Transcription
A lot of people warned me not to share this build with the community, but today I'm breaking the silence and showing you the absolute monstrosity that is this Japanese powerhouse build. And don't worry, I'll also cover how to play against it just in case people start spamming this on the ladder. Let's get into it.
I'll cover two versions of this build. One that opens with Spearman in the dark age and one that doesn't. Let's start with the version without Spearman. This approach is best on maps where early Spearman harassment is difficult such as Ala or Hill and Dealeo or when facing civilizations that are nearly invulnerable to early aggression like the Roose or English. Or even if you just don't feel confident microing spearman in the dark age, you can always just do this version instead.
Start by sending every villager to sheep and want to build a house by the berries. With Japanese, I like to scout first very close to my base to find new sheep. Then I will drop them off and continue scouting the rest of the map. The reason I like this is because I like to place the sheep near the house that is getting constructed like this. So your villager gathers from that sheep instead of having to walk back. This is optional though. If you want, you can just send the villager back to the sheep or make him gather the berries instead. We will go up to seven on food and then three villagers on gold. After there are three on gold, rally back to food. At around the 2:15 mark, you will have enough resources to edge up with four villagers with the Kura storehouse. Make sure you build it at the back of your base and if you can do it right next to the woodline so you don't have to build a lumber camp later. As soon as you start building it, leave only four villagers on food and send the rest to gather wood from the straggler trees. Leave your rally point on wood as well.
Now, from this point on, you will use the gold you gather to do three things. First, get your economic upgrades in this order. Second, get your blacksmith upgrades in this order. And finally, we will use the gold gathered to produce samurai later. As soon as you age up, send one of the villagers to the farm that just popped up and the rest to the woodline. From this point, we will go up to 11 or 12 villagers on wood. Once you reach that number, set the rally point on food for the rest of the feudal age. The woodwig gather will be used for building up to three archery ranges and a barracks. The order in which you build these depends on which stabilization you are facing. If you're against French, for example, build the barracks first since you will need spearman to defend yourself from the incoming knights. If you feel safe, however, build the archery ranges first instead. If you're being pressured hard, you can use some of the excess wood to build towers or walls in crucial points of your base.
As soon as your archery ranges are done, we will start producing Jumi non-stop. Try to maintain constant production as well as you can and never stop producing them. From the barracks, we will produce samurai constantly as well. These guys are going to be useful to tank the damage from enemy units while your yumi are the DPS of your army. Finally, as soon as you get 175 stone, get your dime your manor and produce a yumi matterman to further increase the damage of your archers. From here, you will need to scout what your enemy is doing. If they are just chilling in their base trying to boom or fast castle without units, use these guys to start denying their economy. If you're against a professional scout civilization, try to chase down their scouts and build the spearman to defend from the incoming horsemen. You will need to decide from here what you want to do depending on your specific game. In some cases, if the enemy ages up and has almost no units to defend himself, you will have an impressive amount of units that will be able to dive bases and clear any exposed villagers you see in your path. Also, don't forget to keep moving your sheep villagers to the farms. So, this way, you will have a much more stable food source than your opponent, making it so they will have to move on to outer food sources much quicker than you.
At some point, though, you will want to age up to castle. Whenever you want to do so, transfer every villager you have on woodline to gold and stop producing military units. This way, you will much quickly reach the resources needed to Asop. At this point, set your rally point to wood for the rest of the game. Once you have enough resources, a floating gate with around 10 to 12 villagers from food. Leave around 10 to 14 villagers on gold since you will need a lot of upgrades once you reach castle age. As soon as you a shop up, click your samurai and ji veteran upgrades. Get plus two ranged attack and send your initial priest to put the jishiro in a lumber camp. After this, he will go to gather the relics. I feel like putting all four Yorish into lumber camp works best for me because we already have a lot of military production buildings, so putting a Jorishiro in one of them is not going to make much of a difference. Instead, we can get a lot of passive wood this way and use it to construct more buildings if we want. We can build farms with that wood if we are running out of food. Or we can construct an extra TC later much more easily instead of wasting a Yorish in the TC. From here, the build ends and you will need to adapt accordingly to what the enemy is doing.
