Jomon advice wanted
 

Hi all. I'm a pretty new player, though I've played SP extensively. Can't wait to try MP when I get a chance.

I like LA Jomon. Guess I like the Ninjas, the Summons, and the Heroes it has.

First a specific question: The unit description for the two types of sacred Samurai (can't remember names) says they don't like fighting alongside one another. Does anyone know if this translates into an actual game effect? If not, those troops will just have to get over it because I like to combine them in squads together to improve morale.

Second, I'd like any advice (complete guides?) anyone can give me for Jomon. I've been going with an imprisoned Celestial General pretender, w/ A4, E4, D4, and +1 to all scales except heat/cold and 7 dominion.

I don't care for the death bless, but want to have D4 for all the juicy Jomon national summons. Seems a waste to have magic paths less than 4 on a pretender. Even a weak bless is better than none.

Is it possible to successfully get away with an imprisoned pretender in MP? With anyone other than Vanheim/Jotenheim (who don't seem to have any weaknesses) I mean?

I'm sure someone will tell me that I need production +3, but it bugs me to have negative scales in anything. I want luck to get my heroes, production for resources, the growth for supplies and people, and order to cut down on random events plus for gold. Of course I end up with too much gold and not enough resources. Always things to do with the gold though. Guess I have trouble being a "power gamer."

I usually make my starting commander my prophet, then Daimyos if I recruit any more non-mage commanders (hopefully the heroes show up so I don't have to).

Problems I'm running in to:

No shields on melee troops. Often my archers do more damage to my samurai and ashigaru than they do to the enemy. I usually set archers on "fire archers," but in those cases where the enemy has no archers, or after they route, my archers fire into any ongoing melee and do at least as much damage to my guys as to the enemy. Ok, I can recruit heavy infantry indies for this. What else?

National troops have trouble with crossbows, but also especially heavy cavalry. Jomon cavalry isn't that impressive.

What spells should I be going for. I have some idea, but does anyone have any advice for specific uses of mages with specific path combinations?

I usually research evo3, thau2, alt4, const6, conj6+ in that order.

Looking forward to any responses.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

I'd definitely take an awake pretender with Jomon that either boosts your starting army enough or is capable of taking indies alone. This is because Jomon starting arny isn't very good imo and you need those provinces around capital to get more resources for serious troop building.
For example: awake W9 blue dragon, dom str 5, order3/prod1/cold2/misfortune2.

For early strategy I would go with lots of samurai archers featuring flaming arrows. With this in mind I would research thaumaturgy 2(communion+remotes), conjuration 3(phoenix power), enchantment 4(flaming arrows) first. Cast flaming arrows via communion made of 5 of those mages with S2 and 2 randoms. After flaming arrows have been acquired you can continue straight to enchantment 6 for arrow fend, which is also super good and happens to patch up that lack of shields nicely.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

A weak bless may tempt you into using troops that you really shouldn't. A LA Agarthan Blindfighter is still inferior to a Cave Knight even if he has a N4 and D4 bless. You could take D2 (and forge a skull staff to boost yourself to M3 to cast Mound Find and give him the skull staff to be D4) instead and save 56 points, which is a scale.

IMHO, if you're going to bother with a bless you should make it a good one. Otherwise, forget about the bless entirely except for niche uses. In most cases a weak bless is not as good as a battlefield buff spell like Strength of Giants.

-Max

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

As Zenzei showed, it isn't 100% necessary to go 3 Prod, but the high resource cost of Jomon troops will remain an issue. Really, your 2 primary options are either 3 Prod, or an awake SC. If you don't have one or the other, you will be dreadfully slow in growing, as once your starting garbage troops start to die, you'll have only a handful of men to replace them with.

