China broken?

[baronck]

Hi !

So my second game as China doing the standard rifle rush but also got machinery along the way to pump out their UU (Chi-ko-ku).

Then realized that the UU's UA to attack twice could also be carried over once they upgrade to riflemen , a Rifleman who can attack twice is a bit OVERPOWERED IMO.

That with UA and the UB, China is simply overpowered.

GJ making the game balanced...

 

[bigwinw]

Any unit promotion does carry over when you upgrade the unit. This sounds right. Upgrade the Rifleman to Infantry and they will be unstoppable.

 

[Druin]

China is pretty widely regarded as one of the best civs for several reasons. As far as I can tell, this upgrade cho's -> rifles trick isn't really one of them. There are some significantly more powerful UU upgrade tricks such as the Turks Jan's -> Rifles or Aztec Jag's -> longswords ... ect.

It is a bit silly that UU abilities persist through upgrades, but trust me, the reason China is so good has much more to do with their crazy GG's and the moneymaker

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

Yeah, they really need to tweak the promotion stuff. I like it kind of because it is interesting and it makes some unique units better (Jaguar are infinitely better with their bonuses being carried on).

But it also leads to problem like your level 6 Rocket Artillery still needing to deploy to fire and not having sight over obstacles, etc.

As much as I realize that the CKN and stuff is a bug and unbalanced, it's also neat, and I'm pro-neat stuff.

 

[Blitz47]

I think China's powerful because it's so flexible with their UA, UU, and UB.

Money is not an issue if you play ICS style. ICS with China = even more money due to money making library.

China's GG boost + generation ability = more golden age goodness + more GG for multi-front wars if you really want to do it.

However, I no longer classify China as broken. I can list France, Greek, Siam, Mongol as being very broken right now. Songhai is pretty damn nice and so are Egyptians.

It all depends on how you play, France is great for ICS because each city gets +2 culture automatically. But France is not as flexible as China so if you take away ICS style, France becomes weaker than China. However, with ICS, I think France is probably stronger.

Mongols and Greek, err, most overpowering unit given its age, the horseman gets extra boost under greek, not to mention Greek UB complements maritime and culture city states...err, yeah, Greek > China right now and flexible too.

Mongol and its Keshik, ouch, thank god Keshik is a knight replacement so they come later but still, Mongol GG moves fast so that's very nice for a mobile army, which is what you want right now with horseman rush (or longsword, or rifle, or whatever other rushes you want to do)

 

[AbbieRevo]

In the same vein, I noticed that units built before optics can't embark

 

[Shind]

I have no problems with promotions being carried over to be honest. Nobody would even touch the ottomans otherwise. Unless your playing marathon you barely get to use the units and the unique buildings are already better.

Once you upgrade to riflemen with your chokunus the two attacks isnt that great. Unless you have a major tech advantage over your opponent so your not losing health but then its already easy anyway. Its awesome for range attacks where your not losing any health.

If two attacks is very important for you. Its possible to get the first two promotions from buildings
and the next two required for blitz are easy if you have honor built up.

 

[Belzek]

In the same vein, I noticed that units built before optics can't embark

They can, you just have to move them into friendly territory to automatically 'learn' it.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

They can, you just have to move them into friendly territory to automatically 'learn' it.

It took me about 4 games to figure this out. I'm not sure what the motivation was on the part of the authors.

 

[Bandobras Took]

To prevent the warrior on the other side of the continent from being able to sail across the world as soon as he reaches coastline.

 

[bigwinw]

They can, you just have to move them into friendly territory to automatically 'learn' it.

NICE. Explains why my warrior could travel the coast until I went back to my capitol. Great Info!

 

[Khaim]

You're right. Double-attack riflemen is way overpowered. Good thing only China can get them. Could you imagine if there was a promotion that let any civ do that? It would be nuts!

 

[Blitz47]

oops, forgot rifle is not ranged.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

It took me about 4 games to figure this out. I'm not sure what the motivation was on the part of the authors.

I knew this, and then forgot about it, and one game I had a warrior and a scout waiting at the coastline while I reached Optics to jump across to a couple of islands I knew were there (you can see the light blue tracings and stuff), including some Ancient Ruins.

But they had to go back to my turf before they could do that, and I can see them feeling that this was a way to slow down that sort of thing.

 

[Druin]

Edit: Already dealt with!

 

[Blitz47]

Errr ... can anyone confirm that longbow upgraded rifles actually have a "range" bonus on their melee attack? Because if so that needs to be reported asap.

No, my mistake, I wasn't thinking right. I realized my error and tried to edit my post, you already quoted it.

 

[i_imperator]

I've just gotta try playing as china then, sounds about as ridiculous and overpowered as Civ IV's preats and vanilla cossaks....

 

[Lone Wolf]

They've broken my favourite china cup

 

[Syntax Error]

Not too sure if it's a bug, but I had a warrior turned sword turned longsword turned Rifle. It ended up having Blitz and March. This essentially gave me your version of Chinese riflemen.

 

[zuraffo]

Strong, maybe, broken, definitely not. As others have pointed out, there are some civ more "broken" on the warmongering front like greek and mongol, and I would personally add persia to that list. On the peace mongering front, +5 culture with no cost is about as broken as you can get, and half happiness cost for population is no slouch either.

China strength is in its flexibility, in that you don't need to set your strategy in stone and are less bound by terrain.