How to play as Japan?

[Mickey0815]

All the other guys on the island are my vassals, so i can't expand into their lands. I also can't fabricate claims on Korean provinces, because they are too far away.
And i have to wait ten years to annex vassals.
But every time one vassal gets stronger than me and attacks me. And usually he has an alliance with other strong vassals and they destroys me in the first battle.

Are you supposed to play as a vassal and overthrow the shogun?

[ShadoWwolF]

playing a vassal and overthrowing the shogun speeds things up a bit but you dont have to. just annex vassals as quickly as you can and take the missions that give you claims on korea. japan does have missions to conquer korea and after you get the provinces that are right next to korea you can fabricate claims

[Mickey0815]

But i have to wait 10 years until i can annex vassals, and they start their revolution before this waiting period is over.

[ShadoWwolF]

are you sure you cant just start annexing them right away? you can with a lot of other nations that start with vassals. and in only 10 years none of the vassals should be big enough to win a war against you. just hire mercenaries and build more troops. take loans if you have to

[Mickey0815]

I tried 3 times now, always with the same outcome.

No, you have to wait until 1454 to annex.
You start with almost no money and make very little, even with 0% army maintainance.

The alliance that declares war on me, consists of 2/3 of my vassals.
Japan starts with no army tradition, so you don't get good generals that could make a difference.

I really have no idea how to make this work.

[Blackwolfpt]

Japan has to wait 10 years before annexing the vassals. And you need to be at +190 relations either way so it takes a lot of time before you can mass annex.

One thing you can do is attack the daimyos which are getting too strong. Japan has a CB on every japanese vassal, so you won't get a stab hit by doing so unless you got a royal marriage.

[ShadoWwolF]

then just start as one of the daimyo

[Mickey0815]

Originally posted by Blackwolfpt:

Japan has to wait 10 years before annexing the vassals. And you need to be at +190 relations either way so it takes a lot of time before you can mass annex.

One thing you can do is attack the damyos who are getting too strong. Japan has a CB on every japanese vassal, so you won't get a stab hit by doing so unless you got a royal marriage.

Are you sure that i have a CB?

I tried to declare war on Uesugi, after they annexed two smaller vassals, and i only had a no CB war with a -2 stability hit.

[Blackwolfpt]

Originally posted by Mickey0815:

Originally posted by Blackwolfpt:

Japan has to wait 10 years before annexing the vassals. And you need to be at +190 relations either way so it takes a lot of time before you can mass annex.

One thing you can do is attack the damyos who are getting too strong. Japan has a CB on every japanese vassal, so you won't get a stab hit by doing so unless you got a royal marriage.

Are you sure that i have a CB?

I tried to declare war on Uesugi, after they annexed two smaller vassals, and i only had a no CB war with a -2 stability hit.

Well, that is weird. I used to play as japan quite a lot and I could declare war on my vassals. I also remember playing as a daimyo and if I got too strong Japan would sometimes declare war on me with the annex vassal CB.

Maybe they changed it in 1.7 then.

Edit: Ok, I checked the wiki and it seems now you only get the CB on daimyos who have at least 10 provinces.

[Surimi]

Assuming the horrible bug is fixed and Japan is playable now (I haven't checked) your absolute best friend as Japan is the "enforce peace" diplomatic action. Use it whenever Daimyo go to war with each other and make sure you personally conquer and annex the weaker side (or re-vassalize them if you're just trying to keep everyone weak). Diplomatically annexing all the vassals should be considered ideal because it saves on admin points, but as you're probably noticing actually trying to do it is a bit of a dead end. You need to expand the Ashikaga lands militarily as soon as possible if you're going to survive. Even then, you will probably end up at some point fighting a tough civil war.

Japan can only declare war on its vassals if they hold too many lands. It doesn't really do much to stop the inevitable Daimyo alliances. That's why enforcing peace is so important.

[Mickey0815]

Ah yes, i always forget about "enforce peace". I should try this.

I just failed the fourth time.

This biggest problem is, that i have to go down to very low army maintainance, because i make no money. And when the Damyos declare war, i have no army morale.

[tarkin96]

When I play as Japan, I just wait to start annexing. Everytime, the vassals start fighting each other and I try to enforce peace, and when they decline the enforcment, I jsut start mowing them down. So I join one side of the war, and those who didn't join the war at all have to join it with me because of vassalization. Also, when you delcare war, I think you get a free broken vassalization so then you can declare war again later. Im pretty much reaffirming what Deep Hurting said.

With your money problems, I suggest getting rid of your navy you start with. Also try to ask for money during peace proposals. Then when you get economically situated, start building trade ships and start controlling the trade node near you. Your best hope is trying to go to war as fast as possible in order to get more money then controlling trade. Took me 15 years to get control, but I ended up with high revolt risks, so try to take it slow.

[Funsize]

If you have high relations (100+), they will be less likely to revolt on you. Focus on Hosokawa and Takeda first, since they have the cash to field large armies. You should be able to diploannex them with no wars. One trick is to send the diplomat, recall him, and resend within the same month. You get 2 ticks of relations: 1 from sending and 1 from the month ticking over.

You could also enforce peace, but why spend money and manpower when you don't have to. Letting the big daimyos annex the smaller ones without worry about getting the at war relations penalties. Just figure out which ones you can marry and you can diploannex them last because of the -30 relations penalty for annexing vassals.

[Mickey0815]

I finally made it.

"Enforce peace" was the key to success.

The relations made no difference. I always focused on the Uesugi first, got over 100 positive relations and they still attacked me once they owned 5 provinces.

[tarkin96]

Well I palyed another Japan game, and it came out different, but still a failure. I was able to get to the point where only the Shimazu and Ouchi were left, each holding 2 provinces, but both were allied to each other, Korea, Ming, Manchu, and some other chinese faction that broke off from Ming. Together, according to the ledger, they had 5 times my navy size and 7 times my army size. So there was no war happening. I was also very far behind on tech. I got hit with corruption events over and over and over.

For laughs, I started the war and within a few months I had over 100k troops in my lands and most of my ports blockaded vs my 10 ships and 20k troops. Also I was having this wierd thing going on where I could only get 21% siege status. One of my sieges lasted for about 4 years.

But good job, Mickey, hope you can conquer east asia, conquer the pacific, or rule trade in the pacific.

[Nelso34]

The way i did it was when your vassals declare on one another go to enforce peace and you will be able to join a war against your vassal or vassals you'll get one of the vassals to help you its a much easier way to do it and you can take all of Japan pretty quickly