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Idk, with early tp you get nearly 3 shipments in a row in colonial, which is pretty good either way. (Btw I'm pretty new to China, but I've done tp+2 vills pretty much every game)

I've been playing a lot of age 2 China lately and unfortunately it's just way worse in every way to any other build China can do. FF is the only viable option :(

That, or flamethrower rush.

On water maps I quite favour the petard FI too. Also sometimes the horse artillery FI can work, but not always.

Aizamk wrote:That, or flamethrower rush.

On water maps I quite favour the petard FI too. Also sometimes the horse artillery FI can work, but not always.

Im so much confused... are u a japan or sweden??????

@breeze

deleted_user wrote:notification

oh boi am I confused about the quality of your recent posts, please stop talking shit everywhere

pecelot wrote:@breeze

deleted_user wrote:notification

oh boi am I confused about the quality of your recent posts, please stop talking shit everywhere

what do you define as shit? he claimed to be sweden before and i just asked a question because i was confused

What if Standard Army Hitpoints became Standard Army Combat (kind of like Boyars)? Would a colonial play with china be more viable?

Buff changdao Swordsman's melee multiplier vs cav. or give them some hand resist.

They already have 20% vs. Melee

They also don't have lower hand attack in cover mode iirc unless the patch fixed that

The patch fixed that.

Aizamk wrote:That, or flamethrower rush.

Teach me, master

What's the difference between the patch and standard? IMO, the only thing China really needs is to fix Keshiks. Ming Army is barely better than Old Han Army vs Cavalry, so China lacks a pure anti-cavalry army, which the Ming Army is supposed to be. Keshiks are theoretically incredibly broken units, but what might improve them would be to lower their health and increase their attack, making them more competitive with Qiang Pikemen in terms of damage output. They're fragile as hell anyways, but they don't deal enough damage to compensate.

See, here's the problem. Do the number crunching, and what do you find? The trick is that China does not actually build units, excepting its artillery pieces, it builds armies. The armies are balanced as a whole: Old Han Army, for instance, is essentially a musketeer, not a skirmisher army, dealing 20% less anti-cavalry damage for about the same cost as 4 musketeers. The Ming Army is more of an anti-raiding army, using a combo of pikes and fast ranged cavalry to put ranged cavalry down. But you know the problem with the Ming Army? When it comes to direct anti-cavalry capability, it actually has approximately the same, or a little less, anti-cavalry ability as the Old Han Army. So you have a choice of crappy Musketeers in the Old Han Army, or a mix of anti-raider and anti-cavalry in the Ming Army.

I played a game recently where I decided to sit tier 2 and spam flamethrowers. My opponent predictably carded hussars and I switched to Old Han / Ming Army, but China simply doesn't have a real anti-cavalry banner army. Ming basically needs a third pikeman to be competitive as anti-cavalry; as is, when it's just as effective as an old han army for cost, it's only worth it based on having a different resource structure than old han army.

Inst wrote:What's the difference between the patch and standard? IMO, the only thing China really needs is to fix Keshiks. Ming Army is barely better than Old Han Army vs Cavalry, so China lacks a pure anti-cavalry army, which the Ming Army is supposed to be. Keshiks are theoretically incredibly broken units, but what might improve them would be to lower their health and increase their attack, making them more competitive with Qiang Pikemen in terms of damage output. They're fragile as hell anyways, but they don't deal enough damage to compensate.

See, here's the problem. Do the number crunching, and what do you find? The trick is that China does not actually build units, excepting its artillery pieces, it builds armies. The armies are balanced as a whole: Old Han Army, for instance, is essentially a musketeer, not a skirmisher army, dealing 20% less anti-cavalry damage for about the same cost as 4 musketeers. The Ming Army is more of an anti-raiding army, using a combo of pikes and fast ranged cavalry to put ranged cavalry down. But you know the problem with the Ming Army? When it comes to direct anti-cavalry capability, it actually has approximately the same, or a little less, anti-cavalry ability as the Old Han Army. So you have a choice of crappy Musketeers in the Old Han Army, or a mix of anti-raider and anti-cavalry in the Ming Army.

I played a game recently where I decided to sit tier 2 and spam flamethrowers. My opponent predictably carded hussars and I switched to Old Han / Ming Army, but China simply doesn't have a real anti-cavalry banner army. Ming basically needs a third pikeman to be competitive as anti-cavalry; as is, when it's just as effective as an old han army for cost, it's only worth it based on having a different resource structure than old han army.

