EA T\'ien Chi
 

Hi newbie here.

I would like to try EA T'ien Chi next, any ideas on how to do a SC build for the pretender? This is just SP of course.

Any thoughts are welcome. In my first game as EA C'tis, I didn't give my pretender any paths in astral at all, but it seems for SC builds, Astral is good to have cos of a lot of low level buff spells like etheralness, twist fate and luck?

I'm playing at the normal difficulty level (the second one).

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Depends on how you're going with magic, and if you want a bless or not.

Personally: I like rainbow pretenders for magic/forging later in the game.

If going SC I would go for:
Ghost king - Lvl 2-4 astral+ lvl 4 water, death, fire, earth +1 or 2 other lvl 4's + scales, sleeping
Would still give good magic variety later

If I wanted something out of the gate
Dragon - heavy water = good def
Wyrm - either just astral or no magic. Possibly 2 paths if you have points
Cyclops - heavy earth = good prot
maybe even vamp queen - but pretty expensive
Most good SCs have a high path cost, so their magic variety is low

Alteration/enchant early for buffs, const early for items

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

You can do a sleeping ghost king with 5 levels in death to give him +10 fear for a large radius fear effect.

You'll have to alchemize to get the earth gems to equip him, but otherwise you can forge all the base equipment he'll need out the gate.

Jazzepi

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

+3 luck can be alot of fun in solo play. Especially if you take -2 order so that more things happen. Add one of the +luck gods that Tien Chi gets and it should be very interesting.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

EA T'ien Chi is probably unsuited by a SC.

Good scales are probably far better, so you can recruit lots and lots of mages. Then concentrate on a very, very strong magic strategy.

EA T'ien Chi can probably employ virtually any magical strategy.

Wind guide/Flaming arrows with your composite bows for example is more powerful then ANY SC.

Another good one is recruit lots of warriors of the five elements and assemble armies that can cast battlefield spells like foul vapours, wraithful skies and perhaps the fire & water equivilents.

EA T'ien Chi is a nation to play if you want to learn the magic system in detail.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

I'd also like to say it's very easy to random yourself into an Air 2 guy who can carry lots of magic gems along and cast arrow fend.

Jazzepi

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Try a W9 awake/sleeping dragon. Hes very tough(good stats, high defence) and provides a nice blessing for both your warriors of the 5 elements(high defence, good speed and they slaughter EAs lightly armoured troops) and summoned sacreds. You can also get good scales and average dominion.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Megablob, jutetrea I don't want to try a rainbow pretender cos I already did so in my first game with C'Tis where I did a blessed strategy (multiple paths). Didn't know what to do besides using divine bless and lots of blessed units and running up the construction tree to craft items for my lizard king prophet and later enchantment cos I wanted gift of health and thesis's blessing to go kill the silly R'yth.

Now I read it isn't considered a good strategy, but i managed to win and it's only SP right?

I read the AI can't really handle SC strategies , so if my strategy is slightly sub-optimal it doesn't hurt I hope.

Are nationals spell generally stronger than the normal ones? The last time I totally ignored them. Should I make a special effort to get them and cast them?

W9 Dragon looks interesting...

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

National spells can be very strong(read umbrals and seraphs) but most are there for flavour or to add something to a nation(tien chi gets some sacreds who can really take and dish out damage that go well with their fragile sacred warriors).
If you give your W9 Dragon a ring of regen and a pendant of luck he will be a killing machine. You have some great infantry(low resource tower shields, composite bows and good damage sacreds). Site search early and often with both manual(flying CMs) and remote(you have alot of level 2's) searching and use these gems both to outfit thugs and SCs(sleepers and elemental royalty are nice) and to forge boosters(get a wing of wizardry and a staff of elemental mastery on a CM, theres not much he cant forge http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) and maybe get up globals; forge of the ancients in particular is very powerful for EA tien chi's versatile mages.

Also make good, sorry, i mean great use of battle magic. You have acid spells, magma spells aswell as possible clouds(sulphur/freezing are good early against the glamour nations) and other elemental spells such as falling fires/frost, bladewind and thunder strike. Your versatile(and flying if using CMs) mages with boosters, spell boosters and gems if neccesary can really put the hurt on your enemy and help defend you early on along with your dragon(in a mp game which i thought was lost i beat a double blessed lankan army almost purely with battlemagic).

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

National spells offer thematic flavor to a nation. It can be powerful but I dont think that is the original purpose of them.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

If you want a SC for SP try an awake Cyclops with a dominion of 9. Forge him a blacksteel shield and any kind of weapon and he can route most level 9 indies. The exception being undead who will fatigue you to death and watch for indies with sleep vines/ sleep spell.

Add a robe of etherealness, lucky pendant at const level 2.

You may want to consider going earth 4/ nature 4. The computer opponents dont really contest globals and if your Cyclops gets some afflictions you can concentrate on getting gift of health up which is easy enough with a thistle mace. The regen is bless is nice on your summoned sacreds later on.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

E4N4 is a handy bless for mages(minor reinvig, can put a shroud of the battle-saint on important diseased mages) and gives you access to a vew nice globals like gift of health and the awesome forge of the ancients. His protection, however, will be a good bit lower than the E9 varient(although E9N4 is VERY nice and can also give your mages and celestial soldiers a powerful bless).

