Japan Overhaul

[Set]

Do you have a more concrete proposal?

Both radical and less radical

Radically, shifting Japan's spawn to 1600 to coincide with Tokugawa uniting Japan at Sekigahara might work. Currently, a large part of the problems with the Japanese goals is that there is so much time to do them. A lot it feels extraneous, like I always have 100 more years than I need to complete a goal. I'm not sure that just making the goal more difficult would fix the time problem, since it's difficult to balance over such a long period of time due to the increased variability introduced by long time frames, though it might work.

A Japan that spawns in 1600 with a goal due in 1800 or 1850 has less time and therefore fewer spare hammers and tech points to pour into non-first goal related endeavors such as the fairly standard invasion of china in the 17th or 18th century (if not earlier). I also think shorter time frames are just better for development goals in general. Babylon , Egypt and China all have incredibly fun (well, Babylon is debatable) games with development oriented goals because there is less time to screw around and the player has to figure out how to achieve the goal like solving a puzzle. There's very little room for mistakes, and as a result the interesting parts of development like prioritizing production, improvement priority and more involved city management (specialists/chopping etc.) come to the fore.

Pre-1600, Japan can be independent cities with castles, walls and some city defense promoted units to make it difficult for human China to invade. The advantage of a 1600 start is it becomes much easier to have an interesting development goal, and also nicely fits into a narrative of Japanese history (ie. Goal 1 is the Edo Period and internal development, Goal 2 is the Meiji (+Early Showa) period and Japan's expansion, Goal 3 is the Japan of present day). It also means the human player is less likely to go completely off the rails since he has a thousand fewer years to do so (completely off the rails is not a bad thing, but I don't think it should be what happens EVERY time like it is now).

Less Radically:
Starve Japan of production. I know this is the opposite of what was proposed earlier, but the human player already has way too many spare hammers as Japan, which makes it kind of dull since there's really no need to prioritize production beyond the early stages of the game. Instead, add food resources to Japan so it's cities can grow larger. Combined with a draftable, industrial UU once in the Industrial Age a player will be able to draft an army to invade the mainland, but earlier in the game will be forced to prioritize. The AI is still a problem though, making Emperor Meiji more likely to draft might help a little, but in light of your other comment I think conquerors might be the way to go. Hopefully my proposed changes to UB (below) will help alleviate the AIs troubles as well.

Add (or change) the current goal 1 to"Build X wonder(s) by Y date": In addition to further forcing prioritizing of production, adding a wonder to the goal means that Japan will have to research towards said wonder rapidly, which means more specialist management, and fewer spare beakers and hammers floating around. The only problem is that a production starved and technologically backwards Japan might have trouble getting the wonder. Changing it to "Have X and Y tech by Z date" would fix that, but it's also more boring. For the wonder, maybe add Kinkakuji under Drama or some other out of the way tech.


EDIT: Almost forgot the UB change :|
Have the Kaizen plant add hammers for each coal or oil resource controlled (say 2 for oil, 1 for coal) or give a percentage increase to production (5% from coal, 10% from oil). This way, a Japan that expands to historical size, and gains access to the oil and coal in the East Indies and Manchuria will be able to get good production at home. Also means there is a nice incentive for players to secure sources of oil and coal just like historical Japan. If the production bonus is OP, maybe limit it to being built in Japanese core cities?

 

[LacsiraxAriscal]

Simple answer: give Japan a land bridge to Korea.

Actually I have no idea; I'm in favour of Leoreth's ideas for UP and UB and I also support a more modern UU. Not much to contribute but general support.

 

[Novicenoble]

Simple answer: give Japan a land bridge to Korea.

Actually I have no idea; I'm in favour of Leoreth's ideas for UP and UB and I also support a more modern UU. Not much to contribute but general support.

I can see the Chinese and Mongolian Troops invading Japan with that bridge

 

[Qiu]

If Japan was set as indenpent cities, several capes can be placed to represent Kamikaze protected sea.

 

[Leoreth]

I have already been thinking about a land bridge feature for coast tiles. If you can only cross it when its under your cultural control and there are no enemy ships on the tile, it could be balanced enough.

