These are the two civilizations I’m having the most difficulty with at the moment… How are you doing?
My play is to rely on defenders advantage (emplacements in outposts, garrison dps from outposts and TC) and to counter raid with small groups of horsemen. The trick with counter raids is not to invest too heavily into it (oh and don’t lose the horsemen, even if you just idle vils it’s worth it), I’m assuming this is in feudal. The trick is trading well when you do fight and keeping them from getting too much map control.
If we’re talking about castle age, like if they are going FC into immediate aggression, the best thing to do is try to limit their access to food before they age up. Try to age up yourself since crossbows hard counter both armies, springalds even more so for infantry focused armies.
If you have access to knights that can help a lot with their feudal age MAA. Archers are suprisingly effective when massed and offer a natural counter to spearmen, or onnabugeisha from japanese.
Ironically I’m one of the people spamming early aggression in 1v1 with hre and japanese. What has been the most effective at stopping me has been the opponent keeping my army at home with small raids to keep me off of food outside of my base. When my opponent plays passively, as in they don’t leave their base, it is very unlikely I will lose the game.
What does a typical game look like? Have you been matching their aggression and are struggling with countering their army comp or is it something else?
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Just uploaded today, beasty (malians) countering dark age aggression from kiljardi (japanese)
Starts by denying food with scout (DA spearman rush from japan used to push deer into main tc, then go aggressive). Beasty also builds a barracks when he scouts the dark-age barracks. When kiljardi comes in to attack pitmine beasty is already gathering resources to counter with his own dark age spearmen. He loses a lot, but kills the attacking spearmen. He even ages up later than his japanese opponent.
After age up he uses remaining forces to push nearby deer to his own TC, builds a small force to counter opponent and focuses on getting eco. Typical malian cow-boom. Also drops a second TC at 18min (japanese is playing with 1tc). Only grabs 2 relics. The rest of the match is him pushing back attacks on multiple fronts and taking good trades. Uses small groups of 2-5 knights to harass eco and kill straggler reinforcements.
Once beasty gains enough momentum he can go in and kill the japanese eco with castle age heavy cav.
Obviously a lot of what happens here is pro level strategy. The main take-away that I have from this game is that it is the ability to effectively keep the opponent out of your base and taking good trades that counters all ins from japanese (and really any other civ that goes all in). Early aggression comes at a cost, and MAA are one of the more expensive units to spam. Even if you take damage to your eco you can still make a comeback if you wipe the opponents army and take good trades in the mid-game combat. Scouting your opponent and making a strategic decision BEFORE you see the army is also important.
The most important thing is get good trades, whether that’s by picking the right fights, using the right counters, or using defensive emplacements and garrison slots to protect your eco and deal damage simultaneously. (Note: try not to replace your army with defensive buildings, a mobile defense force can go on the offensive if you win fights)
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Excellent tips, it gave me some light, I’ll try to follow these strategies the next time I play against Japanese or HRE. My biggest difficulty is in the Feudal era, finding a combo that is effective against their units. But FC into immediate aggression is not easy either.