What is concerning about Chinese in ranked game

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Dear devs,

I don`t know if you guys have paid any attention to the statistic. When you do so, you will find an astonishing fact that Chinese get the lowest overall win rate, 47.3%, while all the other civs win rate only derive roughly 1% from the middle, and they have <50% winrate against EVERY other civs. Regardless though, it seems there is still no one think Chinese need urgent buff or rework in the latest patch. If this is the best your balance team can do, I have to say this is really disappointing.

I would say Chinese has a too slow pace that they do everything one step behind their opponents. This could be for several reasons: expensive dynasty, Zhu Ge Nu is easy to counter and expensive farm transition. If Chinese does not advance their dynasty, they loss 3 of their 6 special units. If they do invest on dynasty, Song is fine but Yuan and Ming are hardly affordable. Fire lancers usually present after 20 minutes, and grenadiers only present in team games. And for Zhu Ge Nu, they does almost no damage to anything has a base ranged armor of 3. Sadly, among all the 10 civs we currently have, 5 of them have age 2 heavy armor, Ottoman have Sipahi and Mehter, Malian has javalin, the only left are Abbasid and Delhi. I have heard many people complain that their heavy armor is defeated by Zhu Ge Nu, truly it happens, but usually they just run 5 or 6 heavy armor units into 50+ Zhu Ge Nu, they are just overwhelmed and they will die anyway even there is same amount archers. Lastly, Chinese has no discount on their villager or farm, 2TC Song will run out their food extremely fast and they have to spend a lot of resource to transition into farm earlier than any other civs. This extremely hinders their unit production, usually causing a defeat by all-in. I would urge an adjustment on these problem for a better balance.

Another issue I want to draw attention is, many people insist Chinese is fine on its current situation, or Chinese get a bad win rate because those players are suck. Their common reasons are, they claim they get to conquer league with Chinese (cannot be examed wether they are telling a truth or just bragging), or some professional players get a decent win rate with Chinese, or Chinese get a >50% win rate among the top 100 players, but I would say, if you want this game die, then take their advice. I was once a StarCraftII player, I witnesses how that game continually lost its player because their balance serves professional players only and totally neglects the majority of ladder players. Going back to our game, maybe those people are enjoying Chinese, but if much, much more other players DOES NOT, that indicates a problem. And my last suggestion is, if you still don`t trust my word, then play Chinese yourself on ladder and see if you can really enjoy it.

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When the lowest winrate is 47% that is a very well balanced game tbh. The game is not really balanced much around the top level, otherwise French/English would be seeing major buffs, but that would break lower elos. One of the issues with buffing Chinese is that they are great in team games. If they were made a 50% winrate civ for average players, they would break team games. You can’t balance perfectly in every game type/level.

Also please for the sake of everything good, please use spacing in your posts.

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Chinese is #2, the civ with highest win rate (54%) after mongol, if you filter by only the top 100 players. That’s why making it better would be tricky.

Its just a hard civ to play. 47% isn’t so bad.

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I have addressed that, among the other 9 civs, none of them have a win rate <49% accross all league, Chinese win rate just derive too much comparing with other civs. I admit that the balance between other 9 civs does not have major problem, but it definitely requires more effort on Chinese. The problem for Chinese is most of players cannot make it to mid game, the risk of breaking team game you mentioned is because Chinese has a OP late game, so the correct way to handle that is buff Chinese early game and nerf its late game.

And as for the French/English, they are on the contrary because they can do early aggressive. This is fine as it is a player friendly design, top players may not pick them but them can still satisfy to need of the majority of player. The problem with them is their mechanism are too simple, and I believe that is why English got their king and French is receiving a varient civ. Hopefully the problem with Chinese can be solved in its varient.

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Average may not be the best measure for this.

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Not every civ has to be good for average or below average players. As long as the game is not exclusively balanced around high level, it is ok to have more difficult civilizations, otherwise top players stagnate. You see this in League of Legends where there are a handful of champions that are really mediocre outside of top-level play.

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I am afraid you do not get my point at all and you are messing with the concept of balance and player`s strength. Balance is not “if there are players can manage it, it is fine”, it is “if the majority of player can manage it, that is fine.” I admit that probably the top 100 players are enjoying Chinese, but average players like me DOES NOT. Those top players can get a high win rate with any civ, but that attributes nothing to the balance, it is simply because they are better at the game. Blizzard said “StarCraftII is designed for good enough players” and it is dying, if devs do the same thing for Chinese then players just stop playing Chinese, thank god we have other 9 civs so the game will not die for this moment. If there is only a few people cannot manage a certain civ, it is their problem, but if the majority of players cannot manage it, you have to think twice about the design. This is a game, a commercial product, it is meant to be enjoyed by everyone.

