China Fast Fortress Tutorial

 In this tutorial, I am going to explain a good way to play the Chinese from my own experience.

Like the other two Asian civilizations (Japanese and Indians), the Chinese can train villagers while aging up. So don't forget to keep training villagers while you build your wonder.

Wonders

This is the order of wonders to age up:

Summer Palace: Generates Banner Armies automatically.

The first wonder you build is Summer Palace. It generates banner armies for free and gives 400 food. This will help you to build a small force to defend early in the game. The 400 food is useful to advance to Age III.

The next wonder is the Temple of Heaven: Which casts the Transcendence ability to heal your units. You get a town center for free which will help you to maximize the number of your villagers.

The third wonder is the Porcelain Tower which Generates resources automatically.

And the Final is the Confucian Academy which Generates Flying Crow artillery.

Important Buildings

One of the best buildings that the Chinese have is the consulate.

It is a building that allows the Chinese to exchange export for shipments of resources, buildings, and units. Three of the alliances that the Chinese can get in the consulate are very useful. 

    The first alliance you get after you build your consulate is with the French - you get extra resources and gather rates during Ages I and II. After you advance to Age III send the 700 gold shipment and switch to the Russians.

    After you switch to an alliance with the Russians the villagers become cheaper and train faster. You build a third Town Center and start building your Rice paddies. You get a fort a blockhouse and a factory shipment. After you advance to Age IV, send the factory shipment and Then you switch to the Germans. You can set the factory to make Heavy Cannons which also get bonuses from Artillery cards.

    
After you switch to  The Germans - You get a food discount on army training and resource trickles shipments. You can keep this alliance for the rest of the game.

Also, the German Expeditionary Army is really good. It ships 18 skirmishers and 1 Heavy canon.

Another useful building that the Chinese have is the village. It has a huge amount of vision and can be used to garrison your villagers if the opponent is trying to hurt your economy at the beginning of the game. Vision provided by buildings in-game is usually neglected but is a valuable thing to have. You can place your villages in strategic positions. Near a gold mine, woods or hunts. In this way, you can spot the enemy coming from very far away which in turn gives you time to respond. By having more vision on the map you also help your team.

The deck

The first two shipments you send are the Tea Export which ships the Advanced Consulate and the Good Faith agreement which lowers the export cost of shipments from the consulate. It is a good start because you will be sending all the shipments from the three alliances at the consulate

After you advance to Age II you send Nomadic Expansion(Two village rickshaws), Northern Refugees(a villager for every village and Town Center), and a Chest of 700 coins.

The first shipment you send after you advance to Age III is Western Refugees(a villager for every village and Town Center).

The order of the other shipments is whatever the situation requires.

Army Composition

The Chinese are an artillery civilization. They have a lot of cards that upgrade their artillery.

Artillery is strong against infantry and weak against cavalry so it is good to pair it with Territorial Army and Ming Army. 

This means an army composition of Keshiks,  Qiang Pikeman, Arquebusiers, Changdao Swordsmen, Flying crows, Heavy canons, and Flamethrowers.

If the enemy is relying heavily on their artillery you have the inexpensive Hand Mortar at your disposal.

If they have a lot of skirmishers and you are having a hard time you can switch to Forbidden Army. Iron Flails and Meteor Hammers can soak up the damage from skirmishers.

One of your most valuable units is the Flying Crow. It lacks mobility and fires slowly but 3 or 4 of them can make a difference in a battle. The rest of the army is basically to guard them against threats. If you mass 6 or more Flying crows it becomes very hard to face them unless your opponent has culverins or a decent number of hand cavalry. Of course, there is always the possibility that the enemy will ignore your slow-moving army and head for your economy.

If you manage to mass a few Heavy Cannons and Flying Crows it gets even more deadly.

In the end, if you get a few native villages you can make a vast army that will overwhelm almost anyone on their path. You just constantly resupply your army.

Conclusion

At Age II you build a small force to protect from enemy attacks. You can even get some 

natives if they are good.

At Age III you try to get 3 Town centers and max your villagers and maintain a decent army.

At Ages IV and V, you fight the opponent with everything you have and overwhelm their forces.

If executed properly this strategy you can get a great economy that can produce a strong army.

This is just a battle plan. In a battle, many things can go wrong. Even if you lose, you can learn from your mistakes