Rant: serious. What can Chinese make vs hindustani?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Hi i am 1400 elo currently, i don’t know what i can make vs Hindustan my main civ is Chinese.

In 1v1 ranked, i got megarandom, got a semi closed map with each player spawned with 3 towers around base, plenty of herdables and thick woodlines, so early rushing is impossible, so both of us went FC. The map has a lot of gold and stone so he made a castle at the front of his base. I knew ghulam was coming, literally the only thing i can make vs ghulan is cavaliers, but you know cavalier vs hindustani is never a good thing. I don’t even have paladin upgrades. I got more relics than him but the gold on that map is plenty. I saw him doing camel handcanoneers, i was wondering what can i make vs that. My thought is halbs and cavaliers and wish for the best. But it doesn’t work. I had good eco but the resources cannot be converted to a meaningful army. My unit cannot counter his unit.

I analysed it. It is because all my units are soft counter to his but his unit is very hard counter to mine. So i can never trade well.

If i make foot archer, it is only a soft counter to hindu camels.

Cavalier is only a soft counter to ghulams and hand cannoneers

especially hindu has the best cannoneers with shittons of range.

I got no hand cannons no paladins

Look at his army,

Ghulam is a very hard counter to my halb and archers

Handcannons are a very hard counter to halbs

Imp camel is a very hard counter to cavaliers (even paladins which i dont even have)

So my army composition is never going to trade well vs him. It is not a skill issue, it is a civ win . Now i think even if he didn’t do hand cannons, just going camel + ghulam, i still have no counter units. He even has hussars to raid while i only get light cav. He has bbc to snipe my trebs, i cannot kill his castle. My civ doesn’t even have bbc, and even monks are trash

Expand the topic, not just Chinese, many civs don’t have counter to hindustani units, mayan aztecs have no answer vs handcannon + ghulams, many civs cannot deal with imp camel + 9 range hand cannon.

they hindustani civ have the best counter to infantry, cavalry and archers you can imagine in aoe2, i don’t even know if i can win if my eco is twice of him, because my unit will trade badly no matter what. No nerf to hindustani it seems

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Archers are hard counter to camels

Did you try fast imp UU push? Hindu UUs are medicore before elite (and kinda bad against Chu ku nus)

3 Likes
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But also Chinese late game is just bad, because they have mediocre units. There are many unfavorable matchups for Chinese.

You would have to all in such scenario.

Huh? It definitely isn’t. No bonus damage, no extra defense. Especially vs Hindu camels.

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Chinese have a stronger early game. If it was an open map, you can attack in Feudal age, deal some damage, and then keep up the pressure in castle age. Even with the towers, scouts can still run around the base to idle/kill eco. Walling could keep the scouts out. As it’s a closed map, a full castle age push (castle drop or siege push) is likely a better option. Castle drop into UU should be effective in this case (ghulams are good against archers, but they really need the elite upgrade to get the pierce armor to charge into them - and Chu Ko Nu tend to be better against armored units than most other archers anyways). Then you can add in siege to go for the kill or knights to raid.

If they can’t get to imp (or even just can’t research chemistry), then hand cannons do not matter. And if camels are beating archers, then the camels must have a significant advantage in either tech or numbers (because camels lack pierce armor) - or some atrocious micro on the part of the archers (as in the archers march without firing while the camels get free hits). Hindustani camels get faster attack speed, but that doesn’t help much against ranged units.

Hindustanis are a civ with a very strong late game. But their early game is held up mainly by their cheaper villagers (some small food savings that encourages them to boom). Missing knights means that they lack the powerful raiding unit that most other civs have (though they can still raid with camels/light cav, even if they aren’t as good as knights at that).

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What if you hard push in castle age with LS + the new Scorps with balistics? LS beats Ghulam. Scorps beats Camels (specially with balistics). Archers and CA struggle against massed scorps too.

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Sell all your stone and keep pressure to the Hindustani player all the time after Feudal, stay in 1TC. Don’t advance to Imperial, don’t let him advanced to Imperial.

