First and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone who's been kind enough to give help and feedback in the making of this guide: Many thanks to JohnnyJohnny for Build advice, and Infact, Negate, Cleveland, Joste, Darkwolf, Naaira, HPMunchcraft, Wigglefig, and Kalkyrie for feedback. Extra-special mention to Naaira and Joste for their help porting the guide to the Illwiki.

WIP

Author: Rovsea

So I’ve actually been struggling quite a bit on how to structure this guide. On the one hand, Pretender Design is actually the first interaction most people will have with a nation, while on the other hand, Pretender Design is a complex topic that requires a holistic view of a nation to do well. You have to know what you’ll expand with, what you’ll scale into the game with, and the scales and blesses you’ll need to make your mages and troops function.

With that being said, let's briefly go over the initial troops you'll make as you begin, what mages are most important, and the overall strategy to start expanding and prepare for the rest of the game.

To keep things brief, the full overview of Jomon's various land troops is in the corresponding section of the Appendix below, although as each troop comes up a link to it's entry will also be included.

The basic strategy for Jomon to use with its recruitable troops is to place them on hold and attack, allow mages (mainly Master Shugenja) to buff them, then go into a melee where their superior attack skill and plentiful two-handed weapons allows them to out-brawl the opponent. As we’ll see, their mages are actually well suited to complimenting this style, and because they have so many different buffing paths, especially earth, this type of strategy is scalable into the middle and late-game phases. Ashigaru carry out this strategy the most efficiently, while Jomon also has a slew of more elite infantry who hit harder and more often, but the basic stratagem doesn’t change, and because Jomon’s troops lack shields and all move slowly, it’s hard to implement more advanced concepts very easily. The main exception to this rule, among Jomon’s recruits, are Samurai Cavalry, which dovetails nicely into expansion.

In expansion there are two main schools of thought for how to expand with troops (there are other complexities but those will be explained later):

• Expand using masses of Ashigaru, preferably in line formations to maximize use of their weapons and minimize attrition to ranged weapons. Ashigaru will attrition out, but they’re cheap, easy to mass, and perfectly capable of taking independents of any pop-type.
• Expand using a bait/infantry squad backed up by Samurai Cavalry. Samurai Cavalry will either be on Hold/Attack Rear if using a bait squad such as archers, or on Hold/Attack Closest if using infantry. The archer bait would be on fire and keep distance, and risks attritioning out the Samurai Cav if they get caught out, while the combined infantry/cavalry method wants the infantry squad and Samurai Cav to hit the enemy frontline at the same time, using both squads along with the lance charge to quickly snowball the melee, which typically results in larger infantry attrition.

The first plan using Ashigaru has a very simple plan regarding build/scales: Take Productivity scales, save any points you would have spent on order for other things. If in need of points, even tanking Turmoil is possible, although this’ll probably limit the numbers of Go-Hatamoto or O-ban you’d be able to make later. Creating Aka-Oni Samurai or Samurai Cavalry in more than small numbers is pretty discouraged with this build.

If you plan to use Samurai Cavalry in expansion, the build can get a bit more complicated. In order to maximize production during expansion Order scales are most likely needed, and this can often result in a bottleneck where it’s difficult to determine how much Productivity to take, as this can impact other scales such as Luck/Misfortune, Growth/Death, or Magic/Drain balance, making it difficult to fit everything you want or need. Aka-Oni Samurai become a bit easier to afford, but things like Ashigaru, Samurai Archers, and sometimes even Go-Hatamoto start to be capped unusually early because of a lack of Productivity scales if those are sacrificed. The precise scales will depend on other factors in the build as well, so it’s still possible to expand with Samurai Cav and have other options open later on, just not with every build.

Jomon's sacreds, the Sohei and Yamabushi are rarely if ever used in expansion, due to being somewhat fragile, Jomon not having great priests, and constraints in Pretender design limiting blesses, all of which we'll be going over later on in more detail.

Let’s discuss the elephant in the room: Jomon’s troops don’t have shields. Half the map’s provinces contain crossbows in Late Age. Combine these things together and you realize pretty rapidly that making crossbows is a good way to attrition down Jomon’s troops. By the mid-game, Jomon can easily layer Mist with Arrow Fend with Storm, at which point projectile damage is knocked down to something like a tenth or twentieth of its earlier strength, so the main concern for Jomon is how to deal with it early. There are a couple tactics Jomon can use to deal with this, depending on things like timing and the like:

• In general, lines and troops with protection buffs can pretty radically reduce attrition to crossbows, while mages can cast important self-buffs like Air Shield or Ironskin.
• Mist is also available fairly early, and because you’re liable to go up Enchantment school relatively early, even Haste becomes a potential option.

Unfortunately, these are all mitigation, and you can’t totally ignore the disadvantage to ranged units (especially in expansion) until Arrowfend comes out.

Another downside to a lack of shields is that Jomon’s infantry end up with less effective defense skill than a lot of other infantry in the age. While they are still pretty likely to hit around enemy shields, they’re also not unlikely to be hit themselves, despite their defense being relatively high for unshielded troops (compared to Abysians or Ulmers).

Now that we’ve done a light overview of the troops available to Jomon, how they fit into the overall strategy, and discussed what might be necessary to access them all, we can move on to discussing what Build/Pretender you might want to take to tie all this information together. While we will be talking about Pretender options a bit, we’ll be discussing the most “viable” Pretenders together with the build I think works the best for them.

Jomon’s pretender design is tricky in that it attempts to balance 2 primary needs: 1.) The need to expand underwater to gain access to Ryujin and Shark Warriors, and 2.) Scales to help with production of troops, mages, and infrastructure.

Jomon’s basic mage strategy is fairly reliable in the early game, but it will diversify rapidly based on what’s necessary into particular matchups. Early game, your research will be driven by the most reliable Master Shugenja paths, Nature and Earth. As such, early-game focus is on paths such as

• Conjuration 3
• Alteration 3-4
• Construction 3
• Enchantment 3-4

Jomon has a lot of utility in a lot of the different Magic Schools (basically everything besides Blood), so it’s important to judge which opponents you think you’ll fight, what random paths you’ve gotten on your mages, and continuously revise your Research to fit your needs.

To be clear, Jomon has excellent overall magic availability. They have 3 reliably, 3 and 3 semi-reliably with 2 and 2 reliably, as well as 2 and 2 once they’ve made it uw. In addition, they have reliable 2 with the ability to boost all of their other paths as high as necessary in combat (easily up to X5 with a small communion, Power of the Spheres, and whichever other boosting spell is necessary). By the mid-game, Jomon can easily cast strong spells in Conjuration, Alteration, Evocation, Construction, Enchantment, and Thaumaturgy. This wide range is extended even more by their national summons (which we’ll discuss later) and excellent forging options, which make Conjuration and Construction more attractive than perhaps they would be on other nations.

Jomon has one serious problem when it comes to their magic access and magi, however: scaling. Because 2 of their 3 primary mages (Ryujin and Onmyo-ji) are slow to recruit, and Ryujin are only available underwater, Jomon has serious issues in expanding their roster of Magi quickly, and largely have to invest more into infrastructure than many other nations in LA. This is only exacerbated by the difficulty in getting underwater in the first place, which often requires pretender intervention and sinking valuable design points into a pretender option capable of getting underwater.

All of this can be more or less sorted by the mid-game, and Master Shugenja have enough versatility and use to carry the nation through the very early stages of the game, but you run into another issue as the game goes longer, again in terms of scaling. In short, Master Shugenja and Onmyo-ji fall off, largely due to increasing ease of targeting them in battle as the game goes on. While Jomon is not the only nation with vulnerable human mages in LA, they still have some of the worst, especially with their low morale, and this is compounded by the fact that Jomon’s mages are gem hungry. In an age with generally low gem availability and numerous nations that scale through blood hunting, Jomon tends to rely on Ryujin as a potent raiding and casting tool in the late-game.

