Cards: All unit upgrade cards, Mountain Warrior (for treasure heavy maps, doubles res of a treasure), 2 orchard rickshaw (=9000 food), Daimyo cards, Economy upgrade cards (at least in team games), Chonindo, 300 woord, 4 villagers, 3&5 fisher boats (to be continued)
Shrines are important because u have a 75 vill limit and animals boost them by far. On herdable heavy maps (texas, Mongolia etc.) get them first before u hunt after treasures
Large hunts gather at .08
Small hunts gather at .07
Sheep gather at .11
Llama gather at .13
Cows gather at .14
Elephants count as two gatherers but only gather at .08 (Elephants suck for shrines)
Base gather rate is .07 for food, .05 for wood/coin, .34 on XP.
Navajo sheperds and team Fatten Faster will increase the livestock gather rates accordingly.
Only the Base gather right on shrines is affected for bonus upgrades.
Toshugu Shrines gathers at .35 for everything and .93 for XP. Having herds or hunts on toshugu does not increase their rates. Hunts/Herds are static in terms of gather rates. Toshugu increases shrine effectivity by a multiplier of 2.33. This is rougly equivalent to 5.36 villagers after you have 20 shrines. It also gives 20 pop space.
The age1 shrine boosting card gives 1.5 gather rate. With 20 shrines + Toshugu that will be worth the equivalent of about 2 villagers. The card sucks, don't use it.
The XP Shrine card is awesome, use it and XP boom.
The last upgrade increases it by 300% or a multiplier of 4, roughly equivalent to 10 settlers with 20 shrines + toshugu (excluding toshugu bonus).
FU Shrines without hunts will be worth about 17 settlers.
FU Shrines with Herdables is worth about 26 settlers.
NOTE: You cannot shrine boom. You do not gather enough resources through shrines. Do not use Toshugu unless you want Export and pop space and are building a consulate in age1, preferably for Spain's XP trickle and pikemen to complement Yumi.
Japan gets double unit shipments and lots of XP through Gates and Shrine XP card, it is better to use this to get Rice Paddy boosting cards and Royal mint and crap like that. Your economy will be great, better than Euro, if you can take advantage of the XP and invest all of it that you get into some rice paddies.
Or you can invest all your XP and Export into military and just kill your opponent...
Early consulate (Age I) doesn't really payoff only if u want to make shrine spam (with portuguese)
In Age II u should get the consulate already when u have the wood left. in 1v1 u will have to take Japanese (+10% attack), developing bushido is also nice (training 10 batches intead of 5), in team games dutch also pays off (goold trickle + u can get arsenal (without advanced techs, advanced techs can be developed in Golden Pavillion), bank and church)
Wonders: Torrii + Golden Pavillion + Shogunat
or GP + SHogunat
in 1v1 u have to go to GP usually because it also boosts ur military, though Torrii are also nice, depends on situation
Weaknesses: cannot hunt, only berries though u have to consider u don't have to micro the hunters and berry vills don't have to walk to the next hunt, no ff, only semi-ff, weak late economy because of vill limit, though boostable with economy cards
Unitcombo: Usually Ashigaru and Yumi