Editing Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Grand Cathay (section)

==Units==

===Infantry===
*'''Peasant Long Spearmen''': Your early chaff unit that's literally expected to run away once things get hairy. The unexpected MVP of the MP roster (at least until DLCs give you something better). They come with Expendable ''and'' Expert Charge Defense, which is a rarity for tier 1 units. They are pretty good in campaign too but Jade Warriors with all the tech and ancillary buffs are a lot more efficient and auto resolve much better.
**Rather than treating them like Skavenslaves, they're a lot more like TK Skeleton Spearmen without the shields: a really good screen with lots of bodies, relatively high health compared to the rest of your infantry, and high model count that can absorb losses. They're still expendable chaff, and you take them to die in place of your Jade warriors or Celestial Guard.

*'''Jade Warriors''': Your mid-tier unit and your bread and butter until you can afford Celestial Dragon Guard, and you may prefer to run halberd Jade Warriors anyway for cheaper armies even after unlocking Dragon Guard. Have a unique mechanic where the longer they sit still and brace, the more bonuses they get, gaining higher charge resistance and armour. Make the Dragon Empire into the Turtle Empire with these guys. Just keep in mind that like turtles, they don't move very fast or hit very hard. Basically empire troops with worse offensive stats, but much better armor, and a greater focus on defense in general. all jade warriors can benefit from plus 3 recruit rank and -8% upkeep from very common ancillaries in campaign, an they have a lot of boosting techs in the tech tree. Stack red skill tree buffs, techs, harmony, and spells and jade warriors will be your reliable cost-effective workhorse units all game long, just like empire state troops. They are comparable to dwarf warriors in raw durability.
**The Sword and Shield combo, when combined with Harmony and their own innate stationary buff, they are very tough and can still find a use to tank hits for the Dragon Guard in the late-game. Excellent front line unit with ok missile block chance and dwarf warrior levels of armor. They have much worse melee attack than empire swordsmen but slightly better melee defense, which goes to much better when buffed with harmony.
**The Halberd has better melee attack and armor piercing, so they're like the Wardancers in that even when fighting against heavy infantry, its generally a lot more useful to take them to do some damage. Still more of a holding force than an aggressive force. Compared to empire halberds they have worse melee defense and melee attack (even with base harmony buffs), but much higher armor. As long as you aren't fighting lots of missile units these make for a generally superior front line than the sword and board variant, and they can easily have 100 or more armor in campaign so don't need to be that afraid of non-ap missiles. Dragon guard are definitely stronger than them but jade warriors are so much cheaper and easier to recruit.

*'''Celestial Dragon Guard''': Your elite, end-game unit, taking the best from both Jade Warriors since they're all armed with Halberds and Shields. They have expert charge defense, AP, and don't get bonuses/lose nothing from moving, meaning you could move them to where they're needed most, or even have them charge though Peasant chaff, foregoing the low charge bonus to keep models alive given the low-model count typical of Elite Infantry. Good unit but in campaign you may just prefer to use terracotta sentinels, backed up by cheaper jade warrior units instead, as generally Cathay doesn't rely on their melee infantry for damage. 
**'''Dune Dragons''' - Dragon Guard with Magic Attacks, Magic Resist, Immune to Psych and Encourage. These guys are pretty much designed to be a middle finger to large Daemons as they can punch through physical resist and not get terror routed.
===Missiles===
*'''Peasant Archers''': Like your peasant infantry, but with a bow and arrow. Cheap and expendable, potentially valuable if you need a relatively disposable unit to provide a small amount of ranged support and trigger the harmony buff where needed. Has no AP, but that shouldn't be a problem in campaign where the majority of your chaos, norsca, and ogre enemies don't have much armor. Becomes obsolete for your main armies fairly quickly since you can get jade crossbowmen very early, but they make good emergency fodder since they can be recruited pretty much anywhere.
** Very cost effective, especially with the harmony buffs. Can put down a significant amount of fire with their reload skill buffs.
**'''Bandits of the Silver Road''': Archers with Stalk, Vanguard Deployment, and a Shield, making them a better skirmisher focused unit that can trade with lower tier skirmishers. Their big selling point is that they have fire arrows and their shots imbue fire weakness, so now you have a cost effective unit that can trade cost effectively against units weak to fire. The fire weakness can also synergize with the Fire Rain Rocket and a Yang caster, allowing them to act as spotters for you artillery and magic.

