They aren’t truly bad in imperial age. They lose out to some of the really strong imperial civs sure, but they aren’t like Mongol tier or anything. The monks are actually arguably more of an issue in imperial if you get to Yuan dynasty since you can pump them out of 4 production buildings and since they don’t take bonus damage from anything (and have really high durability + dps), they are quite difficult to deal with. They also only cost food and you have crazy granary eco.
Yes I agreed already that monk need a nerf. But other than that in imperial they just aren’t good.
They have the worse springald/culverin in game (some civs have culverin, china have more hp, rus and mongol more range).
They don’t even have handcannon. Dont have ribauldequin/culverin.
They don’t have strong tech to boost their units like abbasid, french, hre…
Their defensive option are also lacking.
Their trade is bad.
The whole advantage of the civ is their tempo.
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Zhu Xi’s library has some really strong techs in there. They still beat out the average imperial civs, they have a good matchup vs English imperial (who also have generic siege). Imperial guards are pretty crazy units, and they still have the absurd China eco with Imperial officials + granaries.
If I had to guess on equal imperials, they probably beat
Delhi, English, Mongols, Malians, Ayyubids
They probably lose to
HRE, OOTD, Byzantines, Japan, China, Abbasids, Rus.
The rest Im not sure on or seem pretty equal
The zhu xi library tech are basically making up for their weakness, but not as strong, for example 10000 bolt is just a way to compensate having no handcannoner, but its weaker than handcannoner, the advatange of it is tempo though because you can upgrade you already existing army instead of needing to make a new one. But once that tempo advantage is lost, the handcannon are better than 10000 bolt.
The imperial guard are maybe the only exeption here. Other tech arent that good. And you are limited to 2.
I think English (enclosure + strong defenses), Delhi (tower elephant), and Malians (culverin) are definitely better than xhu xi in imperial.
Mongol and Ayyubids are also Tempo civs.
Delhi imperial is godawful because they basically don’t have imperial techs for SOOOO long. Them and Malians also have equal seige with Zhu Xi (nothing special).
Pretty sure granaries + IO is stronger than English enclosures but I haven’t done the math. English also have generic siege and the 10000 bolts xbow + PG spam matches up pretty well vs MAA spam.
While Malians do have the culverin, from my experience and seeing other games, Malian is just kind of lacking in imperial. It might just be the lack of a good infantry frontline since Musofadi warriors are so niche.
Malians have culverin AND Musofadi Gunner
Granary gives 30% but just in the aura.
English farm have 30% food everywhere AND gold bonus. English have other units than MAA.
They have culverin sure, but winning the siege game isn’t everything. Malian imperial just seems to perform so poorly. It might be because they lack good units. Javelin throwers fall off pretty hard in large army sizes, they don’t have xbows, their only frontline unit is sofa which die to counter units.
In general, Malian armies just don’t perform well in 200 pop games, they perform much better in smaller fights. I’m not convinced that Malians beat palace guard spam.
I haven’t tested, but pretty sure imperial officials collecting taxes give noticeably more gold than enclosures, also if they get to Yuan the 10% unit discount makes up for the somewhat lower food income.
I’m also personally unsure how well grenadiers perform vs infantry heavy armies. I have to imagine they do pretty well vs MAA?
Everything gets crushed by knights, even his counter.
Btw, leaving the monks alone, that extremely fast castle “strategies” in my opinion is bad to the game. Already, dark age is near testimonial, and now, we have certain civs (Ayyubids, Zhu Xi and HRE) that can super fast castle.
The difference between HRE and even Ayyubids is that they don’t get as fast to castle and is easier to check and plan a counter (in fact, their safe food is limited and they haven’t proper eco to just build farms), and simply bring some units and get map control can delay them and punish them.
But, Zhu Xi fastest castle can drop in 5:52, and they can instantly train units that literally beat everything except for knights (and if your civ doesn’t have knights on feudal?), and they collect all the relics.
If I remember well, a relic equals to 2.5 villagers in gold, so, you are telling me that a strategy that is hardly no punishable, and can near instant bring you an advantage of 10 villagers is ok?
With HRE fast castle you can just use spears and other units to force HRE train units and punish him, kill the monks, etc…
They actually nerfed TCs along this year because building second and even third TC was near no punishable, they increased the amount of resources, the time to build it, and now, the arrows range and the villagers capacity.
Zhu Xi fast castle need to be punishable. If the whole civ concept is their ability to fast castle and get all the relics, and simply nerfing the monk would make them unplayable then the civ must be reworked.
I don’t know why i don’t have much issues against zhu xi fast castle. It’s still a lot of resources spent on aging up and you can use that time to make army and go in their base. Or just use that time to outboom them with 2 tc which is much better than their fast castle with relic.
I think zhu xi is much stronger when they go zhugu nu rush. But that’s just my experience.
They could potentially reduce the tang dynasty from 15% to 10% but i think would make zhu xi players upset considering their winrate isn’t that good.