Jomon’s land mages all share a few characteristics that make them weaker than a lot of other mages in Dominions. They’re all poor in melee, they all have sub-par hit points, all lack any armor whatsoever, and they all have low morale (technically, Monks have ok morale, but this is still generally true). Taken altogether, these characteristics mean that Jomon’s mage corps, at least the human portion, are quite vulnerable to everything from flankers to archers to combat spells like Earthquake and morale spells like Wailing Winds.

Protecting and positioning your mages well enough to get maximum value out of them is important, although it can also mean that their use is more limited than you’d like. Remote spells like Flames from the Sky (a powerful late-game fire spell that deals fire damage to half the enemies in a province) are devastating to Jomon’s mages, so it’s important to keep this weakness in mind whenever you plan an engagement.

These spells all require a crosspath between Holy and one of the paths that Monks of the Fivefold Path have access to. Jomon doesn’t have any other mage-priests in its lineup, so Monks are almost the only mages in the nation (and therefore the game) who can make use of these spells. All of these spells are available from the start of the game as holy spells, a couple among them being particularly useful.

Despite there being "meta" builds for Jomon, there's still plenty of room for experimentation, difference of opinion, or just plain fun builds, that don't necessarily take themselves too seriously. To check some of these out, check the Appendix below.

An additional expansion tactic, “Archer Bait” expansion refers to a specific setup in which someone uses a larger squad of Archers to distract independent squads while a smaller squad of Cavalry on Attack Rear orders snipes enemy commanders. The Archer squad is on the seldom used Fire and Keep Distance command to kite any independent infantry squads. In theory, Jomon can use this to effectively expand, and I mentioned it as a viable expansion tactic previously. I still believe that this is the case, but I also think it’s flat out a worse technic then simply running a Cavalry + Infantry squad, as described in the previous expansion example. In general, the Cavalry + Infantry squad seems to be the most reliable from the tests that I’ve done, albeit it’s easiest to get such expansion parties out while taking order, which makes it harder to use such technique on builds without that scale. In addition, Jomon’s Samurai Cavalry lack full lances, only have 1 attack after their lance is used up, and don’t wear shields, all of which makes them more vulnerable to use with the Attack Rear strategy.

This is approximately the positioning you should use for an Archer Bait strategy. In theory, the archers should be positioned further down on the Army Setup screen, but in practice this doesn’t reliably grab all the infantry squads, and sometimes one will intercept the Samurai Cavalry before they can hit the rear.

After the early game comes the mid game (I'll put something witty here later).

Dominions is often not a game where prescriptive tactical advice is strong enough to carry you to victory. Why? Because “It Depends” is the go to answer to almost every open-ended question having to deal with tactics. “How do I deal with this pretender?” It Depends; “How should I fight MA Ermor?” It Depends; “What do I make to kill these sacred knights?” It Depends. What tactics you use are going to be heavily dependent on the game-state, what you have actual access to, comparative research of the two parties fighting, the diplomacy between you and your other neighbors, and on and on. Instead, it’s often helpful to look at matchups from a strategic perspective, to ask what type of things you should be doing, and keep in mind this wider toolbox when moving to address particular solutions. We will get to tactics later, but for now, what strategy should Jomon be going for?

To start off with, we’ll be going into the end-of-expansion phase, and discuss how you should lead into your first war. Jomon has good matchups and bad matchups, so we’ll first discuss the absolute worst-case scenario that you could be fighting into: Lemuria.

If possible, you should avoid Lemuria with all your might. As we’ve previously discussed, Jomon’s priests are somewhat lacking and it’s sacreds are uninspiring. Even if you take Cold Resistance and the Magic Weapons Bless for your sacreds, they’ll still struggle to deal with just large quantities of ghosts that you have few other ways to kill. Low-level research in conjunction with Nature and Earth magic, primarily, does not lend itself to a strong matchup into Undead, particularly Ethereal Floating undead. Fire magic will likely not be prevalent enough to carry through such a matchup, and potentially useful Astral mages who could cast spells like Solar Rays are slow to recruit and therefore difficult to mass enough to matter. In this case, you should address the possibility of fighting Lemuria before the game even starts. Take a dormant or awake Titan you don’t think Lemuria can kill, make sure Dominion score is high and you can make plentiful sacreds, who have Cold Resistance and Magic Weapons at minimum, additionally Poison Resistance and Reinvigoration if possible, possibly even extra Morale to deal with Fear. Lemuria’s thugs will come with Ethereal, a Chill Aura, and a Fear Aura innately, not even mentioning their ability to bring a pretender who can cast Foul Vapors to synergize with the universal Poison Resistance their ghosts have.

Never fight Lemuria alone, and use diplomacy like a bludgeon to reduce the impact of fighting them as much as possible. Make a coalition to fight them, warn your other neighbors that you need to deal with Lemuria and get them to leave you alone so that they don’t have a 2 Capital Lemuria to deal with later, or make a deal with Lemuria itself in exchange for not joining a coalition against them. In whatever way possible, avoid fighting them as much as you can. It’s not incorrect to say that fighting a Lemuria in a 1 on 1 situation is the worst possible early-game matchup for Jomon.

Moving away from that particular scenario, everything else is a bit more generalizable. You want to be able to ensure a strong infrastructure build-up, and while everyone else will also be doing this, taking a couple extra turns to make sure you have plenty of forts and mages can also help you identify a particular war target for your first war. Outside of Lemuria, nobody is a particularly bad matchup for Jomon per-se, although strong sacred builds should probably be avoided in a first war. You should be at a position where you’re comfortable being able to support your infantry with mages, preferably somewhere up Alteration, with spells such as Earth Meld, Protection, Mossbody, Quickness, etc. all available. Your primary mages at this point are Master Shugenja, although around turns 12-15 if you have forts coming up, you can begin to switch into Onmyo-ji as well.

At this point, intelligent mage use and having troops in the right places should be able to deal with most opponents. Depending on who you’re fighting and what they’re going to be using, your research goals might change, so it’s important to scout out the opponent and figure out a battle plan ahead of time if possible. Strategically speaking, Jomon does best when it has a clear idea of what it’ll be fighting and can spend a turn or two gearing for that particular threat

Between turns 15-20 is approximately when you’ll be at the Early-Mid game transition, and Jomon’s breadth of options forces you to make a research decision. It’s important to note that a research decision is also a strategy decision! It will impact which of your mages is most useful and therefore which you’ll be wanting to make most, and it’ll impact how well you’ll be able to fight different opponents. Jomon’s ideal offensive scenario begins 2-3 turns before the war. Jomon’s troops aren’t very mobile, so they need to be properly positioned for whatever war they’ll be engaging in. This is actually one of the larger weaknesses of the nation, as their immobility makes them particularly vulnerable to a 2-fronted war. For that reason, proper scouting of not just the primary war target, but also other neighbors is quite important, and if you have any questions about one of your other neighbors, it’s better to keep something in reserve than to be sorry later, particularly against more mobile opponents like Vaettiheim and Caelum.

Jomon’s strategy will be slightly different if you have Ryujin or if you do not. If you do have Ryujin available, then there are 2 main considerations for their use: Do they bring a unique threat to an army battle, and Can you use proper logistics to maximize their use. If you think your Ryujin will end up being important casters in an army battle, keeping one or more crucial randoms in reserve to reinforce an army can be useful. If they’ll need spells to cast an important spell (such as Mist, Foul Vapors, Marble Warriors, Elementals, etc.) then bring extra gems of those types with the army to use later. Ryujin are also incredibly mobile, able to cast any of the Elementals depending on Magic random, and always able to deploy Water Elementals, so they make excellent raiders. Using minimal gear, such as Kithaironic Lion Pelt and Frost Brand, a Ryujin can clear 6-10 pd without issue, and effectively be where the enemy is not. An enemy caught off-guard can lose a lot of land in just 1 turn to Ryujin raids. A more advanced tactic is to have scouts forward-deployed with gems to restock a Ryujin who raids into the province the scout is located in, if for example the Ryujin is making Air or Fire Elementals.

