Don’t care about win rates or whatever, It is so obvious China is awfully imbalanced compared to all other Civs. It’s so painful playing China. I can’t believe how badly these devs have treated China mains. Nerf after nerf after nerf. All advantages they ever had over other Civs have been nerfed to the ground. All other civs get so many econ bonuses it’s ridiculous, China gets nothing. It’s uphill battle from game start playing China. You have to be so damn perfect in every aspect to even stand a chance. Especially in 1on1, China is so weak. The advantage use to be if you could turtle and make it to Castle, but now you can’t even do that because of Song/Villager nerf, all other Civs get to harass you AND still make it to Castle the same time, while you as China get to struggle and have to spend 4000 wood to build up goddamn farm infrastructure.
Chinese farms don’t cost more or perform worse than other civs. Only the English gets cheaper and better farms, and the French with cheaper mills, and the new PUP Abbasids with ‘Fertile Crescent’.
China’s strength was never its fast castle timing; China had a strong Zhuge Nu push timing since its rework in Season 1 and 2, and it wasn’t that long ago that China was considered near OP or top tier at the beginning of Season 3.
I agree it could use more tweaking since the PUP/Season 4 is likely to change a lot of other things and indirectly affect them greatly, but I don’t disagree with any of the changes for China in Season 3. Its Song dynasty booming potential was too great/fast/hard to punish.
Relax man. I know what you are talking about, because I use it occasionally as well. However the biggest problem of Chinese civ isn’t its strength, but its operational strength.
In other word, even as a 3 stars civ, it is still too difficult for ordinary people to get started.
The advantage of this civ is its strong ability of investigation and counter-reaction, so you must tried to understand the civ that your opponent were useing better than himself.
What makes you painful was come from its high-intensity detection, defensive, macro, and multiple attack. Although I am not sure whether this civ needs buffed, but it has indeed become a civ that is worthless to practice.
What we need is to improve the experience of Chinese main, but not simply buff this civ. Otherwise you will see it become too OP in the high-level match then get nerfed again. Just like what happened in the last season.
Whoa, what? China is so great if you know how to play. It’s a difficult civ to master, but the potential is tremendous. Zhu ge nu printing has been slapping since the day this game came out (which took time for people to learn and execute the build order correctly) and Barbican rushing is still a potent strategy in short distance maps.
Speaking of harassing, you can print horsemen yourself with supervision, giving you the option to harass early game. When we talk early game win rates for Chinese, the biggest mistake Chinese players make is rushing Song without properly preparing yourself against enemy aggression. Don’t get so fish-barreled into “I am Chinese, I need to Song boom.”
Yeah, that’s because people only play china booming using song and expecting the oponent will not just rush you.
Imagine you are english or french and got a chineese in front. You better make him suffer in feudal or you are simply dead.
You won’t be able to keep his pace and if he reach imperial you are simply dead
This dude has posted in the past a lot of times saying china was crap, alongside other dudes that probably will come saying the same.
The problem with china is they are too difficult. They would be probably 3 stars + difficulty. Probably 4 stars. They are really powerful but just if you know how to drain all his potential. Some civs as english you can drain his whole potential easily.
I’m not a china main and I am not even close to knowing how to play them properly, but everytime I reach to imperial age fine developing a good eco, I just think their imperial age is OP.
Not talking about the castle harassing using firelancers. In team games I ever start the castle spamming a few palace guards with xbows or zhu ge nu, and when I reach near 90 villagers I get next dinasty and start to mass near 30 fire lancers and break the whole eco of the enemy.
Low level player gripe. I agree with the original post from a low level prospective. But at the same time china has a difficulty of 3 stars so it’s reasonable for lower players to share the original poster’s opinion.
However one way they can boost China slightly is to revamp the way taxes work. Currently you get 1 tax per drop off. As long as you have gathered 1 unit? Of resource you’ll then recieve 1 tax under normal circumstances. That mechanic needs to change to being 10% of the amount gathered truncated to the nearest tenth.
