Suggestions to make Japanese Dojos viable

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

Hello,
sadly the Dojo card is very underused and with some small changes it could become a legitimate strategic option.
Why is it barely used?

  • produces standard units
  • is not as flexible as 7 vills
  • has low HP
  • Costs 2 AGE 3 card slots. Japan has many great cards in Age 3, so that s a double block

What could be done to make it more usable, while also not making them broken?

  • Have it synergy with the Church upgrades of dutch. So in mid/lategame it is better than 7 vills
  • Buff its HP to 5000, so it is in line with other important buildings (factories)
  • Make it a “2x” card, so it only eats one card slots. This is especially true, because it is an age 3 shipment, where japanese have lots of important shipments.
  • Move it to Age 4 entirely. That would kill its limited use in Supremacy though OR move some other important lategame cards of japanese to age 4 (Yabusame attack x canons, Flaming Arrow HP, Naginata attack vs infantry)

For reference, i did a video to summarize dojos. Most stuff is still recent, except that the queue is not restarted when at full population (i think?)

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2

I think allowing it to train normal units twice as fast as they would normally train but at 230% their price would be a nice trade off, like some sort of panic button.

So a unit costing 50f 50w and train in 20 seconds would cost 115f 115w but would train in 10 seconds.

As they are right now they are boring, and I am pleased that nobody uses them.

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3

personally i think moving them to age and buffing their training speed would be the way to go, japan simply has way too many age 3 cards that are important, you are already making trade offs without them.

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4

They are treaty cards, buffing them outright in supremacy makes them op.

5

you still have too many good cards in treaty, you would NEVER take them in treaty, produce units in places you dont want them to and they train them too slowly.

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6

I think the low hp is probably one of things that makes me never want to use them since 4 petards can easily take out both of them. I think they should at least be 3500 hp so it would at least take 3 petards each and it would also be ~3/4 of a factory hp instead of 1/2.

I think making it a 2x card may be too much of a buff. If it is already almost as good as 7 vills, making it 2x would probably just mean people would substitute 2x7vills for 2xDojos to increase their economic potential by ~14 vills without sacrificing any of their other age 3 cards.

I think moving it to age 4 and buffing the rate (maybe just have kamidana researched by default) could be good because of all the age 3 cards Japan would probably rather have in their deck.

I like your videos btw.

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7

Nice topic Andi ! I would personally move one of the cards in age 2 and adjust the training time accordingly with the age. Something like the Chinese Summer Palace

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8

Dojos are pretty viable in tr20 builds I think. Cards could be selectively viable for different game modes and that should be okay.

:globe_with_meridians::arrow_forward:The first game here shows a successful use of dojos in a tournament game.

9

i mean no offence but treaty 20 isn’t really competitive, like the games balanced around no treaty and treaty 40, and treaty 20 therefor is in this weird position where a timing faction like japan will perform really well.

10

Idk, it was considered competitive enough to have a tournament for it. Even if it is non competitive, the point is not that. It is about card viability in a specific mode, competitive or non competitive. FFA is a non competitive mode and some cards are only viable for it.

11

Thanks for the Insight.
I still think that none of these changes would make them more OP in NR20, but only enable the Dojo to be more versatile in other Game modes as well. I mean remember all euro civs have GG auto include factories, so Dojos even can get some small buffs and still be reasonable balanced.
The only Change that would mean a significant buff in NR20 would be the Church Upgrades affecting dojo. I still think that s an oversight (since engineering school also affects Flying crows / Heavy canon production). And it shouldnt be the full value, more like 50% or 25% or something

Have it synergy with the Church upgrades of dutch. So in mid/lategame it is better than 7 vills
Buff its HP to 5000, so it is in line with other important buildings (factories)
Make it a “2x” card, so it only eats one card slots. This is especially true, because it is an age 3 shipment, where japanese have lots of important shipments.
Move it to Age 4 entirely. That would kill its limited use in Supremacy though OR move some other important lategame cards of japanese to age 4 (Yabusame attack x canons, Flaming Arrow HP, Naginata attack vs infantry)
12

Dojos are a boring concept, and don’t really add anything to Japan. You could argue they are the equivalent of factories, but Japan doesn’t really need that.

If anything, dojos need to be reworked into something that requires a tad more interaction than just being the shipment variant of the Chinese wonder.

13

I personally think it is more interesting than a passive benefit like refrigeration or royal mint just because you get a cool unique building that you have to micro a bit. I also think they require more interaction than factories since you probably only want to switch the army when it finishes training a batch. Also with the last update you can pause the queue to maybe time a large pop of units when your opponent pushes your base. That said I never really use them. I am curious what kind of rework were you thinking of?

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14

Dojos train too slow for army changes micro to have any significant effect. Factories on the other hand have an immediate effect when you change resource income.

