I am trying tou outline a strategy for the Chineese on Immortal Difficulty. Standard Set Up (6 player 12 CSs Continents Map all options default). It is taking advantage of both UU and UB as well as the racial trait and City States.
Basic Concept:
Detailed Explanation:
I usually start with:
Scout -> Worker -> Warrior -> Settler -> Rushbuy Settler
You can swap Scout and Worker but I like having the chance at free techs from huts and 15 gold bonus from CSs.
You should have the required money to buy a Settler around the time your first one spawns so you can double expand. I found that if you keep the area in vision with your Scout you don't necessarily need an escort for your Settler as Barbarians are usually way too passive to be a threat and there are no animals.
As soon as your have your worker out, improve a hapiness ressource and trade it away for all their gold + around 6-8 gpt. You will not need the happiness for the next 30 turns and this is usually a gold boost of around 250-300 gold. If you have more hapiness ressources improve them and trade them to another civ. Always trade away all the happiness ressources you can afford to get more gold during the early game. This is not "nice", this is key!
After Improving the Resources, start spamming trading post on every tile that is not a hill. Riverside Forests are the best, followed by nonriver forests, river grass, river plains, nonriver grass/plains. On the hills you can build mines for burst production.
Settle your 2 new cities and make sure you have a total of 3 workers (through any means: Barbs, build, buy or capture from a non Maritime City State). Connecting the cities nets you quite some gold (Usually 20-30 gpt minus around 10 for roads) and should be a high priority. After that spam Trading posts/Mines just like in the first city.
As far as production goes: After your two settlers make sure you build 3 Archers asap to protect your cities and possibly to prevent being DoWed (no idea when they will DoW but 3 Archers and 2 Warriors should hold off almost everything anyways).
Then get monumets up and start on some Paper Mills (this building is INSANELY GOOD! +3 net gold per turn while providing a horsehockyload of science you will need anyways).
After your initial techs of at least writing, calendar, archery and other improvement techs, beeline for Machinery (Cho Ko Nu's).
Start saving up a lot of gold (over 50 gpt is not unusual). This is a very powerful and save playstyle as in case of total emergency you can just rushbuy an army of warriors and archers. Make sure you get at least a Monument and a Paper Mill in every City and then start building more Archers.
Don't spend your Social Policy points yet (just rightclick the notification away).
When you hit Medieval Age (which will be fairly early) you should be pretty close to your 3rd Policy and you will spend them on
Patronage - City State Influence degrades 25% slower
Aesthetics - Minimum Influence level with all City-States is 20
Philanthropy - +25% more Influence gained from Gold gifts to City-States
At this point I had just about 1k Gold. Donate 500g each to two Maritime City States.
This will provide your Capital with +8 Food and your two other cities with +4 each. Which is 16 food in total. Lets do some math:
Early game farms get you +1 food per turn, trading posts +2 gold per turn.
500 gold nets you 85 Influence, degrading 0.75 per turn. Thus you pay around 4.5 gold per turn to keep them happy plus a small initial investment (40 influence minus any quest you did = max of 235 gold).
One City State provides a total of 8 Food for 3 Cities and costs 4.5 gold per turn to maintain. That basically means 8 Farms equal 2.25 Trading posts disregarding the initial investment (depreciated over ~150 Turns this would result in an 8:3 ratio). Oh and you get at least 2 ressources for free and a not neglectable war ally. Yes, City States are THAT good!
Now you can say but with Civil Service farms get better! While they do there are still 2 problems:
1. Its still a 2:1 ratio in favor of the trading post and
2. We do not want to research Civil Service until MUCH later! Like after-rifling-later.
And once you start annexing more cities, Maritime City States just get flat out ridiculous. Another very important benefit of this type of economy is that you will have a lot of cash in the bank to react to any kind of emergency or speed up production by rushbuying.
