Pyrotechnics only works on handcannoneers. It’s really puzzling. If the production team thinks that cannon has a 12 range that is too IMBA, it just needs to cancel the role of pyrotechnics on cannon alone. Don’t forget that nest of bees is a very important unit for Chinese.
At the same time, there is a series of weakening of the Grenadier. Is it still necessary for Chinese to enter the Ming Dynasty (the cost of entering era 4 twice is not directly proportional to the income)?
Chinese was originally set to defend in the early stage and counter attack in the late stage, but now it has been changed to a mess.
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While I agree that the changes to the chinese, at least on the paper seems like a mess.
I’d like to see it use in practice before I make any clear judgement.
But based on the info.
A much needed nerf was needed for the Chinese.
They are overall a very strong Civilization, from the early stages into the late game.
Don’t forget Chinese excell at Tower-rushing unlike any other. Giving them a strong aggresive early game option.
Their ZhugeNu are one of the best units in game, and will become even better after the patch.
A multipurpose ranged unit that can deal with any threat except siege. Giving them a very solid feudal into castle.
And their MAA with Nest of Bees combo is some of the strongest Castle-age composition you have to deal against. Added with the fact that if you haven’t lost your ZhugeNu blob, you still have a sizable portion of ZhugeNu to provide excellent support for your Maa / Nest of Bees composition.
And then when you finally hit Imperial Age, you have undeniable the strongest late game units in form Grenadiers that really had absolutely no counter untill they fixed the mangonels again.
But even so are still better and cheaper than Mangonels, with a much less power-drop off when targeted.
(if 1 mangonel has the strenght of 4 grenadiers, then technically you loose the DPS of 4 Grenadiers by loosing a single Mangonel, and 1 Mangonel is far more squishier and vournarable than 4 grenadiers)
So something had to be done about the Grenadiers.
I personally think Pyrotechnics change is good as it is, perhaps apply to Defensive upgrades as well. (the Nest of Bees on the Gate, and their Cannon towers as well as the Gun-slits.)
However, I would like to see Reload-drills apply to Chinese Cannoneers as well and not just bombards.
This would make the Chinese Cannoneers have a much better edge over other cannoneers, but equal to English Cannoneers.
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I agree with you. As a gunpowder nation, it lacks gun power in the later stage. I don’t like this setting very much. I request to withdraw the modification of Pyrotechnics！！！！！！！！！
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FALSE.
This tells everything you need to know. Chinas winrate starts to enter positive side only after 30 minutes. Early on something like TR / BBQ rush doesn’t explain the positive winrate because those games can easily drag on 15-20min mark only reason why it could affect is that ppl just quit after they see BBQ build next to their base.
False.
Zhuge nu is shit unit and far from “best”. Zhuge nu does more dmg than normal archer only in situations where they stand still and can shoot. Also Zhuge nu cannot deal with armored units even tho they deal with them slightly and I mean very slightly better than Archers which is irrelevant and later game goes on worse they become. Also Zhuge Nu is something that enters to field when opponent can easily be in castle age making them useless.
False.
NoB is inferior to mangonel and PG is also inferior to other civ MAA outside of them being faster at running and nothing else.
“till fixed mangonel” Its fixed already and grenadiers ARE and BEEN most expensive unit to unlock and yet the fact that they still costs 240 resources. Chinese late game was/still is one of the best, English is better especially once gold runs out.
False. Mangonels are better especially because they got 9 tiles range which grenadiers don’t have (4 tile range with pyrotechnics 4.8 tiles) Also you need multiple grenadiers to fill the role of mangonel especially when facing ranged based army or multiple mangonels due the lack of range from grenadiers
Yes I do agree they needed tuning but not in the way that they received. Range is everything for unit like Grenadier and it not having range at all is huge butchering especially when DMG is deleted completely with the fact that they didn’t compensate it in any form and yet they still are MOST EXPENSIVE unit to unlock with the fact that they still stay at 240 resources.
No its not. China losses their answer to imperial age siege now they’re 2nd civ without imperial age siege weaponry alongside delhi but delhi has the broken elephants that they can use at castle age and insta heal them to full hp with multiple scholars that are faster than F1 car.
