China needs a buff

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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I played China quite a lot, it used to be my best and favourite civ on RE and EP (legacy), but on DE they just feel much weaker in comparison to most other civs.
On RE China’s advantage was to always have a TP start cause they were the only civ with fixed crates.

Now on DE every civ has the best possible crate start while China’s crate start didn’t get buffed. The only exception is Germans, but they got 190 hp uhlans back, that match up was already hard on RE.

I’m not quite sure what kind of buff China needs, but you always feel like youre one step behind when playing the civ. Maybe one more food crate and 200w villages would be a good compromise.

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What does that mean?

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Ignore that, I played too much sweden lately.

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Good post. Legacy China was “balanced” over the total number of games since sometimes the opponent’s civ with random crates would get a worse crate spawn, sometimes a comparable crate spawn, and sometimes a better crate spawn. Now they get the better crate spawn 100% of the time. Seems unreasonable.

I thought the fixed 200f 300w would be okay at first but I think I massively underestimated how good the maxed fixed crates would be for other civs.

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I don’t think china is too weak now. However I don’t understand why the consulate techs were nerfed (higher costs).

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Chinese melee infantry is consumed too quickly.
If Chinese can recruit melee infantry from the desperadoes at a particularly cheap price, it should be good.

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I dont think they need a buff, specially watching the game between soldier and h20 where ports had 2x the Chinese eco and China still had 2x the military
Their age 3 is already ridiculously strong with all the crazy shipments they get + free units + manchus and the ff os already super hard to punish even with a rush and the amount of units they can pull off is insane.

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Didn’t soldier lose the game?

I’m always happy to face a chinese player (I can’t remember the last time I met one, nobody plays them), cause they’re always one step behind.

They just feel really bad, slowest age 2 time (both other TAD civs got the wood start), brit consulate bonus and their age 4 got nerfed, the only buff is 10 wood cheaper villages, I mean cmon.

What’s even one good MU for China? Dutch got the best crate start now, Fre can TP start every game and age super fast, Ports got a food gathering buff, gets XP whenever a TC gets constructed, not to mention the TWC civs can always start TP now…

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He lost the series, but the ports vs China he won very convincingly.
The problem is that any buff to china age up speed will indirectly buff their ff which I would say its already too strong due to the amount of stuff they get.
And they still have good match ups
France, Spain, ports( soldier even beat h20 ports on water) are quite china favoured.
They are even favoured against Japan imo.

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How are they favoured against french or spain?

Ports was always a good match up, but Ports received so many buffs. “Even on water” isn’t a good argument if Port goes super greedy, of course he’s gonna get outmassed, not to mention H2O is super rusty.

How are they favoured against Japanese when Japan starts with 300w and can Port cons Kami and be age 2 at like 4:30 now, half a minute before China?!

There’s a reason most China players think the civ sucks on DE.

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If it is against France age 3 vs age 3, unless French does some good damage early china or get away with stagecoach tp china just wins because they just get a lot more stuff
Same with spain, although with the buff I would argue it might be more balanced now or even spain favoured but still if china survives without taking damage they pretty much win the game

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That’s your personal opinion, I don’t know who you are. But I’ve played China on the highest level and I can assure you that Spain with all the XP buffs, spanish gold and stuff does very well vs China. Same for France with the guaranteed TP start.

Many other high level China players said they felt like the civ is just much worse compared to legacy and nobody plays them. There is a reason for that.

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What kind of buff do you want? I think 300f start seem too good but idk.

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To be fair that could be me saying that because I simply have no clue of what to do when I am up against china!
They somehow just come with a massive army and win.
It could be the case that what you are saying is true and at high lvl they are under preforming

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Lol that’s ludicrous. Spanish cav damages China HARD with their infantry multiplier and French well… Gendarmes vs China and guess what happens.

China should have never gotten a consulate nerf, if anything they need a buff with new Swedish consulate (that’s historically accurate btw) that helps them deal with cav better (that maybe gives them merc boosts as well)

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French gendarmes do well against china on mid to late game if French can survive the deathball which is pretty hard to do
Trying to go cuirs against Chinese on the early to mid fortress is pretty much suicide

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i played them recently, and i quite agree that china seems weaker, and i also think it’s because of the fixed crates, but china remains strong anyway in several MU but not as strong as she was on EP, it’s just that the civ pool in the qs is also bad for china imo

to sum up I quite agree with lukas

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China is not being played much either in the competitive scene as it seems. I can’t say exactly how good they are, but they have one unit that is never used: The Flamethrower.

