How can China compete post patch?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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China siege was an issue.
Im glad siege got nerfed but the issue is…

China landmarks are bad. Siege was all they had man. They need there 2nd dynasty landmark price cut in half. The cost for entering a dynasty is TOO MUCH.
Compare Chinas dynasty bonus to like Mongols landmark bonus. Its night day when you factor in the cost of making that 2nd landmark (also the time lost and the delay of getting to next age)
Its a big investment in time and resource to enter. Yes its strong but at what cost?

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106

Gl with that. No surprise that I win 80% of my games just rushing lancers

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The Mongols TR, the French knight, the English longbow and the elephant in Delhi are much better than the Chinese Bombards. Except for the elephant, others have a high probability of ending the game in the early stage, which is much better than Chinese Bombards. In my opinion, they are more op. why do you choose to turn a blind eye and always complain that Chinese Bombards are too OP, Chinese Bombards requires a lot of resources and time.

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I am just putting graph here

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Because Delhi is a SCHOLAR civs. Free tech is their unique points.
Half price scholar is landmark. YOU CANNOT BUILD BOTH 2 LIKE CHINESE DID. You chose it between different advantages.

Don’t ignore that CHINESE could build all landmarks. Meanwhile Chinese got best defend landmark at age2, Which could make Chinese unable to rushed in early games. IA could get gold faster.
palace could observe large scale area and FULL MAP HACK that could show all your villagers to kill
SW could reduce price of FL blabla. Clocktower is the best landmark in games. Greatwall could make your wall undestroyable
Fast harbor production to fishing fast.
And those Dynasties bonus, those are pretty strong.

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Don’t ignore that CHINESE could build all landmarks. Meanwhile Chinese got best defend landmark at age2, Which could make Chinese unable to rushed in early games.

Those landmarks cost resources to make and out of all the defensive landmarks Barbarican of the Sun is the weakest. The only reason China makes it is because the other one is worse. Consider all other civ’s and how often they make their Age II landmark. They don’t because they have better options, China doesn’t. When you make two towers in your base do you suddenly become unable to be rushed? You’re fabricating scenarios here.

IA could get gold faster.

Assuming full gold collection and optimal placement they gather 420, 440 if you get to late game and get the upgrade. Most of the time you’re better of supervising a building than using tax collection.

palace could observe large scale area and FULL MAP HACK that could show all your villagers to kill

I use scouts, scouting your enemy is a good idea. The palace tells you what you should already know, if you think it’s overpowered then you’re playing poorly.

SW could reduce price of FL blabla. Clocktower is the best landmark in games.

Clocktower since the nerf is just good, not great. I’d trade Clock tower for Regnitz, Swabia, Compound of the Defender, House of Learning or King’s Palace. French get Spirit Way for all their units around keeps for free.

Greatwall could make your wall undestroyable

Double HP just means it takes a few extra bombard shots before it falls. It helps delay the enemy 10 seconds extra. Not the best example of a game breaking landmark.

Fast harbor production to fishing fast.

China did have a good matchup on full water maps, they can lose water control pretty easily on hybrid maps. Open water maps unfortunately are gone.

And those Dynasties bonus, those are pretty strong.

Yea, Song is almost as good as building a second TC. Yuan is great with the movement speed and Ming is solid with the HP bonus. If they weren’t so expensive to achieve they might see more play.

I’m not sure why you hate China so much or what China did to hurt you but I’d suggest actually playing the civilization before telling people who actually invested time into learning the civ how to play it. Your bias is blatantly evident and you’re not making objective arguments. The consensus opinion is that China is the weakest civ. Both the data and opinions of professional players support this.

Your random cherry picked stats and bad advice aren’t going to change my belief that China needs a buff if it’s going to be considered in competitive play. It has no strong match-ups and it has no strong maps.

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111

No really? A unit you can make in Feudal is more likely to end a game in Feudal than a unit you cant make in Feudal Age?
Tell me more…
French knights and Longbow rushes are considered very counterable since they buffed spears and horsemen.
Do Feudal rushes hold you in Feudal, yes they do, but its not like you cant fight it back properly.
And i dont know why you seem to think people turn a blind eye on Mongol Towerrush. Everyone hates it and knows its a problem, so i dont get your point.

