chinese dutch sling

[punkybruster]

I've been dicking around with the possibility of a Chinese dutch sling and this is what I've come up with. It seems like flamethrowers have superseded grens as the prime 2nd age art, so why not try a sling to get them super early?
I have a tentative strat to hit them at 4:40 with 9 qing pikes and 4 FT:
dutch player builds 3 vills and puts everyone on food until he has 555 (about 1:40)
chinese builds 3 vills and puts all on food and ages up (1 vil on the resource-generating wonder)when he gets 300 of his own food.
At that time he sends one vill to FB a castle.
The dutch player puts 5 vills on coin and 5 on wood. He sends 100w and 100 coin to help pay for the castle.
The dutch then proceeds to cut another 144 wood and sends a shipment of 300w. He sends it all to the chinese.
The dutch player then puts all on coin and keeps trickling it to the chinese.
While againg up the chinese puts all vills on wood, except for a few to kill the goat and get enough food to build one more vill. Then all go to wood (except for the builders).
When he ages up, he starts one FT and ships 9 pikes, to be received at the FB.
The 400f he gets for aging up goes to building vills. The shipment and the FT's arrive at the same time, about 4:30.
Then some limp dick gets his ass kicked. The end.

[pcups]

Sounds good!
How fast can 4 FT destroy a TC?

[punkybruster]

I didn't record it exactly, but it's very quick with the 9 pikes. I lost 2 pikes and their TC was full, but it may take longer if he sends minutemen.

[boorules60]

The Chinese army does 786 siege per volley and has 1830 HP and is a little more adept at killing the units you are likely to encounter.

The Pumas do 768 siege per volley and has 2080 HP and is more adept at killing vills BUT comes at 4:15, not 4:40, and has the War Chief XP bonus for a faster recovery (Peasant Shipments too!).

I won't speak too soon, but I'm not yet convinced that this is the way to go guys.

[mrniceguy]

so the chinese sound pretty good in both treaty and supremacy. are they the civ that i should try? i want to get a couple games in before the big day... who do u guys think i should go with?

[boorules60]

Judging by the type of game play you have liked in the past, I think the Chinese are probably most well suited for your supremacy style because their armies are based largely on numbers and a variety of units. However, I'm not so sure that you would like them in treaty because they are really not the aggressive force that the Ottomans and the Russians are and become heavily dependent on slaughtering armies to drain your opponents of resources.