Current bonuses on Japan:
Shogunate:
When a GGeneral or GAdmiral is born, gain 50% completion towards the next Great Artist/Writer/Musician in your capital
+1
and 
to all military training and defensive buildings
10 buildings are boosted by the UA:
5
2 flat supply in city
25XP to all units trained in city
All Melee/Gun and naval melee units gain Bushido promotion (10HP on kill, fight better damaged, 1 of 8 randomly-picked extra bonus)
Gain in this city when a unit built here gains a level (gains yields equal to 4 * (X-1)^2, where X is the new level gained)
VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 19
Discussion Thread: (5-19) Japan Nerf
Proposer: @pineappledan
Sponsor(s): @pineappledan
Proposal Details
1. Reduce the buildings boosted by the UA from 10 to only the 5 Mainline Defensive Buildings: Wall, Castle, Bastion, Arsenal, Military Base
2. Remove Bushido promotion from naval melee
VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 19a
Discussion Thread: (5-19a) Japan Tweaks
Proposer: @Legen
Sponsor(s): @Legen
Proposal Details
Proposal
Rationale
These changes aim to replace a component that has issues with AI difficulty scaling, and reinforce the UA's GG/GA birth aspect instead. It also tries to address an issue with the Defense/Military building mechanic, which departs from its original intention.
The core issue of the "yields on leveling" mechanic is its volatile performance with the AI handicaps. This mechanic has a history of easily getting out of hand in high AI difficulties from back then, when Gazebo experimented placing it in the UA; there were reports of Deity AI Japan about 10 techs ahead when everyone else was at Classical. This mechanic scales exponentially with unit level by design, and the AI handicaps has two parameters, AIFreeXP and AIFreeXPPercent, that can push this mechanic to extremes. I suspect this mechanic is affecting AI Japan's winrate at high difficulties again by the results of the 3.6 AI Emperor/Warlord tests, in which AI Japan ranks 3rd place in Emperor and 36th in Warlord.
Notably, Japan's wins at Emperor has a significant portion of scientific victories, despite Japan's kit being mainly tailored abound cultural/domination victories instead, and AI Oda having an overall low scientific flavor (conqueror personality, the lowest science/spaceship flavor of the four types, and no personalized adjustment towards either). With the only extra science yields in Japan's kit being in the Dojo, and the leveling mechanic having a prior case of getting out of control to extreme results, there's reason to believe the same happened in those tests. Meanwhile, these yields do not perform to such degree in human hands. It is generally treated as a fun extra that quickly falls off. Human players don't generally aim for a scientific victory with this mechanic in mind, as its values are not currently tuned to carry a victory type.
So, there's a strong mismatch between how this mechanic has to be balanced between human and AI, as well as between low and high AI difficulties. This makes it a problematic mechanic on this civ's design, as what would be balanced on one end is likely to be too powerful or underwhelming on the other. Until the AI combat handicaps are reworked, it is probably healthier to refrain using leveling as part of Japan's design and focus on their other core mechanic, a.k.a. the GG/GA birth rewards.
The "yields on Defense/Military buildings" has a different issue. Originally, it was intended to cover Japan's early game, as much of Japan's kit was being moved to Medieval (the reason why the Dojo has so many effects stacked on it) and AI Japan was struggling to keep a decent pace with other civs in the first two eras. As implemented, though, this mechanic extends its usefulness to much later eras. There's also complaint about it not being particularly fun or interesting, as it just reuses a very common effect in policies and wonders with no particular link to the UA's theme. It is also tied to costly Ancient buildings; players would sometimes report struggles to find a decent build order for Japan due to the unusually high maintenance costs and unorthodox tech priority that comes from prioritizing both Barracks and Walls.
The tweaked UA aims to cover for the yields from those two mechanics, tying those to the
Great General and Admiral birth instead, and reinforcing this core mechanic for Japan. Moreover, the addition of yields on GG/GA birth opens the possibility of using the UA as an early game boost through a free Great General; here, the proposed UA gives one at Iron Working, a tech that used to grant one though the Heroic Epic (instead of a Great Writer) in earlier versions of VP. This should cover the original intention behind the "yields on defense/military buildings", and expands Japan's early game with Tradition (who can take advantage of the early 50% 
GWAM progress and normally struggles with setting defense/military buildings) and Progress (who benefits greatly from early science), giving some extra variability over the straightforward Authority start.
