I think the china units are fair for their cost.
Cho Ko Nu
Qiang pike
arquebusier
Changdao
Iron flail
Meteor hammer
Steppe knight
Keshik
They are extremely cheap for their categories.
the biggest problem i see for china in the late game is the training speed of the units.
China is also not very seen in the treaty because they have a lot of difficulties to deal with very strong meele units, for example; chinacos. gandermane, magyar hussars, hussars (with a lot of hp ) Lancers, Doppelsoldner, samurais, nagnatas and etc.
I think an improvement that could be made to give China more quality of life in the late game would be to improve the training rate and maybe return the 250 pop that China could have (np legacy was 250 reduced to 220 in DE)
the only thing i think for range infantry for china right now is maybe to revert the removal of the 10% damage increase from repelling volley since the the arquebusier already has the base stat taken down a bit so a 10% scaling is pretty minor at this point.
It also bumps the lategame atk to like 40.2 which is competitive even against things like cassadors and rangers
Dear dude ,I am a Chinese
The word ‘in history’ is the reason how i convince myself to accpet the current status
The game faction named China is really funny, not a single real army is like the same monk-lead-army, and i haven’t complain about that ,since the game is fun ,i don’t mind.
I post that is because now that France can revolution to Napoleon France , that is my jam, it would be fun if China could be like that
Of course , the balance is needed
But in my view ,the current faction of China is really hard to balance,what my suggestion is we open a new window to balance it ,instead of adjusting the current data
Maybe give it a new niche.
Make it really good at burning mercenaries, outlaws, heroes, pets, artillery, buildings, and ships as long as it can get close to them, like a mix of spies and rams.
Need an Age 4 card that improves it, giving it better stats, especially a better anti-artillery or anti-infantry multiplier, but will make it use 2 population.
Maybe it could get a Jungle Bowman-like poison effect to make up for the lower base damage. Of course in this case it’s burn damage not poison damage.
Hand mortar is broken as hell, it’s a 1-pop unit that deals 160 siege damage at a range of 34 to buildings. The issue most people don’t seem to understand with them is you can’t build just 2-3, you need about 20 of them because they’re about as cost-effective as a normal mortar.
8.75x16x4 = 560 damage to buildings per 4 population of Exalted Hand Mortars
875 damage to buildings per 4 population of Imperial Howitzer
560x3 = 1680 damage to building per 4/pop of Exalted Hand Mortars per 12 seconds
875x2 = 1750 damage to buildings per 4/pop of Imperial Howitzers per 12 seconds
The Hand Mortar is only 70 damage behind the Howitzer.
Hand mortar = 360 wood, 200 food
Howitzer = 100 wood, 350 gold
Slightly more expensive, I’ll give you that.
But their damage is fine where it is. If they really needed a buff, slightly cutting their wood cost to 75 rather than 90 would be a good start - that’d put them at 300 wood, 200 food per 4 pop. 50 more resources than a Howitzer, but 200 of that is food, the easiest resource to gather.
(Btw, calculations were done solely using Imperial + Exalted status; No cards were considered, so HM may be more effective than even that if they’re carded. Were I could, I’d give the Confucian Academy a global aura to improve the damage of artillery, increased per age.)
The main issue is you need so many of them at the same time. They seems to have a pretty big hitbox, similar to an actual mortar. When you have so many of them, all those will expand in a line in order to reach. They will bump into each other and get,easily picked off and the damage is reduced. When a mortar is damaged they still do full damage.
They also block the pathing of surrounding units. Which means all your units are walking around the mortars and not attacking.
You can try to bring the whole squad of mortars in range and then shoot. Many of them will die to culvs in that process. That also means the effective range of them is even lower, at 28-34. They can even be picked up by heavy artilleries at that range. Btw mortar has 40 range, is way easier to use. The on paper range of 34 is already quite low for a mortar.
They on paper trade even vs culverins. However culvs can just shoot. Hand mortars need to expand in a big line very very slowly, then shoot. By that time the first few hand mortars are already killed bu culvs.
giving them range as it is is dicey since that means they dominate anti-artillery fights
2 things could be done for the hand mortar
remove the limber mode and make them like leather cannons
split the building attack & normal attack so if you want to give them siege range that will only affect the anti-building attack and not the normal attack
Hand Mortar: 5x6x4 = 120 damage per shot/4 population
160x2 = 320 damage/12 seconds to artillery
120x3 = 360 damage/12 seconds to artillery
Tbh they could use a slight nerf into their damage vs artillery anyway, they’re more efficient than Culverin against artillery. Maybe reduce their damage multiplier from x6 to x5?
the problem is that range has an outsize effects in these situation since it means that one side can do damage without retaliation
like as a thought culv have 1.4 speed in firing mode
a +2 range advantage would mean that hand mortars can get out a volley on a culv and the culv would have to waste about 2 seconds moving forward before even able to fire back,
reducing the multi would only sort of move the critical mass point where they can just start one shotting units for free
with 6x multi you need 10, x5 you need 12, x4 you need 14
But the same dynamic will still occur hand mortars will just 1 shot culvs from a safe distance and dominate artillery wars, and they can push buildings.
I think the normal attack has to stay at 34 range for it to be balanced.
But we can give it the sort of reverse treatment that all the other mortars got and basically give it a super long anti building attack (max 40 or maybe 38)
that kind of means as well that culvs have to move closer to them to counter their anti building barrages and be vulnerable to counter fire.
Culverin 1-shot Hand Mortars. I think that’s enough of a balance at that range, especially if you’re smart enough to walk your culverin into range after the Hand Mortars start unpacking. They move slow in bombard mode, and they don’t move fast enough to meaningfully move out of range quick enough for a single culverin to unpack and fire at them.
No buddy ,not to you
I mean as long as we don’t go like the command and ######## generals that far should be fine
The ban of generals is under expectation ,this one is so typical
Gameplay-wise (ignoring the historicity), late-game China is mostly fine. While, their units are relatively fragile, and they do lack high damage artillery (ignoring the Flying Crow), their per-unit damage output are fairly good (cost efficient), and they do have extra pop. So long as you are not charging directly into artillery (you can use Hand Mortar to deal with that), China should be able to put in a decent fight even in Age 5.
That being said, there are a few things that should be changed:
Flamethrower:
The unit is just bad. Its range is too short, such that it either get kited by anything 12-range or more, or end up into a melee by HC and even HI. Furthermore, they get one-shotted by Falconets, which is very bad for a 3-pop unit. They need to have their range buffed and add some siege resistance to become viable in Age 3 and onwards.
Changdao:
After shipping the Old Dynasty Reform, Changdao is arguably inferior to Qiang Pikeman in most instances (ani-cav, shielding troops). Note that I am aware that wood is harder to come by than food in the later ages, and that due to the Banner Army system, I need to consider their compliment units as well. However, I do think that the unit needs a late-game buff to differentiate itself from the Qiang Pikeman. (Maybe some extra HP? An area-of-effect of 1 for snaring?)
Swap the location of the Forbidden Army (War Academy → Castle) and Black Flag Army (Castle → War Academy): This is more for Age 3. I think locking the Forbidden Army behind the castle should slow the Chinese Age 3 somewhat, as this is their only not-fragile Banner Army, since the two cav units have good HP compared to the rest of the roster. (Furthermore, it just looks nice from a design perspective. The Castle is the Chinese “Stable”. The War Academy Banner Armies must always train some sort of infantry.)
