How to counter the German mercenary FF with China?

[LOrd CaRL]

I find it's really hard to use China to counter German mercenaries. Chinese units are very weak even though in Fortress Age. Do you guys have some suggestions to counter German mercenaries rush?

[tedere12]

[RFijo]

raid his mines

[Kaiserklein]

Is it a rush or an FF? Are they mixing regular units or making only mercs?

[jgals]

maybe do the same thing back? China has some pretty damn good mercs themselves. I feel like Manchu/iron troop is the second best merc capability of AOE civ actually.

[helln00]

I think territorial army +mercs works pretty well , iron troops should work best. Use the changdao to pressure the cav back and then just snipe with skirms from the back.

Add some cav to further pressure german skirms and cav

[Hazza54321]

China units are very good and great late fortress upgrades so it’s basically delaying the fight as long as possible and hit a timing as german runs out of mines

[LOrd CaRL]

Is it a rush or an FF? Are they mixing regular units or making only mercs?

Yeah he only made mercs and some cavs. with good mircro, I was crushed. My men died 200+ but he only lost 70. That's frustrated.

[Shikari]

Is it a rush or an FF? Are they mixing regular units or making only mercs?

Yeah he only made mercs and some cavs. with good mircro, I was crushed. My men died 200+ but he only lost 70. That's frustrated.

His 70units are probably worth your 200 units though. Anyway imo early normal china stuff with early fortress push should work maybe age with skirm wonder and ship intervention and push?
It also depends on luck what mercs he got.

[deleted_user]

If you post a rec it's discovered you do X things very poorly.

I'm here to tell you it's not a strat issue.

[jgals]

some good answers here.i feel like this stuff should work if you take it to heart. Not that I really know because china is my weakest civ. I'd be more afraid of him going to 4 fast and shipping elmeti/fusilier with factories to keep producing merc

even then you should be able to have so many units by then and just rush his base after winning one fight

[gh0st]

Is it a rush or an FF? Are they mixing regular units or making only mercs?

Yeah he only made mercs and some cavs. with good mircro, I was crushed.

sounds like one of kaiser's smurf

[Squamiger]

China units are really cost-effective in fortress. German mercs are not. Your goal as China is to use your TC / army placement to hold as long as possible and trade cost-effectively until their mines run out, then counter. Or you could try a really aggressive early fortress push (700g age up + confucian academy skirms + forward village) to try to hurt them before they mass, but you probably still won't be able to kill them before they get their big merc shipments out. in theory anyways. its tough because a merc ff can always just turn into a regular German FF, with the huge uhlan and skirm shipments. I lose to Germany a lot as China so what do I know.

[lemmings121]

If you got to the point of losing 200 units, and killed 70 mercs, thats like a 20minutes game? you can be sure its not a strat issue where he "rushed mercs and you lost", there are a million details that could win or lose you a game like this. the only general tip i can give you is just pressuring gold mines, as german going heavy on mercs will be spread all over the map mining.

[Kaiserklein]

Is it a rush or an FF? Are they mixing regular units or making only mercs?

Yeah he only made mercs and some cavs. with good mircro, I was crushed. My men died 200+ but he only lost 70. That's frustrated.

What was the name of the guy, out of curiosity?

You want to check his deck. If he has a deck with no unit shipments, like I do when I make mercs, be aggressive. On a map without renegados/thuggees in age 2, you can rush him with bow pike steppe stuff. He won't have more than 5 outlaws to defend your first push. You might just win with the rush directly, or you can age after that and ship more units and deny his coin mines.

If he has a deck with unit shipments, it means you have to be a little bit more careful. But it also means he won't have a huge late game potential, so you can go greedy FF and take your time, mass the counter units to his merc, send unit upgrades and raid his gold.


To be fair, china is probably the weakest civ vs mercs, because it's hard to mass the counter unit, and it's also hard to be aggressive early on to punish the improved mercs and royal mint cards

[Aizamk]

you can monastery semi-ff yourself as China, it’s not that bad. then you get to see what mercs there are too and whether to resign or not

[Kaiserklein]

If you do a saloon semi, might as well ship the card to train iron troops tbh, they op

[lemmings121]

you can monastery semi-ff yourself as China, it’s not that bad. then you get to see what mercs there are too and whether to resign or not

and if you are playing re, you also have a chance at having mamelukes vs nothing in the saloon

[LOrd CaRL]

Is it a rush or an FF? Are they mixing regular units or making only mercs?

Yeah he only made mercs and some cavs. with good mircro, I was crushed. My men died 200+ but he only lost 70. That's frustrated.

What was the name of the guy, out of curiosity?

You want to check his deck. If he has a deck with no unit shipments, like I do when I make mercs, be aggressive. On a map without renegados/thuggees in age 2, you can rush him with bow pike steppe stuff. He won't have more than 5 outlaws to defend your first push. You might just win with the rush directly, or you can age after that and ship more units and deny his coin mines.

If he has a deck with unit shipments, it means you have to be a little bit more careful. But it also means he won't have a huge late game potential, so you can go greedy FF and take your time, mass the counter units to his merc, send unit upgrades and raid his gold.


To be fair, china is probably the weakest civ vs mercs, because it's hard to mass the counter unit, and it's also hard to be aggressive early on to punish the improved mercs and royal mint cards

I got your suggestions, that's very helpful. The guy's name is natedogg0925. BTW, I choose China as my major civ, but now I am thinking if it is too hard to get started...

[Kaiserklein]

Yeah it's definitely not the best civ to begin with

[macacoalbino]

Wall his mines

[uberjz]

China units are very good and great late fortress upgrades so it’s basically delaying the fight as long as possible and hit a timing as german runs out of mines

@Hazza54321 Which upgrades would you say are must-haves for china?

[Kaiserklein]

Inf combat, repelling volley, double faced armor