Nationalist China

Hey guys.

Gazebo had an idea which I have decided to act upon, that being to do specific guides for the different Civilization according to the Nationalist Strategy I've offered to the community.

Quick stock review:

The idea of a Nationalist strategy is to be able to pursue a Domination, Cultural, and Scientific Victory simultaneously with an economy that can afford worst-case scenarios, like being sanctioned by the World Congress. This approach minimizes investment into diplomacy to be able to pursue these goals. If you make this work, you'll rule most of the world's population and lead the world in every intellectual category, making it nearly impossible for your enemies to stop you as the eras progress.

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I've decided to start this off with China.

Introduction

China and Imperial Examination takes a game feature that is sometimes ignored and makes it a strong feature of the civilization - "We Love the Empress Day." China's ability to exploit Great People to grant this effect and their powerful Golden Age capabilities make them a fun Nationalist civ to play.

The opening start for China will be oriented (sorry) around Tradition, a specific Religion and the mid-game around Aesthetics and Imperialism. I do not focus on end-game because there are simply too many variables in CBO to really go into too much detail.

Most of a CBO game is shaped very early on - doing so optimally is the key to victory.

Ancient through Classical Era

China is exclusively oriented around Tradition. There really isn't any other choice for them given their strengths.

Let's go over why:

Progress gives you bonuses to science, gold, and production but does not improve your Faith output at all. We want very specific beliefs from our start to be optimal.

Authority also contributes nothing to our faith output and without military oriented bonuses or an early UU, China does not excel at being aggressive this early on.

So let's go over this critical period of time step by step.

Technology Opener

Pottery
The Wheel
Calendar
Animal Husbandry
Mining
Construction
Trapping
Bronze Working
Iron Working
Trade (you will be tight on money and might freak out. Don't worry)
Writing
Fishing
Military Theory
Mathematics
Masonry
Engineering
Currency
Metal Casting
Steel

I consider this sequence to be immutable for China. Stonehenge makes getting your Religion significantly faster, Pyramids provides critical support for your economy by giving you a second city and more efficient workers, and Mausoleum of Halicarnassus is the most synergistic Wonder China can get. The rest of it gives you cool toys to play with for your future cities, opens up where the Iron is in your region, and unlocks Paper Maker. After that you can fish, embark, unlock Hanging Gardens, Arena, and then Great Wall, which will make your salivating neighbors very miserable if they try to do horrible things to your happy, loving people. You could get Sailing, Drama, etc., but it's shorter to get to Steel, you can get a Historical Event by doing that, your military will be significantly stronger with Armory, and those three Spearmen who should have a lot of XP at this point will now be nasty Pikemen.

Production Sequence

Beijing

Monument
Shrine (Rush buy)
Stonehenge
Granary (Rush buy if you can)
Farming (if you have any turns between 3rd policy)
Pyramids (try to settle on the coast)
Warrior
Warrior
Worker
Farming until 4th policy unless you can fit in Walls before 4th policy
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
Archer
Archer
Scout
Farming until Trade is ready

Shanghai

Monument
Shrine
Archer
Settler
Archer
Settler
Archer
Settler

Policy Sequence

Tradition
Sovereignty
Justice
Ceremony
Majesty
Splendor

Sovereignty is the most important one. With it you can get your Great Prophet quicker and your next policy. Justice kicks in right when Pyramids is available so it's right on time for the big show. Majesty is better than Splendor because you want Beijing to grow while still having all those great people slotted.

Important Notes

- Get faith from monument from event because our specific Religious beliefs are very important to get. Get Goddess of Love.
- Invite the nomads to cities every time because they're singing to you. See above if you're confused.

- Use your Great Engineer for a Manufactory in Shanghai depending on which one is on the coast. This will be your settler spammer and hopefully your coastal military-industrial city.

- If you're scared of not getting Mausoleum of Halicarnassus or a neighbor you can also spend it in Beijing to complete it. Your Warriors should be enough though.

- Settle your cities to get as many strategic resources as possible and to get a global monopoly of your regional luxury.

