[R&F] Civ of the Week: China

[acluewithout]

• Leader: Qin Shi Huang.
  
  
• Leader Ability: The First Emperor. Builders receive an additional charge. Can spend Builder charges to complete 15% of the Production cost of Ancient and Classical Wonders.

• Civ Ability: Dynastic Cycle. Sort of like a Chinese version of Dallas or Descendants of the Sun. Eurekas and Inspirations also provide an additional 10% of the science or culture cost of the relevant tech or civic.
  
  
• Unique Unit: Crouching Tiger. Unique Medieval Ranged Unit. Unlocks at Machinery. Melee Stength 30, Ranged Strength 50, Attack Range 1 (seriously !?! One? Sigh), Move 2. Production Cost 160, Maintenance 3. Does not actually contain tigers or hidden dragons.
  
  
• Unique Infrastructure: Great Wall. Unique Tile Improvement (requires one builder charge). Unlocks at Masonry. Can only be built in a line on the current border of your territory and cannot be built on top of resources. It's basically a Fort, but in addition to defensive bonuses / fortification, provides +1 Gold and (after Castles) +1 Culture for each Adjacent Great Wall. Culture from the Great Wall provides tourisim after Flight.

• Leader Agenda: Wall of 10,000 Li. Builds wonders, and likes Civs that don't. Doesn't like Civs that build more Wonders than him.

• Interesting links: I found this interesting, but YMMV.

Notes:

• If you get walls, your City's Ranged Attack is based on the strongest Ranged Unit you've built. So, building one Crouching Tiger will give all your walled Cities a Ranged Attack of 50.

• Does anyone else think the extra builder charge mechanic should have gone to Egypt? I do sometimes, and then other times I think it's more interesting giving the mechanic to China and then giving Egypt the whole river District and Wonders thing. The downside though, is that China is better at getting Pyramids than Egypt. Go figure.
  
  
• Relatedly. Does anyone ever think that (AI) Civ's should get a bonus to producing Wonders they actually built Historically?

 

[local_hero]

My favourite civ but it is the leader ability that carries this civ. I might underestimate Dynastic Cycles (or not), but it's not that noticeable or fun. It doesn't give you any satisfaction getting that +10% when you complete a Eureka or Inspiration.

I think the tile yields of the Great Wall is too weak to encourage you to build it in longer segments in workable territory, so also a bit underwhelming. I play the game with a mod that makes it possible to build wall segments without removing forest and rainforest, that makes it more decent.

Notes:

• If you get walls, your City's Ranged Attack is based on the strongest Ranged Unit you've built. So, building one Crouching Tiger will give all your walled Cities a Ranged Attack of 50.

• Does anyone else think the extra builder charge mechanic should have gone to Egypt? I do sometimes, and then other times I think it's more interesting giving the mechanic to China and then giving Egypt the whole river District and Wonders thing. The downside though, is that China is better at getting Pyramids than Egypt. Go figure.
  
  
• Relatedly. Does anyone ever think that (AI) Civ's should get a bonus to producing Wonders they actually built Historically?

Very interesting about the City Range. Never noticed despite hundreds of hours. Makes the Crouching Tiger useful for more than the era Score. But I don't think civs should get bonuses for building wonders they have historically. I try to do it sometimes for role playing, but I appreciate the alternative history aspect of the game.

 

[Disgustipated]

Gotta love that extra builder charge. My favorite feature of this civ. The only downside of this civ is they are a little boring. Flat bonus to builder charges, inspiration and eurekas aren't the most interesting thing in the world. Not my favorite civ to play, but certainly not weak.

More to add later.

