1.It costs too much to advance dynasties
In 1v1 matches,most games end while players are still in Tang or Song Dynasty. It’s really hard to reach later dynasties. Advancing dynasties costs massive resources,and most landmarks are weak with low returns. Even if you can reach dynasties, saving up resources to age up further is usually the better play. 2.Dynasty units are too weak
Fire Lancers and Grenadiers just got buffed—Grenadiers multiple times, in fact. But they’re still garbage no one ever uses.Fire Lancers lack armor and damage but expensive. They can neither support frontline fights nor raid villagers, as defensive buildings take them down instantly. They are even worse than regular Horsemen.Similarly, Grenadiers lack sufficient damage, making them inferior to Hand Cannoneers in most matchups. Zhu Xi fares slightly better with them, yet even he would opt for Hand Cannoneers if available.
A well-designed civilization should have every unique unit serve a clear purpose, every faction trait fully viable, all landmarks evenly picked, and all unique techs practical and worthwhile. Military and economic strength should also stay properly balanced.Chinese ranks among the least complete civilizations. It relies on its lopsided economy to mass generic units with no special bonuses to secure victories.
Zhu Xi and Jin Dynasty are stuck in the same situation. In 1v1 matches, players hardly produce large numbers of Shaolin Monks (even though they are the core themed units) and Imperial Guards, while Jin players never win by relying on Iron Pagoda (even though it is a cavalry civilization) and Bed Crossbows.
They’re tax building should do better at collecting gold when properly surrounded by the appropriate structures, as that is no easy task coordinating comparatively to the other factions. Also, I believe they should double down on their gunpowder prowess, a range increase for the handconneer units is nice, but I think they, and the Palace Guard, deserve a little more, as well as the other gunpowder units. In light of these suggestions, yes the Dynasty system for the Chinese currently also holds them back, as it adds extra strain to their micro/macro management, and costliness of their Empire. So far, I do not have an eco or military problem at all with the new Jin Dynasty. You need to properly use the new worker units, and calculate how many actual workers you will need in the process. I tend to put 10 of the new worker units on gold and 8-12+ on food (with the garden buff spell on the food being farmed), then any extra on wood. Zhu Xi is also pretty good at making money, but they are in a similar boat with China, I think the devs should play into Zhu Xi’s role of sorcery a bit more; eg, the grenadiers debuffing enemies, etc.
I always found that to be a problem with games in general. RTS and loot based. What is the point in having all that loot if players are just going to use one SMG, or what is the point in having all these neat tech options if we can’t reach them in the match. The gameplay flow is nice in this game, I haven’t really had a problem with it in terms of matches ending too quickly; however, I mainly play against AI. Regardless, I know that was directed towards OP, but that is my opinion on the subject.
I suppose it’s a flaw in the way they decided to implement the chinese Dynasty system in 2021, giving it the unique feature of producing both 2 landmarks per age, to unlock bonuses and more.
However, each landmark is already “expensive” and it’s not always profitable to advance to Age III or Age IV. Besides, having 2 active landmarks per age would be too unfair for a single civilization.
To compensate for this, I suppose that’s why China has “the best economy in the game” and the best construction bonus in the game; it’s really to build landmarks faster.
To balance having two landmarks at once, the effect of at least one of them was made less overpowered than in other civilizations:
Barbican of the Sun had no effect.
Imperial Palace revealed enemy villagers but offered no bonus to economy or army.
Great Gatehouse originally only functioned as a gate, without the Nest of Bees.
The problem is that it sounds good on paper, but not in practice:
People prefer to use those economic bonuses to quickly mass-produce units and overwhelm the enemy with numbers rather than strategy.
Building the Great Gatehouse landmark requires constructing a wall, which is double the work, so unless you’re doing an economy boom, it’s hardly profitable to go to the Ming Dynasty.
The movement speed bonus is more useful than the Ming bonus; many prefer to stick with the Yuan
Zhu Xi way
In fact, it seems they tried to compensate for this problem with Zhu Xi, since the first effect of his first dynasty “REDUCES” the cost of Landmarks, making the transition to certain dynasties, or even a Fast Castle, easier.
I suppose that’s another problem stemming from the way the game was released in 2021.
I have two theories, but they even complement between them with more clues beetween the years. One of which occurred to me after replaying the Mongolian campaign:
1) Balance of the Alpha and Beta versions in 2021
At that time, in 2021, all eight civilizations had only three unique or early units, and one or two support units other than monks.
I suppose this was due to balance considerations; they believed that including more units per civilization would create an imbalance. In the end, it turned out that this wasn’t the case, and some unique units were barely used, like the Lansknecht, or some very weak civilizations, like China in Season Zero.
