[Edit I was looking at CBM when writing this guide, honestly not sure how much vanilla changes any of this suff]
MA T’ien Ch’i is a bit like an industrial, professional tool. In the right hands it’s got amazing versatility and more power than most people know what to do with. On the other hand it takes some fineness and skill to unlock that potential and it’s no surprise that this is a nation who generally has a lackluster image (I’ve heard several people describe them as a forge-***** nation). Much like Bandar Log this is a nation that should have a warning label reading “For Expert Use Only”. Just like any professional grade tool though, in the right hands this nation is an absolute beast.

This nation has some deep similarities to Bandar Log in how it plays. TC has a strongly differentiated roster and it’s quite important that you bring the right tools for whatever job is at hand. You’ve got first rate archers, cavalry and heavy infantry, but you don’t have a “super elite” universally applicable troop like many nations do. You’ve got nothing you’re “always” recruiting, you always need to field the right things to exploit your enemies weaknesses. This often requires using mixed troops which is a good portion of where the fineness of this nation comes in. You’ve got amazing versatility, but if you don’t handle it correctly that amounts to a lot of rope to hang yourself with. Because of awesomeness of your troops when properly balanced and the fact that you’ll need to shift your strategy several times over the course of the game I strongly recommend going with a production-3 scale which greatly reduces the time it takes to shift your troop ratios.

The amount of different ways to combine your troops is so varied I can’t begin to outline all of them, but let me give you some general guidelines of where your head should be. I’ll get into the wizardry in a following section, just take my word for it that the support spells I suggest should be easy to get whenever you need them.

Archery:

You’ve got five different solid archer deployments (told you this gets sophisticated). Your cheapest archer is pretty easy to mass and has a nice composite bow. He’s your goto guy for putting as many arrows into the sky as possible. As wicked as massing composite archers under production 3 scales can be all by itself, anytime it makes sense to field a bunch of archers it makes sense to throw in wind guide and flaming arrows, and if your opponent has any archers of his own don’t forget arrow fend and healing mists. The amount of damage you can lay out in this fashion is sufficient to bring even fairly heavy infantry to its knees, pretty much anything without tower shields and heavy armor. Particularly when you also drop quagmire and watch them slowly crawl across the battlefield. The really wicked will combine this with armor destruction spells. Destruction is an obvious one, but don’t forget about the less common armor destruction iron bane, rust mist, acid rain & acid storm. All these spells also completely destroy non-magic shields as well, turning those composite bows into a close approximation of a machine gun.

Against heavier/slower/fire resistant opponents you’ll want to use imperial crossbowmen for that AP damage. With a nice wind guide a decent sized mass of these guys will cause serious problems even for shielded SCs, particularly when you’ve forged a couple vine bows for your commanders (eye of aiming optional….stacking with that wind guide). This works better than tangling vines or earth meld because you can only script those for 5 turns, whereas that vine bow if fired from fairly close range will leave that SC standing around looking like a doofus for half time till the battle turn timer expires regardless of how tough he is. As if they’d live that long being pelted by all those point blank xbows….

Now, a good opponent is going to strenuously object to slogging slowly across a quagmire into hideously withering fire and try to counteract it. Flying or fast moving flankers are going to try to close the distance before you can empty your quivers. You can do some things to mitigate this such as good battlefield placement with blockers and casting storm (yes it hurts your archer’s effectiveness, but not as much as having the enemy instantly close to melee range), but assuming your opponent is wily you’re going to have angry guys with sharp steel nose to nose with your archers at some point. This is when you want to have your third archer deployment - the imperial archer. With full scale mail and a short sword this guy makes a pretty respectable medium infantry with the advantage that they sit around shooting arrows and giving you plenty of time to lay down buffs. With legions of steel, strength of giants, and wooden warriors these guys will make short work of any light, quick flankers hoping to engage some easy archers.

Against heavier fast movers (say, giants) it makes sense to use archer deployment number four, your horsemen. Set to hold and attack these guys will fire their (flaming?) composite bows twice while sitting around getting buffed, then charge forward for a hopefully devastating lance strike. The trick to this deployment is critical mass, between the arrows and the first strike you need to do crippling damage because these guys don’t have a whole lot of staying power. Fortunately, they’re perfect for this role as they’re only 20 gold so you can mass a lot of them fairly easily. Since these guys are intended to be glass cannons they make a lot of sense to use with iron bane – you’re really hoping the enemy breaks immediately after your charge. Also, don’t neglect the strength of giants as it nicely stacks with the first strike lance damage to *destroy* the guys who just got softened up by all those flaming arrows. It also makes a lot of sense to drop a panic or two the same turn and blood rain (more on that later).

Heavy horsemen you’d think would be the same only more so, but that’s not the case. These guys don’t do much more damage (only difference is +2 damage from their bigger horse hoof) but cost more. You’ll field more than 5 horsemen for the cost of 4 heavy horsemen and you hopefully noted my previous focus on the importance of critical mass for a crippling first charge. What the heavy horseman does excel at is a hybrid role. This is because they have a much better protection than the horsemen and a buckler, which means they are much better at resisting incoming archer fire and not falling over so fast if your initial charge wasn’t successful in breaking the enemy. They’re a good way to hedge your bets if you don’t think you’ll actually be able to inflict enough damage in that first charge, particularly when you lay on legions of steel & wooden warriors. They’ll perform some nice blocking for awhile while your other archers keep pelting away at close range from behind. These guys are particularly nice for countering enemy archery if you find yourself without access to arrow fend, they’ve got good armor and a buckler…but will be targeted by “fire archers”. Place them in front of your massed regular archers and they become much harder to counter.