 

[BenZL43]

^ That will certainly helps Indonesia and other archipelagic civilization like Japan, Polynesia, etc. However careful considerations should be made to prevent it become OP.

 

[Qiu]

I have already been thinking about a land bridge feature for coast tiles. If you can only cross it when its under your cultural control and there are no enemy ships on the tile, it could be balanced enough.

Nice! cannot wait to see Hundred Years' War

 

[Lone Wolf]

I think that things are going to be surreal in a hurry between England and France this way.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I really don't like the idea of the Kaizen Plant staying in.

Bair can explain the flavor reasons much better than I can, so I'll leave that to him.
But gameplay-wise, it solves none of AI Japan's problems (development+growth), which is what we need a mid-game UB for.
Production is literally the least of Japan's worries with all the Hills tiles available on the archipelago.

Now, I'm presenting my revised UHV set for Japan. Comments and criticism appreciated:

UHV1- Trade or steal a total of seven techs from an East Asian (China, Corea, Mongolia) or Western European civilization
UHV2- Ensure there are no European colonies in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Indonesia
UHV3- Maintain a trade surplus in GPT with ten other civilizations and accumulate 1000 Gold via GPT/resource trades

EDIT: I did actually suggest a Japanese spawn post-Warring States around the time I first joined this subforum but it was deemed not palatable.
The situation now may call for it though, so I'm tenatively in agreement with you (Set) on that one.

 

[Leoreth]

How is goal 2 harder than its current counterpart?

^ That will certainly helps Indonesia and other archipelagic civilization like Japan, Polynesia, etc. However careful considerations should be made to prevent it become OP.

I'd make it a feature that is only assigned to appropriate tiles. Definitely not between Polynesian islands.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

How is goal 2 harder than its current counterpart?

It makes the existing goal a little bit more flexible with regards to the hypothetical humanitarian elements in the other thread (keeping civs alive/in their core).
The criteria was simply changed to make it flexible in that regard (conquest, vassalization, liberation, etc.)

 

[merijn_v1]

It makes the existing goal a little bit more flexible with regards to the hypothetical humanitarian elements in the other thread (keeping civs alive/in their core).
The criteria was simply changed to make it flexible in that regard (conquest, vassalization, liberation, etc.)

If you will go for the UHV, you probably don't focus on the Humanitarian victory anyway. A sync between both victory types isn't needed because you can't win both in one game.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

If you will go for the UHV, you probably don't focus on the Humanitarian victory anyway. A sync between both victory types isn't needed because you can't win both in one game.

I'm aware of that fact. It's an option if the player wants to snag a Triumphal Arch on the way,
a tactic I've leveraged with some civs on their way to certain victories before, mostly because certain civs, when following their UHV paths,
will stay stable anyway so it doesn't cost too much to fulfill UHV goals while pursuing the other victory.
Japan, in my mind, would be one such civ that has that kind of flexibility.

 

[ales_]

I'm against moving the Japanese spawn date. Moving the goal is better IMO.

 

[Leoreth]

A 16th century spawn is definitely too late. I would prefer the choice of a goal that prevents early expansion. Maybe even by associating a condition similar to the Canadian UHV with their first goal.

 

[Set]

I'm against moving the Japanese spawn date. Moving the goal is better IMO.

Which way is the goal moved though? If it's moved forward to say, 1200, we make the first goal more interesting but the second becomes much too easy. It gives the human Japan 700 years to conduct a relatively easy (strategy wise) campaign that often turns into a mindless slog once China collapses. I think there's honestly way too much time to complete the second goal as it is, increasing that should be avoided. If we move the first goal back to around 1800, we have a more interesting second goal, with a newly industrialized Japan conducting a fast paced campaign again her more primitive neighbors, but the first goal will be incredibly hard to balance over such a long time frame, either being way too easy or too hard (and no matter what, involving a lot of just clicking enter).

