Shennong/Strategy

Shennong is ideal for turtling strategies as his benefits are mostly defensive or economic.

Strengths
His walls can be upgraded at a considerably lower price, making it easier to defend against attacks. He also enables Peasants to gather wood faster and carry more resources, making it easier to construct buildings necessary for age advancement and gardens to generate even more resources. Players should consider advancing to the Heroic Age as quickly as possible because Shennong’s other benefits revolve around units available in that Age.

His Monks heal units faster, meaning the army can survive longer which saves resources. They also have the unique ability to convert enemy Myth Units along with human soldiers, which both protects the player from taking considerable damage and provides them with a stronger army at no cost (aside from population space). This also saves the player the trouble of training expensive Myth Units. All this can be done behind the safety of the player's walls.

On the offensive side, Shennong lets Fire Lances and Sitting Tigers deal area of effect damage, enabling them to damage multiple buildings clustered together. If the player chooses to worship Xi Wangmu in the Mythic Age, they will be sturdier and train faster, enabling them to overwhelm enemy towns with ease.

Weaknesses
As with the other Chinese major gods, Shennong's weaknesses are not very significant but should not be ignored regardless. As mentioned above, most of his bonuses do not take effect until the Heroic Age, so players must make do with what they have until then. Meanwhile, his economic bonuses act more like compensation to the fact that he has no means to lower the cost of the expensive Chinese soldiers. As it happens, despite being a defensive major god, Shennong has access to only three of the ten economic myth technologies, the lowest of all three Chinese major gods.

Finally, although his Monks are able to convert enemy Myth Units, the process is extremely slow, up to 20 seconds long. As the conversion range is only average, Monks can easily be killed before they successfully recruit the Myth Unit.