So basically, to avoid the 3Prod, I'd generally take my buddy:
Cyclops, E9, Dom 5, Order3/Cold1/Drain2

You can put him to sleep to research buffs or cons first:
Dormant Cyclops, E9, Dom5, Order3/Prod3/Cold1/Misf1

While I mostly have used the Earth bless for Jomon, I am a big fan of Water as well:
Dormant Lady of Fortune, W9 S4, Dom6, Order3/Prod3/Cold1/Misf2/Drain2


As far as sticking with your Celestial General, you have to ask yourself, "what do I really expect to get from X magic path?". Maximizing your pretender build is extremely important, as it's the only thing you can't just change in the middle of the game. Using your D4 as an example, the highest level Jomon summons, needs D4. If you took D3, you can make a Skull Staff to use for the summons. Bear in mind, that 4th circle cost you 32 points, that's almost a scale point - and you need 1F as well to summon the Dai Oni, something that you lack.

Some points to bear in mind - if you want to do a bless strat with capital only troops that need 20+ resources, you probably need the Prod3. The 3 minor blesses that you show (A/E/D) won't provide near enough benefit to even worry much about your bless anyways. The problem for you with Jomon, is that your other heavy infantry are pretty solid, so you really need a major bless to even make it worth fussing over. Simply put, 20% Air Shield, 2 Reinvig, and +100% Affliction rate isn't going to make your bless troops substantively more powerful.

Since your General wasn't awake, I'll give another suggestion for a more magic/summons heavy strat:
Dormant Enchantress, 6 Dom, F4/E4/S4/D4, Order3/Prod3/Cold1/Misf1/Drain2 - You could drop the Drain into Misf, but Misf3 while doable, can be frustrating. You could also experiment with dropping the Prod 1-2 points to boost the other damaged scales, or balance with a little out of your Order, if you are used to playing without the cash. Just pay close attention to your rate of troop acquisition in the starting phase of the game, and how fast you are able to topple indies. If you can't expand your territory very efficiently at first, then the second stage of the strat needs to come fairly early, and be well thought out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Hopefully someone will post a decent guide as I am no expert at mp or Jomon. But I've got Jomon in an upcoming mp game and I'd like all the advice I can get. And I have been playing them a little because of it. The Shinuyama guide is good on the summons for jomon as they are the same. I think Zenzei's Flame arrows is a great aim to go for. Your Longbow Samauris are a key unit.

I am sure the W9 Dragon is good but I am not sure that Jomon is an especially bless strategy friendly nation and it wouldn't be my paths on a Jomon pretender. You do have some sacred summons (iirc), but the sacred troops are capital only and don't really excel at anything and are as resource intensive as the rest of Jomon.

Your national mages are decent all rounders but they can't summon most of the national summons. Therefore I think you really need them on your Pretender. You need some death and some fire to get your best summons (Dai Oni). Air, water and earth add extra summon options too. Quite frankly the manual suggested awake Ghost King with D3, F2, A2 & E2 is not that bad for Jomon.

The ghost king is not the best awake SC points can buy but you can get the extra paths fairly cheaply so he will help with early conquests (with the army) then provide your early summoning and finally some decent forging options. I usually operate him with my army as he is a bit frail for an SC and losing him is a disaster. His etherial nature helps when your samauri are peppering the enemies he is fighting too. But try and script him and them to hit different things.

While Jomon is very resource hungry and therefore cries out for Production scales it has been pointed that you are usually better off going for extra cash (order or high luck) and then building another castle soon. That is the usual 'rule' for multiplayer Dominions anyway. And goes for most - some would say all - nations. Your almost always better off with Sloth 3 and 120 points in the 'bank'.

But in Jomon's case your small and poor quality starting army plus crippling resource intensive troops makes either an awake SC or high Production scales needed if you are not to get off with a very, very slow start. Which will kill you in mp. The Jomon's starting army struggles against indie 5s IME and won't take one a turn unless you are very lucky. You simply can't build anything decent at under about 24 resources a piece (and even then they are not exactly good) so you won't be able to even replace early losses let alone boost the army until you have the capitals surroundings conquered.