In this variation, we open with a barracks and rush spearman toward the opponent. This works well in games where you expect to deal early damage. For example, by donating a French player's gold mine or breaking Byzantine players aqueducts. Start by constructing a barracks with one villager, sending two more to one nearby straggler tree, one to build a house and the rest on sheep. Scout first near your base and then towards your enemy base to see where their exposed resources are. Leave your rally point on a sheep for now. As soon as the barracks are done, start producing three spearmen. These three spearman will be enough to deny a gold or stone bane. Now, two things about the barracks. First, make sure you place it in a corner of your TC. That way, you will only block one farmed space. Second, if you haven't found your opponent's gold yet, rally them to a point near your enemy base so they start walking in that direction as they pop out. Speed is key here. Your spearman should be arriving at the enemy base by around the 2:10 minute mark.
When you have finished producing the three spearman, pay attention to your wood. As soon as you have 50 wood, take three villagers from sheep and construct a mining camp on the gold. Then the two wood villagers will gather 50 wood for a house and then go back to sheep. At around the 3:20 mark, you will have enough resources to age up. Do so with the Kura storehouse with five villagers. At this point, leave only four villagers on food and the rest on wood. The three gold villagers will stay here and the gold you gather will be used in the same way explained in the previous variation. As soon as we age up, send four villagers from the landmark being constructed to the wood line and the remaining one to the farm that popped up. Now set the rally point to food from this point on. You should have 11 or 12 villagers on wood by this point, which will be enough to construct up to three archery ranges and constantly produce ji from them. From here, the build will be exactly the same as I displayed in the previous build. But now, because you already harassed with spearmen previously, it is less likely that your opponent will have horsemen or knights to counter you. You can also use the spearman to deny professional scouts or keep scouting your opponent in case they decided to move on to a different gold vein.
The reason why this strategy is so strong is because of how cheaply and quickly you can produce jummies. These guys cost only 25 food and 35 wood, which is almost nothing, and they also come out around 17% faster than regular archers. This means you can mass them pretty consistently and faster than any other civilization in the game. And yes, they have one less damage, but as long as you have your bannerman with the army, they will have the same damage as a regular archer. Because Japan also has many men at arms in the feral age which are the samurai who can use these guys as a mid shield giving enough space for the archers to deal insane amounts of damage. With enough of them we can kill horsemen and knights if we kite well enough. The last thing that makes this so good is because of farms. The Kura storehouse provides us with a bunch of free farms that we can use to run out of wood much less quicker than the opponent. Japan also gathers faster from farms after you get the dyno manor upgrade from your DC. What this means is that you can keep consistent production of units without having to risk going out for outer resources for a very long time. If your opponent wants to stay in feudal and fight you, they will run out of food faster than you and that will give you an opportunity to have a bigger army and attack their exposed food sources. The food income is so strong that you will even be able to reach castle age while keeping constant yumi production while your opponent will be most likely stuck in the fage making units to defend himself.
Now let's talk about which maps are best for this build. Besides water maps, the only map where you will have to play differently is in Enlightened Horizon. But this build can still be pretty amazing here, especially for Japan. If you want a guide on how to play this map, I already have one in the channel, so check that out if you're interested. Every other map is amazing for this build. In maps like Alai, Carmel, and Sunken Lands, you could go for the variation without barracks since the goals are very well protected by either the spawn or the TC. For the rest of the maps, the barracks opening should work just fine.
If you're facing this strategy, first you will need to know it's coming. You can know this by looking at how many gold villagers they have. If a Japanese player puts only three on gold, it might mean they only want gold for upgrades instead of aging up to castle. This is already an indicator that Jimmy spam is coming. The second one is to always be active with your scout. Keep looking around his base and try to spot the archery ranges. But if you cannot see them for some reason, then look at how many wood workers they have. If there are a lot of villagers on wood instead of food, it might mean they want to build a lot of military production buildings.
Once you know you're getting jimmy spammed, immediately start producing horsemen plus archers of your own and get your ranged armor and damage upgrades. With enough horsemen, you have the possibility of getting a surround on the jumies and killing a big ball of them. While your archers guide the samurai and kill spearman if there are any. If you're unable to kill the jumies, use the horsemen to raid their farms and woodline. The Japanese farms usually are always pretty close to the TC, but they are not invulnerable, so try to exploit this weak spot as much as possible with horsemen or knights. Finally, I would always recommend you to stay in feudal and fight at least until you are sure you can age up safely. Do not try to go to castle age without some kind of control of the game. If you try to do this and your opponent finds out, you can get dived pretty easily by a big bowl of Yumis plus samurai and lose the game right there.
