Crazy how low it is. I am surprised. Really surprised about Rus too. I thought Russia had good units
I think we can consider getting rid of our excessive dependence on NOB now.
NOB should play as sort of supplementary fire support, rather than being the core of your strategy.
For this we can nerf NOBâs damage from 6 to 5 even 4, when increasing bouns damage to range unit as compensate. Then give China and ZXL some new buffs like below.
NOBâs damage decrease form 6 to 4, bouns damage to Range increase from 2 to 4.
China
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Add a new upgrade to Spearmen, available after Castle. Name it whatever you like.
Spearmen wield Chinese Halberd as Keshik, increase bouns damage against Heavy to 3. -
Incendiary Arrows granted for free in Castle Age.
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Battle Hardened will also increase HP of Spearmen now.
ZXL
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Dali Horses increase extra 2/3/4 bouns damage to Heavy Units.
Iâm not sure if it is OP, maybe 1/2/3 is more reasonable. -
Hard Cased Bombs buffed.
Units receive +20% Melee and Ranged Damage for 5 seconds when hit by a Grenade. -
Roar of Dragoon give Spearmen with Chinese Halberd to increase their bouns damage to Heavy Units just like China.
This is just my another casually plan, no need to take it too seriously.
Hopefully in the next patch some of the weaker civilizations will be buffed. 
I think what youâre saying makes sense. In the last patch, they nerfed sieges, which was a hint that we should get rid of our reliance on NoB. But they should buff some other units to have a more interesting and flexible playstyle.
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China need buff of course, the change of Chemistry nerfed all their gunpowder unit, make the millitary now looks pretty vanilla (or mediocre I think), got less feature comparing Ottoman(in gunpowder) and ZXL.
And I approve that China are lack of anti heavy armor before Age III, handcannons (from TC, Barbican or Outpost) do helpful but dismal against heavy unit horde.
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I agree with your opinion. In the introduction to Chinese civilization, one of its characteristics is gunpowder. However, itâs somewhat ironic that this characteristic seems to have little significance in this version. 
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Thereâs no doubt that the Chinese need to be strengthened, and this seasonâs update actually nerfed many of the Chinese traits almost to the point of a death sentence, with the NOB now ceasing fire almost immediately after firing, which has been one of the few Chinese troop types that are stronger than the ZXL. On top of that, the handcannonâs university tech has resulted in a drastic narrowing of the advantage of the Chinese having chemical tech as a bonus by default. what about the Zhugenu? They are completely incomparable to their ZXL counterparts. Sieges are even more vulnerable now for all to see, so beyond that, what do the Chinese have? The incredibly fragile and hard to damage firelancers? Or the Palace Guards that are inferior to ZXLâs in attack power, movement speed, and unlock timing except for a bit of pitifully little extra HP? Or those generic soldiers? Oh, itâs true that Chinese Knights have extremely high HP when unlocked the Ming Dynasty, but donât forget that ZXL has better options. So overall, the Chinese are not only weaker, but compared to ZXL, even their so-called civilized traits no longer exist.
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China has many bonuses, the biggest being the faster training villagers from song dynasty which allows for an incredible boom that can be done in relative safety thanks to the barbican defensive landmark.
NoBâs are still good and the additional barrels tech is better than before, they got buffed in range this patch so that helps as well. You can buff them even further by building them with the clocktower for much more HP.
China has the best HCâs late game and you get the ancient techniques tech to further boost your eco.
China compared to zhu xi has a better boom, HCâs, much better NoBâs, better palace guards and for most of the game a better eco.
Zhu xi lacked identity before the recent changes, in many ways it was just a worse china but now it is much more different to china which is great.
I agree with you and I think China does need some buffs. however, in this patch, they extended the range of NoB for China and Zhu Xi but only nerfed the tax on China. Maybe the balance team has a different view on China or maybe they only focus on the opinions of pros or high level players, at least my feedback seems to be of little use in this patch 
.
Yes, these two civilizations now have different characteristics. But compared to ZXLâs cav and ZGN, Chinaâs NoB, HC and Palace Guard are all very underpowered inside this version, which leads to a bad performance and play experience.
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You keep emphasizing on better NoB, but that NoB upgrade after nerf is ridiculously expensive, I donât see it being worth it until late game, when you dont really want NoB that much
Well it is a late game upgrade, it would be broken earlier. China still have better NoB from the clocktower landmark.
The first thing you need to acknowledge is that the Chinese need two original landmarks to enter the Song Dynasty, which means that more than any other civilization, China would need to invest twice as many resources in the Tang Dynasty, which has basically no economic bonuses (especially in terms of food) in the first era, to be able to take advantage of the bonuses offered by the Song Dynasty. Entering the Song Dynasty would be in either the second or third era, and the extra 400 food and 200 gold would impose an additional economic burden that would not be offset anytime soon by the advantages that come from training villagers faster. Compared to the Chinese, ZXL has fewer resources needed to enter the second or even the third era, and in Song Dynasty, ZXL can build all kinds of buildings (including farmland) with less wood which is again a strong economic bonus, and without detailed data, I donât think that ZXL would be economically weaker than the Chinese in Song Dynasty.
Secondly, what I mean by NOB cease fire immediately after firing is that the firing logic of the siegecraft has been changed this season, NOBâs attack is realized by doing multiple low damage bursts quickly in a short period of time, but now once the target it chooses is dead, then even if there are still a lot of enemy troops around that target, NOB stops its bursts and chooses the target again - this will waste a lot of time, and itâs not something that can be compensated for by increasing range.
As for better palace guards, I made it clear that with all the bonuses, Chinese palace guards only have extra lifesteal (Ming bonus as well as tech), whereas ZXL can produce palace guards as early as the second era, and with all the bonuses, ZXLâs palace guards do more damage (Ming bonus), have faster movement or healing out of combat (Temple of the Sun ), and faster production (overseen by more powerful officials).
