Vision and Range increase to that of a max feudal age tower! 
Now you can drop the BBQ near enemy TC and basically see their whole base!
Edit
Range was always 8 range? I didnât notice that HOWEVER; I donât think the 8 range in live build was effective since you did NOT have the LOS to kill someone 8 range away.
Just to be clear - this is only the vision range. right. Weapon range hasnât increased at all.
Vision buff is nice, but minor. Does it really help you that much to see your oppâs entire base when youâre barbican/tower rushing
IMO it does, bc current BBQ canât see anything and would need a scout/additional tower to get that vision; Having Omni vision in itself is ALWAYS OP.
And this change isnât just good for aggressive BBQ; IMO itâs probably even better defensively because you can see enemy trying to sneak around your own base.
The rush to 2TC + Song now takes ~45 Second longer because of the change for Emperial Officials. At least up to that point villages donât help. Of course, if youâre left alone and allowed to boom you can now grow even faster with Villages and Granaries but actually I donât like it to be limited to the late game. Iâd rather have more options early game which are now less (so gameplay becomes more one-dimensional).
(Disclaimer: first impressions. They might change, they might not.)
The village building not requiring a dynasty is actually quite huge. It means not only is China the only civ that can consistently garrison all their vills, but it saves tons of wood (even if it isnât ideal for your first house or 2, itâs super good afterwards). Also having access to granaries on song is nice, but tbh I think these buffs are not enough to make up for other changes. Thereâs so many changes this patch, Iâm sure we will see more in the future. (Also the Imperial palace got a really nice buff for team games).
The village as your first house doesnât pay off until youâd alternatively would have had to build 3rd house; however when it pays off you save a max of 75 wood and 30 sec of build time. The 30 sec build time saved might as well be another 20 resources.
But back to the BBQâŚthe BBQ is much strong YES b/c of the LOS; seeing everything is worth EVEN if you dont go all in tower rushing b/c you can SEE and react and as always depending where the BBQ was set it will always be a hinderance to his town building since he canât build over the ruble
I think the purpose of the village price increase from 100w->125w is to halt the ability for Chinese players to open with it.
Currently, you start with 150w, you can build 1 mill, 1 lumber camp, and 1 house before gathering enough wood to make a mining camp. If Village was price still at 100w, you would open with mill, then observe where your 3 primary resource spots (food, wood, and gold) are located. Finding the two resources that are clustered together will dictate where you will drop your Barbican and the offside resource will place the village. You literally just lockdown harassment. Then skip the lumber camp and just chop the tree near TC for resources for the gold camp and then build lumber camp later or none at all if you are planning all in.
With a single village, you now sit at 50 pop cap, which is more than enough to carry you to castle age. You can literally skip all wood gathering and go straight to food+gold with IO supporting you on gold, and the inability for the enemy to harass you effectively, you can rush to castle age and ludicrous speed then drop a barracks/stable and supervise that to completely roll stomp your opponent with palace guard/lancer for a 2.5-3x production. All this can be accomplished with only 50w+100w+50w+150w = 350w investment (mill:village:miningcamp:barracks/stable).
I think village in Tang may be a bit powerful even with the price increase. Maybe make it should be Feudal age requirement, forcing at least 2 additional house prior.
I agree, I donât think you start with village, but being able to build them in feudal age without going song is a big deal. Not to mention they garrison like 10 vills so raiding chinese vills gonna be like impossible now if they are paying attention.
I have a build order that that does not waste potential tax that opens up with a village.
Immediately send 5 vil to wood and build a lumber camp,
send 1 vil to build a mill and rally your starting sheep to mill.
by the time you stockpile 100w pull a wood villager (make sure to clear its wood cacheâŚ) and send it to gold. Either by the time you reach gold or before you gather 10 gold youâll have enough wood to build a village with said gold villager. Your gold and stone are typically your exposed early resource thats why i suggests building village near gold (in-between TC and gold mine such that village is covered by TC fire while being a quick retreat from early raids)
Bu the time the village is built and before the gold villager can cache 10 gold mined you should have 50w to build a mine.
Now itâs up to what your plan is.
Either pull all wood villagers and send to food or send 3 to food and keep 1 on wood. (You could take the 4 wood villagers and send 3 to food and 1 to gold, but IMO youâll overcap on gold in the case of an all in)
By the time you have 8 villagers at the mill is the soonest IMO you should que your first IO.
IMO IMMEDIATELY once the IO pops out the TC manually pick up the 33+ tax at the mill and 16+ tax at the lumber camp SEPARATELY. IMO dont wait for 40 at the mill bc youâll need 2 to 3 mill tax trips to get all the gold you need around 3:26â˝â˝ for feudal.