Also as you pick up new areas you may want to build some troops with shields to protect your Samauri from these provinces. It is suprising just how many indie chaff you can build with just Production 1 after playing so often with the traditional Sloth 2/3. You can then build purely samauris at your forts. So I think Jomon is one of the very few nations where a positive Production scale is a possibility. At least consider it.

Money is seldom a worry for Jomon. Your top mages are only 160 each and your troops are cheap (and too resource expensive to mass). So you could consider taking less order and can get away with it. I think Turmoil/Luck is good for Jomon as the bonus gems and cash it generates are very useful. Plus the Heroes of course. Picking even +1 positive production seems to greatly increase the appearence of the resource boosting mine finds too and these are obvious sites for new forts.

I like a bit of magic too if I can aford it with Jomon. You will recruit a lot of mages (as they are not capital only) and it's a decent research boost. And it makes the cheaper 90 cost mages actually more efficent as researchers.

Quite frankly Jomon's strength is not in it's troops - although the Samauri LB is nice - but you just need to get in to the middle game when your summons & mages can take over. Without a plan for the early turns you will be easy prey in mp. So an awake SC and/or Production scales are needed to keep you in the game.

You have another problem though. Most of your good summons require death gems. Ghost generals (nice Thug) and Oni Generals (ditto - but why not get a Bane Lord instead?) and finally the Dai Oni - practically an SC - all require plenty of death gems. Plus the better Oni troop summons want Death (or valuable Fire) gems. Although I am not really sure that the troops are as useful as the Thugs.

But Jomon has no death income and no death mages. So your pretender needs enough to at least summon a Revenant or two to start remote site searching as soon as possible. Happilly Revenents are Enchant 3 so you pick up the ability on the way to Flaming arrows anyway. Some alchemising is going to be needed for that though. Plus a bit of searching by your mini Rainbow Ghost King. You see he has no end of uses http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif It's another reason high luck is useful. Getting a couple of death gem finds can boost you a lot early.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Max made a shorter post that raised a couple of my points while I was still typing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Forgive me if I don't want to edit the entire body of it to reflect that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Max and Jim both posted good points while I was typing as I type very slowly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif I'll be here far to long if I try and edit so I'm not going to bother either http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Jomon is incredibly resource hungry, so that means you want an awake SC (with awe, of course). If you're keen on having death access I'd go for a ghost king, give him a bit of A/E on top of his death so he can self-buff (air shield is especially important early, it should make him able to solo most indies right off the bat)

The other option is an awake 'clops, which will give you a couple more points of productivity and a safer early game SC, at the cost of some magical flexibility. (Or you could splash D on him instead of taking scales if you prefer...the GK will have better mobility later on, but is vulnerable to anti-undead spells, the cyclops is less mobile, but doesn't have the undead weakness to certain spells. Take your pick.)

You'll need to budget 45 astral pearls in order to empower one of your S2 guys to S3 to make the 2 rings, but you've got crystal coins available nationally, so it's not a huge weakness.

I wouldn't bother with the Jomon sacreds, they're kind of horrible. Go with the archers and flaming arrows strat mentioned early, just keep recruiting until you get an F2 mage and cast phoenix power and you're good to go. Commune if you get bad picks and only have F1 mages available.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Good stuff. Thanks everybody. I do appreciate it.
I tend to play thematically, which makes me balk at a Ghost King or Cyclops pretender. This is why I like the Celestial General. He has an awesome standard, and should be a decent SC if I can ever get there, though his paths aren't what I'd like for Jomon. I might go with either a Lady of Fortune, Lord of Plenty, or an Enchantress. A Crone might be perfect, but I can't stomache having an age problem with my pretender.
I guess I will bite the bullet and go for production 3, and maybe Luck 3/Disorder 3.

Another question.JimMorrison said he likes an earth bless for Jomon. I can't understand that. Since Jomon's mages aren't sacred, they get no benefit from the reenvig. Sure the pretender gets a benefit, but there's no other real use.

