Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

Got it on my first go just there. My tactic was to ignore the Engineers after getting the Vills, then quickly sailing to Jin's island and setting up almost in the far right hand corner near the two boar.

Churn out a ton of vills (about 50) and try to boom on wood and food. Market trade to get enough gold and stone to age up to Imp, afford only necessary upgrades (Elite Skirm, range upgrades, Ballistics, Murder Holes), and plop a Castle near the north-east Jin gate. Garrison with a ton of Elite Skirms, and get out a Treb or two to start working on the towers. You want to be in Jin's base and harassing their central eco by 35-40 minutes.

Looking through the replay, Jin seemed to start going crazy into Knights at about 20 minutes, and never really had too much of a stockpile; then once I broke in, they pretty much sunk all their Gold into more cav and archers. Replay available: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fwIWOHAgQplDNLusoDBwxhFWEX8...

The achievement only popped upon completion of the mission, by defeating all four main Chinese factions. I left the Engineers alive and untouched to the end, and never picked up the Bombards inside the Great Wall.

Fixed as per the latest patch, version 34055. Hooray!
Warning! Glitchy!

All other achievements (so far) have popped with a notification, except for this one. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but as a result I can't tell whether it should pop mid-match or only at the post match results screen. I even ended up repeating the win condition by re-loading my saves and messing around with it.

My fastest kill was a few seconds over 45min on the game clock (scales based on your game speed setting). The previous attempts dragged on past the 50 min mark and I did not get the achievement that time. As to why I'm not entirely sure, since I did make sure that there were no wonder notifications in the log.
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Strategy tips:
- Focus on gathering wood & food (utilize the Market as well)
- Get to Castle Age asap for the important unit & eco upgrades
- Retrieve the free 6x Bombardiers from South of the wall, West edge
- Set up a staging area at Yellow's island, pump out E.Skirmishers and Pikes
- Bombard their buildings while protecting your guns with your cheap counter units
- Alternatively, try a Castle rush! Yellow's East gate is lightly guarded (suggested by the Strategoi in the comments section)

The key to this will be getting your economy going early. When in doubt train more villagers!

The Wonder "event" starts at around 40 min if Yellow is left alone. What happens is the AI deletes the conspicuous 3x3 set of Blacksmiths inside his base and builds a Wonder in or near that now open space.

You can double check the chat log for any wonder alerts. Make sure there's none visible before completing the rather drawn out mission.

Two awesome guides up already, here's my addition in trying to get to minimize the attempts everyone has to put into this, to unlock the achievement.

Solution for I Was in China Before In Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

For the most part, I followed this solution by TheChrisD . Start off by going East, along the top of the screen, retrieve the villagers from the engineers. Move further along the top, to the top right and set up a base there. Build economy, units, etc. I got rid of Jin (Yellow) BEFORE they had removed the blacksmith buildings and started the wonder (obviously). While getting rid of him, make sure NOT to destroy the 3x3 block of blacksmiths. I tried an awful lot of times (also reloading saves) with the blacksmiths all destroyed, but never managed to get the achievement like that. Some of them were ablaze, but all intact. To get rid of yellow, also no need to destroy all buildings, just destroy their unit producing buildings, town center and kill all units & villagers.

After yellow resigned (with 3x3 blacksmiths intact), I got rid of green and red. I never retrieved the bombardiers from the engineers at the top! Afterwards, I started getting rid of light blue, but made a couple of saves while I was getting rid of the units/buildings, until I had a save where there were just 3 villagers left, garrisoned in a building. I reloaded this save like 5 times, but never got the achievement.

I THINK IT HAS TO DO WITH THAT UPON COMPLETION IT SAYS FACTIONS DESTROYED 3/4 AT THE TOP EVEN THOUGH YOU DEFEATED ALL 4.

This is something I noticed at my last few attempts, could be a coincidence.^

I moved my units away at this point (after reloading the save again), so that they would not defeat light blue. I sent some units over to the area of the engineers where you initially got your villagers and destroyed ALL buildings/units there which were left. I also created a couple of new units and let these guys attack the 3x3 blacksmiths (a bit later). By the time I sent my units back to defeat light blue, the engineers on the 'villager area' were all killed/destroyed, and 1 of the 9 blacksmiths was destroyed. I then clicked on one of the others to try to force the game to recognize the fact that the wonder event hadn't started, I had this one highlighted by the time the victory screen appeared, at which point the achievement instantly popped (also it says factions defeated 4/4)

So to summarize:
-bombardiers not retrieved
- Great wall not breached/
- 8 out of the 9 blacksmiths intact at Jin, one of the 8 highlighted upon victory screen
- all 4 factions defeated, also says so at the top right (4/4)

Hope this helps

Hello everyone, here is how I did the achievement as of 22/04/2020.