A Foul Vapors role Ryujin can even be used to wipe certain armies entirely, by taking enough Point-Buffs to be largely immune to mundane damage sources. If an enemy is telegraphing an army movement, and they haven’t seen a heavily geared/buffed Ryujin yet, this tactic can be particularly effective. Ryujin shouldn’t be used recklessly, but they should be used as much as possible to gain either an edge in combat or to take control of momentum by forcing the enemy to react to raids on the strategic map.

Another tool in the belt is the use of Ninjas. Ninjas are very basic Assassins, with a couple small quirks: They can see in the dark, and they can scale walls. These make them particularly effective for going inside of sieged forts to deal with mages or commanders, particularly those who will be taking Darkness penalties during night-combats. Many people don’t consider Ninjas very carefully because they’re not mage-assassins, but with cheap gear like a Handful of Acorns (summons Vinemen) they can be reasonably effective, particularly against unprepared mages. This is another way for Jomon to alpha-strike the opposition, it gives an option to snipe out site-searching or isolated mages, and to put a strain on someone’s mage resources to deal with Ryujin by acting in conjunction on the first turn of a war.

More mundane raiding techniques include the use of Master Shugenja with squads of 15-20 infantry (Ashigaru are cheap but attrition and are less reliable than the more expensive infantry), usually casting spells like Wooden Warriors, or Legions of Steel in conjunction with Strength of giants. This is a relatively cheap but effective raiding group, only really vulnerable to sizeable PD dumps. Even simpler is a larger squad of 30-40 simply being led by a commander, either with or without formation ability. Jomon can also use magic phase movement through Cloud Trapezing or Teleporting (with item support) mages to catch an opponent out with Elementals, or more rarely an MR Check or Die spell like Soul Slay (when dealing with thugs).

All of these contribute to the overall strategy of controlling the pace of the war and securing land as quickly as possible. This helps make room for Jomon’s armies, usually slower and more ponderous, to get on top of forts, and take advantageous fights. If you can isolate forts and take them 1 by 1, you’ll quickly gain a large enough resource advantage to make winning more or less inevitable.

Army composition and Strategy is also important. The core of any Jomon army will usually be infantry supported by buffing mages. At the first-war stage you’ll usually only have 1 or 2 Level 5 Magic Schools unlocked, and which schools those are will be based on who you’re fighting. A brief rundown of what each of those schools actually offer:

We’ve already discussed that Jomon struggles with mobility for its troops, and that this makes it difficult for them to defend multiple fronts easily. Keeping this in mind, what’s the optimal Defensive strategy for Jomon? In a word: stall.

Jomon’s main plan is to force favorable fights in a defensive position. If troops are out of position, use raiding, Assassination, Foul-Vapor traps, and any other tricks possible to slow and divert the enemy until you can get something in position to counter with. This could be aided by keeping one or more reserves of troops (this doesn’t have to be a lot initially, but enough that a couple turns of build-up would make it substantial) that you can use to more rapidly respond to an enemy threat. Being somewhat experienced playing as Jomon, this kind of back-stab where you have to ponderously respond to a sudden threat is perhaps the single biggest obstacle to winning a war.

The primary advantage you’ll get in fighting a defensive war is the information advantage. This should be used to tailor Thugs or Assassins if possible for maximum effectiveness. If you find yourself needing troops fast, things like Mechanical Men make good buffers for many of the previously discussed Evocation Spells, and chaff generating spells like Howl and Swarm are other ways to help stall out a battle. While too expensive to be used in offensive situations, where information is often incomplete, many of Jomon’s stealthy mage summons are actually more viable defensively, where they have more functional mobility due to being able to largely walk through enemy raids.

A major point to remember here as well is that the initial suggestion for development was to make as many forts as was affordable, and in a defensive situation this is again useful, particularly if forts are adjacent. Adjacent forts are so useful for defensive purposes because they allow you to gather mages and troops safely to support a friendly fort under siege, and also offer an adjacent location to refuel on gems or important items, all while avoiding direct enemy attack. This should be incorporated into the larger stalling strategy if possible.

Given knowledge of how an enemy is attacking, Ryujin make excellent counter-raiders, and can either be geared to tackle potential thugs they might run into, or cast damaging spells or summon elementals to deal with raiding forces. Air random Ryujin are particularly useful at this because of their ability to Cloud Trapeze, which allows them to catch out a lot of non-stealthy raiders. Once a sufficient force is ready, you should seek to force an engagement with an enemy army, crush them, then try essentially use the same strategy as you would if you were the attacker to start raiding their land and controlling as much as possible.

By the time the Mid Game period enters its more serious phase, roughly around turns 30-40, you should hopefully be in a strong position. By this point, you should have multiple schools at Level 5, and be working towards–or at–your first Level 7 school. Almost always, the first Level 7 school should be Alteration, although Construction 7 is also fairly potent. Important Level 6 goals include Alteration 6, Construction 6, and Enchantment 6, with Conjuration 6 and Evocation 6 being useful for Wailing Winds if you can summon Oni. At this point, Jomon has access to such a wide variety of spells that what you actually need for any given fight will be the primary determinant of what gets cast, although there are some spells that don’t really come with downsides.

As an example, the reason one should head straight for Alteration 7 is because of the incredibly strong combination of access to Fog Warriors and either Marble Warriors or Mass Protection (or both) depending on if someone has a way to punish Fire or Cold vulnerability. Construction 7, on the other hand, would mostly be taken to maximize damage output using Weapons of Sharpness. Both Schools have quite useful pickups at their Level 6 as well, with Lightless Lanterns, Starshine Skullcaps, and Armor of Knights in Construction, as well as Frozen Heart, Wave Warriors, and Battle Fortune available in Alteration.

It is at this stage of the game, before it becomes easy to mass remotes, summons, and thugs to deal with Ryujin or Jomon’s weak mages efficiently, that Jomon truly shines as a nation. Given the initiative, Jomon is capable of rapidly locking a nation down, sniping out its commanders, while moving unstoppable armies onto forts and winning any fights necessary to conquer the opponent.

To help show how you should be transitioning from development to fighting, and also to back up what I’ve said so far with a real game, we’ll show a couple of games. First, what could be considered as a “Best Case” scenario where development is smooth, none of your neighbors are overtly aggressive, and you get to pick your first war target at an opportunity of your choosing.

This image gives us a lot to take in, so let’s go over what it’s actually showing and what the overall position looks like. Firstly, the outline in red shows the land that was expanded to without any contesting, including the Throne province shaded in red, which was taken later after the end of “normal” expansion. Expansion in this game ended at 19 provinces, a pretty respectable opening in a multiplayer game where there’s about 15 provinces per player. This was achieved through the use of the Earth Snake for expansion, essentially following the setup outlined earlier in this guide, including the use of a Prophet Ninja. While some of this can be attributed to good fortune (the Caelum, for example, had a bit of difficulty expanding well, and the Utgard chose to rush a Xibalba instead of focusing on expanding well elsewhere), it’s also due to the extra speed and reliability the Earth Snake provides, which allowed me to capitalize on the opportunity.

Sadly, this map was limited in the number of UW available provinces it had, which on the one hand basically ensured that nations like Erytheia and Atlantis especially wouldn’t show up. On the other hand, this also meant that we only got a single UW fort up for Ryujin. It also severely limited the number of coastal provinces on the map, and took out any coastal starts, which we took advantage of to screw Marignon over (sorry Zan).

