hi i play japan as my main civ but i never can defend a rush from aztec russia or haude:-( maybe you can help me ? i BO is fitst card 2 settlers i age with 15 vills. and tori Gates. then 600 wood for a few shrines then 5 ashi then 2times 4 vills and shrines on gold. but i need to long to get a mass that can defend a rush maybe you have any tips for me thx a lot
My only advice I can give you, is that if you have water and you can receive naval shipments, send the 3 fishing boats and not the 2 villagers, that way you will have a little more food to take out army.
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You need to adjust the BO if the enemy is likely to rush you. Don’t send the 600w crate, but instead send a unit shipment.
Either way, you will have a very hard time holding the rush effectively.
If you want a safe and secure way to hold a rush, especiaclly from russia, get the TC atk upgrade card ( I think its called irregular uprising?), send it when you see the fb being built, usually in transition and construct your base to obstruct cav movement to slow them down and get more fire
The upgraded tc should one shot strelet and ruskets so just micro the tc fire to gun them down( try to keep the minumum number of vils needed to get the maximum atk, namely 10) and they should not be able to siege any of your buildings while you make ashi - and also send the ashi shipment, to kill the cossacks
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i will try that thanks a lot
A few key points for success
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you need to have an eco while defending so a heavenly kami + port consulate into toshogu shrine might be better then the torri gate
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you need to scout out the blockhouse so have one of your monk hang around the middle of the map at around 3 mins so you can make your decisions well.
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If it is a water map, then as another comment said go for 3 fishing boats instead of havenly kami
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It’s the Japan conundrum. Extremely vulnerable to rush civs but lame op to most others. Have to take the good with the bad I suppose.
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If you are expecting a rush don’t go up with torii gates, use toshogu shrine and isolationism on the consulate, or portuguese consulate and age with 14 vills. Is better because provides 20 pop space (don’t let you get housed early on) and 200 export that can be used to make some clubs/shinobi-besteiro batch at the consulate.
Torii Gates is only advisable against civs that do semi-ff/ff timings (Otto, Spain, China, etc) or civs that outscales you on the longrun even with heavenly kami (Brits, Ports, Dutch, etc)
If your opponent is swarming you with ranged units, ships the daimyo to kill them. It does an ok job as a substitute for early game cavalry shipments/consulate batch that Japan does not have it. Is always depressing when you lose it, but well, shit happens.
Also, there are two previous comments that where bad advice:
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Always send crates as first age 2 card if you go for Torii Gates. You will get popped if you go Torii and ship units first card.
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Don’t use Boxer Rebellion. As soon as your opponent sees the difference on TC fire power, it could switch to a semi-ffich build and you wasted a card. Japan is quite weak against semi-ff/ff timings, exept if it hits a age 2 timing itself, that you have considerably hurt by shipping boxer rebellion.
Boxer Rebellion is pretty much useless for Asian civs, except for the triple village opening + nothern refugees + boxer rebellion + village defenses into a minutemen age 2 timing from China, but that’s a niche build.
On the specifics matchups mentioned:
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Aztecs: Is pretty much a fucking nightmare for Japan, even if you manage to hold the initial rush. Arrow knights have the same DPS and 10 more range than Yumi. (And the 800s elo thinks that this unit is bad
) plus Naginata is kind of a suspicious hand cavalry unit. So the combo arrow knight + erk + hero and warriors laming are really fucking hard to meet. You basically need to go ashigaru heavy and pray.
On the rush, the most problematic unit for you are the maces. #### ### ##### cheap, have insane DPS and you don’t have early game cavalry shipment/consulate batch. Do ashis and use the daimyio if the maces counts are too high. Some shinobi/besteiros adding DPS from behing could also be helpfull. Try to add naginata as soon as you can. -
Iro: Go yumi heavy with some ashi/clubs to fend off kanyas. Aennas have a bad animation, so they can be kitted by yumis. But you have to be proactive on the kitting, aennas a super cheap and have really good DPS. If you lazily z move the yumi, the aennas will get the better trade.
Against iro, you need to win the game on age 3. Is kind of hard because Iro age 3 is pretty good, but you just can’t win on age 4 because light cannons are just objectively better than flaming arrows, and you basically don’t have a good answer to those cannons (Yabusame are expensive and not very good as an anticavalry. Is always depressing when you have to make that unit).
Try to put de double flaming arrow shipment to good use. Iro just has musket riders on age 3 to kill artilery.
Go ashi heavy. Yumi don’t have multipliers and musket riders have big ranged resistance, which makes them sort of uneffective. Plus, iro have good hand cavalry and the cuirassier shipment is always a threat. So keep the musk count high. Some yumi could be helpfull to add long range DPS, but I would advise to go ashi + flaming arrow heavy.
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Russia: Open with stable (Maybe a side one) and try to get a batch of naginata together with a shipment of ashi. The reason is that Russia can go cossack + strelet, and the only reliable way you have to kill this is by doing naginata. The daimyo alone here won’t cut. You need to get naginatas out as soon as possible and mix ashi afterwards. Cossack + musk is silly, but some braindead bots do it sometimes. You can hold that with a couple of ashis.
On the follow up, Russia is kind of annoying, because they can remass very quickly, and Japan units are expensive. They do have really mediocre anti cavalry units thought, so Nagis are your best bet. Plus, Russian consume their natural resources quite fast, so you might even be able to pick up a raid or two.
You can even do Yabusame laming if you get to age 3 (Russia don’t have anything with more than 14 range, and Yabusame have 18. So you can just kite Russians units forever).
Iro and Russia are hard, but winnable matchups. Aztecs vs Japan is very one sided in favor of Aztecs.
Hope this helps. =)
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Since many early fights can happen near your tc, I would suggest getting comfortable with fighting with your villagers. Even if you are outmassed militarily, you can use them to tank damage and pick off some units. Their melee attack is much higher than their ranged attack so move them into melee range of your opponent’s units. Make sure to put them in your tc when they become low hp. I think you can check units’ hp with the alt key but maybe you have to disable the smart ping hotkey first since it may be bound to alt-click or something I don’t remember. It is probably only decent when you are fighting directly under your tc and can quickly garrison your villagers. Eastern medicine may be a good tech if you think it is likely you will fight with them.
Also pillarless walls can help. Even if you don’t completely wall off your base, having like a 30w 6 segment wall facing the side you think you will be attacked from will slow down your opponent getting reinforcements into your base and if they decide to siege it it will give you maybe 15-20 seconds to pick off some of their units. You can also use some of the high hp buildings that the civ gets like the age up wonder or the consulate as part of your wall. If you don’t know how to do pillarless walls this tutorial goes over it.
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you putting inside town center 10 villagers?
you gain 9 atack per villager maximum 90 attack , you must use ungather from building hotkey, in order to shoot fast a 90 damage shot to a musketeer etc when they are near, and then ungather villagers to get sources
I would like to say if russia has decently committed (IE 1-2 cossack shipment + first batch of strelet) then the TC fire power card has more than paid for itself in timing, resources and delay so that you can mass shrine boom (assuming you are going with the kami shrine build.)
They would also only see the tc fire power if you put vils in the TC and its always a good ploy to a) place vils in the back so that they have to come into do damage and b) to do that only at the last minute to maximise the amount of damage dealt and almost forcing a commitment
In addition, sometimes its enough just to have the card and that is enough to deter the russian from even trying a rush
a more advance-big brain play (and risky option) is to send the card in advance but periodically canceling to always keep it ready in case they actually try.
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hey, thank you very much for your effort and time for this detailed answer, especially for going into every civ really great!!!