Guiding Jomon

[Sombre]

My personal experience suggests you should just be building armies of longbow samurai and ignoring all the rest 90% of the time.

[Aezeal]

my personal experience with dominions in general is that guides that say you don't need much money are wrong.. always ways to spend it... if only to build more castles to build more troops and mages.

saying others can field more (5 on 1) archers than you cus yours are 21 resource is just wrong.. that is why you take production (while others might have sloth) and when you have your 3th castle (which you need with any nation to pump mages more races usually can't use all that combined production anyway... then you can just pump all those archers from 3 castle (or more)

While I can't say that this guide is wrong in which troops you should use (I never played Jomon, never appealed to me) the reasoning/logic behind choices is at least flawed somewhat. (and I just believe Sombre in he says archers are what one should use.. but that is one of my weak points )

PS I wonder what general idea about kitting assasins is too. I haven't played much nations which have them as recruitables but I use the merc sometime. I don't the assasins I've used effective so I dont'kit them out (loosing stuff) then again.. they PROBABLY aren't effective because I haven't kitted them.

The tip to use bows seems very good (I was thinking melee weapons and armor most of the time) might try that. A strong bow should help against most mages.

PS I like your clear research priorities, can all those spells be cast out of the box by mages or are boosters needed?

[Ming]

Good guide. You may want to mention that Jomon's Master mage has a 42% chance of being able to make fetish. If you can find 2 water boosters, they can make clams 42% of the time too.

I haven't played Jomon yet but this guide certainly stirred my interest.

Not sure if A4 is absolutely essential since indie inf can shield your shieldless inf.

Not sure about samurai longbow vs. other troops but suspect you'll need both rather than either extreme.

[Tichy]

It's always nice, and in MP perhaps essential, to be able to make air boosters and storm staves (not to mention all the nice air armors). I have a hard time not taking at least A4 on my pretender if I don't have an easy way to get it otherwise.

[Ming]

Tichy,

Thank you for your comment.

I agree that A4 is nice, maybe even essential. It is just that I am not sure at this stage (not having played this nation) if it is. I may come around to thinking that A4 is essential after I have tried playing Jomon.

The point is that E4S4 on your pretender will get you to A4 eventually through your A3 national summon. So the real question is how soon would you need the capability that A4 provides and if you need an SC chasis for your Pretender. I simply do not know the answer at this stage, but wished to point out that using indie inf with shields does allow you to go without A4 for a while.

[Hoplosternum]

Hmm,

While the guide is interesting and has given me a few ideas (I am in a mp game as Jomon) I think it misses two crucial points (especially for mp). Namely you need an awake SC and you want to exploit the power of the Commune.

The Jomon start army is very weak (10 Ashigari and 10 samurai LBs) and can't really take on even Indie 5s without taking big losses. And with resource intensive troops it is difficult to build up a critical mass quickly to take indies without much losses.

This means you can't expand fast. Unless you take an awake SC. And due to Jomon having no access to death and really wanting some magic diversity for summons on his pretender this is an issue.

I just can't see how you can afford to get even single useful minor bless and stay competitive early. Nor the paths to be able to build air or fire boosters. I think you need an SC or the Thug/Rainbow Ghost King.

Secondly Jomons big advantage is the plentiful Communable mages. They are cheap (but not sacred so their upkeep mounts quickly) and recruitable everywhere. From fairly early on you can boost all those 1A, 1F etc. mage paths up with the communes for Flaming arrows & wind guide (if you've gone archers) or mist etc if you haven't. Or simply mind burn/soul slay spam with them etc. There are few battle spells they can't cast. Just the death & blood ones.

As most sites are 1 or 2 simply site searching with a number of your mages should net a lot of gem income. I usually prefer to use the spells but with Jomon I do quite a lot of manual site searching due to their mages having so many paths, being fairly cheap and not having so high a research that the opportunity cost is too great.

The mages also allow good forging flexibility but as you struggle to get any Thugs/SCs early (no death or blood income) this is not that useful initially. But they can build things like Fetishes, Crystal Coins, Communion crystals etc. which many other powers don't find so easy to make due to the blend of paths. So there should be trade options.

Quantum mentioned that the best infantry is too slow. But the mages are move one also. So the army (if backed by a commune) is slow anyhow and you will need to send a steady stream of new mages with your new troops to the front lines anyhow. Having said that it is hard to justify buying troops that are not Samurai LBs IMHO.

So while one move armies is just another bad point to Jomon I don't see how you can be very competitive without mages backing your armies early. The fun (and hope) of Jomon is their flexible and somewhat disposable (cheap mages built everywhere) communions. So you may as well build your armies around them and their one move nature.

