The New Jomon?
 

So, I've been away from the game for a while, because it drains my time like there is no tomorrow, and I've been trying out the new Jomon Units. When I first started playing it, it was widely declared to be a weak side because of 3 factors, a lack of shield units, high Resource requirements and a lack of battle mages. Also, national summons are way to hard to get.

After tinkering in SP only, and looking at all the guides I could get my hands on, I've made a short strategy for the Jomon as they presently stand. Beware, this has not been tried out in multiplayer and I'm throwing this out not as the end all be all guide, but as a means to start a discussion over how to play the new Jomon.

I've tried an Imprisoned Oracle as my chasis, and paired it with 9 Astral, 4 Fire and 4 Death and 7 Domain.
3 Turmoil, 3 Productivity, 3 Luck and 1 Magic starts me out with enough resources to build my army, and enough gems to cast spells from the path of Astral and Death.

With 9 Astral, I can use my Sacred units to do one thing well, block and stop arrows. I've switch Fire and Death for Wind and Water so that the units can do that job better, but hey.

With high enough construction and conjuration, I can bootstrap my way up and summon all the national summons.

Anway, I'm out of time, and have to get back to work, but I thought I'd start a thread on this.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Only comment I have is that Jomon should aim to get a sea province asap (something you omit).

Ryujin and the shark warriors may be the best thing that Jomon has going for it.

Easiest way into the sea is an awake Wyrm. I just made one dom10 neutral scales E3, but A3 is likewise doable and then you have your guaranteened arrow fend/mist caster and with a little finesse storm caster who can cloud trapeze around to support your armies. The Wyrm will also aid in expansion.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Yeah, my current build would be slow to get under the sea. That's why I originally tried 4 Air and 4 Water, for Sea Trolls, but with the awesome Fear Not Bless of the Monks, 4 Air seemed like a waste. With 6 Astro, you can get your mages to 4 Air without too much trouble. 1 Air Magic becomes two with the Ring. That allows them to summon a Dai Tengo, getting them up to 3, plus the ring makes it 4, which allows you to create the helmet and other booster goodies. Of course you need Conjuration 6 and Construction 6 to do that.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

A bless, if any, should be targeted with the sacred summons in mind rather than the recruitables.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Slobby, I'd love to hear why you like Shark Warriors so much--I'm having trouble justifying their cost.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

The whole Court of the Dragon Kings makes you wonder if something will come of it down the line. I'd love to see a middle era side based around the dragon kings and spirits. Shark Warriors and Shrimp Soldiers, along side Jomon warriors, all lead by Dragon Kings or dragons.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

I've been tempted more than once to make a mod where Jomon just plain starts in the water and gets a Dragon King pretender--then they can retake the land and free the people from bondage to the Bakemono. That comes after a general rebalance, though.

Jomon has most all of the tools it needs to survive--it just doesn't all mesh together nicely. You can do a ton of things--but not all of them, and not as well as other nations. They're more than adequate for single player, but tend to be a penny short in MP games if that makes sense.

As far as your build goes...I tend to shy away from Turmoil-Luck for Jomon if just because I know how incredibly money-hungry the nation can get. Sure, all your mages are cheap--if you discount your 500(!) gold Ryujin, which is your only mobile mage-support. They even do that super-duper well(in a current MP game I crushed EA Ulm by essentially having a floating pool of 7 Ryujin giving unexpected mage support in every battle I needed them for, usually bouncing 3 or even 4 provinces every turn). Ideally you want a dozen of them raiding and laying down heavy artillery, but those guys don't come cheap.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

I like your idea, although I fear that the sea is overcrowded as is. I would suggest that the Jomon go the same route as the late era Atlantis or early era Agatha, start on land but with a mix of amphibious units and normal units.
Human, Tengu and the Dragon Court.

As to your SP points, the Jomon are spread out a lot. It seems that you can only reliable get 2 Astral, 2 Nature, or 2 Earth from the units you can purchase on land. Everything else takes a strong effort and quite a bit of planning.

