The true reason of nerfing Chinese in PUP

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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TL:DR: The Devs team is going to split Chinese

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Please note that the whole thread are a wild guess based on previous behaviour of devs team.

Remember when their nerf Indians

With update 42848, all Stable units have +1/+2 pierce armor in the Castle/Imperial Age but Indians can no longer research Plate Barding Armor.

Indians was a strong civ especially among high elo game but win rate is quite low in other elo. It kind of like the stiuation of Chinese and of course the problem of Chinese exist much longer. And then they change Indians that many criticism raised that and some even suggest that the change is unnecessary and make Indians almost unplayable. The change do not address any issue that it just make the civ worse.

After the Indians nerf, they announce the release of Dynasties of India, the Indian civilization was split and reworked into Hindustanis, Gurjaras, Bengalis.

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This is just a wild guess based on nothing.

That is what i got from your post.

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IDK. Correlation not causation IMO.

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It will be so dumb to split a civ like Chinese anyway. Anyway I doubt this nerf will change anything regarding Chinese power. They need more for sure.

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Lol, that just happened for 1 civ. What about all the other civs that got nerfed in the past? Aztecs got their +5 carry capacity reduced to +3, Vikings got their thumb ring removed, many other civs got nerfed from where they were 4 years ago but didn’t get newer civs which belonged to the same region historically. There’s neither correlation nor causation between nerfing civs and addition of new civs.

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Why, exactly? A Chinese split would make the most sense as a new DLC thing.

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Hmm, I don’t see why splitting necessarily requires nerfing OG?
In fact, they rolled back the changes to Indians upon indian dlc release

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You dont need to split the chinese just adding the surrounding empires like tibet and juchens is enough.

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China is like the 2nd biggest market outside the USA. There’s no way Microsoft are going to jeopardise that by adding Tibet to the game. Look at the list of games banned in China and the innocuous reasons for the bans and you’ll understand why.

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Concept is still solid though. They can add civs that surround China, like Jurchens, Khitans & Tanguts.

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I don’t think adding tibetans as a historical civ will get it banned
i m chinese . I think the civ doesn’t refer current tibet as not part of china
it is a historical empire. But i do feel tibet is not a significant enough civ in world stage

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Anything which stokes national pride in Tibet is a bad thing for the CCP. Look at the list of games banned and their reasoning for the bans and you’ll see why. E.g. Both Command & Conquer: Generals and Hearts of Iron 4 are historical battle games, but they are still banned in China.

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But again tibet empire has been under chinese influence or administration or both
since Tang dynasty
so that’s 1400 years ago. It is not a significant standalone civilisation in history

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Wow. Didn’t know that. This is a total fantasy game based on mostly stereotype. And it got banned? Because it portrayed modern China as an overly aggressive nationalist?

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That’s also my understanding. In Europa Universalis IV for example, Tibet can be formed as a new nation and to my knowledge, this game isn’t banned as it shows Tibet in a historical context.

C&C: Generals was also banned here in Germany for over 10 yrs as reviewers of the BPJM found it to be quite controversial in hindsight to the historical context of the early 2000s.

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I thought CCG was banned, despite drooling over China, for making their superweapon the nuclear missile.

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If tibet complicated to add just add other factions like juchens and keep chinese as it is simple solution.

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Just name them Himalayans or Tufan if you want to cleverly avoid use of Tibet

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Splitting Chinese is actually a great move, because China as a civilization is sort of boring right now, given that it has a single strength and rather set strategies.

Getting Tang / Song / Ming dynasties would be interesting, if Song was set to the current Chinese civilization, whereas Tang would be “Chinese, but strong in Feudal”, and Ming would be “Chinese, but historically accurate gunpowder weapons”, and adding Jurchens would actually be adding the early Qing Dynasty (“Chinese, but with Paladins and strong cavalry”).

The three things I want to see Forgotten Empires get right would be:

Manchu bows need to be featured with the Jurchens. On AOE2 Reddit, I suggested making the Manchu a very unique UU; i.e, while the cost of the Jurchen unique unit remains the same throughout, the Castle Age version (Iron Pagoda) would be a Horsekerl (heavily-armored cavalry unique adept at raiding and countering archers), while the Imperial Age would be a cavalry archer with bonuses against either infantry, cavalry or both (Manchu bows were noted for their short range, but extreme ########### power). Could actually make it a cavalry archer that benefits from piercing damage upgrades, but deals melee damage instead, a sort of non-camel Mameluke or mounted Throwing Axeman.

It’d be interesting because you’d have the first unique unit whose elite upgrade causes it to change unit class; the Iron Pagoda (Castle Age Unit) would be an anti-archer cavalry unit, while the Imperial Age Manchu would be a cavalry archer, and a good one at that.

The Ming civilization should emphasize the Ming’s innovation in gunpowder technology, such as their use of grenadiers, landmines, and so on. The best way to do so without deviating too much from Chinese technology would be to give them Hand Cannoneers (after a research) in the Castle Age, or give them Chemistry in Castle Age.

More importantly, the Ming should not have Bombard Towers (I don’t believe that was much of a Chinese thing), but should have a research that’d allow them to get Bombard Cannons with 100% accuracy (possible not on the move). You might want to take away siege engineers for balance purposes, but the Ming (and Chinese in general) are noted for using field artillery as sniper weapons.

The founder of the Manchus was killed by a Chinese artillery strike on his head, and that should be perfectly possible when it comes to AOE2, with 100% accuracy bombard cannons killing Nurhaci in one salvo.

