Chinese . . . the unsung Jack of all Trades

Chickidy

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 28, 2008
Messages
7
Location
Green Bay, WI
I just finished my first game as the Chinese, and I discovered something interesting. The Chinese can pretty much do anything they want. Think about it, one extra person in their cities, that means they can start researching techs or gathering funds IMMEDIATELY. Or you can customize the worker tiles to get a bonus square of production or food on your capital for either faster warriors or a bigger city if your doing OCC. They can get the best military, cultural, economic and scientific techs faster than anyone if they focus on science in all their cities, who can still function normally and add to research at the same time because they start out so large, and that means faster expansion, a greater research base and military infrastructure, all making the completely adaptable.

In my game I began pretty freaking well. I got three warriors fast and popped all goody huts and barbarians on my continent. That isn't an exagerration. I also got a couple galleys out fast to explore. Technologically I took an early lead, which I held for the rest of the game. I let my military go skeleton defense for the early part of the game. My fast expansion allowed me to trap one of my two neighbors, Russia, giving them no room to expand beyond one city. They weren't a factor for the rest of the game. My other neighbor, India, didn't become a problem until later in the game. My first galleys discovered my two other competitors, England and Greece, on the other continent, and one of the 4 artifacts that the villagers thought existed. I got ark of the Coven, so I was also in the lead culturally. Economically, I got my first two milestones and began building roads and rushing buildings. Honestly, early game I got the best start I could hope for.

Things started getting complicated when I hit medieval era. I was the first to discover navigation, so my first Galleon went off looking for Atlantis and whatever else might have been out there. India demanded some technology, I had just recently discovered Democracy (But stuck with republic), and had built a pikemem army in a choke point city between my main cluster of mainland cities and whatever Ghandi could throw at me, so I told him to go take his stick and idea of peaceful resistance and shove them up his bony little ass. He got angry and threw what seemed liked unfairly lucky armies at me. I began churning out legions as I frantically researched Mathematics. I had one city up past my choke point one which was in danger of falling. I had them easily out teched, but for some reason India's legion armies seemed to be stronger than they should be. Not just because of fundamentalism, but they were freaking pissed off. It was very frustrating.

I held onto my choke point city and began building catapults as soon as I stumbled onto Atlantis. The city up beyond my choke point town fell. I was fairing pretty good, keeping my science up with some island cities, which were doing very well since I basically kept them weakly defended and played simcity. They were on some pretty good real estate too, not just some1 square island. Then Queen Elizabeth came knocking on my door demanding some technology that gave me the edge. I told her to screw off and she declared war. At the time I wasn't that worried since she was divided from me on the continent by good old Greece, India was the biggest threat at the time, and traditionally I remember civilization AI's suck at sea invasions. I went as far as to settle a few more Island cities. I had a few galleons now, of searching for the remaining two artifacts, and I was really getting up there technologically. I was weathering the storm.

The game began to move fast, I found the two other artifacts. Angkor Watt and The Knights Templar. I got a tank and the hanging gardens, and discovered combustion pretty fast after that. I used the tank to take a weakly defended Indian city near the island I found the artifacts. One archer army, and the tank won! I began building Leonardo's Workshop in my big production city. Three mountains around it, plus an iron mine, equals 'Leonardo's Workshop complete in 7 turns!' I weathered a bit longer, using my cannons and catapults to kill any Indian invasion force that tried anything funny, counting the minutes it would take to exact my revenge. England began messing with me too. My Island cities came under attack from English knight armies, and again I saw how overpowered the AI was in this game. Her freaking knights almost killed my riflemen army. Alright, fine, it's possible that they got lucky, nearly taking one of my cities, but this happened 4 times!

I completed Leonardo's workshop and rushed forward with my legion-to-tank armies and brought my galleons-to-cruiser armies home to defend my islands from English ships. India fell to pieces, I 100% drove them off my continent and to the islands. All the while my cities developed into super cities, my big producers turned out the tanks and my ships sank the navies of my enemies. And again I was presented with the stupidity of the AI. In comes Elizabeth, talking about how she didn't really need that galleon and demanded I tell her about combustion so she can make her own tanks or else my 'snobbery' will be ended. Naturally I tell her to **** off.

I'm just gonna break off here for a second and talk about how much I hate the AI in this game. I despise it. I mean I remember playing civ2 where the AI sent trickles of units at your cities and constantly made stupid demands, declared wars and made peace treaties the next turn and that AI was ****ing art compared to this **** Sure the civRev AI fights a hell of a lot better than civ2, maybe not as well as civ3 or maybe civ4, I don't know I never played civ4 because my pc sucks, but the major difference is that civRev AI is shamelessly pitted against the player. In civ2 stuff happened around you all the time. Foreign adviser would pop up and say "Oh dear, the French and Soiux have declared war on eachother!" Never, in any of the games I've played in civRev have once the AI actually declared war on eachother on their own. I never even bother with bribing them since I'll have to kill that guy later anyway, and the more cities for me the better. And that raises a few more problems I have with this game, but for another time.