Please bear in mind I am far from very good player, so I play on Normal difficulty. I am writing this guide because I tried following the others without success. The town center drop next to Jin's town center doesn't seem to work anymore, they keep sending units over and over and progress is very slow.

So here are few steps that helped me unlock the achievement after one whole day of trying (note that I don't claim that to be the most effective way to do it!!!)

1. Check the map and memorize the location of the transport ship and the bombard cannons and Jin (yellow) location and the green tower that guards the water. Then restart mission.
2. Head straight to the ship. Go to blue base, defeat their military units and transport everyone on the island of Jin.
3. Town center not too close to their base (somewhere close to shoreline). Because there is a limited space for farms I found useful to put all the villagers on wood and create a lot of fishing ships, which gather only the fish close by and later use fishing traps.
4. In the mean time send some of the cavalry to collect the bombards. Avoid the tower. Put them on no attack stance and send them for the cannons.
5. Bring everyone back to base. In the mean time construct Blacksmith, 2 Stables, Market and advance to Castle Age. Get second town center and more people on wood. We can sell wood and food on the market.
6. Once in castle age I used Camel riders for frontliners and the bombards to destroy the fortifications and towers. I also dropped a castle right before their east entrance, but that seemed unnecessary. Once you clear the entrance and their towers you have access to gold. You might want to drop a castle inside their base to make it easier to control the area.

After that it is a slow push forward into their base but with access to gold now you can allow yourself few monks and more powerful upgrades from the blacksmith. I think once you entered their base and keep your position there they will spend all their resources on units trying to shove you out and they will not start building the wonder. So slowly and surely they will get defeated.

Achievement pops up once the Jin resign, so if you completed the mission before, you can just quit.

Regards,
Slacker

similar to others but different strategy for me. worked. took about 3 hours. save often, especially early.

1) take whole army south east. cross the river with the transport.
2) sneak along the border, grab the villagers. make sure your set to no attack. go to the end of the pennisula.
3) during #2, take your empty boat (or filled with sheep) around to the pennisula.
4) bring your whole army + villagers across the river, to yellow. south.
5) take 3 villagers and 1 scout south to the unprotected gate of yellow.
6) with the other villagers start building 4 houses, then a dock, then a lumberyard
7) with ppl from #5, keep 3 villagers outside of gate. with scout, attack wall to the east. yellow will attack. then bring scout south west allong wall and gate. yellow ppl should exit. as they exit, bring 3 villagers in to yellow base and build a TC just west of their town center. once done, continue building villagers and protecting TC from archers
8) once your TC is built, bring your horsemen (minus 1 scout) and ram and poke a hole in the wall by the south gate. immediately go after stable, church, TC, and archery range. after that, scout around with horses. make sure yellow doesn't build another TC. use the ram to take down towers.
9) once stable TC and archery is down, take that left over scout in water transport, west past the great-wall-of-china, land him. take him North west. get the cannon. bring the cannon back to the transport, back to yellow. and use cannons to take our rest of towers and castle of yellow.
*YOUR ACHIEVEMENT WILL POP NOW#####
10) boom economy. build massive army.
11) go back around. kill off blue.
12) build castle. take over east of wall.
13) go in a wipe out teal, red, green. those 3 are piece of cake.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (PC) - Achievement - I Was in China Before

Defeat the Jin before they start constructing a Wonder in the third Genghis Khan mission "Into China".

Time is of the essence with this achievement, so bear that in mind from the start. The Jin are your most powerful opponent on this mission and they normally start to construct a Wonder around 25 - 30 minutes in - This can vary a little. The faster you attack them, the easier they are to defeat. One helpful tool shown in this video is the 6 x Bombard Cannons that will join you if you are able to reach them. This really helps as it's difficult to get an effective siege group together in the time that you need it, so take advantage of these and keep them alive as best you can. You can defend against your other enemies quite effectively just by blocking them off and building a castle at your base, so you can focus solely on attacking the Jin once you've done this.
The Jin have a fair amount of cavalry, so I found Pikemen to be a cheap and effective counter. It helps to build up on their island, rather than ferrying troops from your base all the time. You don't need gold or stone early on much, so try and focus on food and wood, but there should be a little time to get some gold or stone at some point - The stone can be particularly helpful to build castles in the Jin territory as you are pushing. Just make sure you keep the pressure on them. It's not good enough to just have them on the ropes, you really need to finish them or they may still randomly build a wonder.

*PLEASE NOTE* This achievement was bugged and wouldn't always trigger in previous versions, but triggers fine in the current version