The Chinese have the ability to build up a large army quickly due to banner armies, but most units are not as strong as those from other civilizations. Exceptions are Meteor Hammers, Iron Flails, Flamethrowers, Flying Crows, War Junks and Fuchuans, which are quite strong and expensive for their type.
Strengths[]
They have the ability to en masse armies quickly due to banner armies, giving them great rushing capabilities. They also have many impressive cards, such as Confucius Gift, which causes shipments to arrive very fast and researches upgrades nearly instantly.
They build Villages instead of normal Houses. Villages are more expensive than houses, but provide more population, which can be increased by technologies. It acts as a Chinese version of the Livestock Pen, that trains goats and fattens livestock. They also have an ability to garrison villagers inside them, they can also fire on enemies by a card.
Also they have the largest population cap and their economy can begin building up quickly since some of their Home City Cards will make Villages and Town Centers do a one-time muster of one Villager. They also have excellent herding capacities, because they need to build Villages anyway, and have a card which makes Villagers gather 300% faster from herdables.
Their navy is also very good. They have ships like War Junk and Fuchuan which are one of the strongest in their class
Thanks to the Boxer Rebellion card, they can field infinite armies of sentries and irregulars by demolishing and rebuilding Town Centers.
The Chinese are the only Asian civilization that can create Heavy Cannons on their own, because of a Factory provided by Russian allies at the Consulate.
The Chinese can have a reasonably diverse army thanks to how their Banner army works, which provides two sets of different units. This allows the player to have a unique combination of units in their army composition.
Weakness[]
Most of their units are weaker than other civilizations. Also, Banner Armies require large amounts of resources, and if an initial Rush attack is a failure, it will waste significant resources. Villages, although support a large population, are more expensive than normal houses and their build limit is limited to six.
While the Banner Armies can allow diverse armies, some units that the army may provide may be deadweight to the player. For example, the Old Han Army provides a composition of 3 Chu Ko Nu and 3 Qiang Pikemen. While the former can pick off heavy infantry, the latter may be useless against Musket infantry (i.e. Musketeers) due to their superior range, unless the opponent decides to mix heavy cavalry units on their own.