[GoodSpeed's 3.0 TAD Guide] Japan
Posted: 17 Feb 2017, 11:09
Another guide from GoodSpeed, this time for Japan — comment, share, discuss, like!
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Japan
Japan, I have to admit, are somewhat of a favourite of mine. They are a very strong civ but still relatively balanced compared to the actual overpowered civs, and so they have more fun and interesting match ups. They're an adaptive civ that gets very complex and challenging if you want to master them, and they're not map dependent. This especially is a very big deal. The fact that they work on any map makes them, as a boom civ, uniquely playable on the standard maps which explains (or is one of the reasons, at least) why they are so popular on TAD.
They have some great units. Their upgraded colonial army is one of the best in the game and their musks are so fast it makes them an effective raiding unit. The daimyo is a great shipment, the infantry upgrades are decent even after the nerf and yumi are extremely cost effective. What more do you want in your army? A colonial lancer? Sure, you have it. 4 Flaming arrows, which counter falcs? Check. The only thing missing here is an urumi shipment.
Japan's boom is also great. It takes a relatively small investment and can get them a total of about +15 vills in income plus XP from the shrines. 2 downsides though: Shrines, like banks, don't scale with market upgrades, and the fact that they need to occupy hunts makes them very vulnerable. Japan's vills are unraidable, but their economy is all over the map and can easily be harassed. The plus side (for Japan, that is) is that it takes siege to raid their economy instead of cavalry. Siege means heavy infantry which you generally don't want in fights (think pikes), especially against Japan because they like their infantry so much.
But Japan is slow. Lacking a 3v shipment and their orchards giving a slower food income than huntables do, their early game eco is, quite frankly, pathetic. They age up with 13-14 vills (including the shrine) which is very little compared to all other civs, many of which have 16+ vills and a TP. And it's not like Japan's colonial time is fast, either.
This creates a problem. It means that Japan is not going to have a lot of options when it comes to their early colonial start. They have no eco rushes and they have early harassment builds, but none of them are viable because their economy behind it is so bad that they won't have any follow up options. Therefore, Japan's only real option is to shrine boom. This makes them a predictable civ and makes it very hard for them to deal with builds that punish their boom.
Fast rushes do this, fast FFs and even eco semi-FFs can be a pain to deal with. Japan has strong semi-FF builds of their own (always use Golden Pavilion to fortress) but they're slower than other civs' and can more easily get punished by timings. Often, Japan needs to semi-FF with yumis behind a wall to remove this vulnerability, or they have to stay colonial. Of course Japan has no problem staying colonial since they scale extremely well, however they won't have map control and their shrines are vulnerable. Staying colonial against strong (semi-)FFs can be dangerous too, because early fortress pushes become tough to hold. Some civs can even choose to simply take the map and remove most of Japan's shrines, putting Japan in an awkward position since now they're stuck in colonial with a mediocre economy.
Because of Japan's slow start and early investment in economy, they need to be focusing on gathering a large mass from the moment their military buildings are up. This is why eco shipments like 4v are generally a bad idea with this civ. They already have a strong eco, your priority is not getting an even better eco but holding the timings that may kill you. Therefore triple 600 is almost always the correct choice. Like with Brit, 600 gold gives you the choice to age up but you don't have to, you can easily spend it on units as well.
With a wall and yumi behind it, you'd be surprised by the amount of situations where you can sneak in that age up with a 600w 600w 600g card order.
And Japan needs walls. In order to cut corners when it comes to economy or a potential age up in the way that Japan wants to, walls are absolutely necessary. After all you have a bad economy early on and you're focusing on booming, so your mass is logically going to be relatively poor. You can play a somewhat less eco-heavy style and in that case you won't need walls, but you're sacrificing economy and for what? It's not like you're going to be pushing out any time soon because your mass will still be worse than theirs in almost every case, and if they're ageing up then staying colonial and doing a timing isn't the right way to play. Following them up is correct, or setting up your economy for a long term colonial vs fortress fight. Either way, neglecting economy for a bigger early colonial mass is opening you up to some nasty mid fortress timings.
