Let's talk about China

[BdelloidBore5]

@Shneider177

Secondly tower play is a legit playstyle in this game and china is only second to mongols in playing the tower game

Dont know how is this any relevant? I just stated that they would be pushed towards this playstyle because of their strength in building things fast and look what happened?

@Shneider177

3rd, 40 gold per 20 sec equates to 3 villagers worth on gold as oppose to the 20g/15s that was worth 2 villagers on gold.

Its not as that simple.

Gold is generated from drop offs which is 4 times per minute so 4gold per minute. This means you need 30 workers collecting resources to fully utilize single IO 40g drop off 3x per minute. Assuming buildings are not under influence of imperial academy which doubles the gold from drop offs.

Then there is the factor that IO stops supervising building when they’re delivering which again results to loss of resources which can effectively taken away from the tax income. Obviously forcing workers to force return resources is one way but this results loss of resources and not worth. Then just having one IO tax collecting constantly isn’t efficient at all because IO AI is bad for example if building got 10 tax gold and IO passes TC they won’t drop the gold till it reaches the 20 gold. So yeah.

40/80 gold drop off again doesn’t solve fundamental issue of tax collection at all. The issue is that no one is going to sent IO to collect ANY amount of gold from 20-40 tiles away (or well if IO could bring all gold then sure) but these irrelevant amounts are not worth of even considering. And no one is going to drop TC next to each resource building just to fully optimize IO’s. Imperial academy change won’t really solve this at all because whole building is placed near the starting TC.

@Shneider177

jist mentiomed nest of bees should now work correctly

So when did they fix nest of bees not able to fire shots from water crossings? Or how IO’s are still bugged and not supervising when told to?

China was mid tier civ before they nerffed anything on them. Very good in turtle maps where they could reach imperial age. You really think that with minor buffs are enough to even bring them back to mid tier? No its not enough. No where near enough.

They get better because they waited 1 month to see if it was good idea to nerf IO or not and they realized it wasn’t so they made up “ups it was mistake”. If it was mistake they would’ve hot fixxed it next week because its literally changing 2 numbers in code and done. Then the fact that mongol scouts got the khan ability in last patch if I recall correctly which was another undocumented change which wasn’t reverted?

[BdelloidBore5]

@Shneider177

Let’s be frank team elo doesnt matter… this game is balanced predominately around 1v1s, and team elo is heavily inflated.

So why was firelancers nerffed because of teamgames?
Why was wonders nerffed?

FL was never issue in 1v1 and yet they nerffed unit to ground because of TG’s. You don’t know where they intent lies because they have shown time after time that they do not know by themselves.

Wonders are hardly build in 1v1 and they got nerffed?

So don’t go say that 1v1 is only thing that matters because its clearly not.

@Shneider177

if you watch leenock or mlord play china you’ll see for yourself what 2 of the best players let alone china players think is efficient.

Plenty of times watched top tier players and plenty of times seen how weak china is. But hey if you want to be optimistic its your right =). Im not.

@Shneider177

China’s relic play is lock behind a dynasty and would require building a monastery to make the monks, so by no means could china fast castle fast yuan dynasty fast monks on the field and have res to build 3 pagodas to then have the trickle to support infinite army.

Which is VERY true which I stated. Its more costly but the thing is. You don’t need Yuan instantly. First you go for fast castle and get 3 relics which is super fast to produce thanks to IO. After you acquired 3 relics or even 2 then you can push to Yuan if there is no huge aggression coming to you. Its not easy to do but it will push china towards this strategy because the effectiveness compared to alternatives is just too good

@Shneider177

I heard it mentioned that the pagoda would be nerfed to match its age.

You heard it from where? Elfs? There is no mention of altering the buildings. Only thing that dynasty units are always trainable if they’re unlocked so with buildings and dynasty buildings move one up what ever it actually means.

If they nerf it then great then it means it won’t have much of use just like FL. No point going FL with the landmark cost being too high and having slow expensive raiding unit.

[Shneider177]

You quote a lot but you clearly dont understand the quote??

@Shneider177

Let’s be frank team elo doesnt matter… this game is balanced predominately around 1v1s, and team elo is heavily inflated.

You read this to mean ONLY 1v1 matters? Clearly you wanted to make a strawman argument…

@Shneider177

if you watch leenock or mlord play china you’ll see for yourself what 2 of the best players let alone china players think is efficient.