Losing pyrotechnics from siege AND grenadiers is huge blow when its THE MOST IMPORTANT upgrade for units like that making chinese late game absolutely dog shit. Gatehouse is fuckin joke and NOB is irrelevant there. No one is going to run to them and die.
Having pyrotechnics affecting towers is stupid idea and makes no sense and pointless upgrade
Useless buff compared to what they lose in the patch with none existing compensation buffs to civilization that has always been bottom tier feeder with bad feudal, castle age and only saving grace for them has been imperial age. First it was imperial age then it was moved to imperial age + meaning (had to spent double the resources to unlock similar power level or higher than opponent who unlocks imp just paying once)
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That is not really true, early stages are tower rushing OR just turtling, zhuge nu rush is only a thing in low elo.
Late game is strong, that is true.
As the for the games registered in aoe4world in the latest patch, in every rank from bronze to platinum Chinese are ALWAYS below 50% winrate. The lowest winrate they have in any rank is 46 which is not terrible but nowhere near “very strong” or “much needed nerf”.
Even more there are tournament stats to see how pros perform with the civ.
And to no surprise Chinese is the lowest winrate and second worst pick rate.
Now, pretty much everyone agrees that the civ needs changes. Mass grenadiers and clocktower bombards+pyrotechnics in particular. The thing is that these are the units that allow you to win a game as Chinese, nerfing them to the ground is removing THE payoff of surviving to imperial(and ming dynasty which is a lot of resource investment too).
Another topic is civ identity, what does Chinese do better than any other civ? are they the best at early aggression? clearly not as they don’t have special military units in tang feudal, only in song dynasty they have Zhuge nu which works best when massed but at that point you opponent should be in castle age or overwhelming you in all-in feudal.
Do the Chinese excell at early defense or booming? not really, English are a lot better in early defense and HRE always boom harder and faster. China turtles because it has no other options and song dynasty is a bonus to vil production (1.5x) but at roughly the same cost of a second TC(2x), so not really getting ahead in economy even if both players make an aditional TC each.
Now what China excells at is late game gunpowder units, the clocktower bombard+pyro and grenadiers. Nerfing them a bit is fair but hard nerfs like the pup ones make it really questionable why even play China if everything is done better by another civ.
Yes, that is the only reasonable thing to do.
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This isn’t exactly true. HRE if they go for fast imp this gives china chance to get 2 or 3TC song play if they ignore relics and are sure HRE ain’t gonna push in castle. With this boom they have already close to 100 villagers when HRE starts. Ofc it all depends on HRE but its risky AF to go 3TC song.
If we have to talk about booming civs then we should talk about English, French and abbassid or even mongol trade boom. Mongol being bit of exception with traders because it can be punished quite easily, but if they go 2nd TC instead of trade and keep map pressure + deny scout they are much better than china
English gets “free TC in castle” also farms are superior to anything safe food source from the start and threat of longbows. French just simply denies you any access to map and can do what ever they want and they got superior production to chinese and mini song dynasty effect making them having massive advantage over china. Then there in my opinion is the best booming civ out all. Abbassid. -50% villager cost reduction is insane. Its way better than villager production speed because with it player has to spent a lot more food which is away from army etc.
But like you said. China will not do anything better than any other civ and is still by far hardest civ to play and in many areas just clunky and unpolished. Its like 20ppl pitched 100 different ideas to a hat and then they pulled 10 ideas from it which resulted china we know rn
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Just basing thing completely off statistics isn’t a clear answer upon itself.
While it is a Indicator nonetheless, it stays as a indicator.
People underappreciate certain strenght of civilizations. Just because they get blinded by Statistics.
If we were to base of solely on statistic. Then Dheli Sultanate should be a Top tier civ, yet you see it struggling in the high level. Compared to lower ranks. If one are to base off stastitic in all ranks then it becomes suddenly among the top tier civs.
Which doesn’t make sense, but again. Statistics.
And should we base everything on the absolute peak players performance?
Because then you start forgetting and neglecting certain civs such as English and especially French which are far more “easier” to play, becomes way more OP for the lower ranks. Is that fair?
All civ’s should be about equal in difficulty in my honest opinion. But that would sorta ruin the uniqueness of civs now wouldn’t it?