The flamethrower has 210 HP and costs an insane amount of 170 wood + 170 gold and 4 population. As a reminder, a Curassier costs 150 food + 150 gold. This makes the flamethrower easily one of the lowest stats per pop in the game, aswell as lowest all-around stats per cost. Curassiers cost 3 pop for example, and they can reach 900 HP with upgrades.

The high population costs inflates their cost even more, because it means building 5 of them costs another 190 wood for a village.

The flamethrower is anti-infantry but China uses Arkebusier/Changdao and/or Arkebusier/Iron Flail against Infantry. There is never a reason to build flamethrowers because they have poor range and get picked off easily by cav and artillery.

Suggestion: Lower the pop cost for Flamethrowers to 2. Decrease their wood and coin cost. Increase their speed to 4.5 so they can keep up with Arsenal tech Heavy infantry with 4.40 speed.

Many units face the same issue: European civs get 10% bonus infantry speed from their arsenal and China and Aztec have no way to keep up with this, which means their units get kited. 10% speed bonus should either be removed from the game or normalized so that every civ has access to it. Speed + range are the strongest stats in RTS and can easily make or break the balance.

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I agree, perhaps also keeping speed but improving range could work as well cause that’s what’s make them so vulnerable to cav.
I suggest you create a particular post for your idea so the devs can see it.

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Biggest issue: Too slow in Age I

After a lot of talk with high elo players everyone agrees that China earlygame is too slow. They take too long to age up, and that is with eating your own goat at 100 food already.

Suggestion:
Add a 100 food crate.

Next issue: China is one-dimensional, because China Age 2 is weak.
We already talked about it here and in the other thread: China age 2 is weak. Flamethrowers are bad, yet China doesn’t have a 2 Flamethrower shipment to put on preassure. Steppe Riders are terrible at direct engagements and both Iron Flails and Steppe Riders have too low base attack. They are ok vs Skirms but terrible vs everything else. Playing a prolonged Age 2 as China is a death sentence because they cannot boom at all, they have 1 less villager from Age 1 shipment, they are slower and they have no villager shipment in Age 2. Because of this their economy just cannot keep up with that of other civs. And having units you don’t want to make with banner armies means that they have much fewer unit types of the unit they need.

Suggestions:
To improve this, we suggested to buff Steppe Rider base damage and reduce multiplier vs skirmishers, to make them not suck vs everything but skirms. Another suggestion (of mine) was to unlock the wood trickle tech of the german consulate in Age II. Someone else suggested a small buff to the russian consulate to offer cheaper villagers ontop of faster villager train time for a small buff in booming. These two suggestions could help the economy of China in Age 2. Another suggestion was to make it so the “Northern Refugees” Card delivers 2 Villagers per Town Center instead of 1. That means by building 1 village in Age I, China would get 3 villagers instead of 2.

The problem of being unable to mass Skirmishers and weakness of Iron Flail in Age III:

Iron Flails in general are just not worth their cost and you never want to make them, according to the best players. Everyone I have talked about has agreed that Iron flails are terrible and you never want to build them. Because of this you are going to have to make Skirm + Changdao army vs mass Skirms.

Now we get to the issue about banner armies. Apart from their unit shipments, China is always going to have a big amount of units that you don’t want. China cannot mass Skirms. Even though their Skirms are a little cheaper than other Skirms, Changdaos are going to trade terribly vs Skirms.

Since Iron Flails are bad, you can’t make the Arkebusier+ Iron Flail army. You need a combination of Changdao + Skirm and Meteor Hammer + Iron Flail armies.

Suggestion:
Increase the base damage of Iron Flail. Decrease their multipliers so that they still deal the same damage vs Skirmishers, but deal more damage vs everything else.

And as a sad ending to this post: China can’t even deal with Caroleans properly because of Svea Lifeguard in Age IV. Not saying their skirm is too weak, but just more proof that Svea Lifeguard needs a huge nerf or should just get removed/reworked in general.