[Mind Elemental]

Having just won an MP game as Jomon with an A4E4 imprisoned Celestial General (very similar to the recommended build), I thought I'd bump this and add two things that were vital for me:

1: Rain of Stones. This is huge. The OP mentioned its use by the pretender - but this is where Jomon's magical diversity comes in useful. It's only E3A1. Slightly more than one in every four master shugenja will have E1A1. A pair of earth boots takes that to E2A1. Summon Earthpower then gives E3A1 - and if you have gems to burn, the shugenja can boost himself to E4A1 for repeat casts. With this, one in four of your cheap, buildable-anywhere mages can slaughter dozens of enemy mages and rout an entire army by himself. An A2 shugenja can mistform himself or Cloud Trapeze, and if by some chance you can cast Fog Warriors, you can now use this in conjunction with armies.

2: Indy crossbowmen. In the LA, indy crossbow provinces are abundant. If you went with good Order/Production scales, or place your other fortresses carefully, you can recruit huge forces of crossbowmen to supplement or replace samurai archers. If you have a F2 mage cast flaming arrows, you can now rival Marignon in a shoot-out.

[st.patrik]

Hmmm, let me clear up a few misconceptions...

PvK - Decoying using small groups of independant shield-wielding infantry is fine up to a point. Especially early in the game this works fine. However, once your 100+ strong army is facing down another one, and it comes to protracted melee, your small shield squad is probably going to be either overrun or right next to your unshielded samurai, at which point you will start taking heavy losses. So decoying will work in the early game, and with smaller fights, but for larger battles as the game progresses it will (in my experience) be insufficient on its own.

Tifone - I wouldn't want to spend much on kit for assassins: you have other priorities for your gems. However, an ethereal crossbow or a bow of war can be pretty deadly with a prec. of 14, and both of them are only 5 gems (3 with a dwarven hammer). Of course both of these are Construction 6. Before that your best bet is probably Longbow of Accuracy.

Sombre - I think the 'hordes of longbow samurai' strategy is why this nation is rated as low as it is by most people. I think it can do better.

Aezeal - I didn't say you didn't need money. Everyone needs money. In fact (as I think I said) you can get almost as much money from good events as from an Order scale. What I said is that your troops and mages aren't that expensive, which is true. Compare, for example, to Pangaea: most expensive mage 330 gold, 35-75 gold for elite troops; or Abysia: 330 gold again for most expensive mage, 30 and 55 for top elite troops; or Patala: 450 for most expensive mage and 20 - 45 gold for your better troops.
Compared to these (which are just a sampling) you are paying a lot less with Jomon to buy as many of your best troops as you can, plus your best mage. Using the build I describe I rarely run out of cash, even with aggressive castle-building.

Aezeal - no offense, but I think your logic is flawed wrong re. archers. So they can take sloth while you have to take production - you don't think that's a disadvantage for you? that's 240 design points difference! If you have 3 castles pumping out archers what's to stop them from having 3 castles also? then you are still outgunned 5 to 1. The point is that your Samurai's melee skills and good melee weapon are largely irrelevant if you're in a shooting war, and you are paying 27 resources for that equipment.

Ming - good point about fetishes and clams. The only problem with clams is you don't start with a water income - but the hope is you'll find one quickly enough. Two water boosters should be easy enough. I agree that longbows have their place - but I'm going against the prevailing wisdom, which is that all you need is longbows.

[Aezeal]

What is stopping them doing so is CASH!!! Other nations usually spend most cash if they train a few mages and then buy loads of low resource troops in either the capitol (some good cap only troop) or the castle closest to the front.. and then cash is gone.

Since you have about the same cash you can just train those archers in 3 castles (getting less per castle due to high resources, but in the end same amount to cash is spend)

BTW on the cash issue.. the fact their mages are more expensive probably means you need MORE of yours to field the same power (and it's the power that is needed, more low powerspells to offset their highpower spells) which means more castles to train more mages/turn (which also is more cash)
If you THINK you have to much cash: more castles and more mages is always a good idea

[JimMorrison]

Plus if they went Sloth 3, they get 55% resources, and Prod 3 gives you 145% resources, which is over 2.5/1 resources in your favor. Now the battle is at less than a 2/1 ratio, and the samurai armor starts to show its worth in an archer fight.

BUT, be that as it may, I agree that just making archers won't cut the mustard. While they are excellent missile troops, it still comes down to the fact that the strength of Jomon's conventional army is in their shock infantry. Practically every one of their units is a slight variant of a shock troop. Personally I would make armor/protection spells the #1 buffing priority. Who cares if they can hit you with arrows if you have 20 Prot, right? Also, you have access to gobs of 2S mages, who can spam Body Ethereal until the cows come home. 20 Prot ethereal samurai should dominate the early game. Also, these should likely be your primary battlemages after some time. Once you can field enough of them to set up strong Communions, all those scattered paths at 1 suddenly become endless diversity of top end evocations. Want to cast Blade Wind? Easy. Want to cast Thunder Strike? Got it covered. Need some Magma Eruption spam? Gotcha.

Now I think I want to try these guys out again, I love the flavor of Jomonese culture.