 

[Disgustipated]

• Leader Ability: The First Emperor.
• As mentioned above, I love the builder charge. It can be hard to get a lot of improvements done in the early game, this helps immensely with that. The wonder bonus isn't particularly useful on any level above Prince. I normally play on King, and even on that level getting ancient and classical wonders isn't easy, unless you are willing to forgo expanding. With loyalty what it is, delaying expanding is not a good idea. In my game (see below) I didn't have a lot of room, and could only get 7 cities down. Playing as China, offensive warfare didn't seem to be in character, I'm playing a peaceful game. That said, I did manage to get 2 ancient/classical wonders. Oracle and Colosseum. I really wanted Temple of Artemis, but I forgot it had to be next to a camp (I don't build this hardly at all and forgot the requirements), I did have a lot of pastures, and would have got a nice bonus. Pyramids would have been awesome, but at the time I didn't have the terrain for that.

• Civ Ability: Dynastic Cycle.
• A powerful ability, but as mentioned above, isn't particularly interesting as it is passive and doesn't alter your playstyle all that much, though you may want to delay some techs/civics for those eureaks/inspirations. A strategy I hadn't really used as much as I should that I saw on the Civ 6 wiki for China is using spies to really boost as many techs as you can. I did manage to get a couple tech eureka steals in my current game. That civ6 wiki has a ton of information on China, somebody went all out in that wiki entry. May be worth a looksee if you are into this civ. With Rise and Fall's eureka/inspiration nerf, this ability is even more useful (though still only at 50% is actually a bigger percentage increase than vanilla).

• Unique Unit: Crouching Tiger. The reason why this range is 1 is because the devs intended this to be a defensive unit. And it is. A range of 2 would have made this unit great for offensive warfare, and the devs wouldn't have wanted that. I built one for era score, not much else to say about this unit other than that.
  
  
• Unique Infrastructure: Great Wall.
  I actually did manage a line of 4 segments in my current game, mostly on useless flat desert and plains that weren't suitable for farming triangles. The gold and culture come so late, and this UI just seems kind of useless. Maybe more useful in multiplayer? Maybe a muliplayer person can comment more on it.

• Leader Agenda: Wall of 10,000 Li.
• You can be sure he will complain about you if you like wonders. That said, since I don't build many early game wonders, I find if you can get a friendship with him early, it's fairly easy to maintain that friendship. And once you get your alliance, he doesn't really care about you building wonders.

Does anyone else think the extra builder charge mechanic should have gone to Egypt?

It suits China as well, but you could make a strong case for Egypt as well. I'm okay with it as is, but would rather Egypt have a larger wonder building bonus.

Relatedly. Does anyone ever think that (AI) Civ's should get a bonus to producing Wonders they actually built Historically?

Sounds kind of interesting, but probably not something I would want in an umodded game. Would be interesting to see in a mod though.

As for my game, I'll include the save if anyone is interested. It can be challenging map if you play peaceful like me. An unnamed neighbor to the NorthWest is dominating the game on score, and overall progress since they expanded much more than me (mostly through warfare). And he snagged Big Ben from me. I was really irritated by that. I thought I could get it, but they have a civ ability that is hard to compete with that gave them the edge.

I failed several wonders this game, including great library which I really wanted. Oh well. Haven't finished my game yet, I believe the world is in a renaissance age right now.

Spoiler :

note about this save, it has culture victory turned off since I tend to do that victory so much since it's so fast. I realize I don't have a single science victory in my game of the weeks. It's what I'm going for. If I leave culture victory on, I tend to build a lot of theater squares to defend against AI culture victory, and it's hard to resist just taking all those great writers/artists and winning the game with them.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I'd agree that they are a bit boring.
Build wonders, defensive UI and UU, very much a turtle civ this time around.

Hate the idea of civs getting a bonus to building wonders they did historically. No fun at all.

 

[Disgustipated]

Finished my game. As I have nothing to compare it to, it's hard to say how powerful they are as a science victory civ. I managed to get my production (technically not since I used royal society extensively) and science almost equal. Sometimes I'm waiting on discovering techs before I can finish the rocket parts, this game worked out well, and not too much waiting. I only got rank #11: Charles De Gaulle. I had some decent size cities, not sure why it was so low. But I just don't have a lot of cities.

