In one of the threads discussing china, one suggestion of a buff is to lessen the cost of the blockhouse in age 2.
From this I wanted to see how viable it is now and I have to say, while it is slower then a castle start, it has a lot of benefits to china, though as it stand it is a bit slow.
A rough BO:
age 1 - normal build ( I am a bit unsure as to whether the tp start is the better one for this build) but for this example go 2 village then 3 vils.
During age up chop 200 wood for the consulate and send GFA as your sencond shipment.
When building the consulate I find that its better to put like 2-3 vils on it to complete it faster.
Age 2 - go russian consulate and get the blockhouse when you hit 121 export and build it in base. 1 shipment depends on the flow of the game but 7 steppe is my prefered most of the time. Then its a roughly normal china age 2, the next cards depends on how the game goes, you can sen 300 export while ending the russian consulate to make getting a new consulate easier( it makes it so that you have enough export for both the german trickles or enough for one crate from the french consulate)
So yeah, I think making the blockhouse cheaper is a very good buff for china that doesn’t affect much else
As it stands there is a gap between the first shipment in age 2 and the blockhouse finishing so you can spam units, and this is where I think the cheaper blockhouse can make a real difference, with china potentially have very strong momentum with the unit shipment and a batch from the blockhouse completing at the same time, it could be very strong.