diaymo are easy to kill. Tartar loyalists do the job fine. Also, i am not fussed about killing them anyway, they arent that great, also, i kill the shogunate in basically every game i play against japs with ops. (i only play russia). The only thing i hate about japs is their art. ANY civ who gets cannon thats anti artillery and anti infantry is OP.
I hate those damn cannons, they are soo annoying, i havent played japan but i think they are only 4 pop 2. The fact that japs get 20+ army doesnt help either. If u play russia you should be usings strelets, strelets are the key with russia. Alot of russian players dont use strelets and often lose because of it. To use strelets u need the following things:
*imperial upgrade
*strelet combat (card)
*advanced arsenal improvements (card)
*another card which improves cossack and ops aswell, dont know what its called.
These imrpovements will give your strelets 203 health or something and 22 or so attack. Strelets are only good because they are cheap and can be made in 10's. (if you get the inca settlements improvements then they goinstand :P) Also, strelets dont cost any gold, so you can basically have an army of halbs for cav and strelets for infantry which will be low cost and will work well. (when teh jap played and u are having a ranged battle remember these things:
*ALWAYS have at least 5 culverin waiting for mortaru and those flaming arrow things
*Mix in strelets with muskets, as this gives the strelets defence from cav. Its allways good to keep like 5 field guns behind units to PWN any sams that get close.
*last of all, have cossack on standby for Umi archers, cossack are good as they have a balanced cost so they dont unlalance your eco and they are 1 pop so you can get large numbers of them and still hold up somewhere else.)
good luck with fighting japs. They are an OP civ and they are a bit of a hasstle with the diaymo but just fire a culv bullet at em and the player wil retreat it.