Japanese isolation consulate rework

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Since we are on the topic of reworking weird / useless mechanics in the game, I think the japanese consulate, more to the point, the japanese isolation,needs to be reworked a tiny bit,there are some techs which are essentially useless, some are a tiny little bit too good, and some are just outright weird.

  1. Clan offerings: instead of making castles spawn a useless samurai after 45 seconds, replace it with spawning tokugaua instead from the consulate, not castles lol (move the tech to age 4 and remove the card from deck). He can be respawned at the consulate. Increase cost to 700 export.
  2. Bushido principles: Now also changes japanese consulate unit costs from export to part export (50%) part food/gold (50%). Daymios train units a 10% slower. Cost increased to 500 export.

And now the elephant in the room: Meiji Restoration
Instead of advancing wonderless to age 5 and being at a huge disadvantage because of that, allow it to improve the bonuses of existing wonders by a specific percentage:

Shrine wonder: supports 10 more population and boosts shrines by an additional 5%
Statue wonder: reduce cooldown of informants by 50%
Shogunate wonder: 10% faster training time for units
Golden Pavilion: 5% more to each bonus
Torii gates: 10% more XP bonus.

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They dont need more OP mechanics. Cost reduction would buff to hatamotos spam.

Castles to train tokugawa is laming and they dont need stronger wonders while they have the best ones

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Wish there was a way to down vote. This thread is a contender

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I understand your point of improving some useless things, but already the civilization is strong. Japan just needs to survive the early attack and after that the chances of winning are less likely.

Even with useless things it is already well above average. I hope that in the future I can beat Japan later with a strategy that is not rush every time.

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You do realize most of what’s going on here are nerfs, right? The only thing that gets a free buff is the consulate age up, which probably has been used less than a dozen times since TAD was released.

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I think clan offerings is the big one that needs a revisit. I’d kinda like to see it unlock yamabushi and/or shinobi at either the barracks or castle. They are already trainable from tokugawa in age 4/5 for regular resources so i can’t see it being a big jump in game design to enable them a bit further. They’re unique japan units with a lot of flavour anyways so encouraging that always feels like a step in a good direction.

I personally feel japan isnt overly strong in 1v1, but the current design of all the stacking auras makes them go a little bonkers in the late game. I would eventually like to see the pavillion and daymio auras work from base stats and not from “current” stats. Minimally impactful in age 2/3, drastically toned down in age 5.

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I think overall the yamabushi and shinobi units are in a very weird place. First, they can be trained for export at the consulate, but then they compete with other export related stuff in there.
Then they are available for normal resources after you ship tokugawa.

Yamabushi do have some role in the army, as meatshield and/or harassment units as they break down buildings easily, basically they are better samurais, but shinobi seems like a worthless unit outside some cheese involving stealth, and are basically worse than yumi once the range card is sent.

My idea was mostly the same, by allowing tokugaua to be trained at the consulate, these 2 units become available. Tokugawa should also now be more expensive to revive, since he now costs export instead of gold.

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i have to strongly disagree here. shinobi have a solid amount of siege and drastically more speed and hitpoints than yumi, while costing food/coin. they overlap with yumi a lot, definitely, but they have good utility due to shadowtech/coin cost/generalist ranged unit/siegers/speedy bois/stealth.

My honest opinion with absolutely no facts or data to back it up other than memeing with shinobi every game as japan is roughly thus: in scenarios where japan is forced to go stupidly late in the game to where no wood is widely available, shinobi could fill that role, giving japan more options than to just spam ashis. The lack of cards for shinobi acts as a moderator to keep power levels in check. Yamabushi would be the opposite, giving options in say, 2v2 where you’ve lost control of coin mines but need some semblance of anticav, you can train yamabushi alongside yumi to help push out onto more coin mines.

as for the other isolation tech i think the old restoration tech could be more of a revolt option like “all villagers turn into (idk some unit, ashi or whatever) and ships some gatling guns/unlocks gatlings at the castle” it would be more interesting.

