Japanese Rework Suggestions

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Japan Rework Suggestions

Main issues regarding the Japanese civilization is the lackluster landmark choices for the civilization. Namely that their Feudal & Castle Age landmarks are never given much strategic thought. Land maps = Kura Storehouse, water maps = Koka Township. Castle Age is even worse, with the Temple of Equality seeing next to no use. These suggestions seek to make all Japanese landmarks more useful & offer different play styles. Especially in regards to the underdeveloped Shinto vs Buddhist religious direction.

Koka Township New Bonus: Adds +1 Bannerman Limit

  • Aim is to steer Koka Township as the aggressive landmark, delaying the need to upgrade TC for Bannerman gives good tempo

Koka Township New Technology: Jizamurai

  • Available in Feudal Age, infantry units can build military buildings
  • Costs 25 Wood & 75 Gold
  • Aim is to give Japan a feudal bonus while also making their infantry comps more viable by having the ability to create forward production
  • Jizamurai means ‘samurai of the land’ & was the term for independent farmers who provided their own military equipment in times of war.

Koka Township New Technology: Ninjitsu Training

  • Available in Castle Age, gives villagers +3 attack & +7% movement speed
  • Costs 150 Food & 150 Wood
  • Historically Shinobi & the areas were they came from were peasants who used guerrilla tactics to resist feudal Japanese lords, these bonuses reflect that while also providing some long term use for Koka Township

Shinto Shrines new aura effect: ‘Kami Worship’

  • Historically Shinto shrines were placed in areas of nature & were developed with gardens & animal sanctuaries inside. Shinto religious beliefs also placed emphasis on not killing animals
  • Shinto Shrines when built around Berry Bushes, Deer, & Trees generate resources. Food for berries & deer, wood for trees
  • If the trees are chopped down, the berries are eaten, or the deer are eaten then the temple resource generation is gone
  • Shinto Shrine cost increased to 200 Wood & 75 Stone
  • This means Japanese players want to avoid ‘developing’ (chopping wood, eating berries/deer) certain areas of the map, & to get maximum use out of their Shinto Shrines have to go out on the map to build them. If they build safe Shinto Shrines then they will slowly generate less resources unless carefully managed

Floating Gate comes with ‘Kami Worship’

  • Allows for Floating Gate to utilize the resource generation of Shinto Shrines
  • Has increased tile radius compared to Shinto Shrines
  • Tile radius of 6

Shinto Shrine Resource Generation

  • Berries are 3.5 food a minute per bush, giving 21 food per minute assuming regular 6 berry bush spawn
  • If berry bushes are depleted than they no longer provide food for the Shinto Shrine
  • Deer are 10 food a minute per live deer, giving 70 food per minute assuming regular deer pack
  • Dead deer do not give food
  • Wood generation works like Hunting Cabins
  • Has a 4 tile radius

New Shinto Technology: ‘Takemikazuchi Deer’

  • Available in Imperial Age, spawns 4 deer every 3 minutes per Shinto Shrine (including Floating Gate)
  • Costs 400 Gold

Temple of Equality Provides New Unique Unit: The Sohei

  • Unit stats: Heavy Melee Infantry
    • Costs 125 Food & 75 Wood
    • 2 melee & 2 ranged armor
    • 150 HP
    • Melee attack of 12
    • Cavalry attack bonus of +6
    • Melee attack speed of 1.25 seconds
    • Weapon range of 1 tile
    • Elite Upgrade available in Buddhist Temples, costs 300 Food 700 Gold
    • Increases HP to 180, +2 melee attack, +4 cavalry damage bonus
  • Comes with active ability: ‘Amida’s Fiery’
  • Units within a 2 tile radius of the Sohei take +15% melee & ranged damage for 5 seconds after being hit

Move ‘Nehan’ Technology to Castle Age

  • Increase cost to 500 Gold

New Buddhist Technology: ‘Nenbutsu’

  • Available in Imperial Age, spawns a special Buddhist banner
  • If the carrier is killed this banner will spawn again in 3 minutes
  • Costs 700 Gold
  • This banner functions as a relic but cannot be placed in a monastery
  • This banner can be picked up and used by Buddhist Monks or Sohei
  • Allows for more fluid use of the ‘Buddhist Conversion’ ability

Revert Daimyo Manor Stone Cost to 225 Stone

  • Daimyo Manor upgrade is far too good for the 175 stone investment
  • If quick Feudal aggression is the strategy then the Koka Township would be the clear choice
3 Likes
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Having played a lot of japan at mid-diamond level, i think it is not japan thats the problem, the civ is actually tuned very well and id argue the best balanced civ. Winrates dont really fall off at any particular point with this civ.