What happened in my game (and I must admit it was more out of luck than anything else) was that I hit my first golden age the same turn Machinery finished. Swap all cities into production mode and you can litteraly churn out 5-6 Turn ChoKoNu's (or faster if you have more hills). I don't know how reliably you can time this if you actually try to do it, but it is insanely good if you manage to do it.
You should have at least 3 Archers possibly 4-5 and 3+ Warriors by the time you hit machinery (dont build granery and watermill, just pump archers and Warriors if you have monument and Paper Mill done). One Archer costs 110 gold to upgrade and you will easily have the money to upgrade all of your archers.
Do 1 Production Cycle of Cho Ko Nu's and attack with your warriors and around 6-8 Cho Ko Nu's. After your first few battles you will recieve a Great General thanks to Chinas racial Trait and he will provide an even bigger bonus to your invading army.
I don't think there is a way to stop this attack at all. Cho Ko Nu's are insaaaaane and in masses the shred anything before it can come close. Just keep them out of reach from their melee guys.
You probably want to annex the capital of your targeted civ and and maybe 1 more city depending on your hapiness (City States FTW). Raze/Puppet the rest as you see fit. If there are more civs on your continent it is wise to do 1 or 2 more production cycles of Cho Ko Nus and wipe out at least 1 more civ.
How to go on from here:
Try to find and ally with more Maritime City States and get the rest of the Patronage Policies.
Priority Techs are Currency (for Market), Astronomy (if you wiped your continent) and Rifling.
Keep your Cho Ko Nu's alive and upgrade them to Riflemen to keep the 2 attacks per turn bonus.
Support them with a good mix of Siege and other units and Embark to your next target civ.
Keep your Riflemen alive and you will eventually have 2-attack Mech Inf.
Here a few Screens until after the first war:
Basic Concept:
- Build a heavy money based economy off 3 Cities
- After Initial Techs, beeline Cho Ko Nu's
- Save your Policy Points for Patronage and use City States to provide food to grow
- Time the golden age, upgrade Archers and Attack with 6-8 Cho Ko Nu's around the year 0.
- Claim your continent with a mix of Annex and Puppet (hapiness..)
- Keep making a lot of Cho Ko Nu's and tech to Astronomy -> Rifling
- Upgrade Cho Ko Nu's to Riflemen who retain their 2 Attacks per turn
- Embark them over for the win
Detailed Explanation:
I usually start with:
Scout -> Worker -> Warrior -> Settler -> Rushbuy Settler
You can swap Scout and Worker but I like having the chance at free techs from huts and 15 gold bonus from CSs.
You should have the required money to buy a Settler around the time your first one spawns so you can double expand. I found that if you keep the area in vision with your Scout you don't necessarily need an escort for your Settler as Barbarians are usually way too passive to be a threat and there are no animals.
As soon as your have your worker out, improve a hapiness ressource and trade it away for all their gold + around 6-8 gpt. You will not need the happiness for the next 30 turns and this is usually a gold boost of around 250-300 gold. If you have more hapiness ressources improve them and trade them to another civ. Always trade away all the happiness ressources you can afford to get more gold during the early game. This is not "nice", this is key!
After Improving the Resources, start spamming trading post on every tile that is not a hill. Riverside Forests are the best, followed by nonriver forests, river grass, river plains, nonriver grass/plains. On the hills you can build mines for burst production.
Settle your 2 new cities and make sure you have a total of 3 workers (through any means: Barbs, build, buy or capture from a non Maritime City State). Connecting the cities nets you quite some gold (Usually 20-30 gpt minus around 10 for roads) and should be a high priority. After that spam Trading posts/Mines just like in the first city.
As far as production goes: After your two settlers make sure you build 3 Archers asap to protect your cities and possibly to prevent being DoWed (no idea when they will DoW but 3 Archers and 2 Warriors should hold off almost everything anyways).
Then get monumets up and start on some Paper Mills (this building is INSANELY GOOD! +3 net gold per turn while providing a horsehockyload of science you will need anyways).
