Help with China

[BlueSignofDeath]

Hey folks,
I'm looking for a comprehensive and effective guide or any suggestions to help me in a game as China, going for a scientific or domination VC. Any input is welcome and highly appreciated.

Love,
BlueSignofDeath

 

[EditorRex]

I'm getting ready to try China in my next game, but a strategy I've been using with England will probably lend itself to to Domination with China in G&K. If you look book at some of the old War Academy guides from the early vanilla days, there was a popular China exploit based on its UU. Basically you leverage massed quantities of your UU asap, building tall until that point. The same idea works well with England's very similar UU (it gets range instead of the extra attack, but you can add the other with your fourth bonus). This allows you to dominate other pre-Industrial civs pretty effectively, though you have to include some decent horse or melee troops in your armies to actually capture those enemy capitals. And if you manage your bonuses nicely, you'll end up promoting to extra-range-extra-turn Gatling guns and Machine Guns for the later game. You'll want to complete the heart of your expansion before your stronger opponents get too far ahead. Know your map and adapt your military and planned order of attack accordingly. Take out relatively advanced civs with inland capitals (especially not on your base continent) as early as you can do so reasonably. For those with coastal capitals, it will likely be much easier if you mass some combination of naval firepower.

 

[chazzycat]

china can work with a number of strategies - they are one of the most flexible civs out there, IMO. for military obviously you want to focus on your archer line, so you get some highly upgraded chokunus, but you don't have to go pure military. The paper maker is a nice building for going wide peacefully, if you have the map for it. Otherwise go tall and beeline machinery, not much else to it. Ideally you have several comp. bows & money for upgrades available when you hit it, to maximize the window of dominance.

 

[Donaskme]

Hey folks, I'm looking for a comprehensive and effective guide or any suggestions to help me in a game as China, going for a scientific or domination VC.

I haven't played China yet, but I generally always go Science victory. If you read Tabarnak's "4-city tradition strategy" thread here, I'm sure you'll have all the basic information you require ready to be dialed in and massaged around the edges.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=468487

 

[ahawk]

There's a lot of great strategies to choose from, but the one that makes the most sense to me is:

Rush to Cho-Ko-Nu's
Spawn a Great General
Combine Great General with China's UA and the Cho-Ko-Nu for a super-powerful army
Conquer more land than you could ever imagine

That's simplistic, but the basic message is that Domination is usually the way I go. After all, the UA and UU combine nicely for a powerful military, and the UB, while still good (though it used to be great), is a nice boost but really doesn't have much strategy to it other than to build them anywhere and everywhere. ICS is the only possible strategy that utilizes the Papermaker UB, and if you go military-based in terms of strategy, well, you'll conquer enough cities anyways so ICS isn't really the most efficient way to go.

Lastly, as EditorRex says, the upgraded Cho-Ko-Nu's are very nice: gatlings and eventually machine guns that can defend against virtually anything with their two-attacks-per-turn. So China's military remains potent for quite some time, since the Cho-Ko-Nu bonuses remain as you upgrade them. All the more reason to go military, IMO.

 

[Buccaneer]

Well, I hope all this works for a Chinese deity domination victory. Thanks for the tips.

 

[Compugasm]

The chu-ko-nu rush has been nerfed. Now you can't get trading posts until Guilds has been researched. Plus it costs twice as much gold to upgrade the archers to Chu. So by the time you get the National Treasury, you can't afford to upgrade everything AND get city-state allies. Couple this with the computer fighting much better on the sea, I'm finding myself slowly strangled to death every game.

 

[Buccaneer]

The chu-ko-nu rush has been nerfed. Now you can't get trading posts until Guilds has been researched. Plus it costs twice as much gold to upgrade the archers to Chu. So by the time you get the National Treasury, you can't afford to upgrade everything AND get city-state allies. Couple this with the computer fighting much better on the sea, I'm finding myself slowly strangled to death every game.

I agree and on top of all that, by the time I got 8 CKN, they were going against gunpowder units.

 

[Light Cleric]

I was actually considering attempting a write-up for China for the War Academy since I absolutely love them but I wasn't sure there was an audience for it. Maybe there is. Or maybe I'll do a video/screenshot LP. As long as you can keep tech parity of the AI(not that difficulty on Deity) then you'll be able to just shred through everyone and everything and just keep going right through Ballistics and have massively upgraded Machine Guns. It does require a somewhat different mindset than some other civs though.

 

[Compugasm]

The 4 horseman rush has been nerfed too. I just tried attacking with 6 horses, 1 archer, and 1 spearman and all I could take out was one city on Immortal difficulty. If I reinforced I probably could press on for a second attack. But domination victories by turn 100 are not going to happen anymore using this strategy.

 

[ense7en]

The 4 horseman rush has been nerfed too. I just tried attacking with 6 horses, 1 archer, and 1 spearman and all I could take out was one city on Immortal difficulty. If I reinforced I probably could press on for a second attack. But domination victories by turn 100 are not going to happen anymore using this strategy.

Considering horse units generally have a penalty against attacking cities, i'm not sure this was ever a strategy?

You need lots of ranged units. Horses are best for swooping in to snipe seige/ranged units or taking the city, not for attacking the city.
Exception: Mandekalu cavalry, as they have no city penalty.

 

[Buccaneer]

Considering horse units generally have a penalty against attacking cities, i'm not sure this was ever a strategy?

You need lots of ranged units. Horses are best for swooping in to snipe seige/ranged units or taking the city, not for attacking the city.
Exception: Mandekalu cavalry, as they have no city penalty.

It was in the initial vanilla release - a very powerful and effective strategy since horses had no penalties against cities. That, I believe, was taken care of in the first patch. Never heard of anyone attempting since then even though I've seen some allusions to horses coming back into play more than before.