The Asian Dynasties

Another pre-1.01 patch game, a Japan vs China on yellow river. Scouting was the key here, since my ikko-ikki spotted no gold crates and a CKN shipment just arriving. He went with a tough big han army with some disciples and at first I regretted sending my 4 villie cards as first shipment but with nice micro and some luck I managed to drive him off. Had two big battles later, the last one being his fortress army of disciples, skirms, redcoats, changdao and manchu (I had tons of cavalry so he favored manchu instead of HM) against my fortress upgraded naginata, yumi, ashigaru. I still have tons of things to learn yet so a review would be welcome, and wubs as well

Maaaaan I'm so late

Like you say, the micro pretty much won you the game and you can almost see him despairing and the effort getting less as the fights go on... - but there are still a couple of things you could have had to make your life a bit easier.

- Gold miners up north unprotected - begs a kicking. Get a castle or something up there if you can, that was a massacre waiting to happen

- Consulate a bit earlier might have given you a bit of edge with the 10% and maybe a few Shinobi to help you out in those tough spots, but it's a good sign that you did so well with so little.

- Something I've seen in the more expert replays - and they can vouch/disagree with this if they will - I always assumed they grabbed groups of ranged infs and tried to one-shot targets, what I'd assumed they'd always meant by not shooting everyone at one target. But recently I saw a guy simply grab small groups and put them on targets just for the sake of spreading the damage and keeping them on the right targets, he didn't seem too bothered about one-shot and it didn't do him bad at all.
I dunno how much there is to get out of that one though. Something to look into!

Points 1 and 2 would be the main points though, those are the ones that will get you a few PR up vs rushes.
All things considered, pretty good game. Can't argue too much with that micro...

gonna review