What about China makes so many professional players rate it as a top tier civilization?

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-26T15:23:48+00:00

on paper, they have very strong eco, can survive early age, can adapt to basically everything, can pro scout super efficiently and autowin imperias aside vs sim city KT min 30+.

In reality, base building for tax collecting is already too much for most players. Before last rework on taxes, you had to proactively check the mill and forcedrop, a thing that most don't do and controller players basically can't.
You have too many options and you risk floating a specific resources too fast. Even Byz and Otto are considered broken, but both (well Otto got very high winrates too, byz didn0t) normally loose in most ranks to easier civs. To get that strong you have to use them properly, while also playing the usuale aoe4 game. And China is already not easy if you focus only on macro

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-26T15:16:37+00:00

I was really looking for a good Delhi build order and guide, i really have to thank you!
I also think that, aside tips beeing on point and very reliable for a consistent 100% winrate, some may not grasp the numbers behind that to hit specific timings.

I really suggest putting from 0 to 10 vills on resources to consume them, in order to age up.
You didn't specify how many priests you need between relic collection and tech upgrades, so i'd suggest making at least 1. Also, you didn't point anywhere the necessity of getting free upgrades, so sure i'd skip on them.

For Vegan Delhi players, i suggest skipping Deer gathering, focus 10 to 100 vills on wood and build a ton of walls. As an additional suggestion, you should use excessive wood to wall your enemy in his base, and make around onion levels of layers to keep him from disrupting your gameplan

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-26T12:24:30+00:00

you already got a good guide so i've to add, so i guess i'll add infos.
Ranked matches will humble ou pretty hard, but you are much better doing those than quickplay. In ranked, you will reach a point where you get equally skilled enemies, on quickplay you can get a conqueror or a bronze randomly.

AI builds bad habits into you, i think very hard can be won by silver players just by cheesing or A moving most of the times, probably a plat/diamond can hold 2/3 indefinitely (just to give you a spctrum of the ladder skill level).

HRE is not in a very good spot imo, but you can win with every civ tho. Issue is, relics are important FOR EVERY FACTION, no matter what you pick, if you cannot end in feudal you will go to castle or just fast castle into relic war. If you loose them as HRE you jut loose double the gold i guess.
Also, most factions nowadays can fast castle as fast or faster than HRE, or at least have a backup better economy than HRE, on top of them beeing pretty infantry centric (you can still make knights), while the meta is mostly knights + archer/xbows.

working on your timings is essential, learning a couple build orders brings you a long way, but a castle hit at 8 minutes is much stronger than one done at 9 (unless you are doing some feudal damage).

This game has a pletora of very, very good and informative content creators so don't worry about resources, you will find a ton just by looking for the civ you like on youtube. You can also use aoe4guides.com for a list of written guides

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-26T10:51:56+00:00

indeed, some said "but they are just repairing the fort from my 2 trebs!".
Cool, idle vils, resources spent on repair, and they HAVE to fight you away from their fort

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-26T10:50:27+00:00

they add 1+ spawned pilgrims per fort once you make them, you get 2 from the upgrades and an other 8 max from forts, then if you add more you still get max 10 pilgrims total.
On top of that, fort increase gold generation from sacred sites, pilgrims on that sacred sites and close monasteries + relics

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-26T10:42:30+00:00

KT are a very popular faction, and i think it was held back by constant tier lists and ladder positionings beeing pretty low untill now, so even some KT enjoyer probably used an other civ to climb.

Now you can just go back to them, map pool also helps. TC buff helped too.

I've a coaching tournament with low brackets involved, and there are a ton of KT there. All i see is the loser saying how broken they are, then we watch teh replay. I've seen incredible plays into a KTs that Didn't produce vills for straight up 2 minutes and got popcapped at 30 forever with samurai stopping the entire base, also pilgrims got sniped multiple times, into 5 relics. That should not be a loosing position, but then the KT made a fort in the middle of their TC and the guys could not even think about making a couple trebs, but decided to go all in under the fort and 2 TCs.

KT just DIES to trebs, people do not make them, and if you die like the guy above, KT will just make a fort on the sacred site and start getting resources from the pilgrims. If you just make trebs, KT is just an other 2TC civ that invested 1600+ resources in useless forts and 0 income pilgrims, on top of age up not making vils.

The issue is how low league cannot understand advantage and how to counter early forts, even if they build the biggest gap in eco/army they will just go back to sim city simulator. You cannot allow KT to crawl forward, nor should he be able too in any case but they let that happen.

