The Japan Thread

[manio curio]

After a wonderful trip to Japan I decided to play a game with this great civilization and it was an absolute blast. Attached some pictures and the saves. Here's my feedback:

1 - I played with the lowest difficulty level and all historical goals were rather feasible, the first one being rather similar to one of Italy's. I wasn't able to conquer all of the land of the former Japanese empire, I needed Java as vassal to prevent my expansion stability from cratering.
2- Russia founded Vladivostok within my cultural borders, unsure if it is a scripted event, I thought I would mention it.
3- I had to declare war to pretty much everyone to complete the second UHV, and that has put me in a rather bad spot when it comes to the foreign score, at some point I had -12 for 'bad relations' and I couldn't gift too many techs not to jeopardize achieving the 3rd UHV. Any suggestions are welcome on how to mitigate this issue.
4- I could really never get al l my cities happy since luxury resources bonuses don't apply to all cities but just a fraction, I ended up putting specialists in Indochina and part of China to stop the growth. On one hand the mechanics mocks really well the discontent in foreign occupied cities, but if anyone can give me any suggestion please go ahead, I am still learning.
5- The northern half of Japan is very unproductive. I was basically left with Toukyou and Kyouto as productive core cities. I am interested in seeing what other players think about this.

All in all I had a ton of fun with the conquest, never a dull moment. Thanks again @Leoreth for putting this wonderful mod together, I have said it many times already but not enough yet.

 

[Leoreth]

Glad that you enjoyed the UHVs, it's one of my favourites.

 

[AOS9001]

I had to declare war to pretty much everyone to complete the second UHV

Sounds true to life, lol.

I agree that Northern Japan is kinda... boring. Japan's already such a powerful civ, though, I don't think it needs anything up there, not without taking some resources from the southern half at least.

 

[Fresol]

It's interesting how Japan holds "historical" territory in China in this game while China itself doesn't. Military occupation and brutalizing the region make "conquest" area at best.

 

[Leoreth]

What do you mean China doesn't?

 

[Fresol]

The "Ming" period in the game, do you intend it to represent the Qing dynasty as well? If so, they should hold most if not all of manchuria as their historical area. It's hard to imagine Japan can claim manchuria as historical after 10-40 years of military occupation while the Qing, after hundreds of years of ruling over the region and initially originated from there, only considers parts of the region as historical or even conquest area.

 

[Fresol]

The point is Japan should has "conquest" claims on the area, to be fair.

 

[Leoreth]

Fair point, but it is important to consider historical areas as specific to the overall situation of the civilization rather than doing a one-to-one comparison. If we set the baseline that all territory under Chinese control should be historical then the result would be an ahistorically stable China. Likewise Japan is expected to expand a lot and already struggles to do so even with the historical territory in Manchuria.

 

[Fresol]

Fair point, but it is important to consider historical areas as specific to the overall situation of the civilization rather than doing a one-to-one comparison. If we set the baseline that all territory under Chinese control should be historical then the result would be an ahistorically stable China. Likewise Japan is expected to expand a lot and already struggles to do so even with the historical territory in Manchuria.

I don't want to digress to argue about China in game since this thread is about Japan.

In reality Japan only expanded out of their home islands for a brief period and imploded and fell vassal to the United States, which should mean historically they shouldn't be stable at all when they expand. And "conquest areas" are enough for their brief occpation over China and SE Asia (and Korea?) needed for the #2 historical goal in game.

For game balance, you can add their target regions to the "conquest area" map, much like what is done to their axial ally (is that even a word? sorry) in WW2, Germany, so that they can maintain occupation of these places long enough to pass the goal check.

 

[Fresol]

Japan already has a huge core population upon reaching the Indusrial Era, partly due to the unrealistically food rich cities on their mountainous islands. I would even suggest turning some of their coast tiles into ocean(or arctic coast) tiles to limit city growth in some random cities.

 

[Leoreth]

In reality Japan only expanded out of their home islands for a brief period and imploded and fell vassal to the United States, which should mean historically they shouldn't be stable at all when they expand.

And they aren't stable already with their current stability map, so no change is needed.