Cho-Ku-Nu

The Leader: Qin Shi Huang
Traits: Industrious, Protective
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Mining

Unique Unit:
Cho-Ku-Nu
Damage: 6
Movement: 1
2 first strikes
Causes collateral damage
+50% vs. Melee Units
Upgradeable to Riflemen or Grenadier

Arguably this could be more of a realization, more than a strategy, however I find that cross-bowmen are under played, in multi-player, as people dive straight to civil service, in order to obtain macemen, which cross-bowmen rock at killing. So without further a due, here is what I've come up for my first multi-player strategy, and welcome any and all comments, or improvements.

Before I start, there are four things *heavily* dependant on this strategy. First, being that you *must* get the oracle. This is your number one priority. Second, you must locate, and settle near Iron. Third you must keep your actions non-aggressive, not to give anyone reason to attack you, and last -- You need two/three cottages ASAP.

Here it goes:

1.
- Poof your settler appears.
- Build worker
- Research Bronsworking

2.
- Worker appears - start chopping for second worker
- Research Mysticism, Meditation, Priesthood
- Once second worker is out, start barracks to get pop up
If you have corn, rice, or wheat I'd suggest getting to that special resource asap

3.
-Once Priesthood is done, start oracle ASAP
-Research wheel (2-4 turns)
-Research pottery (2-4 turns)
Time pottery with oracle
Oracle == Metal Casting

There isn't much in the way of micromanaging your workers. Your first priority is oracle, and don't care about how many tree's you cut down to get it. This thing fails if you don't get it. Anyway ....

4.
- Workers now need to build 2-3 cottages
- meanwhile research land support tech, such as Animal Husbandry, hunting,
archery if you think you need it to survive.

5.
While researching Iron Working
- Place workers on cottages. Get them to grow.
Iron working shouldn't take long if you have two pop's on cottages.
- Start building Forge
- Once Forge is done, then place citizen as Engineer (more on this later)

6.
Research writing (4 turns approx)
- Build library afterwards to cut down time on Machinery
- Build settler to go after Iron
- Build Archer to defend 2nd city

7.
Research Machinery. Now this might take a while. I've seen it as much as 20 turns before my library was built. Typically I see about a 2 turn gain after the library. But what I watch the most is the cottages. When they go from 3gc to 4gc it takes another 2 turns off. If your lucky to have gold or whatever, you might see 12 turns before long. Neway -- If you are successful Machinery should be done 500BC.

8.
Research Math - Construction


OKAY!! That is not very specific. I might come up with a turn by turn play, but lets recap. You went for Bronzeworking first. Then Priesthood. Your life depends on Oracle. You then research supporting land tech's. Get archery if you think you need it. Building to produce include barracks, library, forge. You must find iron, so other than your two workers, the only other non production unit you should build is a settler. You will need high gc for this to work faster, so work your cottages.

Great so now you have the ability to produce cross-bowmen. Typically if you’re lucky it will take 2-3 turns to make each unit, however with three of them you can take out easily a fortified city, even if a praetorian is there. Yes -- these units easily kill Romans. So you ask -- what will kill cross-bowmen?? Good question.

Remember that engineer you put into your city from the forge? OHH yeah that thing. What of it? Well it will take about 30turns to pop, unless you have stone, and have built the great wall after getting machinery, then it might take sooner.

But by the time you research Math - construction, that lucky engineer should pop, giving you the ability to light-bulb Engineering. The only thing that kills cross-bowmen effectivly early on are Elephant's. They walk right over them unfortunately, so you'll want to get Engineering for the pikemen.


Anyway -- Give it a try. It has worked 2-5 times for me. Sometimes you can't get the oracle. At that point, you will need to swear at the computer gods, and move onto plan b)

Cheers,
OctavianFlu

If you find a good commerce site, you can try a machinery slingshot.
with BW and IW, metal casting isn't that expensive. It's pretty doable (depending on level of course).

The only problem with going for a machinery slingshot in mp seems to be that the other humans are more likely to be single mindedly pushing for the oracle as well so a delay may be fatal.

vale said:

The only problem with going for a machinery slingshot in mp seems to be that the other humans are more likely to be single mindedly pushing for the oracle as well so a delay may be fatal.