One idea, if the spawn date change is completely untenable, would be to change the current structure of Japan's goals. Rather than one goal for medieval Japan, one goal for Imperial Japan, and one goal for modern Japan, it might work better to have two goals for medieval Japan (triggered before 1800) and have their last goal be the 1945 one. Goal 1 might be "build a Buddhist Cathedral by 1200" (Japan would need a Buddhist missionary for this to work), Goal 2: "have X Culture and Y population by 1700/1800 and goal 3 can be the same as goal 2 is now. Respectively, you represent the Buddhist renaissance that occurred in the Nara-Heian Period, the increased urbanization and flourishing of the Edo period and Japan's imperialist meiji/early showa period)

My only issue with the above is that Japan only has so much interesting development to do before it becomes "hit enter for next turn" or "might as well invade China since I have spare time" due to the size of their island. Two goals might improve this, but I doubt they'll fix it all together, so I still support a spawn date change as it solves what I think is Japan's biggest problem: too much time to do stuff

 

[Leoreth]

Let's assume for a second that the only pre-industrial goal remains culture related (not against changing it in principle, but I think it should remain a builder goal in any case). Then we can control the difficulty of the following goals with the end turn and difficulty of this first goal.

Except that even for this first goal (and similar builder goals) it's usually helpful to go conquering in the meantime. More cities = more culture, pop, buildings, what have you. That's the problem imo. The first goal should encourage non-expansion, or at least not reward expansion.

In case of the culture goal that could mean:
- add "without conquering any cities" to the goal. In my opinion too restrictive and ahistorical (conquering Korea should be allowed for instance).
- add "and >90% Japanese culture in all cities" to the goal. Would discourage expansion but not make it completely impossible.
- turn the goal into "X culture in your core". Expansion would not help with achieving the goal, but would also not be discouraged.

 

[Set]

-add "and >90% Japanese culture in all cities" to the goal. Would discourage expansion but not make it completely impossible.
- turn the goal into "X culture in your core". Expansion would not help with achieving the goal, but would also not be discouraged.

These two like good ideas for solving the early expansion problem and should probably be added no matter what the final solution is.

My one concern is that it doesn't solve the fundamental cause of early expansion, that there's nothing else to do. Currently, Japan's first goal is too easy, and that makes it boring to sit around and wait for it to trigger. Just increasing the difficulty might work, but since most of the fun decisions you make that are relevant to accomplishing the goal are made in the early game no matter what, players (me ) are still going to be bored waiting for the goal once all their specialists are set, early buildings up etc. Japan needs less time to do stuff and or more stuff to do (probably both). Changing the type of the first goal might help (ie. wonder goals have an element of suspense to them, build religious stuff goals are more involved thanks to missionaries), but I'm skeptical it will solve it alone.

Just to spitball, maybe making the first goal have multiple triggering dates might help? Build Buddhist/Taoist cathedral by 1200, Have X Culture in 1600, Have Y Population in 1800. This way the Japanese player would have lot's of mini development goals and have to shift the focus of their cities constantly and give them an interesting early game similar to the Chinese one. Also probably easier to balance then finding the exactly the right level of difficulty for one goal over a huge time period. It is a little complicated (gameplay-wise) though.

 

[Leoreth]

I could do that (some goals have those, such as the Mandinka money goal), but I don't want to rely on this too much because it seems like two or three goals have been unfairly compressed into one.

I still think culture is the best approach. It's true that there's not much to do (it's hard to imagine an isolationist goal where there is), but at least there are many different ways of generating culture. Culture buildings, culture slider, building culture, farming GAs. For instance, building a cathedral could be implicit to a culture goal because without the +50% modifier you'd be unable to make it in time. Wonders could be similar, in that case Himeji Castle should probably also do something culture related instead of encouraging military solutions (+1 culture per stationed military unit in a city?). I've usually played the first Japanese goal historically (Japan + conquering Korea) and I actually had to make use of all of these things. Granted, I'm probably not the best player and let some micromanaging fall to the wayside, but the actual problem is that most people don't even encounter this challenge because they have five extra cities in China at that point.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

If you want to prevent Japan from expanding early, make the Internet UP scale by era.
If the number of cities Japan owns < (Era x 2), then the effect does not trigger.