Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Anyone have a link to a strategy/hint guide for LA T'ien chi? I like the sacreds, and have tried a W9N4/6 bless in SP. They do alright, but super expensive for the value. Tried a F9/W9 bless but the nasty scales really suck. Worth trying a bunch of lvl 4 blesses or just go with medium/good scales and 1 or 2 lvl 4 blesses?

Love EA T'ien chi, but rarely play them bless.

Pretender advice?

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I really enjoyed my Imprisoned Lady of the river with W8 for a light bless. I had 6-7 dominion and great scales. The most important thing about the sacred horse guys, to me, is their high protection and defense. All you really need besides that is quickness, and the different between 21-22 defense is probably negligible because at that point a standard unit swinging at your scared units with a sword is already going to have to hit 6 on their opened ended DRN before they get a chance to hit you.

LA T'ien Ch'i has some great battle mages too. The E2 guys can forge themselves some boots of earth, and cast summon earth power, so that they can spam blade wind. The D2 guys can spam the raise skeletons out the door without any equipment. I usually build a ton of them to begin with.

Jazzepi

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I was disappointed when I found out F9 doesn't affect ranged, otherwise 2 nice flaming volleys and then flaming lance/hooves would have been nice. I'm still a wicked noob when it comes to blesses so I'll play around a bit. In SP it seemed I had to sacrifice quite a bit to get them a good bless and could only recruit 2-3 on initial resources.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

The key to getting a bless cheaply is to find a pretender that has 3 levels of the type of bless you already want and a dominion score of 2-3. It's important to remember that increasing the magic skill of a pretender is exponentially more expensive based on where you started from.

Increasing your W skill from 1-2 is not as expensive as from 8-9. So a pretender that starts with W3 and goes to W9 pays a lot less than a pretender that starts with W1 or no water magic at all. A lot of times you can makeup for the extra points that pretenders with higher levels of magic because they end up being cheaper to get a single or a dual bless.

Jazzepi

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Call me a heretic, but I don't think that LA TC is really a bless nation. Yes, the sacred cavalry are cool, but they're also cap-only and quite expensive. More importantly, the Barbarian Kings don't have any decent priests, so applying your blessing is a bit tricky.

I'd go for a minor bless and concentrate on good scales. LA TC's real strengths are its magical diversity (outstanding for a LA nation!), composite archers, and amazing cavalry that you can recruit anywhere. Minor blesses to consider are: E4 to reinvigorate your sacred mages and/or N4 to help protect your sacred units from battle afflictions.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

LA TC is the nation for a Death bless. Unlike F9 the extra afflictions part of the Death bless works with arrows, and with battle magic.
I've used W9D8.
A few rounds of fear and affliction causing arrows, then they reach your lines and hit the nasty quickened heavy cavalry.

They can get off 2 volleys of arrows with the water bless too.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

How abominable were your scales though?


That's kind of what I mean, they seem to be a good bless chassis, but not perfect (I think higher HP or prot would make them unreal).

Then they have some cool mages, heck most of the battle mages even have decent protection, good site searching still, etc.

So, I'm torn. Bless noob, so wanted to try it out but the scales make me cringe.

I could go with a dormant GH, lvl 4 magic in everything but earth/blood, moderate scales. So, +2 atk, +2 def, 20 AS, +100 afflic, +5% regen...nothing amazing but keep ok scales and get SOME bonuses. I think the scales would be order 0, prod 0, heat/cold 3, death 3, luck 2, drain 2. Obviously rather not take death 3 or drain 2 but its a bit resource intensive. thoughts?

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I don't remember what I used. I'll try to see if I can recreate it tonight.
With the right pretender you should be able to get a good bless without crippling scales.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Try an awake D9 Prince of death with Dominion 9. Expanding is a piece of cake and you get decent scales and a nasty bless. Dont use the prince early vs knights, lizards (curse) and crossbows. Once you equip it with a lucky pendant, blacksteel armor and shield any inde is possible. Early on put the prince in a back corner and script hold hold attack archers.

One other options if you want a better bless with better scales is a Dormant D9,N4 PoD with a dom of 6.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

How about in relation to summons? TC has some pretty beefy summons with the soldiers, fire and rivers. Does anyone ever shift their bless strategy to take advantage of the summons? I'm not a big summoner, rather use my gems for crafting/spells...but these 3 look pretty nice. The dogs and whatever that other one is don't look as impressive.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I've also been generally leery about having a single path pretender, I probably use my pretender moreso than the norm for research, searching, crafting and occasionally as an SC. Haven't made a personal playstyle decision yet if I like the initial expansion generated by an SC pretender vs. the early research boost.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Bless is a playstyle decision. If you're going with an double bless strategy, you're not using your pretender for other things, at least early on. Those high paths can come in useful in the late game, so keep that in mind during design, but focus on the bless, dominion and scales enough to build your sacreds. He's going to be imprisoned anyway.

Both are good ways to play, but trying to do both is likely to get the worst parts of each.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I found the Celestial Soliders are quite frankly amazing. Especially with a strong water bless they have high protection and high armor.