Now, let's analyze a game I played against a Conqueror 2 player. If you would like to see me test these strategies out, consider subscribing to see when I'm live or follow me on Twitch to catch me there also. Okay, so in this game I am playing against the Malian player uh which I believe is around conqueror two level and I immediately go into the varax variation this time. Uh the reason for this is because malians always have an exposed bit mine as you can see here and he's doing a good job actually of putting the houses on the back side of his um uh of his pit mine instead of the front. uh although he's starting to do that right now. And if you're playing Malians against any civilization that has early spearman like Japanese, uh I recommend you to never do this. Uh you always want to put the houses on the back because now my uh spearman will be able to attack these houses or these pit mine. Well, the pit mine, there's nothing you can do about it, but at least the houses I can u uh attack them uh from outside the TC range. So that's going to be really excellent for me in this case. So my opponent got seven sheep. I am getting uh five. I actually missed two here. Wow, that's that is not cool. Uh but yeah, I usually miss a lot of sheep here uh because I'm focused on what the spearman are are doing. So you have to be very careful with your scout. Uh I I now get seven, but I should have had nine uh by this time. So that's pretty bad for my part. And now in the build, I told you to go for four spear for three spears, sorry. But I go here for four. Uh the reason for that is because uh Malin is really an exposed civilization. Uh, so having more uh spearmen than normal uh allows me to uh deal even more damage to to his structures. Uh, look at how I already cleared two houses from him. And um, he still hasn't gotten to to fuel yet. Actually, I could have targeted the bit mine for sure uh at the very beginning. I think I could have gotten it, but the re the bad thing about targeting the pitman is that he can always just repair it, right? And attacking with the spearman so close to um to the TC range is is not the best.
So, back at my base, I'm going up with uh eight. Uh that's because I went for one more spearman, so I wanted to go up a little bit faster. Uh and I'm soon going into Yumi spam. So right now what I'm doing with my spearman is looking for his other goals. So I already know he doesn't have any golds on this side. He only has this one. So the other only place that he can go right now is here. So there I find uh one lone archer. Uh that what this archer it deals damage against spearman but you can actually just uh kill it if you have more. So right now I'm trying to split my spearman like this. So he has to micro a lot and I am just delaying his houses on this uh on this bit mine. So that's pretty uh good damage already done with just the initial spearman. And in the meantime, I'm already uh building a few samurai and uh and I'm going up to three archery ranges. So only two for now, but I will get more pretty soon. So, right now I'm just looking to see. I'm saving my spearman. I don't want to lose them because if he goes into horsemen into water uh scouts or sofas, I will need those spearmen later. But no, I actually think I I misclicked. I built onations instead of samuris. Uh but I mean, they're still fine. they will be able to tank a few shots uh uh in order to kill the the archers. And um my two spearmen that were still left alive, they dealt a little bit of damage to this sofa. So that's going to be pretty useful. And because I don't have any spearman now, I go for the archers instead of the sofa because otherwise the sofa is just going to clear uh every other archer here. Uh but yeah, right now what I'm doing is just rallying absolutely everything towards my opponent's uh pit mine. Uh because I don't want him to have this for free. And yeah, right now uh I because I saw he was making sofa, I made another barracks instead of a third archery range. And look at my economy. Like I already uh cleared all the berries. I still have a lot of sheep because uh because I'm going for these farms, too. And I have these uh deer back here. So really a lot of of food left over. I don't really have to expose myself uh like this. But I wanted to go for this first uh because he has sofa and I want him to raid me. So I want to get this deer first and then I will have safe sheep under my TC. Uh in the meantime, he's already out of of sheep. It seems uh only a