I already posted my suggestions earlier.

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15

That’s a good point it probably takes too long for the army change micro to be meaningful.

Ah my apologies I forgot you put them earlier. I think your proposed rework could be good if dojos were a building Japan could make without a shipment but I think it would seem underwhelming for a fortress age shipment. You get -50% build time for +130% the price of units when you could instead send bafuku and get the church train time upgrades to get -45% build time for infantry and -55% build time for cavalry without the increased unit price. And in a sense bushido principles gives twice the production rate for a building without increasing the unit price.

16

The dojo reduction would come on top of other buffs, so you could technically train units instantly but much more expensive, good for panic buttons or timing attacks but not much more. And if it turns out op you can just nerf the costs. As they are right now, dojos cannot be buffed without becoming op.

17

Hey! I like the dojos very much but what i don´t like much about them is that i have to wait until minute 11 or something to put both of them, but anyway, i´m just writing this because i haven´t seen anyone mention it, so i don´t know if you know but not only kamidana reduces the generate time of the dojos, according to my experience and tests, the ones that do affect dojos are Kamidana tech, Bakufu card, Shogunate wonder and Immigrants tech, so they reduce:
Kamidana = -25%
Bakufu = -10%
Shogunate = -10%
Immigrants = -10%
TOTAL = -55%
That means they generate at 45% their base rate (122.222% faster), and if you want, i leave here the times:
Yumi Archer = 134s —> 60.3s
Ashigaru Musketeer = 148s —> 66.6s
Samurai = 154s —> 69.3s
Naginata Rider = 154s —> 69.3s
Yabusame = 170s —> 76.5s
So i think they are pretty good, but i do think they could use a buff, maybe later i´ll be commenting of what kind, but what you guys´ve been saying it´s nice. This is also my calculations, but i haven´t tested all of the units and the combinations, but it should be like that, so if you would like to test it as well it would be great, so we can compare and reach the actual times and everything… Cheers!

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18

Chinese training time from Summer Palace does not vary by age.

19

If this is the case, I guess your could submit it to bugs as well to get clarification from devs.

20

I’ve been doing some calculations and I think dojos are actually already rather strong in terms of un-upgraded villagers. The original video did things in terms of fortress-upgraded villagers which I think is good for comparing it to the 7 villager shipment, however I think it makes it hard to compare to eco upgrades like refrigeration.

For natural resources I used
Food: 0.67/s
Wood: 0.5/s
Coin: 0.6/s

For non-natural gather rates I used
Food: 0.5/s
Wood: 0.5/s
Coin: 0.31/s

Here is what I calculated dojos to be worth in terms of un-upgraded villagers

-----Yumi without upgrades:
6.8 vills on natural res
7.84 vills on non-natural res

-----Yumi with Shogunate + Kamidana (I included the -5% unit cost in my calculations)
9.9 vills on natural res
11.5 vills on non-natural res

-----Ashigaru without upgrades:
6.3 vills on natural res
9.75 vills on non-natural res

-----Ashigaru with Shogunate + Kamidana
9.2 vills on natural res
14.3 vills on non-natural res

-----Samurai without upgrades:
6.2 vills on natural res
10.2 vills on non-natural res

-----Samurai with Shogunate + Kamidana
9 vills on natural res
14.9 vills on non-natural res

-----Naginata without upgrades:
6.2 vills on natural res
10.2 vills on non-natural res

-----Naginata with Shogunate + Kamidana
9 vills on natural res
14.9 vills on non-natural res

-----Yabusame without upgrades:
6 vills on natural res
10.67 vills on non-natural res

-----Yabusame with Shogunate + Kamidana
8.8 vills on natural res
15.6 vills on non-natural res

For comparison an upgraded factory food/wood is worth 14.3 vills on non-natural resources and a factory on coin is worth 23.1 vills on non-natural resources (using the rice paddy gather rate).

If you have all 75 vills on food, refrigeration is worth 15 vills.
If you have all 75 vills on coin, royal mint is worth 18.75 vills.

So theoretically dojos are worth more villagers than these upgrades since you are not likely going to have all vills on one resource. Of course, dojos are less versatile than improved gather rates and all value is lost if the dojo is destroyed.

This leads me to personally think that the spawn rate of dojos probably doesn’t need a buff from the church or other sources. I think dojos are a lot more viable now since the unit queue pauses if you are housed now. Probably the only buff I think that could be good is a slight hp buff maybe to 3500-4000 hp. I think it’s annoying they are as viable for your opponent to siege as your barracks but I suppose that just means they have to be protected better.

Another conclusion I took is that while your vills are gathering from natural resources dojos producing yumi is producing the most value (as the video states) but when the mines run out, yabusames produce the most value.

I think I’ll try using them a bit on the ladder to see how they feel.

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