Japanese Underrated Civ At Low-Mid ELO?

Japanese were a civ I use to play all the time as a kid playing against my dad in 1v1 DM, he would always pick Vikings and go heavy Berserks, and I would counter pick Japanese since the Samurai mop up Berserks and their water is pretty decent as well.

On paper Japanese don't look very compelling. Almost all their bonuses are either terrible or only good for water maps.

They have a pretty average tech tree, missing Hussar, Paladin, BBC, Siege Ram, and Siege Onager.

But their one redeeming quality: 33% faster attacking infantry, and much faster firing/packing trebs. Considering how many people pick cavalry civs at lower ELO this bonus is insane. Probably 70% of my games so far have been against cav civs, with Franks being by far the most popular but Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Mongols, and Huns definitely being up there.

I believe Japanese militia line beats any other militia line in the game with equal numbers, and their spear line definitely does.

Their spearman line absolutely MELTS light cav, and wins fights against cavalier with equal numbers. I've found a ball of Japanese halbs protecting their super trebs is impossible to push for cav civs. Usually a handful of cavalier/paladin can dive in and kill a treb or 2 before getting killed, but not against Japanese Halbs.

Since starting to main Japanese I've won 70% of my games and jumped from 1000 ELO to hitting 1100 for the first time.

Japanese seem to have an answer for everything, best halbs for fighting cav civs, best champions for fighting meso civs or other infantry civs, have fully upgraded arbelests and better trebs for fighting campy archer civs like Britons. Their Samurai MELTS other unique units like Goth Huskarls or Berserkers.

They even have fully upgraded cav archers, so if the enemy goes for lots of onagers you can switch into those, or just use them to raid.

I'd say probably their worst matchup is an archer civ with a better eco that can pressure in Castle age and an open tech tree, like the Chinese. Something like light cav + xbow + onager I think would work great.

You just can't let the Japanese get a forward castle down, you can't win a treb war against them and you can't snipe their trebs with cavalier.

I'm honestly not sure how you can fight a Japanese player who has a forward castle covering one of your golds, with trebs+arbs+halbs. Maybe Celt siege rams with Champions inside would work, but normal siege rams just get melted by Jap halbs and anything you might put inside will get destroyed by Arbs.