few left under his DC. Uh but he's going into cowboom. I think he th this is good right now because he has he had to pit mines. I am already clearing this one. Uh but right now he's really getting a lot uh he's getting really greedy. um because he's going into into a lot of boom, but he has a really big army in front of his base. So now I'm able to get a few a little bit of damage. Um I have spearman instead of samuris because he has a lot of sofas. Uh but I will be able to add a few samurai here and there later. Uh and now he only has one pit mine, so I know he's on this side. Uh, so I will most likely pretty soon start going towards that way. And I don't I didn't actually see this. Uh, I think he got this because because he thought I was just going to stay here, but I actually never saw that that pit mine. So, he's actually on two pit mines right now. And I am on a little bit of a timer because Malions on two pit mines means that they will be able to cowboom really, really easily. and he's already up to four full ranches. Uh, but now I see that he's mining a lot of gold. So, I go for the speed mine once again. And my army is extremely extremely good. So, let's take a look at this fight. He goes for the fight because he thinks sofas are going to be effective against archers, but my jum archers, that's the thing. Ji archers are really, really fast. So, catching them is really, really difficult. So, he takes a terrible fight. um right there and loses a lot of his sofas, loses a lot of his backline and now he's getting out of food. Uh take a look at how he has to go for berries even though he has a few cows, a lot of cows actually. He's up to 12 right now. Uh he's out of food. Uh he cannot mine gold except for this gold that he has right now. Uh and I already know that he's on berry. He was in a good position uh right before that engagement, but because I won so heavily because the archers are so good. Look at how the archers can kite by the way. Like I don't have any spearman with me. This is a mis position for my part. But because my archers are so fast and I already have my katana bannerman here, I am able to kite sofa sofa which are supposed to counter archers uh and are faster than the regular knights. They have 173 movement speed instead of the 162 for my knights. So I'm able to kite really really effectively even though I didn't have my front line with me. My front line was busy getting this uh this pit mine. So yeah, that is the strength of Yumi. Yumi are really really good. Look at this movement speed. Uh and then compare it to the spearman or or the samurai. And meanwhile, his jab throwers are also fast uh but not as much. And back home, I am just able to ball able to get all of the space in in the world. I got a tower here just in case in case he goes here for with sofa. I only mine with five uh because I'm already thinking about going to to uh to castle. So, I'm mining with five and I'm just spamming uh archers and spearmen uh in order to save up the gold to go up to to the castle age. He needs to he he was booming uh before, but because he sees that I have a really big army, he started uh going into units again. So, right now, his army uh is big, but not as big as mine. Look at I have already 32 Yumies, uh 13 archers, one samurai, and the ram and the banner man. Uh meanwhile, he only has 15 archers and seven uh jav troers. So, at this point, I can one-shot one uh jab throwers with the units that I have. Uh and even though he counters my units, uh he's not able to engage into this. Look at how easily the Yumies can deal with the with everything pretty much. And I go for the three cow uh for the cow kills right here because if he doesn't eat these cows, he will not be able to produce anymore. So, this is pretty good damage uh whenever you are playing against Malion. And now he's in a little bit of a of a trouble uh food-wise. Even though he has a lot of cows, he's this is the only food source he has. And it's a really exposed one. And I am going into castle. So, I take this opportunity to just clear these houses uh while I age up. And he also takes that opportunity to uh to get this food. But I am aging up at this point. And look at his resources. He's nowhere near aging up. And we are both getting military units. Look at how many units I have. A being able to age up uh faster than your opponent. Having more military units and still having more resources. Look at his resources. He's nowhere near aging up. Um it is it's absolutely crazy.