- Upgrade those Warriors as soon as possible after all the building is over. You're going to be a very juicy target to aggressive neighbors.

- Keep building specialist slot buildings in Beijing and slotting them. That's what Tradition is for.

- Protect that worker! They are vital to completing your road network and if you lose him it's going to be a bit of a catastrophe.

- Get the Great Wall once you get Engineering. Not only is it the most famous aspect of real China, but it is instrumental to keeping you safe throughout the game. Use that Great General to grab some land you know you shouldn't have but can get anyway =).

- As soon as you get Splendor get those Hanging Gardens ASAP. Do not forget. That sucker is the best policy Wonder of the game IMO.

Pantheon and Religion

As astonishing as it might sound, I almost always unlock my first Great Prophet at 550 BC or earlier. Seriously. It's that fast.

Hopefully the Maya don't screw it up for you though. If they Progress left side and beeline Mathematics they can beat everyone to the first Great Prophet and it sucks.

Goddess of Love
Theocratic Rule
Synagogue
Thrift
Resilience
To the Glory of God

This is the ideal list. I'll go over why:

Goddess of Love - Golden Ages are very important to China, giving you more growth during them than any civ in the game. Goddess of Love is wonderfully synergistic in this regard - the more people you get the more golden age points you get and it just keeps going as the game goes on.

Theocratic Rule - Beijing is where most of your Great People will be born in Tradition and every time they are, your city gets 15% more Culture, Science, Faith, and Gold. This is by far the strongest choice.

Synagogue - Oh, was Theocratic Rule not enough? Here, have another 15% Science from your cities with Synagogues.

Thrift - This one might be tricky to get but the military ambition of a Nationalist strategy is not cheap. The more gold you can squeeze out of your believers the better.

Resilience - Theocratic Rule is what Resilience was born to work with. Every Great Prophet you get adds to the fun of Imperial Examination and they're cheaper to get because of this.

To the Glory of God - Yeah, and now in the Industrial Era you get to buy Great People with Faith. All of whom trigger "WLtED."

Are you excited yet? I hope you are because this is even more fun in-game.

Classical and Ancient Era Recap

By now you should have

* Stonehenge, Pyramids, Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, Great Wall, and Hanging Gardens in Beijing.
* 5 cities. Beijing should be a juggernaut of a great people city. Shanghai should have two Manufactories as a coastal city. The rest should net you horses, iron, and a luxury monopoly.
* Religion with Goddess of Love, Theocratic Rule, Synagogues, decent happiness
* A solid infantry foundation of 3 Spearmen.
* A bunch of Archers who really want to be Composite Archers and then Cho-Ko-Nu.
* Lots of people singing Foreigner, especially in Beijing.
* Passive aggressive neighbors who want to conquer you really badly but know they would get swallowed up by the Hollywood quicksand swamp that is the Great Wall. (Quicksand really doesn't work that way)

Your enemies will hate you, but they'll hate you even more with what we've got coming up when China's glorious Dynastic Kings unlock the potential of the Five Kingdoms' Artists. Five cities, five kingdoms?

This is how your empire should look

This is how I was set up right before getting Steel. You eventually want a happy face under every city as much as possible, which is "We Love the Empress Day."

Anyway on to the period of time where Mongolia hopefully doesn't repeat their history with China!

Medieval Era

Now that we're in the Medieval Era, we have a specific set of goals to achieve:

* Set up food trade routes to Beijing and Shanghai so that you ensure your military industrial city and the best city in the world have plenty of labor.
* Make Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Xian strong cities instead of the backwater toilet towns they are right now.
* Make Shanghai a military industrial behemoth that cranks out the kind of military force that can redraw the world map. I'm talking cavalry, infantry, artillery, and a strong navy. You will be stronger, smarter, faster, more stylish, and you'll have better hair.
* Building an exploration crew to give you a greater understanding of your surroundings.
* Hopefully build the Hagia Sophia and Cathedral of Saint Basil in Beijing so that you can have Thrift, Resilience, and To the Glory of God, as well as build Alhambra in Shanghai.
* Cultivate a truly magnificent society through Aesthetics, the proliferation of your religion, and your former backwater toilet towns becoming Cultural Great People factories that are almost as cool as Beijing.
* Upgrade those sorry Archers to Composite Bowmen and Cho-Ko-Nu with our gold earnings.
* Still have lots of people singing Foreigner

Shanghai

The goal here is to get every food and production building, Heroic Epic, and an Armory built before starting the Assembly Line of Glorious Warriors.

