Mills, Lumber/Mining Camps cost -50% changed to Mills, Lumber/Mining Camps, and Town Centers cost -50 wood.
The Japanese eco bonus is only really relevant in the early game. This change expands an existing bonus and avoids introducing a new one and makes the Japanese just slightly better as a boom civ.
Keep upgrade cost reduced from 500 food, 350 wood to 350 food, 300 wood.
While this is not a Japanese specific change, it might as well be. Keeps are virtually never used by any civ that just has generic towers. The upgrade is expensive and only increases the tower’s damage by 1. When transitioning into Yasama Towers with Japanese, it’s the last upgrade you get.
Buffing Keeps directly I don’t think is a good idea, because Yasama/Eupseong/Svan Keeps are already very powerful once you have all the upgrades. A cost reduction of the upgrade would make Keeps more attractive to generic civs, leave Korean Keeps unchanged (which are completely fine), but buff Georgian Keeps (which could be counteracted by increasing the Svan Towers cost).
Eco camp bonus is not only for dark age but also for later age. There are some unconscious benefit, I think. TC cost discount is Britons and Burgalians bonus.
I think that’s too cheep. Instead, I want +2 garrison space in tower for defence.
I don’t think militia-line is terrible. If buff, I want barrack cost discount to 150 or 160 wood (except 1st barrack).
Don’t reduce the university potencial, professors are weeping
I think we can add another techs in university instead. Like more garrison space and change of arrowslits in other post etc. Besides, there can be techs to allow garrison miltia to shoot arrows in Castle age.
But they are already among the best civilisations in the hybrid maps.
The reality is that MAA no longer works at relatively high levels. It does not do the damage necessary to pay for itself, and as a result you find yourself chasing for the rest of the game.
But this is not new today; Japanese have been behind on Arabia, as have Bulgarians, for some time.
Keep upgrade also increases HP (+750, or +50%), +1/1 armor, and +1 anti-ship damage. The upgrade is a bit pricey, but it’s also a “trash” upgrade that makes towers significantly harder to eliminate (which I think is the main benefit of the tower-line upgrades). It’s not a hard upgrade to get once you’re at 200 pop.
It would impact more than just Japanese. I’ve had several games with towers recently, and I’ve found that towers are quite helpful when you’re playing open and want to hold a position. An opponent can dive (putting themselves in range of the tower) or they can use long range siege (slowing them down a lot, since keeps can be quite hardy - and BBC can get rid of enemy siege if you have access to them: Japanese do not). I also sometimes like to put a tower down near a enemy/neutral resources (especially when there’s an enemy presence already there) - usually less to protect my own villagers and more to ensure that my opponent can’t collect them. Towers are also a good place to put a king in a regicide game (unlike a castle, you won’t accidentally ungarrison a king from a tower). One of the biggest advantages of towers imo is that they don’t take any pop space.
Other civs with notable towers: Britons (extra attack from Yeoman), Byzantines (extra hp bonus), Chinese (extra hp UT, all techs cheaper), Koreans (who would be unaffected by a tech cost discount), Celts (Stronghold UT), Incas (stone discount), Slavs (stone to wood UT), Italians (university discount includes all tower techs, and have FU towers), Spanish (faster-building and stronger vils), Teutons (free murder holes and extra garrison space), Georgians (UT, elevation bonus, repair team bonus), Portuguese (Feitorias provide stone trickle, and towers don’t take pop space which is quite limited with a Feitoria economy).
Japanese (and Koreans) aren’t the only civ that use keeps. Japanese aren’t even the best tower civ (though they are a pretty good one). Towers can be used as a cheaper (and weaker) version of a castle. Keeps do have to compete with Bombard towers (which cost gold, making them much more expensive - but the significantly higher attack often justifies the gold cost).
I don’t think Japanese really need a buff, but that’s mainly due to their strong fishing eco (not so good on Arabia, but solid on water/hybrid maps). If they must get one, though, this would be a pretty good one.
While the Keep upgrade improves the tower’s durability, the problem is that towers without any civilization-specific upgrades like Yasama can most often just be ignored. No reasonable amount of towers will make a cavalry raid more costly for the attacker than the defender. A Castle always deals more damage per unit stone than a tower, has a lot of other utility, and also requires far less upgrades. That is why you virtually never see Keeps in competitive play other than with a select few civs.
Japanese are alright on hybrid maps, but they have been power-creeped significantly by other civilizations. The 5%/10% fishing speed increase is just not relevant compared to
Georgians: Doesn’t need a lumber camp, can build the first fishing ship almost immediately
Persians: Same thing.
Dravidians: Fishing bonus is more powerful, gains extra wood on Feudal, and saves wood on houses, which accelerates the first fishing ship.
I would like to play Japanese on Nomad, but there are other civs that are just much better.
TC discount is for Britons. And I’ll always be careful with civs that have strong eco in both Dark Age and Castle Age.
I’m all in for wall & tower defense but not tower rushing. I also believe Keep upgrade cost is a bit expensive. So no disagreement here. But maybe moving the upgrades to tower themselves is the best buff.
Since that will probably never happen, I’d double down their latest bonus - CA +2 attack bonus vs archer (except skirmisher).
New UU “Mounted Samurai” replace the generic CA for Japanese. Here is the stat (in parenthesis generic CA to compare):
Cost - 40w/55g (40w/60g)
TT - 30 sec (34, 27 sec)
HP - same
Attack - same
Attack bonus - +2 vs archer (except skirmisher), +2, +4 vs spearman (+2, +4 vs spearman)
ROF - same
Range - same
Attack delay - 0.85 (0.90, 0.88)
Accuracy - 75%, 90% (50%, 80%)
Armor - 0/1 (0/0, 1/0)
Speed - 1.45 (1.40)
Upgrade cost - 850f/450g (900f/500g)
Upgrade time - 45 sec (50 sec)
And Samurai takes 3 (5 for elite) less damage from UU.
Britons discount is -50% wood. This is just -50 wood (making it a fair bit weaker for TC-booms, but with an early-game aspect). Same total TC-cost-savings as Bulgarians, but in a less valuable resource.
Defensively, keeps provide a place for a few villagers to garrison (pretty limited benefit outside of that though). If played more aggressively, they can deny resources quite effectively. You don’t need a lot of firepower to drive vils off a gold/stone mine or a woodline, and farms inside the range of an enemy tower are effectively unusable. It does require forward villagers, but if you have 4+ TCs, that’s not much of an issue (that’s a situation where you can afford to send villagers out on the map to gather valuable contested resources). Though if you have overboomed with 4+ TCs, the food/wood cost aren’t likely to be much of an issue anyways. On water maps, towers with heated shot deal solid damage to ships (enough so that an opponent won’t want to fight underneath a tower).
Castles deal significant damage and have utility, but are expensive and take a while to build (and take up more space, which may limit where they can be built). Bombard Towers deal significant damage (one-shot most units, two shot heavy cavalry) and cost much less stone, but have a gold cost and are easier to destroy than castles are (though still fairly durable). BBTs are also especially vulnerable to rams (who have enough pierce armor to reduce the BBTs damage to 1). Keeps are the cheapest and deal much less damage, but have durability comparable to BBTs and are still strong enough to keep enemy villagers out of an area without taking up any pop space. If your goal is area coverage rather than firepower, keeps are the best option. If you want to secure an area, castles and BBTs are better.
The problem in the buff of the Japanese is that they are already top tier in hybrid maps. They do relatively poorly in arabia because they do not have a mid-game economic bonus, but this is true of many other civilisations. They can stay as they are as far as I’m concerned (Samurai aside).
