hi, i have read many of the pasts posts and have had wins at monarch level. I wanted to give some tips on playing a war strat using the japaneese.
First off, your not very productive and you cant produce tech advances fast or can you build roads very fast BUT you can fight!
The core strength of the japaneese is to stay at war while obtaining tech advances from the the one your at war with.
War should take place in stages. Take a few cities and then ask for peace. during the peace period, bring up additional units. once your cities are garrisoned with cheaper troops, declare war and enter the enemies territory.
The fight. There are some universal truths about war. sun szu reflects them best. Some of the general ideas about choosing your terrain, using your enemies resources(the pyrimids/sun suz's acadamy) are very useful for building up captured cities and reparing units.
When fighting, start out with slow moving defensive units. the stage of the game will determine how many but as an example: I started out with 4 spearman and about 3 cities. I declared war and moved them into *his* territory. I initially placed the defensive units on very defensible terrain. Once the computer gave up attacking the unit, i moved him to a road and pillage the road. the roads i pillaged are all roads leading from the capitol. this completely isolates the capitol. I leave one defensive unit at his capitol and move the remainder to defensive positions. Note, his workers wont work if your in visual sight of his city.
At this point, i have horseman moving up. I try to bring 2 for every size of his city(a size 4 city, 8 horse). Keep the horse at home untill you have at lease 1 horse for evey size of his city.
Replace your spearman as they get killed, these will be the best investiment you can make.
Once you take their capitol, try to ask for peace. if you dont get it that round, ask the next round. Keep building units and bringing them up. remember to keep the roads removed between the newly conquered city and their cities. this helps on keeping the peace and to a lesser extent flipping. Also, get a road from your cities their asap. Use gangs of workers and 2 defensive units to do so.
ok, you have peace and you have a road under construction to your new city. 2 turns have passed and your units have healed up AND you have a few extra horse coming. Now, at this point, take one of your fertile cities and set him to making a setler and a few workers. other comps will be encrouching soon on your territory and you need to have cities around your capitol that are placed to your satification.
The second war: You had to move your spearman away from his city so you will have to reposition them. Same as before, bring in 2 spearman(or 3) and pillage the roads in and out of the capitol and fortify on a high point to keep an eye on him. This time, take the cities near you. do the pillage road routine to isolate it and build a road to your capitol. Repeat this cycle of war/peace untill you have:
1. all his money.
2. all his tech.
3. all his cities.
Early Midgame wars: These are wars before infantry where cavalary is still good. During this time, samuri will issue in the golden age for the japaneese. They require iron and chivalry. If you can delay your first war until you have chivarly, you will have quite a few cities to population build units with. This is crucial. These wars will be fought by decimating your population and have that population rebuild using granaries. Also, getting allinaces or mutual defense pacts(not sure when you can get these, i think these are with nationalism and hence before this period). Getting an alliance OR have a trade deal with those countries you dont want to fight is a key method to keeping other comps out of the fight. You need to have embassies with everyone you can. Remember, you took out a comp and have lots of extra luxuries. Trade these luxuries for cash and buy luxuries which you can resell to others. have a web of trades with all but your intended victim. Before mutual protection pacts, this is the best to obtain computer support.
These wars will be fought in a similar manner as before, send in the musketeers/pikeman and send them in 2 columns. have about 4 in each column and advance with all 4, pillage with one, hold one back, advance 2, pillage with one of the 2 that adavanced, hold back the one that did not pillage and move up the 2 that had previously pillage. the result is a line cut on either side of his cities running from your border to his capitol and around his capitol. when your pikeman get close, move your cavalry up and forify them with the pikeman. ignore all of his wounded units, wounded units keep moving, wounded units that can't keep up, die.
size your force as noted before. try for 2:1 on city size and dont go below 1:1. The pikeman will destroy a lot of his units.
once you get his capitol. make peace, try to ask for what you can. Rest your units inside his former capitol and once you get them up to full strength, go for the cities between you and him. Hopefully there will be 1 or 2 at the most. Again, declare war and then move troops into his territory. If you can, try to get a back door neighbor to sign an allinace with you against your target. This will distract and suck up more of his units AND win you a friend which you can take out latter.