tokugawa can’t really be unlocked before age 4, his base stats are industrial levels and changing his scaling into age 5 seems unnecessary. I personally would not like my opponent to have a 1500 hp cav that 1 hits vills running around in age 2

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iirc consulate yamabushi and shinobis are slightly different from the tokugawa ones. I think they are stronger by 10% since all consulate units have 10% buff like royal guards

Also a thing to consider is that Shinobi behave more like muskets due to the fact that they have no negative multi vs cav and their base stats are closer to ashis rather then yumi so they are complementary rather then being a comparison. Its a musket with range resist, always a strong combo.

as for meiji restoration, I think it might be interesting as a imp level tech for say some extra eco for japan. its supposed to be japan modernising so a factory or something

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KEKW not more op mechaniks for japan lamer

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I actually considered both. And both could work. However, I don’t think it is worth 4000 export in either case.

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I’ve also wondered about how to make this tech useful. I think as it is it sucks since you need at least 3 castles for it to be worth it, they take too long to receive, and they still need unit upgrades. (not bad in empire wars when you have 10 castles though)

I wonder if maybe it could be reworked that every new and existing castle spawned a samurai like the USA card that lets outposts spawn state militia. Granted even if it gets reworked this way people may not take it just cause many people don’t use samurai.

One consequence of reworking it to give the shogun instead of getting the shogun via the home city is that it would free up deck space for perhaps either an additional age 4 unit shipment/artillery upgrade or maybe an age 1 eco shipment and I don’t know if Japan needs the additional deck space.

I like the idea of maybe enabling yamabushi/shinobi in the castles since I think they are cool units but I think maybe they would need slight changes like +5 wood cost to yamabushi (since it is like ~10% better than a pikeman yet only costs 5 food more) and maybe some nerf to shinobis stealth/villager multiplier or something if they are to be massed easily before age 4.

I think on the release of DE the golden pavilion ranged attack aura was nerfed by 5% so I would be hesitant to semi-revert that change via a Meiji restoration rework.

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I would like to make it cost more, then change it into make each castle and shogunate spawn 1 samurai once, and automatically spawn 1 samurai per about 7 or 8 minutes later. This can make it a permanent effect, but it won’t easily affect balance due to the long wait time. It could be a good investment for the treaty game.

Culturally, I dislike that Tokugawa exists in the game. He is a shogun, similar to a prime minister of ancient Japan, cannot appear in the new town/colony, not to mention there is even his grave as a wonder. The design about multiple daimyos is absurd too. They are the feudal landlords and warlords, so a town/colony should be only 1 daimyo as the leader and ruler for the people there. It’s also weird to have the daimyo have a real name, it needs a fictitious Japanese name in the game. For example, Masamune Date was already the lord of Sendai in northeastern Japan, and could not possibly be the lord of a new town/colony in the Carolina, New England, Yukon, or the Nile Valley.

It is really a shame that there are too many stereotypes and cultural inaccuracies in the design of Asian civs.

The original one is good and just need a little adjustment, not a big change.
Perhaps make it still can train up to 10 units at once but the training time needs 10%/20%/30%/40%/50% more when 6/7/8/9/10 units are training together.

I would just introduced a modernized musketeer-like unit and a modernized skirmisher-like unit, maybe named New Army Regular and New Army Rifleman and having good stats at their lower price, for the Chinese and Japanese to make them be more the 19th century rather than staying in the 16th and 17th century.

Then, make Meiji Restoration cheaper and change it into a revolution-like effect, turning every Ashigaru Musketeer into Guard New Army Regular, Yumi into Guard New Army Rifleman, samurai into 1 Guard New Army Regular and 1 Guard New Army Rifleman, Naginata Rider into Guard Hussar, and Yabusame into Guard Dragoon. Also, the Guard New Army Regular and Guard New Army Rifleman become available at the barrack for the Japanese.

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I just realised that shinobi doesn’t have a heavy infantry tag, that is huge actually for a musket type unit with range resist.

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navajo riflemen and shinobi are nearly identical on DE now, they are quite strong well rounded units, but they do not counter cavalry directly. they do, however, make aztec players very sad when massed.