Help me not suck at Toku

[budweiser]

Explain to me the situation where you would ACTUALLY tech pottery FIRST with Toku.

EDIT: I stand by my previous comments that the way to play Toku to his strengths is to keep a compact empire early, focus exclusively on economy, and then come out of your shell during the gunpowder era. You just need to ensure space for ~8 cities where most of them can serve as drafting centers with at least one getting the GT. Then, if you can survive until gunpowder with at least tech parity, you should be able to conquer a civilization or two to give you what you need to go on to victory.

Yes, inland start with flood plains, possibly bare hills. Worker first, cottage 2 flood plains. Then you can go wild with Mining>BW>IW and you will enjoy a research boost because of the many turns you have been working your first two improved tiles.

I agree with you totally about staying small until you build yourslef a chance to strike. I just dont think you need to wait all the way to gunpowder. You have a great chance to do improved axe, sword and mace rushes all the way through ancient times if you play for it. Those cottages first give you the edge you need to on a narrow research path whihc should also include alpha early for tech exploitaiton. Pun intended.

 

[r_rolo1]

It is always the same thing : people try to play a leader/civ with a strat that was designed and optimized for civs/leaders with other caractheristics and then they decide that leader is underpar just because they tried to make a car with square wheels

So, let's see: Japan has a very late UB that is not exactly shiny ( but definitely useful ), a very good medieval UU and military traits that boost considerabily both offense and defense for a long period and that concur to make excelent gunpowder units. So , people play him like they were using HC of the Inca ... The business with Toku of Japan is war, war and some more war: you will surely keep on par with Fin civs if you have more land and more capital starting spots than them And as some others showed in countless games, being behind on tech is not exactly a defeat stamp on this game ....

 

[DigitalBoy]

Saladin has a very nice UB, and Spiritual. Those two factors put him way above Toku.

The only leader I might say is worse than Tokugawa would be Boudica. Pure military traits, crap UB, situationally useful UU, terrible starting techs.

Exsqueeze me? Charismatic alone makes Boudica better than Tokugawa. It's as much an economic trait as a military one, if not more so.

As long as I'm posting, I might as well say I agree with futurehermit about teching Pottery first normally being inconsequential. An abundance of floodplains with seafood and no farm resources is the only reason to prioritize Pottery so early that Toku's starting techs would benefit from it, and even then, it's not that much of an advantage compared to other leaders.

 

[noto2]

It is always the same thing : people try to play a leader/civ with a strat that was designed and optimized for civs/leaders with other caractheristics and then they decide that leader is underpar just because they tried to make a car with square wheels

So, let's see: Japan has a very late UB that is not exactly shiny ( but definitely useful ), a very good medieval UU and military traits that boost considerabily both offense and defense for a long period and that concur to make excelent gunpowder units. So , people play him like they were using HC of the Inca ... The business with Toku of Japan is war, war and some more war: you will surely keep on par with Fin civs if you have more land and more capital starting spots than them And as some others showed in countless games, being behind on tech is not exactly a defeat stamp on this game ....

- Exactly. You don't need tech parity to win wars. I just played a game as Sitting Bull and the game-ending late game war was me vs. Gilgamesh. He had flight and industrialism, so he had planes, tanks, and infantry. Poor ol' me had only infantry, artillery, and anti-tank. I was quite far behind in tech but managed to decisively beat him due to quantity of units. My anti-tank units were so numerous that they shot down fighter planes and of course stopped tanks dead in their tracks. My artillery blasted city defenders and my infantry took the cities.
Not only that, but you can be below tech parity in general but still at tech parity for war. Another civ might have a dozen more techs than you but not be able to field a better unit than you because they focused on researching economic/peaceful techs like education, etc.
Honestly, I think that a lot of people start playing Civ at low difficultly levels, like chieftain, and it gets them lulled into a certain pattern of play, where they just sit there and build build build, and they come to love traits like financial and industrious. I think you need to play at least monarch before the game gets interesting, at that difficulty level the AI's actually have a chance to win, and you have to start paying attention to diplomacy. When you move up to interesting difficulty levels you start to appreciate leaders like Toku as much as, say, Elizabeth.

 

[shyuhe]

Explain to me the situation where you would ACTUALLY tech pottery FIRST with Toku.

The only situation I can think of is where you start on the coast with seafood and also have floodplains with no other land-based resources. But even then you'll be building workboats first and could easily tech something else (min-bw) before needing to tech pottery.