Also, does anybody know how/if the Lord of Plenty pretender brings "good fortune to those around him."

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Crone loses her age problems the moment you take a nature magic pick. Or two, can't remember for sure. As to earth bless, if you have heavy sacreds, reinvigoration and extra armour help them a lot. But really shouldn't bother with Jomon's troops...

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

I think Jomon's summons tend to be sacreds, so they do get help from an E bless, but that's not a great reason for a huge one. If you're wanting to use Dai Oni they'd benefit from a couple of points of reinvig for sure.

And I reiterate my pretender suggestions, celestial general is crap. If you want to splash around in the kiddy pool of playing thematically be my guest, but it's frustrating to be asked for strategy advice and then have it dismissed for non-strategy-related reasons. And just to make it clear, this is NOT a minor point for Jomon. They are one of the worst nations in the game to attempt to play without an awake, functional SC pretender to get some resources into their cap and money into a second fort as soon as possible.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Hey Micah. Don't be frustrated. I didn't dismiss your strategies. Ok the Celestial General is crap. Fine. I really appreciate your advice, and I'll try it out.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Just seems like every nation should take a Ghost King, or a Cyclops, no matter what. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but reading through the strategy guides, those seem to be the most common, with perhaps a vampire queen thrown in.

Guess I need to start powergaming if I want to try MP, or I won't last long.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

sorry if I was grumping at you.

You're pretty much right on the pretender choice though...there's a choice between GK, clops, PoD and Wyrm for early SCs (with a few nation specific choices such as the risen oracle, gorgon, and colossal fetish as well.)

The fear/awe combo is just too damn good to pass up, and the celestial general doesn't have fear (he isn't as bad as I thought though, since he IS armored at least, but his encumberance value is a problem for extended fights, which will happen due to the lack of fear...Actually, if you give him enough death magic to have a fear value he might be a viable option, though it'd be somewhat inefficient. Play with it if you'd like, it might provide a decent compromise for theme.) If you haven't tried it go ahead and give it a shot, you'll be amazed at how well they go together against indy chaff.

If you don't have an awake SC you need to have an imprisoned bless chassis (and good units to use it with, Jomon's don't qualify), which is also confined to a handful of different choices.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Is that really true? Bless is just a way of boosting certain unit stats so you get more killing power for a given pound of gold. If you have good, solid national troops, they can expand quite well even if they're not sacred. Functionally-speaking, a dual F9W9 bless in the early game is just a way of killing indies faster and more efficiently. You can get the same effect on expansion in some cases by having a 50% larger army from good scales. This is especially true if your army has access to good missile weapons, which scale better than footmen in heavy plate. (LA Agartha is lots of fun with a good bless but in practice armies of crossbowmen with some light infantry guards expand better than uber-blessed Blindfighters.)

Consider how valuable mercs are for expansion, and then consider that most mercs are pretty average as national troops go--and they're almost never used with a bless.

-Max

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Max,

The problem is that production 3 will give you about 40 more resources in your cap. Taking a mountain province with an awake pretender will give you about 40 extra resources in your cap. And then the next province will add another 40, and so on. You also get more gold that way.

Sure, eventually your prod scale will spread out and give you more resources in the long-term, but by then you can have a second fort up. In the meantime you're forced to either attack with marginal forces that will take more casualties than you'd like in order to get resources, or wait longer to let your forces overpower the indies with little or no damage taken, losing expansion speed.

Going for a bless or an awake SC are almost always going to be the best options. Is there some exception? Of course. Perhaps "need to" was a bit strong, but the optimal strategy is generally going to be one of the two.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

First I would like to point out that though the "cyclops" is a western name, Japanese folklore has mountain warrior spirits that could be adaptable, with a little imagination. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I tried the earth bless with Jomon because your sacreds start at 14 prot. Since you have samurai with No-Dachi and 16 prot, and other people have 20 prot heavy infantry, I went in the direction of having better tanking power. The difference between 18/20 prot seems small against conventional troops, but yours are better offensively, and get the reinvig for staying power, especially important against a cold/heat scale enemy.