*'''Jade Warrior Crossbowmen''': Jade Warriors with crossbows (in case you couldn't have told from their name). Armoured and with a shielded variant, they sit in-between Empire Crossbowmen and Dwarf Quarrelers in terms of durability and power; they still have the same "hunker-down" ability as regular JW, so you'll probably want to move them in position behind Long Spears and refrain from moving them to keep those bonuses. Similar to jade warriors they have a lot of tech and ancillary buffs so remain useful all game long, eventually you'll consider switching these for celestial crossbows or crane gunners, at least for your more elite armies, defensive armies can probably stick with these. Harmony gives them very impressive reload speed.

*'''Jade Warrior Crossbowmen With shields''' You know the drill by now. silver shield and a plus 8 to melee defense. They are basically more expensive Dwarf Quarrelers with better unit sizes and better reload with harmony.
**They have become substantially more important in the Campaign after the WoC and Chorf updates: the shields let them tank Horror fire and Hobgoblin spam, at the cost of being more expensive and a slightly worse Global Recruitment than the non-shielded variant.
*'''Celestial Dragon Guard Crossbowmen''': Jade Warriors on steroids, once again. Shielded, heavily armoured and with armour-piercing bolts, they're durable archers that can trade shots with the enemy's best. Definitely a better upgrade to jade crossbows than regular dragon guard are to jade halberds, but remember that ap doesn't matter if your fighting most demons.
**On paper, their bolts have more strength than the Sisters of Avelorn, but it's mundane AP versus the Fire/Magic combo that lets the Sisters put in work against pretty much anything. Celestial Crossbowmen have better DPS when buffed, though.
**Desperate and in a pinch? Castle too tight for shooting? Well, they're still Celestial Guard, and so are decent in melee, minus the AP or anti-large bonus. They still give Harmony when in melee. As a pure ranged unit they do face competition from crane gunners who have much better range, but these can actually hold the line and tank some damage, plus the benefits of indirect fire. Generally a core of these with 2 crane gunners is a good mix for example, have the crane gunners snipe lords and high priority cav or fast targets, while these handle the infantry and slower enemies.

* '''Iron Hail Gunners''': A living version of the Zombie Handcannons from the Pirate coast, these ladies massacre armored infantry with their high-AP shotguns. With the Harmony system, being able to keep them closer to your melee units will make them into machinegunning shotgunners. Can fire in melee if the enemy makes contact without breaking through the first rank.
**Unlike your Crossbowmen or Crane gunners, they lack shields or armor, but are much more mobile. You can flank with them to outright delete elite infantry, but even having them shoot through gaps in your formation is also helpful, because they're Cathayan shotguns. Keep in mind they do worse than jade crossbowman in auto-resolve. lack of indirect fire is an issue so learn to use chevron formations. Replace these with crane gunners as soon as you can however. Frankly given that all your early game enemies tend to have poor armor in campaign, you should probably just use Jade warrior crossbows instead.
**Considering how quickly you can get these ladies in the Campaign, they're instrumental damage dealers from early to mid.
** Be cautious about using them against the ogres because they will literally just run through your front line, because hurr durr pull through. In campaign, best employed against all chaos factions other than Tzeentch, whose basic units will fucking slaughter the gunners with their ranged attacks, because fuck you I guess.

* '''Crane Gunners''': Human Skaven Jezzails. Much like their rat counterparts, these gunners excel at long-ranged sniping with their second-only-to-artillery range and will likely form a core part of your backline while you make the enemy come to you. They come with shields, which should give them some missile resistance to weather counter-fire and kill those jezzails. You're probably better off going for grand cannons in most match ups though. Grand cannons have better all around combat stats and the exact same movement speed; but with Patch 1.2, they are now shieldbreakers (reducing Missile Block Chance) and their missiles gain limited piercing, which makes them good at mowing down closely ranked. Better than cannons at sniping mobile targets and they can take cover + shoot out of forests when cannons can't. 1-2 of these in an army is a great way to snipe down high priority targets.

