N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

Here's a game of me against an Aztec Captain on Orinoco.

Things aren't going so well for me to begin with, I make a couple of poor choices. Then I get the brilliant and completely original idea (haha) to start massing hand mortars. I send the 7 hand mortar shipment, build a castle, and start making as many as I can while sending more unit shipments and changs / arques.

Even though the Aztec player has a decided advantage in terms of score, villagers, resources, units, etc.....watch what happens once I start using my hand mortars.

oh nooo, not against Grandma OP !

And he doesn't use arrow knights why again...? Hand mortars have a pathetic multiplier vs. infantry and low ranged resist and HP.

He wasn't in Fortress. The strength of hand mortars lies in the fact that they have such insane range AND they are super cheap. It's very easy to quickly accumulate 20+ hand mortars and then they don't die so quickly, and your opponent tries so hard to kill them that your other units can deal with their army easily. They also take down buildings very quickly.

7 handmortars = most annoying shipment in the game. They own culvs (so much for counter system). And when the cav goes in for them, china has about 28394792 military units already and the cav just gets pwned.

I guess i'm just angry for frequent losses to every civ, and get mad when I can't outlame china with dutch. LOL.

use spies drew (with agent upgrade)
a few can take out the monk in age II (so no more extra disciples) and then use em stealthed to kill the mortars.
Dutch can spam em easily

Unless they manage to get a lot of spies by the time the Chinese player is sieging their base, I don't see players being able to fight off hand mortars AND disciples with spies effectively, unless the game goes longer, I guess.

With a decent amount of units defending the hand mortars, I don't see the spies (or agents) surviving long enough to really pull it off.

One thing about hand mortars is they tend to clump a lot inthe middle and then spread out really wide in an arc when they are attacking so it's not easy to take out all of them at once. The ones in the middle are protected by the units around them and the ones on the end die easy but are not all easy to get to.

The best way to deal with hand mortars is cav but the advantage that China needs to use is the fact that they can get lots of hand mortars out quickly and early. Early in fortress is the key.

I <3 hand mortars.

Just beat an Indian Major (MarH) who tried to FF and do the 3 TC strat with Howdahs / Mahouts. I did basic disciple FF, sent 10 Arques and then 7 hand mortars, made a bunch of hand mortars, and took it to his base.

My disciples / arques and shipped pikes were enough to deal with his 2 mahouts and 3 howdahs, and then i took down his TCs with my hand mortars.

Guess what my most produced unit was? You guessed it. 31 hand mortars.

you know i have this funny ringing noise coming from my head.....oh yes i can just about make out the word LAMER lolz.!

The problem with China is that it's actually a fun civ to play, while Dutch or Iro weren't (I loved and love Iro but that's just me), which makes lamers stick to it. I can't stand playing Dutch, it's soo boring.

Agreed, China is a lot of fun to play, maybe my second favorite civ behind Russia.