Back at home, I made a few farms just to keep up with economy. And yeah, I don't even need to go for these outer resources. I could go for this, but there's really no need. And as soon as I y up, I uh go for my upgrade, my veteran upgrade for archers. And I said in the build that you should put uh Jordi in the wood in the lumber camp. So uh don't mind this. Uh and yeah, I forgot a lot of stuff. I forgot uh double products and uh I it seems I did get the third upgrade there. Uh but yeah, he still has this by the way. This is this I never found this this thing, but it really doesn't matter. Look at my army. Uh few fully upgraded right now and he's still nowhere near castle age. He needs a lot of gold to do that. So there he is. But I know he's there. And I'm going up with my with my my Ji archers. And I actually missed micro there. I went into the into the sofas. But now I have so many archers that this sofa just die in one hit. These are knights. These are early knights. Uh they have three ranged armor. And look at how easily they die. Now, by this time, I should be adding samurai instead of spearman because he has that many uh uh archers and um and javelin throwers. So, I should not be adding spearman at this time. Uh but what I decide to do eventually is just go into a stable. I'm not sure if I have it somewhere here, but I need to go for a stable eventually because he has way too many uh ranged units. And right now I'm just having the time of my life with these jumies. Uh getting kills and he's he has nothing to deal with it. Uh even the sofas dr he ages up and even though he took a lot of damage um I want to kill him fast because uh he right now probably has uh the same resources as I have because of the Imperial Age landmark. Actually, I have way more, but that's because I'm so ahead. But he will soon start uh going um at the part of me or a little bit better in the economy side. But now I have 60 Yumi. And yeah, his upgraded sofas uh are still no match for this many yumis. And even though he has an army that counters mine, look at how easily my yumi deal with with him. And look at this samurai. how much he's tanking. That's why samurai are so good with this composition. Uh these guys tank a lot of of uh of firepower. And now something else you can do, you can start getting the outer resources. Look at how exposed these guys are. But he's he has nothing to do to deal with this. This is really really oppressive. And now I'm going into samurai. And these guys are going to be able to tank for my Yumi archers. So yeah, I'm able to almost one-shot uh veteran upgraded sofas who have five ranged armor uh with these yummies that have nine range damage, which is not bad. I have uh all the ranged damage upgrades. Never forget that. And u and the uh yumi banner man always with me. I am also getting all the relics uh in the map pretty much. I already have three. Uh there's only two left. And also look at how I place my uh my houses. By the way, uh I see people that always place their houses like in really weird positions and then you end up blocking the farms. But try to do it this way because now all of these guys can drop off the farms into the into the houses and they are all still affected by my um by my dime manner. So right now I'm taking it slow. Uh I don't need to engage into this. I am getting all the economy in the map. I am getting uh all the upgrades, all the uh uh army value. So I am not in a in a rush. And I I I thought at this time that he was only on on this was his only gold. Uh I didn't know he had this at any time in at any point in time. And then I saw this this castle that he was doing. And this is just uh something that he does to survive for now. Um but I because his castles are are pretty good. I don't want to engage into that just yet. So what I do instead uh is a little trick you can do with Japanese. So take a look at this. What I do is what I go up with a villager and I construct a siege workshop right here. And then what you can do is come up with one Shinto priest that is still carrying the Jory Shiro and you can put that into the sh siege workshop. So this way uh you will get really fast u siege trebuchets rams whatever you want uh right in front of the enemy base which is going to be really really useful. And now I'm adding also mounted samurai into the mix which are going to uh deal with the ranged army of my opponent really effectively. And not this is also pretty good if you can do it because uh my villager was already there. So you can construct towers and upgrade them with the stone you get passively. Uh so yeah, that's also pretty good. And now I'm just uh firing up into the skip. He already has a lot of sofas, but not nearly enough to deal with my army. I'm already popcapped by this time. I have three secret sites, and I am only missing one relic in the map. Uh, so yeah, I'm using my samurai for now to just raid and um and take his attention off my off the front. And meantime, uh, the trushets are just doing work. These guys come up in 10 seconds. 10 seconds. That is really really amazing when you have the Yorishiro in a siege workshop like this. Uh so yeah, instead of just uh suiciding your army into static defenses, uh this is a really neat trick that you can do. And finally, I feel like uh yeah, I'm I'm maxed out. Uh I don't need to wait any longer. Uh so I just go for it. And his army was all the way back here chasing the advanced samurai. So, I get a really nice opportunity to come in. And this is just a destruction. Like, he has veteran archers with poison, but look at how many samurai I have. These guys are not able to die. These guys tank so much damage. And if he were to build Musafi warriors, I believe these guys also deal extra damage against infantry or maybe only against heavy. I'm not really sure. Uh but yeah, even if he had infantry, these guys would be able to destroy them pretty pretty comfortably. So he actually managed to hold uh hold there. But now the samurai is come and now he has an issue because uh these guys are going to be able to deal with his uh archer mass really really good. And he knows he he already lost and I was getting also his cows. So he just decides to tap out. And that's it. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, don't forget to like and subscribe. You can also catch me live over on Twitch or here on YouTube live streams. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a great day. See you in the next one.