Transcription
Deer pushing is dead. Now that the Japanese can't start with a dark age barracks to push deer into their base, we need to figure out a new meta. And I'm here to help you do just that.
Japan's strongest power spike is in Castle Age. But if you try to rush Castle without securing enough food like Ruth, China, or Sushi can with professional scouts, you will hit castle and then immediately starve for food. That's how most Fast Castle games are lost. In this video, I will show you a build that kind of solves that problem. We will explore different ways to avoid the food issue and how to adapt to a variety of early pressures. Whether it's early nights, fetal aggression, or anything in between. Let's get into it.
First, start with all your villagers to sheep. Send your scout to go around half of the map and rally to food until 7. As soon as you can, send one villager to build a house near your berry bushes. Make sure the house is within TC range. This is important because it will help you against early feudal aggression or ram rushes. Also, ceue up the first food upgrade from your house.
After reaching seven on food, send the next four villagers to the gold mine and then rally back to sheep. As soon as you see the food upgrade finish, send all your villagers from sheep to varies. We do it this way because the first food upgrade gives you a small movement speed buff. So your six vills on sheep will reach the berries a little bit faster. Also, the reason we go for berries first is because we want to get rid of the exposed food resource first. This will allow you to save sheep under your TC in case you get harassed very early in feudal age.
At around 2:45, you will get enough resources to a shop up with the Kura storehouse. Do so with three villagers that are gathering from sheep and one from the berries for a total of four. Send the next three villagers to gather wood from a straggler tree and then rally back to sheep. Now, take a look at the landmark placement. This landmark is a resource drop off point, so we want to place it near a woodline so you don't have to build a lumber camp later. If your main wood line is forward, just place the landmark at the back of your TC and gather your straggler trees instead. After the straggler tree is finished, two of these villagers should go to the wood line and one should go to the sheep.
By this time, you should already have enough wood to build a tower near your gold mine. Don't forget to transfer villagers from sheep to farms as soon as you can. This will allow your ship to last longer, which will allow you to stay under your TC for more time.
At around 6:35, you should have enough resources to age up to castle with the floating gate. Do so with eight villagers. While you build the landmark, queue up the dime your manor from your TC. Transfer four villagers from food to wood for a total of six and construct a stable. Make sure you do it earlier than me in this example. Ideally, it should be finished as soon as you age up so your priest can leave the jurorish inside and then immediately go to gather relics. After finishing the landmark, send your eight villagers to gold and rallied food until you have 20.
Now, in Castle, your main objective will be to produce mounted samurai non-stop and use them for three things. One, protect your monks that are gathering relics. Raid your opponent and protect yourself. Use your spare wood to build a monastery, walls, and towers as needed. Then, when you reach 20 on food, leave your rally point on wood for the rest of the game and rebalance your economy as you need. You will use your excess wood to build archery ranges and farms. Because we will have a lot of knights, your opponent will most likely build a spearmen and crossbowmen to counter them. This is why we will start building archers at our base when we start floating wood and reveal them only when necessary. This will allow your opponent to build an army that is entirely countered by Yumi because our ideal composition will be mounted samurai and Yi archers. The order of the blacksmith upgrades should be the first melee upgrade, then the first range defense upgrade, and finally the ranged attack upgrades. Don't forget to ceue up your economic upgrades as well.
Now, obviously, if your opponent is also making knights and nothing else in response to your mounted samurai, you can build an amusha instead of archers, which are incredibly effective against knights.
Now, sometimes there are games where you get almost no sheep. If this happens to you, there is something we can do to prevent yourself from starving. After you start building your landmark and you get enough wood to build a house, immediately grab five food villagers and send them to the closest deer pack, then build a tower here instead of your gold mine. You can later upgrade it if you want with the passive stone you get from mining. Be very cautious when going for this strategy. You need to be extremely active with your scout and see whether your opponent is going for an all-in strategy. If so, you will need to go back to your base and build a secondary tower in your gold mine. I don't recommend doing this against night sifts or any ses that are good at early aggression such as Mongols or Delhi.
Talking about feudal aggression, there are two things you can do here. You can either double down on the fast castle or you can build a barracks and defend yourself. I actually like not being a and doubling down on getting to castle age. So, let's talk about that.
Normally aggressive opponents will go for two resources against Japanese. If they go for your berries, just move back to your sheep. This is why we went on berries from the dark age. By the time they harass you here, you should have already finished eating most of the berry bushes. If they go for your gold instead, you will need to scout whether they're just attacking it with melee units or also ranged units. If they're attacking your gold with just melee units such as knights or men at arms, use the stone you got passively to upgrade your tower. You should be able to reach castle, build an archery range, and easily dispatch any knight or menatarms harass coming your way with on mushes. If you're getting attacked with ranged units as well, a single tower won't be able to cover your entire gold mine from archers. So in this case, we build a secondary tower on the opposite side of the mine. So now you're protected from both sides.
Now if you see there is no way you will save your gold mine, you could transfer six more villagers to gold. So now you can garrison a total of 10 on both your towers and gather as much gold as you can before aging up to castle. This way if you need to abandon the gold mine, you can still produce your castle gold units to defend yourself and recapture this gold.
If you went the Anamosha route against knights, your opponents will have two choices. Build horsemen or go for archers. In this case, my opponent goes for both. When you see this, build stables back home and start transitioning to mounted samurai plus yumi, which is your ideal composition anyways. But this time, you will be facing horsemen and archers. If you hide your army transition, you will very easily overcome this army composition since mounted samurai will completely destroy horsemen and your archers will also catch up to enemy archers or crossbowmen. So every time you get into this situation, always try to transition on the back of your onamushes for a stronger composition.
Now this season we actually have pretty good maps for Japanese. So let's take a look. Japanese is pretty good on hybrid maps, but for this specific build, we are going to ban all maps that will require you to go for ducks. The best maps possible for this build are going to be the ones that spawn with close deer to your base. So, Alaii and heal and are going to be the absolute best maps for this build. When you play either of these maps, make sure to go for the deer at the very start of the game instead of your berries. This way you will reach castle H a little bit faster since deer are gathered more quickly than berries and you will still have them if you run out of sheep later which will let you keep producing units once you reach the castle age.
Carmel and sunken lands also spawn with deer close to your base, but because they also spawn with small gold veins, you will have to be extremely careful since you will only have 1,600 gold available to you to reach castle and produce some units. After that, you will have to go out on the map. Dry Arabia and Gorge are also good for this build, but you will have no great advantages. Gorge will be slightly better since the woodland spawns at the back of your base where you will be able to place your gurus storehouse pretty comfortably. Rocky River is also amazing for this map because it features a hager amount of sheep spawn. It is also kind of easy to wall at your base, so if you get a back gold, it will be virtually impossible to harass. And finally, Enlightened Horizon can be good for this build. You will have to play this map differently in the dark age. However, if you want a video on how to do that, I have one on my channel that features a Japanese opening for this specific map.
And that's it. This one is a pretty simple build order, but quite effective if you know how to defend yourself. If you watch until the end, thank you so much, and I hope you have a great day. See you in the next one.