Civilization Overhaul - Chinese

Hey y'all,

Do you ever think about how weird some of the civ bonuses and unique techs are? Like Atheism… seriously? Good job to the two people who play wonder race. Even if they are not bad in-game, many civilizations are missing or have techs that are not very historically accurate (Gothic Cannon Galleons and Malian Bombard Cannons come to mind). While anyone who aims to learn history by playing Age of Empires II needs an MRI scan pronto, and civilizations are given techs and bonuses for balance reasons, I thought it’d be fun to reimagine the game in a more realistic and historically accurate way. I did not want to completely throw balance out of the window, since I want to make these rehaul concepts somewhat playable, and I was careful not to change everything about a civ so that it would maintain its current favour. Nevertheless, I would love to hear more opinions on my ideas and would be happy to change some of them. :)

For today, I want to look at the Chinese. This civ is a bit of a meme in the community for having invented block printing, gunpowder, and basically half of all technologies available in AOE II, but then getting none of them. In my attempt to rebalance the Chinese, I wish to give them these inventions while still making sure that they do not steamroll every other civ. Here is my proposal:

Chinese

Archer and Economy Civilization

Civilization Bonuses:

• Villagers are created 10%/15%/20%/25% faster in the Dark/Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age
• Free Town Watch and Town Patrol
• Technologies are 10%/15%/20% cheaper in the Feudal/Castle/Imperial Age
• Demolition Ships have +25% HP and are +25% faster
• Team Bonus: Town Centers support five population

Unique Unit:

• Chu Ko Nu (foot archer that fires multiple arrows)

Unique Technologies:

• Great Wall (Walls and Towers +25% HP, +3 LOS)
• Rocketry (Chu Ko Nu line and Archer line +2, Scorpions +4 attack)

Tech Tree:

• Barracks:
  • Missing Champion
  • Missing Eagle Scout, Eagle Warrior, Elite Eagle Warrior
• Archery Range:
  • Missing Heavy Cavalry Archer
  • Missing Parthian Tactics
• Stable:
  • Missing Hussar
  • Missing Cavalier and Paladin
  • Missing Bloodlines
• Siege Workshop:
  • Missing Siege Onager
• Castle:
  • Everything is available
• Dock
  • Missing Elite Cannon Galleon
• Monastery:
  • Missing Faith
  • Missing Heresy
  • Missing Theocracy
• University:
  • Missing Treadmill Crane
• Town Center:
  • Everything is available
• Mill, Lumber Camp, and Mining Camp:
  • Everything is available
• Market:
  • Missing Guilds

First of all, the civ bonuses. The current Chinese start is a small blessing to those who know the civilization well and a big F%&@ you to everyone else. Executed well, a player could turn the 6 villager lead at 0:00 into an extra villager+loom lead by the time he/she advances to Feudal Age, but in the hands of someone who does not know what he/she is doing, the bonus could actually turn into a detriment. Although it is a cool concept, and I assume that it is supposed to simulate the vast population of Ancient China compared to many other parts of the world, I have always found it slightly lame as an economy bonus. A strange advantage that the Chinese gain from this is that they have a good head-start on nomad, which is also a bit unrealistic given their agrarian tradition. Sorry quirky start, I think a villager creation time bonus would simulate the population of Ancient China better. Now, this first bonus is the one that I worry the most about, because I don’t know if it would be borderline OP. Thus, I staggered the bonus like the current Indian villager bonus, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. To accommodate the removal of the 6 villager start, I revamped the original “TC +10 pop, +5 LOS” bonus. Since the Chinese no longer start with -200 food, they do not really need the +5 LOS bonus to find sheep early. Instead, the Feudal and Castle Age effects of this old bonus is replaced by free Town Watch and Town Patrol (sorry Byzantines, I’ll figure something out for you), which is pretty accurate, since the Chinese were a very structure-focused civilization that relied on patrols on the Great Wall, for instance, for reconnaissance. Their tech cost reduction bonus stayed the same, but I did change the demo ship bonus a bit. I felt like buffing a suicide unit’s health by 50% is kind of unnecessary and that a better way to portray the intended effect would be to amp up its speed.

If I could, I would also add FIX THE UNIT PATHING as a bonus for every civ, since demo ships like to do this thing where they snuggle their nose on one enemy ship while all the others flee, only to blow up when the splat damage only hits the initial target. You could, as some would say, learn to press del to manually detonate your demo ships, but I’d much rather prefer a quality of life change. Anyways, I’m off track. For the team bonus, since the Chinese will also not be needing +10 pop on every TC without the extra villagers in the beginning, I reduced the bonus to +5 pop and moved it to be a team bonus. The removal of the old team bonus was out of two reasons: the Chinese get crop rotation in my revamp, and my current version of the Chinese is a bit stronger, so I wanted to balance them out by having a weaker team bonus.

For unique tech, I did some minor tweaking with the “Great Wall” to make it more historically accurate. It is not an expensive tech, and the change was pretty minute and not very important. For rocketry, I gave the +2 attack bonus to the archer line as well, which I think could be significant in certain circumstances. As of current, elite-chuks are better than the arbalest in every way but range. They also have their melee damage shenanigans going on, so they can wreck rams and even buildings when massed. Since they cost less gold than archers, chuks could start replacing the archer line when the Chinese player has castles to spare. With this buff to their archer line, I hope to make xbows and arbs more viable for the Chinese late game (partly also because xbows always made up a good portion of the Chinese army in history), and maybe giving the Chinese a slight Imperial edge that they did not have before. Since rocketry comes so late into the game, I don’t think this change justifies a price change to the tech, especially since I’m nerfing other aspects of the Chinese, but that could all be discussed.

For military units, I took away champions, but they are not my go-to unit for most civs anyways. Since the Chinese cavalry was quite weak, I took away cavalier and bloodlines. This, I think, effects the camel line more than the other two stable units, since the Chinese now have subpar heavy camels compared to before. To balance their anti-cavalry ability, I think the better economy will help their halb production, and, if not, the Chinese historically lost to horse riding nomads so...justified? Anyways, Archery Range. Yes to Hand Cannoneers and no to Heavy Cav Archers. The latter isn’t really used by the Chinese due to the lack of Parthian Tactics anyways, but HCs could prove pretty useful in a later game composition. Right now, the Chinese are a well-rounded-ish civilization, only classified as an archer civ because of the Chu Ko Nu, but I want to make them actually archer focused instead. Moving on to siege. The addition of the bombard cannon should help mitigate how devastating the Siege Onager is to an Imperial Chinese army, but other than that, nothing else changed. Finally, I gave them Fast Fire Ships, making their navy a bit stronger in Imp.

For techs, I guess the Chinese did not get hoardings so that they would use towers more, but I thought this was kind of stupid, especially for a more turtle-y civ. For the Monastery, I gave them block printing since they invented it, but I took away faith and theocracy to balance it out. China has a rich religious culture, but not many people, past or present, are very pious. The state always dominated the church (temple?), so I thought the civ should have a middle-of-the-road monastery. Siege engineer was added, which should make their onagers more viable against mass skirms, and their scorpions not awkward to use. TC and market techs stayed the same, but I did give them crop-rotation since they did that even in antiquity. Weaker early farming without the current team bonus, but better late game food eco to support your mass halbs.

So what do you think? Let me know if there are balance/historical issues with my take on this civilization!