FLAMETHROWER BLITZKRIEG!!!

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

Hi guys. I played a game with Lazy, Huggy, Holly and Ghosteh and a friend of the clan a couple days ago. This "friend of the clan" (I think his name was Pharaoh) used China, but not in the manner you might expect. Instead of just your usual Old Han business, he built a castle and spammed flamethrowers! It didn't work for him, but I immediately saw some great potential here.

There is nothing like having early infantry-killing siege... just ask any Otto player who can spam abus. Flamethrowers are a forgotten unit and they are quite deadly when massed. Plus, unlike abus, they can burn up barracks, stables and houses in short order. They do 1 area damage, 30 damage (base) to infantry, and they don't have a reload animation--they just keep on pouring on the heat (literally). They have 65% ranged resistance and 210 BASE HP (more than a falc). Plus you can upgrade their HP and damage by 20% in colonial. Later on they have disciplined, honored and exalted upgrades, too. Their main weakness--like all artillery--is against cavalry. But that's where your teammate comes in!

I have started doing some tests to manufacture flamethrowers quickly. It is a tough venture to get them out by the 6:00 mark, but it can be done. The problem is that they put a big strain on the early Chinese econ (they cost 170 wood/170 coin each). Thankfully, spamming flamethrowers only involves coin and wood, so you only need to keep a few vils on food to assure a constant vil production. The rest can go on wood and coin. I've found 700/600 wood shipments, plus a 700 coin shipment, help get the job done. Ideally, you'll want about 8-9 vils on coin and 12-13 on wood for a constant spam. Also, market upgrades for coin and wood are helpful. As far as the consulate goes, I would say go British for more HP (flamethrowers already have lots of HP, so this is a good one), plus you can always call in some redcoats for anti-cav. When I age, I always use the Summer Palace and use the food for 4 vils. I set the Wonder to produce a Ming Army, since I want nothing but anticav to protect my flamethrowers.

I will keep tweaking this build order. In our coming clan games, I will try to test it out under actual game conditions. Let me just say this: Once you have 5 or 6 flamethrowers belching fire, infantry and FBs just go up in smoke! As long as they are covered from cav (cough, sepoys would be nice!) they could burn through the opposition!

[I__CHAOS__I]

interesting Kaiser, worth looking into it!

also, they are tagged as infantry, so some team cards could affect them too.
their main weakness is their range, if you can work around that, they do really well.

[Hydrovert5]

Pharoah did this before while in a team game with me, and he wiped the floor with those flamethrowers. With my muskets guarding his artillery, the game was quickly over. The key to being successful with that, is that the enemy does not see your castle.

[Soccerman771]

I'll look into this since I'm quite a dedicated China player. However, the Ming army I find to be useless. Maybe if there was some kind of Keshik shipment that was worth it or an upgrade, maybe, but I don't think so. What about the other castle banner armies where you get multiple units?

I remember days when this guy named Harley14 used to spam them in team games and it was not fun to deal with. They are similar (except they have range) to flail elephants.

Get us a rec..

[Navarone_Guy]

Bwahahahahahaha! Flamethrowers are quite possibly the most fun unit in the game when spammed. If you get a group of about 10 of em and pile on the upgrade cards, they tear through anything, including cavalry. In 1v1 rush games, they're not practical, but in team games things might get interesting... good luck with it, Kaiser!

[Sporting_Lisbon]

They are the most underrated unit in the game (no, it's not grens, those do suck) and some really lame strategies could be used!


Flamethrower/Zamburaks! Flamethower/Port early goons! And regarding 1v1s they are useful in some situations. In one game vs Drew's brits I only managed to chew through 23549 lbs and pikes with flamethrowers and backup units.

[GeneralMichael]

China has been one of my weakest civs and I have yet to find many people playing as them in nr40 games. I have a hard time with the making 2 different units at a time since usually I will have heavy losses of one type of unit and will want to make more of only that unit. Also I still don't understand why the castle has a anti calv block that involves the mortars??? Mortars are artillary so therefor should lose to calv. (I hate it when fighting a chinese opponent using a lot of artillery and then they bust out a ton of mortars since for china they take only 1 pop)

[joe4holly]

Evryone doing this now.

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

[quote=""joe4holly""]Evryone doing this now.[/quote]

Ha ha, the one weekend I couldn't play much, everyone tries out the strat. How is it working out?

[joe4holly]

Its too evil to say, dont want more people doing this.

[ruminator]

Sporting hit me with some vs my iroquois this weekend! He fought off my initial rush (while doing the ironing at the same time no doubt) and then massed a huge infantry mass with about 4 flamethrowers bunched in the middle.

I don't care how good your micro is, you just can't get the flamethrowers in melee as there's too much fodder in the way. He also went French at the Consultate and sent young garde which caught me by surprise. My warhuts were downed in a couple of seconds!!

[ruminator]

Double post - arrgh!

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

Here is a refinement to my team flamethrower Build Order : Send 300 wood in colonial and send 3 vils forward to build the castle, just as if you were a Russian building a blockhouse. Put the castle near a gold mine and have your forward vils mine gold after they put the castle up.

Another thing I like about the wood/gold econ: You don't have to risk too many vils straggling out looking for hunts, and/or attempting to herd and having the animals run the opposite direction into the wilderness where uhlans, cossacks and hussars roam :-P

Don't get me wrong: I love to raid. But I'm devoting increasing amounts of energy to FOILING other people's raiding.

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

Just a quick query: How many flamethrowers can you train in your first batch around 5:30 or 5:45? Lately I have been managing 2, then 3 in the second batch.

RANDOM NOTE : Don't you love the flamethrower voice? When you see me on vent next, I will try to do an impression for you! The Chinese lady where I order spare ribs and mu shu pork says I sound pretty good for a Western barbarian :-P I repeat the stuff from AOE 3 to her and she says: "Very smart! Very smart!"

[I__CHAOS__I]

i'm getting 4 in first batch followed by 3, out around 7.20 - 7.30 + one boost card and some free units from wonder