Keshiks are a fine unit actually for their cost, if you manage to mass them up they can do very well against cavalry. The problem is massing them, since you can only train them in armies. It is also awkward to have your anti cavalry split between melee and ranged units and this is what probably makes you think that the Ming army is not a good anticav army. Keep in mind that chinese units are all weak, so you need to outmass your opponent on top of making the right unit counters in order to win fights decisively (1 ming army costs barely more than 2 hussars).
Anyway i don't think that it is in the EP balance team's plans to fix colonial china anytime soon unfortunately.

The problem is the army, not the unit. Keshiks, for cost and with cards, actually outdamage most other cavalry units. But because they're trained either with the Mongolian Army or with the Ming Army, they don't provide strong anti-cavalry support for Standard armies or Flamethrower masses, which have glaring cavalry vulnerabilities.

Thing is, Keshiks deal 18.6 dpsr with scourge in Colonial, and they don't have wonky scaling factors. This makes them the best dragoon-class unit in terms of damage for resources, even better than Zamburaks. However, Qiang deal 38.9 dpsr without any cards in Colonial, and they penetrate ranged resistance. This means that Keshiks are good when they move ahead of the main army and snipe enemy Hussars, but they're bad when you need to protect units like Chuks or Flamethrowers from enemy engagement.

The advantage of Keshiks, however, is that they get their bonuses against all cavalry, implying that they'd beat Dragoons in exchanges. But to get to a mass of Keshiks is difficult, moreover, Keshiks are atrocious as strategic units, since their reliance on multipliers means that they're atrocious against anything but cavalry, and their siege attack is too low. So, it's roughly better to get Old Han Armies, especially after Old Han Reforms, as anti-cavalry.

china has pikes and redcoats to do anti-cav job in age 2. keshik are a bit weak, but it's not so bad.
steppe rider is the problem. you can only have 2 steppe in a batch (means 1 hussar), and you don't have another unit to replace them.
10 rattan shields are not bad, but it's far from enough.
that means, after 7 steppe died, china can only train a colonial army with chukonu+pike/keshik/redcoat, which is far from "complete". what will you do if you play colonial with an european civ, but are not allowed to train hussars? it's called "unplayable"!

There's still the 8 cossacks.

but the russian ally bonus, vill training boost, is totally useless in age 2.

It is indeed. But what options do you have?

Ming army should be 2 keshiks+2 steppes imo (or something like that), but it would probably be too strong, so idk. Moreover that would change a lot how the game is played, so i don't think it will even be considered.
Russian consulate is also bad, you can use it to get cossacks but you need to change it asap because 10% faster vills is useless and also the blockhouse doesn't give you much.
If the EP team doesn't think that the chinese colonial age should be changed then there is little point in discussing the possibilities imo.

Consulate units are nice to have, but they're essentially the equivalent of a shipment; using availability equivalency, one export is equal to 15 wood in the best case scenario. Using export rate equivalency, one export is equivalent to 2.78 wood in the best case scenario and equal to 7.44 food in the worst case scenario. In general, export shipments are nice to have, but not something you can depend on spamming.

One of China's main weak spots is low anti cav potential, especially against heavy cav. Pikes are useless in age 3, Keshisks too weak, while Changdaos are just not enough. Manchu's are very good merc shipment, but one can't always afford them. I think buff to China's anti cav potential is in order...

Try Forbidden Army for anti-cav. It is true, though, that Qiang and Changdao are both much weaker relative to the arquebusier and chu-ko-nu, for example. The Keshik is a somewhat similar case. It almost seems as though it's intentional, doesn't it?

Atomiswave wrote:One of China's main weak spots is low anti cav potential, especially against heavy cav. Pikes are useless in age 3, Keshisks too weak, while Changdaos are just not enough. Manchu's are very good merc shipment, but one can't always afford them. I think buff to China's anti cav potential is in order...

imo it's china's opponent who should focus more on his anticav job
tons of forbidden army, backed up with monk, changdao, redcoat, are just too hard to deal with. cuirs are good, but 60s training time makes them less useful in this situation (forbidden army takes only 29s to train in RE, and 33s in EP: still very fast).

fei123456 wrote:

Atomiswave wrote:One of China's main weak spots is low anti cav potential, especially against heavy cav. Pikes are useless in age 3, Keshisks too weak, while Changdaos are just not enough. Manchu's are very good merc shipment, but one can't always afford them. I think buff to China's anti cav potential is in order...

imo it's china's opponent who should focus more on his anticav job

Ye, meteors and fails are very good cav, but how many times have you seen China lose to mass cuirs or even mass huss. I saw it too many times.....