Late game wars: this is a prickly pear. your enemies culature can be way higher than yours and flipping can be problematic at best. this is the time of panzars and tanks. It should be noted that any civ that is about to enter their golden age, should be allied with or avoided altogether. In my last game, i was allied with the germans from the very begining up and until i attacked/razed 3 of his core cities AFTER the germans had went though their golden age and killed off 4 comps for me..... There was just 1 comp player left at that point and the germans were crying for mercy once I killed off his elite units. It should be noted that i had trade agreements with him and right of passage for a very long duration. I waited until he had killed the last comp and I had amassed 15 tanks per city(or 10 and 1 army). I had about 45 tanks near 4 major cities, i razed berlin and 2 others which he never recovered from.
ok, to the war. Once you get the draft, you want furtile populace civs. this is the age of trench warfare and the begining of tanks. I generally, go very defensive and try to get to tanks asap. I hate offensives at this period of history BUT if you need to fight a war here are some tips.
1. have a large population, you should have taken out atleast 2 civs and have their cities for population building units.
2. use draft to get lots of infantry.
3. sell off your barraks, well keep a few in core cities and build cav with them.
4. build artillary.
5. when war begins, get a defensive permiter up. place a wall of infantry to guard aganst those who approach. then pulvarize them with artillary. I had ended up with 20 plus artillary last game. Also, as you build railroads, build them inland first. this is to protect against shore bombardment and you can move them up to blow the snot out of his sea units.
6. once your lines are stabilized, draft more infantry and send(yes you guessed it) 2 columns of infantry. this time go with columns of 8 or so(16ish in all). these guys will pillage your enemies capitol square. every single square around his capitol. if this fails, draft more! its only 1 pop per draft.
ok, you have armor now and you have a few built. You have a mutual protection pact with a few nations and there is this web of allinances built up. You want to start a war and take out one of your neighbors but you need to think carefully on which one you declare war on. If you have MPPS with 2 of the 5 comps, and your allies straddle another comp that is very high on the score chart, declare war on him. place a bunch of workers near his border OR place an unprotected artillery on the border. he will go for that like a moth to a flame.
Now, his ally might be a smaller country on your back side. this is the country you really wanted to take out anyway. you grab his land and take his tech by using tanks/get a city/getting peace/declaring war in the same turn. Defend yourself against the bigger boy but dont use units on him. you want land from the weaker/lesser defended ally.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
goverments/build stratgies.
being militarisic, you have a higher chance of obtaining elite units and obtaining a leader. that is how you build your wonders. if you get a leader, try to obtain a key advance to build a wonder. pay a high price for it and build the wonder in one turn.
when your not at war, i change governments. I go from despotism -> monarchy or communism -> demo/rep... depending. There are periods between conflicts that you need to build roads and update trade deals. Rember to first build a road to the capitol, this makes hauling their gold home much easier!
build stratgies: japs get barraks and temples cheap but pay full price on marketplaces, libaries, graneries. Your going to population build during war times, to make sure you get a granary and baraks in every city. during latter periods, use temples and harbors to keep the population in line. Given that your population is not very large, you dont need as many luxaries but you will need a few. trading for them is ok but trading all your extra luxuries will help fund future campaigns and let you put more resources into tech developments. You will never be the top tech power untill you have won by kill off all the other civs.
ok, the game start is crucial. Your starting point needs to be taken into consideration. I will not play a map that i dont like, i will sometimes make a new game 10 times and then restart after about 10 turns after that. Know what is a good starting point for you. As I have become a better player, more starting locations are suitable for me.
Starting sites: I will allow myself one move before placing my home city. I either have my city on water(harbor) or I place it inland. I try to build it on a hill(defensive purposes). I also look to see if i have a few grassland or floodplains around me. one or the other is crucial. Starting in the middle of the jungle takes way too long to get them going.
Ok, i have started my city on a not so good place. the food is slow but I have flood plains near by. I have gold/luxaries within reach of my home city. I will build warriors until i can time a settler build and then build a barraks. This settler will be place on a hill near flood plains. my worker had irrigated a few tiles near my home city(the ones the city is using) and build roads. My worker is currently building a road toward the new city site and i have a warrior placed positioned at my desired location. Placing a warrior there prevents barbarians from forming near.