After such solid expansion, development was also thorough and uninterrupted. In this case after initial expansion we made 8 forts in addition to the Capital, for a total of 9. That’s just under 50% of provinces with a fort in them, with consistent mage production out of most of those forts for much of the game thus far. In addition, there’s even an additional lab in the Wasteland/Mountain province currently occupied by our Earth Snake Pretender, which has been used to pump out Master Shugenja in addition to the forts we have. This saturation of mage-producing provinces allows us to switch into Onmyo-ji earlier and more smoothly than a build without so much infrastructure would be able to. In order to afford this infrastructure while maintaining mage production, sometimes normal Shugenja or Monks of the Fivefold Path were recruited instead. At the stage shown, you can see that there’s ample troops available for counter-raiding, or held in reserve in case the Utgard decides to invade, and there’s also plenty of mages able to support those troops on any of the fronts they would be needed in. Another advantage to this setup is the research I was able to pump out.

This is honestly perhaps the smoothest research I’ve ever put out as Jomon, and for turn 35 I’d argue this is more than ample. In this case, rushing Construction 6-7 made sense since there wasn’t any early pressure, and I wanted to use Lightless Lanterns to bolster research even more. However, because of the initiation of war with Caelum, only 3 Lanterns were ever made (Fire Gem income was low in this game). Keep in mind that 800 RP per turn here is also excluding a large number of mages who are out in the field either directly fighting with Caelum or patrolling around to catch the squads of Raven Guard that were brought out by Caelum to raid. In addition, Thaumaturgy 5 isn’t usually a priority research goal for Jomon, but in this game the neighboring Utgard was running an Awe + Fear bless, so it was made a priority to help deal with them easier should a conflict arise.

What this shows is that good development from an awake expander can easily make up for not taking an awake researcher or similar build. Even in the event of an early conflict, research came in quickly enough that mages would have still been effective in combat, and even though some forts might have been delayed or never built in the first place, this just means that you would have that gold to spend more directly on fighting power early in the game. So despite being a huge investment of Pretender design points on early game power, an Awake expander gives you enough extra resources that you can still play flexibly, by either investing that extra gold in additional infrastructure to build up research, or by investing it into mages or troops earlier to have greater early fighting capability.

Here is an example of the kind of fighting force being used to intercept enemy raiding squads. Important to note that this party is somewhat beefed up to support the site-searching being done by the N3 and E3 Master Shugenjas (also, I just realized that there were 3 lucky 10% random Master Shugenjas in this group). A “real” patrol group would probably only have 1 Master Shugenja, casting either Earth or Nature buffs on the Ashigaru. Ashigaru are used here because they’re cheap, easy to mass, and they do just fine against most opponents given that one side has buff magic and the other does not. In this case, Caelum doesn’t actually have stealthy mages, so if they were bringing any mage support I’d be able to see them before I ended up fighting. It’s ok to invest a bit more than someone else in a counter-raid if you’re able to cleanly deal with what they’re investing. Of course, you shouldn’t be only focused on defense but also send something out to attack the enemy as well.

And so we have an example of an army sent out to siege down the enemy. In this case the army is split primarily between Elemental summoning and troop buffing roles. There are also 2 Battlefield casters, one for Howl and one for Antimagic, but most of the magic support is sunk into the prior 2 roles. This is an army assembled to fight a Caelum, and it actually comes with a couple weaknesses to LA Caelum in particular, although some things are much harder to directly combat than others. Caelum can cast Earthquake without hurting itself at all, meaning that it can bring an army with Earthquake support much earlier in the game than other nations, since it doesn’t need a measure like Mass Flight to insulate itself. Evocation also gives access to spells like Thunderstrike, which are particularly useful when an enemy masses it’s mages together to avoid flying troops, which Caelum can also bring. In addition to this, Air Elementals are pros at jumping onto weak mages and sniping them, even through bodyguards through the simple expediency of trampling.

While the army composition above isn’t actually well suited to dealing with Earthquake or Thunderstrike, it is adequate at dealing with Air Elementals and excellent at dealing with flying troops. The Air Elementals from the Enemy will potentially run into size 6 Elementals from my side, which will hold them in place so they can be deal with. In addition, the more elite Jomon infantry are all being held as bodyguards, meaning that they’ll be reserved to soak up extra buffs and deal with any flying enemies. Ashigaru are cheap and efficient as a screening frontline as well, but also good enough to walk forward and snipe enemy mages if they’re left lightly defended.

This army is also a good example of using research power spikes at Conjuration 5 and Alteration 5, as well as the more baseline research at Construction 3, and Enchantment 3-4. Construction 7 isn’t actually a huge deal for the matchup vs Caelum for Jomon, but once you do hit it, you can easily deal with nations who rely on their own high-protection infantry like Ulm or Marignon by simply chopping right through them using Weapons of Sharpness. This army would be much scarier once it does hit Construction 7, then Alteration 7 (as the research image shows is the next goal).

Hopefully this example shows a good idea overall of how Jomon can develop infrastructure, build a strong research base, then deploy its mages and troops effectively, in a real-game scenario.

I have a confession to make: I am a filthy NAP breaker. Not even on purpose, but because I misidentified who was playing the nation I attacked. It was a pretty embarrassing, easily rectified mistake, but nonetheless one I made.

Regardless of why it happened, this is the result. In total, the first turn saw 10 out of Phlegra’s 27 provinces change hands, drastically cutting their gold and gem income, and distracting much of Phlegra’s forces while they retook land they used to hold. It also helped isolate forts for sieges, and allowed for extra information by forcing Phlegra to walk into contested provinces in order to fight back properly. Despite what this kind of Alpha-Strike can do for you, there were actually several ways it could have been improved, several tricks and tactics you can use to give an even bigger advantage, and more inherent weaknesses into this kind of tactic, all of which we’ll be going over when we discuss this game.

First, it’s important to remember how advantageous the information advantage can be. In this case, I blatantly broke a Non-Aggression Pact, not something I’m known for, so I had a large element of surprise. What’s more, I had a large scouting network in the neighbor I planned to invade, with forces along the border ready to move in as soon as I knew what I’d be fighting. In the initial turn, I successfully avoided any large force that could have given my raiders any issues. In doing so, I also lost much of my information advantage.

Part of the reason I decided on invading Phlegra was because of my belief that Phlegra in particular would struggle to deal with highly mobile raiders like Ryujin. Nominally, Phlegra has no real ability to exceed a Ryujin’s mobility, as they don’t naturally have Magic Phase movement, flying, or stealth. Nations with any of these, particularly Magic Phase movement, can disrupt your ability to raid by moving onto your raiders with counters to what they know you have. In this example, Phlegra actually had 3 chassis capable of Magic Phasing. His Pretender, a Laestrygonian Tyrant (which was empowered), and a Cyclops Hero, all of which have the potential to kill a lone Ryujin raider. This allowed him to partially intercept my raiders the next turn and maintain enough mobility to strongly contest the raiding game.

It’s important to note that there are ways to deal with the enemy Magic Phasing onto Ryujin, several potentially useful methods, in fact. The first is to simply Magic Phase your own Ryujin or other Mage in to counteract whatever the enemy is doing. Another way is to forward deploy gem-mule scouts where you anticipate you’ll raid, then transfer gems onto your Ryujin once it’s there, outside of the expectation of your opponent. Potentially, you can also interdict an enemy mage via assassination, although it’s important to note that many of the the things which can Cloud Trapeze onto a Ryujin with the expectation of victory won’t care overmuch for a humble Ninja assassin. Still, you could potentially burn gems and turn the latter fight by doing this. All of these methods involve anticipation that the enemy will, in fact, intercept your raiders with their own Magic Phase combatants, something which can be hard to accurately predict and plan for, although when you do succeed it can be especially demoralizing for an enemy.