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This is a lie. The Barbican of the sun is strictly inferiour to the Kremlin. Do not spread lies. It doesn’t help the discussion. Simple math shows Kremlin does 36 dps vs only 25 for the Barbican. Kremlin is straight up better against every enemy with 3 armor or less.

Also being able to build two Landmarks that don’t do anything doesn’t help at all. The Age 3 and Age 4 Landmarks are a joke and will never pay for itself over the game. The only bonus are the Dynasty bonuses and unit unlocks. But you are better off just putting those ressources into Age 4 and units instead.

Also Chinese doesn’t get bonus ressources to snowball like other factions. The IO is a 150 food investment which needs to pay for itself first. Meanwhile cheaper farms, berries, free gold income from Hunting, cheaper techs, faster villager production are all straight up bonuses which don’t require you to invest 150 food like Chinese does.

Proof:

The Kremlin acts as a fortified outposts, shoots an arrow with 12 damage every second and can garrison villagers. Ontop of this, it also increases the amount of wood dropped off at town centers and lumber camps around it by 20%.

Meanwhile, the Barbican of the Sun acts as an outpost, shoots a small cannonball with 25 damage but only every 3 seconds. Villagers can also be garrisoned in the Barbican. In terms of dps, this is much worse.
Even against early Knights, which have 3 armor, the Kremlin does 27 damage within 3 seconds. The Barbican is much worse.

Ontop of this, the Barbican offers no other bonus whatsoever. No economy bonus compared to the Kremlin.

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113

lmao, you guy need check wiki ,then we can try to talk.
Delhi is a SCHOLAR civs? Chinese is a Gunpowder civs from the introduction. What it got? unique Mangonel with bug? Culverin? most powerful and cheap gunpowder unit, Sreelty？no military tech without sieges?

Which civ want two landmark, a powerful one is enough. The Golden Gate is so good that almost no one chooses the Kremlin. What you don’t know is that the Kremlin is a better defensive landmark. The best defensive landmarks belong to Chinese?

As FL, :rofl:

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114

Good comparison.

Firelancer is poorly designed in terms of speed. I have pointed out this issue once before.
You see, its the slowest cavalry in the entire game, even slower than Knights.

The only thing which makes Firelancers viable is when you are in the Yuan Dynasty and get that movement speed bonus, which allows it to outrun Knights.

Now since you unlock FL with the Yuan Dynasty this is not an immediate issue. However as soon as you leave the Yuan Dynasty for another Dynasty, Firelancers lose their speed bonus and they move at their usual snail speed. As we can see they are weaker than Horsemen in direct combat and cost more. And given the fact that they have less speed than even Knights they are unable to utilise their charge attack effectively. They are easily stopped by Spearmen and can simply be chased down by Knights or Horsemen at that point.

Therefore I have already suggested to increase the speed of Fire lancers but make them unaffected by Yuan Movement speed bonus. This is an easy fix and means this unit will stay useful even outside of Yuan Dynasty.

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115

in low ranks, china can perfectly win, dont ignore us low-rank players… im ELO 900 and i can perfectly win with china post patch

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Conveniently ignoring the fact that Fire Lancer have double the Torch dmg 40 vs 20, Aoe Charge dmg and the Horsemen extra Attack is only vs Ranged units.

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This is not balance issue. Low elo players do not need to concern themselves with balance because its not the factor that matters in games.

At those elo ratings biggest factor which wins you the games is who does less mistakes. If you improve your gameplay and do less mistakes than opponent you win games regardless of your civ so play what ever you enjoy.

Balance comes to discussion only when players are at higher elo when those mistakes are not happening even tho they make mistakes but they’re still less crucial and impacting than at lower elos. And higher we go those mistakes don’t generally happen so it comes down to civ picks a lot more.