And China is not one of those considered “easy” to play. Henche why people overall perform far worse with china. But that does not ignore the fact they are still Strong and far from being a “useless trash tier civ” that so many people make it to be.
One could say the same about Abbasids. They are at the bottom, yet they are considered one of the strongest civs even among the TOP players despite its low pick and winrate.
Pretty much sums everything up about ZN not doing any damage to armored units.
With Fire-arrows, they actually do more damage to Knights than Cannoneers for the Chinese.
It is one of the strongest composition there is. NoB’s are gunpowder units and does fixed damage on targets. Yes they do less damage. But they do more damage against heavy armored units such as Maa and Knights, Things that Mangonels barely do damage against.
So in a sense, you are sacrificing killing power against range units due to the nature of not doing burst damage.
But overall DPS is higher against armored units.
The PG are some of the best Maa there is, only Dheli and HRE are better.
You are not appreciating how good unit mobility is in this game.
“Its like comparing a gun to a bow, just because the gun has bullets. Because the bullets are smaller, even though its faster doesn’t mean the gun is less lethal and the bow is more lethal due to having a much heavier projectile” - My friend who mains china.
Mangonel vs Grenadiers, ofc the mangonels are going to win.
But here again, in practice, the Grenadiers are just better. Why? because its far easier to deny Mangonels than it is to Deny a descent size group of Grenadiers.
Not to mention if they are supported by clockwork Bombards, that easily shred through Mangonels.
And also not to mention Rus and Mongol springals. And we can’t forget a single culverin is enough to destroy several mangonels.
So as long as you keep Grenadiers protected with Anti-mangonel units, be it in form of horsemen, springalds, or bombards.
There not much you can do to hard counter grenadiers. Other than trying to constantly split them away from their siege support.
You know that having +1 range on Towers and Castles, makes their Cannon emplacement outrange bombards ye? You could put 2 towers next to a castle, upgrade them with cannon emplacement, and you can pretty much just snipe the bombards trying to break. As 3 of them shooting at a bombard would immidietly kill it.
Also against Dheli Elephants.
Just use Crossbows. 25 Fully upgraded Crossbow should easily kill War Elephants supported by healers.
And Mangonels do bonus damage against Tower Elephants, not to mention easily kill the Scholars supporting it.
Other than that, I find just using horsemen a simple counter against Tower Elephant spam, as they do bonus damage + take less damage from tower elephants as horsemen doesn’t count as heavy armor.
And rarely do they have an war elephant to support.
But Dheli is a hard-counter civ against the Chinese in a sense.
The only strong unit the chiense have to counter Elephants is Fire Lancers.
Their AOE blast should easily flatten the scholars hiding under the elephants or trying to run away.
And if you play Abbasid.
Nothing hardcounters the Dheli any harder.
Imams Single conversion allow you to pretty much Snipe elephants from miles away. giving dheli a taste of their own medicine.
I don’t think you appreciate the strenght of the cannoneers.
Theya re among the strongest units in the game.
Giving reload drills to Cannoneers, + extra range. + the effect Dynasty buff.
That gives the Cannoneers a whopping 53% Increased attack speed, and range of 5.5
That means they get to fire off 3 extra shots against a MAA before they get in range. Not to mention healing over time that might allow them to fire a extra shot even before dying.
If you think this is a useless buff.
Then I do then think Strelskies deserve a major buff.
The hard nerf to pyrotechnics didn’t only act as a nerf to ability but also personality. It was a large part of what set Chinese apart in terms of playstyle, and that was simply deleted for the sake of balancing stats.
There are ways to balance without cutting off critical things about a civilization’s identity. Games should be about fun, and technologies, units, buildings should motivate players to use them and not simply be benefitial stat boosts that is technically the best thing to use.
There are a lot of fun things about the Chinese civilization and it is unfortunate that they have simply been pruned patch after patch. I don’t mind nor care about nerfs as much as I do for the redesigning of abilities to absolute stagnation. I hope future balancing tries to take this into consideration and revisit this decision.
Compare the two versions of Pyrotechnics and there is no doubt in anyones mind that the first one, is far more fun. And that should be the goal as a gameplay principle. Nerf, twist and squash it all you like–but maintain the core concept, and it will still be more fun than whatever the current rendition of Pyrotechnics is.
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