In addition, one of the key mistakes I make in my initial aggression is not locking down the enemy forts. Targeting forts is actually much stronger if successful than targeting non-fort provinces, for a couple reasons. First, Magic Phase movement onto a friendly fort, even one under siege, places a Mage within that fort, meaning that Ryujin on top of a fort aren’t vulnerable to Cloud Trapeze or Teleport shenanigans. It also is just as effective if not more so at cutting down gold and gem income, and if you organize it properly, you can cripple someone’s income almost entirely. Hitting forts also cuts mage and troop recruitment, as well as ends special commands like Capture Slaves, Blood Hunt, or Reanimation (none are relevant here, but something to keep in mind). You can also use a fort ping to help screen for an army moving onto that fort, as you will control the outside of the fort without the enemy necessarily being able to see your army composition and scripting. Another advantage is that you end up severely limiting the mundane movement available to enemy mages, as they’ll need to break siege before they can move out of a sieged fort, something which can be especially risky if they don’t know what you could reinforce the siege with. Lastly, for Jomon specifically, having any-fort wall climbing assassins gives you the ability to more or less “Shoot Fish in a Barrel” by assassinating into a fort under siege, where the enemy cannot patrol you out.

Keen-eyed readers will note that this is another mistake I made with this initial assault. Many of Phlegra’s human Mages are actually incredibly weak without the support of their communions, and thus particularly susceptible to interdiction by assassination. While the Cyclops and Laestrygonians Phlegra has access to don’t really fear such things, these mages are the minority, and you can cripple Phlegra’s magic ability without even targeting them particularly.

Here we have another example of an alpha-strike, this time covering over a large number of forts, and more substantially disrupting income and army production. It’s important to note that in this example, several of the raid attempts were unsuccessful, which brings up a very important point in general. This is the idea of efficient investment.

In Dominions 5, one of the key strategic errors is investing too much or too little into whichever tactics or overall strategy you’re pursuing. Invest too much in an invasion, for example, and you’ll be aligning most of your fighting force usually in a specific, non-central, location and de-labbing mages who were keeping you competitive on research. Over-invest to counter a raid and you’ll be tying up forces chasing an enemy when they can be doing more productive things. In general, constantly moving resources on the map to do things that will not help recoup their value is a losing proposition, and only a substantial material/tempo advantage makes this beneficial in even the short term.

The flip side of this coin is underinvestment. Is that Commander + 20 ashigaru force enough to take out 11 Province Defense? Maybe not, and the Commander + Ashigaru took resources and commander points to make, as well as nearly 4 times the gold investment. In this case they’re essentially been thrown away for no benefit. So then the question becomes: how much do I need to invest in order to raid that province? 40 Ashigaru may well be enough to take that 11 PD, and the two 6 PD provinces behind it, and even though it’s barely twice the investment, the payoff is also massively higher. Even more seriously, bringing too little to an important fight, particularly when you have more resources available to invest, can be a critical failure, to the point of being game ending by making additional fights impossible to effectively take. This is the concept of being defeated piecemeal played out.

In a real game, it can be difficult to determine exactly how much you need to bring to accomplish a goal. The enemy will probably have tools safely in forts that are difficult to attack directly, or have Magic Phase or Ritual Spell capabilities to attack you if you initiate aggression. You won’t always be able to see enemy scripting without giving away your own intentions, and even if you can see someone’s scripting, that doesn’t mean they won’t introduce new magic due to either moving mages or increasing research. Even with as much information as you can have, you’d still need either the experience and judgment to predict a battle or strategy’s outcome, or the fortitude to test a battle extensively beforehand to have the strongest likelihood of success.

The deeper into a game of Dominions you go, the more difficult it becomes to predict how a build will play out, how the diplomacy will have impacted game state, which research goals will have been prioritized, and what summons or independents have been co-opted into your national strategy. Matchups and build strategy will have become determined not by who you start next to, or the pool of nations you could face, but by who was successful and how strong you judge them to be. In short, there is a lot of uncertainty.

Instead of trying to exhaustively go over literally everything Jomon can do, I’ll instead go over Jomon’s key late-game research goals, why they’re important, and what kind of spells you might want to cast. I’ll also discuss some of Jomon’s limitations and what you can do to address these as the game goes on.

Late Game is a nebulous term (much like mid-game) which lasts from the time people feel like the game is hard to play to the end of the game. Late Game Dominions 5 is usually characterized by increasingly ramping research hitting all the way up to level 8 or 9 in a school, with other schools coming up to level 7 before being pushed all the way as well. A sufficiently long Dominions game should see one or more of the major players complete research entirely, although this obviously isn’t necessary for a game to conclude. Jomon’s primary goals in this regard are Alteration 9, Enchantment 8, Evocation 8-9, and Construction 7.

Importantly, these lists are not exhaustive, and there’s creative stuff Jomon can do with their summons and schools like Thaumaturgy or Conjuration. These are more common options, and give a rough idea about the kind of stuff Jomon wants to be casting, although if you’re looking closely you’ll not that a lot of these spells can actually be cast by Ryujin. Ryujin with water boosters can cast big Water magic spells like Niefel Flames or Liquify, Phoenix Power is enough to cast either Warriors of Muspelheim or Fire Fend, Earth Boots and Summon Earthpower in conjunction give enough of a boost for Army of Lead/Gold, and a Thistle Mace unlocks Serpent’s Blessing, Mass Regen, or Polymorph. About the only spells Ryujin can’t cast are Wailing Winds/Winds of Death, Relief (without 2 boosters), or Astral and Air spells. Why is castability by Ryujin so important?

Jomon’s human mages are easy targets in the Late Game. Remote spells will decimate their low HP and non-existent Protection, and guarding against these spells requires enormous gem investment in the form of gear or Domes. Flames From the Sky is great against squishy human mages right? Jomon is just as vulnerable to this as anyone else. Master Shugenja and Onmyo-ji also require gear to get higher map-move, and even with both of these in place are particularly vulnerable to Morale checks like Beckoning or Seduction out of combat, or Wailing Winds in Combat. In addition, missing just one weakness like not flying vs Earthquake, or not having PR vs Foul Vapors is devastating for a mage with only 9 HP, and even strong defensives like Mass Regen can struggle to overcome this gap. Ryujin, on the other hand, are always strong mages, invariably highly mobile, high HP, and come with build in immunity to Earthquake, as well as low level resistances to Fire, Cold, and Shock. They always have a water gem available for assassination battles, have multiple attacks in the case they are engaged in melee, and despite not having incredible Morale, are at least much better off than the Master Shugenja’s 8.

The longer the game goes, the less you should rely on human mages. This isn’t to say that they serve no purpose, they’re cheaper and more efficient than Ryujin are, and bringing some along to cast spammable spells while you leave the important battlefield-wide ones to your Ryujin is fine. Having extra mages to cast Maws of the Earth, Polymorph, Frozen Heart, Charm, or other spells which are more useful en masse is fine, and if some of them attrition in or outside of combat, you still have your core spells available.

Jomon’s troops also fall off somewhat over time, although less so than the mages. A two handed weapon with high attack skill and Weapons of Sharpness will always have some battlefield use, and with a Magic Weapons Bless both sacred variants will have some use well into the late game. Cheaper mages like Master Shugenja can still lead raid squads for a relatively low investment as well, and your more disposable human troops are fine in that role also. For major combat roles, however, Jomon should focus on disposable in-combat summoned chaff from spells like Creeping Doom and Howl, Elite recruits like Magic-Weapons Blessed Sacreds and Shark Warriors, and largely elemental immune summons like Mechanical Men, Wights, or even in-combat full-sized Elementals. Assassins like Ninjas can still be cost-effective as well. Low Mobility troops will still be an issue into the late game. Few of Jomon’s summon or recruitable options are liable to change this either, unfortunately.