I was last in units killed and total combats, now that's what I call playing a civ defensively. I don't think I've ever been last in those categories. It shows 1 city taken because I did take one free city. With my limited space, I needed all the cities I could get.

It will be interesting to compare them to Korea when I play them. Although with Korea's obscene bonuses, not sure how China can compare. Actually I'm looking back through my final saves, they aren't civ of the week play throughs, and some have mods like loyal capitals and played on TSL Earth maps. I did beat my Poundmaker science victory, but as expected my Korea Science victory was way ahead of this one. By like 39 turns. My Scotland game was better than this one as well (though one difficulty level lower). Hmm, I also have an India and Germany game that was better, but that was vanilla civ and one difficulty level lower. Though I would think Rise and Fall would be easier science victory because of Royal Society, but I had no great engineers or scientists to boost either. Final Grade: B-. Lower 2nd tier in my book.

Not much else to add that I haven't covered above. This is probably a civ that is better at higher difficulty levels with extensive use of spies to boost techs. I think I got around 5 tech boosts this game. But at a higher difficulty level I could have gotten more.

On a side note, I did build the Amundsen Research station. This isn't bad to build with 3 charges of Eiffel, 3 Eiffel charges will get the entire thing built. I had nothing better to do with him.

Spoiler :

 

[Leathaface]

Are China good at Culture victories? I think the extra builder charge helps with completing Theatre Square projects once you have the Royal Society.

 

[The Highwayman]

Yes, China is good at culture victories. Getting a few extra early wonders helps along with the extra builder charge. The builder charges save some chops for later infrastructure, as well as let you build the Petra with no initial chops available. Dynastic Cycles is decent at progressing down the Civics tree. All of this sets up a solid peaceful, sim city civ. Additionally, the Great Wall's only redeeming quality is that it produces tourism in the late game without the need to be worked. China's borders should be extended beyond workable range by this point, so the Wall may not conflict with other tile improvements that are actually useful.

 

[Archon_Wing]

China's always been good, and probably better than I thought because they basically have the Pyramids for free..... and then they also have an easy time getting the Pyramids which lets you have 8 charge builders by the mid game.

The better inspirations and Eurekas are nice but you need to be fast to them otherwise you'll miss the chance as they never overflow. In reality it's probably going to be less than 10%. One thing that really helps is if they can get the Great Library which they do have an edge on, as well as the Oracle.

The Crouching Tiger is like an earlier machine gun.... and is bad like a machine gun but getting the improved ranged attack for all your cities means that China is very annoyingly hard to invade in the medieval era.

Great Wall tourism is pretty good but you really have to get started on building the wall.

This is a game I started earlier last week-- Emperor, probably continents.

Settled on the luxury (don't know if that was a good idea)

Tamar spawned really close so had to kill her and then Khan is annoying as ever with mountain passes and t70 knights so that was whatever. Getting into a cavalry pissing context against Khan is a bad idea since he can steal everything so I actually went.... pikemen. Well, all 2 of them, plus an encampment

Spoiler :

Wanted to build Terracotta army, but that city wasn't that good so built it up North.

For the rest of the game I just collected writers and built a giant wall.... This is my favorite wall for sure since I connected it across the continent. Was sort of a waste of gold, but hey.

Spoiler :

I was sorta pissed upon losing Big Ben and Petra though the game was about to end anyways so didn't bother to go to war.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

• Unique Unit: Crouching Tiger. Unique Medieval Ranged Unit. Unlocks at Machinery. Melee Stength 30, Ranged Strength 50, Attack Range 1 (seriously !?! One? Sigh), Move 2. Production Cost 160, Maintenance 3. Does not actually contain tigers or hidden dragons.

Yes, they contain hidden dragons. You just can't see them.

​

• Relatedly. Does anyone ever think that (AI) Civ's should get a bonus to producing Wonders they actually built Historically?

