To be blunt, I stink with Tokugawa. I am now winning semi-consistently on emperor, yet still haven't won on Monarch as Japan, though I haven't tried in awhile. With a couple solid wins lately, I decided to give Toku a shot on emperor shuffle and am looking for advice on how to proceed.

It appears to be a continent map, though I guess it could be pangaea; I'd have expected to have run into more civs by now though. Have met Julius and Louis; as it's early days and I'm on a southern tip there could be more civs yet to the north. I got one piece of luck nabbing sailing out of a goody hut. I always seem to fail horribly with my initial expansion as Toku though; by the time my economy recovers someone somewhere is running away with the game. I'm spoiling screenshots of what I can see thus far and my planned dot map; yellow is for a cottage city, red for hammers, capitol will be GP. It looks like Caesar may have some nice land around him, have yet to find Louis.

I seem to have 2 possibilities: with copper in my BFC I can crank out a dozen axes or so and go visit Julius. His capitol will be a bit far from me though and maintenance won't be nice, especially with Toku. I have no pre-calendar happiness, and not much post-calendar, with a bunch of sugar, one source of incense, and Rome has silk if I take it. I'm afraid Rome is too far away to be easily rushed though. I could first settle in the northern red city, right near Rome, giving me two cities to crank out axes from, and a shorter distance once I start going, but Caesar might find iron quickly.

Instead, I think I'm going to chop GLH and try to settle peacefully while teching HR myself and planting a bunch of cottages. Going the peaceful route, the northern red city will probably be settled by Caesar before I get to it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as it sure would be nice to have a Japan win in my HoF.


http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu217/Out_photo/toku%20game%201/tokuempsouth0000.jpg

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu217/Out_photo/toku%20game%201/tokuempmid0000.jpg

don't rush - too far.
your dotmap is pretty, but it requires cities to have chopped monuments and waited 30 turns befor they can startworking (farming another 8-15 turns) their food sources.
that's a thing that i hate to do myself, but maybe you place your cities a little toghter to share food with each other and your overfed capital?

When I play as Tokugawa on Emperor, which I did just recently, I aim to block off a nice area and then cram the cities in. IMO the cities in your dotmap are too spread out. As far as I'm concerned it's about quantity not qualtiy, though your earliest cities should be the best quality ones. Pretty much every 3 tiles along coast should be a city. That even includes the single tile on that southwest peninsula.

As Tokugawa, I have found the most important thing is to survive relatively intact til gunpowder. At gunpowder, you want to start drafting as much as possible, while building siege and other things like pikemen etc. Even mech infantry which cost 3 population points should be drafted if the 3 citizens are only specialists or working crap tiles (like coast or ocean).

Here is how I built my cities in the game I played... Note this was a huge map and that the southwestern-most cities are recently captured Egyptian cities (you might be able to see their names) so they were not spaced as closely as I would have liked. Note that near the capital and further north cities are very tightly packed. When each of these obtains every espionage building, it becomes less worrying that the cities are so close together because the bonuses come per city instead of per tile. This lends itself well to corporations as well.

Toku is definitely tricky. You have to do SOMETHING with his economy or you are screwed. GLH is a great option. The best option, really, imo, assuming the map supports it (I.e., lots of coastal cities). Otherwise, you had best have a strong commerce capital and some good nearby commerce cities. It's the maintenance costs really that hurt as Toku. You have to do something to offset maintenance.

Once you get into the 2nd 1/2 of the tech tree Toku has one of the strongest hammer economies in the game hands down. If you can survive to transition to a caste-state property workshop spam, combined with drafting, he can churn out a very powerful gunpowder army in short order.

Tokugawa is actually pretty decent for a very early economy. He starts with fishing and the wheel which are pretty good economic techs

1) He can research Pottery as the first tech, so a ehad start on a CE.

2) He can tech sailing for early trade rotues and a head start on the Great Lighthouse.

3) Fishing provided early commerce.

The key to Tokugawa is to eastablish a very early economy and hold off on the military a bit. I usually expand normally or a little agressive. Military I wait until the Samurir/musket era unless there is an early rush situation.

If Toku gets a coastal start he is ok (fishing, GLH). I find pottery first for an inland start only pays off if you have multiple floodplains (rare). Usually it is better going for ag/ah to get your food going. Pottery for me generally comes after ag/ah/min/bw.

I think inland start-->production capital-->rush is a terrible plan with Toku in most cases. It can leave you strung out and in a massive tech hole.

I agree that the best course of action is a heavy emphasis on economy early and then go to war later during his periods of strength.