I have my first city! I will irrigate near it and will have looked for population build sites near by. these can be in jungle but flood plains if preferred. You can place a city on the edge of the floodplains your second city went onto. I try for 6 cities in jungle or in floodplains. if the cities are in jungle, build a warrior, workers and walls. have your capitol build veteran warriors or spearman depending on how soon a new settler will pop. If your settler-building city is about to exceed size 4 and you have 2 warriors inside, population build a granary.
ok, you have a military city, population city and one or two population-building cities. Look at building around your capitol. Your warriors should have the area scouted and the nearest computer opponent scouted(this includes where their capitol is). Try to position a warrior at the back of their civilization to keep an eye on where they expand to. The choice locations for additional cities should be for both defense and lux resources and for key resources such as iron and horses. Since I go for horse back riding first and iron working second, these resources usually pop fairly close to my city. Once you research either horseback riding or iron working, do not trade these with a neighboring civ or any civ for that matter. Keep some cash on hand to make embassies asap. make an embassy with the civ's closest to you.
ok, you have 3 cities around your capitol and 2 population cities(possibly still surrounded by jungle) you have roads leading to your closest neighbor and one or 2 tiles clear in jungle. Its time to gear up for war baby! you need granaries. The comp has probably completed a wonder or two so your time is ticking. It has also exceeded your ability to produce cities so you need to *aquire* some cities.
Gearing up for war requires a granary in every city then a barraks. the tough part is the granary. its expensive for japs but the barraks is cheap. Also, get a temple in your capitol for the culture it produces. This helps on flipping.
At this point, you have your capitol producing spearman, your population building cities with graneries, your settler build city building settlers with a granary and your two cities around your capitol in the process of building a granary. At this point get spearman. The previous mentioned strat stats you need 4 or so. Once you have these, move them toward the enemy controlled area. start to work on horseman. Once you have one or 2 horseman built, declare war and keep the horse at home to defend against your enemies attack. Build up 4 to 6 horse and then proceed with your attack.
Place up to 6 population build cities, tighly packed in jungle, removed from your capitol. this is an area where it will be very corrupted in the future and not of much use.
After taking his capitol and his cities closest to you, set cities near your capitol. Place them to that one to 3 tiles over lap. Place for defensive/resource reasons. Iron/horses take precedence over defensive location or food for that matter. If food is in short supply build on water if you can. Also build city walls. Their very cheap. If you build walls, build a warrior then worker once the growth is zero. If the food supply is ok, build warrior, warrior, granary(population build if your at 4 size) then get a barracks and granary.
conqured cities get a granary + barraks and temple if the conqured culature has a high culature rating(egyptians in particular)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
end of part one.
First off, your not very productive and you cant produce tech advances fast or can you build roads very fast BUT you can fight!
The core strength of the japaneese is to stay at war while obtaining tech advances from the the one your at war with.
War should take place in stages. Take a few cities and then ask for peace. during the peace period, bring up additional units. once your cities are garrisoned with cheaper troops, declare war and enter the enemies territory.
The fight. There are some universal truths about war. sun szu reflects them best. Some of the general ideas about choosing your terrain, using your enemies resources(the pyrimids/sun suz's acadamy) are very useful for building up captured cities and reparing units.
When fighting, start out with slow moving defensive units. the stage of the game will determine how many but as an example: I started out with 4 spearman and about 3 cities. I declared war and moved them into *his* territory. I initially placed the defensive units on very defensible terrain. Once the computer gave up attacking the unit, i moved him to a road and pillage the road. the roads i pillaged are all roads leading from the capitol. this completely isolates the capitol. I leave one defensive unit at his capitol and move the remainder to defensive positions. Note, his workers wont work if your in visual sight of his city.
At this point, i have horseman moving up. I try to bring 2 for every size of his city(a size 4 city, 8 horse). Keep the horse at home untill you have at lease 1 horse for evey size of his city.
Replace your spearman as they get killed, these will be the best investiment you can make.
Once you take their capitol, try to ask for peace. if you dont get it that round, ask the next round. Keep building units and bringing them up. remember to keep the roads removed between the newly conquered city and their cities. this helps on keeping the peace and to a lesser extent flipping. Also, get a road from your cities their asap. Use gangs of workers and 2 defensive units to do so.
ok, you have peace and you have a road under construction to your new city. 2 turns have passed and your units have healed up AND you have a few extra horse coming. Now, at this point, take one of your fertile cities and set him to making a setler and a few workers. other comps will be encrouching soon on your territory and you need to have cities around your capitol that are placed to your satification.
The second war: You had to move your spearman away from his city so you will have to reposition them. Same as before, bring in 2 spearman(or 3) and pillage the roads in and out of the capitol and fortify on a high point to keep an eye on him. This time, take the cities near you. do the pillage road routine to isolate it and build a road to your capitol. Repeat this cycle of war/peace untill you have:
1. all his money.