We’ve gone over troops and mages, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, and why certain builds are going to need certain scales to fit them. Ashigaru and Samurai Cavalry are primary expansion troops, and other infantry can be mixed in to help with the general melee. Then we walked through chronologically from Pretender design, then Expansion, transitioning into the first war, then mid-game. Hopefully this gives a good idea of not just what Jomon can do, but how Jomon should proceed from those first steps, adjusting to get to as strong of a position as possible. No Dominions guide can tell you exactly how to play, so focus towards larger strategic objectives like utilizing Ryujin mobility, and using magic to make-up for vulnerabilities with troops was also discussed. All of the summons were shown, and we explained why most of them are unfortunately only sometimes useful. Particular strategies, including the initial alpha-strike that Jomon can carry out were also discussed, as well as some of the end-game goals. Hopefully you now have a fuller picture of what a Jomon game looks like, and how fun it can be. And so:

Here we are, at the end. If you’ve never played Jomon, I hope this guide gave you inspiration to try something; I hope you’ll have fun trying something new. If you already love the nation, I hope you learned something–or got a new perspective–and you’re eager to get back out there and try it again. I’ve spent altogether too much time and effort on this guide doing tests, pulling from my memory and experience and past games. I’m still learning, and in another year, I might be dissatisfied with my own ideas.

I welcome that disagreement, I welcome learning something new myself, and if anybody has any feedback you’re welcome to get in touch on Discord and point it out to me. Know that even while I type this I’m trying out new, whacky builds that I’ve theorycrafted, and expansion-tested, but never tried in MP before. They may not be optimal, but it sure as heck is fun to try out!

If you take nothing else out of this, take the idea that you can have fun learning this game, and a nation in particular. I did. " FIN "

A lot of information didn't make it all the way into the guide! I have a lot to say, after all, and cramming too much about pretenders or troops or particular summons too closely together can be distracting or lead to information overload. For that reason, at the end of the guide here, any extraneous information will be compiled into an Appendix, hopefully expanding on any questions you might have.

Back to Basic Troop Strategies.

Back to Basic Troop Strategies.

Back to Basic Troop Strategies.

Back to Basic Troop Strategies.

Back to Basic Troop Strategies.

While the exemplified builds above are typical of some of the “main” build ideas that I have for Jomon, it’s true that there are still a lot of other possibilities out there, some more serious than others. Instead of going in-depth for each of these, and making an already long guide even longer, I’ll just give some brief thoughts on a variety of builds that I think would be fun to play with.

Back to Pretenders and Builds section.

Back to end of Main Builds section.

Back to end of Main Builds section.

The Dominion 1 Pretenders, known as Humans, or “Rainbow” Pretenders since new paths are so cheap on them, will often function virtually identically to the Awake Researcher build I mention much earlier in the guide. If you want, you can sacrifice scales to take a crazy bless, similar to the Demilich build above, or you can go Dormant or Imprisoned for even stronger scales, or you can settle on a compromise where you go Dormant or Imprisoned but take a stronger bless. These pretenders are really flexible, although in my opinion Jomon benefits most from taking a build which increases its strength in the early game. Just know that in terms of function, these Pretenders are basically identical to a Great Sage or Onmyo Hakase.

Back to end of Main Builds section.

Jomon is a nation with a large list of National Spells available to it, mostly unique Japanese-themed mythological summons. Some of these summonses end up being a trap, and some of them end up giving solid utility. Jomon has no shortage of other places to spend its gems, with ample uses in forging and battle magic, so there’s a lot of competition for use. It’s because of this that many of these summonses end up feeling kind of useless, either because of redundant magic paths or weakness outside of home provinces or both. Others are over-costed or come too late to be as worthwhile, but we’ll go through them all briefly to show which should or shouldn’t be created.

All of Jomon’s summons end up coming from Conjuration (and indeed, all of the non-combat national spells that Jomon has access to are in Conjuration, and they’re all summons!), ranging from Conjuration 1 with at least one at every level up to Conjuration 8. They have summons available for all of the gem types except Blood, which means that Jomon has a way to convert almost every gem type into some form of summoning. We’ll progress through them from the lowest to the highest level, as follows:

Early Game Troops

Summon Kappa	School: Conjuration 1	Path: 11	Cost: 3	Effect: Kappa x3
Summon Okami	School: Conjuration 3	Path: 1	Cost: 6	Effect: Okami x10+
Ambush of Tigers	School: Conjuration 3	Path: 2	Cost: 10	Effect: Tiger x10+

Summon Kappa at Conjuration 1 requires the use of a Water mage and water gems, both of which Jomon has no real way to guarantee early in the game, when the spell would be most useful as a means to get underwater. If you do happen to pick up a Water magic random Master Shugenja and have 10-15 water gems from either sites or an event, however, then it’s a fairly useful way to break yourself underwater. It can also be a means to bulk up a party led by Ryutaro (a Jomon hero with water-breathing) or a Celestial Carp. Later in the game, Kappa are less useful and you should be spending water gems on other things.

Okami are a Wolf-like summon (size 3, similar to Cu Sidhe, Dire Wolves, and Barghests) with Stealth, Magic Power, and Bodyguard, heftily elevating them their Dire Wolf brethren, although unlike Cu Sidhe they are not Sacred. Despite this, they move quickly and you get a decent quantity per cast, which means that if you want additional flankers in an army they’re quick and easy to add. Unfortunately, like most animals they struggle to be competitive into the game, although their use as Bodyguards is not to be underestimated (Jomon does have other competent Bodyguards, however).

Tigers are a regional Summon shared with nations like Patala, but are less efficient to summon, harder to summon, and while having 2 attacks, functionally worse than Okami in every other way (outside of Drain). Tigers should rarely be used unless you’re desperate.

Trash Oni Summons

Summon Ko-Oni	School: Conjuration 1	Path: 1	Cost: 7	Effect: Ko-Oni x5 +1/2
Summon Ao-Oni	School: Conjuration 2	Path: 11	Cost: 10	Effect: Ao-Oni x5 +1/2
Summon Aka-Oni	School: Conjuration 3	Path: 11	Cost: 10	Effect: Aka-Oni x5 +1/2
Summon Oni	School: Conjuration 4	Path: 11	Cost: 12	Effect: Oni x5 +1/2
Summon Kuro-Oni	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 21	Cost: 10	Effect: Kuro-Oni x4

Ko-Oni are small size 1 Japanese demons who have ok combat stats, but are pretty poor summon despite being relatively easy to cast spell. Jomon, in particular, struggles to cast this due to their lack of death gem income or Death mages early on, but at Conjuration 1 and Death 1 to cast, it’s not exactly a massive threshold. By the time Jomon does have easy access to the spell, it’s no longer really worth casting (if it ever was). Ko-Oni themselves are hardly worth the death gems the spell requires.

All of the Oni troop summons are relatively hard to cast, somewhat expensive for what you get, and often not worth it to cast regardless. These Oni spells include Summon Ao-Oni, Summon Aka-Oni, Summon Oni, and Summon Kuro-Oni. While the Oni get progressively stronger, they’re still relatively easy to kill, even with the size 3 Kuro-Oni. Usually, you have better uses for your gems, although if you’re floating a lot and are in desperate need of heavy hitters they can still be used in a pinch.

Additionally, all of the Oni possess Chaos Power, and for the troops especially they take severe penalties if you do have Order scales instead of Turmoil.

