This is the guide to the Chinese civilization and Some strategies to it. (This guide took me a loong time to finish. Actually it's not even finished yet)
THE BEST THINGS ABOUT CHINA:
The banner armies
Pretty cool buildings
Max population = 220
Houses are replaced by Villages, and Villages can substitute for Livestock Pens, Houses, and villagers can garrison in it.
Things to know about Asian Civilizations:
The newest thing is the Exports. Exports allows you to exchange units for those exports that you gather. Those units are foreign units and you can probably have some musketeers in the Chinese City!!! (See Consulate for more)
The Home Shipment Cards:
EMPEROR'S TREASURY:
FORTRESS:
IMPERIAL COURT:
MERCHANT'S GUILD:
CUSTOM'S HOUSE:
Town Center
Self Explanatory, but you cannot age up in this. You cannot revolt but there are upgrades that you can do, two very special cool ones are Blockade and the upgrade that lets you see the enemy. The Irregulars are like Minuteman but cannot be sent again and looses health instead of dieing after amount of time. A card sent from home city can make them not loose hitpoints OVER TIME and can last forever unless deleted or killed. Also can produce villagers and revive your shaolin master after it is defeated (of-course, for a price that is)
Market
You can upgrade the speed of your villager's natural resource gatherings and also trade resources for another resource.
Monastry
Only one is allowed to be built. Trains mercenaries and upgrades your monks and shaolin master.
Villages
Can train goats and water buffalos (only if you have gotten the water buffalo card from Home Shipment) Can upgrade your villages to support more population and the fatten time amount. Your sheeps, yak, water buffaloes, goats, etc will be fattened here.
Rice Paddies
Up to 10 villagers can gather here. You can upgrade for faster gatherings and can also switch between food gathering or coin gathering.
Consulate
Your allies can be chosen here, and depending on the amount of exports you have you can train western units here and special things, like trickles of food etc, see below for more.
Choices (specialties and units are shown on the above images, I will just tell you what special things these allies give you below) :
BRITISH
Surgeons, Spies, and Petards
RUSSIANS
Blockhouse (Since the Chinese have no barracks, the blockhouse can be used as a defensive building, like an outpost), Fort, and Factory
FRENCH
Crate of food, wood, and coin
GERMANS
Trickles of food, wood, and coin
War Academy
Trains Banner Armies
What are banner armies? Why they are almost similar to the Russian Unit spawn, banner armies train more then one unit when clicked, and will choose a set of unit types like cavalry combined with a couple infantry, etc. May upgrade your armies to get them stronger.
BANNER ARMY TYPES:
Old Han Army
3 Cho Ko Nu 3 Qiang Pikeman
Standart Army
3 Cho Ko Nu 2 Steppe Rider
Ming Army
2 Qiang Pikeman 3 Keshik
Territorial Army
3 Changdao 3 Arquebusier
Forbidden Army
2 Meteor Hammer 2 Iron Flail
Imperial Army
3 Arquebusiers 2 Iron Flail
3 Keshik 3 Hand Mortar
Black Flag Army
3 Arquebusiers 1 Flamethrower
Castle
A mixture of Fort and Outpost. Trains two other types of banner armies and also singly trains flamethrowers and hand mortars. Can also upgrade your armies and your castle. The castle has fewer hitpoints then the Fort and has arrows at first, next upgrade has a gun and last upgrade can get you a cannon.
Dock
Trains ships and can heal ships. They might also be able to attack too.
WONDERS:
Porcelein Tower
Trickles of resources will come to you
White Pagoda
Powers up your monk and disciples and nearby units
Summer Palace
Trains free banner armies
Confucian Academy
Trains the one and only best seige weapon for the Chinese.
Temple of Heaven
Shaolin Masters have abilities to heal and you can press a button called transcedence and heal all your units a bit. (the more units you have the less you heal, the less units you have the more health you heal)
Shaolin Master
This is your explorer, the above image is an unupgraded shaolin master. The max you can have is 2, although you can only gain one more by a home shipment card. It can train disciples, stun treasure guardians, do roundhouse kicks,can convert dead enemy units (see disciple for more), can do critical damage ,and can power up your units nearby. Below is an image of an upgraded one.
Disciples
Best used to help out your shaolin master in treasure hunting. can also convert enemies into disciples after you have defeated that unit. The chances are low, though.