It seems that one of the biggest downsides is the lack of pretenders that you can use. There just aren't enough Chassis to take advantage of all the abilities the Jomon could bring to bare.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

The sea isn't that crowded in LA... only R'lyeh starts underwater.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Talking about MA.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Huh come again?

It seems to me everyone in this thread is talking about LA Jomon. The thread title that you yourself created has Jomon in it, and most posts in this thread make mention of the underwater recruitable units that are exclusive to LA Jomon.

You yourself talk about....
Making a distinct reference to land recruitable units (so implying water recruitables exist). And MA Shinuyama doesn't get access to water recruitiable units or Astral mages from the land roster (not that MA Shinuyame has a water roster). But LA Jomon has both the things you talk about. So again, you are the one talking about Late Age and LA Jomon.

So to respond to rdonj's remark with the reply "Talking about MA" seems to me to be you forgetting yourself what you were actually wanting to talk about :)

If you really did want to talk about Middle Age though, and MA Jomon in particular (so Shinuyama), then you did a great job of tricking everyone into talking about LA Jomon instead :D

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Ah, sorry for the confusion. When I was making a reference to MA era for the Jomon, I was talking about the possibility for a Mod Nation. One that would be a rival to the Shinuyama, but led by the Dragon Court. (There are two conversations going on at once on this thread)

As to the Late Era Jomon, the issue that I am discussing is opportunity cost that you pay. If you want access to the water units right away, you need to have an Awake SC, because none of your troops are going down there with you anytime soon. This weakens your scales and magic a lot I believe, so you can be sure that you won't be fielding much of an army, or have much of a Bless Strategy.
If you want either of those (although a bless strategy seems a little weak for the Jomon) you probably won't be hitting the sea until you get Sea Trolls. By that time, who knows what is going on down there.

Personally, the coolest improve that have come to the Jomon are their new Holy Spells. They are really cool, and it might make it worth it to have a Spellcaster as your prophet just to get access to all of them.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Why do the Jomon get Fire Crystals? That is a definitely oversight. A sea bound culture such as their's should have water crystals.
More the Air Crystal to the Mountain of the Mystics, get rid of the Fire Crystal, and put a Water Crystal in the Temple of the Pure War. Easy!

Re: The New Jomon?
 

My comments on LA-Jomon.

Turmoil-3 Prod 3 Heat 3, Death 3, Luck 3, Magic 3
Awake Wyrm, E6 Dom 4.

Like a turtle returning to the sea - head for the water, asap.
Heat(3) because your income (etc) will almost be unaffected by the heat scale from your water provinces.

As jomon, you are going to have small numbers of expensive units, and lots of forts. Decreasing supplies (heat, death) make siegeing painful your opponents. Additionally you have a lot of summons which provide supply bonuses. You have no old mages, which is a plus.


If used with care, attacking high dominion provinces, your wyrm with a 16 regen and a 17 prot can solo most provinces by himself. Which is good. Cuz your land troops suck. Personally, I view Cav as the only worthwhile unit - tho hard to mass.

The earth-6 is good for conjuration as well. The awake pretender is critical for getting jomon's expansion going. This build has a little too few $$ for my tastes - and the Jomon hero's are nothing to write home about.

You're counting on necromancer luck events to get you access to death - so land provinces are necessary.

Build your O- mages both at least through turn 10, to minimize the chance of bad events.

Consider building your other mainline mage and prophetizing him, in order to benefit from the fivefold path spells. Helpful if he has nature path. Having an o mage build a crystal matrix, so your prophet can benefit a communion with skillful path is useful. Consider it, but don't do it if you're close to water.


You can also try a Dom-9 Death 4 pretender, which is *much* more fragile, but gives you a leg up on end game.

The kuijin (?) summons is well worth the 18 gems. I like the shrimp warriors over shark warriors- and crabs generals make amusing thugs.

You need to get in water asap - and then build a fort, lab, and temple in water as fast as you can.