Generally speaking you want to improve FOOD SPECIALS first, meaning that if you start inland, you're going to be teching at least ag maybe hunt and/or ah first before pottery. Then, unless you have a few floodplains that you want to get cottages down on, you're going to be teching other important things: mining, bw, ah (horses) prior to teching pottery because you're not going to be working a grassland cottage when there's pigs to work.

I've never understood the argument: Toku starts with fish/wheel so you can go pottery first. I want to get to BW asap before I start thinking about cottages. Even DaveMcW preaches working resources first before cottages. And that means you need the techs to work them: ag, ah, bw (copper), hunt, etc.

A riverside start with Toku may warrant pottery before other techs. Early cottages can help you power through AH and BW a lot faster.

 

[vicawoo]

If you have a flood plain, you're much better off farming it until you can get your second city. Food leads to more population/worker/cities. Commerce doesn't. If you get an extra city, you can cottage that city and catch up to this so called early tech lead.

 

[azzaman333]

Exsqueeze me? Charismatic alone makes Boudica better than Tokugawa. It's as much an economic trait as a military one, if not more so.

As long as I'm posting, I might as well say I agree with futurehermit about teching Pottery first normally being inconsequential. An abundance of floodplains with seafood and no farm resources is the only reason to prioritize Pottery so early that Toku's starting techs would benefit from it, and even then, it's not that much of an advantage compared to other leaders.

Charismatic might be a big improvement over Protective, but the Dun is useless, and Gallic Warriors are barely better than Toku's swords unless there are lots of hills. Shale Plant is moderately useful, and the Samurai is a very good UU.

Boudica sucks.

 

[The Almighty dF]

Charismatic might be a big improvement over Protective, but the Dun is useless, and Gallic Warriors are barely better than Toku's swords unless there are lots of hills. Shale Plant is moderately useful, and the Samurai is a very good UU.

Boudica sucks.

I'd rather have good traits and a bad UU/UB than bad traits and a good UU/UB.

Also, in all honestly? Shale Plant kinda sucks. I'd put it in the same tier as the Dun.
Samurai being awesome, I'll give you. If Tokugawa had better warmonger traits, he could utilize them better (or stay alive in time to use them.)

Japan'd be better if they had a leader with at least -one- trait that has a bonus beyond warmongering. Genghis and Kublai at least get quick expansion. Boudica gets a happiness bonus, making her near unstoppable if she gets ahold of Stonehenge.
Tokugawa... has none of that. He's borderline Barbarian.

 

[azzaman333]

I'd rather have good traits and a bad UU/UB than bad traits and a good UU/UB.

Also, in all honestly? Shale Plant kinda sucks. I'd put it in the same tier as the Dun.
Samurai being awesome, I'll give you. If Tokugawa had better warmonger traits, he could utilize them better (or stay alive in time to use them.)

Japan'd be better if they had a leader with at least -one- trait that has a bonus beyond warmongering. Genghis and Kublai at least get quick expansion. Boudica gets a happiness bonus, making her near unstoppable if she gets ahold of Stonehenge.
Tokugawa... has none of that. He's borderline Barbarian.

Boudica's not going to get Stonehenge unless you get lucky, and even if you do it'll hurt your expansion. She doesn't have super-draft gunpowder units to fall back on either. She has to get someone early or it's game over.

Toku's still probably the 2nd worst leader, but Boudica is definitely worse.

 

[vicawoo]

Boudica's not going to get Stonehenge unless you get lucky, and even if you do it'll hurt your expansion. She doesn't have super-draft gunpowder units to fall back on either. She has to get someone early or it's game over.

Toku's still probably the 2nd worst leader, but Boudica is definitely worse.

I doubt most people would agree, but to each his own.

And you can get stonehenge, but it definitely weakens your game due to slow expansion. Definitely not worth it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

+2 is a lot more useful on average than a highly situational UU like samurai. Medieval was isn't a cakewalk, and often impractical. The unit is solid vs almost every defender once defenses are down, until you start getting hit by things like knights.

But the +2 is there every game, and CHA effects all military unit classes, including mounted if you lack metal.

Although we're writing off the UB as trash for some reason, don't forget that even the likes of muskets/grenadiers get access to the promo, even if drafted.

Both leaders have awful starting techs, but Boudica's traits are more consistently workable than toku's, and neither has anything better than a situational unique.

 

[Zink]

I just played my first game ever with Toku. I never wanted to play him since i also think his traits suck. But this thread (and dingding's report) made me give him a try. I played a level lower though, on Monarch.

To my surprise i finished the game with my 2nd highest score ever. Conquest in 1782. Samurai just rock.

