Koreans

Korean players were more feared in AoC than players using Koreans, such a shame really!

Quick Card

• Villagers +3 LOS
• Stone miners work 20% faster
• Tower upgrades free (Bombard Tower requires Chemistry)
• Towers range +1 Castle Age, +1 Imperial Age (for +2 total)

• Unique Unit: War Wagon
• Unique Unit: Turtle Ship

• Unique Technology: Shinkichon

• Team Bonus: Mangonels, onagers +1 range

Analysis of bonuses

Villagers +3  LOS

One of those “handy bonuses”, a bit like the Teuton town center LOS. It’s very handy but you can’t build up a tactic around it. However, on some maps it’s an extremely valuable handiness! On nomad style maps, especially on LN, Koreans can find their perfect spot a lot easier. And while their villagers are running around to find that spot, they have the sight of roughly 3 villagers. Making a bad start unlikely with Koreans.

On more standardized maps, this gives Koreans a good defensive bonus: they see all attempts to attack villagers coming from miles. And trushing a Korean is just a bad idea since they can see any tower being built.

Both screenshots are taken from a game where L_Clan_Buddha (Mongols) tried to trush L_Clan_Chris (Koreans) and ran into the Korean LOS bonus multiple times.

Stone Miners work 20% faster

Villagers can see attacks coming but then they must be able to shelter too. That’s where this handy little bonus pops in. Faster mining allows for easier towering in your economy even though it needs quite a bit of micro to shelter your villagers in time.

This is the only Korean economical bonus and even though it’s not a huge one, it can be used for handy little tricks. One of them is mining stone in feudal age when booming. And then trade the stone you gathered for gold to advance to the castle age. It obviously allows you to afford castles, towers and town centers faster than your opponents.

Tower upgrades free (Bombard Tower requires Chemistry)

Probably my favourite bonus in the game. Not because it’s such a good one, but because it’s so much fun to play around with! When you pull up some towers around your enemy he’ll most likely have to withdraw a part of his economy. But if the tower gets a free upgrade, you won’t be automagically able to shoot wherever. A tower is and stays a tower. It can be irritating to see that the tower that was just out of range for your new economical activity can harass you again, but that’s about it. However, strategically placed towers can wreak havoc on an economy. And since they’re great in every age with the Koreans, you might want to think out of the box and use them just a little more.

If keeps aren’t your cup of tea, you might as well go for bombard towers then. A slow and expensive upgrade that needs chemistry too. But not with Koreans. They can build bombard towers about as fast as Turks. Given that Turks are the top gunpowder civ, that’s quite an achievement. The coolest thing about bombard towers is that they have very few counters. Bombard cannons, trebuchets and rams (more civ specific counters are Aztec monks and Spanish villagers).

Ever tried a Korean FI?

Towers range +1 Castle Age, +1 Imperial Age (for +2 total)

You can see why Koreans are nicked “the tower civ”. Yet another bonus to benefit their towers. Sadly towers are just towers. Big immobile archers. But with an incredible range, they can be used in funky ways. 8+5 range can compete with bombard cannons in imperial too!

Team Bonus: Mangonels, onagers +1 range

One of those awesome team bonuses in the game. Extra range on mangonels is everything in castle age fights when facing archers, buildings and even monks. It’s that extra tile they don’t have to stroll forward, slowly towards the enemy. They can fire, dodge and go for their next target. This is especially handy for Celts and Mongols who have a Korean ally. It must be noted that exactly this bonus still has Koreans banned from michi team games nowadays.

War Wagon

• 
• Cost: 120 wood, 60 gold
• Attack: 9 (Elite: 9)
• Armor: 0/3 (Elite: 0/4)
• HP: 150 (Elite: 200)
• Range: 4 (Elite: 5)
• Elite Upgrade: 1000 wood, 800 gold

The unit that was probably patched most, and some might say it’s still not 100% balanced. War wagons suffer from big disadvantages but also have huge advantages. Let’s start chronologically: which brings us to their disadvantages: war wagons are downright expensive. They cost a little fortune that can only be topped by war elephants. Therefore it’s hard to mass them early on, and because they are a cavalry archer unit, their strength is in their masses. Safe to say, once they hit their critical mass, they’re hard to stop. However, it takes a while to get there and it requires the elite upgrade too. And, most important, a meat shield. This highlights the most important weakness of the war wagons: they have loads of counters: cavalry, eagle warriors, pikes and skirmishers. They’re a bit like mamelukes in that perspective: as long as you manage to keep them away from the pikes, they’re very sweet.