Another example of your strawman approach. The reference of these two pros was to highlight efficient mid feudal farming as opposed to long distance deer berry or boar harvesting in the mid game. Also i referenced those 2 bc they have high win rates with china so you’d not likely see china in these 2 hands and think WEAK…

OrangUtan28 – AoE4 World

Next you’re not gonna fast castle with china unless you can back it up with some type of serious typing push. So this idea of a fast castle and hopes you can sustain as a standard gameplan until you reach yuan and male better use of the 3 relics you previously collected… would only work in lower elo games. Example f you fast castle in 9mins you better have some type of aggression planned, bc the 10 more minutes you’ll need to stay alive and get to yuan dynasty JUST to get what you hope willl still be an OP resource trickle to THEN superpower your military production, isn’t standard easily pulled off HRE fast caslte 3 relic boom/push/bigger boom.

This version of 3 relic OP TRICKLE is actually rewarding for serious time and effort invested and by no means is a guaranteed plan at decent level of play.

Last let’s talk tax. You most have glossed over my mention of the distant tax drop off issue?? Re read if you like. But about the 40g per 20 sec buff. This is an instant game buff you would realize just 1 minute into the game!!

The standard pre-this patch opening for china is build a mill and que an IO first. Then make a lumber camp. Now this one IO would pause overseeing at tax intervals of 20 tax to collecr then drop off tax. It jist so happens if you went the single IO start and single scout start with the mill and lumber camp then you’d retrieve sufficient gold to age up by 3mins 15-20s. Now the issue to why it took so long was bc you could only gather 20 gold at a time so you jave to devy up your villagerd such that you could get 20 gold on your lumber camp and 20 gold on your mill in order to go from 160 gold to 200. But now that we can carry 40 gold!!! you will no longer have to devy the villagers in a way to make 20 lumber camp tax appear around the same time as 20 mill tax. This will make aging FASTER.

It gets even better if you do the 2 IO in dark age build (slower thwn single IO but much much more efficient by reducing IO walk time and therefore increase IO productivity boost time).

Next point, early to early ish imperial you’ll want to have very high control over your IOs. So those lil auto tax collecting inefficiencies IO do when left to their own will be occurring very infrequently because you’ll be micro’ing them a looot.

[BdelloidBore5]

@Shneider177

Another example of your strawman approach. The reference of these two pros was to highlight efficient mid feudal farming as opposed to long distance deer berry or boar harvesting in the mid game. Also i referenced those 2 bc they have high win rates with china so you’d not likely see china in these 2 hands and think WEAK…

I could say you’re strawmaning quite lot too.

Yes leenock etc are very highly skilled player(s), but those are results of QM. This means that they’re almost ALWAYS facing off opponent that is dramatically lower their skill level and with that difference they can make things work a lot more often.

You can go check the N4C qualifiers and you will see the state. China is picked hardly ever and thats very clear indication that civ is heavily underperforming.

And that comes to single thing. Clockwork tower targetted nerf alongside global siege nerf.

Them giving china minor borderline irrelevant buff won’t change them from bottom tier feeder to mid tier because during the golden era China was already mid tier civ.

I made china work in my elo without relying siege. Sure. But its not indication of anything especially when I was most of time facing opponents that were far weaker than I was thanks to bad matchmaking or did you forget how they widened the matchmaking to ridiculous levels?

@Shneider177

The standard pre-this patch opening for china is build a mill and que an IO first. Then make a lumber camp. Now this one IO would pause overseeing at tax intervals of 20 tax to collecr then drop off tax. It jist so happens if you went the single IO start and single scout start with the mill and lumber camp then you’d retrieve sufficient gold to age up by 3mins 15-20s. Now the issue to why it took so long was bc you could only gather 20 gold at a time so you jave to devy up your villagerd such that you could get 20 gold on your lumber camp and 20 gold on your mill in order to go from 160 gold to 200. But now that we can carry 40 gold!!! you will no longer have to devy the villagers in a way to make 20 lumber camp tax appear around the same time as 20 mill tax. This will make aging FASTER.

It gets even better if you do the 2 IO in dark age build (slower thwn single IO but much much more efficient by reducing IO walk time and therefore increase IO productivity boost time).

Next point, early to early ish imperial you’ll want to have very high control over your IOs. So those lil auto tax collecting inefficiencies IO do when left to their own will be occurring very infrequently because you’ll be micro’ing them a looot.

Im not exactly sure what devy refers in this to, but im assuming you’re meaning force drop off. This is bad play because its loss of resources and not worth doing and you should always avoid it.

Yes the increased gold carry capacity will affect how often you need to deliver the gold from building to TC, but IT WILL NOT solve mid / late game tax collection issues. Do you even understand how much gold is lost per game? Each game china collects anywhere from 1k to 20k gold from taxes to buildings. Literally 70-80% of them are not used for anything because taxes cannot be efficiently collected from them. This is huge loss.

Does this IO change solve it? No it wont. This change WILL help china, but its so irrelevant change that its same as not even doing it. Which makes it miss buff. Returning the 50% from IO is better than the gold drop of increase.