Once you have all that build three Longswordmen, two Knights, 2 Heavy Skirmishers, three Trebuchets, three Caravels, and three Galleass, while upgrading your Spearmen to Pikemen, three Cho-Ko-Nu for offensive purposes and upgrading your crappy garrisons into the best Crossbowmen in the game.

You've been weak for most of the game, but now... your enemies will tremble.

Now that you've got the kind of force that would have made sure Genghis Khan never set foot in China as anything but a beggar on the street and routed those savages.

Xian, Guangzhou, and Nanjing

These cities are very important. Once you get Drama and Poetry after getting Steel, do whatever you have to do to get those Guilds in those cities and slot the Writers. They are vital to progressing your policies to the point of getting Cathedral of St. Basil. You also want Temples, Amphitheaters, and Paper Makers to get those cities to the level of excellence becoming of a Nationalist Motherland.

The goal with these cities is to have Merchants, Scientists, and all culture guilds slotted. The reason I don't do this with Beijing is because I want Beijing's production output to still be significant, which can't happen if they have an additional 6 great people.

Also remember to prioritize reducing unhappiness with Barracks, Walls, Castle, Armory, Market, Customs House, etc. Poverty and Crime are really bad.

Beijing

We want Beijing to have every National Wonder that isn't Ironworks or Heroic Epic and every building available. You might be tempted to slot a Civil Servant or two. Don't do it. Here's why - we are not even trying to get that kind of victory. Those citizens could have been mining, farming, etc.

The idea with Beijing is to have the Scrivener's Office, Chancery, Wire Service, Printing Press, etc. but to only pay lip service to that process and cash in on the extra production.

Again, you want Hagia Sophia and Cathedral of St. Basil. Those are the most important Wonders to aim for, even if you don't get them. China in CBO benefits immensely from emphasizing religion and getting the beliefs I referenced.

Use Beijing to fill any gaps in your labor force and to build your trade routes. Make sure two of them feed Beijing and Shanghai for maximum peasant production!

Tech Sequence

We'll start from the point we get Steel

Drama and Poetry
Philosophy
Theology
Physics
Machinery
Chivalry
Guilds
Compass
Astronomy
Education
Civil Service

The idea is to catch up on Culture, provide all the tech we need for our goon squad, our exploration unit, and to pave the way for a Renaissance Era where our arrival to the lesser nations of the world creates awe. I don't really know or care if 1434 is accurate or not, the story of it is intriguing xD.

Policy Sequence

Aesthetics
Refinement
Humanism
National Treasure
Heritage
Cultural Exchange

Refinement is the way to start it off, but you have to address unhappiness to make it work. If you're dealing with some zealot with a flood of missionaries, do Humanism first so you can clean up his filth with your superior faith first.

National Treasure I go with Engineer to get another Manufactory in Shanghai. That city should be so efficient at making military units that it can afford building new buildings before the next era. Plus you get the bonuses to Great Person Improvements.

I should go over why I don't use Piety for them. Piety does very little for getting more Great People, which is the bread and butter of China's UA. It may seem like the urgency of getting Religious beliefs we want lends to devoting a Policy to that, but that's not what we're going for here. The Guilds cranking out Writers, Musicians, and Artists is what you want so you can have WLtED throughout your Motherland.

Military Affairs

Now that you've got the doom squad it's time to declare Total War on one of your neighbors.

Total War means one thing - every city, every citizen of a rival will kneel before the Glorious Emperor / Empress and join the majesty of China.

Remember to read up on military matters so that you do not waste a single unit of that magnificent conquest machine.

There is another option though.