​

The AI Civs, sure. Maybe they could at least prioritize different Wonders, ideally based on their agendas, secondarily based on their strengths, thirdly based on their civ's history if need be to fill up a "top 3" or "top 5" list for each Leader.

I might not be saying this if the Leaders otherwise played the game differently. I'm a bit desperate for some variety in the AI's behaviour. It's all well and good that you can play your own empire differently based on your strengths and weaknesses, but when all of your neighbours play the game the exact same way and the only thing that changes based on who you border is the colour beside you and the things they show up to complain to you about, it feels so samey. I can't even count on Gandhi to nuke me anymore. Maybe at least he could always try to build the Taj Mahal

Spoiler :

and fill it with nukes

.
​

 

[Halcyan2]

China also benefits quite a lot from R&F due to Liang the Surveyer. While Magnus is the go-to-guy for most civs (due to the chop yields), the extra builder charge from Liang synergizes well with China's ability and lets you get that many more wonder charges.

Furthermore, Wonders help you get era score to get Golden Ages and one of the best early game Dedications is Monumentality, which gives your Builders extra speed and an additional 2 charges. With Monumentality when entering the Classical Era, China can do really well in building up the Classical (and leftover Ancient) wonders, helping them advance into another Golden Age for Medieval (where you can use the extra worker charges for infrastructure).

For other civs, you often use early chops to get the good early wonders. With China, you use worker charges to get the early wonders, and then save the chops for Medieval/Renaissance wonders.

While I love China's Leader ability, the other civilization bonuses and uniques are not very good or interesting IMHO.

 

[KayAU]

Right on, China, one of my favorites.

• Leader ability - The First Emperor
  • Additional charge for builders
  • Can use builder charges to complete 15% of ancient or classical wonders

I love this ability. The extra builder charge is quite strong, and will help you out from the very beginning until the very end of the game. The ability to rush wonders is my favorite part, as it allows me to get those early wonders without hindering the development of my cities. It is, without any doubt, the best boost to wonder production in the game, even if it does only apply to wonders from the first two eras.​

• Civilization ability - Dynastic Cycle
  • Eurekas and Inspiration provide an additional +10% of the total research cost

This is another strong ability, which will help you throughout the entire game. My only reservation about it has to do with the eureka/inspiration system itself. While I like the idea of it, the implementation is a bit lacking, and the notion of researching something part of the way, then swapping it out while waiting for the boost to finish it, just seems wrong, and it is somewhat amplified with China. Still, the system being what it is, this is a useful ability.​

• Unique unit - Crouching Tiger
  • 50 ranged strength
  • 30 melee strength
  • 1 range
  • 160 production
  • 3 maintenance

I don't really like this one. It becomes available at the same time as Crossbowmen, and honestly, I prefer those. The main differences between the units are that the Crouching tiger costs slightly less (20 production less), strikes significantly harder at range (50 versus 40), and has a puny 1 tile range. This is the whole reason why I don't like it. Having to bring a ranged unit right next to its target is a major problem. On the defence, it works better, as you can keep it safe inside a city center or fort, but still, its extra ranged strength has to be weighed against the range of the Crossbowman. While the Crouching Tiger can only strike the 6 adjacent tiles, the Crossbowman can reach 18 different tiles. This is a huge tactical advantage. Also, consider that you will probably already have a fair number of Archers, many of which will have promotions, and which will upgrade into Crossbowmen. The Crouching Tiger is just not needed.​

• Unique infrastructure - Great Wall
  • Tile improvement
  • Must be built in a line along the border
  • Defence and fortification bonus like a Fort
  • 1 gold for each adjacent Great Wall tile
  • 1 culture for each adjacent Great Wall tile after Castles
  • 1 tourism for each adjacent Great Wall tile after Flight

I don't like this one either. The yields are extremely weak, and having a bunch of forts like this at the border is really not very useful, as you will never face any military threat to justify the use of space and builder charges. The extra culture might have been marginally useful if it arrived at the start, but it doesn't.​

So those are two good things and two bad things. The uniques are quite bad, but I still like them a lot due to the Leader and Civilization abilities, and I just love early game wonders.

