Been playing multiple ranked matches against multiple civs at 1100-1200 level. Heavy cavalry & shock infantry is hard (to near impossible) to counter, when playing China, especially Age 2. (Shock infantry are the “heavy cavalry” of Native civs.)
Chinese anti-cav is too weak. Qiang pikeman, they die to what they are suppose to counter: Heavy cavalry, shock infantry.
If you get Keshik, you’re forced to get Qiang pikeman, which are weak.
I sent the card that increases their multipliers against runners & heavy cav, still doesn’t beat them in a realistic fight (of how easy things can mass up like cavalry/runner cards and Chinese player having to use a card to fight them… and still not win)
Hard to mass qiang pikeman (whether from Old Han Army or Ming Army) as well.
From the patch notes, Chinese pikeman did not receive any buffs for heavy cavalry, infamously, still very weak to heavy cavalry and loses to runners. I suggest a buff damage/health or receive more anti-cav units but I rather leave it to the professionals back at AoE3 DE Forgotten Empires / Tantalus Media.
Thank you.
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Try aging. China age 3…only lakota has better anti
It’s hard to use Chinese. However, it is still very difficult to use different fast attack suppression tactics for different countries and take advantage of the number of people.
I know is kind a old topic that got revived, but… I think pikeman in general are kind of weak. Is very easy to kill they using hit and run tactics. I fell like they should have a higher range of attack, currently, they need to get unrealistic close to attack the target.
Is very silly that they have the same range of melee attack that say, for example, the skirmisher. The skirmisher is fighting with the stock of a rifle that clearly shorter than the pike, so why they have the same range of attack? 
This is why I proposed making Manchu available to be recruited in the monastery when you ship their mercenary card.
It’s perfectly okay for the civ to have a weakness vs cav, but it shouldn’t be an automatic lost vs a mostly cav composition. With this, the weakness would still be there, since you would only train manchu from one building, with little to no train-time reduction capabilities, unlike the euro civs.
There seem to be no news on China so far so I guess the devs weren’t interested or haven’t gotten to it yet.
China is fine!!!
If you stay age 2 as china dont expect to win games by only making xbow pikes, the whole point of them is that they are weaker but cheaper, making them spammable!!
Their age 3 is already insane and its were china is strong!! They get a massive ball of units, changdaos, redcoats from consulate and manchu on top of that!!
Even french cuirasiers can’t deal with all of that!!
What makes you think I stay in Age 2? Yes, rushes happen to where you have to fight in Age 2. Most civs are rush civs and Chinese has the slowest uptimes of Age 2 and Age 3 so you’re going to be fighting to defend. I go Age 3 in all my games but rushing is advanced now and no longer as simple as old meta in AoE3 Asian Dynasties where people rush at 6-7 minutes. Even in Age 3, still weak to cav and runners.
You need the Han Reform shipment in order to make those units relevant