I think a small nerf on monk would already make this strategy less effective
Yes, the Zhu Ge Nu rush is also so strong. But think about this, how many units do you think you can do if they get to castle in 5:52? Normal feudal age up is about 4:20-5:00, depending of civ and decissions, you have between 1 to 2 minutes to tell if he’s going castle rush and if he’s going, make units to deny relics.
If you let him take the relics, is instant 10-12 villagers boost, doesn’t matter if you are going for second TC because the second TC will drop at minute 7-8.
Also, my critic is not at all for the uncountereable situation, but more about the easy that results to just safe skip literally 50% of the game rushing to castle. Dark age is also testimonial, and now also feudal.
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Frankly by the time Zhu Xi is beginning to build the castle age landmark, most civs have been in feudal for around 60 seconds. Heck most civs can’t make more than 2-3 military units by the time Zhu Xi has started aging up. Even if you get like 10-15 archers by the time they age up, a couple shaolin monks or 1-2 knights can make quick work of that.
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60 Seconds to castle, and another 60 seconds to make units…
I think in those 2 minutes you have time to make units or a tc.
I always open with horsemen against zhu xi, not archer.
I mean whatever the unit, are like 8 horseman going to be able to fight castle age units? 3 shaolin monks (which can be made within 20 seconds of hitting castle age) can easily fend off 8-10 horsemen and it doesn’t get better in the long run.
Also Zhu Xi inherits the faster build speed of the Chinese so aging up is faster. By the time Zhu Xi has finished building their castle landmark, the opponent has been in feudal for about 60-90 seconds. Accounting for building production building, training units and walking across the map, at this point there are probably no more than 3-4 units that the Zhu Xi player has to deal with, and that isn’t going to be doing game-losing amounts of damage.
It’s not like Jeanne or Ayyubids levels of broken atm, but the civ is definitely overtuned compared to most civs, and that is largely because of Song and Tang dynasties.
2 minutes isn’t enough to make any feudal army to battle monks. And as the other user said, just a few monks and a few knights (castle knight), can destroy your whole feudal army and take the relics.
As japanese, a strong feudal civ, I can place the first barrack more or less at min 5, then bugeisha needs 15 seconds to build, this means that I will have 4 bugeisha by the time he is at castle age.
How many horsemen can you have at min 6? Maybe 2, and that’s not enough for nothing.
I think we are talking about different things.
I agreed previously that the monk need a small nerf.
Then we were talking about if zhuxi dynasty bonus are fine. Which i said i think they are because if you remove monks out of the equation, that’s not a big deal and zhu xi concept is that they have very good tempo, but not so good units/tech late game.
So maybe Zhu Xi needs more viable strategies, not based in rush castle or rush zhu ge, mostly because both strats seems cheese.
Abbasid had only a viable strat (eco wing+fast TC), and nowadays after some reworks on their wings has a lot more options.
Yeah I agree with you, it should be nerfed, I think adding “light” or “heavy” tag to it is first step.
But this is really history that actually happened in Ming dynasty. (I’m not sure if the monks or samurais are in armor.
)
Source?
Sincerely can’t imagine a martial arts dude challenging a samurai with no armor nor weapon. This never ends good lmao.
Edit: don’t forget the samurai were well trained in martial arts too.
Blockquote
With the establishment of the Ming dynasty by mid-14th century, Shaolin recovered, and a large part of the monastic community that fled during the Red Turban attacks returned. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, the government did not advocate martial arts. During the reign of the Jiajing Emperor, Japanese pirates harassed China’s coastal areas, and generals Yu Dayou and Qi Jiguang led their troops against the pirates. During his stay in Fujian, Qi Jiguang convened martial artists from all over China, including local Shaolin monks, to develop a set of boxing and staff fighting techniques to be used against Japanese pirates. Owing to the monks’ merits in fighting against the Japanese, the government renovated the temple on a large scale, and Shaolin enjoyed certain privileges, such as food tax exemption, granted by the government. Afterward, Shaolin monks were recruited by the Ming government at least six times to participate in wars. Due to their outstanding contribution to Chinese military success, the imperial court built monuments and buildings for Shaolin Temple on numerous occasions. This also contributed to the establishment of the legitimacy of Shaolin kung fu in the national martial arts community. During the Ming Dynasty (in mid-16th century), Shaolin reached its apogee and held its position as the central place of the Caodong School of Chan Buddhism.
In fact, for the Shaolin Temple owned so much farmland, Shaolin monks had access to far more food than commoners in those days. They would enter the Shaolin Temple at a very young age and begin martial arts training, and they would fight with iron rods, so it’s not strange that they were able to beat the samurai.
https://www.shtong.gov.cn/n87232/20210701/131705.html
This is documented in the official history of the Ming Dynasty as well as the local official history of Shanghai, but since it is written in Literary Chinese, which is still a bit difficult to read for me as a native Chinese speaker, I don’t think you should be able to read it either.