If you feel confident with your devious scheming, you could use your position of extreme military power to get your rivals to fight each other and liberate conquered territories. I, for example, could liberate Ragusa from Sweden, bribe Poland into declaring war on and conquering them, then liberate them again. The Sicilians wouldn't like it, but who cares about them? xD

There's also picking a nearby City-State, bribing a rival to DoW them, and gift them units. This kind of trap works wonders for divide and conquer. In my game I can do that with Ragusa and Poland, hurting their forces while mine prepare to raise our flags in Warsaw and Krakow. Shanghai's massive production capabilities can let us do that sustainably, which is pretty frightening.

Religious Affairs

With Temples, Hagia Sophia, and St. Basil, make sure all of your holdings follow your faith and inquisition your conquered territory to respect the Magnificent Theocracy in Beijing. Side note, China has never really been 'religious' the way that the Western nations have but in this case, China's alternate history will be that of a Royal Theocracy. I'd imagine that it's actually not that different than the Qing Dynasty, but there was never a state religion and a dedicated clergy to minister the faith of the people.

If you don't get St. Basil, then you'll have to change gears and spread your religion the less glamorous way. It becomes easier if you win a Total War against a rival with a Holy City so that their influence can be annihilated and erased from history.

Exploration

Once you get Astronomy you'll have the means to send an Explorer across Oceans, so building one of them and a Caravel will let you completely explore the available areas of the world map.

I would set that up as soon as Astronomy is ready. Just move the garrison out for a second, buy an Explorer and a Caravel, and you're good to go.

You'll be happy you did - the whole world is out there waiting for you to find it!

Renaissance and Beyond

From here, you want Imperialism, Order, to maintain your military strength and to expand or sit on your holdings as you see fit. The hard part is done - building up your Motherland to weather any storm and win any war. Now it's up to you how you want China to be - do you want to be like historical China and stay where you've always been or go down the path of empires in history?

If you go on a conquering spree make sure you pick rivals who have Wonders and a good number of Great Works. Taking those from them will give you a complete stranglehold on Tourism, provided you can protect your holdings. That gets harder as the game goes on as the number of fronts you fight on increase, demanding even greater command of military strategy and deployment.

The Hanging Garden is fantastic, but it's such a crapshoot. I think in one tradition game in the last ten, I've managed to beat the AI to it.

Yeah that one is pretty dicey. A more culture oriented Pantheon can help with that, but sometimes it's just not going to happen.

could you explain how Wltkd works? when a great person is born, does it trigger wltkd in all cities for 10 turns? if there are 5 turns of wltkd left, and another new GP is born, do you get a stacked 15 turns or do you get reset to 10 turns? just wondering how to chain wltkd...

Yeah it stacks. Beijing can be in a very long period of WLTED with Tradition, hence its use.

agc28 said:

could you explain how Wltkd works? when a great person is born, does it trigger wltkd in all cities for 10 turns? if there are 5 turns of wltkd left, and another new GP is born, do you get a stacked 15 turns or do you get reset to 10 turns? just wondering how to chain wltkd...

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WLTKD isn't triggered in all cities at once, though. Only in the city where a GP is born.

Edit: oh yeah, the guide is great, by the way! Had fun reading it.

Looks awesome. Any idea up to what difficulty level this works? I play on Deity and would have to tailor some of this for sure (you aren't getting 3x early wonders 99% of the time). Looks fun though I'll have to try it!

Sorry guys was on vacation for the last four days

Edaka said:

WLTKD isn't triggered in all cities at once, though. Only in the city where a GP is born.

Edit: oh yeah, the guide is great, by the way! Had fun reading it.

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You're right it's just the city the GP is born in.

Looks awesome. Any idea up to what difficulty level this works? I play on Deity and would have to tailor some of this for sure (you aren't getting 3x early wonders 99% of the time). Looks fun though I'll have to try it!

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Yeah for Deity it's going to be a lot harder to get the Wonders, so I'd substitute some of them for more troops so that you can conquer and puppet cities ASAP.

I find that higher difficulties are basically tests of military power more than anything else because of how much stronger the AI is in domestic areas.