Japan is generally going to be late with their military buildings. To stop the fastest of rushes, you're going to want to build the rax immediately as you hit colonial, instead of waiting for the 600w which is standard. Walls are extra important here. Another option is to hide your buildings when the 600w arrives. If they're good, they'll scout for this but even then it's worth it because you've managed to refocus their army to your hidden buildings instead of your base. This means your vills can gather and you can start new buildings elsewhere. Keep him chasing your buildings rather than having all your vills garissoned. Sometimes you need CM, though (in case of Japan the card is called Enlist irregulars). CM is only worth it if it makes your TC 2 hit units where it would otherwise 3 hit them (jans/sepoy etc), or 1 hit where it would otherwise 2 hit (maces/xbows/pikes etc). If you send CM, boom fully and send military shipments or Daimyo if necessary, otherwise resource shipments and get raxes up, or rax+stable. You're often going to find yourself microing 5 yumi against large armies (walls!) while switching your shrines to food/gold to gather for large batches of minutemen and to keep up vill production (which isn't always worth it).
Japan, much like Dutch, doesn't fit into the TP meta that well. They can get a TP up from 300w starts and send 300w for the consulate and then Heavenly Kami, but this isn't something you do to improve your build. Rather this is something you'd do if you want to steal the middle TP on Great plains from your opponent because it is vital to their build. Even then it's questionable because you will likely lose it in early colonial due to Japan's early mass being too small to defend it, and it won't have paid off by then. This start may only be viable against slower civs, where your TP isn't vulnerable and your later age up won't hurt you.
Japan, being a defensive civ with excellent scaling, are possibly the most adaptive civ in the game. They are weak early, which means they constantly have to cut corners in order to somehow get through the early game and get ahead. This means taking risks, adapting flawlessly to your opponent's decisions and not overcommitting on anything. It also means your defensive abilities need to be on point.
If you do all of this flawlessly, Japan may be the best civ in the game (on standard maps, that is). However, scouting isn't always that easy and always taking the right risks without them backfiring is impossible because then they wouldn't be risks. There is also a certain luck factor in that. But anyway if you're bored of the euro civs (which with enough experience isn't surprising considering a lot of euro civs have barely changed since vanilla), try mastering Japan. You will find challenges you didn't know existed.
The Japanese build
Due to Japan being possibly the most adaptive civ in the game, writing a build for them is nearly impossible. There are a ton of variations and you may even have to transition into suboptimal builds if you scout something unexpected from your opponent. I'll take a slightly different approach in that I won't be listing the builds and saying when they are viable, but listing your reaction to each possible opponent's build. Remember to play this civ with a clock. Always have timings in mind, and know which ones you need to be scared of. Also, “Can I age up without dying?” should be a question that is always on your mind, especially when you reach that time in your build where you're sending 600g.
With 300w, consider the TP mentioned above (in that case chop 25w for shrine and send 300w first for consulate + extra shrine). In the future I will assume you did the standard build:
Start consulate and ally with Ports. Chop either 107 or 7 wood based on how much wood you started with.
(1) Heavenly Kami
Age up with the Toshugu Shrine. During transition, leave 6 vills on food for vill production and have the rest on wood. Start spamming shrines all over the map. Their placement can be important in some match ups (build them on the edges of the map if possible against aggressive builds), but usually you're just going to want to plant every single available hunt full of shrines anyway.
Note that you want your shrines on either food or wood. Gold is less effective vill-second wise, and putting the shrines on food means your rice paddies will last longer meaning you won't have to waste a shipment on them as early.
Against a rush
Against early colonial pressure you're going to want to invest in economy a little less. Depending on the speed of the rush, you can still decide to wait for 600w before building military buildings and as mentioned, you can also go for the CM route explained above, which I will not get further into in this part. And wall! Seriously, wall.
There are several options when it comes to your shipments:
(2) 600w. Use this against the somewhat slower but powerful colonial pressure builds. You still have the choice of building the rax immediately or waiting for 600w.
(2) Unit shipment (against fast rushes)
(2) Daimyo. Works against fast rushes as well, it's a decent combat unit as well as a moving military building. Don't lose it.
(3) 600g (only if you sent 600w first) for ashi+nagi or full ashi.
(3) 600w for yumi, or to build military buildings if you don't have those yet.
(3) Unit shipment if you're still in trouble in your base.
(4) 600g (age up optional). Strong if you want to leave your options open for a while longer while you scout what they're doing.
(4) Daimyo. Strong in longer term colonial fights, and can act as a stable if you need cav but don't have a stable yet.
(4) 600w. Obviously you can only send this if you didn't already send it twice. Use for stable, possibly replacing shrines and/or yumi
Against a long term colonial start
Most civs won't want to play a long game against Japan, but sometimes you will run into it. Their plan will usually be to keep you in your base while they kill shrines and mass up, and they will generally plan to age up at some point, even if its after 10 minutes.