Alright, now that India is on the ropes, all I see from them is a bunch of annoying galleons stalking my cruisers. Oh ya, I'm terrified. Anyway, England's galleons are a bit more of a problem, what with their special abilities, I don't have quite so big an advantage against them. My 6 to their 4.5 ORDINARILY wouldn't have been a problem, but what with the AI's overpowered troops this game, I didn't take any chances. So anyway, I throw together a fleet of cruiser and about 5 tanks armies and go off to finish the dying beast that is India as I continue to pull ahead on all 4 victory fronts. Long story short, I accidentally accept India's 10 gold in exchange for 10 turns of peace (While before they demanded 276 gold pieces for 3 turns of peace) so I am forced by my own stupidity to turn my attention to Merry'old England.

I attack on two fronts, right, to kill two birds with one stone. I never stopped building tanks, so back home I got another 4 armies or so, and and on the ships I got some upgraded armies. So I float over to London with my tanks and my battleships and I start killing Brits, while back home I declare war on Greece and start fighting my way across the empire that kept me safe before so I could get mt tanks to England without tying up my ships. They were beginning to become a threat anyway, as I had switched to Communism and built a ton of factories to help me end this war quickly, and my lack of culture made Greece's 4 high culture cities right on my border a dangerous threat to national security. My tanks were killing hoplites in Athens and longbowmen in Dover, and all was right with the world UNTIL an army of English knights killed my scout ninja lightning tank army between attacks, and to that I say . . .

BULL****

No way in hell any dude on horseback is gonna kill my buffed tank! It didn't really set me back at all, but I was pissed none the less. I killed England fast and hard for that, and within 1 turn Alexander and Elizabeth were telling me about how "The fortunes of war" have failed them and "The English will rise again!" So at this point I'm nearing space flight, can essentially switch to democracy and play out the game peacefully with culture out my ass, or I can switch my science to gold and use my factories to build me some money buildings, or I can take ma' tanks and finish Gahndi off and then show Russia the first action she's seen all game. The rest doesn't matter really, the point is this.

China has potential to win at anything because they can get an amazing starting lead and keep it. More people make it possible to excel at anything early game and the one civ that has more people than anybody is the one lead by that little communist hobbit we all know and hate, Mao! Give it a spin if your curious, go on, try it. China is good for anybody because with that extra person they can do any old thing that the proletarian needs to succeed in a world full of idiot Bourgeois AI. Thank you, and if you read this Sid Meyer, wtf man? Seriously, fix the AI in a patch or something, because it's just ri'goddamnd'dadiculous!
 
You forgot the part that the Chinese start with writing. That means that right after you research alphabet, you can research code of laws, so you can start spamming settlers and still maintain large cities!
 
How could I forget that? That big city with the mountains I mentioned had a cattle grassland right next to it, so I beelined my behind on Code of Laws real fast like to compensate for the lack of food. Thank you for reminding me.
 
How could I forget that? That big city with the mountains I mentioned had a cattle grassland right next to it, so I beelined my behind on Code of Laws real fast like to compensate for the lack of food. Thank you for reminding me.

Hey man, you from Green Bay? I was born and raised there, moved away for college at 18, but my family is still all there. GB Pride :goodjob:
 
Hell ya man. Technically it's Ashwaubenon, but then it's just splitting hairs. I like the Packers, and if that doesn't make me GB enough then your lying about being from here!
 
I can tell you struggled with the legion hoards the AI is so fond of

your best answer is an army of catapults defended by an army of archers or pikemen, up on a hill. (hopefully you have one in a strategically critical location.

then watch as you overrun their entire army every time they stray into a square next to the hill. legions are awesome until they're on defence

NaZ
 
While I appreciate the advise, I really didn't start this threat seeking help. I wasn't struggling, I was merely annoyed at the double standard AI on king difficulty. Your just repeating what I already knew, sound advise, but completely misplaced.
 
well ok then. hopefully it will be good for newer players reading this thread.

I prefer the tech path with the chinese. chain out like 4 cities, hit irrigation, research COL, rush buy a settler in each city- hit 8 cities before researching invention. since they all start at pop 4 it is pretty insane.

you can play defensively and beeline for modern infantry. it can be really hard for someone else to keep up if they let you boom.

but I don't think the chinese are the best at culture or domination. they certainly can do it well enough (but so can any civ really)

but certain civs (japan, french, roman, aztec) are just better at cultural. others (germans, arabs) are far better at early domination attempts.

NaZ
 
A tank army that get's beaten by knights (when the knights attack) is no surprise at all.

A tank has a basic defence of 6, and can get a maximum defense of 9 when veteran.
A knight has a basic attack of 4, and can get a maximum attack of 12
(fundamentalism + 1 attack, samurai castle + 1 attack, Guerilla + 50%, Veteran + 50%)

In addition to this you have terrain bonus that could have been for or against you.
I do of course not expect all of the conditions to bet met, but even with both defender and attacker on basic, its still a 33% chance that you will loose so not that big bomb.