 

[futurehermit]

So some people are saying that when they start inland with grain or livestock they are going to tech pottery first instead of going up the ag/ah route?

I find that hard to believe.

I could maybe buy the argument if there are at least 2 floodplains, but I would still prefer to tech ag first for that riverside corn and then pottery second for the floodplains...

 

[futurehermit]

It is always the same thing : people try to play a leader/civ with a strat that was designed and optimized for civs/leaders with other caractheristics and then they decide that leader is underpar just because they tried to make a car with square wheels

So, let's see: Japan has a very late UB that is not exactly shiny ( but definitely useful ), a very good medieval UU and military traits that boost considerabily both offense and defense for a long period and that concur to make excelent gunpowder units. So , people play him like they were using HC of the Inca ... The business with Toku of Japan is war, war and some more war: you will surely keep on par with Fin civs if you have more land and more capital starting spots than them And as some others showed in countless games, being behind on tech is not exactly a defeat stamp on this game ....

Yes, but how do you afford the maintenance on your sprawling empire? Aggressive doesn't help, protective doesn't help, the UU doesn't help, the UB doesn't help. No boost to gpp, no boost to commerce, no reduction in maintenance, no boost to wonders, no discount on workers, no cheap early economic buildings, etc. etc. etc.

The thing is, I don't find war to be very difficult in this game at all. It's the maintenance costs that generally prohibit further expansion.

That's why financial is considered the best trait, even though the ONLY thing it does is give +1 on 2+ tiles

 

[r_rolo1]

That sounds so bad from someone that has such a sig , futurehermit And maintenance is not exactly a big bad wolf: if you want to take things to the barebones, you can shut all the sliders down and sec the thing up ( or even build research ). That works exactly as well with toku as with anyone else... and if we want to push things further the way that the city maintenance is calculated actually favours big empires

And please, PLEASE, don't start another "best trait" discussion. Fin is most likely not the best trait ... the only thing is is surely is the winner of the lazy leverage award: pluck a city, work the land and let things in autopilot ... don't even need to build units or buildings to reap benefits. That makes it easy to use, not necessarily better ( unless you are in a lazy mood , that is )

 

[budweiser]

Yes, but how do you afford the maintenance on your sprawling empire? Aggressive doesn't help, protective doesn't help, the UU doesn't help, the UB doesn't help. No boost to gpp, no boost to commerce, no reduction in maintenance, no boost to wonders, no discount on workers, no cheap early economic buildings, etc. etc. etc.

The thing is, I don't find war to be very difficult in this game at all. It's the maintenance costs that generally prohibit further expansion.

That's why financial is considered the best trait, even though the ONLY thing it does is give +1 on 2+ tiles

Pottery first, build 2 cottages, let them grow while you figure out where the copper, horse, iron is. Then make city 2 near the resource. Then attack. Thats how you afford it. You can worker steal too.

Don't just rex out 3, 4, or 5 like everyone else. Prepare to make a strike. Much like Rome, its about the iron.

 

[futurehermit]

Pottery first, build 2 cottages, let them grow while you figure out where the copper, horse, iron is. Then make city 2 near the resource. Then attack. Thats how you afford it. You can worker steal too.

Don't just rex out 3, 4, or 5 like everyone else. Prepare to make a strike. Much like Rome, its about the iron.

Assuming an inland start, how do you grow if you tech pottery first?

 

[The Almighty dF]

Assuming an inland start, how do you grow if you tech pottery first?

This.
Teching pottery first doesn't seem like a good idea for really any civ. Bronze Working/Mining? Yeah. Agriculture? Yeah. Pottery? Not so much.
Due to this, Tokugawa is kinda screwed unless he has a couple of sea-based food resources around his capital.

 

[eireksten]

Going Agriculture -> Pottery isn't the end of the world when building an economy either. Agri does give +20% beakers for pottery, and with both fishing and agriculture you'll get your growth.

I find it funny, though, that some people think you are screwed unless you actually have some economic bonus from the traits/UB. I wouldn't consider you screwed even if you started without traits!

I enjoy playing Tokugawa, lots of war and lots of espionage. I won't be tech leader (until really late in the game), but I really don't need to be either.

 

[futurehermit]

It's not that you're screwed. It's that you are in a worse situation than if you were playing a different leader.

The AI sucks at war, so war traits are not that valued (Imp/Pro/Agg). Cha is the best but also gives an economic bonus in +2

Maintenance costs are the main barrier to expansion, so economic traits are highly valued (Fin/Org/Phi).