In China’s case, it was funny: Their three units were the Bee Nest, Palace Guard, and “Dynasty Unit,” and the support unit was the Imperial Officer. I refer to the Dynasty Unit as the third because in the early stages (Alpha, Beta, Season Zero), China could only have one Dynasty Unit at a time. They had to build the final Landmark to unlock all four simultaneously.
They changed it in a patch of the 1st season, and until now every unit unlocked by Dynasty is unlocked forever.
2) Units Limited to Campaign Units
In the Mongolian campaign, China has five unique units: Imperial Officer, Palace Guard, Nest of Bees, Zhuge Nu, Fire Lancer, and Grenadier. In level 7 of the campaign, you can play with a slightly altered version of China, where the Dynasty system is absent, and you can use all unlocked units.
If they were going to implement the Fire lancer and Grenadier in the campaign for the Song, then they really aren’t Ming and Yuan units.
Since they already had more than 5 unique units, to avoid limiting them to 3, they created a dynasty system and associated each dynasty with certain attributes and bonuses:
Song: High population growth, therefore, greater villager production.
Yuan: Mongol rule, army, and horses, therefore +15% movement speed.
Ming: Their army improved tactics, I suppose, therefore +15% HP.
3) Zhu Xi Legacy traits
In fact, it seems my balance theory might make more sense if we look at what happened in 2023 with ZhuXi Legacy:
They literally made the Zhuge nu and Grenadier “Common” units of the civilization, which didn’t need dynasties to activate them.
In Yue Fei’s campaign, the Song dynasty replaces the dynastic system with a system of good governance, which functions “almost the same” but uses growth strategy names instead of dynasties.
Also, the fire lancer and grenadier didn’t appear in the Yuan or Ming dynasties.
In fact, the campaign also features new units: Such as the Bed Crossbow, the Fire Eruptor, and the General.
And well, the campaign is quite impressive in terms of historical accuracy, besides being very entertaining.
In Conclusión:
It seems that many, if not most, of the attributes of the Chinese civilization actually refer to the Tang and Song dynasties, including almost all of its unique units. On the other hand, I don’t think it would hurt to add one or two extra unique units (General), as in the campaign, or some unique technology or bonus to existing ones (Fire Lancer, Grenadier).
ZhuXi does have several elements from the early Ming dynasty, but this civilization is original enough to warrant more unique units.
Because either you reach them in Single Player, or you reach them in larger game modes. You can even reach them in 1v1 assuming a lower skill level.
In higher-level gameplay they still serve as ways to finish a game, even if most high-level (1v1) games won’t reach that point. In my opinion, that’s not bad design.
I do get, as a non-competitive player myself, wanting to explore the whole tech tree. I do it a lot, which is why I play a lot of SP, and not a lot of MP.
That said, the amount of optimisation players can do to build orders means that nomatter how well you design a game, players will always find a way of finishing it without teching everything up.
I’d say that with the current number of variant civs depicting various dynasties across the world, the single “Chinese” civ no longer makes much sense. Rename Zhu Xi into Song and split the Chinese into Tang and Ming (Yuan could be either Chinese or Mongol variant).
I think it would be much better to rework the Fire Lancer into a more dedicated buffer.
For instance, you could increase its vision range and movement speed, but reduce the torch damage.
This would allow it to be mixed into groups of Horsemen or Lancers to provide the Spirit Way effect, without slowing down the overall movement speed of the mixed unit group. It could effectively replace the Scout in that role.
I think it deserves some extra bonus when it hits its targets. Both Jin and ZhuXi have many bonuses that cause their units with explosives to inflict debuffs:
Heaven Shaking Thunder: Eruptor and Spearman with firelance reduce cavalry attack by 20%.
Pli Pao: Traction Trebs and Nest of Bess reduce the attack of buildings that were shot by 20%.
Hard Cased Bombs: Grenadier damage reduces melee and range resistance of hit enemy units by 15%.
In the case of China, the Fire Lancer was originally used to kill archers en masse before its nerf, taking advantage of its high area-of-effect attack. They could very well consider giving it its own ability as well. Something like:
“Blinding Flash”*.- The fire lancer’s explosion reduces the attack speed and damage of ranged units hit in the area by 20% for X seconds.
Campaign unit, accompanied troops and at some levels gave you the bonuses that YueFei had, such as movement speed or the Zan Ma skill, which increases the attack bonus against cavalry by +20 to all infantry.
I think the second landmark of each age can get a discount. While China economy is strong, they are in conflict with their dynasty mechanics. I mean if you had 1800 more resources than your opponent, why would you build an extra landmark in full price than converting them into military units which would give you instant advantage?
Yes, I think that at some point the Chinese will rework the units to look like that, or at least add units like the General (just like the Chinese in Tale of the Dragon had the General)…