===Cavalry===
*'''Peasant Horseman''': The fastest thing in your army that can't fly. Probably based on the herdsmen levies that numerous Chinese dynasties employed as scouts and light cav. With an almost identical statline to Brettonian mounted yeomen, the only reason to get peasant horsemen is because Cathay has no alternatives other than Jade Lancers and Longmas who are simply too expensive to waste chasing down routing units + artillery crews. You'll want to grab a few of these guys in Multiplayer and early campaign, but hopefully we'll get better alternatives with future DLC.

*'''Jade Lancers''': Jade warriors on horseback. More defensive than other factions cavalry. More suited defending your flank than running in to attack the enemy. high armor but mediocre melee stats and speed. in camapign use them if you want a flanking unit, who will actually kill the units they are supposed to kill, or just peasant horsemen if you want to run down routing enemies. They can get the Slaanesh Devastating flanker ability from a campaign tech so they they will have over 90 charge bonus on the flank, they will do good work cycle charged, but replace with Longma riders asap.

*'''Great Jade Longma Riders''': Your versions of pegasus knights, except instead of a rich noble who sneers at peasants, you get a rich noble whose great-great-great-grandad/mom got busy with a dragon. Also comes with Fear, possibly making them an expensive option to spook away and chase routing units. Their true strength will be as a bodyguard unit for your squishy balloons/artillery against enemy air forces and flankers, and being a hammer to the rest of your rosters anvil. 1-2 of these is a great option for any of your armies.
**Stats wise, they're roughly between pegasus and royal pegasus knights that traded away their Anti-Large bonus in exchange for 30 more armour (110 total), higher weapon strength, and charge bonus. As such, they're better at dealing with multiple different types of opponents but aren't quite as good at dealing with large units and other cav.
**'''Righteous Lances of Wei-Jin''': Comes with good AP damage and the Guardian ability that decreases damage taken by nearby lords and heroes. If you want a bodyguard for your flying lords or just want air cavalry that fight armored targets these are the horse dragon things for you.
===Chariots===
*'''Wu-Xing War Compass''': A big ol' magical battery that boosts Harmony and counts towards Mastery of Elemental Winds increase the power of your spells. Can cast Urannons Thunderbolt and Comet of Casanodora; the Compass has been buffed in 1.2 to give you 2 free casts of each power without costing WoM, but their ''Celestial Comet'' is half as strong (but also twice as fast) to compensate. Better used as a mount for your spellcasters than an actual unit on it's own
**Also ok in melee as a ...cart. It moves as fast as infantry, literally anyone who gets run over by this thing deserves to die under the hooves of plain old cows dragging a heavy fucking magic compass.
===Monsters===
*'''Terracotta Sentinel''': Take the standard Terracotta soldier from China, make it really big and teach it kung fu and you have this thing. Possible doomstack material. They are unbreakable and hit like a truck, making them good at both clearing chaff and 1v1ing monsters. Don't leave them unsupported against missile units or anti-large elites, as they'll still break down to concentrated AP and missiles. Causes Terror for understandable reasons.
**If you've played Tomb Kings, you know what to expect: keep them away from Halberd tarpits and anti-large monstrous infantry, and if you can't, give them a screen, like Peasant spears or Jade cavalry.
**It's also the best monster in the entire game right now. Like seriously, this thing can beat a Necrosphinx or a Bloodthirster one on one. It's also incredibly affordable and only costs 100 gold more than giants despite fighting much better in combat. Yeah these things are a little bullshit. Given that Cathay as a faction is considered subpar it's nice that they have at least one unit that is unambiguously strong, but expect CA to whack these guys with the nerf bat eventually. Seriously with the blue tree you can get these for like 250 upkeep each, just spam doom stacks of these supported by magic and you’ll destroy everything. You don’t even need to support them with the harmony system, but can anyway by bringing a balloon or two. They can get an insane plus 15% replenishment buff from the tech tree as well as an ancillary that giives -10% upkeep and unlike most single entities they auto resolve very well due to high armor and health.
**'''The Jolly Green Guardian (Regiment of Renown):''' A Terracotta Sentinel with better missile resistance ''and'' a permanent missile mirror aura that applies to all enemies around it. The aura also renders him immune to many short ranged anti-large units like poison wind globardiers and norscan javelins. You'll need to use him aggressively as a bullet sponge in most matchups to get the most out of his abilities.
===Artillery===
* '''Grand Cannon''': Your basic artillery unit with surprising mobility thanks to being pulled by oxen. Comes with flaming attacks by default, making it slightly better at burning trees and mummies, and cutting through regeneration. It is roughly as fast as a standard infantry unit, which is actually a big deal because it will be able to keep up with your main army and rearrange itself much easier than a normal cannon.
** Extremely strong basic artillery unit and will likely be your main damage dealer and the focus of your army: with the harmony bonuses, it can and will kill large units very fucking quickly with their reload bonuses. Always nice to swat Fateweaver out of the sky even before the shit starts spamming searing doom/various fires over your lines.
** It's important to note that these boys are the most accurate cannons we've seen in Total war so far, extremely useful as they're actually capable of swatting tzeench's flying chariots out of mid-air.You can get to tier 3 extremely quickly in campaign and these boys WILL be your bread and butter in both campaign and multiplayer.