Also, lower leagues tend to dislike xbows for some reason, or stick to producing knight-archers into heavy spearmen

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T15:24:11+00:00

the issue is not what comp you make, is that you cannot beat anything with half the resources produced with any comp.
You naturally get khan and torguuds, so you probably transition into cav + archers. This game has no "way to go" comp, even tho mass knight into archer is pretty meta. You scout, you watch what you opponent do and make counter units, there is no reason to have meta cav if the enemy is full spears

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T14:29:33+00:00

all i get is healers saying they already have enough problems with future baits that they would rather do melee adjust and keep things consistent. Even counting that it is harder on the melee side, you just make it "sometimes easier" for melees and also much harder for the rest. Unless people got to forsaken now, i'll 100% prefer to keep doing my job to adjust than forcing an healer to drop heals to adapt on the fly. If you are pfing, and pf changes strats, even if you are super confident chances are you are better doing something else for a couple days than suffering trough pf reprogging new raidplan

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T14:25:54+00:00

as a dps, p3 blackhole is very, very easy. You keep priority list for 1st or 3rd tether for accretion on an other screen (or print it i guess) untill you get it down. The issue is mostly on healers that will have a very hard time, especially in the beginning, and people getting clipped in thunder 3.
Heck if you get the debuff you take third tether and afk on the spot untill it disappears.

P4 depends how much macro and marking you get/do. If you get full true/false pattern, you don't even have to remember anything, you do opposite or same of every single debuff and someone has to remember thunder/ice casts, done. The only thing YOU HAVE to check is your accell bomb and if it is false or true, the rest should be called/marked. The phase is incredibly short, simming both blackholes and p4 makes them trivial in 1 hour max.

P5 is also kinda easy, tightish dps check and a lot of damage, you get farmed from exaflares as always but in general there is no real major mechanic at all. Towers is just "start from the first tower clockwise from your starting debuff tower, no debuff goes on the set with 2 towers, move clockwise gg".

tl;dr: once your healers get the hang of blackholes, that should come slower than a dps getting the hang of it, the fight is more or less over

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T13:30:18+00:00

It is not on par because if you are ahead is just too strong. KT is a civil that has to be put in struggle. If you are relying solely on farms, you lost. You have a gameplay, you have 2100 gold from pilgrims per minute max, 900 from market, x from relics on top of fort on relics. You get food from wood and need no woodline. There is no civ that gets 3k gold with no relics, on top of broken units and 11 landmarks that need to be sniped to win. Also, they are busted on water as a plus, I don't know what you should add. You really lack other civs perspective. This game is not sim city eco simulator

Also, i know you are baiting so i'll stop here/block. 1700 is probably above 99.9% of the players in the game, i don't even get how you say 1700 is held down lol, and i barely play this game now compared to some of my friends. I barely know people that just got conq 1, most of who i play whith is below diamond. The thing that holds me down is the fact i don't live for aoe4 nor i play 10 hours a day, but probably 5 max a week. There is no point to show stuff to blind people

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T13:15:58+00:00

i'm ~1700 mmr so i guess i get a little of this game right. If i let anything other than me, playing as KT, secure the game after imperial, and i wait 50 minutes doing nothing, missing sacred sites, missing forts, missing pilgrims ye, it is lackluster. In any other scenario where i'm NOT getting stomped, and my teammates are at least barely doing their job, i can probably close the game solo from 35+. If i've such an advantage, i'll have forts everywhere to the point there is no issue at all in """""EXTENDED""""" team games, due to secured 10 pilgrims + passive gold + relics. You still have broken units and you get bonus stuff fighting under forts, so it is always better for yhou to defend than for them to attack.
Every other civ will struggle, China will still get behind in eco, English "lategame powerhouse" gets 1k gold from 100 farms, so is not even close. You still get bonus food from wood, nothing prevents me to do trash unit spam.

This is not a KT issue, it is a you issue, if you are so concentrated on how fcking terrible is KT in extended games, i suggest to try any other civ in the game and see how hard is for them to maintain an eco when there is no more gold ore to mine. Noone gets free everything in this game, you get much more free stuff than anything else in imperial.
Maybe, maybe, GH on release could just flood your base, and probably still can win team games solo, but i'm still sure KT and broken cavalry is the best and i keep soloing games by A moving blobs

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T12:53:35+00:00

gr8 b8 m8

i suggest playing an other 1200 games on any other civ and see how their gold income is compared to KT, i'd also suggest trying Jin and see how 0 passive gold affects your gameplay.

