Chinese strategy: Jumpstart!

[Frelinder]

A Chinese strategy! Jumpstart in expanding and teching with backfilling!

The Chinese Bonus + 1 pop in new cities is one of the strongest bonuses in this game. Lets see how we can take advantage of that the best way.

This strategy is mostly to desrcibe how to expand fast. In MP games you may use this but need to think of your defence and may not always be able to expanding quite this fast.

This Strategy is mostly for MP but it will work good for SP too. The different in SP is that you wan’t backfill as much as this strategy should allow you to do in MP. But on the other hand you don’t need to reach Irrigation so fast in SP.

This strategy will let you have all this after only 22 turns.

6 cities with a total pop of 20.
7-10 techs (depending on how much that will back fill)

And you only need 80 gp to get all this…

How is this possible?

-I will explain it turn by turn exactly how to do it.


Then let the game begin!

Put all 3 on forest and build 3 warriors in 5 turns. ( if having only 2 forest put one in city and this will take 6 turns) Now switch to produce a settler and put 2 on forest 1 on grass. After 5 more turns you have hammered a settler and have a pop of 2 again in Capital.

So after 10-11 turns you will have produced 3 warriors, 1 settler and have grown to 2 in Capital. Find a close spot and Settle the settler.

So now you have 2 cities after 12 turns. One with a pop of 3 and one with pop of 2 without using any gold.

Continue and grow to pop 3 in your Capital by working 2 grass. So after 16 turns you are up to a pop of 3 in it again. In meantime hammer a settler with 2 on forest and one on grass in your secon city that you settled in turn 12.

This means after 16 turns you are back to pop 3 in Capital and after 17 turns you have hammered a settler for free in your second city and grown to 2 in your second city.

Right about now (after 15-17 turns) you should get your free settler for reaching the 100 goldmark. Right after reaching the 100 gp then use your gold for the first time and rush a settler in capital.

Secon wawe of settlers:
This means you get 3 settlers around 15-17 turns into the game that you can settle and you have only used 40 gp sofar.

So after 18-19 turns you have settled those and now have 5 cities looking like this:

3 of them with a pop of 3 (the ones that you’ve just settled) and the other 2 with a pop of 1 and 2. And you have only used 40gp!!!

In one of the last 3 cities that youve just settled you now rush a settler for 40 gp. With thos one you will settle your 6 city. But Don't settle him before you are in medival.

Now you have spend 80gp.

But Hey!! Up to this point you haven’t put a single worker on producing sciense. So whats up with that????


The Techjump by backfilling!

This is around 19 turns into the game (2100 BC) so around this time all the 20 beakers techs should be discovered from others. Or atleast Pottery, Library and Bronze. Put ALL your pop on watertiles.

You have 5 cities. 2 with a pop of 3 and 1 with a pop of 2 and 2 with a pop of 1 so total 10 pop. Put everyone on water!

This will give you 20 Beakers/turn.

Hopefully you will backfill all the 20 BT (BT=beakers tech) In 1 turn!! scinse they will all be discovered by now. If you do the techjump and get into medival right away you should by now have found a good location for the last settler that you rushed and settle him in medival to get a pop of 4 right away in your 6 city.

You do remember the settler That I said you should rush in one of the citys of your Secon wave 3 settlers? Yes that one you settle now when reaching midevial and you get a pop of 4 right away in that city. Put all on water in this city too and you get 8 beakers more /turn from your 6 city. Also you will get literacy for free when reaching midevial wich will give you + 1 sciense in all your cities= + 6 beakers/turn

If not all 4 20 BT backfilled right away research the 20 BT that you need in one turn in order to get into medival. Important to get to medival so you get the + 6 beakers from Literacy and 4 pop right away in your 6 city

So the turn right after the switch (after 20 turns) you can start researching Irrigation you will now be making 34 beakers/turn so you can jump over massonary and research irrigation in 2 turns. (without the pre-tech massonary Irrigation cost 60 beakers instead of 50) Also you will backfill ironworking now if anyone have discovered that. Getting Irrigation first will give you an bonus of 6 pop!

Woha!!! You have now 6 cities whith a total pop of 20 after 22 turns!!! And you have only spend 80 gold.

You can now management your cities a little better. I mean you can’t have all on water/sciense for the whole game! Go for COL right after irrigation and continue expanding to 10-12 cities and after around 35 turns stop expanding and switch to democracy. You haven’t spend a lot of gold sofar so you should be able to rush a little and hammer the settlers you wanna builds when you are in republic pretty fast.

What about defence?

Expanding this fast as this strategy sugest may not be the best tactic if you are starting close to an agressiv player that might rush you. But this should your 3 warriors that you build let you know quite early and if you feel that you can expand the first 25 turns with little defence then this is an excellent start.

Well anyway you have your 3 warriors wich works as scouts. After getting barbhuts and friendly huts and stuff. Put them at your boarders on chocepoints. Its not more then 2-3 cities by your boarders that need protection. If you see an opponent coming at you you can do several things.