Your priority is booming as hard as possible in early colonial. You will likely not run into any trouble even with late double rax (from 600w), and if you think they will try to push your base instead of simply sieging shrines, boom a little less hard. Walls are still advisable, simply because they allow you to boom harder with less units, as well as giving you the option to age up more safely. Important though, is to stop booming immediately after 600w. You're going to want to mass in order to do 1 of 2 things: push them off your shrines, or age up. Sending vills can be viable, but in the vast majority of cases it's a bad idea. This is the point where you need to take control of the game.
(2) 600w. Build either 2 raxes or rax+stable.
(3) 600w for yumi or yumi+nag, or (3) 600g for ashi or ashi+nag.
(4) 600g (age up optional)
Age up with this if he's busy sieging shrines or if his army is not that scary. Sometimes they're sieging fast though and you need to push them off shrines before they hurt your economy too much, in which case staying colonial is better. Note that if you decide to age up and have some ashi, send them to raid. It will keep him busy as well as possibly killing some vills, and the ashi should almost always get out safely due to their speed.
Try to keep scouting for semi-FFs. You don't want to find yourself in a defensive position while they age up for free, likely it'll already be too late for you to follow them up. If you do scout a semi-FF, or simply a lack of units, age up. Staying colonial is fine in most cases, but if you want to be totally safe about it you'll want a fortress army. In colonial, no matter how upgraded your units are, you will still have trouble against artillery. Of course, you won't always have time to age. If you don't have the time, max shrines and possibly even send vills.
Against a fortress build
Many civs will try an early fortress timing against Japan, because it can punish an overbooming Jap while not being vulnerable to harassment due to Japan's slow military start. Against this, Japan has to neglect their boom somewhat and age up themselves. In many cases it's also possible and even straight up winning for Japan to play it out in colonial, but ageing up after them is generally a more solid choice. That is, if you can afford to.
Against fast early fortress timings, use walls to slow them down a bit. Straight FF may be advisable in that case, which means:
(2) 600w (shrines + market)
(3) 600g (age up)
Or if you need to be really fast (in which case it may be viable to start TP even with 200w):
(2) 600g (age up)
(3) 600w (military building and shrines)
The semi-FF, also described above, is:
(2) 600w. Build 2 raxes or rax+stable, also viable is just the rax or even just the stable if you know you're ageing up
(3) 600w or (3) 600g depending on unit composition
(4) 600g (age up)
**
Japan
Japan, I have to admit, are somewhat of a favourite of mine. They are a very strong civ but still relatively balanced compared to the actual overpowered civs, and so they have more fun and interesting match ups. They're an adaptive civ that gets very complex and challenging if you want to master them, and they're not map dependent. This especially is a very big deal. The fact that they work on any map makes them, as a boom civ, uniquely playable on the standard maps which explains (or is one of the reasons, at least) why they are so popular on TAD.
They have some great units. Their upgraded colonial army is one of the best in the game and their musks are so fast it makes them an effective raiding unit. The daimyo is a great shipment, the infantry upgrades are decent even after the nerf and yumi are extremely cost effective. What more do you want in your army? A colonial lancer? Sure, you have it. 4 Flaming arrows, which counter falcs? Check. The only thing missing here is an urumi shipment.
Japan's boom is also great. It takes a relatively small investment and can get them a total of about +15 vills in income plus XP from the shrines. 2 downsides though: Shrines, like banks, don't scale with market upgrades, and the fact that they need to occupy hunts makes them very vulnerable. Japan's vills are unraidable, but their economy is all over the map and can easily be harassed. The plus side (for Japan, that is) is that it takes siege to raid their economy instead of cavalry. Siege means heavy infantry which you generally don't want in fights (think pikes), especially against Japan because they like their infantry so much.
But Japan is slow. Lacking a 3v shipment and their orchards giving a slower food income than huntables do, their early game eco is, quite frankly, pathetic. They age up with 13-14 vills (including the shrine) which is very little compared to all other civs, many of which have 16+ vills and a TP. And it's not like Japan's colonial time is fast, either.
This creates a problem. It means that Japan is not going to have a lot of options when it comes to their early colonial start. They have no eco rushes and they have early harassment builds, but none of them are viable because their economy behind it is so bad that they won't have any follow up options. Therefore, Japan's only real option is to shrine boom. This makes them a predictable civ and makes it very hard for them to deal with builds that punish their boom.