2. all his tech.
3. all his cities.
Early Midgame wars: These are wars before infantry where cavalary is still good. During this time, samuri will issue in the golden age for the japaneese. They require iron and chivalry. If you can delay your first war until you have chivarly, you will have quite a few cities to population build units with. This is crucial. These wars will be fought by decimating your population and have that population rebuild using granaries. Also, getting allinaces or mutual defense pacts(not sure when you can get these, i think these are with nationalism and hence before this period). Getting an alliance OR have a trade deal with those countries you dont want to fight is a key method to keeping other comps out of the fight. You need to have embassies with everyone you can. Remember, you took out a comp and have lots of extra luxuries. Trade these luxuries for cash and buy luxuries which you can resell to others. have a web of trades with all but your intended victim. Before mutual protection pacts, this is the best to obtain computer support.
These wars will be fought in a similar manner as before, send in the musketeers/pikeman and send them in 2 columns. have about 4 in each column and advance with all 4, pillage with one, hold one back, advance 2, pillage with one of the 2 that adavanced, hold back the one that did not pillage and move up the 2 that had previously pillage. the result is a line cut on either side of his cities running from your border to his capitol and around his capitol. when your pikeman get close, move your cavalry up and forify them with the pikeman. ignore all of his wounded units, wounded units keep moving, wounded units that can't keep up, die.
size your force as noted before. try for 2:1 on city size and dont go below 1:1. The pikeman will destroy a lot of his units.
once you get his capitol. make peace, try to ask for what you can. Rest your units inside his former capitol and once you get them up to full strength, go for the cities between you and him. Hopefully there will be 1 or 2 at the most. Again, declare war and then move troops into his territory. If you can, try to get a back door neighbor to sign an allinace with you against your target. This will distract and suck up more of his units AND win you a friend which you can take out latter.
Late game wars: this is a prickly pear. your enemies culature can be way higher than yours and flipping can be problematic at best. this is the time of panzars and tanks. It should be noted that any civ that is about to enter their golden age, should be allied with or avoided altogether. In my last game, i was allied with the germans from the very begining up and until i attacked/razed 3 of his core cities AFTER the germans had went though their golden age and killed off 4 comps for me..... There was just 1 comp player left at that point and the germans were crying for mercy once I killed off his elite units. It should be noted that i had trade agreements with him and right of passage for a very long duration. I waited until he had killed the last comp and I had amassed 15 tanks per city(or 10 and 1 army). I had about 45 tanks near 4 major cities, i razed berlin and 2 others which he never recovered from.
ok, to the war. Once you get the draft, you want furtile populace civs. this is the age of trench warfare and the begining of tanks. I generally, go very defensive and try to get to tanks asap. I hate offensives at this period of history BUT if you need to fight a war here are some tips.
1. have a large population, you should have taken out atleast 2 civs and have their cities for population building units.
2. use draft to get lots of infantry.
3. sell off your barraks, well keep a few in core cities and build cav with them.
4. build artillary.
5. when war begins, get a defensive permiter up. place a wall of infantry to guard aganst those who approach. then pulvarize them with artillary. I had ended up with 20 plus artillary last game. Also, as you build railroads, build them inland first. this is to protect against shore bombardment and you can move them up to blow the snot out of his sea units.
6. once your lines are stabilized, draft more infantry and send(yes you guessed it) 2 columns of infantry. this time go with columns of 8 or so(16ish in all). these guys will pillage your enemies capitol square. every single square around his capitol. if this fails, draft more! its only 1 pop per draft.
ok, you have armor now and you have a few built. You have a mutual protection pact with a few nations and there is this web of allinances built up. You want to start a war and take out one of your neighbors but you need to think carefully on which one you declare war on. If you have MPPS with 2 of the 5 comps, and your allies straddle another comp that is very high on the score chart, declare war on him. place a bunch of workers near his border OR place an unprotected artillery on the border. he will go for that like a moth to a flame.