Click to expand...

right, sorry
I don't play MP and it shows !

OctavianFlu said:

So you ask -- what will kill cross-bowmen?? Good question.

But by the time you research Math - construction, that lucky engineer should pop, giving you the ability to light-bulb Engineering. The only thing that kills cross-bowmen effectivly early on are Elephant's. They walk right over them unfortunately, so you'll want to get Engineering for the pikemen.

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Horse Archers are good crossbow killers as they are immune to first strikes (elephants are not).

A great thing about cho-ko-nus is that, as Qin and Mao are both protective, you only need 10xp for a drill IV promotion. A drill IV cho-ko-nu is a fearsome beast, even against an elephant (but not a HA).

CKN's are definitely used in multiplayer games, especially against pesky legions and later maceman, both staples of human attack forces. And they usually come in large stacks too, so collateral damage will matter. They're even useful without oracle, as you'll be going for machinery for maceman anyway, and archery's kind of necessary, in case some newbie tries some stupid axeman rush.

it sounds like you neglect getting more cities asap. Having cho-no-ku's wont help you if you cant build enough of them. I have heard ppl mentioning them as beeing the best unit in MP so this is indeed doable. I am not sure if is possible to get oracle after building a settler(as people might get it first), seeing as you delay oracle to after pottery/archery/hunting this is probably the case... 2nd city could grab copper horses or just get up more comerce worked. Should speed up the total time to get to machinery. Heck you might want 3 or 4 cities or more by the time you get there. You do need archery to be able to build x-bows though.

oyzar said:

it sounds like you neglect getting more cities asap. Having cho-no-ku's wont help you if you cant build enough of them. I have heard ppl mentioning them as beeing the best unit in MP so this is indeed doable. I am not sure if is possible to get oracle after building a settler(as people might get it first), seeing as you delay oracle to after pottery/archery/hunting this is probably the case... 2nd city could grab copper horses or just get up more comerce worked. Should speed up the total time to get to machinery. Heck you might want 3 or 4 cities or more by the time you get there. You do need archery to be able to build x-bows though.

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Thanks for your comments. Yesterday, three cho-no-ku's (9 turns) distroyed a city settling a practorian, and archer, with 40% cultural defense with ease. You just need a couple of them to start having fun. But yes you are right. To be fully effective you should have at least a second city (production if possible (2 food - 4 hills would be nice)).

I don't think its doable getting the oracle after building a settler either. That's why I suggested to start building it once the tech is available. Its only 8 turns for bronsworking typically, then 4 for mysticism, 4 for meditation, and another 4 for priesthood. I could be off. But that gives me enough time to get two workers, and my barracks out the door, before the oracle is available. Once priesthood is finished, immediately go for pottery, then whatever.

I wouldn't want to waist my first settler on copper if I don't have iron in my borders. I would wait until iron is researched first before moving my settler to that location. If you have copper in city boundries then you will have a good resource to fend off any early attack.

The problem with expanding too quickly in multiplayer is that people think they will be able to attack you easier, or they might get offended if you took what they wanted so they'll start war. I guess it depends on what size of map with how many players. I think I will work on a timeline, and see if a second city will get me there any sooner -- that's something I haven't equated into my above scenario. Good idea.

Counter it with longbows+cats. cho-kus and pikes are 6 strength each , so are longbows and they have no hard counter in that stack. So if you are getting invaded by cho-ku's + pikes use cats+ crossbow/longbow .

I learnt it the hard way when my war elephant + crossbow+ horse archer pillaging stack got attacked by something like7,8 longbows by Ai. First 4 longbows died the rest won.

edit : longbows are cheaper , crossbows are more useful

Instead of researching machinery and using the engineer to lightbulb engineering, just use the engineer to lightbulb machinery (which will always happen if machinery is available to be researched). You'll get the cho-ko-nus much much earlier.

druidravi said:

Counter it with longbows+cats. cho-kus and pikes are 6 strength each , so are longbows and they have no hard counter in that stack. So if you are getting invaded by cho-ku's + pikes use cats+ crossbow/longbow .

