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How to Beat Jin Dynasty as English in AoE4 (Bronze Tier Matchup Guide)
This is part of my Climbing the Ladder series, where I break down how to win every matchup at every rank I’ve actually reached. Here’s the Bronze tier breakdown for English vs Jin Dynasty.
Okay, I need to be straight with you about something before we get into this one.
The Jin Dynasty is new. Brand new, in fact — introduced with the Yue Fei’s Legacy expansion. Which means if you load into a ranked Bronze game and your opponent locks in Jin Dynasty, there is a very real chance you are looking at a civilization you have never seen before in your life, with units you don’t recognize, doing things that make absolutely no sense to you in the moment.
Villagers on horseback. Grasslands that spawn free horses over time. Cavalry pouring out of Stables at reduced cost the moment a horse is ready. A Flower Pagoda buffing the attack speed of your opponent’s entire army. Free cavalry defenders auto-spawning from buildings whenever you get close.
If you walked into that blind the first time, I completely understand why you lost. I would have too.
But here’s the thing: now you know it’s coming. And once you understand what the Jin Dynasty is actually doing, it becomes a very manageable matchup for English — because almost everything Jin Dynasty does revolves around cavalry, and English has one of the best answers to cavalry in the entire game.
This guide is going to make that next encounter a very different experience.
What Makes the Jin Dynasty Different From Everything Else
Let’s get the civ overview out of the way first, because you genuinely cannot counter something you don’t understand.
The Jin Dynasty leverages a dynamic economy to gain an advantage. Their unique Mounted Villager gathers exposed resources quickly, and their Emissaries travel far afield to set up Tributary States that give them a steady supply of food. Their military is no slouch either, fielding a powerful cavalry roster capable of dismantling opposing forces and laying waste to enemy lands. The Jin Dynasty excels with mobility, both economically and militarily.
Here’s what that means in practice:
Mounted Villagers are the heart of the Jin economy. Mounted Villagers move faster, gather resources faster, and have a bigger carry limit. They are perfect for quickly progressing through the ages earlier in the game. However, these bonuses come with two big limitations. First, you can’t have more than 20 Mounted Villagers unless you hire Emissaries. Secondly, the Mounted Villager costs Gold along with Food, which makes it quite expensive. Translation: Jin’s economy is faster than yours right out of the gate, but it’s also fragile. Mounted Villagers are expensive to replace. If you can kill even one or two of them, you’ve set their economy back significantly more than killing a regular villager would.
Grasslands and War Stables create an instant cavalry machine. Grassland is a unique Jin Dynasty building that automatically trains horses over time. When you build a War Stable adjacent to a Grassland, you will be able to train cavalry units instantly at a lower cost whenever there is a horse ready in the Grassland. So Jin Dynasty can produce cavalry faster and cheaper than anyone else when their system is set up properly. The Iron Pagoda in particular is their signature heavy cavalry — expensive but heavily armored and very hard to kill.
The Flower Pagoda is a combat multiplier. Flower Pagoda is a tall building that offers a Flower Garden buff. When activated on a selected area on the map, every villager that works within the ring will receive a 25% increase in their gathering rate. You can also apply Flower Garden onto the battlefield, increasing the attack speed of every non-siege military unit by 25%. When a Bronze Jin player knows what they’re doing, they drop this Flower Garden buff directly on their army before charging into you. Their cavalry suddenly hits 25% faster. That’s a substantial swing in any fight.
Dragon Pavilion spawns free cavalry defenders automatically. Dragon Pavilion comes with the Meng’an Mouke upgrade, which is a reinforcement cavalry unit that automatically exits the building and fights enemy units whenever they enter Dragon Pavilion’s radius. Every 60 seconds, a new Meng’an Mouke unit is created within the Dragon Pavilion. So if you try to push into a Jin base that has Dragon Pavilion up, free cavalry appear to meet you. At Bronze, players stumble into this without warning and immediately lose half their army to units that seemingly materialized from thin air.
Their late game is a cavalry and gunpowder nightmare. Iron Pagodas buffed by Grassland horses, Mohe Tribesmen providing ranged cavalry support, Nest of Bees raining AoE devastation — Jin’s late game is aggressive and expensive to deal with. This is another matchup, like Chinese, where you don’t want to let the game go long if you can help it.
