This article discusses how to play the Chinese Civilization and links to various strategy websites for additional information.

Let's start by taking a look at the Chinese Civilization bonuses:

• Science research at the Library is 20% cheaper


• Receive Herbal Lore, Medicine, and Pharmaceuticals upgrades for free


• Start with a Large City. New Cities you found become Large Cities


• Citizens, Caravans, and Merchants created instantly

Science research at the Library is 20% cheaper

This seems like a minor bonus, but it has some interesting implications. First, it enables you to easily upgrade your science tech tree. If you were to manage to keep an extra tech ahead, then all of your other research would be 10% cheaper as well. But a science-heavy teching strategy is risky because it may put you behind in other areas of your economy early on. The second implication is that it makes your early build orders a bit smoother. The best things this bonus are: 1) You can research SCI1 and build 2 farms at the start, and 2) You can research SCI2 quickly after getting only one wealth ruin, or if you focus on food ruins, soon after building a market. This means you can obtain quick CLASSICAL times and still sneak in the key SCI2 upgrade beforehand.

Another option, which is mentioned on the Big Huge Games website, is to research SCI1 and SCI2 right away. Now, you'd need an early wealth ruin to do this, since SCI2 is 96F/96W. This makes subsequent research 10% cheaper than the normal build patterns and increases your typical ruin intake by an extra 50% (to 75 for each ruin). Is it worth it? You be the judge. If you could pull it off and catch back up with the extra ruins, you could probably get away with keeping that SCI lead througout the rest of the game (i.e., research SCI3 before CLASSICAL) and have a big 10% savings on all research the rest of the game. That could be huge.

Receive Herbal Lore, Medicine, and Pharmaceuticals upgrades for free

These are not impressive technologies, but they do allow you get a big army more quickly than normal. The herbal lore line also speeds up healing of your troops when they are garrisoned. In normal games, this technology is not a high priority for me, but it comes in handy for the Chinese because it enables you to respond more quickly if you need to make defensive troops, or to build up your army.

To gain the maximum impact from this bonus, be sure to pull wounded troops off the frontline to garrison and heal up. Because of your faster healing rate (over players who don't research this tech), you'll be able to get them back out on the battlefield sooner.

Start with a Large City. New Cities you found become Large Cities

Large cities make the Chinese harder to rush in the early ages. This is useful since rushing is a risky strategy, but still very dangerous. It takes considerably more firepower to take down a Chinese city, particularly when it also has a temple. If get attacked, be sure to build that temple to boost your city's hitpoints up. This bonus is still useful later on during siege attacks; the Chinese cities will take longer to reduce, enabling you to get appropriate defenses ready in response. One drawback to having larger cities is that they require more citizens garrisoned to get them to fire. A Chinese city requires 3 garrisoned citizens before it will fire. 7 to get to 2/3 of max, and it requires a whopping 12 citizens to get to max firing. If you get attacked, you're probably better off only garrisoning the minimum 3 citizens.

Large cities also give the Chinese a bigger radius enabling them to grab resource spots more easily. I like to position my towns so they can grab as many good resource locations as possible. Chinese cities make this even easier. A minor plus, but it fits my style nicely.

Finally, the larger cities means the Chinese will be grabbing more territory. And your border cities will always be large cities, even if you only put temples there. Good for pushing on those borders. I like to border push (even though I think it's over-rated). It helps secure some of that early game key terrain.

Citizens, Caravans, and Merchants created instantly

This is the big kicker to the Chinese. Make sure you make the most of this bonus. Just remember to click the waypoint for where you want them to go before traning them. If you're like me, this will probably force you to change your intitial start. For most civs, when not rushing, I start with 'VQ, LTE'. This queues up villagers and starts library research (SCI1 and CIV1). But the infinite queue does not work for the Chinese! So for the Chinese, I hit 'A, SHIFT+V, LT'. THe 'A' sets the rally point to resource buildings and the 'SHIFT+V' creates 5 new villagers. (I have to wait for a moment to research CIV1). I use two of the new vilalgers to build farms 'BF'. If I have a big wood camp, I create new vills until it fills up. If I have a small one, I use the leftover vills to scout ruins or move them out to build City #2. The keys to maximizing this bonus are to set your waypoints BEFORE training them(!) and to always have an abundance of food. As you can see, this makes the Pyramids an excellent early wonder to support your economy. The Pyramids also complements the border pushing strategy because they enable you to make an extra city.

Let's not forget the instant caravans and merchants. This enables you to quickly get your economy up and running, and there's no waiting for them to train before setting new waypoints. If you're like me, this is a big bonus. I get distracted waiting for that merchant to finish so I can set a new waypoint for the next one. Now I can spend 15-20 seconds in the game to hit 'N', and then RIGHT CLICK on rare, 'B', RIGHT CLICK on rare, 'B', RIGHT CLICK on rare, 'B', on each rare resource I want to send merchants. My rare resources stat goes way up when I play Chinese in team games, since it takes very little effort to fill up all of the rare resources we've discovered in our territory. Because of the abundance of rare resources I'll be enjoying, the Porcelain Tower becomes another excellent Wonder to get.

One final point about extra citizens: they are a surprising defensive resource. If you reasearch the militia line, your instant citizens can become an instant army! If you build that new border city only to find the enemy waiting to pounce on you, you can create an instant army using your bonus and the call to arms ability of the citizens. BOOM! Instant defensive army! Also, if the enemy tries to harass my new border cities, I just create 3 new garrisoned guys and get my town to firing. When they go away, I bring them out to do some actual work...
posted by Tim at 11:00 PM

posted by Tim at 2:00 AM

Big Huge Games Chinese Strategy Guide
MS Official Profile: Chinese
Rise of Nations Heaven: China (has major errors)
RON Heaven Forum Search: "Chinese"
MFO: Economic Nations

If I am missing something that might be helpful, let me know.
posted by Tim at 1:00 AM

This article discusses how to play the Mongol Civilization and links to various strategy websites for additional information.

