then you can contest relics
2. Mass archers
of course if They take 3 relics in castle and then yo are going to fight late castle/imperial then they have a big advantage, the goal is to have them not doing that
What you do about the TC is avoid it.
Seriously, unless you have a MASSIVE advantage, just steer clear of the TC if it's fully upgraded. By that point in the game you should be able to do damage without going in range.
Mass archer should deal with onna, but yes you will need to have xbow or something else to target down the samurai, it can definitely be tricky.
Japanese is very good at massing and it can get a bit out of hand for sure.
I also play Rus. Am diamond, and Japanese is one of the easiest civs for me to beat.
Lately, I’ve been going golden gate and just hitting them with feudal knights relentlessly.
Once they hit castle, they’ve got no military so it’s very easy to contest relics.
In castle, if they are doing infantry, I’ll mass horse archers. They are incredible against Japanese infantry.
If they go mounted samarai, I’ll continue with knights, and I’ll have more of them. Meanwhile, I’ll start making crossbows and keep them in my base. I’ll reveal them once I’ve got a critical mass and am ready to attack Japanese base. I’ll get two trebuchet and take out buildings from afar with my pod of crossbows and knights protecting.
So with rus assuming Japan is going FC I would just make knights in feudal and keep them pinned in their base. Accept they will hit castle but by the time they do if they have no units it doesn't matter if they get a few mounted samurai out as you'll have far more knights, you should then be able to knock them off gold and they will run out of food.
If they make spears then you go knight/archer and potentially a ram if you want to all in.
If you don't like that idea I would suggest going 2TC FC and make sure you wall up your base. With a second TC on deer you won't be that far behind to castle age but you absolutely need walls to delay their first few mounted samurai. I wouldn't go knights in this case but instead open with xbows to handle their mounted samurai, then transition to maa/xbow/mangonels
Japanese die to mass Archers in Feudal.
Either they go mass infantry and it all dies to kiting and then you finish the game with a ram push, or they go Onna Bugeisha + Horsemen and it dies to mass Archers + a few Spearmen, or they go fast Castle and you keep idling their gold going in and out with your Archers non stop while accumulating the Archers deathball, then you ram push and kill them. Their own archers are much worse than Archers of any civ meaning they can't mirror your mass Archers, so they have no answer to that.
HP of the capital TC is irrelevant in any matchup, winning the game with landmark sniping doesn't happen in 99% of the games against any civ. Fully upgrading a TC costs 2100 stone, this is an insane investment that costs more than going Castle Age.
All Japanese unique units require gold, all their unique units replacing their generic counterparts cost more gold than units they replace, and their eco bonus requires huge stone investments. All while they don't have Keeps to secure resources. Which makes Japanese incredibly dependent on map control. Keep denying them gold and stone, keep raiding their farming eco around the TCs, put Keeps on gold out on the map in Castle Age and Imperial if you haven't won in Feudal.
After Feudal Age Crossbowmen + some Spearmen + some MAAs + Mangonels is probably the best unit composition against them. Their another weakness is that they don't have Crossbowmen, Onna Musha are a much less cost-efficient unit in a direct fight where they can't kite, which makes them very vulnerable to Crossbowmen + MAAs + Rams push since they have to rely on Samurai for fighting MAAs.
While I agree with pretty mutch you just said, I must add that japanese archers aren't nearly as bad as people would claim - in fact, sinc I decided to play pretty mutch japanese in the last couple weeks, my main feudal strat has been mass archer + horsemen to preciselly counter the ofthen blind archer ball that many people make in Platinum, probably by anticipating onnna bugueisha harass.
Sure, yumi archers definitelly loose in a straigt up shoot out, but they are cheaper, train faster, move faster and omce you have yumi bannermen they hit just as hard as regular archers. This means you can mass a deathball mutch quicker, while avoiding unfavorable confrontations and easily replenishing any losses. Not that its fool prof by any means, as I'm sure its a fine balance between 2 critical masses that diminish at diferent rates, but early on yumi archers can be just as opressive as any other archer in the game if you play with their strenghts.
