Civilization Bonuses:

Team Bonus: Galleys +50% LOS

• Fishing ships 2x HPs; +2P armor; work rate +5% Dark Age, +10% Feudal Age, +15% Castle Age, +20% Imperial Age
• Mill, lumber camp, mining camp cost -50%
• Infantry attack 10% faster Feudal Age, 15% Castle Age, 25% Imperial Age.

Unique Unit: 

• The Samurai:  A fast attacking foot soldier

ES_Deathshrimp:  I will say again, the Japanese fishing bonus (which would make them unstoppable in ROR) is probably not as good as you are thinking in AOK. If anything, their cheap dropsites make them efficient hunters. They are still not an economic powerhouse like the Chinese, Franks or Persians.

Samurai can beat any unique unit, although it will take many of them to fight off a Teutonic Knight or War Elephant. Samurai can still beat a Champion 1 on 1--barely. It is easy to produce more Champions than a Japanese player can produce Samurai. Archers take out Samurai like they do with most infantry.

ES_Sandyman on why the Samurai don't have two attack types: "In our original spec, we planned to have certain units have multiple attacks. For a number of reasons, none of which were because it was hard to program, this was scrapped. Two reasons for dumping it were, first, the icky interface it led to, and second, the immense annoyance a player suffered when his multi-units used the "wrong" attack. Example: you have a bunch of samurai. Suddenly you spot an enemy erecting a trebuchet nearby. Frantically, you target it with your samurai and scroll off that screen to find more soldiers to fight it. When you return, you find that the samurai are uselessly shooting arrows at the treb, which has meanwhile destroyed your castle. If they'd only rushed up with swords, they could have killed it. Quick responses are essential in RTS games, and multi-attack units tended to undercut this. So we went for simplicity. "

History

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