To this end, conquer the water province with your pretender. Turn1:Start a fort, build a cmd.
Turn2:Build another cmdr, have 1rst commander continue fort. Pretender builds lab.(why you need some path on the pretender)
Turn3: Prophetize 2nd cmdr. Pretender goes off conquering.
Turn4: 2nd Commander builds temple.
Turn5: Start building your mages - and start looking for free forts.

Ruyko's are OK.. but way too expensive to get more than 1-2.

If LA-Ryleh is in the game.. you're going to need higher dominion (and a lotta luck).

Re: The New Jomon?
 

What happens to your plan if Jomon starts with someone between them and the nearest water?
It seems a bad idea to focus your early game around something you may not even have access to.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

you're hosed, duh.

But you're hosed as jomon generally. My build doesn't hose you more or less than usual =).


Jomon is probably best with fairly aery maps, and with with ready access to water.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Not that I like Jomon much, or have much experience with them, but it seems that Chris's build depends too much on luck of non-scales variety. And the variant with Dom-4 Wyrm I'd say a way to suicide. Though I agree about Heat - it protects your dragon princes and doesn't affect your troops as much as many opponents.
Actually, Jomon may work with awakened rainbow researcher who will open up many possibilities for nation's mages quite soon and allow to produce many of the nation's summons. This will also take you into water as soon as you will get about 10 Kappa (vanilla game, or 1st Kappa thug in CBM).
Or you can go with SC - Wyrm or sea goddess. Or even Cyclops, actually, with Construction 1st research priority he will be able to bring you into sea by the start of the 2nd year for sure... ;)

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Anyone notice that with high Turmoil and Luck you get a lot of instances of Ronin coming to your bidding? I wish I had the stats for them at hand, although I think they are just unarmored Samurai.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

New discover in my SP game. Contact Yama-no-kami, a cool looking spell, even if the unit can't move off his mountain (he summons creatures to your domain)must be cast on mountain terrain. Further more, it doesn't work on border mountain terrain, which makes it useless on the random map I'm using. That sucks the big one if you ask me.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

yes. the yama is why I like the E on the wyrm.
And yes, you have to remember to turn off border mountains when you make random maps. Hoses a lot of nations.

I seem to like the mori for five fold path reasons, in a communion.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Ive tried all these alternates. After the Wyrm, I like the cyclops best. In vanilla or with little water, I certainly would consider the cyclops strongly. But otherwise, I prefer the ability to get to sea.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Yes, I see. But what I pointed out is that the Cyclops doesn't automatically prevents you from taking into water relatively fast: you would only need Const 2 for this, attainable by the end of year 1 for sure, and probably earlier.
And you pointed out yourself that dragon princes aren't so good as to base your whole strategy on them. Crab generals are good support thugs, but they would need some Construction or Alteration anyway.
Another question - what do you think about Magic 3 for Jomon? It both increases research, decreases effective encumbrance of your mages (some of which are badly encumbered) and makes some spells of Fivefold Path monks more effective...

Re: The New Jomon?
 

It is hard enough getting everything you want with Jomon. It's like having a swiss army knife versus someone with a hammer.

I'm enjoying a sp game with a lady of Fortune, dormant. 3 Order, 3 Production, 1 Magic, 1 Misfortune, 1 cold or heat. This gives me a SC that can get underwater after a year.


Astral is a must in my book, because the Ring of Wizardry is of great benefit to the mages of the Jomon and the summons, most of which of 3 to 4 magic paths.
I believe that with crystal matrix, one of the ideas is a reverse communion, with a few water and nature based monks boosting dragons.

Re: The New Jomon?
 

Yes, Lady is another possibility. But to act as a real SC she will need either research (and it allows to put Cyclops or summons underwater, too) or Dom 9-10 for Awe. And that's damn expensive even without requisite Astral 5-6...

Re: The New Jomon?
 

She does well enough in a years time to get her and her bodyguards under the sea. And if becomes a communion slave to a few Monks, so much the better.