So I finished the Japanese UHV just now:
Just as a reminder, this is with the changes I discussed above, including somewhat improved modifiers for Japan. Considering that it took me until 2004 to complete the tech goal, I don't think I have gone too far, and as you can see in the tech graph I only pulled ahead of everyone in 1900 and didn't achieve too much of a lead, just enough to get most techs first. And that's with seriously prioritising expanding research. By the way, even though I didn't make a screenshot, Kyouto was producing almost 1200 beakers without a GA at the end, pretty great.
In addition to the above, I also improved the congress logic a little. I noticed that congresses are a major obstacle for Japan, because the European civs whose cities you conquer usually have a better claim than you on them and they tend to stick together when voting against faraway civs. This gets you in a situation where you either have to accept demands and reconquer cities continually, or be at war with most of the world continually, which is very annoying.
In fact, I had to reload this game to go back 50 years because I mismanaged congresses and was bogged down in annoying wars that didn't really stop me but made conquest of SEA very tedious. In the second attempt, I instead beelined Civil Rights and rushed Palace of Nations to keep my cities safe. Pretty useful wonder if you are Japan.
The changes I made are:
- Other civs are much more reluctant to reassign cities that the claimant has only recently lost, unless it's a post war congress. The reluctance gradually expires but should effectively stop immediately losing recent conquest to congresses.
- The chances of a civ going to war after a refused demand increased with every civ that voted yes. This didn't take into account that half the civs in the congress already needed to vote yes for things to get this far, resulting in a very probability for this to happen. I think it's been everyone's experience that it's almost guaranteed that all civs that agreed with a claim will also go to war over it
- I added completely new logic that makes a civ decide to go to war over a claim that only increases for every civ beyond the minimum number required to approve the assignment, and is also sensitive to their opinion of the owner (worst enemy, defensive pact, attitude, peace treaty). This had been completely irrelevant before.
- There was a bug (I think?) where the owner having defensive pacts increased the probability of other civs joining the war, instead of decreasing it. I think defensive pacts should be a deterrant.
- The probability of a civ joining the war over an assignment decreases based on how many civs already joined in. This should limit the overall number of belligerents. Civs that have the highest desire to go to war will be checked first, so most likely it will be them, with the others staying out of it. Your defensive pact partners will always be checked last and should therefore usually remain loyal.
With this, refusal will still lead to significant wars without resulting in frustrating dogpiles by literally everyone, followed by those annoying congress world wars triggered by cascading alliances. But please keep me updated about that, I did not encounter much of those situations in the portion of my game with these new rules, because I still kept trying to avoid them with Palace of Nations. It could be that it's still too much, or that suddenly nobody is willing to go to war, both of which would be undesirable to me.
Overall, thanks for making me play Japan! I didn't want to say that in the voting thread so as to not sway votes in favour or against, but I really like Japan. The concept of the first goal is quite unique and I like the different direction it throws the game into. Even though it's been a while that I last played it I think it still does its job for what it was designed for. It's definitely the most interesting part of the game because doing it right sets you up for the rest of the game, and provides many opportunities for optimisation that are a lot of fun at least for me, as you can tell from my earlier post.
There is not much to say for the expansion goal. I wish it was a little bit harder, to be honest. Your timeline is quite tight still, but often not for military reasons but because you have to manage your expansion stability. The way things usually play out, you have to go to war with a bunch of European powers (for me it was Spain, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Russia). This would be more of a challenge if the AI was capable of managing remote reinforcements and invasions, both France and Russia were much more powerful than I was at the time. But the wars mostly resolved themselves by defeating their local garrisons and riding that warscore and some waiting time until they are willing to make peace, with some tribute even. Serious wars that require you to e.g. have a strong naval defense or real fights with Russia would be so much more fun and engaging. Unfortunately, not much I can do until the mod gets better AI.
Lastly, the tech goal: as I said above, from a time horizon it seems to be tuned right now, but it definitely needed work, so it's good I got to that. Obviously, the most important challenge was becoming tech leader. If you can't, it's a lost cause. Even with my lead I lost a few modern techs to other civs, so it wasn't an entirely foregone conclusion, and you also have to accomplish it before 2020. The way to get it becomes less interesting once you are a tech leader (basically just stacking commerce and research modifiers) but before that there are still some interesting decisions around tech trades and the UP.
Speaking of the UP, it is useful, but it's not
that useful. And it's somewhat underwhelming to have a UP that you only benefit from in a transitionary stage, and that is absent from the game both when you are very much behind and very much ahead. One thing I have considered in the context of this is to make the Japanese UP a general mechanic available to everyone to help with catching up and tech diffusion. One way this could work is that the overall diffusion rate would be lower than what Japan currently has, but there is a civ modifier to allow some differentiation. That way Japan, and other civs that are historically known for catching up in technology, can still have a stronger benefit from it.
If anyone has ideas for an alternative Japanese UP, just let me know. But I don't think this change is urgent, and I won't get to it immediately as part of working on Japan now.
Another thing I wanted to hear everyone's opinion about is civics. As described above, I went Regulated Trade and Organised Religion asap, then later Monasticism. I also used Tributaries for unit production. I did not use Absolutism, even though Kyouto is a very good spot for it, because the Vassalage happiness seemed more valuable with my large cities. Was that a mistake? When I could, I switched into Monarchy + Constitution + Egalitarianism + Free Enterprise + Secularism + Nationhood, but I am not sure if that was the best combination. Monarchy again seemed necessary for the happiness requirements, and I had a lot of specialists and fewer towns so Egalitarianism won out over Individualism.
I hope everyone who wanted me to play Japan to deal with the issues they had with the civilisation got what they were looking for out of this. If you have critiques of Japan that I did not address here, please let me know. I really want to find out if I just did not encounter those problems in my game or if I just have a different perspective on the situation.
Finally finally: look what America did in this game, I've never seen them do this before:
That’s good to know. I asked because I was wondering if I was missing out on an obvious in-game benefit. Is there a gain from missing out on the silver and overlapping BFC with the capital?
