Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

These guys get my vote for Some Of The Toughest Sons of *****es In The Game.

I really love T'ien in every age; their military is extremely good and their magic is usually at least tied for best. But WOtFE... these guys beg for a W9 bless, F9, maybe a touch of astral thrown in for good measure, makes them pretty unstoppable. It's worth being Imprisioned over. It'd be great to see them against Vans. I think they're undervalued and underused.

They are VERY cheap, fast, two (shortsword) attacks with superlative ATK and DEF, and of course, best of all... resist resist resist (resist). Natural protection, low encumbrance, an extra point of strength. 15 base morale, they can even have huge hps when you time it right. Really I just wouldn't want to make one angry, let alone a nation of them.

They only have two weaknesses:

1) Arrers. Screen em with your Most Honorable Tower Shield Eunuchs.
2) Capitol-only combined with no survival skills makes me a sad coyote. The best you can do is pump out 10 every turn (pretty rough to afford scales-wise with a high bless) and start to laboriously ferry them to your fronts.

By the mid to late game, when their resistances really start to shine, they are hampered by the distances involved, and worse yet, your dominion is probably starting to suffer from all those points you spent on what ought to have been your pride and joy.

You'd think that with all the fighting in bamboo forests, praying in remote mountain shrines, and celibate, ascetic lifestyle in general, they'd have SOME kind of movement bonuses. I mean, if nimble warrior-monks can't move freely through a forest, what can? I hesitate to be so acerbic, but come on, haven't the devs seen any martial arts films of any kind over the last couple of dozen years?

Add forest survival!

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Yep, they are rad. I just love these guys. To keep it thematic I usually take an elemental bless (fire, water, earth, air).

They are indeed worth getting "Imprisoned over". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I've often wondered--what is the fifth element supposed to be? (after fire, water, air and earth...)

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

it's Fire, Water, Air, Wood, and Metal.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Forest and mountain survival could both be justified. I don't think it's a glaring oversight though, I mean they don't specifically live in forests or mountains or anything.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

The fifth element would be Aether (perhaps astral in Dominions), if you believe Aristotle. Aether makes up the super lunar sphere (the moon and above), where all the celestial bodies rotate in perfect circles.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Chinese Taoism: Fire, Water, Air, Wood, Metal are the basis of the universe.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Hum yeah but aristotle was (probably still is) completly unknown in the eastern civilisation from which Tien'Chi is based.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Yes, of course, silly of me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I just thought it fit better with astral as metal as such is not represented as an individual magic path in dominions.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Ah, for a fifth Dominions element ? I think that it fits better that way :
- Fire : Fire,
- Water : Water,
- Air : Air,
- Wood : Nature,
- Metal : Earth.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

However, for a 5th "European" element, I think astral would be better in addition to fire, air, earth and water.

This tries to sum things up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I've always been partial to Fluorine for some reason.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

In a MP game playing EA Tien Chi I centered most of my strategy around those guys.

Early game just recruit as many as you can, they take indies very easily.

Mid game, research battlefield damaging spells which your Wot5E are immune to such as foul vapours, wrathful skies etc and serpents blessing, storm warriors to make them 100% resistant. Few enemy armies can fight the Wot5E's while being posioned/lightning bolted etc...

When you add in all the other magic Tien Chi can throw around it can be a very fierce mid/late game nation but it needs a good start/luck early on.

Sadly, the host disappeared in that particular game so I never got to see how my strategy would have turned out, but I was in a good postion at the time.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Sounds cool. I will try that strategy Meglobob, thanks!

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

The 5 element of Chinese are:
Metal,
Wood,
Water,
Fire, and
Earth

IMO air is never supposed to be an important element for Chinese.

For the WOtFE strategy I perfer using them with A/W bless. W9+Double sword combination is well enough to overwhelm most high-defence units, and air shield is also critical because of the best Anti-WOtFE strategy: Arrow.
A high Dominion value is also recommended, that's why I give up F9 and turn to lesser bless like A6/A7.

I once used them in a MP game vs F9W9 vans. Though they had no bless bonus except D4(I am just the sub), they did take down quite some rivals before being flanked.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

...

The link I provide gives the right elements and I am wrong in my answer.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Actually I think it's Wood, Water, Fire, Earth and Gold. Judging by the characters anyway.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Gold=metal, perhaps?

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

The fifth element would be Leeloo (Milla Jovovich ) from... "The Fifth Element" Willis & Co. A pretty lass indeed.
-SSJ

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Sansan multipass?

But really, yeah, I originally used to take W9A9 but it became apparent to me that it just wasn't necessary... just torment opposing archers with your excellent composite bows and cavalry, maybe chariots, and you have nothing to worry about.

It works but you'll wish you'd taken just about anything else later on; you do NOT have points to spare with a high Dominion on top of a bless for these guys. You can protect them in a lot of magical ways as well, and they have 10 base protection and 5 on head, so they're not quite as vulnerable as they seem.

