China campaign
The China campaign is one of the three independent storylines in The Asian Dynasties. It follows Jian Huang and his companions on an expedition across Asia. Rather than one continuous skirmish, its missions use scripted starting forces, travel, rescue and survival objectives alongside scenarios where the Chinese economy and military can be developed.
Setting & objective
Where production is enabled, Chinese Banner Armies and the War Academy determine which mixed formations can be trained. Other missions restrict the player to a small force or give a special objective, so standard Village growth and Wonder age-ups may not be available. Examine each briefing and identify any hero, ship or allied force that must survive.
How to approach it
Choose a Banner Army for the role needed in that mission and check its full composition before spending resources. Preserve mission-critical units and follow the required route before committing to optional combat. Read each scenario’s rules separately; a Chinese random-map strategy does not automatically fit a scripted expedition.
Campaign structure and westward voyage
Act II: China contains five scenarios—To Finish a Fleet, Storming the Beaches, Lost Ships, A Rescue in the Wilderness, and No Empire Lasts Forever—and seven cinematics. The story is set around 1421–1422, an estimated date, and follows Ming captain Jian Huang and his friend Lao Chen. Their expedition begins with an attack on a treasure fleet still under construction. After repelling Wokou pirates, the Chinese force sails west under Admiral Jinhai's command and becomes entangled in conflicts with Indian and Aztec factions. The sequence moves from a port in India to the Yucatán coast and through a jungle interior, giving the campaign naval, landing, rescue, and base-building scenarios. The campaign is narrated by Jian Huang, whose perspective frames the expedition as a dangerous mission that the survivors hope to keep secret.
Jinhai's ambition and the expedition's collapse
Jinhai begins as the admiral leading the voyage but pursues power for himself. The fleet's early losses leave Huang and Chen responsible for rescuing captured sailors and protecting scattered survivors. In India, the Zamorin's forces and Chinese defectors take crew members prisoner; later, storms scatter the ships along the Yucatán. Huang and Chen search for missing men, discover that Jinhai has set himself up as a ruler among the Aztecs, and learn that he plotted with the Zamorin. The final confrontation turns the expedition into a fight against its own commander. After defeating Jinhai, the survivors remove evidence of their presence from the beaches and sail home. That ending links the campaign's fictional premise to the 1421 hypothesis about a Chinese fleet reaching the Americas before Columbus; the story is an imaginative game narrative, not a claim that the hypothesis is established history.
Unlock order and mission browsing
The Asian Dynasties originally placed the three campaigns in an unlock sequence: Japan opened first, China followed its completion, and India became available after China. Since the Complete Edition, players can choose all three without finishing the previous act. The campaign entry describes the expansion's Chinese story and roster, while the five scenario entries hold the exact primary and optional objectives. Open To Finish a Fleet for the opening shipyard defense, Storming the Beaches for the first landing, and the later mission pages for the rescue and final assault. This keeps the broad narrative together while allowing players to find a mission's rules directly.