Jazzepi

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Would that be high protection and high defence/health?

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I meant high protection from their equipped armor, and then high defense skill from the water bless.

I'm a dork http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Though do have good hitpoints though.

Jazzepi

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Death and Water are both good blesses for LA T'ien Ch'i, but I have to agree that you're gonna be better off going with good scales than a dual bless. The non-sacred heavy horseman is plenty good enough to carry you through the phase of the game that a good blessing really helps with, and T'ien Ch'i really benefits from good gold, resources, and research.

Also, LA T'ien Ch'i has some of the best PD in the game.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Well after playing around a bit more in SP I think I like the rainbow strategy so far. A moderate bless of 4F/4E/4N/4D works well, just not sure if I should ditch air/astral or go 4A/2S or 2A/4S on the pretender. This is with a ghost king, so there are side benefits as well - ok SC with items, ghost production, 20+ research and site searching. Lich is nice for immortality, great enchantress for 1 gem/turn (not real nice), or sage for even more research.

I've been wanting to try LA TC with a bless for a bit, but with a large game I dont think the synergy is great enough for a huge jump. shrug.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I used something like this:

Imprisoned Master Lich
Water 9
Death 8

Dominion 6

Order 3
Production 0
Heat 0
Growth 0
Misfortune 2
Drain 2

Shift the scales around as you prefer, you only need one negative scale, which isn't bad at all. Drain hurts, but you can do both quills and skull mentors, so it's not that bad.

It may not be the most effective bless, but the Water is, as usual, brutal and the death works very well with Late TC.

It's not so much that death is the best bless for TC, as that TC is the best nation for the death bless.
All your mages are sacred, so they benefit from the affliction chance. The sacreds are one of the few sacred archers and they have those cool fear bows, so I had to find a way to make it worthwhile to use them.
I don't know how they'd stack up in MP. They're not Vans or Neifels and they are capital only, so they'll lose effectiveness eventually. I'll bet SCs will still fear the affliction bonus, though.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I really like the idea of using blade wind with a self-blessed W9D8 priest battle mage as a retreating affliction crippling anti-invasion technique.

Here's what I'd do to script some PD backed up mages.

Summon Earth Power, Bless, Blade Wind, Blade Wind, Retreat

Jazzepi

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Just keep in mind that afflictions are more psychological warfare than an invasion-stopper. In practice, Leprosy will probably create more afflictions than the D9 battle mage. However, the battle mage doesn't cost gems.

-Max

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I played around a bit with it last night as well. Ooops, can't get a PoD. After playing with it a bit, I agree that the way to go is minor bless.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

So, the timer is running and I've got to make up my mind. Anyone want to chime in?

either
master lich - master lich gets a discount on death by starting at 3, but is weak yet immortal
or
Ghost King - stealthy, ethereal and can SC with items, ghost production

All Dom 5, dormant
Good Scales with minor rainbow
2 Order, 2 Prod, 3 Heat, 1 Growth, 2 Luck, 2 Drain
M Lich 4F,4W,4D,4N
GK 1F,4W,4D,4N
or
medium scales with medium rainbow
0 Order, 0 Prod, 2 Heat, 1 Growth, 2 Luck, 2 Drain
M. Lich 4F,1A,4W,1E,4S,4D,4N
GK 4F,4W,4D,4N + 2(A or E or S)
or
turmoil/luck scales with good rainbow
3 Turmoil, 0 Prod, 3 Heat, 1 Growth, 3 Luck, 2 Drain
M Lich 4F,4A,4W,3E,4S,4D,4N
GK 4F,4A,4W,1E,3S,4D,4N

I'd like to lean towards the GK, I hate imprisoned, and I like luck, minor bless priorities would be death, water, nature, fire, other

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

After writing that all out I'm leaning towards turmoil GK or good scales ML (top and bottom choices)

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Great Enchantress gives you one free Astral Pearl every turn. That's a nice little bonus to consider....

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

If you like GK's try:
Imprisoned Ghost King
Dom 5
F2(phoenix pyre and maybe fire shield)
E3(summon earthpower, protection boosters, maybe battle magic with/without fire)
D3(fear, good access to death with items+summons, soul vortex)
N2(personal regen)
Order 3
Prod 1
Cold 1
Growth 1
Misfortune 2
Magic 1

Then you have 60 points to spend on something(100 if you take misfortune 3) such as D5 or 1 pick in a new path+1 extra scale(growth or production probably)

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

The key to Tien Chi IMO is Rivers. A L2 (iirc) summon bless vehicle. I always triple-9 bless, usually with Fire, Water, Astral Spring.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

It's also incredibly slow to mass up river demons for triple blesses.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

I was aware that Heavenly Rivers and Heavenly Fire are only accessible to Spring and Autumn.

Re: Request: Tips for LA T\'ien Chi
 

Hi i'm a newbe at this game and im a fire drake with a 9 fire bless im getting my hat handed to me by bogarus any hints