Nice writeup on the Chinese however, and yes they are powerful.
 
Hell ya man. Technically it's Ashwaubenon, but then it's just splitting hairs. I like the Packers, and if that doesn't make me GB enough then your lying about being from here!

Nice nice. Yeah I am technically from De Pere, but right outside GB. Life-long Packer fan too. Go Packers (and Jets)!
 
I wouldn't exactly call the Chinese unsung, seeing as how they are one of the most used civs online.
 
This write-up was great, and as NaZ pointed out, very helpful to newbies like me who read the threads. So, thanks. Keep posting such well detailed scenarios!
 
Thank you for your compliments and contributions everyone.

Raw Power: I realized the math is correct, but I'm not looking at this statistically, I'm looking at this logically. This problem has plagued civ since civII when somehow, someway a phalanx managed to hold his own AGAINST A BOMBER! It defeats all practical thinking, swords vs six inches of steel doesn't equate to swords winning. They wouldn't be able to pierce the shielding of the tank! I guess I just expected such long lived and well known problems with the civ games to be fixed in the latest title. This one is a bit more like civII, but I sort of thought it would be like a re-birth instead of a reversion.
 
No way in hell any dude on horseback is gonna kill my buffed tank! It didn't really set me back at all, but I was pissed none the less.

This type of thing seems to happen to me a lot... guess I'm not the only one shouting at the television screen :lol:
 
while i understand in a way what you are getting at in terms of logically its hard to complain about things like this in a game where it can take a couple of thousand years to build a temple

the concepts whether they be units or techs or buildings in this game are just window dressing for mechanics

they make the mechanics pretty so to speak but at the end of the day the game runs off its mechanics and sometimes that makes some things seem pretty damn illogical considering its window dressing but thats the way it is

sure that might cause some instances of the game being not fun to come up

however even less fun would be only being able to play the game one single way because you are forced to play defensive to the guy who heads straight to certain techs and you stand no chance of survival unless you match him tech for tech in order to defend yourself

one way to look at it is that these old units are getting modern technology as the eras progress after all in real life no one would have confused the mujahideen in the 80's with civrevs equivalent of modern units however they were able to take out modern units because someone provided them with the technology

i think one way they could look to 'fix' this in a future civrev title would be to give a penalty to older units against more modern units if the older units civilization isnt in the same era as the more modern unit

its rather easy to peg the different units to eras (archer/ancient, pikeman/medieval, rifleman/industrial, modern infantry/modern etc) so then if an archer fights a tank if the archers civ is in the modern era then the archer gets its full stats but if the archers civ is in the industrial era then it is at 3/4s stats if it is in the medieval era 1/2 stats ancient 1/4 stats

in real life 'ancient units' are given modern tech so why couldnt it happen in the game
 
as an addition to my statement people seem to have no problem assuming other parts of their civ have 'modernized' over time

after all we figure that our industrial era folks arent going to the temple that still has the 36 armed goddess with the bloodstains around her mouth from the hearts that their ancient ancestors used to feed her a couple of millennium ago

we figure that their medieval ancestors likely upgraded things a bit

in fact we also likely figure that they themselves have removed some of the 'pagan' materials that their medieval ancestors used

i mean our tanks arent getting their veteran upgrades by practicing in the sword arena of that barracks that we built back in the ancient era

we never give these types of things second though yet somehow believe that there are literally 4000 year old guys with yew bows walking around our industrialized cities and defending those cities with said bows
 
Thank you for your compliments and contributions everyone.

Raw Power: I realized the math is correct, but I'm not looking at this statistically, I'm looking at this logically. This problem has plagued civ since civII when somehow, someway a phalanx managed to hold his own AGAINST A BOMBER! It defeats all practical thinking, swords vs six inches of steel doesn't equate to swords winning. They wouldn't be able to pierce the shielding of the tank! I guess I just expected such long lived and well known problems with the civ games to be fixed in the latest title. This one is a bit more like civII, but I sort of thought it would be like a re-birth instead of a reversion.


This is a debate that will go on for ever, I just showed the math so that people would understand how the game mechanics work.

PS! Even tanks, bombers etc have weaknesses. You are "stupid" if you have bow and arrow and go head to head with a bomber/tanks. What you do is wait until the right time, for instance when the tanks are not in use, and rushing the camp killing the soldiers or sabotaging the tanks. Similar to bombers you can hide and follow the planes back to base and sabotage them or killing the crew. Remember the Civ battles doesn't show exactly how the win is gained, just a percentage on how the battle develops.
 
Just imagine that in this one particular stroke of great luck, the archer (or whatever) unit ingeniously found a way to disable the tank: dug trap trenches, got them stuck in mud, tricked them into following them onto an unstable ledge above a ravine, made them run out of gas chasing them through the bushes...WHATEVER, use your imagination. Think Ewoks vs. the storm troopers.
 
Top Bottom