Example right now wheelbarrow has originally a negative impact on tax that doesn’t become a net positive until much later in the game. With my suggested change wheelbarrow will at all times be a positive eco boost for taxes and standard resources. So instead of getting 1 tax for a 15 food drop, now you’ll get 1.5 tax for that 15 food drop. Likewise that same drop inside Imperial Academy influence will now result in 3 tax per 15 resources dropped.
This alone should be able to buff china early game significantly!!! The only negative to this idea is now forced drops will not necessarily get you the amount of taxes you’re used to getting. And IMO it’s poor design currently that you can with optimal macro and micro can generate higher total resources (natural + tax) if you force drop correctly.
Well, this and saying “you know the total amount of taxes that can’t be collected?, Thousands and thousands!!” Is completely false.
Taxes is a way china can generate extra gold, yeah, extra. Wheelbarrow will just buff ALL your resources income, including your villagers in gold.
Thousand of taxes being kept not being able to be collected is easy fixed by just limiting taxes in a building up to 80. Again, taxes are extra gold, the way right now is designed if you were able to collect all the gold, will just be too much. The fail of design is just let the gold to accunulate to infinite and put a timer to officers collect it. Just limit to 80 and delete that timer.
If you think wheelbarrow affects you negatively, just don’t research it. But I am pretty sure you are investigating it every single game by free using the gold incoming from the first minutes of feudal age collected by your officers.
You don’t quite know what you’re talking about. But if you look up the original thread about wheelbarrow and tax generation; you’ll find a link to age of noob 3 level analysis. Wheelbarrow is a flat out resource bonus from the start however it is NOT a bonus to tax generation specifically.
What I’m suggesting would make wheelbarrow directly and linearly effect tax generation from resource gathering.
Also you don’t have thousands of uncollected tax in 10mins of play. If you do thats clearly something you should work on. Bc just 1 official on tax rotation can support 15 gathers on an academy drop-off point if he has the 80 carryijg capacity. It’s only when the drop off points get too far apart or you have too many gathers on the drop-off.
Also a late ming dynasty auto tax mechanic would make for a decent gold trickle. Heck it would be functional if they made a slower auto tax gathering trickle available in yuan dynasty that could then be upgrades/replaced with a full auto tax mech.
I didn’t say it provides a bonus to tax generation.
I’m only saying the bonus it provides to the other resources + the increase of mobility to your villagers easily compensates the possible lowering of taxes you mention.
Also I’m not saying in 14 mins you can generate thousands of gold that can’t be collected. Generally in late game if you look your Mills or granaries near your imperial palace, you will see there are tons of gold, that due to the timer between collection can’t be collected.
Just limit the accumulation to 80 and delete the timer.
What I’m really saying is tax collection actually provides a lot of gold, and is not justified the “buff” of making it linear with the amount of resources dropped.
I think the civ was in a good spot in season 3. The nerf in season 4 to Song dynasty was unnecessary, in my opinion, since most other civs were also getting buffs too. If something needs a change is their water being too strong, But i think they will struggle on land maps.
At the very top level, chinese seems to be really strong, but we would be talking about top 50 or something like that.
china is in a fair spot. theres a certain way it has to be played if you are to use it to its strength. thats to say, thats not happening for majority of players because truth be told… this is a 4-5 star difficulty civ. ive practiced this in skirmish dozens of times and its still hard to get everything correct. the extra stars is because due diligence and concentration is really required
by not playing china correctly, then yes, its weaker than other civs.
China is completely garbage in Feudal compared to all other civs. It is extremely frustrating to play. China entire strategy depends on whether you get rushed in Feudal or not. You can’t even get Zhuges before English archers or French knights are in your base harassing. Zhuges need to be available without going Song. Everyone knows rush China because we have zero chance defending any kind of significant pressure.
I wouldn’t say feudal is the issue.
Imo chinese have very good feudal because of barbican and the ability to supervise units. It’s really hard to kill a good china player in feudal. Their weakness is in castle imo, especially during their farm transition, they have a hard time dealing with mass armoured units.