I can go to 1k elo and pick any civ and just do same thing. Fast castle = knights & lancers and opponent cant do anything and losses, but when this is done at higher elo, opponent is well aware whats going to happen and is prepared and aggression has to do dmg otherwise Im behind.

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The fire lancer charge damage is affected by armor. Therefore, they don’t do meaningful damage any more after the previous patch.
Their higher torch damage, combined with their little to none aoe damage in the current status, means that they are basically landmark snipers (not siege snipers, because the faster and cheaper horsemen can do the job better). This is not healthy for the game. Plus, why should they do higher torch damage anyway?
I propose nerfing their torch damage to match other cavalry units, but increase the aoe damage to a point below the pre-nerf value. And increase their speed and armor, so that they sit somewhere between the horsemen and the knights.

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Torch damage + lance damage + splash damage from Lance, highly effective vs siege, especially post patch, cost reduced significantly with spirit way in imperial age…. That’s allot to leave out, like has he tried fighting Flancers with horsemen? What happens, try it and tell us.

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You only emphasize that Chinese can make all landmarks.

Why do you deliberately ignore that no landmark in Chinese has practical value?

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121

Spirit way indeed reduces the cost of firelancers, but who is going to invest 1800 resources on unit while they can use horsemen that are way cheaper?

Firelancers are ■■■■ units and they were that before and only worked against opponents who were pants down and nothing else.

In pro TG’s it was spammed as filler unit because they were horses and uses could be justified but even then they were never game changers or impacted in way that won the game because one team went for FL. They can be too easily shutdown.

Also if player goes mass FL they lock themselves out of Grenadiers option unless they destroy their stables around spiritway. There is no good way to use spiritway.

AOE dmg from FL is joke especially how fast how they die and how slow they’re. Raiding unit needs to be fast but FL is slowest horse in game

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122

First off, this was directed at another comment and should be read as a response to said comment, context makes a difference in every conversation.

Going yuan Dynasty pays for itself with granaries (food and tax) and speed boost which applies to villagers as well as military. You get yuan mostly for economic gain it doesn’t cost you anything if in five minutes it’s actually net gain. The fire Lancers are just a bonus.

I don’t care and it is not useful to know what happens in “pro team-games” not really a thing, nobody is being paid for said games. If you’re talking about team games played by streamers, you are selecting very small subset of total games to make your case for the viability of a unit, among players who obsess over perfect timing and one unit difference in army size winning or losing a battle.

You get spirit way when you go imperial, meaning you receive the cheaper unique units without investment unless you take the Great Wall gatehouse which is rarely the first choice.

The spirit way can fit 12 production buildings around it,
when would you ever build 12 stables to produce fire Lancers? There’s plenty of space for archery ranges.

Being in yuan Dynasty, which naturally grants movement speed, also naturally applies to fire lancers, meaning if you are making fire lancers, they are not slow. The aoe damage is not a joke, it does enough damage to armored units to turn the tide of a tight battle, works brilliantly against light units.

This obsession with dogging on China is absurd.
The arguments are weak and baseless, filled with gaps in reason and weak, fallacious supporting evidence and conjecture.

Play another game, try to have fun

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Which is true to some extend. First granaries cost 250 wood so each of them has pay itself back. Also player needs to invest for farming which happens at some point of game but not necessary much before imperial (heavily depends on game)

So the investment isn’t just “oh get yuan it pays itself off”, it takes long time to pay off 1800 + granaries

Imagine saying “firelancers are just bonus” dude its civs unique unit AND their identity… You can just brush it off like “oh its just bonus you get alongside of going to yuan”

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I guess it does take away from the excitement not being able to get a truly high power unique unit, but that kind of seems to be the theme they went for with China, you can have some of everything at a cost (various buffs and tactics although not as strong as any other civ single route) and you get the most unique units but their mostly just okay compared to base units unless you mass them. (Lots of options but again inferior to the single unit available to others)

Not sure if you’re familiar with SC2 but I feel the Protoss play very similar, if allowed to mass tech heavy units late game you are overpowered, but getting there is hard, and you have to commit to that unit comp more heavily than Terran or Zerg… at least in gold league level play.