You could consider them as the ultimate backup unit.

Turtle Ship

• 
• Cost: 200 wood, 200 gold
• Attack: 50 (Elite: 50)
• Armor: 6/5 (Elite: 8/6)
• HP: 200 (Elite: 300)
• Range: 6 (Elite: 6)
• Elite Upgrade: 1000 food, 800 gold

When looking at the statistics, not a single unit looks as brute and robust as this one. Except maybe elephants, even though they’re still way off dealing 50 damage with their tusks. But once more, it becomes painfully clear that you will rarely see this unit on the battlefield for many reasons: first of all, naval battles are decided by galleys 90% of the time. When a fleet of galleys reaches a certain point, not even fire ships stand a chance anymore. Second, you can only start producing them in the castle age. And last but not least, they require a castle and a load of resources!

This does not mean however that they’re useless. Because despite all those disadvantages, they’re still monsters on the sea. It’s just hard to get them. I still have to see a game where Turtle ships decide a game on a high level, the closest I found was a teamgame between _DauT_, Erhun and dogao vs L_Clan_Ruso, L_Clan_Hackl and L_Clan_Ringkvist. Needless to say the teams were stacked and _DauT_ even went afk for a phonecall and they still won the game. The nice part was though when Ruso could keep up 1v2 on the seas with his turtle ships against a British and Saracen fleet!

Recorded Game

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Shinkichon

A simple upgrade that aids Korean onagers even more. Boosting their range for a total of 8+3 if siege engineers is researched too. Effectively outranging the castles of some civs and if you use attack ground, you could even outrange every castle! (Except a Teutonic one of course)

Dominance through the Ages

An oversight about dominance through the ages can be found in this article.

Dark Age

Koreans are nothing special in the dark age, however, the great LOS for villagers should help you out on some maps. Above that they can signal dark age attacks much sooner than any other civ. Thanks to their LOS bonus, they’re not rock bottom.

Feudal Age

Koreans suffer here, they have no economical bonus except their stone mining boost and lack bloodlines too. Since feudal warfare decides a plethora of games in age of empires, it’s easy to see why Koreans are no popular choice. A nice example in AoC history are the orion_ nicks from Canary. He made 18 nicks, one for each civ: orion_aztecs, orion_britons, etc…

And out of all the nicks, the Korean had the lowest rating, only achieving a 18xx.

Castle Age

The age in which Koreans finally start to play along. Their towers get a free upgrade which gives an instant boost to their defensive (or maybe offensive) structures. And they can make their mighty mangonels, to scare away archery units. However, that’s about it, Koreans suffer from the lack of an economical bonus, their knights have no bloodlines and their archery line is just the same (or worse) than other 16 civs.

Even though they have access to war wagons now, these behemoths still weigh way too heavy on your little growing economy.

Early Imperial Age

If you made it this far, you have a fair chance to win the game. If Koreans can battle themselves through the first few minutes of the imperial age, they should be in steam rolling shape soon. Koreans have no outstanding early imperial though, they can get along with arbalests, halberdiers, siege and gunpowder units.  However it’s only a few more minutes until…

Imperial Age

The imperial age. If you made it this far, you can probably bet your life savings on winning this game. Koreans simply rule the imperial age, the simple combination of halberdiers + siege onagers knows very few counters and need a lot of micro to be stopped. If you decide to add hand cannoneers to the mix, you pretty much excluded any plausible counter to your army. However, you must not hesitate if you’re playing in 1v1, because what if Koreans run out of gold?

But first time for a record, a 1v1 arabia between 18xx players at the time of writing, one plays random civ and the other goes hunwhoring, attempting a drush+CA tactic. Well, sit back and enjoy how a guy shows how Koreans do stand a chance on arabia, even though it must be said: the guy had a good map. But nevertheless!

Recorded Game

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If you like 2k recs more, you can always take a stroll down the aocbox archives and take a peek at this notorious game: War Wagon Fest

Post Imperial Age (no trade)

The Korean imperial army is enormous and monstrous. But that also comes with a price. Once gold runs out, it’s time to scratch your head and think about what to do next. Koreans have good skirmishers and good halberdiers (only lacking the final attack upgrade) but their hussars are last to none. Only Viking and Teuton light weight cavalry units perform worse. Which results in a pitiful 14th place amongst 16 civs with light cavalry units.

