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because a chinese BO is hardly possible to write (their strat is always different because of treasures) i have thought of another way to make such a guide: I have recorded a game i just played and will guide you through every decision/mistake i made during this game, so that you won't only know what to do, you'll know why you're doing it.
Game: (Map: Great Plains, Opponent: Fanjunkaren (lvl 31 major), Civs: China(me) vs Dutch.
rec:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/0775d5first look at my resources: I see in my direct LOS a few deers to herd and my gold is good enough for this match up (Dutch won't be agressive). I immediately plan to build my first village in front of the second gold mine to secure it, this will probably also help with herding. in age1 I build 1 village and send Sumptuary laws (all res trickle).
you can see a vill already moving to herd, the herd became visible because of my village (don't underestimate a village's LOS).
I age to colonial with 14 vils at about 3.30, 5 vills on the wonder (allowing me to be in age2 before 5.00) and put my wonder so that it hinders the enemy allowing me to use it for micro, and protects my vills from harassment.
when i'm aging i wait till i get 100 food, queue a vill, and allocate vills the following: 5 still on wonder, 6 on food, rest on wood (in this case 3). i do not build anything during transition and just keep making vills that all go to wood.
in age2 (time ~4.50) i build my barracks strategically (behind wonder) for optimal defensive positioning (against dutch this isn't very important however) and keep my hunts as close to my TC as possible. my 2nd shipment is always 7 steppe riders.
i gather the age up crates with 2 vils (i'll need the food quickly) and make sure i have about 10 vils on wood and 7 on food after picking these crates up. as soon as my rax is done i try to queue as many vills as possible (i'll be going over pop for a while) while still having the 255 food for an old han batch, and make 1 old han batch for starters.
i build a 2nd village as soon as i get the 200 wood (i need it fast, as you can see in the previous image my pop is 33/30), and my 2nd batch of military will always be standard army (if i didn't have enough gold yet i put 2 or 3 vils on gold to get it before hand, but mostly trickle takes care of that).
i got lucky scouting here, i scouted he was going colonial strat and not FF + a good raiding spot. lost my explorer in the process but that was worth it.
btw i like to place my villages in a circle around my town to secure any direction the hunts will run, also secure extra resources with villages later in the game.
3rd shipment 8 chuko nu's.
by not seeing any pikemen with his villies i figured he was being more agressive than he should be, and yes, when i killed 4 vills his pikes came from the direction of my town. i now knew he was making a mistake and hoped my army would meet his without the protection of his TC/minutes/buildings for micro
after my raid i had been too concentrated on it for a while and neglected vill allocation. optimal would've been to take a few vills off of wood and put them on food/gold to achieve a 11 food 6 wood and 4 gold economy which would allow me to spam standard army batches pretty nicely + wood for villages, market, and consulate.
the mistake i made was i kept too many vills on wood, the next 200 wood is always for a 3rd village and the wood after that for consulate, this time i had the wood for consulate faster but military production was delayed. compensating the extra wood by building a consulate pretty much took care of this tiny mistake, because i was able to ally with germans rather quickly.
at this point he dares to pressure me with skirm+pike (while he should be expecting my 2x bigger RI army and cav army to chase him) and this mistake already lost him the game. he loses 10 skirms because of poor micro vs zero losses for me and i take the big advantage right here, being given this present of 10 dead skirms.
his pikes are already retreating beyond my LOS, and his skirms are dying to my 11 steppe riders + chuko nu back up.
with my 4x bigger army i now march upon his town for victory and in the meantime STILL have too many vills on wood, EVEN making an old han batch now to compensate the extra wood. next shipment: 9 pikes for siege + i'm expecting opposing hussars.
at this point i'm microing and my macro is pretty poor, totally not following my planned allocations of ~13 food-~6 wood-~5 gold. this is not as big a deal as it seems however, maybe slows my military production down a mere 10 seconds, while also getting my other advantages (maxing villages faster and being able to send a 7 vill card (all villages+TC's muster of 1 vill).
after concentrating on macro for a few seconds i push into his town, kill about 5 vills, kill his army, and achieve victory at exactly 10 minutes.
as you can see i fixed my vill allocations by now and have a steady standard army spam going on:
a mistake i made was that i kept my pikes back sieging while i was actually expecting hussars. because of this i lost a few steppe riders where i should've lost zero... wasn't too worried about this at the time since i had already won the game and 5 hussars weren't actually gonna challenge my 10 steppe + 20 chuko nu army..
if the game hadn't ended here, i'd have sent steppe rider + chuko nu upgrade card and vill card as soon as i max villages. 700 gold and wood can be used to feed a dual rax spam (mind macro) or to go fortress.
and a last note about the game itself: an easy game because of his rather large mistake of attacking me, obviously not a Dutch player :).