For example, triggering the Song Dynasty gives you a village that is like a super house that provides +40 housing capacity and the Zhuge Nu, a unique repeater crossbow unit. Triggering a dynasty has its perks and bonuses. The dynasty system bypasses the need of building a landmark in order to advance to the next age. The Song, Tang, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. The Dynasty System is unique to the Chinese civilization and there are 4 dynasties that you can trigger. Fire Lancers can quickly raid and burn structures to the ground. Both of these units can do massive area of effect damage and can take out groups of enemies fairly quickly. The civilization has unique units such as the Grenadier and Nest of Bees. This increases the damage of gunpowder units. The Chinese get the Gunpowder Research for free. The scholars can also heal wounded units. You can also use the Efficient Production technology to garrison scholars inside military buildings in order to boost production speed by 100%.
You can build a mosque early on in the game which you can use to train scholars and speed up research.
You can make up for it by garrisoning scholars inside mosques.
The Delhi Sultanate has access to free research but the progress is slower as compared to other civilizations. You will have to rely on hunting deer and sheep as an alternative. With that in mind, you will not be able to hunt boar and harvest it for food as that is haram in the Islamic faith. The Delhi Sultanate is one of the Islamic civilizations in Age of Empires 4.
If you are interested in playing aggressively and like raiding early on then the Mongols might be the right fit for you. Mongols do not have access to walls or strong fortifications so you will need to be on the move a lot.