* '''Fire Rain Rocket''': Imagine a hellstorm rocket battery that fires even faster due to the Harmony mechanic. Terrifying. Aim for big blobs of enemies and watch as they become chunky salsa. Compared to the normal Hellstorm it does more missile damage, but the majority of it isn't actually AP. So while you still want to aim for blobs, those blobs should be of less armored infantry rather than heavily armored stuff. Do amazing in auto resolve just like empire hellblasters.

* '''Sky Lantern''': The smaller of the two airship units with Crane Gunners, and dedicated support. It provides a morale boost to your infantry on top of Harmony, so even your Peasants will hold the line for as long as they humanly can. As Cathayan Sky Balloons they grat vision on units that are hiding in foliage, which can help thwart ambushes. They don't reveal Stalk, though.
**It can fire while moving and line of sight isn't much of a problem, so as long as it doesn't get attacked, it can take potshots at the enemy. It's slow as balls though, so any flying unit that gets its hands on it will be able to tear it to pieces. And pretty much every chaos army has furies who will rip it to shreds
**Almost useless, if it wasn't for the harmony mechanic + its encouragement buff, you probably wouldn't ever take them. As a flying unit, it can provide a source of Harmony that the enemy cant touch unless they devote their other flyers or ranged units on it.
**Offensively, though, their crane guns are like the stormbolter on a Rhino: they just don't shoot enough to actually be dangerous, and don't have the bombs that would otherwise make them useful. You may as well take the Crane Guns on infantry if you want sniper fire, or the Sky Junk for Guns, Bombs, and Rockets.

* '''Sky-junks''': The heavier of the two airship units that [[Awesome|acts as a flying Helstorm Rocket Battery]]. Can also drop bombs gyrocopter style, and has high armour against missile units. Unlike most other flying units, it can't toggle landing, so try to protect it against flying cav with missile units. It is slow as fuck and will be pretty much useless once it runs out of ammo, but it will hopefully do some devastating damage before that happens.
**Tanky enough to take hits from Furies and other flying beasties that lack AP, they are a nice flying Distraction Carnifex until they run out of ammo. And even when they do, they're a nice flying anvil to hold flyers in place while your Longma riders hammer them.
**Much more effective when you fire very closely downwards, otherwise, just a shitty, inaccurate, single-entity fire rain launcher. Even in campaign, the SkyJunk Miao Ying starts with tends to autoresolve poorly, needing to be microed in siege battles because the balloon-based rocket-ship cant [[Derp|draw LOS through buildings]].
**Oddly enough, they can be healed mid-battle with Miao Ying or a dragon blooded lord with bound lore of life spells.