The policies and religion should stay as close to the same to get as many GP as possible and have the strongest WLTED though. That's the main advantage of China.

i see. only thr city from whcih a GP is born gets WLTKD? okay.

what about great generals and admirals? is it still the city that spawns them? in my current deity game i am debating whether i should go imperialism as china or rationalism. i think i need a lot of military help, but i dont want the increased birth of great generals and admirals to go to waste

I tried this with the latest version, and it started off a pretty rousing success, with landing the three early wonders (Stonehenge, Pyramids, Mausoleum) and nabbing an early ruins with my warrior which got my first policy right away. My only neighbor on my own landmass is Ethopia, who was very passive and did not aggressively expand to me, leaving me to my choice of city spots, and giving me handouts periodically while accepting my resources in trade for gold (keeping me afloat a long time). I'd say the only thing that went wrong early was Hallie converting my closest cities to his religion, so pretty much only my capital had my religion until I was able to enhance (focusing on spreading it now).

It seemed to drop off though. I didn't have even a small chance at the Hanging Gardens or Great Wall, both fell more than a dozen turns (epic speed) before I could've even started them due to lacking the tech (and 1 policy short for Hanging Gardens). And that's only at King difficulty! Is it because I have events and tech trading off that I don't even stand a chance to land those things? I think my capital is quite good, and you can see I'm able to work every specialist slot and grow quite early. Science feels sluggish though, I'm pretty low-ranked in literacy. Trying to get science up with paper makers in every city other than the military pump. I was a bit lost about where to go from trade, I just assumed workers, granaries, markets, science. Should I be concerned about the slow science? I'm assuming it'll take off once I get the paper makers in my non-military 3 and scientist specialists working.

When you buy Great People with faith it doesn't trigger WltED. Only when they are born naturally.

BliTTzZ said:

When you buy Great People with faith it doesn't trigger WltED. Only when they are born naturally.

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Unless that's a recent, undocumented change it sounds like a bug, because it has always been possible and it has always been intentional.

I tried this like 10 times and the first settler from pyramids comes out too late for you to be able to settle 4 cities. All the good land gets taken by the AIs and you can rarely get a luxury monopoly.

doublex55 said:

I tried this like 10 times and the first settler from pyramids comes out too late for you to be able to settle 4 cities. All the good land gets taken by the AIs and you can rarely get a luxury monopoly.

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That's been my experience as well, might be able to find a decent spot for Shanghai, but trying to build settlers in shanghai means you have a 60 turn delay between shanghai and the next city, and at that point everything is soaked up.

If you raise an army you can take those cities from them. Look at forward settling and expansion by the AI as an opportunity - those are going to be lightly defended cities. Two cities, conquering forward settled cities makes up for being cramped.

Question: why go Iron Working so early? I understand it's along the tech path to crucial techs later, but can you explain why you prioritize it over Writing and Trade? I'm not clear what you -do- with it for the next few dozen turns after you get it.

Forge is a huge production boost, Heroic Epic becomes available as soon as you have the population, and if you have Iron, you'll have the best infantry units available to produce.

I know this is the wrong place for this but, will you be making guides for the other civilizations? (INCA PLS) Like you know the Incas? Or do you have maybe any tips for uh, the Incas? xD

The Inca are an amazing Authority start civ. Hills and Mountain free movement gives them a tactical advantage in high altitude that no one else gets, and Slingers attack twice in one turn. They can be aggressive right away, use mountains and hills to hit and run, set up a perch for siege, etc.

Domestically, Terrace Farms and the mountain yields make up for having otherwise horrible tiles for population growth, and the Inca are the only civilization that can settle cities on Mountains. You can build roads across mountains too. Your starting area should have a lot of mountains nearby, so founding there is not only a big defense advantage but frees up tiles for terrace farms, villages, etc.

The defensive value is big, but with any terrain advantage civ I recommend being aggressive throughout the game.

From there, if you're going for Nationalist I go with Aesthetics and Rationalism, limit expansion to 5 cities, make sure your military hub is a port so you can have a strong navy, and crank out Wonders, tech, and puppet everyone you conquer.

Thanks!, should I go for a similar tech tree from your China guide?