Japans Artillery is not weak. Flaming Arrows are both Culverins and Falconets, and have the best of both worlds, and Morutarus are weaker but more mobile Mortars.
Japan has no actual weaknes, which is why it is such a strong civ.
It has everything it could possibly need, on top of a great economy, and stronger than normal units.
Why is this a thing? This should get nerfed ASAP. This is just another layer where Japanese player get to make micromanagement mistakes and not get punished for it.
Ashigaru speed must get nerfed from 4.5 to 4.25.
Having the same 4.5 speed as Archers which are supposed to counter them means they are no longer countered by Archers, because they can just run away. They can also run away from most Skirmishers.
Being as fast as they are, this is another layer that allows Japanese player to make micromanagement mistakes and not get punished for it - exactly the same as with Daimyo and Shogun. But this is worse. Ontop of being allowed to have poor positioning, 4.5 speed Ashigaru can punish opponents mistakes unlike any other civ can.
Adding everything up, its no surprise to see Japan being spammed in ranked 1v1 because it allows players to make more mistakes, allowing the opponent to make less mistakes and have stupidly easy macro ontop of it, simply by being able to toggle shrines and having their food economy always save under the TC.
The nerfs that must happen are obvious:
Reduce Ashigaru speed to 4.25.
Remove Hitpoint regeneration on Daimyo and Shogun.
Remove 50 wood or food from starting crates because Japan Age 2 is too fast.
Because hey can overnerf them, which would be just as bad.
Japan is OP by design, it is very difficult to properly nerf, without breaking it completely.
It is the fault of the TAD devs, not the current ones.
Its easy to nerf Japan, took me 2 minutes to come up with these suggestions:
Those are few but precise changes. Daimyo and Shogun is a minimal change that isn’t going to make a difference in most games, but on the highest level it will, because it means the unit will take less shots to die, since good players micro their Daimyo properly.
Ashigaru speed is just OP and allows for too easy and too powerful micro.
This will also make it harder to defend shrines, so no adjustments needed for Shrines.
Japan Age 2 is too fast, they start with 500 food and 300 wood, the most ressources out of any faction in the game. France was already nerfed with -50 food, its only logical to nerf the next overpowered crate start.
Those changes still do not fix Japan’s unraidable Economy, the fact that their units are still stronger than average, that they have no holes in their Tech Tree, and that Daimyos can still be accessed too easily, and do too much.
That’s an opinion that may be a bit misleading. Ensemble Studios tried to balance Japan, but when it was disbanded in 2009, it could no longer work for AOE3.
After the release of TAD, traces of Japanese adjustments remain on the ensemble’s patch notes. Perhaps if they survived so far, we might have been dealing with a better Japan.
We must face the fact that current developers who ignore the data accumulated over the past decade are even more problematic.
Ensemble Studios did not make Japan in the first place, it was Big Huge Games that made The Asian Dynasties.
Japan is OP by design, it cannot be easily balanced, perhaps not at all, even.
I disagree. Outside of the Sweden issue, they have done a better job than Ensemble and BHG did, in terms of balance.
Gathering Houses is just an OP concept in itself. The devs can only do so much withou having to radically redesign the whole game.
Granted, their 2 new civs should have had Gathering Houses either, which just compounds the problem.
That is because Economy = More Units!
With such a great Economy as Japan’s or Sweden’s, you get flooded with their Barracks units, because their Economy kicks into overdrive early (Gathering Houses, which essentially translates into more Vills) and it allows to spam their best units.
Even if you nerf their units to baseline level, they will still be super strong on the account of just being able to pump out more units than you can, and earlier.
The only solution to this would be to nerf their units so much, that they would no longer be resource efficient, but that would make those civs clunky to play, and wipe them off the Meta, which is just as bad as them dominating the Meta, like they do now.
Nerfing these civs’ military is unrealistic, this situation will be like early Sweden, with weak military but crazy eco, they can still be OP.
Reason is their vils are not costing more; aging up is not costing more that they can reach higher age than you; they are having double quantity of your army because their eco, meaning most of time your unit may needs to 1v2 theirs, etc.
I have said many times eco leads the game, and this OP civs are having stronger and more stable eco.
You could simply do not allow the 2x cards forcing japan to choose either an All in strat or a FF strat.
As it currently stands, Japan can Rush and at the same time have upgraded units and and excelent eco. This is due to the versatility of its deck
My three changes would be
Only one monk (with the HP and attack of the 2) - this would prevent shirne spam;
Give them a better berry gathering rate to balance;
End the 2x card bonus (adjusting and introducing relevant cards like 700w or 700g);
This way japan in no longer good at everything, it will struggle at the early game and it will need to focus on a strategy instead of just going heavenly kami or shinobi rush (since in the first strat it will need to spend villager seconds in establishing the shines, and in the second it will need to spend a lot more ressources on units instead of just spamming shipments)
Why? This is how you make powerful economies balanced. Either by allowing them to mass weaker units or by increasing costs of their powerful units.
Take a look at France for example: they have probably the best eco in the game. And they are perfectly balanced. Why? cause their good units cost a ton of money.
You guys make it sound like it’s rocket science, it really isn’t.