Fast rushes do this, fast FFs and even eco semi-FFs can be a pain to deal with. Japan has strong semi-FF builds of their own (always use Golden Pavilion to fortress) but they're slower than other civs' and can more easily get punished by timings. Often, Japan needs to semi-FF with yumis behind a wall to remove this vulnerability, or they have to stay colonial. Of course Japan has no problem staying colonial since they scale extremely well, however they won't have map control and their shrines are vulnerable. Staying colonial against strong (semi-)FFs can be dangerous too, because early fortress pushes become tough to hold. Some civs can even choose to simply take the map and remove most of Japan's shrines, putting Japan in an awkward position since now they're stuck in colonial with a mediocre economy.
Because of Japan's slow start and early investment in economy, they need to be focusing on gathering a large mass from the moment their military buildings are up. This is why eco shipments like 4v are generally a bad idea with this civ. They already have a strong eco, your priority is not getting an even better eco but holding the timings that may kill you. Therefore triple 600 is almost always the correct choice. Like with Brit, 600 gold gives you the choice to age up but you don't have to, you can easily spend it on units as well.
With a wall and yumi behind it, you'd be surprised by the amount of situations where you can sneak in that age up with a 600w 600w 600g card order.
And Japan needs walls. In order to cut corners when it comes to economy or a potential age up in the way that Japan wants to, walls are absolutely necessary. After all you have a bad economy early on and you're focusing on booming, so your mass is logically going to be relatively poor. You can play a somewhat less eco-heavy style and in that case you won't need walls, but you're sacrificing economy and for what? It's not like you're going to be pushing out any time soon because your mass will still be worse than theirs in almost every case, and if they're ageing up then staying colonial and doing a timing isn't the right way to play. Following them up is correct, or setting up your economy for a long term colonial vs fortress fight. Either way, neglecting economy for a bigger early colonial mass is opening you up to some nasty mid fortress timings.
Japan is generally going to be late with their military buildings. To stop the fastest of rushes, you're going to want to build the rax immediately as you hit colonial, instead of waiting for the 600w which is standard. Walls are extra important here. Another option is to hide your buildings when the 600w arrives. If they're good, they'll scout for this but even then it's worth it because you've managed to refocus their army to your hidden buildings instead of your base. This means your vills can gather and you can start new buildings elsewhere. Keep him chasing your buildings rather than having all your vills garissoned. Sometimes you need CM, though (in case of Japan the card is called Enlist irregulars). CM is only worth it if it makes your TC 2 hit units where it would otherwise 3 hit them (jans/sepoy etc), or 1 hit where it would otherwise 2 hit (maces/xbows/pikes etc). If you send CM, boom fully and send military shipments or Daimyo if necessary, otherwise resource shipments and get raxes up, or rax+stable. You're often going to find yourself microing 5 yumi against large armies (walls!) while switching your shrines to food/gold to gather for large batches of minutemen and to keep up vill production (which isn't always worth it).
Japan, much like Dutch, doesn't fit into the TP meta that well. They can get a TP up from 300w starts and send 300w for the consulate and then Heavenly Kami, but this isn't something you do to improve your build. Rather this is something you'd do if you want to steal the middle TP on Great plains from your opponent because it is vital to their build. Even then it's questionable because you will likely lose it in early colonial due to Japan's early mass being too small to defend it, and it won't have paid off by then. This start may only be viable against slower civs, where your TP isn't vulnerable and your later age up won't hurt you.
Japan, being a defensive civ with excellent scaling, are possibly the most adaptive civ in the game. They are weak early, which means they constantly have to cut corners in order to somehow get through the early game and get ahead. This means taking risks, adapting flawlessly to your opponent's decisions and not overcommitting on anything. It also means your defensive abilities need to be on point.
If you do all of this flawlessly, Japan may be the best civ in the game (on standard maps, that is). However, scouting isn't always that easy and always taking the right risks without them backfiring is impossible because then they wouldn't be risks. There is also a certain luck factor in that. But anyway if you're bored of the euro civs (which with enough experience isn't surprising considering a lot of euro civs have barely changed since vanilla), try mastering Japan. You will find challenges you didn't know existed.
The Japanese build
Due to Japan being possibly the most adaptive civ in the game, writing a build for them is nearly impossible. There are a ton of variations and you may even have to transition into suboptimal builds if you scout something unexpected from your opponent. I'll take a slightly different approach in that I won't be listing the builds and saying when they are viable, but listing your reaction to each possible opponent's build. Remember to play this civ with a clock. Always have timings in mind, and know which ones you need to be scared of. Also, “Can I age up without dying?” should be a question that is always on your mind, especially when you reach that time in your build where you're sending 600g.
