The cuts to Village cost make China a lot less painful to play and were definitely in the right direction. A better way to offset this buff would be to increase the cost of War Academies to 220 wood. Their ability to train nearly anything gives China the flexibility to react to any unit composition without needing to spend an extra 200 wood to build a different type of production building like every other civ would have to do to make a unit switch.
The Blockhouse needs to be just a glorified Castle, not a free War Academy and Castle all in one. Limit it to only Castle units and armies instead of War Acadamy armies that it has now. The way it is currently allows players to skip making a War Academy entirely and just naked FF with the backup of having a defensive building and production building ready if they do face pressure. Castles still allow you to make Mongolian Army for raiding and Flamethrowers to supplement your defense so there are still options.
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In fact, among the 3 Asian civilizations, the Chinese eco is the worst but compensates for its large mass of units in a short time like a 2nd Russia, a difference that in 4 ages the Chinese mass is much better than the Russian mass. Hmm count that you have the German consulate so count them as settlers and you have the wonder as a sort of factory and you can get a factory in 4 ages (yes 4 but it favors the late game). All in all I find the Japanese and later Indian economies better but China has a different mechanism.
I don’t think the war academy should be touched, you train unit sets including not high quality units I’d say better not.
You’re compensated for grouped units by the cheaper cost. The flexibility of being able to counter any unit composition from one building is a straight up bonus. To have the same flexibility as another civ you need to spend 400 wood on both a barracks and a stable. What I’m saying is for China to have to pay 220 wood for something that everyone else must pay 400 for. Later in the game you’d be paying a bit more for production buildings, but even that is just clawing back the buff to Village cost.
It could maybe even make this card a little more viable:
Team Art of War 
No. Just no. Back when China wasn’t OP, I almost never saw China. This is the biggest bunch of, er… I’ve ever heard, as if I am going to play the USA (I never play usa) just because I’m American. Without fail, you always see the most amount of people jumping on the bandwagon and playing whatever civ is overpowered at the moment. You see it constantly, when Sweden was released, when the African civs were released, ( although surprisingly at my levels I am not seeing Ports all the time, that is the one exception apparently, although I do see it more than before Fetorias)- it is very predictable. And since DE was released I don’t think I have ever seen this overwhelming number of people playing a single civ as I see now with China.
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This card will never be used China can’t afford it has some priorities. I remember your 2 age cavalry sucks and it’s very situational and you make cheap units but nothing that strong and you have to invest in cards to make them good and you don’t decide I train 5 steppe knights and then 5 chu ko nu (that would be op) you train unit sets, correct me if I’m wrong the African barracks does the same thing as a normal barracks for the same cost as a normal barracks right? You can’t even compare it to a blockhouse or war hut because at least the blockhouse shoots. Let’s also say, for example, take Dutch or take the British, they immediately have an excellent economy compared to China and they can afford to build stables + barracks in a reasonable time and have a quantity of troops similar to China but of quality. Basically changing the cost of the academy of war is not the right trend. This is just my opinion and honestly I don’t really care if they change it or not (I don’t play aoe3 anymore) I explained why it shouldn’t be done.
PS: Feel free to criticize, comment or flame me, in the last case I will not consider.
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“The westerner players can’t bear with Asian civs being decent”.
“Before Asian civs European gamers cried about African civs op, inca is op, Lakota is op…”
"
Let’s just play European civs in aoe3. Forever. They are vanilla, they are the superior European."
“…so the whole idea of the aoe3 forum is to buff European civs and nerf non European to the ground”.
You sound ridiculous… it even seems racist against europeans… why so much hate?
Asian civilizations are very powerful.
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China has the ability to defend itself and end up getting a devastating snowball with its powerful shipments.
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India is very versatile, good echo and strong army according to its strat. (just like china, she can overwhelm a low level player with her mass, and thanks to urumi and eles she has a very powerful cac).
[If you micro correctly the typical European skirm/dragoon composition you can do the job, but mediocre/non-pro players are at a huge disadvantage against the very mixed mass with units with good cac (urumis/eles or changdaos/cav) against a player of the same level that you just have to press cntrl z.]
Japan is off to a slow start, but has a good echo to back up their mighty army.