You can combine the unique unit and infrastructure to implement one of the silliest military strategies in the game: a huge border wall manned with short range cannons! You will even get an achievement for this. It will be ludicrously expensive, but no one will be able to get through, at least so long as they come right up to the wall where you can kill them. If they stand one tile away and shoot at you instead, you may be in trouble.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Can you upgrade archers to crouching tigers?

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Can you upgrade archers to crouching tigers?

No

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Right on, China, one of my favorites.

• Leader ability - The First Emperor
  • Additional charge for builders
  • Can use builder charges to complete 15% of ancient or classical wonders

I love this ability. The extra builder charge is quite strong, and will help you out from the very beginning until the very end of the game. The ability to rush wonders is my favorite part, as it allows me to get those early wonders without hindering the development of my cities. It is, without any doubt, the best boost to wonder production in the game, even if it does only apply to wonders from the first two eras.​

I had never tinkered much with China (as I wasn’t a big early game wonder builder), but these guys can make a wondercentric early game strategy work, and I do mean work! I managed to hard build the Temple of Artemis, Pyramids, and the Oracle (3 of the 5 ancient era wonders), then used Goddess of the Harvest 4/5 charge chops to to faith summon a great prophet (effectively giving me the 4th, Stonehenge). The only one I missed was the Hanging Gardens. The beauty of the 15% builder charge to wonder production ability is they don’t need favorable terrain, which is a really big deal.

For instance, the city that I built the Colosseum in was barely able to squeak out an entertainment district using Magnus chops. I then had to buy the arena (due to a lack of production), after which the magic happened. Each builder charge I expended over the **400 PRODUCTION*** Colosseum turned into 60 points of production! Seeing as though my 5 charge (Pyramid enabled) builders only cost 50 production, I consider the best return on investment available in the game.

On top of the obvious benefits, I am in a golden age (due to the wonders), the Temple of Artemis has provided food and housing enough to flip an Indian city, and the pyramids leveraged the build advantage even moreso allowing production of military units and a successful war with Korea (whose campus district in Gwangju now provides me with science rather than the other way around).

The rest of it, eeh.

Spoiler :

I have a vid for anyone who's interested in the exact details.

 

[acluewithout]

I don't have a lot to say about China. They and Russia are two Civs that always disappoint me when I meet them as AI. I feel like meeting them should be awesome, scary, and they should end up dominating mid or late game. Instead, they just sort of get crushed early or mid game (often by me) and then that's it. Hey ho.

Crouching tiger is a funny unit. It, like China's fort improvement, are another mechanic that suffer from a lack of aggression from the AI. Great defensive units. Just nothing to defend from.

I wouldn't really change CTs (although a maybe good suggestion I read on reddit was that they have 2 range but get a ranged bonus to adjacent units). Instead, I think maybe China should just get an extra unit, I guess via the leaders LA. I don't know what that would be - maybe a land unit. Maybe something at Military Tactics where the other Medieval Melee hang out.

Partly my logic is just that another unit would make China feel a bit more meaty and impressive (I mean, China are clearly not underpowered, but to me they lack wow). But also, I think it'd be fun if China had some unit that could attack, provoke all the AI, but then China could hide behind its walls and CTs when everyone got mad and attacked them.

I actually think Korea is in the same place - nothing wrong with the Hwacha, and Korea are definitely not underpowered. But they're very passive (indeed, passive by design). With Korea, I'd give them their turtle boats. Because, you know, the game needs more turtles.

