Opinion - Chinese Pioneer unit is bad game design for multiplayer

[Slaytown Baker]

The unit and the way it is structured is too versatile and offers too much in early classic.


Instant Pressure: Begin with 1. Trains from temple so can be made in age 1 and on way up to age 2 meaning as one player just begins placing stables you already have your troops created.

Hero bonus: Having decent bonus vs Myth means your age 2 myth spawn will struggle to engage or find value, giving you less means to create necessary space while you get military buildings up.

The counter to this is to age up early but this is not always feasible as it suffers your economy. Chinese are obviously tuned up and likely being monitored for balance but they have great coverage, lack of major weaknesses and have exceptional boom with Kaufa. Basically you get a age 1 archery range that wont struggle with myth and allow you to boom behind this while pushing off hunt/gold/woodline with pioneer. Very easy abuse, would be nice to see the design looked at.

[Mr.Frog]

The Norse can get Hersirs and Greeks get their hero in the first age. Egyptian I can see struggling a bit since priests are bad vs everything but myth units but you get slingers in age 2 for cheap.

[Slaytown Baker]

I get you. It's not all about them being hero though. But the fact they are a hero means the myth unit is rendered pretty useless. In combination to their ability to be made in age 1 this becomes strong.

Also the fact they are ranged is key, meaning you archer ball and micro. Not only are you less kitable, you are the one kiting. Hersir is a 23 second trained melee fighter costing food which is more valuable to wood. At 60 seconds to classic you can reasonably get 2-3 out.
Pioneer is 12 seconds training, 5 pioneers on the way up and a more steady rally from there. Pioneer 30 gold vs hersir 40. There is a lot working in its favor.

While it doesn't break the game at all levels at high level ranked I feel this is strong in a way that other civs dont get and struggle to have good reasonable counters to.

I just play a 1v1 now where I kite enemy Hersir with pioneers and trivialise the game. His troll spawn was just a free kill for them too.

[Slaytown Baker]

Priest is balanced by high gold cost, low speed and frail stats and only being effective vs myth. The pioneer can still hold its own vs a human soldier.

[Mr.Horakhty]

Not much of MP enjoyer however I do watch game casts and from what I have seen. I do agree bulk of their army almost always seems to be Pioneer for the early-mid game.

- It is a ranged unit you can create from age 1, that is also your scouting unit so it will be on the map ready to harass as soon as you age up,
- It is a ranged hero and unlike priests they are decent against human units while completely shutting down myth units. I mean priests aren't even that good against myth units unless you have a decent number, until at least heroic age that is,
- As you pointed out their costs are wood heavy which is in lower demand than gold or food in early game,
- Their lanterns are really good at locating villagers while other raiding units (which can only come later than them anyways) like Raiding Cavalry or Cav in general might struggle/take longer.

As I said already Not much of MP enjoyer so take those points with a grain of salt though.

edit: Haven't watched the whole thing yet but Boit gives good advice againts them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23TGo9Lyp0

[Mr.Frog]

Originally posted by JeRiChO:

Priest is balanced by high gold cost, low speed and frail stats and only being effective vs myth. The pioneer can still hold its own vs a human soldier.

Greeks are the only ones I can see struggling in second age vs Pioneer spam. You only have Hippikons to counter archers which are gold intensive units vs the 25 gold cost of Pioneers. Egyptians at least get slingers which hard counter archers on top of being cheap, costing less wood and gold than pioneers. Norse you have raiding cavalry and if you're Freyr and go Ullr you get Huskarls in the second age. But then you can just get the halberdiers as Chinese which hard counter cavalry. Atlanteans can just mass Turmas which are not only fast but hard counter archers. If you get third age you can get Contarius and Destroyers. I know Destroyers aren't hard counters to archers but they can sponge tons of ranged damage.

[Dakota]

I've been finding the Pioneers to not be such a problem as described. While ranged attacks and archer balls are useful. 5 units isn't much of an archer ball, kinda takes a bit longer for the mass to be reached where it is, giving enemies time to decide to put up one military building then have access to units that hard counter pioneers for half the cost, which also makes it a bad idea to really mass them up like that in the first place since they're rather expensive for what they provide.