As far as the mages not being sacred and not getting the reinvig, it seems that the Shroud of the Battle Saint is 0 Enc and only costs 5 pearls to make. That's a pretty cheap investment for 4 reinvig, and whatever else they might get (+2 morale for mages, yay!).


I am kind of new-ish, so I don't see quite the necessity of such strict adherence to a small list of pretender choices. Obviously, some of the pretenders are just shabby or in no way cost effective, but it all comes down to strategy, and if you think yours through well enough, just about any pretender should be capable. Just don't get too pissed off when someone's cyclops shows up at your capital on turn 5. >.>

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Ah. Is it true that a Prod scale doesn't affect the resources you get from neighbors until your dominion spreads to those neighbors? Makes sense, and I hadn't thought of that. That does tend to make Sloth more attractive, because it won't hurt you for a while, and the beginning is when your home fort is most important.

-Max

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Thanks again to everyone who responded. I appreciate the advice, and it has helped me understand things better.

Of course Shrouds of the Battle Saint are perfect for mages. I balk at putting them on combatants, because they negate the units' inherent armor, but for mages they're perfect, and a good reason to go with an earth bless for nations that don't have holy mages.

I'm still going to keep trying to find a way to make the Celestial General viable. It's painful to spend all those points to get Dominion 10 for awe, so I'll work on something else.

JimMorrison wrote:
"I am kind of new-ish, so I don't see quite the necessity of such strict adherence to a small list of pretender choices. Obviously, some of the pretenders are just shabby or in no way cost effective, but it all comes down to strategy, and if you think yours through well enough, just about any pretender should be capable. Just don't get too pissed off when someone's cyclops shows up at your capital on turn 5."

This is how I *want* the game to be. The reason I don't play simpler but flashier games is that I want deep, subtle, and varied strategy choices, rather than rushes with one powerful unit. I want there to be a use for most or all units and spells in the game--otherwise why have them? Whether Dominions 3 is this type of game is debatable though I guess.

I've read some posts that claim MP boils down to a "rush for Tartarians." With everybody going for more or less the same spells and everybody having a Cyclops pretender or something similar, I'm not sure I'll enjoy MP as much as I had hoped. I'll try it out and see. I'd like to be the one who surprises my opponents with an effective ORIGINAL strategy. Is that a losing cause?

Also, nobody said anything about the two Jomon sacred samurais not working together, as implied in the unit description. I've never had a problem (that I discovered anyway) so I'll keep doing that.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

You are probably late to the party to be able to come up with an original overarching strategy at first try. I think you will have better luck with coming up with original and creative solutions to particular obstacles.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

As far as pretender choices being too obvious and only a few being "viable", it is not a given that this will remain so in the future...

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

I highly, HIGHLY recommend trying out the Conceptual Balance mod, available here: Post#578909
Its philosophy is to make the unused/underused units, commanders, and pretenders viable, usually by adding or expanding some thematic feature. So for example, I believe the Celestial Master autosummons troops each turn. It really expands your options, I'll bet you'll love it.

Unfortunately this is mostly true, but it looks like the new patch will mitigate that somewhat. DON'T LET THIS PUT YOU OFF FROM MP!!! MP is the home of subtlety & cleverness, and if you find a game with Difficult or Very Difficult Research settings, you'll have literally months before SCs become common...and it turns out that kitting & maneuvering SCs is actually very fun & challenging, as the game is cleverly designed such that no SC can ever be truly invulnerable.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

I don't think all mp is like that exactly. The end game (where Tartarians are) is dominated by them and certain powerful magic schools and so can be a bit samey by all accounts.

But before you get there there are many strategies and ways of playing. the different races play very differently. Some like Jomon are slow starters and therefore really need awake SC pretenders. Others want double blesses, others have the troops capable of expanding quickly anyway (Elephants, Hydras etc.)