- First of all this strategy only needs 80 gp so you will have a lot of gold that you can use on rushing units if needed. Bronze will backfill in 2100 BC after that you can rush archers if needed. I doubt anyone will attack your cities.

- same turn as you backfill you can also ask the AI if he wan'ts to buy the techs that backfilled and you got for free from your opponents.

- You can also whenever you wan’t during this expanding phase stop expanding and switch all to make hammers or gold in order to rush units for defending yourself.

If you get lucky and find Alot! of gold and If you don't feel threatened at all you can even spend gold in a library. If so do that in ancient for 80gp and do it in a city that you can work atleast 5 watertiles and don't plan to use for producing settlers in.


*cheers*

 

[Oddible]

This strategy guide is a bit of a joke right? First of all this is wildly optimistic and in MP playing against anyone who is even remotely competent will annihilate this strat. You make the assumption that you'll have 100g in order to get a free settler and rush a settler but you haven't explained in any way where that 100g will come from since all your citizens are working hammers and science. If you're assuming these will all come from popping barb huts then again, reminder that this strat only works against incompetent players who just sit in their cities and let you have all the barb huts.

Lastly wth is backfilling!? You seem to think that if you produce 20 beakers in 1 turn that you will automatically get all of the 20 beaker techs... Wut?

 

[GeorgeOP]

I think he assumes you'll have 100 gold from your 3 warriors that are scouting around.

 

[GGrayson]

well, this strategy isn't really 100% great for MP play, but moreso to show you what you can do with the Chinese with little to no use of gold.

3 warriors all made in 5 turns will generally pick up 100 gold in less than 20 turns, depdending on the map. But, in most games, 2-3 warriors are typically enough to do the job.

Backfilling is iffy, since you need to be producing 21 beakers per turn, and you'll get all the 20 beaker techs that anyone else has already researched. That's not really that big of a deal, as even if others don't have the 20 beaker techs, you'll get them quickly. The big advantage of doing this with the Chinese is that you get Literacy after you get your 5th tech, which gives you +1 science in all cities, which is pretty huge, especially for the Chinese, since they already start with a great tech (writing) and get half priced libraries in the Industrial, as well as have +1 pop per cities.

Getting the backfill or quick teching of the 20 beaker techs means you'll be settling 4 pop cities in no time, while most everyone else is still settling 2 pop cities.

In Multiplayer, you can't really follow the strategy to the letter, but you can do pretty close to the same thing.

Most people seem to think that early expansion makes you weaker, and this is 99% wrong! More cities means easier defense, since you have more production capabilities than the other guy. If you feel pressed, you can defend using the "4 warriors trick", which is having 4 single warriors in a city, wait for the other guy to attack with horsemen, if the horsemen get a wound, then army up the other 3 warriors and kill the horsearmy. Or you can simply tech Bronze Working really fast, and start producing archers. In 3 population cities with at least 2 forests, this means an archer every 2 turns. With 3 forsets, you have an archer army in 5 turns. You typically won't have to play this conservatively, and you don't have to defend everywhere, really. Sometimes producing too many defenses is a waste of time, sometimes it's an ok call, especially if you are getting settlers out at an ok pace, and the only way to lose is if they try and kill you.

So, you probably shouldn't just build 3 warriors and then spam settlers everywhere without any other units, but you can spam 3 warriors, try to get as much gold as you can, work on a few fast setters, choke out some of the map, have lookouts, defend well in the cities that are more likely to be attacked, create "fronts", spam settlers out of your other cities, and keep going.

I play MP and only write about strategy for multiplayer, and have had a lot of success with the Chinese. They are too easy to play with, part of it is because they have so many easy bonuses for teching and population, and the other part is their ability to get settlers out fast. I'd say an average game for me with the Chinese is having 5 cities in 2000BC, and then getting 10-12 by 0AD, and having about 14-18 techs at 0AD. This comes from expanding in the Ancient, defending wisely but not overboard, and then getting to Code of Laws and building even more settlers.

The only thing that usually will hold back this type of strategy is not having land to expand to, or have bad land for expansion (lots of desersts, no grass, fish, or forests). This is why you have to press the Chinese all game long. If you let up, they will take the inch you give them, spam a bunch of cities in no time, then build a bunch of 20 hammer libraries after 14 techs, and leave you in the dust.

 

[Palaistea]

This strategy can be really helpful for a new player who needs to learn HOW to expand.

When I first started playing, my innate tendency was toward caution, and I expanded too slowly. This was in SP, mind. I'd get creamed on King or higher. When I asked for advice, people simply said, "Expand!" But no one really got down to explaining how, and my efforts to figure it out were quite muddled and often fatal for my struggling civs. Then I read this post, and I tried it out using the Chinese. It didn't work every time, but using it I learned the mechanics of expansion. That made a world of difference.

I see this post less as a strategy (though it certainly is that) than a teaching tool. A good one, at that. There's something to be said for the step-by-step approach. Once I understood expansion, some of the other strategies made tons more sense to me.

I win all the time on Deity now (yeah, still SP, but I love this game!). This post was one of the sources that really opened up my game and gave me some useful tools.