Based on what I’ve seen with Swedes and some Age-up politicians, I want to propose to make Manchus available in the monastery to China when you send their Home City unit shipment.
I think it would be such a nice incentive to make you use the monastery more, while helping China to have a chance vs heavy cavalry. Besides, it’s very historically accurate.
I know that Keishiks have been buffed through the previously known as ‘‘Old Han reforms’’ card, but it’s too late into the game unless you go Fast Industrial and even then, it’s not enough to give China a fighting chance vs cavalry (particularly in mid-game). I believe this could be a huge balance fix for the civ.
That is true, but I’ve been watching a lot of competitive games in ESOC that had that going for China as well, but the problem seems to still stand.
It’s perfectly okay for the civ to have a weakness vs cav, but it shouldn’t be an automatic lost vs a mostly cav composition. With this, the weakness would still be there, since you would only train manchu from one building, with little to no train-time reduction capabilities, unlike the euro civs. @vividlyplain
An effective anticav unit that compliments your army throughout the different stages of the game is effective, adds diversity to playstyles and unit types. But as the game is right now, it is not worth it to go for them long-term (unless you get Woku cav archer that shadowtechs).
I play team-games a lot, and I try to mix in mercenaries and outlaws often. When it works, it works great, but there are 3 big problems:
My performance and chances of winning the game are highly influenced by if I got lucky with mercenaries or outlaws as anticav.
The mercenary strategy and the investment you’ve put in cards goes to trash after the game reaches 20min+, which is often in team-games.
Asian civs pretty much don’t have cards like “cavalry/infantry combat for all units”, so there is not much of a reason to go for this strat (the Age IV card that buffs 8% is miscellaneous)
The good thing is that this can all be easily fixed by giving Asian civs Imperial Mercenaries, Infinite Age IV mercenary shipments, more generalized card buffs, or Wonder specific buffs to outlaws/mercenaries.
The sad thing is that for years and since DE was released, devs only focused on giving these perks to European or new shiny civs for some reason.
I like this a lot. I think it should also come with a range buff because by Age IV, your opponent has range cav caracole and Iron Troops have a very hard time countering them with that extra range, even when they should be able to. The tech is expensive enough already for what you get.
Another alternative to the Manchus one is to buff (like a big buff) this card, in order to have a good complementary consulate army across most of a game.
For the Indians, the effect of Foreign Tradeing Companies perhaps can be changed: the next shipment/tech of Consulate cost 50% off, the Consulate armies cost 10% off, and an export trickle of 0.75 is added. No negative effect.
For the Japanese, an Age I card named Dejima would be nice. It can ship a Consulate rickshaw and give an export trickle of 0.35, and slightly improve bonuses of Western allies.
I would like to introduce a new card to give Asian civs a better trickle of export (eg 1.15/s), but with a cost (eg 500 coins). Their names can be the most famous commodities (other than tea) in the global trade market on the AOE3 timeline.
Chinese ceramics
Japanese lacquerware
Mughal textiles
With these commodity cards and Tea Export/Dejima/Foreign Tradeing Companies, Players can use 2 slots to make the trickle stack up for each civ.