Bbq rush? Take your scout the clear the way of wolves and insure your bbq isnât being scouted. If you see his scout you fight it in hopes of distracting him while your vil go the other way. If he has 2 scouts and your vil got spotted Either go back bc youâre faqqâd or keep going and potentially gg quit.
NOTE:
Because IOâs take 30s to que, IMO making one before you have at least 8 villagers to supervise means you effectively idled your TC by a factor of 0.2*vil times the difference between the vils under supervision minus 7.5 villagers;
TC idle in terms of standard vil que = -0.2* ( overseen - 7.5) vils.
Example overseeing 6 villagers equates to 0.3 vil worth of idle time on your TCâŚ
Wait. What.
China is pretty strong right now. If anything, they need some tweaks thatâs all.
Its important for everyone to understand just how terrible Granaries are. Iâm not sure if the developers themselves are aware because nerfing them down to 10% makes them a terrible investment, so here is an explanation.
You can also watch how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/4VvsA3wVNyI
A rice field and a farm are made up of several tiles. Villagers gather food from a tile until this tile is depleted. Then it needs to regrow and the villager will walk to a differnt tile. This costs walking time and reduces your effectiveness.
Faster gather rate means you deplete tiles faster. But they do not re-grow faster! Which means faster gather rate always has diminshing returns. Villagers will have to walk more and they walk further away from the next drop-off point.
So in reality, a 10% gather rate is never a 10% increase ressource income. In practice for farms it gets less and less effective the more gather rate you add. You could estimate this to maybe 7% in practice.
A granary costs 250 wood. This is simply way too expensive. Even if you stack its effect, you can only have few villagers affected by 3 granaries at once. Then some will be affected by only 2 granaries and the rest are only affeced by 1 granary.
In short, Granaries are a huge trap. They are not worth investing if the devs nerf them to 10%. They must stay at 15% gather rate bonus.
This is not a âbuffâ and this does not justify the nerfs given to Chinese. Especially when looking at other civs like English which get massive buffs without receiving any nerfs.
Chinese is at the bottom winrate and pickrate in this current position. They do not deserve further nerfs.
Sounds nice on paper but the concept is flawed in many ways:
I cant stop laughing at the âbuffsâ in this patch note. You get a worse and more expensive version of these âbonusesâ, that you have to spent resources to unlock!
Does it still sound like buffs? Hell NO, itâs just more nerfs in disguise!
What Chinese needs is keeping all their dynasties bonuses once unlocked, and the cost of unlocking the dynasty should be reduced!
Losing winrate?
This is their Altai winrate, filtered by 1300 and above
China is the best civ there. And yeah, balance should be done from top to bottom.
Ah so based on your own stats, Chinese top civ in Altai so letâs nerf them to hell. Apply the same logic the Mongol is already balanced so no need to change anything.
And your stats are invalid
Nice attempt at nitpicking whatever that suits your narrative.
You make a straw argument since i never said what you claim I said. I never said Chinese should be nerfed.
I actually think they simply werenât nerfed. Im also saying they donât need to be buffed. They are in a good spot. Someone has to be the 8th civ. Its china, and not by a large margin. It still has its advantages and is valid on many maps.
I also said my data is from 1300+ ELO. So, again, stop putting words in my mouth. My data is valid
Your data doesnât imply anything meaningful. Chinese is underpowered COMPARED to other civs overally. Your attempt to distort that fact failed short.
Chinese winrate across all ELO is 47%. Thats FINE. They are not weak, get real.
Im sorry they hurt your loved civ, I truly am, but stop taking it out on me.
China is the worst civ and thats OK. Someone has to be, they are only below average by 3%! Its the most balanced worst civ we ever had since launch.
I didnât mention, but Chinese is one of my mains. Im fine with the chagnes
I donât want to be too quick to judge but from what I read there, this canât be an optimal build. It is forcing usage of the village in dark age, okay, but Iâm pretty sure at the cost of delaying everything else (2nd TC, Song).
And again: till 2nd TC you only need 2 houses. So all you âsaveâ here is 25 wood at the cost of being slow.
Itâs funny to see people pretending hard to defend their argument. As a main Chinese, Iâm 99% certain that you donât play Chinese as main nor playing it competitively.
Most âbalanceâ since launch? Where have you been all the time? Have you been playing since BETA?
Itâs ok you hate Chinese, but itâs petty to see you hating it so much that you distort facts.
Its good that you said 99%
Here is the 1% for you: Bidderlyn â AoE4 World
Thats my profile, I have 4 civs I play the most and Chinese is one of them with a nice winrate too!
You not liking facts doesnât make them distorted. Everything I said is true, and backed by data I sent. I stand behind it. Balance should be dealt with first from top then to bottom. Chinese feel perfectly fine in 1200+ ELO games, as stats show too.