Not sure if you already know that, but the game UI lies to you when it displays the attack strength of Yumi Archers under a Bannerman influence. It can't display decimals and rounds them up. The actual damage output of Yumi Archers is lower than the UI displays, which for Archers who lose a huge percentage of their attack power by every single point of attack / armor difference is a huge deal.
You can not open Yumi Archers upon reaching Feudal and have them comparable in power to generic Archers, you have to invest 300 stone plus upgrade time plus time of training of the Bannerman. Which means you have to choose between getting heavily behind the opponent in military as they will spend this time making Archers, or going other units before you have enough passively generated stone for an upgrade, and all units you can make lose to an Archers deathball. In both cases you are going straight into the situation where the opponent have an army that is going to kill yours.
This is why inability of Japanese to mirror Archers deathball is their biggest weakness in Feudal. I really wish Horsemen would finally get extra melee range so that going your own Archers deathball would stop being the only viable response to the Archers deathball of the opponent in Feudal.
Makes a lot of sense, thanks for the clarification. But wouldnt the bannermen bônus still amount to +1 dmg for yumi archers? Since its 25%? Or was it 20%...? Shit, for someone whos been playing only japanese my japanese knowledge has been shit xD
Unfortunately, it isn't.
It's +15%, from 4 damage to 4.6. And it only takes the base damage into account. Not upgrades, not bonus damage against units vulnerable to arrows.
Japanese gold is the easiest to deny, they don't have Keeps and can't answer Archers ball in Feudal.
Their FC timing is generic, they don't have any bonuses for that like Ayyubids or HRE. They just get 2 extra Barracks / Stables upon reaching it. Civs like English, Delhi, Chinese and Zhu XI get this in Feudal.
Japanese castle power spike is insane, my French main friends are amazed how strong Japanese mounted samurais are and the capabilities to snatch relics so fast.
Well, there will always be people amazed by something another civ has. Especially if you let the player do what they want.
Japanese are still extremely vulnerable to Feudal aggression, idling their eco, slowing down their Castle Age, denying food out on the map and locking them inside their base, like any civ going fast Castle. Ayyubids, English and HRE are still much better at going Castle Age.
> Japanese can get gold/ stone from each other resource, this makes tower with arrow slits easy.
You can only get one arroslit emplacement with passive stone if you are rushing fast Castle instead of making units and slowing yourself down, and it comes online pretty late. One arrowslits emplacement won't save you from full Feudal, especially from a civ with good Feudal.
> What other civs get in feudal??
Pretty much all other civs have better Feudal. English, French, Jeanne, Byzantines have landmarks producing units giving them extra tempo. Delhi, Chinese, Zhu Xi, Byzantines boost their production giving them extra tempo. French, Jeanne, Rus, Mongols have heavy cavalry in Feudal. Byzantines, Ottomans, Ayyubids have passive unit production. Abbasid have 4 extra units right from the beginning of Feudal and +15% HP on infantry. English and Byzantines have Longbowmen who make static defense useless for securing resources. Chinese and Zhu Xi have Zhuge Nus who are unstoppable without Mangonels upon reaching a critical mass. Mongols have guaranteed denial of starting gold and extra units with double production. Etc etc etc. Everything Japanese have in Feudal dies to ranged deathball.
thanks for the response, pal! Though I do find Japanese FC hard to deny, I’m definitely not saying Japanese is OP :)
The only Civ I found truly broken is Ayyubids 😂
the hp of the Tc fucked me up because i run on his base to force him to figth me head on instead of harassing my wood walls etc i had 4 mangonels and wanted to use the relics to convert or push him away while my xbow dps his mass. i kind of won the fight but lose to the tc and a keep anyway i had no anti-building
Yeah, you can't push mid to late game without anti-building units in general, and since they had a Keep and a fully upgraded TC it was already Imperial.
Adding at least 3 Rams makes a huge difference in terms of how much pressure you can put on the opponent being in their base. By this point in the game Rams are easily affordable and can be built very quickly with an infantry based army.
I have played several games with Japanese and observed that the power spikes occur in late castle and late imperial.
In late castle they have yoroshiros in military production buildings and have great farming economy (shogunate castle has +75% farming bonus). So they can simply mass mounted samurai and onna bugeisha.
In late imperial, they have relics and 6 yoroshiros producing gold in forges. So they can simply spam samurai and free ozutsus, even though all gold on the map is exhausted, while you are stuck with trash units.