The free Great General and the yields on GG/GA birth should also be insensitive to AI difficulty, neither being particularly affected by the AI parameters and only giving one extra injection of handicap yields (gold and GAP) early on. Overall, the tweaked UA should place a much closer balance parity between human and AI performance for Japan than what we currently have with the "yields on leveling" mechanic, and hopefully address the complaints regarding the yields on defense/military buildings.
VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 19b
Discussion Thread: (5-19b) Japan Nerf
Proposer: @azum4roll
Sponsor(s): @azum4roll
Proposal Details
Proposed Japan UA:
+1 Culture and Faith from Defense Buildings. When a Great Admiral or Great General is born, gain 50% progress toward a Great Artist, Writer, and Musician in your 
Capital.
Defense buildings include Walls, Castle, Bastion Fort, Arsenal and Military Base only. Current boosts to Military buildings provide 2 in Ancient and make early culture/religion game too easy.
Proposed Dojo:
Remove Bushido on Naval Melee
Remove yields on level up
Gain 1 Science and Culture per XP in this City when Units trained here gain XP (note: does NOT include training XP)
Comparison (assuming only Barracks and Dojo are built, and no handicap XP):
Comparison (assuming only Barracks and Dojo are built, and Emperor AI handicap XP):
As you can see, the proposed version is difficulty neutral, and is actually a slight buff for low difficulty AI and humans at low unit level assuming no Teocalli/Brandenburg Gate/Military Academy are built.
It also no longer has yield jumps in specific XP thresholds and gives a much more consistent stream of yields.
As for the removal of Bushido on Naval Melee, see pdan's thread.
Shogunate:
When a GGeneral or GAdmiral is born, gain 50% completion towards the next Great Artist/Writer/Musician in your capital
+1
and to all military training and defensive buildings10 buildings are boosted by the UA:
- Military training: Barracks, Armory, Military Academy
- Mainline Defensive Buildings: Wall, Castle, Bastion, Arsenal, Military Base
- Extra Defensive buildings: Minefield, SDF
5
2 flat supply in city
25XP to all units trained in city
All Melee/Gun and naval melee units gain Bushido promotion (10HP on kill, fight better damaged, 1 of 8 randomly-picked extra bonus)
Gain
in this city when a unit built here gains a level (gains yields equal to 4 * (X-1)^2, where X is the new level gained)VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 19
Discussion Thread: (5-19) Japan Nerf
Proposer: @pineappledan
Sponsor(s): @pineappledan
Proposal Details
Spoiler :
1. Reduce the buildings boosted by the UA from 10 to only the 5 Mainline Defensive Buildings: Wall, Castle, Bastion, Arsenal, Military Base
2. Remove Bushido promotion from naval melee
Spoiler Reasoning :
- According to both player and AI test feedback, Japan too strong right now.
- They have a flexible and powerful kit that gives well-rounded yields
- Their playstyle facilitates clean transition between domination, culture and science victory focuses late game, and they have a safe early game too.
- They are too safe at founding.
- This is because
- The +1on 10 buildings is too big
- they get an early 2 in all cities. This is enough to give a major leg up on the competition.
- This bonus continues to scale up to 10 in all cities, which is very substantial
- This is a really, REALLY boring bonus. Even if it were a policy it would be lame, but it's a UA. It takes up too much oxygen for how lame it is.
- they get an early 2
- Bushido shouldn't be on boats
- Balance:
- This bonus is contributing Japan's power at sea. The Bushido promotion bonuses are better on boats than they are on land units
- Human players have reported making great use of it, especially in combination with Authority's 15 HP on kill. heal on kills is really good on boats, because they can't heal outside friendly lands normally.
- Fight better damaged is another thing that works really well on ships that can't heal anyways. If you can't heal up, you may as well hit harder
- Update history: This is the most recent buff given to Japan. Last hired, first fired. They were doing well before this, they certainly don't need it.
- Design overlap:
- This forces an overlap between Japan and Denmark. Denmark is the civ with bonuses to land/sea melee already.
- Imperialism also gives melee boats fight better damaged, and the two bonuses don't overlap. Japan's bonus partially overwrites a policy bonus
- Historicity: Giving Japan a naval melee bonus is bad history flavor.
- This was added because the Japanese did boarding actions as their main naval tactic during the Mongol invasions. Japan's boarding actions were extremely minor in that war. Not noteworthy, much less decisive. The first Mongol invasion died in a storm with no engagement whatsoever, and the second was turned back in a land battle, and then they lost their invasion again due to weather. The Mongols chained their boats together to counter possible Japanese boarding actions, but that mainly made the storms worse. The Japanese can't take credit for that.
