Tale of the Dragon: support your Chinese army
By AoM Guides · dragon
Use the original Chinese roster on its own terms, protect support units, and avoid mixing it with Immortal Pillars advice.
Keep the army and support together
Tale of the Dragon’s Chinese combine a human army with Generals, healing and converting Monks, War Academy technology, and Garden income. Keep the support protected so it can improve trades and return surviving troops to the next fight.
Budget the Garden mode
Tale of the Dragon’s Chinese generate favor through Gardens. Gardens can instead produce an ordinary resource, but the resource choice is shared across your Gardens rather than selected independently for each one. Switching away from favor therefore affects the income needed for myth units and technologies. Decide what the next army requires before changing modes, and restore favor production in time for the intended purchases. Garden income needs no worker prayer.
Decide what the support is supporting
Start with a practical human army that can protect your working resources and contest a reachable objective. Support units multiply the value of a functioning force; they do not automatically replace one. If the opponent’s ordinary soldiers can surround your Monks or reach your ranged damage freely, the formation needs fixing before another specialist is added.
Read the target bonuses before choosing a counter. Put the unit where it can reach the intended enemy, with enough frontline support to keep it attacking. Base the next production batch on the opponent’s full composition, including the troops behind the screen.
Keep recruitment and basic income active while learning these interactions. It is easy to spend all your attention on conversions or a special ability and discover that army production stopped during the fight. A smaller number of well-managed control tasks is more useful than an elaborate army you cannot reinforce.
Protect Monks and choose attainable targets
A conversion opportunity depends on position and time. Keep Monks behind ordinary troops and avoid exposing them to a fast flank just to reach a tempting enemy. If the opponent advances onto the support, preserve the units and re-form the army rather than insisting on completing an ambitious attempt.
Healing can return surviving units to the next battle, which makes retreating damaged troops worthwhile when an available safe opportunity exists. It does not justify repeatedly walking the whole army through danger to save one soldier. Establish a regrouping area near production or a defended route, then bring healthy units forward together.
Do not calculate a fight as though every desired conversion will succeed. Count your reliable army first, then treat control effects as an opportunity whose value depends on execution and enemy response. This produces a more stable decision about whether to engage or wait.
Make the General’s presence practical
A morale-supporting unit belongs where the intended army can benefit while the support remains protected. Repeatedly sending the General ahead of the main formation defeats that purpose. Keep the relevant group together through movement and avoid allowing faster components to pull the support into an isolated engagement.
If you split for a raid, decide which group needs the support most. Two under-supported groups can lose separately even when their combined force would have held. Keep the raid modest until you can maintain economy, production, and the main formation at the same time.
Give Shennong’s later tools a route to matter
Shennong’s siege and Monk options reward a protected approach and reliable reinforcement. Build the escort first, then move the machines toward an objective worth the travel. Keep troops on the flanks so a fast group cannot reach the siege without fighting.
With Fuxi or Nüwa, build the economy around the bonuses available to your chosen god and reserve the resources needed for the next troop batch. Keep the support group close enough to work while the main formation fights.
Practice before adding a complex opening
Practice with one main army, one support group, and one limited objective. Review whether specialists survived, ordinary troops attacked useful targets, and reinforcements arrived before the engagement ended. Fix the weakest part of that sequence before adding another control group or a more demanding opening.