'21 Guns'

[fei123456]

Tea export provides many new features to Chinese meta. Allying with Russia for blockhouses or German for cheaper units are decent builds, but the traditional British ally benefits from new shipments too.
Redcoats used to be supporting units in age III unit combo, but they can become an army itself with extra exports. With tea export and 300 export, you can have ~800 export at around 7:30.

Discovery age
Build a village with starting crate. If you gathered ~80 wood treasures you can consider to collect the 120 wood left and build a TP, otherwise just left the crates there.
Send tea export. Though you don't need to chop wood, with only 2 food crates you'll generally have to age up with 6+7 villagers at around 3:00. Eat the starting lamb when you have around 400 food.
Build summer palace with 2-3 villagers. You don't need 4 builders, as you don't have enough resource to go fortress age immediately. Collect the idle wood crates, chop a bit for a TP, and start collecting gold.

Commercial age
Send 700 gold for age III. Porcelain tower is the better option. Academy provides a more aggressive early timing, but you can hardly have eco to train units.
Build the tower with 8 villagers when you have 1200+1000 resource, and send 300 export. Don't send 700 wood: you already have a consulate, and if you send 700 wood you'll have one less shipment. China is not Aztec/Spain.
When 300 export arrives, ally with British for 2 batches of redcoats. Keep 5 villagers on food, and the left on wood. chop for a 2nd village and war academy, then gather food and gold for fortress army.

Fortress age
Send intervention. Train a batch of cavalry, and do a timing push with 21 redcoats, 2 meteor 2 flail, 2 steppe 3 xbow, and a monk.
Set the tower to produce wood. Your eco is slightly worse than the standard FF, but it's generally OK. Macro carefully to keep training cavalry, and send 5 meteor 10 arquebusier etc. for constant pressure. Remember this: China don't need eco.

Alter builds: 12 Red Men
Play colonial with this build. Send 300 export and 7 steppe, train standard army, and do a timing push with 10+ steppe and 12 redcoats. This is a Chinese version musk Huss timing. You can even try to send 10 rattan shields.
Sometimes you need to set the consulate export rate to 10% for earlier 12 redcoats.
Starting with castle or war academy are both OK. Switching into flame thrower in late colonial.

[helln00]

delaying the Tp in age 1 feels really bad, it slows down the first shipment by a lot meaning you also get that 0.4 trickle a lot faster.

Feels better to just go standard village TP start.

[Realife_Brahmin]

Nice title.

[Squamiger]

if you can train two batches of Brit redcoats, maybe it would be possible to just delay this and get the 800 export batch of redcoats + 1 falc kind of early in fortress? that could b a fun cheese. OR, get the 800 batch of Russian units to get 6 coss and 1 culv, to really shut down a 2 falc push from spain/france

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

Nice title and nice build. Given how China can struggle for anti-cav getting additional musks must be good.

However if you don't need the first batch of musks asap to deal with an opponent timing, you would probably be better of using your 800 export for the Expedition force which gives you a falc. Falc+15 musks+Summer Palace batch+ cav batch sounds like a great timing (and the falc allows you to do damage without comitting under the TC).

[Édit: squamiger ninjaed me]

[helln00]

if you can train two batches of Brit redcoats, maybe it would be possible to just delay this and get the 800 export batch of redcoats + 1 falc kind of early in fortress? that could b a fun cheese. OR, get the 800 batch of Russian units to get 6 coss and 1 culv, to really shut down a 2 falc push from spain/france

there is a 1 flying crow card in age 3 now, could be a fun way to do a mock 2 falc push for china with the consulate falc and the 1 crow

[harcha]

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

if you can train two batches of Brit redcoats, maybe it would be possible to just delay this and get the 800 export batch of redcoats + 1 falc kind of early in fortress? that could b a fun cheese. OR, get the 800 batch of Russian units to get 6 coss and 1 culv, to really shut down a 2 falc push from spain/france

there is a 1 flying crow card in age 3 now, could be a fun way to do a mock 2 falc push for china with the consulate falc and the 1 crow

If you are going this way you may even go for the academy for crows production. Two crows+falc is getting close to that critical artillery mass that really punish opponents. Problem is you need enough anti-cav...

[fei123456]

Flying crow takes 4 minutes to pop out from academy, and it doesn't perform better than a falconet in fortress.

[harcha]

Crow has a bad animation so it requires additional micro. How well it performs depends so much on how your opponent micros around your crow. 1 crow could kill 2 falc or die without any success.

[helln00]

iirc a crow technically has enough HP to tank 2 falc shots in age 3 right? and likewise if the falcs are clumped up have enough dmg to kill both falcs in one hit.

but its a gamble since you have less range.

[harcha]

Yes, in age 3 falc take 3 shots to kill crow, while crow kills falc in 1 hit. However crow has less range, moves slower and has worse animation.
So depending on what's going on on both sides, it could go either way. But if only ranged fire is exchanged, then falc should prevail.

[Le Hussard sur le toit]

Still a more interesting artillery war than the usual two falcs shot decided by random bug/freeze.