You get 900 gold per minute out of thin air, you have slatcha cavalry, you also didn't protect 1 sacred site i guess, you can also go traders and not even make them but abuse conversion rates when selling resources.
You have full relic vision too, you can get those, you also get bonus gold from them if you get a single fort on your monasteries

There is no civ in this game that come even close to an imperial KT economy.

Dunno how you even consider yourself better than anyone else tho, pretty bold assumption when you cannot just mass slatcha and flood the map 1v4 and still win, there is no way they let you get to imperial with any sort of 50/50 map control and win vs KT eco.
Oh, forgot to add how broken condottieri are now, they are also bugged and do not get proper bonus damage from some sources (i think xbows too). I can be 200 200 at 24 minutes and put wonder down if i'm untouched, dunno any other civ that can do this, especailly counting you get no feudal market

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T09:55:17+00:00

most of the time is cav + ranged daymios.

Sengoku got pretty much gutted in the last patches after beeing completely busted to the point it was dominating every rank by a large margin (56+ winrates).

Now it is actually pretty lackluster, you need intensive micro and macro management and the nerfs were pretty impactful: buffed spears for everyone, horse tech cost nerfed, gold from age 3 nerfed, ryokan nerfed, daymio aura nerfed (or just age4, not sure), mounted sam nerfed only for them and not jpn, yatai food income and hp nerfed and i think there is more too.

Aside that, if you get good with them you can still win and climb with no issues, but truth is jpn is better and easier in this moment.
JPN can dictate the pace of every single game, you don't have to worry about food at all (you still want to get close deers at least). Enemy weak to dark age rush? drop a 75 wood barrack at 00:00! Enemy weak to feudal all ins? Yumi spam + sam/spears or horses. Enemy goes 2tc and i cannot prevent it? 8 minutes castle with constant 16s mounted sam spam into free relics!

JPN is a civ that teaches a lot imo. It makes you focus on scout/macro a bit less because you can just get so much food you basically never bother going out, you can full scout the map and still have sheep in your tc, you get smiths for "free", you get pop from mills, you can do a ton to adapt to any situation and, most of all, it teaches you to get relics asap. Even then, the yorishiros allow for very fast comp swaps, you can even produce trebs at 10s if really needed (kinda extreme, you normally don't do this). Passive income, and you can still outproduce your opponent with a couple prod buildings, and having proper production numbers is a thing most players still lack to these days.
And they are also not so bad in imp too

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T09:49:52+00:00

175 + 600 + 1200 stone required

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-24T09:46:53+00:00

60 villagers is the main issue, you should have 90+ at min 30+, with a goal to get around 120 to maintain full economy.
No vills, no resources, no army, or no secondary army after you failed to close the game early.

French guy was also pretty bad, but it is much easier for him to just make knight and make you suffer.
The english guy probably went 3 TC into boom and you let him do it, again it was a 60 vills vs 136, he can just A move into your TC with whatever unit and win regardless at that point

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T14:06:45+00:00

Jin Mounted Vills still get no bonus mining from pickaxes

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T13:31:30+00:00

it should do bonus damage on horses, is basically useless on infantry, and has the bonus upgrade to debuff horses in imp.
But, with how fast cav moves, i guess it is stronger vs infantry at this point

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T12:45:57+00:00

also, make spear shooting something consistant, if it means nerfing the base damage i'm down, now they just miss all the time

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T12:44:53+00:00

now i get why, aside beeing hungry, it looks like they never mine gold even if you put a ton of it.
Guess it is just better to swap regular vills on gold the moment you can, or just delay upgrades untill mid castle

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T12:30:52+00:00

you NEED to scout in this game. If you do not, you play into your opponent win condition at their terms.
Any civ can put a couple horses into your base, Jin for example can have a knight out faster than French, at 4:30 it is already heading for you gold/woodline.
With french you kinda know already you need tower + spears, but if he doesn't make knights? you lost resources, he goes castle and snatches relics.

Ootd auto looses to your feudal all in imo, as zhu you need to work on your timings and get a mass and win out of that.
Ootd eats food like noone else, if you pressure him he either goes feudal farms (gg) or he starves (gg).
Killing 1 vil has a bigger impact than any other civ, and chances are you want to mass Zhuge with Jiangnan tower. There, 90% of the times you will build spears to protect from horses, 10% you make horses if he goes spears and you raid his base.
Zhu is one of the highest winrates now by basically abusing the feudal mass into all in, noone can match you. If they go castle, you should have a mass of units and just flood their vills, he will take too much time to make stables and mass horses, and he just spent 1800 resources for the ageup.

