How to beatMaliansas Japanese

You could open Onna-Bugeisha and then follow up horsemen, and Malians would be pretty screwed because Onna-Bugeisha will always beat the Donzos and then you got horsemen to deal with the archer/javelin.

Historically, going naked fast castle against Malians is a big mistake, but the thing that really helps the Japanese especially is they will have access to the food with the Kura Storehouse anyway.

You can make one single Onna-Bugeisha in Feudal, go fast Castle into mass Mounted Samurai, because the Onna-Bugeisha baits out archers.

When you're up against javelin throwers, it's like you're out on sea. Your only choice is to spam out archers. That's typically where the Yumi archers come in clutch because you can mass so many of them and take down the javelin throwers. Especially once you hit castle age, get +2 damage on those Yumi archers, you're finally able to trade out effectively against the javelin throwers.

Onna-Bugeisha are absolutely great against anything unarmored, not just against Donso, but also eventually against Javelin throwers if they're able to get a good angle on the engagement.

Yumi archers will start doing a lot of damage against Sofas in feudal age because Sofas in feudal age only have the same armor as a normal horseman. So in mass you can definitely fight against them.

There is an answer to the Yumi, not a great answer: a bunch of javelins. But getting those mounted samurai out is going to make sure that there's going to need to be more than just a bunch of javelins to shut this down.

Usually what they do is essentially pivot into sofa once they get mid castle age because with imported armor sofas are immensely powerful and they are very spammable. But I actually love mounted samurai against sofa.

If you're Japanese, then you're playing to deny the pro scouts if you can. So here's the thing with the pro scouts of the Malians because you get warrior scouts: your scouts are actually combat capable, which means that you cannot just fight them off with a single horseman.

Japan recently more often than not will open up with a dark age barracks, whether to razz a little bit on those pit mines or just luring deer early on. You have a lot of use for those spearmen and the barracks you'll want eventually anyway because you're Japan.

Javelin throwers are relatively expensive compared to the Onna-bugeisha.