[Request] How to play (and win) with Japan ?

[tongfar]

Hi I play rather defensivelly and i'm use to a certain kind of tech order, but with japan I'm kinda confused.

I don't know if it's better to rush samurai and dojo, or stick to getting knight ASAP.

So can anyone tell me how to Japan ?

 

[Galbias]

Play normally to start, settle your 3-6 cities and make sure you have Iron somewhere, try not to start any early wars, then once you get Dojos and Samurai start building a bunch of them and go on a conquest spree, and either finish the game with Domination or use everything you've gained to build up to another victory type, Japan is well suited for Cultural victory now with their bonus cultural GP points. Overall not very different from any other conquest oriented civ with a strong UU.

 

[tongfar]

Play normally to start, settle your 3-6 cities and make sure you have Iron somewhere, try not to start any early wars, then once you get Dojos and Samurai start building a bunch of them and go on a conquest spree, and either finish the game with Domination or use everything you've gained to build up to another victory type, Japan is well suited for Cultural victory now with their bonus cultural GP points. Overall not very different from any other conquest oriented civ with a strong UU.

Thank for your answer
So basically if I follow your advise I must play "defensively" till I got dojos, then build units and never end my conquest even toward my " AI Friends".

Wouldn't that get me being DOW'ed by every AI in the game ? and in the end get me overwhelmed by them, cause at my level (king) they have a ton of unit!

I guess I should have called this topic "how to war"

Another question is it worth beelining tower the dojo-tech ?

 

[Galbias]

There aren't many hard rules about the best way to play. Generally you'll want to work on infrastructure as much as possible before your unique advantages (Samurai and Dojo) come into play, and then focus on maximizing those advantages once they're available, ie make a lot of Samurai with the Dojo boost and make good use of them by conquering some cities.

Oftentimes you'll have an AI who's a dick early game and will be aggressive towards other Civs or you, these will often be a good first target, especially if you can get them to declare war on you first and avoid some of the warmonger penalties, or liberate cities/CS they've captured. Especially if you're not planning on winning the game through Domination it's good to try and still remain friendly with some AIs so you can use them for trading and RAs, and also not get dogpiled. Getting another nearby AI to join in a war against someone else is good, though fairly difficult to do in VP, as opposed to Vanilla where it was practically an exploit. Don't completely neglect infrastructure (unless you're playing on Epic/Marathon and want to finish the game in Medieval/Renaissance era), you want to balance war and development of your empire.

Dojo is probably worth getting first so you can get the promotion on as many units as possible, I wouldn't suggest making a huge beeline. Authority is the policy tree to go for, the 20 HP on kill for melee units is amazing for Samurai. Past that, Aesthetics is probably good to push Japan's cultural strength further but I've had decent success with Statecraft, maintaining a decent WC presence is always useful.


If you're unsure about general strategy, watching some youtube playthroughs might help. I'm not particularly huge on him but iirc quil18 is a pretty decent player and does a good amount of VP/CBP.

 

[tongfar]

Okay with that I got more hint on playing aggressive, (I usually hunker down and go for culture or diplo victory so playing a war centric civ is new to me).

Anyways thanks for your help