Let's start by taking a look at the Mongol Civilization bonuses:

• Receive 1 free horse archer when you build a Stables, 3 after Military II is researched (scheduled to change for patch 3)


• Mounted units created 10% cheaper and 20% faster


• Receive +1 Food for each 1% of the world you control (times half the number of players in the game)


• Attrition damage to your units is reduced by 50%


• Receive Forage/Supply/Logistics research for free

Receive 1 free horse archer when you build a Stables, 3 after Military II is researched

blah blah blah
posted by Tim at 11:00 PM

posted by Tim at 2:00 AM

Big Huge Games Mongol Strategy Guide
MS Official Profile: Mongols
Rise of Nations Heaven: Mongols
RON Heaven Forum Search: "Mongol"
MFO: Guide to Mongol Rushing

If I am missing something that might be helpful, let me know.
posted by Tim at 1:00 AM

This article discusses how to play the British Civilization and links to various strategy websites for additional information.

Let's start by taking a look at the British Civilization bonuses:

• +25% Commerce Cap


• Receive double income from taxation


• Ships created 33% faster


• Receive Foot Archer upgrades for free


• Forts and Towers +2 Range


• Anti-aircraft units and buildings 25% cheaper and 33% quicker to build

+25% Commerce Cap

One of the best bonuses in the game, the +25% commerce cap bonus enables you to have a bigger economy than your opponent. And one of the better aspects of this bonus is that it makes your economy grow in just about the right proportions to your natural city development. For civilizations without economic bonuses, COM1 research gets you only to a cap of +100. The British will get to +125. With a normal civilization, two cities with 5 farms each will produce +120 food, so you won't be able to fully utilize your second city's full potential until you've been able to research COM2. And once you do research COM2, you'll probably have to build a third city to get up to that cap of +150. The British player, on the other hand, will be conveniently capped at +125, enabling him to make full use of his second city and lumber camp before further economic development.

Because of this economic development, it is generally beneficial for British players to advance to an earlier Classical Age with a build similar to this:

SCI1, CIV1, COM1, SCI2, CLASSICAL, MIL1

At this point the British player has three main strategic branches:

• Attack immediately with heavy infantry. You can probably catch your opponent as he is putting up his third city or getting ready to raid with his own troops. If you're choosing this route, then it might be better to skip the SCI2, and CLASSICAL upgrades, and instead do MIL1 and attack with barracks troops. This would be similar to a +150 attack, but you're at +125 instead. Personally, I wouldn't recommend this, because it goes against the strengths of the British civilization, but that's precisely why it's effective – because they do not expect it.
• Go MIL2 and raid with stable units, while continuing to build econ. If you've both hit Classical Age at about the same time, you're likely to already have a slight econ advantage over your opponent. Some light raiding may be enough to tip the balance even further in your favor. Horse Archers, followed by Heavy Cavalry, are excellent raiders.
• Go CIV2, COM2 and push with borders and economy. The precise order of these two researches depends on the player and the situation. If rares are available, then COM2 first might be a better choice, but it is usually a good idea to get down that third city before your opponent is able to push your borders back. You can research CIV2, and then research COM2 while you're building the third city. Additionally, you're likely to get raided by the opponent so raid defense must be factored into account.

Receive double income from taxation

The taxation bonus is small in the beginning. You don't earn that much from taxation initially. So 2x a small number is still a small number. However, as you gain more territory and research the taxation upgrades, you'll quickly be capped at your wealth maximum from having so much wealth. So the British player should do a couple things:

• Get taxation upgrades as soon as they are available
• Strive to push borders and expand territory as much as possible. Techs, buildings and wodners that increase territory also serve to rapidly increase your taxation - at twice the rate they do for other civilizations
• Build wealth cap increasing wonders, (Colossus, Pyramids, and Taj Mahal.) to maximize the benefit of this bonus over time
• Translate the wealth advantage into knowledge as rapidly as possible by maxing out scholars and researching university techs

Ships created 33% faster

This only really has impact on water maps where heavy fighting occurs. It's not that valuable. Anyone else could just build a second dock (or even a third dock) to out produce you. Winning battles like that really comes down to the underlying economy production, because you're rarely able to keep even one dock at full capacity. So the value is merely the incremental wood saved.

Receive Foot Archer upgrades for free

If you use archers, then you'll like this bonus. If you're not a big user of archers, then this will have little impact on you. The British archers are not siginificantly better against the typical archer counters than their non-unique brethren.

Forts and Towers +2 Range

Static defenses don't serve too well in defense in this game, but they can be useful in certain situations. Having +2 range on those buildings could be useful, but I wouldn't build a strategy around it. Some players use towers and archers together to create a strong defense from raiding, then use those archers later on in the game when they upgraded to Blackwatch.

Anti-aircraft units and buildings 25% cheaper and 33% quicker to build

Not very handy. If you need this as British, then you're probably doing something wrong. In this case BHG seems to be trying to model the historical civ "bonuses" to the game. Britain was a hard target to raid by air, so this gives them some advantage. It's just not that helpful when applied in game terms.
posted by Tim at 11:00 PM

Out4blood vs. montana - Montana (as British) does an early classical and raids me viciously. I fall behind economically and lose the game.
posted by Tim at 2:00 AM

Big Huge Games British Strategy Guide
MS Official Profile: British
Rise of Nations Heaven: Britain
RON Heaven Forum Search: "British"
MFO: Economic Nations

If I am missing something that might be helpful, let me know.
posted by Tim at 1:00 AM