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I usually alt f4 everything thats not Arabia but here is how I would play it:

  1. Go Scouts
  2. Transition to archers: 2 range, 1 stable
  3. Go XBOW+Knight in Castle Age
  4. Get full map control, siege workshop is he is greedy
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Here is replay he went the castle so he has the threat of making ghulam and he didn’t even use fish. I prepared army but couldn’t beat his army and then he just raided me with hussar

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Low PA and low attack of Camels don’t help vs crossbows, even attacking faster.

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Tons of ways Chinese can win the matchup really. Even vs Hindustanis and their good eco, you still have a large eco lead and that’s your main advantage.

Remember: eco lead means that if nothing happens, you win by default. Obviously Chinese aren’t the best in super late Imp so try to pile the pressure before then, like early Imp would be ideal. Don’t wait until you are both 150 vills, multiple Castles and he is on Shatagni HC.

But even before that, the good old Crossbow Knight is a classic double gold comp that few civs can pull of, but Chinese is among those. You get an eco lead AND cheaper techs for this strat and this would be my first idea going vs Chinese. You add +2 armor on Knights and 2nd Stable depending on what units you see and start with a core of 8-12 Crossbows from Feudal plus +1 Knights. If you feel extra aggressive, add a forward Siege, this largely depends on how the matchup is going.

As an alternative fun strat, you can also do a 1 TC push Cav Archers which for Chinese come with cheaper upgrades, the main benefit of this strat is that it’s unpredictable, so try to hide it in late Feudal. Everything Hindustanis can do vs this strat, like Scorps, Skirms, is generic, so basically you turn this matchup a bit into Huns like civ X.

You can do a default light pressure with Xbow and defensive Siege and 3 TC boom fast-ish Imp, I don’t see what Hindustanis can do against that besides playing generic units.

Going Ghulam sets him massively behind in eco (because he will be 1 TC for a while), it’s safe to say that if you see instant Ghulam, he won’t also have Crossbow ready, so you can mix in Longswords or Knights (your choice) and just defend the TCs vs the Ghulams. He will eventually add Camels, Siege and possibly Xbow/CA though, so beware of these tech switches. The core idea though is that you have eco lead the whole time and whenever he overextends his army, or whenever you hit Imp, you take a fight that should be favorable for you. I don’t see Ghulam as having the same potential of Eagles of ending the game early (main reason being that he invested 650s into a Castle + build time and he is limited in production), so 3 TC boom and try to win that way seems like a safe bet. In fact, I think going UU in this matchup is a bad call as Hindustanis before late game.

Really unless Hindustanis finds good damage in Feudal, this matchup is advantage Chinese in nearly all ways I’d say, your core wrong idea seems to be that you think you’re not allowed to make Stable units vs Hindustanis, it’s true that Hindustanis have strong Camels, but they are still 55f 60g, yes they trade a bit better vs Knights, but still if you have 10 Knights, he must have 8-10 Camels to match them, and it’s an advantageous trade for him (accounting also for the speed bonus) but not massively so, more importantly Camels are weak to Crossbow, so Crossbow + Knights should really kill him faster than his Camel + Crossbow.

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Chinese are strong because of the pace they impose on the game and all other civilisations find themselves chasing, and because the Chinese have all the units they have no holes you can exploit to get back to even.

A common strategy is to open scouts, at half feudal switch to archers and arrive at castles already with a mass of crossbowmen. At that point you can continue with one stable and two archery ranges, really, the point of the Chinese is to do everything and not make 1 single unit

Also, if you are up against a closed map, do you know that Chu Ko Nu are strong against anything? Castle drop UU its very good. If anything, the problem with the Chinese is that they die against onagers in Arena

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Archers and Champs is what you need. Camels are hard countered by Archers, shred by Chu Ko Nu. While Champions are required to protect them from Ghulams. Mix in some halbs for extra cost effectiveness and even more counter to Camels if they dare charge.

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CHinese have a much better economy than hindustanis. This is what I will advice:

  1. Open fast archers and pressure in feudal into chukonu in castle.
  2. Hindustani ghulams die hard to chukonu. You need to mass chukonu
  3. Add onagers for skirms
  4. Add halbs and light cav as late game unit.
  5. CHu konu will counter hand canons as well.
  6. If hindustanis go skirms you can go light cavs