- Also cited was the Imjin War, and this is where the idea gets a bit silly. The Japanese were SLAUGHTERED because of their dependence on boarding actions in that war. They lost almost every naval engagement in that war against better-made Korean ships that emphasized cannons. In 1 engagement, the Japanese lost more than 200 vessels against 16 Korean Panokseon Frigates. The Koreans didn't lose a single ship. The Koreans created their own anti-boarding ship, which is a UU in the game already: The Turtle ship. These ships completely countered the Japanese. The Koreans never lost a single battle where a Turtle Ship was engaged, and they didn't lose a single one in the entire war. The Imjin war can be summed up as follows: Japan invades and quickly wins the land war and conquers all of Korea, but then fails to protect their ocean supply lines, causing their occupation to collapse against partisans and guerilla remnants. And we want to highlight this atrocious failure as a UB ability? How is a historic naval humiliation supposed to be the basis for a bonus?
- The Japanese naval presence was not normally composed of warrior-poet bushido-following Samurai boat boys. They were a rabble; thieves and peasants with rowboats and guns. Oda Nobunaga's "Admiral" was a pirate. Japan only professionalized its navy with the Meiji reforms in the 19th century, and they won their greatest victories with long distance shelling. Ranged Naval. And after that they were at the forefront of the Aircraft Carrier revolution. Their preceding time spent depending on naval melee engagements were marked by Japan's amateurism, defeat, disgrace, and isolation.
- Japanese shipbuilding was awful. Half the reason the Japanese were so dependent on boarding actions was because their ships were so flimsy they couldn't handle the weight or recoil of cannons. They build massive floating fortresses called Atakebune, and they weren't seaworthy at all. Then for the next 300 years, building large combat-worthy ships was outright banned by the Bakufu.
- Balance:
VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 19a
Discussion Thread: (5-19a) Japan Tweaks
Proposer: @Legen
Sponsor(s): @Legen
Proposal Details
Spoiler :
Spoiler Dojo stats (changes from the base Armory underlined) :
Cost: 300 
Science: +5 (from 2 )
Culture: +3 (from 0 )
Maintenance: -2
Experience: +25 xp (from +20 xp)
Doesn't require a Barracks in order to be built.
Supply: 2
(from 1)
All Melee, Mounted Melee, Naval Melee, Gunpowder and Armor Units trained in this City receive the Eight Virtues of Bushido Promotion.
When Units are promoted, gain Culture and Science based on their current Level.
-1 unhappiness from
Distress.
Science: +5
(from 2 )Culture: +3
(from 0 )Maintenance: -2
Experience: +25 xp (from +20 xp)
Doesn't require a Barracks in order to be built.
Supply: 2
(from 1)All Melee, Mounted Melee, Naval Melee, Gunpowder and Armor Units trained in this City receive the Eight Virtues of Bushido Promotion.
When Units are promoted, gain
Culture and Science based on their current Level.-1 unhappiness from
Distress.
Spoiler Formula for Dojo's "yields on leveling" mechanic :
Current formula: max{1, 4 * (NewLevel - 2)^2}
Examples:
Upon reaching level 2: 1
Upon reaching level 3: 4
Upon reaching level 4: 16
Upon reaching level 5: 36
Upon reaching level 6: 64
Upon reaching level 7: 100
Upon reaching level 8: 144
Examples:
Upon reaching level 2: 1
Upon reaching level 3: 4
Upon reaching level 4: 16
Upon reaching level 5: 36
Upon reaching level 6: 64
Upon reaching level 7: 100
Upon reaching level 8: 144
Spoiler Japan's current UA (Shogunate) :
UA: Shogunate
+1 Culture and Faith from Defense and Military Training Buildings. When a Great Admiral or Great General is born, gain 50% progress toward a Great Artist, Writer, and Musician in your Capital.
+1
Culture and Faith from Defense and Military Training Buildings. When a Great Admiral or Great General is born, gain 50% progress toward a Great Artist, Writer, and Musician in your Capital.