Lastly, the Tang can be very interesting because they had both the Fubing (farmer soldiers who garrisoned territory while farming) and Mubing (same thing, but under the control of regional governors, leading to warlordism in later eras) systems. I think the Tang’s gimmick could be having the most unique units in the game, i.e, the Tang could have Fubing as unique units trainable from the Town Center starting from the Feudal Age, as a cross between the Man-At-Arms and the Villager (without the ability to build buildings). Mubing could be similar, trained from Castles starting from the Imperial Age (at least I’d like to think such), as a cross between the Hussar and the Villager. There would also be a 3rd unique unit, I’m thinking a combination cavalry archer and knight, for the Castle Age.

To compensate for the Tang having so many unique units, the Tang unique units are not upgradeable, and they’re designed to be trashy in Imperial Age, depending on their Mubing economy to remain viable and giving them a big advantage in trash wars as all their villagers are semi-viable trash units.

And to make the Tang the all-time world-champion UU civilization, you could add Hangtu Fortifications, which replaces all Palisade walls with a Hangtu version that has 2-4x the HP of normal Palisade walls as a Castle Age upgrade.

Hangtu (rammed earth) walls are a big Chinese thing, according to Tonio Andrade, one of the things limiting Chinese gunpowder weapon development, besides how well-developed the archery tradition was (Chinese bows and crossbows were often superior to Western bows, from the heavy Manchu armor piercer to the heavy Chinese crossbow, which had a lower draw weight but higher power due to long powerstroke), was that Chinese fortification technology, while conceptually inferior to later European star forts, was just extremely superior.

Japanese cannons in the late 19th Century during the Boxer Rebellion took weeks to take out the city walls of Beijing, built with rammed earth technology to extremely ridiculous depths, and that’s with 19th century technology facing 6th century technology.

It sounds pretty crazy, no? 500 HP palisades, or even 1333 HP palisades, but it’d be balanced by a few factors. First, it’d only be available during the Castle Age, as a unique unit upgrade to Palisade Walls, Outposts, and Palisade Gates. Second, the Tang are not intended to be an archery civilization; they’d be competitive to Castle Age, but the Tang were never noted for their crossbows. The Tang wouldn’t have the ability to fully exploit the quickwalls and overpowered palisades that an archery civilization would have. Third, the Tang are encouraged to build Fubing from their Town Centers, not villagers, so villagers would be in scarce supply and the Tang would have to sacrifice Fubing production to make proper villagers.

Worst case scenario, historical Hangtu walls took forever to construct, so while Hangtu walls might be way more durable than Palisade Walls, they’d also build way slower and thus be more inefficient for quickwalling.

There’s really a lot of potential for very interesting civilizations if the Chinese were broken up into dynasties. If Tibetans were added in later expansions, too, it would be a bit ahistorical (the Tibetans were shamanists before Buddhism arrived), but they should be able to get monasteries in the Feudal Age and self-healing cavalry (the Tibetans were known for their heavy cavalry). There are just a lot of ways not having China in AOE2 could pave the way for interesting civilizations, more so than the current “Big Eco advantage + Chu Ko Nu spam” Chinese civilization.

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Tibetans actually sacked the capital of the Tang Dynasty, and the Tang called in the Uighur Turks to bail them out. They ##### ### ####### because the Uighurs kept on demanding extraterritorial rights in China, but were too weak to get rid of them. Eventually the Uighurs themselves lost their empire, but by then, the Tang were busy devolving into civil wars with excessively powerful regional warlords.

If the Tang are added to the game as a distinct civilization, the entire point is that their Imperial Age sucks and is fought with trash units, but the trash units aren’t that bad performing for trash units. On the other hand, Feudal Age, early Castle? Power peak, weaken the enemy enough that you can keep a stalemate until it devolves into trash wars, then win with better trash.

The Tang actually have the best historical excuse for having the worst Imperial Age in the game, because no one can get offended by an earlier Chinese dynasty having a terrible Imperial Age, as opposed to getting offended by the current Chinese having a mediocre Imperial Age (Chuk spam is stopped cold by Onagers).

The Ming I have in mind and the Jurchens would have excellent imperial ages, one being a gunpowder-centric imperial age (spam da bombard cannon, spam da hand cannoneers), the other being a cavalry-centric imperial age (combination of Paladins and Manchus laying waste to everything in their path; Paladins counter archers, Manchus counter spearmen, camels, cavalry).

Changing the Chu Ko Nu to a regional unit for the Song and Tang (and perhaps Jurchens, if you wish to establish them as Chinese) also gives space to add a new unique unit for the existing Chinese civilization. The Song are known for the crossbows, unlike the Tang.

The Song used a crossbow composition of up to 50% of their forces historically, being saddled with terrible cavalry.

What this means is that you could let them have an actually historically accurate Chinese crossbow; not the toy, but iconic, Chu Ko Nu, but something like the Shenbi Nu (a steel arbalest with a long draw length, leading to increased power compared to European crossbows, but tending to be large and unwieldy).

The entire idea behind splitting the Chinese civilization is “China wasn’t that historically weak”, but the Shenbi Nu would not be a strictly better Chu Ko Nu, but rather, the Shen Bi Nu would be a cross between a longbowman and a Chu Ko Nu. It wouldn’t fire extra arrows like the Chu Ko Nu, but it’d have a range advantage over Arbalests, and it’d also ignore part of the piercing armor of its opponent (half armor effect), since it historically had a very strong armor piercing capability.

I.e, you could have a mix of Chu Ko Nu and Shenbi Nu (which would be unrealistic in the sense that Chu Ko Nu would be rare, whereas Shenbi Nu would make up the majority of combatants) wherein Shenbi Nu give your task force additional range.