As we all know, the new version of Chinese no longer has a Bombard with a range of 12.
Well, let China also have Culverin. After all, Chinese Springald is very mediocre, and the production capacity of the clock tower is very limited.
Therefore, I suggest that Chinese, like France, can produce Culverin through landmark buildings.
In addition, from a historical point of view, the Ming Dynasty was indeed equipped with such weapons on a large scale.（On the contrary, the Abbasids had never been exposed to such weapons.）
That’s reasonable, however I must mention that French have to choose between college of artillery and red palace, while Chinese almost certainly have a clock tower in each game.
But overall I guess this change should have little impact on 1v1, so it’s still OK.
I don’t see this happening (even if it’s historically accurate). It already takes a large amount of springalds to take care of clocktower bombards. Nest of bees would become way too strong as other civs would have an extremely difficult time taming Chinese siege balls. Firelancers should be your go-to if you’re struggling against enemy springalds / culverins.
Edit: this first paragraph is wrong, thank you Skadidesu for correcting me. Technically speaking, culverins are a smaller diameter bombards*[Edit: Should be cannon]* so any civ having bombard technology would doubtless have culverins too if we go by historical analogy.
Chinese springalds are by no means mediocre - Clockwork Springalds aren’t one shotted by culverins, effectively making them twice as good against culverins.
That aside, Chinese culverins would be no way as oppressive as the previous Clockerk Bombards were, as they functionally doubled as Culverins and Bombards - similar to how the ottoman great bombard now doubles as Omegamangonel + bombard.
My only worry is how oppressive Clockwerk Culverins would be. With these, other civs would be forced to combat Chinese siege with cavalry. So, enemy army comps would be more predictable, and X v China lategame would lack diversity. Chinese Hand cannoneers would lack the counter of mangonels, doubly forcing enemies to co cavalry, since China would be the only side permitted to have splash siege. Because of this, ranged units would be unviable vs china, further improving the effectiveness of chinese spearmen that would then do even better against forced mass cavalry.
Not exactly.
Bombard shoot stone balls, Culverins shoot iron balls.
But the Culverin was more wide spread then the Bombard.
Naming artillery is kinda hard because different names were used for the same thing and different things often had the same name.
Hand cannons are also culverins.
But a normal Field Culverin are larger diameter then a Falconet, yet in AoE3 it’s the other way round.
And then you have local names for different guns.
Maybe it would be the most consistent way to just name them by calibre/poundage.