What to Expect From a Bronze Jin Dynasty Opponent
The Jin Dynasty is so new that Bronze players using it mostly fall into one of two camps right now:
Camp 1 — The Cavalry Spammer. They’ve figured out the Grassland and War Stable combo, they’re pumping out Mohe Tribesmen or Iron Pagodas as fast as they can, and they’re sending cavalry at your base repeatedly. This is the most common Bronze Jin experience because cavalry spam is the most obviously powerful thing the civ does and it requires the least strategic depth to execute.
Camp 2 — The Confused New Player. Jin Dynasty is genuinely complex. There are players who just unlocked Yue Fei’s Legacy and are trying to figure out the civ mid-game. These players are often building random Grasslands in weird locations, not attaching War Stables properly, and generally not executing the civ’s strengths at all. Don’t underestimate them — even a badly played Jin Dynasty has Mounted Villagers making their economy faster than normal — but these games are winnable if you just play solid English fundamentals.
Scouting tells you which one you’re dealing with almost immediately. Multiple Grasslands going up near a War Stable? Cavalry push incoming. Grasslands scattered randomly with no War Stable adjacent? You’ve got time.
What Makes This Matchup Tricky at Bronze
Two things specifically catch Bronze English players out in this matchup.
The cavalry arrives faster than you expect. Because Grasslands pre-generate horses and War Stables consume them to instantly produce cavalry, Jin can put mounted units on the field in Feudal Age much earlier than most civs can. If you’re used to French being the “early cavalry civ,” Jin can match or beat that timing with their system running smoothly. Don’t assume you have a comfortable window to set up.
Mounted Villagers look like military units. The first time you see a Mounted Villager galloping across the map, your brain reads “cavalry threat.” They’re not — they’re workers. But the confusion is real, and some Bronze players waste resources chasing down a Mounted Villager with military units thinking it’s part of the enemy army. Know what they look like. Don’t fall for it.
Your Counter-Strategy as English
Good news: English is arguably one of the best civs in the entire game for dealing with a cavalry-heavy opponent. Your Longbowmen have the Defensive Paling ability specifically designed to punish cavalry, your Network of Castles alarm system punishes cavalry charges near your buildings, and your TC arrows shred mounted units that get too close. You have every tool you need — you just have to use them.
Get Longbowmen out fast and use Defensive Paling stakes. This is the counter to Jin cavalry and it’s non-negotiable. Longbows fire from range, which means Iron Pagodas and Mohe Tribesmen have to walk into your arrow fire to do anything. And the moment cavalry tries to charge through your Longbow line, plant your Defensive Paling stakes. Stakes stun cavalry that run into them, stop the charge, and deal bonus damage. A wall of Longbows with stakes planted in front of them is a genuinely horrifying thing for a cavalry player to face. Most Bronze Jin players have no idea how to deal with it and will just keep throwing cavalry at the same wall of stakes repeatedly until they run out of horses.
Target Mounted Villagers whenever you can. Mounted Villagers are expensive, non-replaceable beyond the 20-unit cap without Emissaries, and critical to Jin’s economic advantage. If your Scouts can find their resource gathering locations and harass their Mounted Villagers, you’re dealing economic damage that hurts Jin far more than killing normal villagers would. They’re fast — you won’t always catch them — but the threat alone can force Jin players to pull Mounted Villagers back from exposed resources, slowing their economy down.
Wall your resource lines before Feudal Age. Cavalry needs open ground. Palisade Walls cut that off. A walled wood line or gold deposit means Jin cavalry has to find another angle, siege the wall down, or give up on the raid. Bronze Jin cavalry players are almost never patient enough to actually siege a Palisade Wall — they’ll bounce off and look for something easier. Give them nothing easier.
Build Outposts near your key resources. Every Outpost, Tower, Keep, and Town Center triggers your Network of Castles alarm when an enemy gets close — boosting your nearby units’ attack speed by 20%. Iron Pagodas and Mohe Tribesmen riding into a defended resource area with an Outpost nearby are suddenly getting shredded by attack-speed-boosted Longbows while Paling stakes are being planted underneath them. This combo wins fights that look even on paper.
Do not fight the Flower Garden buff if you can help it. If you see the Flower Garden circle appear on the battlefield — that translucent area-of-effect ring from the Flower Pagoda — your opponent’s army just got a 25% attack speed increase. Do not charge into that. Back your Longbows up, make them come to you, and engage on your terms when the buff has moved or expired. Most Bronze Jin players drop Flower Garden on a specific spot and then charge through it. If you’re not standing in that spot when they arrive, the buff matters a lot less.