I learnt it the hard way when my war elephant + crossbow+ horse archer pillaging stack got attacked by something like7,8 longbows by Ai. First 4 longbows died the rest won.

edit : longbows are cheaper , crossbows are more useful

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I'm seeing this more and more these days. People going to Feudalism, but its rare. It seems, just from my experience, and I play at least a game daily online, that people tend to goto civil service first, rather than anything else, but yeah crossbowmen would help, but not really. It doesn't take long before your first general pops up. With that you will get an extra bonus, and you could make your crossbowmen +25% against archers. Plus the cho-ku-nu have 20% collateral damage, so having a medic in your stack would heal your lightly hurt units heal quite nicely. Something to watch out for tho.

Thedrin said:

Instead of researching machinery and using the engineer to lightbulb engineering, just use the engineer to lightbulb machinery (which will always happen if machinery is available to be researched). You'll get the cho-ko-nus much much earlier.

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I think it would be the same time. As soon as you finish your forge. It will be 2 gp points per turn. 67 pts for first gp i believe. So about 34 turns approximately before engineer pops. You would have Machinery in 20 turns or less. So I would argue it would take longer.

Thedrin -- I think I will keep this in mind tho. I will try Japan out using this strategy, and instead of going machinery, go straight to civil service, and bulb machinery for Japan's UU. I'll try that next.

Pretty standard strategy but in MP any gambit such as this is always a risk. Always depends on #of players who are in the game as well as their early actions. I often use a strategy similar to this in order to grab early x-bows or macemen but it is Extremely Important to first make sure that you are protected from an earlier opponents rush. I will check F9 graphs almost every turn in the early going watching for a spike in power indicating an axe/chariot/sword rush.

With early Cho-ko-nus, however, another bonus is that drill promotions also reduce collateral damage from cats, an often over-abused unit in MP games. And as mentioned above, when properly promoted along w/ collateral, shred any melee unit in the game.

you dont need barracks before you build the oracle.. Use that time to get a settler out there instead.

I tried this strat in a MP game just now and it worked great. Going with a build order that was something like warrior -> worker whip -> settler (1 chop) -> oracle(2 chops), I actually have 0 hills in my BFC which was kinda anoying i did have one grassland elephant and loads of forest though so it still worked fine. Kinda strage game cause with 4 opponents on a small map you actually had a bit space to settle cities. I got the 1st 2nd city out. Noone were realy very close and my 2nd city managed to grab copper. I also founded budism(which was kinda lucky since someone founded hinduism right before i was done with budism). This also helped me later to access iron in the 3rd ring of the capital. I actually got out 4 cities before Machinery was in All whit a barracks and ready to whip/build Cho-no-ku's. Axemen against drill 2 cho-no-ku's realy isnt a fair fight. Grabbed another 4 cities and cause of my imense production noone backstabed me so after my first war i was free to turn to the next guy and my imense stack of drill 3/4 cho-no-ku's withered loads of catapults before they got to take out cities. During this war i also got some catapults so i could actually bombard defences but agaisnt archers it realy wasnt needed. Controling 2/3 of the map or so the last guy left. Problem with playing random pickup games like this is that you have no way whatsoever to know the skill of the ppl your fighting against so its kinda hard to gague but by the sever blowout this game was i figure this strategy is at least somewhat viable. I did manage to maintain what looked like a health techlead though so my opponents prolly werent too good(my second opponent didnt have I played as quin BTW for industrial to get the oracle faster. For me it is a huge problem playing on blazing after you get 4 cities or are waring as you bascailly got no time to micro cities / workers and your units still timeout sometimes. I never researched fishing even though i had 3 water reasources between my first 2 cities.

After this game i realy got respect for drill. It both protect against colleteral and it means you have a way higher chance of damaging the initial defender even if it doesnt give as high win percentage as you would like. It also realy opened my eyes for how powerfull a crossbowmen rush or at least Chinas UU is. I allways like to expand at least a bit peacefully, like 3-5 cities and this fit perfectly with that as the unit becomes available just at the time you normaly get boxed in. I think i built too many units before i attacked and i prolly only needed like 3-4 to totaly demolish whatever archers/meele units my first victim had.