But you do need a good start in mp. You will find some of your opponents are taking more than a province a turn in the first year. You can't afford to be taking one every two turns in those circumstances.

I highly recommend mp. I started in the new year to play mp and there are plenty of inexperienced mp people to play against. Avoid Micah http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif he is one of the very best mp players. Look for the newbie games. You learn a lot very quickly.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

I have found that Tartarians are great for 1.) giving death/nature nations access to earth/fire/astral/air, 2.) supercombatant duty. In the end game, SCs largely replace national armies, in the sense that SCs can be easily and trivially beaten by mages, but can also easily and trivially beat mages (depends on the tactics each side chooses), and SCs can easily and trivially beat armies while armies have a tough time beating mages (with a small army to support them). What I'm trying to say here is that Tartarian access is an escalation in the use of force, not a bland "I win" card that makes all end games look the same. Still, I like the upcoming Tartarian nerf because it's thematic, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that endgames are boring. Mine would be if I didn't make them fun, because I play against the AI. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

-Max

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

You only need dom 9 for awe. I don't think I've ever spent the points for 10.

Also Hoplos is right, the end game does *sort of* come down to who has the most tartarians, but the paths to get there vary quite widely by nation. The mages available to you nationally also stay important, even if it just comes down to being able to counter tartarians effectively or not. (Dust to dust vs life for a life vs charm...etc). Raiding is also very important and doesn't require massive forces to pull off, just enough to knock out some PD.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Ressurected! Out of nowhere!



An unexpected event has occured in Silicia.
A group of drunken Yamabushi picked a fight with some of your Sohei. After a vicious battle one Sohei and one Yamabushi were dead.


I've played them a bit, and tend to end up with a mix of the two..... This is the first I've ever noticed this happen, but it does happen, apparently. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Yeah rarely you'll lose 1 troop. Not much of a discouragement to mixing them, but a nice event.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Has anyone tried using an awake Celestial General in CBM? I did a little test game, and you can get a dom9 A4 E3 CG with decent scales. The big advantage in CBM is that he autosummons perfect arrow catchers for your samurai. This lets you use the resource-cheaper Aka-Oni samurai instead of the expensive archers or heavy prot samurai. He isn't much of an early game SC, but once you get Alt 3 or so he becomes much more effective with stone/iron skin, and mistform. Just a thought, I'm not sure how effective it is in the long run.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

I think it could be done. 5 HI a turn is like a free 100 resources for arrow catchers. My preference is generally for asleep pretenders, but an awake CG should be viable. The chassis has reasonable SC stats as well.

although I would back them up w/ Samurai Cavalry, who are cheaper and slightly better in CB.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

A Dormant Oracle with 9 Astral Magic makes the Sacred units of the Jomon great Arrow Catchers. Also, Monks spamming Fear Not means that you can field an army that fears no arrow. And you don't even need a Lab to build them.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

If the event replaces another negative event I would actually call it an advantage - most negative events are far worse.

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

Same reason I like to keep 1 blood slave in the lab. Bogus freeing 1 slave is a fine use for a bad event....

Re: Jomon advice wanted
 

I suppose it's time I posted in this thread since I was obsessed with making Jomon work for some time. Before the latest patches, Jomon was a lot more difficult. I have played Jomon SP extensively, and believe I understand how to play them in general.

I advocate a rainbow pretender. I actually like the much maligned Freak Lord. With two or three levels of alteration, he can assist in the expansion--he can trample and has fear. Make him a rainbow and he can search. I like that he has blood. Three blood plus earth magic gets you bloodstones in Vanilla and all you give up with the freak lord is the feet slot. In CBM, the Celestial General is hard to resist for Jomon because of the shield bearing auto-summon troops though.In fact, with the CG, you almost don't have to recruit normal troops at all.

There's no point in a bless, though an incedental bless is useful because your dragon mages and summonable sacreds can benefit from it. It's nice to have 3 death for your death summons, but not essential. For your dragons and summons, I think earth bless is the most important, and maybe nature.