Pressure them before Dragon Pavilion matures. Dragon Pavilion’s free cavalry defenders respawn every 60 seconds and scale up with upgrades. The longer the game goes, the more dangerous pushing into a Jin base becomes. Your Castle Age push needs to happen before Dragon Pavilion is fully upgraded and before they’ve stacked Meng’an Mouke upgrades on their Town Centers and Keeps too. Hit them in that Feudal to early Castle Age window when their cavalry production is running but their defensive network isn’t fully online yet.
Spearmen are your secret weapon in longer games. If the game goes longer than you’d like and Iron Pagodas are stacking up, don’t forget that Spearmen hard counter heavy cavalry. They’re cheap, they counter Iron Pagodas directly, and Bronze Jin players almost always neglect to counter their cavalry counters because they’re too focused on producing more Iron Pagodas. A few Spearmen mixed into your Longbow army makes Iron Pagoda charges significantly less threatening.
If You’re Losing by Minute 10
If cavalry is already in your base before you’re set up:
Garrison your villagers immediately and fire TC arrows. Cavalry walking into TC range takes real damage, and your TC fires extra arrows. Make them pay for every second they spend near your Town Center.
Plant Paling stakes the moment your Longbows are anywhere near the cavalry. Even mid-crisis, stakes stun the cavalry charge and buy you time to either fire more arrows or pull your villagers to safety.
Don’t panic and over-produce military at the expense of villagers. One successful cavalry raid is survivable. A dead economy is not. Keep the villager queue running.
And remember: Mounted Villagers are expensive to produce and limited in number. Every cavalry unit Jin loses also represents horses that their Grasslands had to generate — horses that take time to respawn. Survive one wave, and their next wave comes slower than the first.
Key Things to Prioritize
- Longbowmen immediately in Feudal Age — they are your primary counter to everything Jin Dynasty does militarily
- Defensive Paling stakes — use them every single time cavalry threatens your Longbow line
- Target Mounted Villagers with Scout harassment to damage their economic advantage
- Palisade Walls around exposed resources — cavalry needs open ground, deny it
- Outposts near key resources — trigger Network of Castles alarm and shred cavalry raids
- Don’t fight the Flower Garden buff — back up, make them come to you
- Castle Age push before Dragon Pavilion matures — don’t let their defensive network fully come online
- Spearmen as cavalry hard counters if Iron Pagodas are stacking up in the mid-game
Rocco’s Quick Summary
The Jin Dynasty is genuinely one of the most interesting new civs added to AoE4 in a long time. Fast economy, instant cavalry production, a combat buff that changes fight outcomes, and free defensive units auto-spawning from buildings — it’s a lot to process the first time you see it.
But strip it back to the fundamentals and here’s what you’re actually dealing with: a cavalry-heavy civilization that needs time to set up and gets exponentially harder to fight the longer the game goes. That’s a recipe English knows how to handle.
Get your Longbows out early. Plant stakes when cavalry charges. Harass their Mounted Villagers. Wall your resources. Push in Castle Age before Dragon Pavilion matures. English has the tools — you just have to use them before Jin gets their engine running at full speed.
That’s matchup six in the Climbing the Ladder series. The Bronze tier English journey continues.
If you ran into Jin Dynasty in ranked and had absolutely no idea what was happening the first time, drop it in the comments. I genuinely want to hear the story.
⚙️ What I Play On
If you’re grinding ranked and your setup is working against you, here’s the gear I personally use. No fluff — just what’s actually on my desk.
- 🖱️ Mouse: TUF M4 Gaming Mouse — ASUS did a great job with this one. Precise, comfortable, and it’s held up well through a lot of AoE4 sessions.
- ⌨️ Keyboard: RK-M75 Mechanical Keyboard — My first mechanical keyboard. It took some getting used to but I wouldn’t go back now.
- 🖱️ Mouse Mat: Gaming Mouse Mat — Turns your whole desk into a gaming surface. Once you go full desk mat you won’t go back.
- 🎧 Headset: Redragon Headset — Switched to this for my PC setup and the quality surprised me for the price.
Disclosure: These are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Next up: How to Beat Rus as English in AoE4 (Bronze Tier Matchup Guide)
Age of Empires IV is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment in partnership with World’s Edge and published by Xbox Game Studios.
It is the fourth installment of the Age of Empires series, and the first installment not developed by Ensemble Studios. The game was released on October 28, 2021 for Windows, and on August 22, 2023 for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
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