The pierce damage I've also noticed makes them actually somewhat weak to some myth units despite being heroes. These guys end up struggling against automaton rushes while taking more resources, being a hero unit, and taking longer to train, especially once the turma come to back the automatons up if you do mass them to the point the automatons want to back off.

Gonna be good into units that are bad vs pierce though, like if someone were just building an army of their generalist infantry without scouting, but that's not really a good idea to do in the first place.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Horakhty:

Not much of MP enjoyer however I do watch game casts and from what I have seen. I do agree bulk of their army almost always seems to be Pioneer for the early-mid game.

- It is a ranged unit you can create from age 1, that is also your scouting unit so it will be on the map ready to harass as soon as you age up,
- It is a ranged hero and unlike priests they are decent against human units while completely shutting down myth units. I mean priests aren't even that good against myth units unless you have a decent number, until at least heroic age that is,
- As you pointed out their costs are wood heavy which is in lower demand than gold or food in early game,
- Their lanterns are really good at locating villagers while other raiding units (which can only come later than them anyways) like Raiding Cavalry or Cav in general might struggle/take longer.

As I said already Not much of MP enjoyer so take those points with a grain of salt though.

edit: Haven't watched the whole thing yet but Boit gives good advice againts them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23TGo9Lyp0

Been finding a mix of fire archers with pioneers works for my archer line. Mostly because I can just stream pioneers from the temple I already have built since I'm not building myth units due to using all my favor on kuafu, so it saves me building an extra workshop for more fire archers and provides a bit of anti myth unit capability (they're about as good as hero turma at killing myth units btw). Fire archers are a good deal better vs infantry and only slightly worse vs other targets but are considerably cheaper, the bonus building damage isn't a big deal for the most part but can be good for shutting down buildings in progress and more damage is more damage even if it's a little bit. Fire archers also train at just 9 seconds each, so they help fill up the ranks quickly.

I think it'll take a bit of time before people really lock in on what are the ideal unit comps to run, especially given there's 3 ranged units to choose from in just age 1, and we haven't really fully developed strategies with China yet.

[Mr.Horakhty]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Originally posted by Horakhty:

Not much of MP enjoyer however I do watch game casts and from what I have seen. I do agree bulk of their army almost always seems to be Pioneer for the early-mid game.

- It is a ranged unit you can create from age 1, that is also your scouting unit so it will be on the map ready to harass as soon as you age up,
- It is a ranged hero and unlike priests they are decent against human units while completely shutting down myth units. I mean priests aren't even that good against myth units unless you have a decent number, until at least heroic age that is,
- As you pointed out their costs are wood heavy which is in lower demand than gold or food in early game,
- Their lanterns are really good at locating villagers while other raiding units (which can only come later than them anyways) like Raiding Cavalry or Cav in general might struggle/take longer.

As I said already Not much of MP enjoyer so take those points with a grain of salt though.

edit: Haven't watched the whole thing yet but Boit gives good advice againts them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23TGo9Lyp0

Been finding a mix of fire archers with pioneers works for my archer line. Mostly because I can just stream pioneers from the temple I already have built since I'm not building myth units due to using all my favor on kuafu, so it saves me building an extra workshop for more fire archers and provides a bit of anti myth unit capability (they're about as good as hero turma at killing myth units btw). Fire archers are a good deal better vs infantry and only slightly worse vs other targets but are considerably cheaper, the bonus building damage isn't a big deal for the most part but can be good for shutting down buildings in progress and more damage is more damage even if it's a little bit. Fire archers also train at just 9 seconds each, so they help fill up the ranks quickly.

I think it'll take a bit of time before people really lock in on what are the ideal unit comps to run, especially given there's 3 ranged units to choose from in just age 1, and we haven't really fully developed strategies with China yet.

Fair enough, civ is still new after all. People will find out more ways to play them and play against them.

[Apothecary Michael]

Don't forget the "free" latern scout every few minutes. You can create a bunch of pioneers and set the laterns to auto acticvate. Free Scouting Air Units ftw. :)

[Cryptic]

It's not bad game design. This post is just not a good opinion. The unit is honestly kinda trashy. It does what it needs to but that's it

[Slaytown Baker]

Originally posted by Cryptic:

It's not bad game design. This post is just not a good opinion. The unit is honestly kinda trashy. It does what it needs to but that's it

I hear you. And I'm glad to hear peoples opinions as to how it may fit poorly or fit fine as you describe. My opinion is not fully fledged as China is still new, hence I titled this as opinion and have opened the discussion about it.