Most gold from buildings near TC (resource) etc are fully collected in 10-15min depending how efficiently someone collects them which again just speeds up the issue of tax collection in mid / late game which is efficient at all and almost always neglected over supervising because its just better option and this wont fix it.

@Shneider177

Next point, early to early ish imperial you’ll want to have very high control over your IOs. So those lil auto tax collecting inefficiencies IO do when left to their own will be occurring very infrequently because you’ll be micro’ing them a looot.

GL microing IO’s when you got no cycle keybind for them and when getting under pressure from opponent. Not happening. Ppl sent them to supervise resource collections for extra resources and leave that. Taxes are neglected heavily during this phase because like I have stated many times. No one is sending IO to collect 20,40, 80 gold from building thats 20 tiles away. If it could bring back 500-1k gold then maybe.

[Shneider177]

I said in my quote. You would not see china being utilized in these 2 hands and think "this is a weak civ "… that doesnt mean the civ isnt weak but rather you dont get that impression watching these 2 (frankly 3 if you include 3dbee) and say “this looks WEAK!” Also you mentioned that the 2 players are only doing these chinese mircales in MM facing inferior opponents? Why did you mention NC4 and not mention that these players picked china and won? I vaguely remember Mlords china game? But i know leenock won with china vs brit during a late bracket match and 3dbee beat themista in a china vs abbasid matchup? So while china we can agree isn’t the most OP; those that are exceptionally proficient with the civ make it look viable in their hands (even in tournaments).

Tournament Example linked

Age of Empires 4 - The Forward Barbican Goes BRRRR

The opener i referenced you can see it standardly done by mlord. 7 on mill then 7 on wood with one IO over food. Doing a forced drop on sheep gatherers loses you AT MOST 1 sec of gathering time per villager you forced drop that wasnt max.

Lets say you have 10 villagers at the mill and you pull your IO off the mill to drop off tax and you just happened to miss just 3 villager drops getting overseen. That would have lost you 6 food which is worth 10 villager seconds of gathering sheep.

Scenario 2, same 10 villagers at the mill and you force drop all 10 villagers. You need all 10 villagers to not be maxed to lose the same amount of villager seconds gathering sheep food lost as not having overseen just 3 villagers?! furthermore you can force drop just the ones near max.

Scenario 3 make a 2nd IO but then your age up will be later.

You can currently cycle thru your IO if you control group each one. And lastly if you have to walk nominally 20 to 40 tiles to get to the edge of your main base, you’re doing a poor job base building. The only drop off locations that should be way out of reach of a TC would be large stone and gold mines on the edge of the map and boar/far deer. And I’ve already suggested an auto tax be introduced as a very late game dynasty tech.

Walking a radial distance of 15 tiles or less from a TC or Imperial academy to collect 80 tax would take 30s max round trip and 80gold/30s is worth 4 base villagers on gold. You’d need to oversee 20 villagers gathering at base gather rates to equate to the same amount of resources per sec. And the truth is your IO would at most walk 10 tiles radius ASSUMING it got the max tax on his first tax collection attempt (aka 80g/20s max=6 base villagers gathering rate equalivant, or oversee 30 villagers at base gathering rate).

[Bidderlyn]

Very well written and great suggestions. Kudos.

[grizzgolf]

I wish I didnt suck as China

[Shneider177]

Here’s an experiment I encourage for you to do (and everyone else that maybe curious)

Start a single player game with just you and high resources on dry arabia (for the clear open space). Then build 7 farms in a straight line from the TC and cap it off with a Mill (so TC then count 7 farms in a row then mill). This will put the Mill exactly 15 tiles away from the TC. Next task a villager on the furthest mill, then create an IO to go collect the tax at that mill. Time how long it takes for the IO to walk from the TC to the Mill and back. I got something around 24-26 seconds for the round trip.

Now part of the reason I want you to try this experiment is so you can get an actual VISUAL of how FAR 15 tiles away from your TC is! And how even 15 tiles away from your TC(s) is HORRIBLE base building if that’s how it’s all laid out all around your TC(s) and Imperial Academy. YET!!! If you were collecting 80 gold/26 secs? You’d still get an average of 4.6 villagers worth gold mining at the base gather rate of 40 gold/min. Which means alternatively you’d need at minimum 24 villagers being overseen at the base gather rate to compare to the abysmal 30 tiles round trips your IO would be doing collecting 80 tax per 26 seconds. Also consider as an aside unlocking the Yuan dynasty speed boost for all units (IO included)…

Last point if you’re IO has to walk to several location to get max gold capacity of gold over and over, then you’re collecting tax too soon.