Here are what i think are the first and last saves from the game though they prolly arent that interesting you can at least watch the replay.

It also realy opened my eyes for how powerfull a crossbowmen rush or at least Chinas UU is.

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Well, all that the unique unit brings to the game is collateral damage (which is good) but protective crossbows in general can be very good.

In vanilla, i once played Qin very often in MP, but I don't like his traits as much now. I do remember one game in particular when I built 4 cities that could each get a cho-ko-nu every turn. I just rolled all over the enemy, an army of 40 with all units doing collateral damage is unstoppable.

So I was playing online last night between 4 other plays on a small hub map. I explored my entire area by the time iron working came, and I had no iron To kick things off I was getting 2 GP (prophet) per turn from oracle, and then 3 GP points from working Engineer after building the forge, with a 20% chance if not less in popping an engineer. Lol'be'hold, an engineer popped up giving me lightbulb ability for Machinery at 1000BC. Talk about evil luck.

So I tried a couple of practice games to see if building a second city would get me there any sooner. It didn't appear to do so, however it also didn't delay the process either, which makes me think that the time spend getting the second city is compensated by the commerce/tech from the other city, which is amazing, because then you would have 2 cities to produce units.

In one of my off-line games, these badboys were easily upgradeable to grenadiers. Talk about powerful units. I had about 10 crossbowmen between level 4-7, which upgraded to grenadiers. Needless to say those first strike promotions given to the unit ripped apart Victoria's RedCoat.

druidravi said:

Counter it with longbows+cats. cho-kus and pikes are 6 strength each , so are longbows and they have no hard counter in that stack. So if you are getting invaded by cho-ku's + pikes use cats+ crossbow/longbow .

I learnt it the hard way when my war elephant + crossbow+ horse archer pillaging stack got attacked by something like7,8 longbows by Ai. First 4 longbows died the rest won.

edit : longbows are cheaper , crossbows are more useful

Click to expand...

So what's the best counter to longbows for that era? Macemen with cover?

Wow

Ok FYI. CHOKUS SUCK


Why would you build chokus? Cats are much cheaper, have 1 less str and have 25% withdrawl. Chokus have NO withdrawl. Id much rather have a stack of cats than a stack of chokus.

SappoV8 said:

Wow

Ok FYI. CHOKUS SUCK

Why would you build chokus? Cats are much cheaper, have 1 less str and have 25% withdrawl. Chokus have NO withdrawl. Id much rather have a stack of cats than a stack of chokus.

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I guess you are entitled to your opinion, however your statement does not add much into the topic discussed above, but since you did reply let me share with you an experience I had that makes your wonderful catapult idea - misleading.

1. Catapults do not receive any defense bonus. Therefore they can not pull away, and they do not get any first strike opportunities. Having said that, the last game I played with this strat someone along your line of thinking had 10 catapults, 1 GG appended onto a Phalax, and 3 other Phalax (he was Alexander the Great if you were wondering). My 10 Cho-Ku-Nu (that is what they are called) killed his Great General, and 9 catapults with little effort. Needless to say he left the game after that attack. So your catapults would suck if they were attacked upon.

2. Cho-Ku-Nu also have a 50% gain against Melee units, therefore can win more battles than catapults. So even tho they are cheaper, the life of the Cho-Ku-Nu is far longer than a catapult are. They also take 20% less collateral damage, so even if you were to attack the side effects of the Catapult would be minimal, and recoverable after 1 or 2 turns with the proper medic upgrades. So your catapults would yield 20% less useful against any other unit.

4. Catapults can not be upgraded to Riflemen, or Grenadiers. Which make them even more powerful as they already have plenty of upgrades.

Needless to say -- They are expensive, but they are in no way inferior to catapults, even when the numbers are not equal. I think there are other units out there that would cause more harm to Cho-Ku-Nu, such as musketmen, elephants, horse archers, knights. But using the strategy above where you would get engineering fairly quickly (if your lucky), the only threat would be musketmen, then you would be screwed.

I hope this answers your question "Why would anyone build Cho-Ku-Nu", as I provided four reasons to the point. Perhaps you should try their awesome power one time to realize their power.

Thanks for your comments.