Both OG and proposal B remove the military buildings from receiving
yields on the UA, leaving only the defensive ones. Thing is, since the intent is for a nerf, then these two proposals indirectly involve the proposals that want to nerf
God of War and
Goddess of Protection. Even if none of the Japan proposals pass, the civ may still see a nerf depending on what pass on those two other threads, as it's no secret that an UA that affects both Walls and Barracks would be affected by those.
And on this topic, it is to argue if the thing both find overpowered is Japan itself, or the current state of those two pantheons. God of War has been reported to be a bit too easy to found now, and work too well with Authority. Thing is, God of War is also benefitting quite well from two other proposals: one that gave Brute Force to Spearman, and one that replaced Authority's garrison bonus for a Barracks one. When I did preliminary tests for God of War, I did without these two implemented, so the founding speed felt decent; taking out barbarians wasn't as fast without the Brute Force Spearman, the Barracks wasn't getting buffs from policies (and therefore, needed help from the pantheon to have economic worth), plus I had to keep a garrison in each city that could be hunting barbarians instead. After that congress session passed, I instead found myself with a larger and stronger barbarian hunting force roaming around; God of War now feels much easier to pull off than when I made those preliminary tests. Anyone playing Authority + God of War with all those changes combined now has quite an easy time (no wonder both nerfs to God of War mention Authority in their rationale), so it's natural that Japan would feel powerful in this environment.
Before Protection split the Barracks to God of War, the former was pretty much unfoundable for most civs, but Japan's UA allowed Protection to found a religion and be solid source of Ancient Era yields. However, it required special planning, since focusing on the two Ancient buildings that had a maintenance cost, as well as the largest production cost (110
), made for a unusual build. After the split, Protection is much more accessible for everyone (which was the intent behind the proposal), but I find Japan's UA to be overall weaker and less interesting with the current Protection, compared to the old one. You get overall less faith per city, you don't need the same economic planning and considerations that the old one did, and the UA isn't as satisfying with it as before because the pantheon no longer needs its help to be able to found; any civ has good odds at founding with Protection.
Given that both War and Protection were changed exactly to be easier to found, it is no wonder that pineappledan complains in his rationale for nerfs that Japan is too safe at founding; the UA that originally was making an unfoundable pantheon a reasonable one to found is now interacting with two that are more accessible to everyone and don't need help from Japan's UA to do so. And pineappledan's complaint that the defense/military building yields is a boring mechanic also makes sense in this context: both War and Protection are quite straightforward to play now. In contrast, you needed to know what you were doing with the old Protection even with Japan's UA help, as it was very easy to go on negative gold when focusing on Walls and Barracks during Ancient Era; it was not a trivial build, and players sometimes asked for help to figure out how to make this UA mechanic work.
Since there are proposals to nerf both
God of War and
Goddess of Protection, as well as
one to remove Brute Force from the Spearman that should affect God of War, I think we should be wary of outright nerfing Japan. This civ may already see indirect nerfs during this session anyway on this front, and the direct nerfs can easily end as being over the top in such context.