After your initial techs of at least writing, calendar, archery and other improvement techs, beeline for Machinery (Cho Ko Nu's).
Start saving up a lot of gold (over 50 gpt is not unusual). This is a very powerful and save playstyle as in case of total emergency you can just rushbuy an army of warriors and archers. Make sure you get at least a Monument and a Paper Mill in every City and then start building more Archers.
Don't spend your Social Policy points yet (just rightclick the notification away).
When you hit Medieval Age (which will be fairly early) you should be pretty close to your 3rd Policy and you will spend them on
Patronage - City State Influence degrades 25% slower
Aesthetics - Minimum Influence level with all City-States is 20
Philanthropy - +25% more Influence gained from Gold gifts to City-States
At this point I had just about 1k Gold. Donate 500g each to two Maritime City States.
This will provide your Capital with +8 Food and your two other cities with +4 each. Which is 16 food in total. Lets do some math:
Early game farms get you +1 food per turn, trading posts +2 gold per turn.
500 gold nets you 85 Influence, degrading 0.75 per turn. Thus you pay around 4.5 gold per turn to keep them happy plus a small initial investment (40 influence minus any quest you did = max of 235 gold).
One City State provides a total of 8 Food for 3 Cities and costs 4.5 gold per turn to maintain. That basically means 8 Farms equal 2.25 Trading posts disregarding the initial investment (depreciated over ~150 Turns this would result in an 8:3 ratio). Oh and you get at least 2 ressources for free and a not neglectable war ally. Yes, City States are THAT good!
Now you can say but with Civil Service farms get better! While they do there are still 2 problems:
1. Its still a 2:1 ratio in favor of the trading post and
2. We do not want to research Civil Service until MUCH later! Like after-rifling-later.
And once you start annexing more cities, Maritime City States just get flat out ridiculous. Another very important benefit of this type of economy is that you will have a lot of cash in the bank to react to any kind of emergency or speed up production by rushbuying.
What happened in my game (and I must admit it was more out of luck than anything else) was that I hit my first golden age the same turn Machinery finished. Swap all cities into production mode and you can litteraly churn out 5-6 Turn ChoKoNu's (or faster if you have more hills). I don't know how reliably you can time this if you actually try to do it, but it is insanely good if you manage to do it.
You should have at least 3 Archers possibly 4-5 and 3+ Warriors by the time you hit machinery (dont build granery and watermill, just pump archers and Warriors if you have monument and Paper Mill done). One Archer costs 110 gold to upgrade and you will easily have the money to upgrade all of your archers.
Do 1 Production Cycle of Cho Ko Nu's and attack with your warriors and around 6-8 Cho Ko Nu's. After your first few battles you will recieve a Great General thanks to Chinas racial Trait and he will provide an even bigger bonus to your invading army.
I don't think there is a way to stop this attack at all. Cho Ko Nu's are insaaaaane and in masses the shred anything before it can come close. Just keep them out of reach from their melee guys.
You probably want to annex the capital of your targeted civ and and maybe 1 more city depending on your hapiness (City States FTW). Raze/Puppet the rest as you see fit. If there are more civs on your continent it is wise to do 1 or 2 more production cycles of Cho Ko Nus and wipe out at least 1 more civ.
How to go on from here:
Try to find and ally with more Maritime City States and get the rest of the Patronage Policies.
Priority Techs are Currency (for Market), Astronomy (if you wiped your continent) and Rifling.
Keep your Cho Ko Nu's alive and upgrade them to Riflemen to keep the 2 attacks per turn bonus.
Support them with a good mix of Siege and other units and Embark to your next target civ.
Keep your Riflemen alive and you will eventually have 2-attack Mech Inf.
Here a few Screens until after the first war:
) I know you're netting 3, but when you're used to Libraries, as all other civs are... The -1 is negligible. Not to mention, it's a building you'll likely have in every possible city you can anyway 
