Bach Viet/Strategic Overview

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  • Strengths: Good raiding infantry, strong defensive navy.
  • Weaknesses: No proper heavy cavalry, or infantry to speak of.

The "Bach Viet" or "Hundred Yue" (as they were known to the ancient Chinese) are a race that is concentrated mainly on several things: exploration and littoral warfare of a defensive nature.

Being capable of viewing the map and gathering resources from ruins can be a powerful means to start the game. Not only are Ruins plentiful at the early start, but they are also within full view of the Bach Viet player who can make use of this edge in information warfare for better planning of demographic expansion (and possibly acquisition, later on) to encompass key strategic areas. It is true that the Xianyun have an advantage in expansion, and the Kushans also have a strong intelligence gathering bias (owing to their ability to see rare resources) but the Bach Viet are able to fully use that ability to properly coordinate their construction projects within their available national borders to encompass areas of crucial importance such as defensible positions, rare resources and/or Timber and Metal-gathering areas owing to their having the entire map revealed to them.

Thereafter comes the issue of Ruins. On paper, Ruins don't give much but they are very helpful, especially in the early start of the game when you are still scraping the barrel to construct a new building. However, this is where one of the Bach Viet civilisation's quirks comes into play: for the Bach Viet this amount increases EXPONENTIALLY with each level of Science research, from a humble +36 all the way to a whopping +192 at Level 7. Being capable of finding these Ruins and acquiring more resources out of them can mean the difference between a successful boom/rush strategy and being overwhelmed by an enemy's numerical or economic superiority. Thus, this bonus shouldn't be overlooked where possible especially since Science (a very heavily overlooked area by most players of RoN) can be quite powerful since it increases the amount of resources that you'd normally harvest per Ruin patch. In conclusion, pushing for the Science track can be very profitable for Bach Viet, by increasing the amount of resources possible for research whilst lowering the resource costs for ALL other areas of research, particularly Military.

On land and at sea, the Bach Viet can be a potentially strong faction. Aside from being able to spawn heavy ships from newly built Docks, the Bach Viet also have a plethora of units that they can rely upon to keep the foe at bay, for the Bach Viet unlike the other "jungle civs" (Jin, Nanman and Van Lang) they don't rely on slow-moving "tribal" units. Instead, they can recruit a few Chinese units, such as Ji Infantry and Crossbow Levies. Factor in the Bronze and Iron Swordsmen as well as Elephant mercenaries which are usually trained by Southeast Asian "tribal" civs, and you have a wonderful infantry component that is very versatile and can handle most threats. Still, this civ has its drawbacks and that is the lack of heavy units and cavalry. In enclosed or watery maps, the Bach Viet will shine, but in maps with open land, they are usually easy prey for chariots and cavalry.