Arquibusiers
The only chinese unit with a gun. They are spammed by some people because they are good against infantry and maybe cavalry
Keshiks
Can be killed easily, but very cheap, and are very quick in killing melee cavalries
Cho Ko Nu
Great at kiling heavy infantry units, fragile but is wonderful to see the rain of fast arrows going towards the enemies
Hand Mortar
Great against other seige weapons and ships, although it is a seige weapon it can kill units as well. Better at killing units than buildings
Steppe Rider
Great against buildings, cheap and are good against archers and skirmishers
Meteor Hammer
Melees at range, good at kiling escaping villagers and also great in detroying anti siege weapons
Iron Flail
Great against skirmishers, infantries, and archers. Inflicts area damage and melee at range
Changdao Swordsman
Good anti cavalry, and are pretty good melees
Flamethrowers
GREAT at killing infantry, siege weapons, and buildings. Also a great thing to spam!
Flying Crow
Only available via Confucian Academy or Home City shipments. Great against buildings, but too slow for units.
Qiang Pikeman
great anti cavalry units
Iron Troops
Mercenaries, even though they are chinese. They are archers and are great at heavy infantry
Rattan Shields
Native Asians but looks chinese to me (lol) Great to have this as home shipment card because it will spawn 30 rattan shields which are greart against siege and infantry units, and will NOT affect the population capacity!
Manchu
Great against infantry
Villagers
You know what they do. Build, gather resources, can treasure hunt, and also ages up. Great hobbies at gathering and building, also screams a lot. A LOT!
Mongol Scout
These are available only via treasures and home city shipments. They do not affect the population capacity and are only good at being a scout.
Fishing Boat
Just a fishing boat. The thing that is cool about this is that the fisherman is so lazy he uses ducks to gather fish for him. Look closely at the fishing boats, when you fish for whales they still bring up tiny golden fish :P
FuChuan
Supposidly be part of the Treasure Fleet? If so, then these are too small. The Treasure Fleet ships are about 20x bigger then caravels. They can train banner armies that are from the war academies and have special two cannonball attack.
War Junk
Have cannons and can do a special attack blasting two cannons at once.
Monitor
Basically European ships, with strong cannons and have a special abilitie to do even more damage.
Fire Ship
Demolition Ships, great against docks and heavy ships. And funnily, all their names are chinese pinyin for things like "combustion, explode, kapow, explosion"
To build a good economy without your villagers getting killed that much:
Build a lot of rice paddies, and make it even like 2 rice paddies produce coin 2 other produce food, not 3 rice paddies produce food and 1 produces coin.
Porcelein Tower (Wonder)
Factory (Russian Shipment from Consulate)
Trade Posts (From Trade routes)
Trickles (From German Shipment from Consulate) <
Put all of these "free" produces for wood. Why only wood? Because alot of villagers get killed while getting wood, and as far as I know, I want to punch that CPU square in the face and slap him until he becomes part of the blue screen of death... (Yes I know CPU is not a human)
Ninjas (just because I like it)
Repetant Ronin For this unit, I recommend you having Iron Troop improvement cards, which lowers the population capacity to only 1 for this cool unit.
Inner Resources
Like what I have on my picture, the buildings that provides resources are put in the really back end, so that when enemies attack they will not get rid of my resource suppliers that fast. remember, put this INSIDE (For the Chinese, it is most preferrably the Rice Paddies, Porcelein Tower, White Pagoda, and or the Temple of Heaven.)
Population Middle
I put my villages, town centers, and markets here. These are very close to the Inner Resources because my villages can spawn goats and water buffalos. But beside from that, they are also very important, because you cannot make an army without population!!!
War End
I put all my military and defensive buildings outside. No matter if it is a wonder or not. I would most preferably put the wonders behind the war academies and forts or a bit further from the reach of an army though, because they can only be built once. This place can include: Castle, Fort, Confucious Academy, Summer Palace, Blockhouse, War Academy, Monastries, Towers (If any), Field Hospitals, and Consulates.
Defensive Walls
I put walls on the outside just to make my city look nice and protect it against my enemies, so I get a heads up warning to prepare my army before I get my war academies destroyed. A clever idea would to build several walls, like walls protecting the inner wall, and the inner wall protecting the other inner wall. This is most definetly nice becuase sometimes CPU just pass you and attack somewhere else instead.
[This message has been edited by ValonTheTalon (edited 01-06-2010 @ 09:17 PM).]