Japan - Hojo Tokimune Thread

[Homusubi]

The Mongol Invasions of Japan are the exact opposite of the Spanish Armada: rather than a celebrated military victory that was actually due to the weather, it's a celebrated typhoon incident that was actually due to the defending forces.

 

[bcaiko]

I'm definitely interested in getting my hands on this build of Japan. I agree with those who say that the Meiji Restoration UA encourages Japan to go somewhat wide with medium sized cities and Hojo's Divine Wind encourages Japan to take over coastal cities to expand their empire.

Japan seems cool. Some fun abilities and bonuses.
I appreciated the heads up from the other thread that got locked. There must be a better way to do this from an organizational standpoint, surely.

Yeah, I definitely agree. Finding the discussion of the new information by digging into page 10 of an ongoing thread is less than efficient.

Just regarding the naming of Meiji Restoration, does anybody else find it strange?

First off, the Meiji Restoration was a specific time in Japan's history (late 19th, early 20th century), yet the UA is being applied to this civ's entire history in-game.

More significantly for me though, what does it have to do with densely built cities? As far as I could tell, it coincided with industrialisation on a western model, which comes with increased urbanization. Not something unique to Japan right?

So I think the idea is to represent the rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and modernisation that Japan went through in the Meiji restoration period. You could argue this should be era specific, but i don't think that really matters, it's a cool ability with historical relevance.

I think you properly intuit why the name was chosen. The Meiji restoration is when Japan managed to modernize with such efficiency that it shocked the world by defeating Russia in a naval war (which peace Teddy Roosevelt won the Nobel Prize for negotiating). The Meiji era was a time of astonishing efficiency and organization for Japan.

I'm not sure what one has to do with the other. I figure they wanted to show modern Japan's dense city populations and industrialization and slap a name from recent Japanese history on it.

Yeah, I agree it's somewhat dubious. It's also a little jarring to have the UA named for a time period so far removed from Hojo's time period. He predates even the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate (which the Meiji restoration displaced).

I think it has more to do with the consolidation of power in the Emperor's hands and away from the daimyos. So essentially it was ending a form of feudalism and industrialization at the same time. I guess it's a symbol of change and modernisation so I can see why they used it.

No. Power wasn't more centralized to the Emperor than it was to the Shogun his restoration displaced. The Shogun had plenty of centralized power prior to the final breakdown of the bakufu government leading to the Meiji restoration.

However, the Meiji leaders (who were not the Emperor) did quickly realize that modernizing Japan was the only possible way they could compete with an increasingly belligerent West in the face of a China that was soundly humiliated by the Western powers.

Divine Wind land unit bonus is highly situational making it rather weak but overall everything else is rather solid.

Yeah, all of the leaders' unique abilities are supposed to be situational. Most seem to be temporally limited, but this one can at least be useful the entire game on certain terrain.

 

[bite]

Moderator Action: Thread Title Changed

 

[Mudokon Pop]

As a player who's not overtly aggressive (unless I get a power tech first!), defensive civs suit me rather well.

This may very well be the first CIV I play.

 

[bcaiko]

As a player who's not overtly aggressive (unless I get a power tech first!), defensive civs suit me rather well.

This may very well be the first CIV I play.

Interestingly, I think this version of Japan could be played either defensively or offensively. Obviously, the bonuses could be used to hunker down, build several adjacent cities, and use the Divine Wind ability with Samurai to protect your victory plan. (What that victory plan should be, though, I'm not so sure.)

But I plan to do the opposite with Japan - if there are coastal cities at all near my Japan, I'll quickly acquire them with a Divine Wind supported navy. I'm going to expand aggressively with medium sized cities and establish a naval empire!

 

[Homusubi]

Interestingly, I think this version of Japan could be played either defensively or offensively. Obviously, the bonuses could be used to hunker down, build several adjacent cities, and use the Divine Wind ability with Samurai to protect your victory plan. (What that victory plan should be, though, I'm not so sure.)

But I plan to do the opposite with Japan - if there are coastal cities at all near my Japan, I'll quickly acquire them with a Divine Wind supported navy. I'm going to expand aggressively with medium sized cities and establish a naval empire!

I now know what my first CiVI playthrough is going to be...

 

[Haig]

I'm going Imperial Japan all the way and create a large empire.

 

[Abraxis]

I was watching Quill's playthrough and saw the early civic "Natural Philosophy" which doubles adjacency bonus for campuses. Stacking on top of Japan's inate adjacency bonus I have a feeling getting 3 or 4 cities out asap within range of eachother, all around a mountain, may lead to some very strong science output.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

There is a similar civic for holy district as well and I guess later on you will have such stuff for the other districts as well.

