One thing about Japanese that may surprise most players is that you actually can and shoulod go Onagers way more often than you think. Japanese struggle a bit to overcome bigger Skirmisher(and sometimes Arbalest) masses in Imperial Age and Monks + halbs covers the weaknesses of the Onagers and your push is fairly slow anyway. secure the won territory with towers and move forward.

Ive been playing Japanese the last like 3 days and i gotta say the CA bonus damage against archer isn't as OP as i thought. If they already have a few crossbows out its hard to catch up enough in numbers to win a fight. I overjudged it a lot in the beginning

Let's come back again in 10 years.

I love kataparuto

YESSSSSS! Thanks man - my favorite civ when it comes to just having fun, even if I usually get better results from a few others!

Fact: My afternoon coffee tastes better while watching a Spirit Of The Law review.

Next: How good is the Arambai/Karambit Warrior/Rattan archer

Ideas: 1) Make the Samurai like a Konnik, with a cav-archer first form and the current Samurai as the second / 2) Kataparuto is silly from a history perspective so how about "Sunomata Construction" lets towers to be packed and moved like trebs [25-30 sec unpack time]

I think that the B- for Siege is a bit harsh. I personally include (Elite) Cannon Galleons as part of Siege. Also remember that Ballistics now affect Scorpions. Those could be useful with Halberdiers.

I still demand the return of the "Go Japs!" Samurai! You can't keep him form us! He has a right to cheer for his people!

The problem with Japanese Calvary is their light cav line late game. It’s why their CA play isn’t scary to other top tier CA civs. Tatars, Turks, etc…. Just have to avoid taking bad fights until their own light cav are on the field then they’ll dominate with a much more tanky meat sheild, having their CA attack the Japanese CA while he’s still shooting the light cav/hussar.

Small correction: At 4:32 you say that going Head to head with japanese infantry is the 4th most common of the classic blunders. But its really #1 - Never get involved in a land war in Asia! Infantry are land army, Japanese are in Asia. Therefore, Japanese infantry = Land war

Japan is for sure number 2 in infantry. 33% faster attack against cav is huuuuge with halbs

Hey Spirit of the law, Guys here.

Yeah Japanese CA beats Mangudai, what a disgrace. At this point Mongols are just worst civ, and to think Mongols are the one who conquered the world from horse back and Japanese barely had any horses to begin with.

Looking for a civ with an open tech tree, great navy, good early archers and cavalry archers, a very strong but also indirect eco bonus, and an interesting unique unit? Look no further than Saracens

First comment

I don't think that's how kataparuto is pronounced. I think it's an engrish moment where it's the Japanese pronunciation of Catapult.

Now Viper will never stop playing japanese fish boom haha

Petition to rename the ridiculous "Katapuruto". In Japanese it has a totally different name (投石術 _tōsekijutsu_ "art of stone throwing"). I prupose *Karakuri* which means "mechanism" and might explain how they quickly pack and unpack. It also somewhat looks the same as Katapuruto so half of the playerbase might not even notice it changed name.

More history videos! Japanese maybe...

Starting the new year off with a favorite. (Your favorite that is but still a favorite.) Funny thing about the end is that I was thinking about a website where it’s literally just you talking about AoE2. The only thing missing was that it wasn’t your channel name, but who can argue against La Hire?

Here we go! SOTL Favorite civ!

Hey Spirit! :D I was watching some of your earlier videos, and there is one video topic I feel deserve an updated version: Namely, "is paladin upgrade worth it?". I felt like your theoretical evaluation was a bit weird, and you only harvested data for performance against cavalier, and did not compare performances against other relevant units like halbs, siege, arbalests, villagers, monks or eagles. I think the attack difference would in many cases either require 30 to 20% fewer hits, or not matter at all, diverging far from the average 15% you proposed as a theoretical value. I think the biggest improvement for paladin would be against arbalests or cav archers, and researching it against an army of Aztec monks would probably be a very bad idea, as your opponent is stealing a more powerful unit that's a bigger percentage of your army(assuming not pop capped). So if you're up against an army of arbalests and monks, at what point does the monk to archer ratio swing the results for whether or not the upgrade is a good investment? What about raiding beneath castles and town centers? I also think it is enough of a late-game upgrade that it should be considered how gold efficient it is compared to cavalier. The paladin upgrade has a lot lower gold to food ratio than making more cavaliers. When not comparing solely by gold, I think comparing it to 10 more cavaliers plus 8 light cav is a more fair standard of comparison. But those reinforcements are not gonna come immediately, and the number of stables will affect production time while also being an extra wood cost. So you should probably collect sample data on what is a representative number of stables for measuring how much of the extra horse is on the field when paladin comes in. Another question is if palading is more of a long term value investment or a power spike to close out the game. If you have the resources to both research paladin and continually produce, I suspect it is a faster power spike than using the research funds on extra stables and cavaliers, which I guess would be a bit stronger mid-term. I also think input from a pro player who excels at late game could be valuable for the more complicated qwuestions. Anyway, these are the sorts of analyses from you I enjoy the most, and even though I don't play the game, I would really like a more in-depth answer to whether or not paladin is worth it.

make them truly versatile by having their castle have 3 choices of samurai: normal, mounted, or archer/musketeer (different prices of course)

havent played aoe2 for like 5 years and am scared to comeback because of how many civs there are, it will be over whelming for a idiot like me to remember bonuses, weakness and matchups of nearly 50 civs :(

Why japanese cavalry archer don't do bonus damage skirmisher?

Review Malay pls

Takes me back to "Japanese: the most underrated civilization (and why)" from what I guess must have been a decade ago. I don't comment much anymore Spirit but I just wanted to say thanks for making such bloody superb videos and keeping people's interest in such a precious nostalgic-packed gem of a game 😎

I wish the blog was real :(

Finally he mentioned La Hire 😂

You forgot to mention one benefit the samurai has over the champion line: It looks 20% cooler, 25% if you account for my bias.

You just wanted an excuse to talk about the Japanese again.

41 minutes ago

vietnamese next maybe?

Japanese cav archer beat Turks cav archer? Even though the bonus is free? Isn't that too op?

arigatou gozaimasu!

I like how the Japs have a faster fish gather rate to reflect that they don't have to cook the fish to eat it.

I just watched the old one yesterday! Oh well, here we go again

Something you missed when talking about Katapo trebs is that it's possible to pack to early. Pack up as soon as you fire and your shots turn into fluff balls

so excited to talk about his favorite civ he forgot to put the intro

Kataparuto apparently is the Japanese way to write "Catapult", hehe.

"the last time we looked at the Japanese was 2016" *Ages instantly*

Haven’t watched it yet but I fully expect this to be a half assed overview as to not give away your favorite civs weaknesses

Nooooo the iconic sotl intro is missing New Japanese overview is awesome tho

1

This Civ overview has been 10 years in the making 💯

No overview intro 😿

The teebuche attack speed makes them the best trebuches in the game in my opinion.

I wish the Samurai would also have special armor against Unique Units. Since most of those that see play are Archer Units, which the Samurai is useless against.