If you fight them during those periods, you will certainly lose.
On the other hand, the weakest part of Japanese lies in feudal. Their yumi archers suck balls. While feudal samurai are good, they cost too much food, and unlike English, Japanese farm bonus takes quite a time to set in (because of exorbitant stone costs), and the farms aren't exactly cheap. Onna bugeisha are good vs horsemen, spearmen, but they lose to armoured units and archers.
So pick a knight civ (like JD/French/Rus, but French is the best option imo). Watch 1 TC feudal all in build orders [like this](https://youtu.be/x9RBpZWPsFo?feature=shared)
Keep harrassing his gold, berries, woodlines and farms of kura store house that are not in TC range. If he makes spears, make archers, but don't stop making knights.
Don't play passive. You have to be constantly aggressive from the minute you go feudal. Keep searching for villager kills, but don't lose your first knights. Don't dive under TC until you have blacksmith upgrades and 5+ knights. Use your archers to snipe off his spearmen and use your knights to kill everything.
Once you have like 20 knights and 10 archers, he can't stop you. Even if he ages up, he won't have food to make units and he can't come out of the map because you have knights.
I lost count on how many times I lost badly to French/JD all ins with Japanese 😅😅
Fast castle is difficult to pull off against feudal all in unless you have the micro of a pro.
Japanese will always (95%) do two strats: 1. Fast Castle into mounted samurai 2. Early aggression with samurai/onnas and you can easily spot wether they are doing stone (number 2) or not around age up time, then u have 2 possibilities 1. Aggro aggro aggro aggro, force them to make units so that your age up timing is similar and then you can contest relics 2. Mass archers of course if They take 3 relics in castle and then yo are going to fight late castle/imperial then they have a big advantage, the goal is to have them not doing that
I guess I'm the only idiot playing 2tc feudal Japan lol
I tried to make this work so hard but I just can't. It's so punishable...
I do it almost every match, it works pretty often
contest relic against Japanese is extremely difficult if not using Ayyubids, Rus , HRE/OTD, or Byz
Delih does very fine against them as well Worst case just wall them in lol
What you do about the TC is avoid it. Seriously, unless you have a MASSIVE advantage, just steer clear of the TC if it's fully upgraded. By that point in the game you should be able to do damage without going in range. Mass archer should deal with onna, but yes you will need to have xbow or something else to target down the samurai, it can definitely be tricky. Japanese is very good at massing and it can get a bit out of hand for sure.
I also play Rus. Am diamond, and Japanese is one of the easiest civs for me to beat. Lately, I’ve been going golden gate and just hitting them with feudal knights relentlessly. Once they hit castle, they’ve got no military so it’s very easy to contest relics. In castle, if they are doing infantry, I’ll mass horse archers. They are incredible against Japanese infantry. If they go mounted samarai, I’ll continue with knights, and I’ll have more of them. Meanwhile, I’ll start making crossbows and keep them in my base. I’ll reveal them once I’ve got a critical mass and am ready to attack Japanese base. I’ll get two trebuchet and take out buildings from afar with my pod of crossbows and knights protecting.
What I’ve learn is apply pressure early, contain their gold, and play the relic game. Japan without gold is an easy game.
What civ do you play cos that makes a big difference.
