China PUP changes make civ and dynasties worse

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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China is now the worst Civ on PUP. Everyone got buffed and China nerfed.
China is Meme tier now. Just a joke if you pick for funny meme builds that wont work.

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Regardless what they settle with a few things are clear in their chosen design direction.

They do not want china to be able to skip building a mining camp in dark age. They also are against the idea of 2 IO in dark age in under 3 min 20 ish as the standard BO.

These are the small changes i suggest they start with to clarify the chinese indentity.

  1. Uncap the number of villages that can be created or raise the cap to 6 OR keep the cap at 3 but reduce the price to 75 wood per village and 15s standard villager building time. We should be incentived to build or unique buildings. Currently in the live build and likely in PUP build the village is the 3 house created which sometimes puts us 6 to 7mins in the game before gaining the benefits of this building?? The saving should impact sooner IMO.

  2. granaries need to change. I made a thread dedicated to the granary so ill just say “buff them!! We should be thrilled to have access to this expensive building!!”

  3. Allow IO’s to be trained at the Imperial Academy or reduce the cost of IO’s by 50 food and allow the training time be effected by song dynasty villager training buff.

  4. Reduce all china landmarks from 5000 hp down to 3000 hp BUT also reduce the cost of yuan and ming dynasties by 50% (600f 300g yuan dynasty and 1200f 600g ming dynasty). OR keep all cost and landmark hps as is but allow the dynasty landmark to build in half the regular time AND previous dynasty bonuses are RETAINED. For example going song dynasty would in half the time that it takes now AND we’d keep the 30% LOS on scouts on top of song dynasty perks.

  5. Pagoda will be fine if yuan is made extremely excessible. Otherwise add 75 more gold per min.

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But Ming does not have any special building now. Even from design perspective that is a failure.

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China is trash now and will be worse after patch. They have nothing to offer that other Civ’s do 100% better. There garbage till there buffed.
there to damn slow to get going and even in castle there weak where alot are stong.

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The IO train time has been reverted!! Great call relic.

Now next changes should be village cost reverted back to 100 wood or better to 75 wood. The logic behind it being we only get 3 so my not make them significant?

Granary needs some love. Either revert back to the 15% or reduce the cost to something immediately impactful compared to the alternative. Personally i rather a radical change to this building as I’ve outline in another post.

Now this is the change I really think is actually more important than any other. Song and yuan dynasty units need more functionality!!!

Repeater crossbow unit is an effective unit in most feudal age matchups but the moment you hit castle
 you’ll be looking to transition from this unit instead of upgrading it? I suggest a song dynasty castle upgrade that adds +2 heavy damage to this unit!!!
+2 castle age
+3 Imperial age
This change would give china a cheaper crossbow unit that would retain the DPS vs heavy units and allow for a seemless transition from feudal to castle in the same way early knights and early maa’s do.

And for the fire lancer!!! Reduce the train time from 22 sec down to 15!! And add increase the base speed to that of a horseman 1.88 tiles/s and finally add a bounty similar to mongols for setting buildings on fire of just 50g. The lead designer Eric said he wanted this unit to function like a raider unit and not intended for prolong combat? IMO a raider has to be FAST, EXPLOSIVE, & REWARDING!! (Maybe 25g per building set on fire and 5g per enemy unit killed?) Also maybe reduce the hp back to 120 hp? Which would make them even more adverse to army engagements.

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I really like your suggestions on those units a lot, especially the zhugenu ones. however, I do not think dev will take them. My feeling is that, dev do not want any kind of unit that is superior to another one in all situations. To be precise, they do not want zhugenu can replace archers or crossbows in all situations. Hence they are trying hard to fit them into some niche situation, not just replacing them to those standard units. Now, the result is that chinese has all kinds of mediocre units that sound and look fancy, and can be used to surprise your opponent, but once your opponent know the proper way to counter them, then they are no better than those standard units at all.

Comparing to English longbow or French Royal knights, that are just superior to their vanilla version, and can be used throughout the game, but chinese need to wait till bombards and granidiars to gain some edge.

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Not just longbows and french knights but also HRE maa that completely displaces the need for archers and crossbows?? If anything the units above and what the lead dev Eric said some podcast ago are all reasons to make specality units like the zhuge nu standout more throughout the entirety of a match thru the ages!!

Mind you my suggested add on would still have the crossbow STRONGER than a zhuge nu vs heavy units; the only benefit in favor of the zhuge nu would be it’s cost effectiveness and the fact you’d likely have them fielded and just needing of 2 upgrades (my heavy bonus dmg and their veteran upgrade).

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Hi Shneider, I think repeater crossbows is pretty fine at the moment. They suck because they are archers, and all archers suck in late Age III & IV because Mangonels are too powerful.

China having so many unique units means that it could not have any too-overpowered single unit. The strength of China land should rely on its versatility and proper army composition. As for now, dynasties are too expensive to use, and Age IV landmarks too weak. But I think Devs have heard our complaints, let’s see what they will do in the future.

If the special buildings keep the way they are in PUP, please give Ming another building, or reduce price of Ming more.

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Song dynasty is gonna lose favor in this update with the granary and village moved to Tang change.

Suggestion: Song dynasty buffs Archers and Crossbow attack speed, ZGN gold cost change to wood cost

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Zhuge nu costing gold rather than additional wood is actually a good thing due to tax incomes and gold mines are more efficient than wood gathering.

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Zhuge nu costing gold is better than wood actually. At this point I only hope Relic could upload the PUP changes this week. We need it.

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As a China main myself, I don’t really play 1v1 much at all, so I can only speak from team game experience (where I’m also not super good). I agree with most of your suggestions, especially the Baochuan, that thing dominates on water maps (where I mostly play in AoE4). The Yuan dynasty feels very underwhelming and I hope some more love is given to it.

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Swapping Imperial Palace with Spirit Way for Age III landmark so the ZGN could see its usefulness extended into mid-late game

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I think the main point is, concentrated farming is the preferred “Chinese” way of farming since you can apply buff to drop off points. When ZGN cost 3 types of resources compare to 2 types, you’d need 3 IOs to supervise all drop off points to get the efficiency, leaving you only 1 for military/blacksmith buildings. If you don’t supervise, you lose a great deal of efficiency.

Therfore ZGN cost 1 less types of resources would leave you 1 more IO for tax collection/supervising, which fairly speaking is quite a good buff that is still balance.

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I tested in this patch, and China seems to be slightly better than last patch. But considering the buffs which other civs receive, it is still hard to compete against others in open maps.

ZhugeNu is my favorite unit against Delhi, Abbasid and Mongols. They are especially useful today in my Feudal push against Fast Castle Mongols.

I am still sad about the state of Nest of Bee, Age IV landmark & Granary.

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Pagoda is bugged aswell I already tested it and send in a bug report. Its not generating the amount of ressources its supposed to do. And it also doesn’t work with the Age IV upgrade Tithe Barns. So its not even much better than what everyone else gets with Tithe barns.

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Delhi was meme tier , but it got saved .

Probably it will be the same with China