Finally, clocktower is indeed a nice landmark, but the gain it provides is limited to units it produces on its own, and it canât be supervised yet, which means that the number of units that actually enjoy the clocktower bonus in a single mass engagement is extremely limited.
In this case, then, China, as we know it, is characterized by âdynasties, gunpowder and taxesâ. ZXL also has Dynasty and Taxes, while Gunpowder, ZXLâs Bombardier is more powerful, and Artillery has a key aoe trait. The Chinese would have had hand cannons that the ZXL didnât have (and had a longer range), NOBs with longer bursts, and faster loading artillery. However, since hand cannons no longer benefit from chem tech, the strong side of Chinese hand artillery has been cut down, NOBs donât stand out right now due to their attack logic, and artilleryâs reload speed is only better than being able to deal aoe damage when attacking buildings. Thus, in the last major version (i.e. when University techs werenât so modified), the Chinese did claim to have the best of each with ZXL, but today, the Chinese suffer from too much unintentional damage caused by the version change.
The weakening of taxation is indeed somewhat incomprehensible, but the impact of the repetition is not great. It didnât actually change its output, it just carried less at a time, which meant that officials needed to move around more often. I think the makers need to give more detailed data, such as listing the gold income gained from taxing each matchup, in order to better assess the impact.
If china plan on doing the 2tc song boom they want both landmarks anyway, the barbican for early defense and the academy for IOâs and increased tax.
The song bonus of +33% faster villagers allows for a huge eco on 2tcâs that only abbasids can compete with, itâs also safer initially due to the protection of the barbican. In contrast ZXL can make 2 tcâs slightly cheaper and they can immediately transition to farms much easier due to cheaper farms/granaries etc. The downside for ZXL is they are more vulnerable to early aggression due to no defensive landmark and there boom is just a standard 2tc boom the same as many civs can do with the upside being you can sit in base on your farms.
I havenât personally noticed the difference in the NoBâs firing much. They do however feel better now since they got a bit extra range in the last patch.
For palace guards china can have them with +15% speed from yuan dynasty which is where they usually stay as china rarely chooses to go ming. So they get +15% speed and +30HP fairly easily. ZXL can get the speed but they get it at the cost of not having another bonus active from temple of the sun and to actually get +20% attack they must invest 3600 resources to get into ming. China get the extra HP just going to imperial while ZXL only get speed from being in imperial unless they go ming which is incredibly expensive.
China has a unique tech for bombards as well that boosts their fire rate 25%, if ZXL want the bombard tech then they must sacriice getting another tech as they can only choose 2 techs which are typically 10k bolts and the imperial guards.
In the end it isnât a competition between the 2 civs, if you enjoy playing china then you should try ZXL. I played china mostly then switched to ZXL as I prefer being able to move to farms early even if my overall eco is worse.
We need to clarify one set of concepts, just because a choice is usually made doesnât mean itâs the only choice. Itâs unlikely that the Chinese and ZXL players wonât go into the Ming dynasty in all games, and just because 10k bolts and the imperial guards are usually chosen doesnât mean that no one chooses other techs (which isnât a problem with our players, but a failure on other techsâ design ), and that ZXLâs initial landmarks, one of which allows for access to a large amount of resources, and the other of which allows for the gathering of troops in the early stages, somewhat The ZXLâs initial landmarks, one with access to a large amount of resources, and the other with the ability to gather troops in the early stages, can to some extent make up for what the ZXL is missing, barbican defenses and taxes.
You might say that ZXL needs to consider the location of its garden landmarks, but the barbican also needs to be considered. So I think we can agree that the current version of ZXL is more flexible and has a higher cap than the Chinese.
Going back to my original argument, what I said was that China lost its civilizational qualities, which doesnât conflict with your point, which was more about the fact that the Chinese still have the advantage in certain situations, but reaching the situations wasnât just up to the Chinese players but also the map, other players and sometimes, lucky. Otherwise, I can also say that many voices have stated that the current version is the âAge of Cavalryâ and the âAge of Camelsâ, and that the Chinese donât have much of an advantage in cavalry, whereas ZXL, with its Imperial Guard, Dali Horse tech, and Temple of the Sun bonuses, clearly has the advantage of being the best player in the world. be much more powerful. I hope I can reach this consensus with you that the Chinese need to be strengthened, and that the Chinese are not strong in mainstream matchups right now. As for the argument that the Chinese have lost their civilized traits, I welcome you to keep your opinion, and likewise I will do the same.
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If youâre a china main my suggestion to you would be to play china on the maps where it works well and play ZXL on other maps ZXL is a variant after all and they have similar mechanics. I do agree with you that china could do with a few small buffs. ZXL was in that situation and it received buffs to grenadiers, zhuge nu and cavalry and now it finally feels ok to play. Now china could also do with a few small buffs.
1 way Iâve found to play china more safely is to do the typical 2tc song dynasty boom and put down just 1 granary and supervise it to increase farm income and you can immediately transition to farms just like zhu xi. The extra 20% wood drop off helps with farm cost and extra 20% farm income from supervising the granary makes farming early worthwhile as with the granary itâs a combined +30% in food income and you can get 2 rows of farms all around just that 1 granary. This alleviates chinas biggest problem which is running out of food due to just how fast they make villagers.
Another alternative I like is to age to castle with the imperial palace, supervise a stable to get some knights out quickly then use the palace to find the opponents isolated villagers and go and raid them with your knights to keep the opponent on the back foot while you continue booming your economy.
Until china receive buffs we must work with what we have available and I think you can make china work in most matches.
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