Spoiler AI difficulty handicaps :
From Recursive's 1-05 proposal, relevant lines in bold:
| Difficulty Setting | What does it do? | Settler | Chieftain | Warlord | Prince | King | Emperor | Immortal | Deity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AIStartingDefenseUnits | Extra Warriors (or era equivalent unit) at game start | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| StartingMinorDefenseUnits | Extra Warriors (or era equivalent unit) at game start for City-States | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| AIWorkRateModifier | Workers complete improvements x% faster | +0% | +0% | +0% | +25% | +35% | +50% | +60% | +70% |
| AIUnhappinessPercent | % modifier to Unhappiness from Needs | +10% | +5% | -0% | -0% | -0% | -0% | -0% | -0% |
| AIUnitCostPercent | Discount on unit maintenance | 100% | 100% | 100% | 90% | 85% | 80% | 75% | 70% |
| AIBuildingCostPercent | Discount on building maintenance | 100% | 100% | 100% | 90% | 85% | 80% | 75% | 70% |
| AIUnitUpgradePercent | Discount on unit upgrade cost | 100% | 100% | 100% | 90% | 80% | 70% | 60% | 50% |
| AITrainPercent | Modifier to combat unit production cost | 110% | 105% | 100% | 90% | 85% | 80% | 75% | 70% |
| AIConstructPercent | Modifier to building production cost | 110% | 105% | 100% | 90% | 85% | 80% | 75% | 70% |
| AIPerEraModifier | Additional reduction to building and combat unit production costs (multiplicative) for each game era that passes | -0% | -0% | -0% | -4% | -6% | -8% | -9% | -10% |
| AICivilianPercent (new) | Modifier to production cost for non-combat units | 110% | 105% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| AICreatePercent AIWorldCreatePercent AIWorldConstructPercent | Modifiers to production cost for Projects, World Wonders and World Congress Projects | 110% | 105% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| AIFreeXP | Free XP given to units (except starting pathfinder), scaling with game speed | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 |
| AIFreeXPPercent | % increase to XP gain from combat | +0% | +0% | +0% | +20% | +40% | +60% | +80% | +100% |
| VisionBonus | Extra sight for AI units (except scouting and trade units) in # of tiles | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| AIResistanceCap (new) | Maximum anti-warmonger fervor AGAINST the AI | 64% | 48% | 32% | 40% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% |
| AIBarbarianBonus | AI Bonus VS Barbarians | 0% | 10% | 20% | 20% | 25% | 25% | 30% | 30% |
| DifficultyBonusBase | See AI Periodic Yield Bonuses, below | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 10 | 12 | 14 |
| DifficultyBonusA | See below | 0 | 0 | 0 | 320 | 335 | 350 | 360 | 375 |
| DifficultyBonusB | See below | 0 | 0 | 0 | 190 | 210 | 230 | 240 | 260 |
| DifficultyBonusC | See below | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 | 123 | 145 | 160 | 180 |
Proposal
- Remove the Dojo's "yields on leveling" mechanic.
- Remove the yields on Defense and Military Training buildings from Japan's UA.
- Japan's UA gain the following effects:
- Great General and Admiral birth also grant 250 Culture and Science, scaling with Era.
- Free Great General at Iron Working.
Spoiler How the tweaked UA would look like :
UA: Shogunate
When a Great General or Great Admiral is born, gain 250 Culture and Science, scaling with Era, and 50% Great Writer/Artist/Musician progress in the Capital. Free Great General at Iron Working.
When a
Great General or Great Admiral is born, gain 250 Culture and Science, scaling with Era, and 50% Great Writer/Artist/Musician progress in the Capital. Free Great General at Iron Working.Rationale
These changes aim to replace a component that has issues with AI difficulty scaling, and reinforce the UA's GG/GA birth aspect instead. It also tries to address an issue with the Defense/Military building mechanic, which departs from its original intention.
The core issue of the "yields on leveling" mechanic is its volatile performance with the AI handicaps. This mechanic has a history of easily getting out of hand in high AI difficulties from back then, when Gazebo experimented placing it in the UA; there were reports of Deity AI Japan about 10 techs ahead when everyone else was at Classical. This mechanic scales exponentially with unit level by design, and the AI handicaps has two parameters, AIFreeXP and AIFreeXPPercent, that can push this mechanic to extremes. I suspect this mechanic is affecting AI Japan's winrate at high difficulties again by the results of the 3.6 AI Emperor/Warlord tests, in which AI Japan ranks 3rd place in Emperor and 36th in Warlord.
