jccoluz
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Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 2:44 pm
Location: France

Few questions from a new player.

Sun May 06, 2018 4:46 pm

Hello,

I'm a new PON player and I just started a GC as Japan. I'm currently in the year 1856 : I have a healthy economy (major exports are rice, silk, tea, fish and textiles while i'm importing coffee, sugar, opium, steel and industrial parts ), the people are very happy (although they have high militancy), I've built all the commerce fleets available in my pool ( plus I received a bonus one from the shipyards) as well as several industries ( mainly textile, luxury goods, canned food, furnitures and manufactured goods) and finally I've nearly finished covering the whole territory with railways. I also unlocked a lot of new units after discovering some techs.

Now, before going any further into my game, I have several questions I'd like to ask :

1) Upgrading the Japanese army :

I just received new units in my pool but I have very little conscripts available. In fact I can barely build a modern infantry corp while in theory I have a lot of them available by now. Is there a way to increase the rate at which I receive new conscripts ? (technologies or decisions for exemple ).

I thought about disbanding some of the now obsolete samourai brigades but I'm not sure I will gain back some conscripts doing this. Furthermore, I noticed that disbanding those units would cost me a hefty amount of prestige ! Just disbanding one brigade cost 61 PP !! : How am I to modernize the Japanese army since the cost of disbanding all my feudal units would result in the loss of nearly 1500 PP, while I only accumulated 2000 PP since the beginning of the campaign ? Is there a way to upgrade these units rather than disband them ?

2) What to do next ?

I actually had some fun at the beginning while learning the economic side of the game as Japan. However, it's been over a game year now that I have run out of things to do and just hit end turn after reading the report of the past turn. I 'm starting to get very bored, especially since, on my PC, turns are extremely slow to process ( from 5 minutes at best up to nearly 15 min during major AI wars ). Problem is that I have nearly no diplomatic actions available, no decisions worth taking available, and pretty useless colonial action cards ( I did use some at the beginning though ). Of course, I know that things should change for japan in the future but I shudder at the prospect of just waiting for another 4 or 5 years doing nothing while waiting for the Meiji events to fire :

Any advice from veteran japanese players ? Are there interesting things to do, that I'm not aware of, while I wait for the next events to fire ?

3) Militancy :

As I wrote earlier, my population is very content (they gain 0.6 per turn ) but their militancy is stuck at 100. I tried to play some of the decision cards to reduce militancy ( martial law, etc..) but, while it works, it only reduces militancy by a few points. After just about a few turns the population's militancy is back at 100. So, since I can only play those cards once a year and their effect is very short lived, it is quite a waste of state funds for no results ! Am I missing something here ? Is there another way to reduce militancy ? Is it hopeless ?

Thank you all for your help,

Jean-Christophe.

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Re: Few questions from a new player.

Mon May 07, 2018 5:14 am

I am not an expert at playing PON as Japan, in fact, I have never played as Japan, but from what I do know, two campaigns are worth pursuing, the first against Korea and the second against China.
Disbanding older units is a good move, but it might take a few turns to see the benefit.

I do suggest two things to relieve your boredom:
1. I play several nations at a time when I am playing solo. So in addition to playing Japan, add England and Italy to expand your game play.
2. Join a pbem game. When you have other players, you choices become much more important and interesting.

Japan kind of sits alone and does as she pleases, so you have a lot of solo actions to take. But if you are playing historically, you need a modern fleet and a presence in Korea and China.

jccoluz
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Posts: 29
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 2:44 pm
Location: France

Re: Few questions from a new player.

Wed May 09, 2018 7:24 am

Hi,

Thank you for your answer. I'm aware of Japan history in the 19th century so I already knew about Korea ans China but it seems that I won't be able to tackle these campaigns for quite a long time. I was wondering what I should do now to relieve boredom : my economy is running nicely and I've already developped most of the industries in my pool, I finished building railways everywhere and I'm left with nothing to do !

I have nearly no diplomatic actions to play, I have no decision cards, only 4 colonial action cards which are pretty useless for now etc... and the Boshin war is still several years away !

I'll try one of your suggestions and start a secondary campaign as another country. As for PBEM, I tried it once with another game and it didn't work for me : my work schedule is such that sometimes I can ply a lot in a short while there at times when I won't even touch my computer for weeks ! PBEM requires too much regularity to advance at a reasonnanle pace.

On another topic : I still have no clue how to decrease population's militancy as Japan. I only have two actions that I can use once a year and this is not sufficient because, while these lower militancy by a few points each time, militancy goes back to 100 in just a coupleof turns : is it pointless to try or am I missing something?

I also started to disband my feudal army and replace it with modern troops. The strange thing is that when I hover the tooltip over the "disband" action it tells me that it will cost me 71 PP to do this but , however, I did not notice such an effect and my prestige just increased as usual after the action. Is it normal?

Thanks for your help,
bye,
JC

TPK666
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2018 4:21 pm

Re: Few questions from a new player.

Thu May 17, 2018 7:28 pm

jccoluz wrote:Hi,

Thank you for your answer. I'm aware of Japan history in the 19th century so I already knew about Korea ans China but it seems that I won't be able to tackle these campaigns for quite a long time. I was wondering what I should do now to relieve boredom


Unfortunately nothing, just skip turns. If you have some spare money you can try speeding up research to upgrade your industry and army, which is an expensive thing. Well, isolationism is boring.

Prussia has similar early gameplay - until u can form NGF (1860 is the earliest date) you can do very little.

The only way to make things go faster - to edit files to make critical events happen sooner, but you should double-check events before saving, to make sure not to break event chains.

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