They're not really all THAT prone to arrow fire when you keep them in mind. They wear leather cuirasses so you can buff them pretty easily, Arrow Fend, it's just not worth the points. When you meet high DEF or high protection units the ATK and damage from fire really comes in handy. My suggestion for the bless would be F9W9.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

The fifth element is Boron, guys! BORON!!!

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I love these guys too. I remember quite a while back I tried them in multiplayer with a W9 dragon. Got rushed by Lanka incredibly early and was pushed back(with E9N9, even dual shortswords couldn't punch through him, and the berserk let him occasionally hit back). And I still managed to hold out and beat him. The incredibly tough and deadly warriors, combined with Tien Chis versatile battle magic really is a powerful combination.

Now I want to go play with these guys again.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I believe EA Tien to be the best in the game.

I typically choose a double or triple bless. I like F9 - to allow them to hit things only hit by magic - and then it depends on mood.

N9 - gives a subtle benefit that it prevents your celestial masters from old aging.

W9 or A9 if I go fountain.

Dom 5 is all I bother with usually, even tho its capital only. Archers are excellent - sufficiently good that you can carry your early provinces.

River demons stacking off your bless mid to late - flexible magic, .. whats not to like.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Of course, you're right... I just always remembered the Metal and Wood being in there on top of the normal ones... you'd think those would have covered Earth. Oh well, nice correction!

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

What do you mean by this? Keeping your diseased Celestial Masters going from battle to battle and regenerating the lost hitpoints, casting Gift of Health or what? Because I don't remember Nature magic of pretender affecting sacred units' old age in any way.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Endo, with a nature bless a shroud of the battle said(5 pearls) will give them regeneration and stop them from dying of disease quickly.
I wouldn't take N9, N4 would be plenty. N9 is just sort of begging the enemy to cast earthquake/rain of stones on you.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Oh, right. I forgot that Shroud also gives the bless effect outside of battle.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

A9 bless is awful.

Give the warriors W9S9, which I believe is much easier to get than A9W9 anyways.

They'll tear through almost anything without losses. Lots, and lots of archers can be scary, though.

Jazzepi

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I think he meant astral 9, because he mentioned doing it with a "fountain", which I'm assuming is the Oracle.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Yeah, I meant astral - never get used to saying s9.
Dittos on the N9. I usually hire one celestial master with the rest the master of elements ntil year 3 or so, when water gem production kicks in.

I don't know if its a function of pretender or scales - but my first celestial master usually is not old - and if old.. never develops disease.

And yes, I equip with battle shrouds.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Hmm, giving up F9 for S9 seems nice since you get Twist Fate and Astral, which seems a lot more powerful than fire, but does trading away the magical fire damage and attack rating bonus slow you down?

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

With F9, they eat thugs, high defense troops, setting things on fire which is always nice... I see the loss of F9 as too much of a maulus to WotFE, who only have 16 damage base.

S9 would help against one arrow volley, help some against MR base resist spells, but you're already talking base 14 MR when blessed. I don't seeing it add as much to their survivability as F9, where they can mow through opposing troops, thus removing a potential source of damage.

So for the bless, W9F9 seems to be THE way to go for these guys.

While S9 can be used to better effect by your pretender on the strategic map, the reverse is true for battle magic in my opinion. So the relative utility there might come down to what you're going to use your pretender for, exactly. A Phoenix going up against an army that's not heat resistant can be hard to watch.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

On transporting them: if you get astral, you can use Gateway, & if you have nature - Faery Trod. both are relatively easy to use at endgame, & both are easy to reach w/ Tien Chi.
Though I agree that survival would be very thematic for these guys!

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I completely disagree. It's easy enough to give a thug fire immunity through charcoal shield and firebrand. Any experienced player that's seen your bless will have an easy time removing the benefit of the F9 bless against their SCs and thugs. It also gives a bonus to attack, but the defense loss to SCs, thugs, and troops off of the extra attack from the quickness effect is comparable considering that they're already dual wielding.

S9W9 is also a much cheaper bless to get than F9W9 and unlike F9, S9 is much much more useful in the late game. You can get the female statue, and throw her around the map, either leading a master enslave communion, or just tech her out with lots of gear and let her go nuts standing there with astral shield, fire shield, etc.

Jazzepi

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Looks like I am among the minority of Air-Bless fans. But still I would like to state my argument:

-FW-Bless is much more expensive than WA/WS. Since no pretender has initially FW path, open a new path and grab level 9 is a big investment.

I have made a small test, to get a F9W9 pretender for EA_TC you must pay at least 670 points with no consideration of Dominion (Dragon/Mother of Rivers), while the cost of W9A6 is just about 440 points for Frost Father. That's why I always leave my hand untouched when looking at F9W9 at least for some 25 gold guys. A9 is also a waste for WotFE IMO.

-F9 is always good to deal with defence intensive units/thugs. But please check the WotFE's 25 gold cost again, you can group them in great horde and overwhelm any thugs just make use of the multiple attack penalty. Dam16 is not so brilliant, but In EA there is not so many protection intensive units, while most of them have bigger problem to deal with WotFE's incredible defence/encumbrance combination as the drawing combat continues.