My first game in which was high mmr (my opponent has 300+ games at over 70% WR) had me as greek vs china where the harassment from pioneers didn't end my game but rather gave China a pressure free boom while I was more on a back foot defending from the get-go.

Another as stated I decimated a Loki with ease and based on many games the win felt like a civ win to me rather than I flat outplayed my opponent.

I have looked at their stats and understand and agree that yes, their damage is not insane. Their cost is not crazy high but still significant enough. With Fuxi it pairs extremely well with his special hero and scales well with the divine damage upgrade. My issue is not it being a broken unit in and of itself overall but being an instant classic age somewhat cheesy option. Potentially a slight reduction in training time or myth unit bonus damage would give the defender less punish while still allowing players the option of using them early.

Obviously requires some testing but a few seconds extra on train time, or 5-10 more gold cost, perhaps 0.5-1x lower damage to myth (even if just for classic) so long as it doesnt cripple their anti-myth for the duration of classic could be nice in making them less of an instant power spike. At high level tempo and rhythm are very important.

By all means I want China to be a good civ with strong options as they deserve, just don't want cheesy strats.

[Slaytown Baker]

Originally posted by Dakota:

I've been finding the Pioneers to not be such a problem as described. While ranged attacks and archer balls are useful. 5 units isn't much of an archer ball, kinda takes a bit longer for the mass to be reached where it is, giving enemies time to decide to put up one military building then have access to units that hard counter pioneers for half the cost, which also makes it a bad idea to really mass them up like that in the first place since they're rather expensive for what they provide.

The pierce damage I've also noticed makes them actually somewhat weak to some myth units despite being heroes. These guys end up struggling against automaton rushes while taking more resources, being a hero unit, and taking longer to train, especially once the turma come to back the automatons up if you do mass them to the point the automatons want to back off.

Gonna be good into units that are bad vs pierce though, like if someone were just building an army of their generalist infantry without scouting, but that's not really a good idea to do in the first place.

These are good points, yes.

In doing so you are revealing a hand and committing to a unit type somewhat, this is true. Myth units with higher pierce armor can have some effect, especially easily massed ones like automotons.

[SirCatBeard]

Compare it to the Norse Godi:
Not only is pioneer available from game start from both the temple and the ImpAca, it is 5wood+10gold cheaper than Godi, has more hp--even in the archaic age (Pio=90+10%per age. Godi=85+20% in mythic), it trains in roughly half the time.
DPS is roughly comparable.
The Godi only is ahead in range (16 vs 12) and 5% more hack armor. Oh, and the Pio gets 6.5x vs MU, as opposed to Godi's 6x.
Pio has twice the pierce armor, moves faster, and is only 2 pop as opposed to 3 for Godi

tldr: Pioneers are are cheaper, tougher, faster, trained faster, have balloons, take up less pop (despite the balloons), better vs MU, can scout, and are available an age earlier (two, if you start massing Pio's in Archaic, though I doubt that would be worthwhile.)

[Migromul]

I don't know. I have a much more difficult time to get wood, than I have to get gold or food. You need wood for buildings, and at the beginning, you need A LOT of buildings... The only exception are the egypts, and this in one of the main reasons, why they're my favorite faction.

[R for Reload]

You effectively wanna take away one of the only positives the Chinese currently have.
If you remove Pioneer's ability to fight human troops they have NOTHING going for them, They are a pretty weak faction, They have the worst infantry
Dao swordmen who trade hack defence for pierce defence, On a slow unit that can't even catch archer anyways and still takes bonus damage by them.
A weaker counter cav and counter archer then the rest of the races.
There base archer sucks.
There only like saving grace might be Chu Ko Nus and Red Tiger cav
But the dismounted red tiger cav effectively can't hold there own in a fight due to there extremely low armour.(Posiden Militia HAVE MORE ARMOUR)
They have no 2nd age crush damage unlike the rest of the factions.