Now, his ally might be a smaller country on your back side. this is the country you really wanted to take out anyway. you grab his land and take his tech by using tanks/get a city/getting peace/declaring war in the same turn. Defend yourself against the bigger boy but dont use units on him. you want land from the weaker/lesser defended ally.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
goverments/build stratgies.
being militarisic, you have a higher chance of obtaining elite units and obtaining a leader. that is how you build your wonders. if you get a leader, try to obtain a key advance to build a wonder. pay a high price for it and build the wonder in one turn.
when your not at war, i change governments. I go from despotism -> monarchy or communism -> demo/rep... depending. There are periods between conflicts that you need to build roads and update trade deals. Rember to first build a road to the capitol, this makes hauling their gold home much easier!
build stratgies: japs get barraks and temples cheap but pay full price on marketplaces, libaries, graneries. Your going to population build during war times, to make sure you get a granary and baraks in every city. during latter periods, use temples and harbors to keep the population in line. Given that your population is not very large, you dont need as many luxaries but you will need a few. trading for them is ok but trading all your extra luxuries will help fund future campaigns and let you put more resources into tech developments. You will never be the top tech power untill you have won by kill off all the other civs.
ok, the game start is crucial. Your starting point needs to be taken into consideration. I will not play a map that i dont like, i will sometimes make a new game 10 times and then restart after about 10 turns after that. Know what is a good starting point for you. As I have become a better player, more starting locations are suitable for me.
Starting sites: I will allow myself one move before placing my home city. I either have my city on water(harbor) or I place it inland. I try to build it on a hill(defensive purposes). I also look to see if i have a few grassland or floodplains around me. one or the other is crucial. Starting in the middle of the jungle takes way too long to get them going.
Ok, i have started my city on a not so good place. the food is slow but I have flood plains near by. I have gold/luxaries within reach of my home city. I will build warriors until i can time a settler build and then build a barraks. This settler will be place on a hill near flood plains. my worker had irrigated a few tiles near my home city(the ones the city is using) and build roads. My worker is currently building a road toward the new city site and i have a warrior placed positioned at my desired location. Placing a warrior there prevents barbarians from forming near.
I have my first city! I will irrigate near it and will have looked for population build sites near by. these can be in jungle but flood plains if preferred. You can place a city on the edge of the floodplains your second city went onto. I try for 6 cities in jungle or in floodplains. if the cities are in jungle, build a warrior, workers and walls. have your capitol build veteran warriors or spearman depending on how soon a new settler will pop. If your settler-building city is about to exceed size 4 and you have 2 warriors inside, population build a granary.
ok, you have a military city, population city and one or two population-building cities. Look at building around your capitol. Your warriors should have the area scouted and the nearest computer opponent scouted(this includes where their capitol is). Try to position a warrior at the back of their civilization to keep an eye on where they expand to. The choice locations for additional cities should be for both defense and lux resources and for key resources such as iron and horses. Since I go for horse back riding first and iron working second, these resources usually pop fairly close to my city. Once you research either horseback riding or iron working, do not trade these with a neighboring civ or any civ for that matter. Keep some cash on hand to make embassies asap. make an embassy with the civ's closest to you.
ok, you have 3 cities around your capitol and 2 population cities(possibly still surrounded by jungle) you have roads leading to your closest neighbor and one or 2 tiles clear in jungle. Its time to gear up for war baby! you need granaries. The comp has probably completed a wonder or two so your time is ticking. It has also exceeded your ability to produce cities so you need to *aquire* some cities.
Gearing up for war requires a granary in every city then a barraks. the tough part is the granary. its expensive for japs but the barraks is cheap. Also, get a temple in your capitol for the culture it produces. This helps on flipping.
At this point, you have your capitol producing spearman, your population building cities with graneries, your settler build city building settlers with a granary and your two cities around your capitol in the process of building a granary. At this point get spearman. The previous mentioned strat stats you need 4 or so. Once you have these, move them toward the enemy controlled area. start to work on horseman. Once you have one or 2 horseman built, declare war and keep the horse at home to defend against your enemies attack. Build up 4 to 6 horse and then proceed with your attack.
Place up to 6 population build cities, tighly packed in jungle, removed from your capitol. this is an area where it will be very corrupted in the future and not of much use.
After taking his capitol and his cities closest to you, set cities near your capitol. Place them to that one to 3 tiles over lap. Place for defensive/resource reasons. Iron/horses take precedence over defensive location or food for that matter. If food is in short supply build on water if you can. Also build city walls. Their very cheap. If you build walls, build a warrior then worker once the growth is zero. If the food supply is ok, build warrior, warrior, granary(population build if your at 4 size) then get a barracks and granary.
conqured cities get a granary + barraks and temple if the conqured culature has a high culature rating(egyptians in particular)
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end of part one.
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