In the beginning I got some nice treasures and I was able to get up hd from market.
then I attacked him with an nice force or well I tried to attack him got down one shrine and a market. I decided to go Fortress age to finish with better units. Everything was going as i wanted to,but then I got a little bit too **** and got my little army crushed by nagi and ashi.
so I rebuild an army consisting off skirms+uhlan+the 3 shipped ww´s and they to got crushed.
I do nearly the same as Drew. I prefer to go 700 w, 8 cross, 3 sw though. The general idea is to keep him contained with crossbows while keeping a few pike constantly working at his shrines. It's a lot of multitasking, but as the civs stand at the moment a properly played German should do pretty well against Japan. I'll take a look and maybe write down a few things.
Ok, heres my feelings on the game. You have the right idea, but could do a few things a bit different.
1. Don't herd with SW - It's kind of a waste of vil seconds, especially in age 1 when vil seconds mean the most. Wait for your first vil to come out before you herd.
2. More aggressive FB - This is a great map for Germany against Japan (Yukon). For the most part, all of the hunts are in the center part of the map. If you put your FB there, he basically has no way to shrine 80% of the hunt on the map. Instead, your base was a pretty defensive, and he was able to use the central hunts to his advantage. When you play against Japan, you can almost always FB right up in there face. It reduces the replacement time and allows you to take control of the map (win-win for you).
3. PRESSURE!!! - I can't stress how important this is. I have played Japan against a lot of players who do pretty damn good xbow rushes and I can tell you that from Japan's side it is a nightmare playing against. In this particular game, you didn't ANY pressure on him until 8:30. 9 out of 10 times, if you give Japan this long to themselves, you're going to lose. You need to be right in his face with your first batch of xbows, making him garrison vils from 5:30 on. You should be constantly running back and forth while a group of maybe 10 or so pikes runs around the map and seiges his shrines. This is incredibly frustrating for a Japan player and is incredibly effective. I would say on the whole, that aging against Japan isn't a great idea. There are some civs who can do a Artillery semi (Brit/France/Port) but I think that German should just stick it out in colonial. Try to not commit to a big fight to give him any chance to come even, but rather just constantly harass. Eventually, if you are successful with your harass, he has to make a push out of his base in an attempt to gain some map back. At that time, your Xbow/Pike/Cav mass will be very large and you should be able to win rather handily.
This is all true what Zuta said, but once the Jap player managed to mass Yumis you'll need cannons. I couldn't keep up with Zuta in terms of skill, but at my level it won me alot of games i had lost in colonial age.
If you feel that your pressure works quite good than try to finish it in colonial age, but when you feel that you can't hurt him enough, try to age for cannons. He can't get them, if you protect them properly. He needs to age as well for some anti cannon stuff.
Thx for the comments.Next time I play vs japan I will be more aggressive.
I guess u can go aggressive fb in almost all matchup as German(except for natives,ottos and russia)?
one of the things i have struggled with is when to attack the opponents base.I always get scared of tc fire which means that I just hang around his base.Should i just get in there regardless of tc fire?
Remember that xbows only cost 80 res total. It's much better to lose a few to TC fire and keep control over the situation than to let him get his eco rolling. Any time you go xbow pike, you'll probably want to be forward a bit. Against many civs, Ulhan start is best, at which point you won't want to be forward. No matter what you start with though, pressure is the key to success against Japan. They are very beatable, you just need to pressure them correctly.