 

[Halcyan2]

China also benefits from a lot of the DLC's and the expansion which often introduce more Ancient/Classical wonders for them to worker rush. Base game had:

Hanging Gardens
Oracle
Pyramids
Stonehenge

Colosseum
Colossus
Great Library
Great Lighthouse
Mahabodhi Temple
Petra
Terracotta Army

DLC's added:

Apadana
Jebel Barkel
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

Rise and Fall added:

Temple of Artemis


Another thing to remember is that China's Inspiration/Eureka bonus helps them advance through the tech/cultural tree faster. And that when you advance to a new era, your wonders increase in tourism. So this can indirectly help with a Cultural victory by boosting the tourism output of all the wonders you built.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I always liked China in Civ 6. The leader and civ UAs have very good synergy.
The usefulness of science bonuses in Civ games (or strategy games in general) is often mitigated by the increasing production cost of the new things you unlock, unless you have techs with passive economy bonuses.
Civ 6 doesn't have a lot of those in the Tech tree, but Dynastic Cycles also applies to the Civics tree which is full of them.
China has a pretty small research bonus and a good production boost via more Builder charges and the ability to rush wonders.
Very good synergy overall, and it has only gotten better with Rise and Fall.
Standard Boosts have been reduced from 50% to 40% which means China's extra 10% now increase the Eureka/Inspiration bonus by 1/4 instead of 1/5.
If you pick Liang as a governor you can get Builders with 5 charges. Build a Builder in your capital and send him to some new, small low production city with the perfect terrain for a wonder you want and you can complete it in one fourth of the normal time.
If you have one desert tile you can reliably rush the Pyramids and get another wonder almost for free.

The Crouching Tiger is mediocre and the Great Wall a bit garbage, but that doesn't really matter. Unique units and infrastructure are always somewhat situational, while abilities are forever.
Yeah, you can only rush Ancient and Classical Wonders, but they give you an advantage that stays with you for the entire game. The Oracle, Temple of Artemis, Petra, Colossus, Mausoleum and Colosseum are some of the best wonders.

 

[Disgustipated]

China should just get an extra unit

You can always play Mao Zedong on the Steam Workshop. I have that one enabled, but I really don't have much desire to play that leader due to the way he was designed. But he does have 2 uu's.

 

[Sostratus]

Standard Boosts have been reduced from 50% to 40% which means China's extra 10% now increase the Eureka/Inspiration bonus by 1/4 instead of 1/5.

I like thinking of it in terms of, boosted techs now take 0.5 units instead of 0.6 - a 16% speed up. (Used to be a clean 20%) If they wrote the ability as "Research techs for which you have a eureka or inspiration 15% faster" people would look at it differently. It's just a very nice, broad bonus. And we pick up so many boosts in the game, it really adds up.

The Crouching Tiger is mediocre and the Great Wall a bit garbage, but that doesn't really matter. Unique units and infrastructure are always somewhat situational, while abilities are forever.
Yeah, you can only rush Ancient and Classical Wonders, but they give you an advantage that stays with you for the entire game. The Oracle, Temple of Artemis, Petra, Colossus, Mausoleum and Colosseum are some of the best wonders.

I was really hoping they could retain the Chu-ko-nu in some capacity. The crouching tiger is a bit disappointing; a rapid fire crossbowman would make china almost rome-like with a combination of amazing abilities with a powerhouse UU. One tile range units have consistently fallen flat with players since 2011's G&K introduced gatling and machine guns. (Gatlings were OP on release but people still wouldn't upgrade xbows for a long while because of the range drop.)
The great wall is just so hard to execute well, and when you do it doesn't really do a lot for you. Building it on a border anytime before late game means putting it down on prime real estate. I mean maybe if enemy units just outright could not cross the wall in one turn- either making it like crossing a river or a separate thing where entering the wall tile itself always took all your movement if it wasn't on your territory. Just something. Maybe make encampments work with it somehow. Could it place a road automatically too? I'd almost rather the great wall be a wonder again (slightly less OP then civ5) and give china something else. I mean the civ has so many things to pick from, even resurrecting the paper maker as a unique library would be better. Perhaps a unique amphitheater (Pavilion) to go with the theatre squares you could build next to all your wonders?