The issue is instead - ALL THE OTHER CIVS which need balancing. Instead of making japan stronger, id like them to adjust the other civs so they are not so incomplete/imbalanced.

The flow of gameplay for japan, in my opinion, is the best of all the civs.

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I like all of your suggestions, especially the changes to Temple of Equality and the Nenbutsu tech. I also really like your idea of having Koka Township give a bannerman slot alongside the reversion of the Daimyo Manor cost, it would definitely help incentivize it as the early aggression landmark.

The nature focus/preservation of the shinto shrines is novel and leans a lot into something that didn’t get explored a lot for Japan, I wonder if we might see that kind of design in a future variant for them.

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No please, keep the game simple, this makes the civ way too complicated.

And we need to stop asking for passive resource gen, game should be about fighting for resources and collecting them with villagers (pop cap), with resource exhaustion at some point.

Also, I don’t want japanese to become rus in terms of mechanics.

Plus those ideas are just taken from Aoe3. And there’s a reason why i don’t like Aeo3 and don’t play it.

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It’s a lot easier to balance one civ than ALL THE OTHER CIVS. That doesn’t really make sense if you need to adjust 17 civs, why not just adjust japan.

There’s a few simple ways that japan could be improved without completely changing the civ. The civ is one of the most fun and simple to play at the moment, I don’t want it to become a passive resource civ there’s too many already.

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This is a good point.

Automatic resource generation, without any limitations, can become too broken.

Dutch Case (AoE3)

I’ve played AoE3, and one of the civs that is completely broken, precisely because of the passive “No Villagers” resource gain, is Dutch. Build enough Banks and you already have the best economy in the game.

Supposedly as “Balance,” your villager limit, which also has an economic bonus, is capped at 50; however, this isn’t a true balance, as Dutch will always have more troops than other civs. Worse, since “It doesn’t make historical sense”, considering they were one of the most sparsely populated civilizations in the Modern Age, having more military troops is absurd. I suppose that initially, the design was to mass-produce mercenaries, but nobody uses it that way. They never balanced this because it was a 2005 game, and the patches at that time were annual and “only did minor details, not reworks or remakes.”

Not even in the DE version did they fix anything, because there are already people who “love” to take advantage of how broken they are.

And let it be known: AoE3 is the “least balanced” game in the franchise.

ZhuXi Legacy (AoE4)

When it came out, Meditation Gardens offered so many resources per minute that they had to nerf it soon after, as the massive resource production was excessive.

Lancaster Case (AoE4)

As seen in recent games played by Pros and Top 10 players, Lancaster is copying the Dutch’s problem in AoE3: You don’t even need to create villagers and dedicate 150 population slots to soldiers, and just by troop quantity, and quality on top of that, you win by an overwhelming advantage over your opponent.

The solution given in another thread about doing things like Feitorias in AoE2 seems the most optimal to me: "Make the mansions “COST POPULATION” instead of generating population.

The people who lived in the English mansions “Were people” who worked “overexploited” and took up population.

It’s very likely that a patch will come out after launch to balance this out.

On the subject of Japanese

Japanese is already quite well designed. Its design is elegant and brilliant.

Yorishiro’s system already has its religious meaning, especially the “Mobile Temples” and shrines inside houses, dojos, or other secular buildings; so it’s well represented.

Changing it to resemble AoE3, I don’t think it would be right.

Those were the buddhist beliefs, not the shinto.

The meat-eating ban was part of a Buddhist temple decree, promoted by the Emperor Tenmu of Japan starting in 675 AD to gain favor with Buddhists, and also as part of a political struggle between royal clans. It was made precisely to annoy the Shinto clan. The decree initially only included certain days, but was strengthened as Buddhism spread throughout Japan.

Even so, many nobles ignored the ban and hunted for entertainment. One of Oda Nobunaga’s brothers was killed while deer hunting by assassins in the forest. Daimyos who converted to Christianity also began to ignore the ban.

In AoE 3, during the Tokugawa Shogunate, a radical view of Buddhism was imposed on the country, and conversions were forced, making the ban mandatory and carrying severe penalties. Therefore, it makes sense that Japanese people are not allowed to hunt or eat meat in this game.

But in AoE4, it doesn’t matter, because Shintoism still exists, and there are clans that don’t respect the ban. Now, as a result of the ban, the Japanese haven’t developed “good livestock,” and this is reflected in the fact that in the game they “lack” basic agricultural technologies (horticulture, fertilizers, cross-breeding), which also influence sheep harvesting. Instead, they have other technologies for harvesting berries.

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Good post. i agree with that @GoldenArmorX