How to beatJapaneseas French

Watch every mounted samurai leaving the Japanese base; a single one reaching your economy can derail your plan.

The danger point for Japanese is when starting food runs out under French knight pressure; they must secure secondary berries while protecting gold.

Now, Japan, of course, they have to reach the castle age first for that, but once they do, those mounted samurai with their deflective armor, they always have like that one leg up up against any other knight civilization because when the charge comes in from the opponent knights, that just gets completely nullled out by the deflective armor.

I think French typically in this matchup like there is a little bit of a bait sometimes where players go into pro scouts but instead I think it's much better to just go out on the map because realistically Japan isn't really going to harass you at all in the first place and you're much better off just investing into immediate aggression up against them because you will want to punish them for that fast castle age play style.

You want to play this matchup super aggressively as the French because the Japanese player will want to invest into a Castle Age up and that is very expensive; that's the prime time to go aggressive.

Diving TCs is tough without blacksmith upgrades, especially against the Japanese TC because it does additional damage with the Daimyo.

With Guild Hall, against Japanese you don't mind playing late because your Arbalétrier are better than Japanese crossbows.

Japanese have a bonus that gives them stone from gold, allowing them to fortify outposts on gold mines to defend against French raids.

I think there's definitely potential up against Japan just with the Arbalétrier. If you get a big mass of Arbalétrier, Japan feels like a very much discounted civilization. Suddenly, your men at arms don't do well, your horsemen don't do as well, your knights don't do as well, your Onna-Bugeisha forget about them. They don't do any damage. Spearman? Nope. You suddenly rely on siege, you rely on Yumi archers, you rely on Onna-Musha which also don't trade out favorably against Pavise. It's a rough situation to be in.

You get a couple of Shinobi on a knight, and that knight gets evaporated. Shinobi have huge bonus damage against melee.

You deal well against the Onna-Musha with Arbalétrier. You just deploy the Pavise, and then you're going to be in a fine spot. That Pavise gives you +5 ranged armor.

If you're going up against only Shinobi, you just have to get the vision and the location of the Shinobi and the Knights will work out fine.

Outpost has to happen when there's Shinobi out on the field; if not, all of a sudden your gold villagers could be gone.

For Japan, their fishing boats are 45 wood instead of 75, so if you make two fishing boats you're already ahead on 10 wood compared to French with a dock and no house.

Japanese Mounted Samurai are strong from the start; with Japanese you just get that Knight out, it hits harder, it has the shield, and it just should trade a little bit better in that early game against French Knights.