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It should be enjoyed by everyone which means there should be both civs that are great for low, medium and high players. If we made every civ good at low ranks, then high ranks would suffer.

Chinese are just a civ that is designed for higher ranks moreso than other civs. Pretty soon we will have 14-15 other civs great for lower level players.

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This is the point. As you can tell by the in-game difficulty rating (3/3), the Chinese are a difficult civilization. Average and below average players can’t get the most out of it, if they want they have to improve.

The average win rate doesn’t tell the full picture. It may be around 50% at higher elos, meaning it’s neither too strong or too weak (balanced), but be way below at the lower end, say 38%. If you average you get 44% in this example.

You can’t then assume that means the civ is under powered, that information means that the civ is hard to play, as by design. So the only thing that needs buffing is your skills, no offence.

If you’re determined to learn the Chinese you can practice, refine build orders and counter-strategies and then start winning and climbing the ranks as a result.

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About civilizations that fell on hard times:

The detail is that 47% for the Chinese is not such a bad figure, it is very close to the ideal 50%. If it were 30% or 20% or 10%, there we could say that the civ is having many problems.

Examples of civ that had a bad time are the Mali:

  • When the Civ came out on ranked, it had a 20-30% win ratio with any non-cavalry civ, until someone discovered the strategy of starting the game with a mine and going to feudal age with gold passive, as well as using the War Scout for a feudal rush, and his victory rate rose to be the best last season.

About his average winning streak:

Perhaps precisely because the Chinese civ has unique units for each unit subtype (Range: Chu ku nu, Cavalry: Fire Lancer, Infantry: Palace Guard, Siege: Nest of Bees), being a Jack of All Trades it does not have a specific weakness against other civs but not a specific advantage either.

I would also say that it has to do with the fact that Chinese Civilization is probably one of the most difficult to master, difficulty 3/3, I would give it 4/3.

The other reason I think has to do with their Landmarks:

  • Because they can build 2 landmarks by age, to maintain balance, usually one of them has a smaller effect than the other has a smaller effect than the other.

  • This aspect seems good, but it also limits the strategies that a civ normally gets by choosing one landmark from another.

  • Barbican of the Sun is just a Mini-Keep, and Imperial Palace’s Effect is good, but it pales in comparison to Astronomical Clocktower’s

  • That being the case, what a Chinese player should assess when building his landmarks is "Which dynasty" is the one he wants to have when he reaches the Imperial or Post-imperial Age, since the order counts. However, this only works for LATE GAME, thus China works better as a civ for Late Game than for rush, which puts it at a disadvantage if the opponent specializes in rush.

About its future balance:

Let’s consider what’s coming in Season 6 with the expansion:

  • Once Bizantines, Japanese and Civ variant comes out, even the chinese, whatever the final name is, (For now let’s call it “China 2”), assuming that it has other unique units and another mechanism, in the future by “Balance”, and just like what happened with the base game, we can consider whether they even deserve more unique units or changes to their mechanics.

  • For example, I commented in several posts about possible new landmarks and unique units for the civ. I’m not sure if any of these ideas, or those from Age III, will be used for the Civ variant, but this will also affect the future of the original Chinese Civ.

  • Of course, I don’t think that the Developers will forget to balance or add new technologies or units to the base civs after the DLC, let’s remember that many of these new civilizations will be used in ranked, and if there is a mess because some of these are very broken or very weak, there will be changes due to balance.

  • We will also have to see what the new streak of victories of the Chinese civ against the new civilizations is, maybe there will be surprises.

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It’s a design conundrum to make any 2+ different things, consisting of differing skill floors to meet in competition and result in even outcomes.

Basically China is very hard, so the minimum skill JUST to play it is already super hard compared to ENGLISH? BUT once you get gamers at that equally high level of mastery on CHINA and say ENGLISH, you’ll find out that CHINA reward ceiling is fucking broken… with a win rate as high as 70%? After 25mins??? (That’s not balanced).

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Yeah, I wouldn’t say 47% overall win/loss while others are 51%-49% is bad at all, the kind of numbers only Star Craft 2 achieves. AoE4 is an incredibly well-balanced game.

One other factor to consider is that Chinese players might actually tend to be Chinese, playing the game with heavy ping disadvantage. At least in my experience I see many players with Chinese character as names playing their own culture. And we know that most people playing this game “main” and “sub-main” two to three civs in 1v1, meaning people who play Chinese, if they indeed are actual ethnic Chinese in China, might be consistently playing the game with ping disadvantage.

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Starcraft isn’t really a great reference tbh since it only has 3 factions. It’s way way easier to balance 3 factions than 10, not to mention the soon-to-be 16

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