Tengu Summons

Summon Karasu Tengus	School: Conjuration 2	Path: 11	Cost: 3	Effect: Karasu Tengu x3 +1/2
Summon Konoha Tengus	School: Conjuration 3	Path: 11	Cost: 5	Effect: Konoha Tengu x5 +1/2
Contact Dai Tengu	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 21	Cost: 55	Effect: Dai Tengu + Tengu Warrior x10 + Karasu Tengu x15

Karasu and Konoha Tengus are both relatively high-statted, Katana wielding Storm-Flying sacreds with poor armor and the ability to throw one volley of lightning at the opponent. With the low protection, but the ability to fly in Storms, Tengu are quite likely to kill themselves by jumping right into the middle of an enemy formation, or by jumping onto an enemy, then being shot by friendly archers. Karasu Tengu comes 1 research level earlier and has superior combat ability, but also only comes 3 per summon, while Konoha Tengu scales a bit quicker with 5 per cast. Tengu is a fantastic way to scale a strong bless into the mid-game, but it’s hard to overcome the main liability of survivability. For that reason, they’re mainly disposable weapons, used to target enemies at the rear of a formation or to surprise an opponent unready for a flying assault.

Contact Dai Tengu is the most expensive national spell that Jomon has available to it, and you get quite a bit from it as well. In addition to 15 Karasu Tengu, you also get 10 Tengu Warriors, who are essentially armored versions of Konoha Tengu, and thus much more likely to survive a fight, especially with the mid-game buffs applied. Sadly, they still don’t wear helmets, although they’re still much more survivable. The biggest draw, however, for the spell is the access to Dai Tengu, which has 3112. This allows them to cast Teaching Sign, and become 4 combat casters. Essentially, this is Jomon’s easiest way to get higher-level Air magic (aside from via pretender), and so despite the extra cost the 25 troops tack onto the spell, you will cast it at least once in most Jomon games.

Nature Mage Summons

Contact Bakeneko	School: Conjuration 3	Path: 2	Cost: 8	Effect: Bakeneko / Bakeneko
Contact Jigami	School: Conjuration 4	Path: 1	Cost: 10	Effect: Jigami
Contact Mujina	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 2	Cost: 21	Effect: Mujina / Mujina
Contact Tanuki	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 2	Cost: 26	Effect: Tanuki
Contact Kitsune	School: Conjuration 6	Path: 3	Cost: 30	Effect: Kitsune / Kitsune

Contact Bakeneko gives you access to a cheap Death mage, as Bakenekos have a 50/50 chance between being a Death or Fire mage. Aside from being a somewhat cheap way to boost research (especially in Magic scales), Bakeneko are also therefore useful as site-searchers and forgers, and will eventually break you into death by finding you enough death income to empower into it. In addition, they have very high stealth value and good mapmove, which allows them to act as reasonable scouts. They’re quite vulnerable in combat, however, and should avoid fighting the enemy.

Jigami are cheap to summon 2 magi, with extra supply bonus and Summer Power 50. In theory, with their additionally being Sacred and Ethereal, they should be able to thug during the Summer months, although they’re basically never used for such. This is another way to turn nature gems into research (especially useful in magic scales, again), which Jomon has a lot of. For real, there will be 4 more nature gem Mage summons. Jigami are useful if you ever desperately need to turn 1 into 2, and are pretty easy and cheap to get, but if you already have plenty of Nature magic, there’s no great need to summon them.

Summoning a magical shape-shifting assassin badger, Contact Mujina is possible the most hardcore of all of Jomon’s spells. For a mage assassin, 21 actually isn’t that expensive, and it’s relatively easy for Jomon to cast as well. 21150% are also fairly feasible to use for thugging, and with magic power Mujina will actually have pretty solid stats for melee as well. The main issue with this is that they have low HP, which makes them vulnerable in melee. Because of this, their main use remains similar to Dryads as mostly mage assassins.

Apparently Magical raccoon-dogs are less likely to assassinate you than magical badgers, as Tanuki are not assassins, although they do still have 212100%
50% paths. They also have a small variety of randoms. They have a 100% chance of F/W/E/N, with an additional 50% random of the same. Sadly, this means that the majority of the time they’ll be essentially the same as a Master Shugenja, albeit with a higher chance for 3, and some chance at 4. Still, this summon should sadly rarely be cast, as it’s just too similar to what you already have available.

Kitsune are the final Nature summon in Jomon’s lineup, and also the most expensive. Kitsune will always have Nature 3 paths, but in addition have a random chance at quite a few other paths ( 250%
50%
50%
25% ). In theory, then, Kitsune can help Jomon do all sorts of things, but in practice you’re very unlikely to hit some kind of high-level magic combination that would actually be important. The most likely useful crosspath would be Nature 3 Astral 1, which helps to make the Moonvine Bracelet, which can be useful for boosting a Kitsune or other Nature 3 mage into Mother Oak casting territory. Besides their magical prowess, Kitsune are also highly stealthy and spies, so in theory they can steal the graphs of any other players if you want them to. Despite being generally strong, Kitsune don’t really offer much that Jomon doesn’t already have. If you’ve been missing base Nature 3 for some reason, Kitsune can help you reach that, and if you’re interested in contesting Mother Oak, Kitsune can also help there, but otherwise they’re unlikely to be worth the cost.

Death Summons

Ghost General	School: Conjuration 4	Path: 3	Cost: 10	Effect: Shura
Summon Gozu Mezu	School: Conjuration 6	Path: 3	Cost: 7	Effect: Ox-head x1 + Horse-face x1
Summon Oni General	School: Conjuration 6	Path: 21	Cost: 20	Effect: Oni Shugo
Summon Dai Oni	School: Conjuration 8	Path: 41	Cost: 45	Effect: Dai Oni

Ghost General summons a Shura commander, a ghostly Japanese-themed version of a Bane with better mundane leadership. It also has better stats, a Fear aura, and Ethereal, but there is, of course, a tradeoff. Aside from the Salt Vulnerability being a ghost incurs, it’s also a level of Magic and Research higher to cast than a Bane and 3 gems more expensive. Despite this, if you have the death gems to spare you can use them as tanky leaders or cheap thugs.

Gozu Mezu are Ox or Horse-headed size 4 demons with solid stat-lines and hard-hitting 2-handed magic weapons. They’re a bit expensive, and not sacred, but they’re a viable option if you want to get hard-hitting magic weapons onto the field to deal with a particular thug. Their role is somewhat similar to Wights, although Summon Gozu Mezu is available much later, but is more gem efficient.

This spell summons an Oni Shugo, identical to the EA Yomi Commander. Breaking into Death on Jomon is primarily to gain access to this Mage, although you’d do it eventually anyways just to use all of your resources properly. Oni Shugo all have Death 2 base, but can also get an A/F/E path. These are all potentially useful for combat magic, forging, or thugging. Most important is the Death 2 Air 1 Oni Shugo, as these are able to cast Wailing Winds, one of the most powerful combat spells in the game. Otherwise, Oni Shugo can forge Shademail Haubergeons, Skulls of Fire, or just Skull Staffs. They can cast Winds of Death or Banefire with a Skull Staff as well, although things like Life after Death or Darkness, which both might be situationally useful, would be harder to come by. In addition, Oni Shugo are just a bit too low level to be able to summon Jomon’s strongest national summon, the Dai Oni. Speaking of Dai Oni…

The last, most difficult to cast, and most powerful of Jomon’s national summons is the Dai Oni. It sits all the way at Conjuration 8, and requires a Death 4 caster with a Fire crosspath to summon. Not only that, it’s also somewhat expensive at 45 death gems, although not prohibitively so. Jomon summons the same Dai Oni that Yomi gets, which are powerful Death, Fire, and Earth Mages. Dai Oni are also always able to summon more of themselves, and a Death random Dai Oni can forge itself up to Death 6, which can cast Well of Misery, the Conjuration 8 Global Enchantment that gives 20 death gems per turn. Dai Oni are the only real Super Combatant Chassis the Jomon has as a national option, and they have incredible stats and paths for it, bolstered by Jomon’s excellent ability to forge gear and provide point-buffs. In truth, with astral buffs like Body Ethereal available from Jomon’s national mages, Dai Oni from Jomon are probably the strongest of any of the Japanese line of nations, in the late game.

