Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

The key to MA Tien Chi's magic is communions. Massive communions. Once you get enough communion slaves, the masters can cast truckloads of spells.

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

Check out the pd as well.

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

Yes, Conscription is actually pretty useful, with turns. Having free 20-30 PD in all your provinces is certainly a very useful bonus. Think of all that free gold!

give that PD some boosts with your versatile magic, and you'll be pretty well off.

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

IMO reverse communion and PoTS is obsolutely nessceary for MA TC. Crystal shield is far too expensive to be massed...

I think MA TC lacks offensive power in late game. Building a cost-effective thug or raiding team is not easy for them and reverse communion is hard to be used offensively. Anyway, with crossbowman+WG+FA and flexible horsemen, perhaps they can kill their opponents in early/middle game to avoid fighting Angels & Tartarians:)

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

With the many cheap, recruit-everywhere astral mages T'ien Ch'i has access to, I really have a hard time seeing the lack of late-game offensive power.

Those same astral mages are very good counters to both angels and Tartarians.

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

When you try basing your entire late-game strategy entirely around large communions of fragile mages, and you face a skilled player using a more versatile nation - you will see why it is said that MA TC lacks late-game punch.

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

Of course you cannot just field large communions of frail mages and expect to win, but neither can you field just Tartarians and expect to win. (And do not forget that small communions of cheap mages are often a lot more cost effective than large communions of the same.)

My point is that MA TC's mages are a solid punch. You certainly need to use a kick and a bite as well, but that goes for all nations. Most nations seem to need to work at getting needed late game versatility. Few can, without using a pretender or massive empowering, field adequate amounts of battlefield and ritual mages as well as summon Tartarians and Angels. I do not see anything special about T'ien Ch'i in this regard.

No, T'ien Ch'i does not have much in form of recruitable thugs, but the ability to summon them is certainly there. There is nothing wrong with water and nature access and earth is adequate enough to get to troll kings.

It is also worth noticing that both clams and fetishes are craftable by your national mages (and you have healers). Without counting on a pretender or hero you probably need to empower one of your celestial masters to get to rings of wizardry, but with the aforementioned clams this should not be totally out of the question and then that versatility starts to really open up.

Getting true SCs requires some forethought, but that is something T'ien Ch'i shares with most other nations. In this case, the simplest thing is probably to have at least S6 on the pretender.

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

Never played a tough MP game with tien chi.

Without much thought:

1. I agree with communions for bigger spells

2. I am always somewhat fearful of dying early to midgame when you have no great bless or tough mages. Would not discount going with a Lich to make a combat pretender, sleeping, to tie into death magic for the banelords in midgame. Banelords unless nerfed in the march patch have the chassis to take down about anything living given the right weapons.

A Lich with some earth and air magic(1 fire is ideal but costly. typically better to empower him during game) can wipe out entire armies midgame.

Re: MA Tien Chi tips
 

I like it's standard troops but they are fairly resource intensive. Even it's basic archer is resource 12 (but it does have a composite bow). With the standard Sloth 3 build you can produce enough for indie clearing but you might lose out to another nation 1v1. Marignon's CBs are resource 8. Man's LBs 7. Slinger nations 2. Machaka 3, Caelum 5, C'Tis 1, Bandar as little as it wants :p You can simply be overwhelmed by numbers in the missle department. Except vs Ulm :p And thats without considering any elites or seriously blessed troops you will face. Which your meele troops will struggle to counter. It's not that your troops are bad. They can certainly clean up indies but you really need something extra to fend off another human early before your combat magic (communion fuelled) comes good. And ideally you don't want your mages on combat duty too early instead of reseraching and searching just to make up for a moderate army in the early game.

Therefore MA TC needs to consider an awake or at worst sleeping combat pretender to protect it from any early rush and before it's combat magic becomes effective.

It could also really use that Combat pretender having access to Death and / or Blood for Thugs. TC lacks easy access to Thugs as it is not in these paths. Plus it's mages are all rounders. It is rare to find any with greater than 2 in any one path. In a communion that doesn't matter. All combat spells are reachable with enough communion slaves. But for overland castings - decent summons (even Troll summons), mind hunts, seeking arrows etc. all require boosters and so can't be spammed easily.

A minor Earth Bless (and a minor Nature one as its decent mages often suffer old age and a shroud plus N4 bless makes this only a minor hinderence) are nice for the mages but not really essential. There is no decent bless strategy I can see for MA TC.

So for Pretenders I'd stick with an awake Cyclops, Lich, Vampire Queen (CBM), Ghost King or maybe Deva. Or risk a sleeper with extra magic and / or scales.

These should boost and protect you early on before your battle magic comes good. All except the Cyclops gets you automatically in to Blood and or Death early and hence to early Thugs. He is primarily for defence vs human players as your armies are decent vs indies so he can do plenty of searching and summoning. Getting in to both Death (and hopefully Blood too) early resolves a lot of the late game weakness as you should have no problem fielding Tarts at the same time as everyone else. Everyone can get in to these paths later but it is so much easier to start with at least one decent searcher / blood hunter early.

Obviously you don't build more than a couple of imperial Alchemists who with a Master Crystal join the communions to cast Flaming arrows. If you have recruited any more by mistake its worth giving them a mace and transforming them later to cut down on the vast upkeep :p You won't be mind hunted or even magic duelled often due to the number of astral mages you have. Many of which will be cheap MoM or MoW a quarter of which have astral and are prime Communion Slave fodder.

For scales you really need Order 3. This is a gold hungry power. Not just for the mages but for extra forts to summon spies (Imperial Consort), cheap researchers and to mass your national troops if needed. I like to take at least magic 1 if possible as you use a lot of cheap weak researchers and have no easy access to lanterns or skull mentors. Sloth 3 is OK for the points too. You can mass enough of your troops to clear the indies and use your Pretender plus hopefully extra early forts to fend off opponents early on.

It shares a lot of the strengths and weaknesses of LA Jomon before that was boosted by the latest patches. But not to the same extremes. Nice troops but resource intensive enough that you could get overwhelmed early. So SC Pretender desireable. No easy access to Thugs/SC so need Pretender to do this for you. Great Communions with all the strengths (and frailties) of that. Your mages NEED communions to be effective as they are all rounders. No bless strategy.