Bonuses:

• Villagers cost 30% less
• Wall his points doubled

AoE Missing Units:
Boats-Heavy Transport, Trireme, Catapult Trireme, Juggernaught
Walls and Towers-Ballista Tower
Temple-Nothing
Market-Coinage, Siegecraft
Government Center-Ballistics, Engineering, Alchemy, Aristocracy
Storage Pit-Nothing
Academy-Phalanx, Centurion
Stable-War Elephant
Barracks-Long Swordsman, Legion
Siege Workshop-Heavy Catapult
Archery Range-Elephant Archer

RoR Missing Units: Armored Elephant

Random Map on Land:

Shang is a great civilization to play on land rm(random map) games. This is due to the fact that their villagers cost 30% less! This advantage allows you to quickly advance through the ages.

The Shang's cheaper villagers basically give them one strategy that is unique to them. The other wall bonus doesn't affect game play much. This strategy involves launching a quick attack on the opponent/s. This attack can come during the tool age, bronze age, and iron age. The idea is that you attack as soon as you have reached the age but before your opponents have advanced to the same age. In other words, advance quickly and be one age of ahead of your opponent when you launch an initial attack. If your opponent manages to advance as quickly as you, he has probably not saved as many resources. He has spent all of his resources advancing while you have been able to afford more villagers at a lower price. The opponent probably does not have the necessary resources available to defend himself from an attack.

Special Note: All of these strategies revolve around advancing through the ages quickly in a random map game. If you need help with this go to this article.

1. Attacking in the Tool Age:

This strategy works exceptionally well because Shang's cheaper villagers are more important in this early stage of the game. If you use this strategy, try to locate your opponents with clubmen while you are advancing from stone to tool age, and then upgrade the clubmen to axemen and attack after arriving at the tool age. Target the opponent's villagers to make his advance through the ages even slower. Do not use more than 4 or 5 axeman so that you are able to still advance in a decent amount of time. When attacked, your opponent will probably hide his villagers temporarily and then build some units to defend with. If you cannot find anymore of the opponent's villagers attack a different opponent. Do not bother attacking buildings with axemen unless there are no other opponents. If this is the case, you can either search some more for villagers he has hidden or sit in his town and allow your axemen to attack anything in sight.

The important thing about this strategy is that you do not spend too much on military units: just spend enough to kill some villagers. Also, make sure to keep an eye on your resource gathering. Even during an attack there should be no villagers that are just sitting around doing nothing. Remember that the idea of the attack is to slow your opponent's resource gathering, not to completely wipe out your opponent. If you try to destroy your opponent with tool age units, there is a good chance he will take out your attackers, and then beat you to the bronze age. Instead, just weaken your opponent, advance to bronze long before he does, and finish him off with bronze age or iron age units.

2. Attacking in the Bronze Age:

This strategy is similar to the one mentioned above, except the attack waits until the bronze age. Use hoplites, cavalry, chariots, or other units (or a combination of different units) to attack your opponent BEFORE he has reached the bronze age. If your opponent arrives at bronze around the time you do, your best chance is moving on to strategy 3. (You will have trouble in even battles, because none of your units have special bonuses)

3. Attacking in the Iron Age:

If you go for the quick advance to iron, build some bronze age units while advancing for defense. Preferably make units like cavalry (or possible chariots in RoR) that can be upgraded to strong units in the iron age. Once you are at iron age, use multiple buildings (like stable or archery range) to make an attack force as soon as possible. Try to launch an attack before your opponents get to the iron age. This will give you the upper hand in an iron age showdown.

If you cannot manage to advance through the ages quicker than your opponents, do not give up hope. Although Shang's iron age units are definitely not the best, a skillfully created army can still take out the opponent. Although it is temping, do not try to amass large amounts of resources and plan on fighting a big iron age battle; this strategy probable will not work with Shang's iron age units.

Shang in other types of games:

Lacking units that have special bonuses and not having any good ships, the Shang are not suitable for any other type of games including death matches and games like islands with lots of water. Because each player starts with so many resources, Shang's villager advantage is virtually pointless in death matches.

-taco55-