My favourite thing about EA tien chi is its versatility both magically and in how you play them. With versatile mages capable of forging boosters, good sacreds both recruitable and summonable and a good national army they can be played almost any way you can imagine and with their versatile magic and variety of useful troops they have alot of in-game versatility aswell.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

>You may want to consider going earth 4/ nature 4. The computer opponents dont really contest globals and if your Cyclops gets some afflictions you can concentrate on getting gift of health up which is easy enough with a thistle mace. The regen is bless is nice on your summoned sacreds later on

Game 1 : Tried a W9 Dragon, first battle first turn got afflication (got hit with that vine spell a few times, but still won but got hit a few damage)!!! I don't seem to be able to cure that, or cast gift of life.. So restart

Game 2 : Tried that pretender that reduces bad luck + negative luck scales, got stuck in a map where i was on 2 land surrounded by sea and r'yleah... bah... restart , i want to face someone else.

Game 3 : Tried a great druid with paths in Astral 4, Air 4 and Fire 3 plus magic scales. Tried to research early for flaming arrow and Wind guide. Recruited lots of Celestial Masters for research and then Master of the Five Elements (for NN and EE and site search spell casting)

On hindsight, should have done Thaumaturgy to level 2 first for site search spells, since i need the gems.

Meanwhile the archers alone seem strong enough to kill the independies without much losses.

Quite lucky with search site spells, managed to get quite a bit of gems rolling in...

This game seemed to be working until i got my head handed to me, trying to beat the AI when I invaded his 110 army with my 80 archers + Pretender casting flaming arrow.

Oops..

This game is hard... I guess because there are so many spells, it's hard to get a sense what the right researching strategy is...

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

There is lots to learn, but it sounds like you have the right kind of idea. Despite the fact that there are loads of spells, it's often a good idea to focus a strategy on a particular one or two - Flaming Arrows is an excellent example of a spell to base an early strategy around.

It takes a bit of practise to know which spells are good and worth concentrating on though.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

EA Tien Chi almost has to go 3 Turmoil, 3 Luck, and a 9-Water Pretender. Reasons?

Turmoil/Luck nets you tons of free gems (probably close to an average of 10/turn over the length of the game.) Combine with Tien Chis awesome magical versatility, and you have a ton of options. Tien Chi has great national troops, but these units are limited in the long run.

9W blessed Sacred Warriors are excellent units, useful against almost every nation, and are cheap to buy and maintain. After turn 3, you can start expanding easily with 20 of these guys and a 9W bless without fear.

The only problem Tien Chi has is in the late game; water is (imo) kind of a dead-end path, although it is always nice to have to go into the oceans. You are going to end up with tons of earth and nature and death gems you have no obvious use for, and it's hard for Tien Chi (or really expensive) to turn that versitility into late game power. Thats where you get...

Your three immortal heroes. Each one offers an huge improvement to you magical versatility (3S, 2D, healing). I'd say you almost NEED the man with the iron crutch.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Are you sending your W9 Dragon in to attack? You should get him to hold or fire for a few turns to soften up the front and then attack rear/archers.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Ah... that's the key...

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

>EA Tien Chi almost has to go 3 Turmoil, 3 Luck,

I tried this. Very very nice. Got tons of gold early game (1000 Gold on turn 2!) plus lots of gems, i almost never ran out of gold thanks to these kinds of events... (maybe I was very very lucky?? lol).

I combined it with an awake Ghost king domain 6, water 4 and death 4 i think.

Funny, the archers weren't that powerful in this game even with wind guide, they kept routing against the AI...

In the end it was the Ghost king SC, armed with various stuff (to boast defense and protection) that won pretty much every battle. Not that the GhostKing killed a lot, just that the combination of luck, twist fate, mirror image plus high domain (Hitpoint raised from 35 to 77 due to domain!!!),meant it was hardly damaged, so eventually the enemy just routed after me killing maybe 3-5 units. (due to fear??)

First few times I tried this unkillable SC was a failure, I sent the Ghost king out with some archers and milita, and they just routed quickly, and I assume cos the archers and milita routed, the pretender eventually routed too??? Is the pretender more likely to rout, if the other units rout?

But when i just send the pretender alone he wins!! weird.

In the end i pretty much pushed him back to 1-2 provinces with ghostking plus the rest of the army cutting off his retreat.. but i wanted to prolong the game to see what spells there were (plus I'm nervous about his main fortress), but I made the mistake of building tons of temples and won by domain... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also I didn't get any free ghosts except once in the capital, despite the fact that a lot of provinces had high domains of 5+

Gots the 3 immortal heroes too. Not too impressed, just kept sendin them out to die, they are immortal in my domiain right?? Maybe I'm using them wrong...

PS I'm playing a small map, that's why the game usually ends pretty quick. once i managed to push the AI back and hold the line with me owning 10 provinces or so.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Yes, once 75% of the forces are dead everybody routs, and I'm about 80% sure that routed forces count as "dead" for that calculation.

-Max

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Thank game, a duel blessed F9/W9 Helheim ...

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

The importance of the Immortals is the magic paths they provide, and the girl who heals. As combatants they are only good as a base chassis for some fun single player nonsense. You almost can't use the iron crutch guy at all in combat, he'll disease your troops far more than the damage he causes is worth.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

Why is Helheim the prototypical F9W9 bless? You'd think it would be more important for MA Vanheim with its recruitable-anywhere sacreds. It's true that Helheim has slightly better stats, but a far smaller proportion of its forces are sacred.

-Max

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

No clue Max.

Just managed my easiest ever win ever using Helheim F9/W9, imprisoned father of winter... using SP...

Wonder what i will try next.... Maybe one of the weird blood nations...

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

for EA t'ien Chi i'd like to toss in another recommendation for a W9 god just for the blessing. I believe your desire for a SC god will quickly vanish as you watch your holy troops kick the crap out of everything. Make sure to set your order up high so you can afford them, and buy some screeners because they loathe archers.

Re: EA T\'ien Chi
 

with 2 attack you get more milage out of a fire 9 bless too..