Re: Jomon advice wanted
I suppose it's time I posted in this thread since I was obsessed with making Jomon work for some time. Before the latest patches, Jomon was a lot more difficult. I have played Jomon SP extensively, and believe I understand how to play them in general.
I advocate a rainbow pretender. I actually like the much maligned Freak Lord. With two or three levels of alteration, he can assist in the expansion--he can trample and has fear. Make him a rainbow and he can search. I like that he has blood. Three blood plus earth magic gets you bloodstones in Vanilla and all you give up with the freak lord is the feet slot. In CBM, the Celestial General is hard to resist for Jomon because of the shield bearing auto-summon troops though.In fact, with the CG, you almost don't have to recruit normal troops at all.
There's no point in a bless, though an incedental bless is useful because your dragon mages and summonable sacreds can benefit from it. It's nice to have 3 death for your death summons, but not essential. For your dragons and summons, I think earth bless is the most important, and maybe nature.
Dominion can be medium, and I like luck/disorder for Jomon for the events, and hopefully heroes (though they aren't spectacular). You won't need as much gold as many others because your land mages are cheap.
Expand carefully using your national troops however you can and saving tough indies for later. I like the red samurai and archers for general purpose troops. Start searching for gems immediately, and make a beeline for the nearest water--that's where you want your second castle if possible. With 3 luck, you'll probably not have to recruit any samurai (just archers) after a short while because you'll be swimming in Ashigaru and Ronin from events.
The heavy duty samurai can be called upon in an emergency--they hit fairly hard and have strong armor (but of course no shields). For most uses though, take the red samurai. Do your best to keep your archers from hitting your own men. With Jomon using archers and samurai, your own archers will possibly kill more of your men than the enemy--so select placement and orders carefully. I usually have archers fire archers, so they neutralize the enemy's missle weapons before switching to frontline firing. Hopefully my samurai have already beaten the enemy frontline, and so won't take too many arrow hits from your own archers as they chase the retreating enemy.
The priests that can cast the various Jomon spellsongs are great, but you can't gather enough of them to really make a difference in the early game--you should be recruiting researchers instead. I use the priests later to spellsong defenses and relief for my mages (small area of effect). Priests of the various types are very useful in this role as "force multipliers" so your heavy hitters don't have to cast airshield, etc. If enemy troops make it close to your mage backfield, the priests can (and will if their script has run out) switch to their offensive spellsongs and spells (and maybe charm some enemy troops with their charm spellsong).
Research Conjuration. Yes enchantment, evocation, and alteration are all good schools for you too and you can pick some levels of these prior if you have a specific reason (like using the freak lord to expand), but the goal is to get to the summons who can thug. These thugs are your two kinds of etherial samurai: there's one with fear, and one with awe. These guys can take over for your armies as soon as you can summon them in numbers and start making equipment (they need no equipment to start, but are better with equipment--golden shields for the fear guys, Helms of fear for the awe guys if you can make them). I think they're both good bargains for the gem price, come with ethereal and a decent weapon/armor out of the box, and can self bless. Few other nations have summons as cost-effective as these IMO (mainly because of the etherial + fear or awe).
Ninjas can be useful, but very niche unit, in spite of their reputation. You can summon fox-lady spies. There are lots of other interesting mid-level summons for Jomon too. I try to get several of each summonable mage at least just for the diversity (and many of the national summons are ethereal). The Dai-Tengu is useful for arrow-fend but fragile and expensive. Regular Tengus can fly in storms, which give them some use at least, but I generally only summon a couple of Dai-Tengu. Of course you can eventually get Dai-Onis, which are great.
If the game is vanilla, you should next get some construction researched to forge clams, fever-fetishes, and blood stones (if you can). With boosters and gem-producing items, you start to become un-stoppable as the gems roll in.
As time goes on and your research ramps up, you get stronger and stronger. Your mages can cast any battlefield spell--with communion if necessary. This makes you very flexible. Your greatest strength is your magical diversity. You can basically cast anything you need to(except blood) eventually.
Water dragon mages (and the summonable earth dragon mages) can both be great thugs or combat casters. What I like about the dragons is the flying, and the hp to survive seeking arrows, etc. Dragons can be where you need them in a heartbeat, and have great elemental and nature paths. They are expensive, but after you are summoning your troops and have plenty of land mages, you can focus on these exclusively (an advantage to not having some uber capitol-only mage).
I think Jomon is fragile in the beginning, so you have to be careful, but once research ramps up you're golden. I feel that the threat of a rush in MP is a little over-rated (though not out of the question). Diplomacy is the great equalizer in MP games, and I've been surprised at just how critical it turns out to be. So, as Jomon, make friends with your early giant neighbor if you can and hit the research books while you can. Get into the water ASAP, and start summoning.
That's enough thoughts to keep the conversation going for awhile.
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"War is a Racket."
Marine Corps Major General Smedly Butler, 1935
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