Dai Oni are perfectly capable of casting any of the spells that Oni Shugo can, and then some. They’re also able to bless themselves, and able to put up things like Rain of Stones or Earthquake, both of which are situational, but useful for hitting unprotected mages from an enemy. Dai Oni are just generally the strongest chassis Jomon will have available, even if they do come at Conjuration 8.

Unfortunately, the fact that Dai Oni are available so far into the game also makes them often impractical to use. By the time you have access to them, most nations left have amassed enough research and magical resources to deal with them, whether that be through counter-thugs wielding Holy Scourges, Water mages advancing and casting Frozen Heart, Blood mages casting Leech, or Astral communions spamming Soul Slay, there are a wide variety of efficient counters that a Dai Oni would need to be protected from, limiting their usefulness in the Supercombatant role. Despite this, Dai Oni are still powerful casters, and may well be worth investing into.

Earth-type Summons

Summon Ujigami	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 11	Cost: 8	Effect: Ujigami
Summon Kenzoku	School: Conjuration 6	Path: 11	Cost: 9	Effect: Kenzoku
Contact Tatsu	School: Conjuration 6	Path: 3	Cost: 19	Effect: Tatsu

Summon Ujigami and Summon Kenzoku give access to similar but slightly different Humanoid magic beings. Ujigami are functionally 1 priests, with 120 mundane and 80 magic Leadership, as well as Inspirational 1 and Fortune Teller 5. They’re Sacred, Ethereal, and wear armor, meaning they're much tankier than a lot of other leaders, and can even be used as a light thug if necessary. With morale items stacked on, Ujigami are also capable of giving Jomon’s troops a whopping +7 to Morale.

In contrast, Kenzoku are also Ethereal, Sacred, Magic-Being commanders bedecked with armor, and also have 80 mundane and 80 magical Leadership. However, they lack Inspirational or Fortune Teller, don’t have a Holy path, and instead trade that off for better combat ability. With Awe 2, a magic weapon, and overall better combat stats, Kenzoku are actually a fairly solid chassis for a light thug or counter-thug, although they can always double as solid leaders as well.

Tatsu are similar to Ryujin, except worse in essentially every way. Instead of the W3 guaranteed on Ryujin, Tatsu have only a level 2 Path in F/A/W/E/N, and Tatsu are also confined to only a Dragon form, and are not Sacred. Tatsu are a fine chassis overall, and in theory could be used as an elemental caster or raider pretty effectively, but at the end of the day they’re gem expensive and worse than a Ryujin would be for a similar role. If for some reason gaining Ryujin numbers is hard, Tatsu are an acceptable alternative.

Terrain Restricted Summons

Contact Mori-no-kami	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 2	Cost: 26	Effect: Mori-no-kami / Mori-no-kami
Contact Nushi	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 21	Cost: 25	Effect: Nushi / Swamp Serpent
Contact Kaijin	School: Conjuration 5	Path: 3	Cost: 25	Effect: Kaijin
Contact Yama-no-kami	School: Conjuration 7	Path: 4	Cost: 28	Effect: Yama-no-kami

Contact Mori-no-kami is the first of 4 terrain restricted spells which summons a Mage who grows weaker when leaving either their home province or their terrain type. For the Mori-no-kami leaving a forest drastically reduces their viability as a Summon, as they drop from a 31, easily capable of casting the vast majority of combat Nature spells, down to a 2 mage with drastically reduced physical stats as well. They become redundant and a liability on the battlefield outside of forests, in other words.

The Nushi is a shape-shifting Swamp summon similar to a Naiad. Like the Naiad, the Nushi is a solid Water and Nature mage, and also has Homesickness. Unlike the Naiad, the Nushi has only Nature 2 paths, with their 6th path actually being Death. This is actually an important distinction because it allows them to summon Kokythiads, a Water 3 Death 3 mage. This actually breaks Jomon into fairly high Death access using purely water gems, and if you need a way to summon Oni commanders (which will be discussed shortly) but you don’t have death gems to empower, empowering a Kokythiad is actually a really solid option. Nushi themselves are hard to use in a combat role because of their large 20% Homesickness penalty.

Kaijin can only be summoned underwater, and like the Nushi take 25 water gems to summon, but they are quite powerful beneath the waves. With Water 3, Earth 1, and Nature 2 magic paths, Kaijin have excellent paths for UW combat, or self-buffing. They also start with a length 4 magic weapon and a magic net (which is intrinsic and kept when geared), as well as being Ethereal and Sacred. In theory, they could be pretty potent thugs, similar to Lars, however they lose 1 level of magic access in each of their paths when on land. This has the unfortunate side effect of completely removing their Earth path, which isn’t recoverable even with Earth Boots. Without access to Earth buffs like Ironskin, Temper Flesh, and Summon Earthpower, combined with needing gems for Personal Regeneration or Enlarge, Kaijin are much worse in a solo-thug role on land. Ryujin are expensive and can be slow to get rolling underwater, and Kaijin exist at the same research level as the big Elemental spells, so they’re available at the same time as the strongest UW combat spell. If you’re floating water gems and just need an injection of water magi to spend them effectively in combat, Kaijin can be a useful way to multiply your W3 access, although Ryujin are generally better than Kaijin in most respects.

Yama-no-Kami are the strongest, but also hardest to summon of the terrain-specific Jomon summons. We’ve actually jumped a level of research (which will be doubled back on later) to include this one, but they’re also the most useful of the lot thus far. Yama-no-kami are only available in Mountains and Highlands and require an Earth 4 mage to summon. Despite this, what you get is actually quite strong. Yama-no-kami have Air 2, Earth 3, Nature 2 paths, as well as nearly 30 HP, Regeneration, Ethereal, and Sacred status. They passively summon Wolves in dominion, and summon more at the start of every battle. It’s a strong chassis with good stats and good paths. Unfortunately, similar to the other terrain specific summons, Yama-no-kami are weaker outside of their home province. They end up losing a level of each of their magic paths, which reduces them down to Air 1, Earth 2, and Nature 1, similar paths to a Master Shugenja. Despite the chassis still being solid, it’s probably not worthwhile to use an Earth 4 mage turn and 28 earth gems to summon them, unless for a very specific purpose.

Jomon’s summons, by and large, are situational and supplemental more than strategy defining. Most of them offer little more than what Jomon already has available, or are limited too much by terrain and difficulties summoning to be useful reliably. It’s worth pointing out that in several of the builds the Death/Fire crosspath isn’t even available to give access to the Oni commander summons, making them often difficult for Jomon to make, despite being in many ways the most useful of the lot. The only other Summon which reliably gives Jomon the biggest magic boost, the Dai Tengu, is also the most expensive, again limiting the usefulness. Tengu troops are useful, and as a flying sacred are very distinct from the rest of Jomon’s lineup, but they are vulnerable and therefore difficult to use repeatedly. All-in-all, Jomon’s summons do add something to their lineup. You’ll never run out of Nature mages, you’ll always have a way to spend gems if you really want to, you can summon all many of stealthy mages to run around raiding if it strikes your fancy, but at the end of the day you won’t have so many gems that you can rely on your summon to carry you. Jomon still needs to find a suitable mid-game transition to hitting their power spikes, and it’s at that point that Jomon really blossoms as a nation.