Notably, Japan's wins at Emperor has a significant portion of scientific victories, despite Japan's kit being mainly tailored abound cultural/domination victories instead, and AI Oda having an overall low scientific flavor (conqueror personality, the lowest science/spaceship flavor of the four types, and no personalized adjustment towards either). With the only extra science yields in Japan's kit being in the Dojo, and the leveling mechanic having a prior case of getting out of control to extreme results, there's reason to believe the same happened in those tests. Meanwhile, these yields do not perform to such degree in human hands. It is generally treated as a fun extra that quickly falls off. Human players don't generally aim for a scientific victory with this mechanic in mind, as its values are not currently tuned to carry a victory type.
So, there's a strong mismatch between how this mechanic has to be balanced between human and AI, as well as between low and high AI difficulties. This makes it a problematic mechanic on this civ's design, as what would be balanced on one end is likely to be too powerful or underwhelming on the other. Until the AI combat handicaps are reworked, it is probably healthier to refrain using leveling as part of Japan's design and focus on their other core mechanic, a.k.a. the GG/GA birth rewards.
The "yields on Defense/Military buildings" has a different issue. Originally, it was intended to cover Japan's early game, as much of Japan's kit was being moved to Medieval (the reason why the Dojo has so many effects stacked on it) and AI Japan was struggling to keep a decent pace with other civs in the first two eras. As implemented, though, this mechanic extends its usefulness to much later eras. There's also complaint about it not being particularly fun or interesting, as it just reuses a very common effect in policies and wonders with no particular link to the UA's theme. It is also tied to costly Ancient buildings; players would sometimes report struggles to find a decent build order for Japan due to the unusually high maintenance costs and unorthodox tech priority that comes from prioritizing both Barracks and Walls.
The tweaked UA aims to cover for the yields from those two mechanics, tying those to the
Great General and Admiral birth instead, and reinforcing this core mechanic for Japan. Moreover, the addition of yields on GG/GA birth opens the possibility of using the UA as an early game boost through a free Great General; here, the proposed UA gives one at Iron Working, a tech that used to grant one though the Heroic Epic (instead of a Great Writer) in earlier versions of VP. This should cover the original intention behind the "yields on defense/military buildings", and expands Japan's early game with Tradition (who can take advantage of the early 50% GWAM progress and normally struggles with setting defense/military buildings) and Progress (who benefits greatly from early science), giving some extra variability over the straightforward Authority start.The free
Great General and the yields on GG/GA birth should also be insensitive to AI difficulty, neither being particularly affected by the AI parameters and only giving one extra injection of handicap yields (gold and GAP) early on. Overall, the tweaked UA should place a much closer balance parity between human and AI performance for Japan than what we currently have with the "yields on leveling" mechanic, and hopefully address the complaints regarding the yields on defense/military buildings.VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 19b
Discussion Thread: (5-19b) Japan Nerf
Proposer: @azum4roll
Sponsor(s): @azum4roll
Proposal Details
Spoiler :
Proposed Japan UA:
+1
Culture and Faith from Defense Buildings. When a Great Admiral or Great General is born, gain 50% progress toward a Great Artist, Writer, and Musician in your Capital.Defense buildings include Walls, Castle, Bastion Fort, Arsenal and Military Base only. Current boosts to Military buildings provide 2
in Ancient and make early culture/religion game too easy.Proposed Dojo:
Remove Bushido on Naval Melee
Remove yields on level up
Gain 1
Science and Culture per XP in this City when Units trained here gain XP (note: does NOT include training XP)Comparison (assuming only Barracks and Dojo are built, and no handicap XP):
| Level/XP | Current Dojo Total Yields | Proposed Dojo Total Yields = XP Gained |
|---|---|---|
| 3/30 | 5 | N/A |
| 4/60 | 21 | 20 |
| 5/100 | 57 | 60 |
| 6/150 | 121 | 110 |
| 7/210 | 221 | 170 |
Comparison (assuming only Barracks and Dojo are built, and Emperor AI handicap XP):
| Level/XP | Current Dojo Total Yields | Proposed Dojo Total Yields = XP Gained |
|---|---|---|
| 3/30 | N/A | N/A |
| 4/60 | 21 | 0 |
| 5/100 | 57 | 40 |
| 6/150 | 121 | 90 |
| 7/210 | 221 | 150 |
As you can see, the proposed version is difficulty neutral, and is actually a slight buff for low difficulty AI and humans at low unit level assuming no Teocalli/Brandenburg Gate/Military Academy are built.
It also no longer has yield jumps in specific XP thresholds and gives a much more consistent stream of yields.
As for the removal of Bushido on Naval Melee, see pdan's thread.
Last edited:
