He goes for a strelet rush, and keeps me under pressure for quite a while, while (I think) fish booming. He then adds cossacks and ages; few but big fights.
I didnt watch the rec, but I think you shouldn't fishboom. Of course the Russian will rush, most aggressive civ if not using sewastopol. You wanna collect as many nagis as possible
Good game. This is the first good Russia/Japan 1v1 replay I've seen and it was a close one. George III had the right idea when he saw strelet rush by spamming Yumis, but adding Naginata at that point would have crushed him as he struggled to keep enough food going to pump out more strelets. He did commit some errors here that could have cost him: (1) He did not send boyars, which would have boosted his strelets against the Yumi; (2) he did not mob your Yumis in hand-to-hand combat, which actually is statistically more likely to beat them in the numbers we saw; and (3) he did not produce cossacks once he saw you went all-Yumi.
He did fishboom--massively. That's what turned it around for him. That's the only way a Russian who's failed in his rush can get the huge amount of food needed to both defend and age. All in all, this was a very entertaining watch. The Russian Surovov coup is lethal, especially when backed up by a solid economy as here. This game could have gone either way. I play Russian very often, and all I can say is that I take a huge chance when I go all early Strelet. If I were playing here, I would have been terrified of naginata. But they did not show up in force until it was too late. Thanks for posting; your games are always extremely instructive.
Very Good match! Japans biggest weakness is a good strong Rush, especially with a ton of ranged infantry like Russia can do very early. I was very impressed with the way the Japanese player was able to defend with yumis which beat massed strelet. Even the 5 cossack shipment wasnt very helpful against the yumis because of pathfinding. The Fish boom is what really saved the Russian player after losing in his rush. I was very impressed by his ability to come back and win this game. Beacause late game if a japanese player booms right, they are close to unbeatable. The japanese player also ended whih a great deal of unused wood and gold. Had they added a lot of flaming arrows to their army this could have been a differnt game.
This post has been edited by Lancelot712: Oct 7 2008, 19:20 PM
I are noob :'(