However, they can keep up because their skirmishers and halberdiers are decent.

Post Imperial age (with trade)

May that be a lesson though: if you gotten that far in the game, just try to make sure to secure a trade line early. If you already managed to survive so long with Koreans, it shouldn’t be much of a hassle to make a trade route too.

This is the age where Koreans are the undoubted rulers. Siege onagers that only have competition from the Celts, the best back up units in the game (war wagons), bombard towers to secure ground and guns and halberdiers to stop whatever other unit would try to break through your army of doom. If you get so far in a game, you are not in the right to blame your civ for your loss!

A little game to demonstrate the strength of the Korean army: a lengthy 4v4 epic battle between Poland and (as far as my limited knowledge of smurfs reaches) Russia (or at least, the former Soviet Union). The one to control Korea is L_Clan_BOLT, who had massive stockpikes to make any army of his desires, but made the bad choice to persist on his wannabe Turkish combination (gunpowder and some halberdiers). Needless to say the game was in a deadlock for 2 hours. At that point BOLT finally made the magical combination of war wagons and siege onagers and at that point they managed to push through to the Polish trade line. Needless to say, after nearly 3 hours this also gave the Poles the chance to force some things and after persistent raiding and a very nice sneak of their Saracen player, the Russians were pushed back into Siberia.

When you lose, you lose as a team, but it would surely have helped if BOLT made another combination. Nevertheless, the game is very enjoyable and also shows some real nice playing by PL_Peel who managed to hold ground with his Chinese army (and their incredible allergy for siege onagers).

Recorded Game

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Economy

Koreans have no free economical bonus except their stone mining advantage. Which is probably not as valuable as the bonuses on food, wood or gold, but it’s there, so if you can, you might as well (ab)use it.

Besides that, Koreans get every economical upgrade except crop rotation (the last farm upgrade, giving +175 food per farm) which isn’t even so bad considering the composition of the Korean army, which is very easy on food and very heavy on gold and wood.

Military

Infantry

Only lacking blast furnace, Koreans can be played as an infantry civ. They have champions, halberdiers and besides the last attack upgrade, any other upgrade.

Archery

Yup, Koreans can be played like an archery civ too. They have every archery unit and given their UU and bonuses, it’s not weird to invest in some archery upgrades. Only cavalry archers are running behind without bloodlines and Parthian tactics.

Cavalry

I suspect the Koreans to be created just to make Vikings not feel alone with their terrible cavalry. They lack bloodlines, the final attack upgrade and the final defensive upgrade. Obviously they don’t get paladins either. They get Hussars though, but because they’re quite weak, their uses are more limited.

Siege

Ready to rumble? Korean siege is just top notch. Definitely first tier. Siege onagers that can shoot as far as a castle and bombard cannons. They lack good scorpions and siege rams though. But safe to say their onagers cover up for that.

Monks

Korean monks are more a supportive unit than a backbone to an army. They have handy upgrades like blockprinting (+3 range) and sancity (+50% HP) but they lack redemption and atonement. The key upgrades to a successful monkrush. But since war wagons are expensive monsters, having a few monks supporting your army can save you a whole lot of money. Especially since Koreans are a slow pushing army, which perfectly suits the pace of the monks.

Navy

Probably the weirdest naval techtree of them all. I never understood why Koreans don’t get elite cannon galleons but that’s just how it is. They get no demolition ships either. Not that these units are common, but it’s a limitation. They have a sweet unique unit though, that once deployed, can rule the seas.

Structures

Unlike most civs, Koreans can actually build up some tactics around their structures, especially the “surprise aging” is nice. It’s also not such a bad idea to use keeps when pushing your way forward with bombard towers. Why, you’re asking? Because with a range of 8+5 they can micro out those pesky bombard cannons. Requires some micro and a filled tower though.

Conclusion

Koreans are usually considered the hardest civ to play with. They have no notable economical bonus and in the early ages it’s all about surviving. If you manage to survive they’re bloody awesome though.

At this very moment they’re my favourite civ because they always make me clueless how to play, so you’re forced to think for yourself instead of relying on standardized tactics!

Festina Lente - Make haste slowly.
-Augustus