[Squirrelloid]

rdonj: Yamabushi have (1) higher attack than go-hatamoto, (2) damage 10 weapon vs, damage 8 weapon (21 vs. 19 damage before drn), and (3) map-move 2. You're also likely to have some sort of bless unless you played for pure scales, most of which are going to be at least plausibly useful. Finally, they require relatively few resources compared to their gold cost, unlike most of your troops, so they're easy to 'mass' - I usually take good dominion as Jomon to push my likely great scales so i'm buying 7+ of them every turn.

Originally Posted by Festin

Thanks for some good suggestions (I did not really notice yamabushi, for example), but, in my opinion, the main points still remain.

Sorry, but Jomon magic is simply not good. Sure, there are nations in LA with worse mages, but not too many. Tien Chi magic is good. Marignon magic is good. Jomon magic is not. I have played 2 MP games with them (and several SP), and the most vivid memory is a huge crowd of W1N1, A1N1 and E1W1 Onmyoji hired in a vain hope to get an F2.

Ok, first of all: castle aggressively. If you have less than 3 castles at the end of year 1, you're probably doing something wrong. If you hire mages at all your castles every turn, and continue castling aggressively, you should get most variations you need.

Second: both of your mages are useful. The Onmyoji only really come into their own later on - i'd focus on the other earlier. He'll get you easy access to haruspex and gnome lore, and you'll probably pull an augur and auspex before too long. As your anti-rush strategy should involve alteration research, these are the mages you want to shut down a rush anyway because the early earth magic in alteration is killer. (Suggested research: alt2 -> thaum2 -> evo2 -> conj3+ OR alt4 OR constr++. This gets you all the site searching spells as well as the necessary rush counters before the end of year 1.)

I did not mean that earth bless is completely useless for Jomon. But here the in-built frustration factor of Jomon manifests again: you need earth bless for thugs BUT your mages are not sacred and you have a reliable access to earth. So, it's a kind of a lose/lose situation. Typical.

First, your god doesn't *need* to do anything for you except provide good scales. So grabbing a major e-bless really doesn't involve any opportunity cost except your scales are worse than they would otherwise be. So who cares if your mages aren't sacred? That means you don't need to waste effort trying to bless them all either, and since your priestly options kind of suck, sacred mages would be even more aggravating.

Moving around those huge monk-powered communions which are supposed to be a trump card of Jomon using boots of flying does not really look like a solution.

Monk-powered communions are *a* tool in the jomonese toolbox, not the only tool. You have summonable thugs capable of raiding, you have good battle magic especially in earth and astral, and you have solid troops. You even have mages capable of casting Wind Guide and Flaming Arrows (F2 + Phoenix Power + 3f gems - so keep an eye out for good indie archers). The communions should come out for big fights only, and as your Onmyoji can all teleport with a cap, they are easy to mass when necessary, and are your go-to mages for communions because they can slave themselves up on their own.

Nushi does have D1, but she is Conj-5, needs W2 and can only be summoned in swamps. Well...

Since your major early research goals are in alteration, conjuration, and construction (following acquisition of site searching spells), conj 5 is not that inconvenient. Also, swamp forts are cheap, so you have good reason to want a swamp anyway. And you'll have W2 by the time you have conj 5. IIRC, she also has decent water magic, so you can use her to break into Streams from Hades with some boosters for D3 access. Conj 5 is plenty early enough for death access.

Why ashigaru? I did not really find any use for them. You start with 10, and they do a good job as archer decoys, but I never saw a reason to buy one.

Ashigaru have a length 5 weapon, and you'll have a pile of N2 mages. Panic + repel sounds like a tasty combination. Also, cheap chaffe is always potentially useful, especially when your cheap chaffe is better armed and armored than most of the independents at a similar resource cost, and the independents are much harder to mass. Deploy them against average morale foot soldiers or cavalry, provide some mage support (re:Panic, but also LoS, Wooden Warriors, etc..), and the lowly ashigaru might surprise you. With sufficient panic-spam, even elite soldiers are vulnerable.

Note that the yamabushi's glaive is length 4, so still good for repelling a wide variety of targets - they could easily be mixed into blocks of ashigaru for some punch.