I've followed advice from the posters on this forum in a LA game playing Jomon. My armies were mostly filled with the lower end archers and samurai. I also used personal strategies I learned from earlier games. However, the AI continues to crush me and I can't figure out how its able to do it.
The enemy nations seem to outperform, outproduce and worst of all, horribly outnumber me. I was probably about halfway through the 2nd game year, controlled around seven provinces and my average army was around twenty units. I had three dedicated researchers (the Pretender, and two expensive research units). I had temples in almost every province (so in the Dominion area I was definitely doing alright). I also had a prophet as well, to help spread it.
My magic research pace was decent and my PD for every province was 20. Here's where I think I am really suffering: resources and production capacity.
Building a castle seemed to alleviate this somewhat, but it turned out to be short term solution. I saw one spike in my resources for that area and then that was it. While the AI is taking an army almost half a thousand strong, I'm struggling just to put a decent squad together, let alone two. It seems the enemy can afford to create hundreds of units where I might be able to queue up around ten per turn.
I don't bother taxing provinces whose income is too low, but my gold income was decent anyway. I simply can't figure out why I always seem to be near resource depleted. I'm not draining my funds every turn, I'm taking over every province I can, and I'm imposing higher taxes on the provinces that are worth it.
Other than those solutions, I'm stumped. Please help.