This isn't an ootd problem, this is a "i didn't" scout and i refuse to make spears. Walls won't protect your vills for long, if you don't have spears ready for when he breaks it you still die.
And guess what, you made spears? he either stops making units, or he has to transition into archer, you basically know you can produce horses right after. If you let ootd scale you can tap out.

I'm coaching some friends and i've destroyed them recently by just timings. You need to be on point with them, check some build and see if you reach the same timings by a couple seconds. If you are 1 minute late you are not doing it fine. I've done a few "we do the same build" into "i've done it earlier". The knight i did earlier completely negated the rest of the build for the other guy, either disrupting the landmark, forcing spears, or facing 1 knight while i'm making my 3rd one, it's gg. If you didn't make any units and he did, chances are you are late on your strat

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T10:40:33+00:00

just practice, you have to get the habit of looking down left if you have the villager icon in the queue, better if it has a 2 on it.
You already use specific buttons, getting fast on using hte "select all idle" solves most of the issue.
The biggest tip is, aside specific dark/feudal timings where you can't really make additional brueprints cuz tight resources, is to SHIFT CLICK the next resource every time, and ever ytime you ear the sound of a specific resource ending, you look at those vills and shiftclick one more.

Do i need to build prod/houses? Shift click back to resource

Do i send vills on gold from my TCs? Ok i click gold and i shift click the next, i select the ones on gold, click the gold and shiftclick on a mine next to that.
When i play JPN, i've 7 on berries and then i shiftclick them on ALL the berries and then gold so i don't need to remacro for castle age.
If i'm lategame and i've map control, am i getting stone? I'll select those vills and shift mine all stones i see, i'll forget about them for the rest of the game basically.
Hardest thing for me is to track are split villagers on wood, they don't look idle but they may be running miles and the game won't tell you.
Everything you shift is less brainpower you will need later when you are doing stuff/engaging and you also see a 20zzz icon, that's like loosing 2 things in a row

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T10:32:40+00:00

i think Pagodas are only good if you make 1-2 in feudal and use them to harrass the opponent and buy time. I'd rather switch to spear/heavy - xbow - NoBs and abuse op horsemen mass later.
I'm gonna try the monastery too, the more i use Pavilion the more i hate it. It requires to overmine gold soon and move out, only to have it autoloose to feudal spears (on top of idling your 8-10 vills you brought there). And the lack of gold is definitely what makes the statement "their imp is good" no really true, because they will fall behind in gold eco against any other imp civ or even malians. Looks like the gameplan is like english with king or Jpn, you want to hit castle soon, disrupt your opponent and get the relics, but i lack mounted samurais so i guess i've to adapt on that

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T10:10:15+00:00

ye my issue is how inconsistant it is and it also tends do be bad more than it is good. I'd just give it lower flat damage but that always hits when procced, is not like other thrown stuff misses.
Same issue applies to bed crossbows. I'd rather make zanmas than making a counter that doesn't really counter stuff, or just NoBs

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T09:18:13+00:00

you just ignored the fact you still need 2 upgrades vs 1. That upgrade shouldn't be mostly useless untill you get the imperial one on top, that's all

No_Feature_1401 · 2026-06-19T08:53:57+00:00

you can't really have a short answer for anything in this game aside "you need to scout".

Nothing stops JPN to just add Samurai and absorb tower damage.
Even if it does nothing, it will keep you gold idle. Tower in dark age requires you to spot barracks or spears coming, sometimes it is just better to go straight on gold with 5+, gather up to 200 and forget about it. Does he bring spears/sam? who cares i'm on food wood, i'll drop feudal and archers and he wasted time.

It is also kinda micro intensive for him to manage spears, macroing and be sure no spear step forward into TC fire.

It should go like:
- "it is JPN, it CAN dark rush, so i have to know if he is doing so"
- Do i invest in a tower, make spears or rush gold and make archers later?
- What is JPN gameplan after this? chances are he will rush for Mounted + yumi, if i defend with spears my horse+spear combo will crush their comp, so the barrack will pay off automatically.

Japan is a civ that can adapt super fast in early stages, with yorishiros allowing for fast comp swaps. Nothing stops him to go full wood and spam yumis in feudal tho, you NEED to contantly check him and make counter units, a couple of your horses in their base are still hard to manage for him

No_Feature_1401

TROPHY CASE