Re: LA Tien Chi: Barbarian Kings Strategy Guide 2.0
 

Sounds like you're trying to turn them into SCs, which they'll never be. It looks like, from what you're saying, they could be perfectly serviceable thugs with just a brand and a shield. Cast iron skin, don't worry about the hat. That's still 20 head protection. For most things that should be plenty enough for a thug.

Re: LA Tien Chi: Barbarian Kings Strategy Guide 2.0
 

Eh, you can use them to thug in a pinch (as your testing indicates), but by the time you're dumping 20+ gems worth of items on a guy its usually worthwhile to consider just summoning a light thug chasis like a sleeper or bane lord. Hmmm, actually in this case I might look at using Khans.

Re: LA Tien Chi: Barbarian Kings Strategy Guide 2.0
 

IMO Khans are better thugs than the old guys. A pair of them buffed with body ethereal/wooden warriors/luck(all of them can be cast by a N2D1S1 spirit master) can be very effective flanker with bodyguards. If I need more offensive power, just giving them a couple of frost brands and they can slash their way through most humanoid elite troops.

Re: LA Tien Chi: Strategy for the Battle Mage Nati
 

It occurs to me that fear spamming is an even more viable tactic for LA TC in the most recent CBMs. With "Wailing Winds" easier (D3 A1, instead of D4A1, and Level 4 Evo instead of 6!) to cast, any Ancestor Guide with an extra D gem can cast it. Combined with "Panic", "Terror" and the howling bows, you can beat up the enemy's moral right quick. This guide didnt mention "False Horror", but that is available too (for Ancestor guides casting storm power), even if it comes a bit too late to be very useful. Khans also cause lesser fear now, though I still wouldn't bother with them. Lastly, the global "Dark Skies" is now cheaper (30 gems instead of 50) and lower level (Thaum 5, down from 7),and while it will almost certainly be dispelled, you might keep it long enough to use it to good effect in a war or two.

Re: LA Tien Chi: Barbarian Kings Strategy Guide 2.0
 

The main problem with that is you need to focus research on Thaumaturgy and Evocation when Tien Chi also really likes Alteration, Enchantment, Construction, and Conjuration (those Celestial Soldiers are really good in CBM, if you have a good bless), and you can't possibly cover them all. Tien Chi doesn't have the stealth or flying options to really leverage army routing, so it's good, but maybe not better than going mainly Smiths spamming Destruction and buffing all your heavy cavalry with Legions of Steel, Strength of Giants, and Weapons of Sharpness. And if you're going construction for weapons of sharpness, it can be pretty fun to grab some artifacts too, with the Ark seemingly made for TC.

Re: LA Tien Chi: Barbarian Kings Strategy Guide 2.0
 

While it's a perfectly valid point that TC likes a lot of paths early and can do very nice things with all of them, you're comparing evo 4 or maybe 5 (to grab shadow blast, gifts from heaven, healing mists, falling frosts, storm, etc all in one go) with having 3 enchantment, 4 alteration, and 7-8 construction. Enchantment 3 and construction 1 is a somewhat comparable option, but I would prefer to go with either evo or alt 4 over the enchantment route.

Re: LA Tien Chi: Barbarian Kings Strategy Guide 2.0
 

High enchantment has some interesting synergies with an E9 Cyclops pretender, with order and magic scales for your armored old guy mages. TC should have a very healthy earth income, so with just a little luck and heavy research down enchantment, you can cast a reasonably hard to dispel Earthblood Well as soon as your pretender breaks free. Along the way, you also get flaming arrows, enliven statues, hidden in sand, arrow fend, and mass flight. Only the last 2 are immediately useable unless you luck onto fire indies for flaming arrows, but they are nasty enough. Arrow fend forces the enemy to either lose in a shootout or close to melee with heavy cavalry, and if the enemy is so ranged heavy that they will still win, mass flight guarantees your cavalry gets to close. Sure they can cast storm, but it just weakens their ranged firepower enough for cavalry to close the old fashioned way.

The well gives you more options. Hidden in sand is pretty efficient with order and magic, and gets you a sacred thug chasis roughly equal to banelord, a bunch of tough undead, and a good probability of a mage that breaks you into fire and higher death as well as the fire/death combo for 35 earth gems in CBM. As far as I can tell, it's also the only way to break into fire for LA TC. An E9 caster with earth boots gets 24 good blockers/arrow catchers with just one casting of enliven statues. And of course, all those earth gems come in handy when you head down construction.