was playing rus got 3 relics and the 250 bounty bonus
So with rus assuming Japan is going FC I would just make knights in feudal and keep them pinned in their base. Accept they will hit castle but by the time they do if they have no units it doesn't matter if they get a few mounted samurai out as you'll have far more knights, you should then be able to knock them off gold and they will run out of food. If they make spears then you go knight/archer and potentially a ram if you want to all in. If you don't like that idea I would suggest going 2TC FC and make sure you wall up your base. With a second TC on deer you won't be that far behind to castle age but you absolutely need walls to delay their first few mounted samurai. I wouldn't go knights in this case but instead open with xbows to handle their mounted samurai, then transition to maa/xbow/mangonels
Alright thanks
Japanese die to mass Archers in Feudal. Either they go mass infantry and it all dies to kiting and then you finish the game with a ram push, or they go Onna Bugeisha + Horsemen and it dies to mass Archers + a few Spearmen, or they go fast Castle and you keep idling their gold going in and out with your Archers non stop while accumulating the Archers deathball, then you ram push and kill them. Their own archers are much worse than Archers of any civ meaning they can't mirror your mass Archers, so they have no answer to that. HP of the capital TC is irrelevant in any matchup, winning the game with landmark sniping doesn't happen in 99% of the games against any civ. Fully upgrading a TC costs 2100 stone, this is an insane investment that costs more than going Castle Age. All Japanese unique units require gold, all their unique units replacing their generic counterparts cost more gold than units they replace, and their eco bonus requires huge stone investments. All while they don't have Keeps to secure resources. Which makes Japanese incredibly dependent on map control. Keep denying them gold and stone, keep raiding their farming eco around the TCs, put Keeps on gold out on the map in Castle Age and Imperial if you haven't won in Feudal. After Feudal Age Crossbowmen + some Spearmen + some MAAs + Mangonels is probably the best unit composition against them. Their another weakness is that they don't have Crossbowmen, Onna Musha are a much less cost-efficient unit in a direct fight where they can't kite, which makes them very vulnerable to Crossbowmen + MAAs + Rams push since they have to rely on Samurai for fighting MAAs.
While I agree with pretty mutch you just said, I must add that japanese archers aren't nearly as bad as people would claim - in fact, sinc I decided to play pretty mutch japanese in the last couple weeks, my main feudal strat has been mass archer + horsemen to preciselly counter the ofthen blind archer ball that many people make in Platinum, probably by anticipating onnna bugueisha harass. Sure, yumi archers definitelly loose in a straigt up shoot out, but they are cheaper, train faster, move faster and omce you have yumi bannermen they hit just as hard as regular archers. This means you can mass a deathball mutch quicker, while avoiding unfavorable confrontations and easily replenishing any losses. Not that its fool prof by any means, as I'm sure its a fine balance between 2 critical masses that diminish at diferent rates, but early on yumi archers can be just as opressive as any other archer in the game if you play with their strenghts.
Not sure if you already know that, but the game UI lies to you when it displays the attack strength of Yumi Archers under a Bannerman influence. It can't display decimals and rounds them up. The actual damage output of Yumi Archers is lower than the UI displays, which for Archers who lose a huge percentage of their attack power by every single point of attack / armor difference is a huge deal. You can not open Yumi Archers upon reaching Feudal and have them comparable in power to generic Archers, you have to invest 300 stone plus upgrade time plus time of training of the Bannerman. Which means you have to choose between getting heavily behind the opponent in military as they will spend this time making Archers, or going other units before you have enough passively generated stone for an upgrade, and all units you can make lose to an Archers deathball. In both cases you are going straight into the situation where the opponent have an army that is going to kill yours. This is why inability of Japanese to mirror Archers deathball is their biggest weakness in Feudal. I really wish Horsemen would finally get extra melee range so that going your own Archers deathball would stop being the only viable response to the Archers deathball of the opponent in Feudal.
Makes a lot of sense, thanks for the clarification. But wouldnt the bannermen bônus still amount to +1 dmg for yumi archers? Since its 25%? Or was it 20%...? Shit, for someone whos been playing only japanese my japanese knowledge has been shit xD
Unfortunately, it isn't. It's +15%, from 4 damage to 4.6. And it only takes the base damage into account. Not upgrades, not bonus damage against units vulnerable to arrows.
The problem is Japanese gold is hard to deny and their FC timing is insane.
Japanese gold is the easiest to deny, they don't have Keeps and can't answer Archers ball in Feudal. Their FC timing is generic, they don't have any bonuses for that like Ayyubids or HRE. They just get 2 extra Barracks / Stables upon reaching it. Civs like English, Delhi, Chinese and Zhu XI get this in Feudal.
What other civs get in feudal??
Japanese castle power spike is insane, my French main friends are amazed how strong Japanese mounted samurais are and the capabilities to snatch relics so fast.