With 300w, consider the TP mentioned above (in that case chop 25w for shrine and send 300w first for consulate + extra shrine). In the future I will assume you did the standard build:
Start consulate and ally with Ports. Chop either 107 or 7 wood based on how much wood you started with.
(1) Heavenly Kami
Age up with the Toshugu Shrine. During transition, leave 6 vills on food for vill production and have the rest on wood. Start spamming shrines all over the map. Their placement can be important in some match ups (build them on the edges of the map if possible against aggressive builds), but usually you're just going to want to plant every single available hunt full of shrines anyway.
Note that you want your shrines on either food or wood. Gold is less effective vill-second wise, and putting the shrines on food means your rice paddies will last longer meaning you won't have to waste a shipment on them as early.
Against a rush
Against early colonial pressure you're going to want to invest in economy a little less. Depending on the speed of the rush, you can still decide to wait for 600w before building military buildings and as mentioned, you can also go for the CM route explained above, which I will not get further into in this part. And wall! Seriously, wall.
There are several options when it comes to your shipments:
(2) 600w. Use this against the somewhat slower but powerful colonial pressure builds. You still have the choice of building the rax immediately or waiting for 600w.
(2) Unit shipment (against fast rushes)
(2) Daimyo. Works against fast rushes as well, it's a decent combat unit as well as a moving military building. Don't lose it.
(3) 600g (only if you sent 600w first) for ashi+nagi or full ashi.
(3) 600w for yumi, or to build military buildings if you don't have those yet.
(3) Unit shipment if you're still in trouble in your base.
(4) 600g (age up optional). Strong if you want to leave your options open for a while longer while you scout what they're doing.
(4) Daimyo. Strong in longer term colonial fights, and can act as a stable if you need cav but don't have a stable yet.
(4) 600w. Obviously you can only send this if you didn't already send it twice. Use for stable, possibly replacing shrines and/or yumi
Against a long term colonial start
Most civs won't want to play a long game against Japan, but sometimes you will run into it. Their plan will usually be to keep you in your base while they kill shrines and mass up, and they will generally plan to age up at some point, even if its after 10 minutes.
Your priority is booming as hard as possible in early colonial. You will likely not run into any trouble even with late double rax (from 600w), and if you think they will try to push your base instead of simply sieging shrines, boom a little less hard. Walls are still advisable, simply because they allow you to boom harder with less units, as well as giving you the option to age up more safely. Important though, is to stop booming immediately after 600w. You're going to want to mass in order to do 1 of 2 things: push them off your shrines, or age up. Sending vills can be viable, but in the vast majority of cases it's a bad idea. This is the point where you need to take control of the game.
(2) 600w. Build either 2 raxes or rax+stable.
(3) 600w for yumi or yumi+nag, or (3) 600g for ashi or ashi+nag.
(4) 600g (age up optional)
Age up with this if he's busy sieging shrines or if his army is not that scary. Sometimes they're sieging fast though and you need to push them off shrines before they hurt your economy too much, in which case staying colonial is better. Note that if you decide to age up and have some ashi, send them to raid. It will keep him busy as well as possibly killing some vills, and the ashi should almost always get out safely due to their speed.
Try to keep scouting for semi-FFs. You don't want to find yourself in a defensive position while they age up for free, likely it'll already be too late for you to follow them up. If you do scout a semi-FF, or simply a lack of units, age up. Staying colonial is fine in most cases, but if you want to be totally safe about it you'll want a fortress army. In colonial, no matter how upgraded your units are, you will still have trouble against artillery. Of course, you won't always have time to age. If you don't have the time, max shrines and possibly even send vills.
Against a fortress build
Many civs will try an early fortress timing against Japan, because it can punish an overbooming Jap while not being vulnerable to harassment due to Japan's slow military start. Against this, Japan has to neglect their boom somewhat and age up themselves. In many cases it's also possible and even straight up winning for Japan to play it out in colonial, but ageing up after them is generally a more solid choice. That is, if you can afford to.
Against fast early fortress timings, use walls to slow them down a bit. Straight FF may be advisable in that case, which means:
(2) 600w (shrines + market)
(3) 600g (age up)
Or if you need to be really fast (in which case it may be viable to start TP even with 200w):
(2) 600g (age up)
(3) 600w (military building and shrines)
The semi-FF, also described above, is:
(2) 600w. Build 2 raxes or rax+stable, also viable is just the rax or even just the stable if you know you're ageing up
(3) 600w or (3) 600g depending on unit composition
(4) 600g (age up)