Dominion can be medium, and I like luck/disorder for Jomon for the events, and hopefully heroes (though they aren't spectacular). You won't need as much gold as many others because your land mages are cheap.

Expand carefully using your national troops however you can and saving tough indies for later. I like the red samurai and archers for general purpose troops. Start searching for gems immediately, and make a beeline for the nearest water--that's where you want your second castle if possible. With 3 luck, you'll probably not have to recruit any samurai (just archers) after a short while because you'll be swimming in Ashigaru and Ronin from events.

The heavy duty samurai can be called upon in an emergency--they hit fairly hard and have strong armor (but of course no shields). For most uses though, take the red samurai. Do your best to keep your archers from hitting your own men. With Jomon using archers and samurai, your own archers will possibly kill more of your men than the enemy--so select placement and orders carefully. I usually have archers fire archers, so they neutralize the enemy's missle weapons before switching to frontline firing. Hopefully my samurai have already beaten the enemy frontline, and so won't take too many arrow hits from your own archers as they chase the retreating enemy.

The priests that can cast the various Jomon spellsongs are great, but you can't gather enough of them to really make a difference in the early game--you should be recruiting researchers instead. I use the priests later to spellsong defenses and relief for my mages (small area of effect). Priests of the various types are very useful in this role as "force multipliers" so your heavy hitters don't have to cast airshield, etc. If enemy troops make it close to your mage backfield, the priests can (and will if their script has run out) switch to their offensive spellsongs and spells (and maybe charm some enemy troops with their charm spellsong).

Research Conjuration. Yes enchantment, evocation, and alteration are all good schools for you too and you can pick some levels of these prior if you have a specific reason (like using the freak lord to expand), but the goal is to get to the summons who can thug. These thugs are your two kinds of etherial samurai: there's one with fear, and one with awe. These guys can take over for your armies as soon as you can summon them in numbers and start making equipment (they need no equipment to start, but are better with equipment--golden shields for the fear guys, Helms of fear for the awe guys if you can make them). I think they're both good bargains for the gem price, come with ethereal and a decent weapon/armor out of the box, and can self bless. Few other nations have summons as cost-effective as these IMO (mainly because of the etherial + fear or awe).

Ninjas can be useful, but very niche unit, in spite of their reputation. You can summon fox-lady spies. There are lots of other interesting mid-level summons for Jomon too. I try to get several of each summonable mage at least just for the diversity (and many of the national summons are ethereal). The Dai-Tengu is useful for arrow-fend but fragile and expensive. Regular Tengus can fly in storms, which give them some use at least, but I generally only summon a couple of Dai-Tengu. Of course you can eventually get Dai-Onis, which are great.

If the game is vanilla, you should next get some construction researched to forge clams, fever-fetishes, and blood stones (if you can). With boosters and gem-producing items, you start to become un-stoppable as the gems roll in.

As time goes on and your research ramps up, you get stronger and stronger. Your mages can cast any battlefield spell--with communion if necessary. This makes you very flexible. Your greatest strength is your magical diversity. You can basically cast anything you need to(except blood) eventually.

Water dragon mages (and the summonable earth dragon mages) can both be great thugs or combat casters. What I like about the dragons is the flying, and the hp to survive seeking arrows, etc. Dragons can be where you need them in a heartbeat, and have great elemental and nature paths. They are expensive, but after you are summoning your troops and have plenty of land mages, you can focus on these exclusively (an advantage to not having some uber capitol-only mage).

I think Jomon is fragile in the beginning, so you have to be careful, but once research ramps up you're golden. I feel that the threat of a rush in MP is a little over-rated (though not out of the question). Diplomacy is the great equalizer in MP games, and I've been surprised at just how critical it turns out to be. So, as Jomon, make friends with your early giant neighbor if you can and hit the research books while you can. Get into the water ASAP, and start summoning.

That's enough thoughts to keep the conversation going for awhile.