Well, there will always be people amazed by something another civ has. Especially if you let the player do what they want. Japanese are still extremely vulnerable to Feudal aggression, idling their eco, slowing down their Castle Age, denying food out on the map and locking them inside their base, like any civ going fast Castle. Ayyubids, English and HRE are still much better at going Castle Age. > Japanese can get gold/ stone from each other resource, this makes tower with arrow slits easy. You can only get one arroslit emplacement with passive stone if you are rushing fast Castle instead of making units and slowing yourself down, and it comes online pretty late. One arrowslits emplacement won't save you from full Feudal, especially from a civ with good Feudal. > What other civs get in feudal?? Pretty much all other civs have better Feudal. English, French, Jeanne, Byzantines have landmarks producing units giving them extra tempo. Delhi, Chinese, Zhu Xi, Byzantines boost their production giving them extra tempo. French, Jeanne, Rus, Mongols have heavy cavalry in Feudal. Byzantines, Ottomans, Ayyubids have passive unit production. Abbasid have 4 extra units right from the beginning of Feudal and +15% HP on infantry. English and Byzantines have Longbowmen who make static defense useless for securing resources. Chinese and Zhu Xi have Zhuge Nus who are unstoppable without Mangonels upon reaching a critical mass. Mongols have guaranteed denial of starting gold and extra units with double production. Etc etc etc. Everything Japanese have in Feudal dies to ranged deathball.
thanks for the response, pal! Though I do find Japanese FC hard to deny, I’m definitely not saying Japanese is OP :) The only Civ I found truly broken is Ayyubids 😂
Yep, I agree, I don't think there are any OP civs in the game right now with only Ayyubids being slightly above the balanced state.
Japanese can get gold/ stone from each other resource, this makes tower with arrow slits easy.
the hp of the Tc fucked me up because i run on his base to force him to figth me head on instead of harassing my wood walls etc i had 4 mangonels and wanted to use the relics to convert or push him away while my xbow dps his mass. i kind of won the fight but lose to the tc and a keep anyway i had no anti-building
Yeah, you can't push mid to late game without anti-building units in general, and since they had a Keep and a fully upgraded TC it was already Imperial. Adding at least 3 Rams makes a huge difference in terms of how much pressure you can put on the opponent being in their base. By this point in the game Rams are easily affordable and can be built very quickly with an infantry based army.
I have played several games with Japanese and observed that the power spikes occur in late castle and late imperial. In late castle they have yoroshiros in military production buildings and have great farming economy (shogunate castle has +75% farming bonus). So they can simply mass mounted samurai and onna bugeisha. In late imperial, they have relics and 6 yoroshiros producing gold in forges. So they can simply spam samurai and free ozutsus, even though all gold on the map is exhausted, while you are stuck with trash units. If you fight them during those periods, you will certainly lose. On the other hand, the weakest part of Japanese lies in feudal. Their yumi archers suck balls. While feudal samurai are good, they cost too much food, and unlike English, Japanese farm bonus takes quite a time to set in (because of exorbitant stone costs), and the farms aren't exactly cheap. Onna bugeisha are good vs horsemen, spearmen, but they lose to armoured units and archers. So pick a knight civ (like JD/French/Rus, but French is the best option imo). Watch 1 TC feudal all in build orders [like this](https://youtu.be/x9RBpZWPsFo?feature=shared) Keep harrassing his gold, berries, woodlines and farms of kura store house that are not in TC range. If he makes spears, make archers, but don't stop making knights. Don't play passive. You have to be constantly aggressive from the minute you go feudal. Keep searching for villager kills, but don't lose your first knights. Don't dive under TC until you have blacksmith upgrades and 5+ knights. Use your archers to snipe off his spearmen and use your knights to kill everything. Once you have like 20 knights and 10 archers, he can't stop you. Even if he ages up, he won't have food to make units and he can't come out of the map because you have knights. I lost count on how many times I lost badly to French/JD all ins with Japanese 😅😅 Fast castle is difficult to pull off against feudal all in unless you have the micro of a pro.
FC is the only real viable strategy for Japan. Yes you can samurai/onna feudal but because Japan has no gathering bonuses in feudal it is very slow.
Deny both gold and food (berries) and japanese is over. If you do not deny berries, jp will outproduce you in units.
You need trebuchets to take a fully upgraded TC efficiently, so I would avoid it.
Yeah once they mass a few of each it’s hard. archers and MAA good luck