 

[Seek]

There's also a CS suzerain ability which allows entertainment and *industrial* districts to extend an additional 3 tiles, iirc. They will be mandatory allies for Japan.

 

[Abraxis]

I thought Egypt would be my favorite for building megacities, now I'm thinking Japan might be best. Does anyone know what the bottom range limit for city placement is? I think putting out lots of cities all as close as possible to eachother and just having one big sprawl of development will be a lot of fun.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

There must be atleast 3 tiles between two cities which allow cities to build their district next to each other. Packing cities tight together will be a decent way to play. If you run out of land you can still assign citizens as specialists but how good these are I do not know.

 

[Cyon]

I'm really psyched to play Japan! That three of the disricts are half cost is extra icing on the cake. Policy and CS bonus synergy will be interesting to try out!

 

[Gali]

The Tokugawa shogunate was not all that centralized. The Shogun himself held little actual power or influence. The real power was held by a council of inner circle Tokugawa vassals. The Tokugawa had to maintain order in Kyoto during the Bakumatsu by delegating the job to a senior vassal Kasamori. The government is also called Bakufu-han for a reason. It had the shogunate bakufu and domains Han. Those separate power centers allowed for independent forces such as Choshu and Satsuma to challenge the shogunate openly. Those domains even went for British foreign aid while the shogunate aligned with the French. In China the centralized imperial bureaucracy and military allowed the reactionaries to more effectively stifle opposition. We haven't even mentioned the Emperor yet who provided another entire center of potential authority.

The shogunate had managed to maintain a military dominance and massive hostage system through enforced residence in Edo. Forcing heirs to be raised in Tokyo weakened their ties to their domain. But the reigns were kept lax with the Shimazu in Sastuma being able to break many rules openly and without punishment.

 

[Abraxis]

miss-post

 

[Ulthwithian]

Ah, NM, saw the post.

The Tokugawa Shogunate was many things; great centralization of power was not one of them.

I fondly remember the term paper I wrote on the sankin kotai... that was fun!

 

[bcaiko]

The Tokugawa shogunate was not all that centralized. The Shogun himself held little actual power or influence....

The Tokugawa Shogunate was many things; great centralization of power was not one of them.

I'm not entirely certain why this has become the topic of discussion of this thread, but I will reply to say it's a matter of degrees. The Tokugawa system was a feudal system that was more centralized than the Imperial system that came before it. The Shogunate government levied control over the daimyo through koku taxes, hostage taking, and demands that daimyo spend half the year in Edo (reducing their finances).

Was this totalitarian, centralized government? No. As you both point out, the daimyo had some amount of freedom to do as they needed. Especially in the larger states of Choshu and Satsuma, which over time became economically well off. But make no mistake - those who challenged the early Shogunate government had a nasty habit of being dead, and the daimyo were well aware where that line was.

It wasn't until 250 years after the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate that a series of weak Shoguns and confrontation with the West caused the Shogunate to loosen the strings on the daimyo, including relieving them of their duty to spend time in Edo. The more well off daimyo were even consulted by Shogunate government, and with the restraints lifted on voicing their opinions, rebellion by the more economically powerful daimyo soon followed.

Prior to the bakufu's collapse, it was fairly centralized for a pre-Modern state. But to claim, as some have, that the Meiji restoration gave uncannily centralized authority to the Emperor is a fallacy. The Meiji government was only by degrees more centralized than the bakufu had been when it was strong, and the Emperor remained as largely a figurehead of a constitutional monarchy.

In terms of ability to modernize the Japanese state, however, the Meiji government was astonishingly effective and efficient. More centralized? Not really. More competent? Absolutely.

 

[Ulthwithian]

bcaiko: I was a bit surprised myself, but regardless...

The fact that the Tokugawa system was more centralized than what came before it is, shall we say, a low bar, regardless of whether you are referring to the Sengoku Jidai or the Ashikaga Shogunate. Quite frankly, anything more centralized than anarchy would have been 'more centralized'.

And I most certainly agree that the Meiji government didn't concentrate de facto power in the Imperial person. However, I do think that it was quite a bit more centralized than the bakufu. Tokugawa -> Meiji is more centralizing, in terms of power--though not necessarily in the person of the Emperor--than Articles of Confederation -> Constitution in the US.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

I know that this info was screenshotted and is already known, but did you guys noticed that part of Divine Wind ability which wasn't in First Look video? Hojo can build Encampments, Holy Sites and Theater Squares twice as fast. This guy really wants to fight with Germany for the most OP civilization

That Holy Site/ Encampment ability is pretty huge for military/faith/early Great Prophet.

 

[Magil]

Vicky's ability was similarly buffed compared to what was in the first look video, receiving a free melee unit when settling another continent. There's clearly some balance work going on there.