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Competitive mentality and anti skill, obviously if you want to win take the strongest civ where they don’t require many skills (especially this last factor) and everyone plays these civilizations, the current meta is ff/fi/turtle so the orientation is on these civilization. Same situation as in 2008 with Japan and precisely China. If all civs were balanced we would not have these problems. And then there are civilizations stronger than China, for example the Portuguese in the current state, Japan, Sweden in the current state, Italy, Azzy. Yet in the last patch it wasn’t given anything much op to China on the contrary it was nerfed and I felt uncomfortable playing a civilization (which I’ve always enjoyed) was back in fashion.
when you consider that balance is basically in between 45 and 55% for all civs on average for everything, its tough to call balance bad, imo its more how people think of using certain strenghts in certain situations, which doesn’t equal civ being objectively op or underpowered
Aoe3De is far from being called balanced competitive game, after 17 almost 18 years I would call competitive balanced only aoe3 vanilla and aoe2 in the whole series.
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On the surface, African War Camps look comparable to Chinese War Academies. However, you have to consider that the Hausa totally lack a heavy infantry unit, and Ethiopia lacks a light infantry unit until age 3. They can’t just get everything out of one building like China can and have to also rely on natives, outlaws, and mercenaries to complete their armies.
This is not accurate. Building an early extra production building is a waste of resources that could go into Banks or Manors. They’re most likely going to pick one type of production building and use a shipment to get the unit type from the building they didn’t pick. If the first building they pick is something that gets countered by their opponent’s strategy then they can’t just immediately switch to a different unit composition like China can.
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aoe3 vanilla had quite a few problems the DE doesn’t, insta cuirs on discount and few others like too fast daimyo shipments
in fact, if that version was perfectly balanced then esoc patch wouldn’t come to be
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Hmmm no, brit rush double barracks or double stables in semi ff, barracks and stables in certain cases per rush can do it and they are very good strategies in certain cases, dutch cannot but with his boom he could launch the 2 barracks or stables at a reasonable time.
Vanilla doesn’t have Japan, these problems started late game before you had to get there and deal with it which required more skills, you had neither explorer skill hotkeys and nor could you allow hotkey conflicts so it required a slight more apm, cost of TC 600w and plantation 800w, you didn’t have some cheap cards and russia and spain had 1 factory, maps with less hunting and you had to earn the map and your age up, more i don’t want to discuss. Notably a more complex game where you had the problem of the instant cuirassier, the Dutch a little above the average compared to the other civilizations and the Russian box of the opri but all this is late game which in 1v1s you hardly got there. We don’t argue further because I don’t see a good conversation.
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while i agree with the rest, ty for japan correction btw, you could actually allow conflicts in vanilla, that was a thing, pretty sure aoe3 vanilla invented that setting
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FF isn’t a rush, you can afford two production buildings by then. If you tried to double barracks and your opponent went all in on strelets then you would either need to brute force it with pure longbows, or backtrack and build a stable. In the same situation, China could just decide to make their Standard Army to handle it if they were initially planning a different strategy.
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With external programs or do you have a way to do it? I remember that there was no allow conflict key like on warchief or tad and if I tried to put the same key for example hussar W and Cossack W it would not do it.
I know that ff is not a rush it is obvious, there was a strategy with brit but more used in teams than in 1v1 where you went 2 stables for 15 hussars and went immediately in 3 ages and here you recovered the boom and you had veteran hussars and you could invest the cavalry combat card (build that I don’t want to discuss here because nobody pays me to do it 21) if English goes to double barracks it is obvious that he wants to rush so it is obvious that he does not go in 3 and does not boom with virginia company but will recover the boom with 700 and 600w. If you go in ff against a good mass of pike lb or simply musk or a musk huss you lose then you play in 2 ages where china in the long run does not have a good advantage against the brit. Furthermore china is not very versatile if you want to play pike and chu ko you stay in 2 because it is not like france that you can make a good semi ff even in reasonable time and it counts that your opponent could force you to stay in 2 ages and not let you pass in 3 ages and if you try to go under pressure you will most likely not have the necessary mass to block it.
Just to close no one goes all in with strelets in russia it would already be losing from the start, all in is a strategy that at a high level will not work especially for russia.
ok i opened the game to triple check, indeed missing in vanilla, but present in warchiefs, settings like easy drag military meanwhile exists in vanilla already
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There have always been a lot of Chinese players playing only China. I have a lot of friends. Just like european player like to play european civs. They don’t necessarily have chinese game names. Many of them use english letters as names.
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