Japan & Samurai

[Tidster]

I’ve enjoyed playing as Japan. I like the cheap districts and bonus adjacency bonuses for nearby districts. I haven’t had any luck making use of samurai. Wondering if anyone has had success that can offer advice. Even if I rush through the tech tree for samurai and get all the breakthroughs along the way, I end up with good land units, but am behind the curve on siege... by then catapults are relatively weak. By the time I get bombards, I’ve already teched to musketmen making samurai obsolete. Pretty much I just end up ignoring samurai altogether. Anyone experience that too? (Playing without expansions)

 

[pkaem]

Ignoring siege is the way. The samurai is basically a slow knight which dosen't lose combat strengh on lower hp. Which is quite good. Most of the time attacking with a cavallery army and one or nore battering rams does the trick. Cav for its high movement and combat strenght, ram to kill the walls. Siege units aren't really worth it - sadly.

 

[godman85]

I just wrecked a game as samurai. The strategy is to go hard science as hojo. He actually is a god at science. You should block off expansion on your nearby civs so they have to go thru you. If you can, they will DOW you but you will win if you built right. While they mindleslly throw bodies at you, you have teched all the way to samurais and siege towers. You tech up your samurai with the rank 1 +10 defense vs missiles +4 joint as well, your samurai have a combat score of 62 vs ranged. You can ignore all counter missile fire and you naturally obliterate everything in melee.

Two samurai can take our regular walls in 2 turns with siege towers attached.

 

[Tidster]

Thanks for the tips... makes a huge difference!