Honestly I have never tested EA TC with high bless in MP games. S9 can benefit more as a long term strategy comes into discussion, but I still believe just take W9A6 and you can make things better at starting phase since the only weakness of WotFE is no more question while TC is never considered to be lack of long term strategy.

Edit: some of my points are already covered by Jazzepi before I finish my post... Shame to be not so good with my English.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I personally prefer W9S9 to F9W9 on these guys. Firstly, it's cheaper. You can take an oracle and doing that lets you get high dominion and decent scales along with your bless.

Secondly it really increases their survivability. Unlike what Renojustin said, it helps against more than one arrow volley: not every warrior is going to get hit in the first volley. I would also say it helps their survivability more while in combat - sure, F9 lets them kill stuff quicker, but with their high defence they almost never get hit so that twist of fate bonus really helps.

I'd also disagree about S9 being worse in battle. Sure, F9 can be devastating against non fire-resistant enemies, but even Flame Storm from a F9 caster can be stopped with some counter magic. As a test, I put 100 Mictlan Warriors against a F10 Flame Storm caster. With Army of Gold, I lost less than 20 warriors from the first casting, and a total of 41 from two castings in the same battle. And any enemy who knows you have fire magic will have his thugs/SCs protected against it.

Where-as if you have a few penetration boosters on your Oracle even Master Enslave(ring of wizardry, ring of sorcery, eye of the void and either a crystal coin or spell focus gives a total of +6) can have a big penetration bonus on it, such as the +6 I mentioned. Even with antimagic up, alot of armies can be enslaved by that.

Your oracle with those items also gets +8 penetration on enslave mind, that's enough to get rid of alot of thugs/SCs who haven't pushed their MR up far enough - you could either astral travel your oracle in with a big enough shield of troops to protect him while he does his work(25 gems total - worth it to kill alot of thugs/SCs), or simply teleport him in along with a small number of thugs/SCs(golems are great) to protect him.

And of course, having an S9 pretender can completely screw any plans your opponent had for a thug/SC with astral magic(golems, for example).

Looks like Jazzepi beat me to my main point(note to self - don't leave for half an hour mid-post) but I guess it's still valid.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

The primary benefit of F9 is not the damage done, nor the setting on fire, nor the bonus to attack - although all these things are nice.

Its the fact that it makes the attack magic - and so works on ethereal etc.

I have experimented a lot in small player games and in sp; the results of my tests are that TC with a Dual or triple bless doesn't *need* a water bless.

These units are so cheap, and so fast that the twist fate gives adequate protection in a horde. Plus, they usually are experienced by the time they encounter MP.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

The only thing I'd say to defend F9 against thugs, is that I believe Flaming weapons still count as magic, even if the target is immune to fire. Thus Mistform and Etherealness can be countered, which helps a lot against some thugs.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

The fire attack is 6 points of magical, AP damage, but the actual melee damage isn't affected. Fire-immune unit is safe with etherealness, since etherealness works just fine for the melee part and fire resistance protects him from the separate magical damage.

I'm not sure how Mistform works. Fire damage could negate it, but I'm not sure - it could go either way, really.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I'm just sort of wondering here how you get Eye Of Void, 2 rings, Crystal Coin, and Spell Focus on the same caster. Not many have more than 2 miscellaneous slots.

Also, I did forget about the magical attack aspect of F9 bless, which can become very important against a lot of nations and strategies.

2x 14 ATK, 16 damage mundane attacks just isn't very impressive when weighed against 4x attacks at 18 ATK (and can be considered 6 attacks with fire). While it's true that there aren't very many units in EA with outstanding protection, that only makes your attacks more powerful as you can overwhelm two lightly protected units with each WotFE per turn. And of course you still have to consider thugs and SCs, which will all have very good protection.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Besides.. if you spam a Divine Bless.. Doesn't an S9 all of a sudden become a lot more effective?

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Why would you spam it? Just cast it once. We've pretty much been operating under the assumption that you'd be using a prophet or at least a priest or two to ensure they get their blessing.

Not real sure what you mean there Chris. If they're blessed, they're blessed; we're trying to figure out which bless might be better for these guys under different circumstances.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I think he means reapplying the bless to get another twist of fate, but I don't think it works that way.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Divine blessing should not be able to target an already blessed unit.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

I used a dormant D9 N4 Lich with a high dominion one multi-player game. A W9 bless is definately better for indy expansion. But the D9 bless sure wreaked havoc when I got rushed by an awake E9 cyclops/Abyssia. Combined with some evocation, specifically acid bolts, I easily wrecked his army. I dont think W9 WotFE would have been up to the task. And it sure makes getting a tart factory up alot easier.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

and D9 is usefull for sacred mage too

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

D9 is pretty extraordinary for AOE attacks with blessed sacred mages, I'd say the +400% affliction chance, used this way, is at least as useful as the Death Weapons effect for frontline troops.

Re: Warriors of the Five Elements.
 

Go look at the oracle for T'ien Ch'i. It has 4 misc slots.

Jazzepi