I don’t want to go into the same detail on your non-archer units or this guide would be so long nobody would read it. You’ve got tower shields, you’ve got pikes, you’ve got glaives, you’ve got map move 2 infantry, map move 1 heavier guys, you’ve got very good map move 3 heavy cavalry, and as I’m about to illustrate you’ve got access to almost every spell Dominions includes so I think maybe you can understand my point about this being an “experts only” nation. You’ve got the tools to exploit any weakness your opponent has, but you also run a real risk of not bringing the right things to the party. Because of the importance of properly anticipating what you’re going to be fighting I recommend having at least one castle pumping out imperial consorts. The extra intelligence you get from spies will give you a much better chance of avoiding being surprised, and building up a large spy network also gives you an opportunity for crippling economic strikes.

The trick to a good spy unrest attack is to do it as an overwhelming surprise in conjunction with direct military action. Spies are not that hard to counter if you give your opponent the chance, but when their unrest starts spiking while they’re being hard pressed by your armies it can drastically reduce their ability to recover their troop losses. Also, the chance of a spy being discovered by patrolling troops decreases as the unrest goes up. This means it makes a lot of sense to use several spies together along with unrest increasing spells to bring unrest levels up nice and high on a few important provinces rather than spreading the love around. .

My suggestion to devote a castle to pumping out spies is particularly “expensive” for TC because they are one of the few nations who have a mage which can be recruited without a lab. Pop up a castle and with no other building necessary you can crank out your best research mage – the Minister of Magic. This guy would be one of the most cost efficient research mages in the game even without this special advantage, with it your research advantage climbs to the obscene levels. I recommend taking order-3 scales to complement your production-3 scales, and magic-1. Your national troops are plenty sufficient for high speed indie expansion and your pretender doesn’t need to contribute much in the way of magic diversity so dump those design points into scales. With those excellent scales and brisk expansion aggressively castle up and start massing up those ministers which also further amplifies your production abilities. You’ll want to send out a couple imperial alchemists out and a single celestial master pretty much immediately to site search, but after that recruit magic ministers from your capital and you shouldn’t have too much trouble having castle 5 or 6 under construction around the end of year one. Your year one research will be a little bit slow (with no research pretender and sending your first few mages out site searching) but it will ramp up extremely fast, you’ve got no excuse to not be one of the research leaders of the game.

At this point you’ll want to mostly recruit Imperial Alchemists with a few Celestial Masters from your capital while just piling up the ministers from your secondary castles. Now, at first glance these two mages might seem a bit similar, and I would love to be able to tell you to recruit mostly Celestial Masters for the significant savings in upkeep. I would love to, but I can’t. The CM’s bring astral and holy, while the alchemists bring fire, more powerful nature, and a map move of two. The map move of 2 is crucial, as is the fire and higher nature for reasons I’ll get into in a minute. You will want at least one A2 and one S2 celestial master, but mostly you’ll want to crank out alchemists as fast as you can.

Now, I’m willing to bet some of you guys reading along this long have been wondering what the heck you do with these mages. I’ve mentioned some fairly hefty spells thus far with no mage stronger than level two in sight. Seeing the staggering breadth of magic the alchemist brings I immediately start thinking about things which increase all magic paths. He’s got no astral or blood, so no communions, no power of the spheres, no hell power. MA TC can’t pick a forge lord pretender, so we’re not going to be sticking rings of wizardry on any significant number of them. So, where am I going with this? Any guesses?

Before I answer that question I want to emphasize how fabulous those two alchemists you sent out are doing at site searching. Crunch all the numbers you want about site searching level 1-2 in most paths at one go, then go try it and witness how common it is to get the “xxx has discovered [2, 3, or 4] magic sites”. Your gem income will very likely be well ahead of anyone else. Even rainbow pretenders can’t compete because they’re only one person while you’ve got several alchemists running around. You’re going to put every one of those gems to good use, but for the time being I wanted to focus on your earth and astral income. You’ll almost certainly have piled up 50+ of each in the first year and have a modest income. Use an earth random alchemist to make earth boots and then a few dwarven hammers, and meanwhile recruit a few imperial geomancers who will begin the assembly line cranking out slave matrixes.

With a dwarven hammer slave matrixes cost just 3E + 3S, so you really shouldn’t have much trouble cranking out 3-4 per turn pretty much indefinitely at this point. Don’t be shy about trading for more if you need them or even alchemizing in a pinch, there is nothing at all you can more effectively spend gems on….well, with a couple support items. Namely a master matrix or two and some crystal shields (why you wanted an S2 Celestial Master). The crystal shields are a bit more expensive but you really don’t need that many.

These synthetic communions are a bit expensive compared to natural communions, but they also offer some hefty advantages. One (obviously), you can pull in mages with no astral magic. Two, the communion is in place when the battle starts, which not only saves you a turn and fatigue of casting communion slave/master, it also can save you *another* turn if you’re doing a reverse communion because that crystal shield autocasts power of the spheres at the start of the fight…which done to a master effects all the slaves. In a classical reverse communion you spend one turn casting communion slave/master, then another casting power of the spheres, then possibly another casting summon earthpower (or whatever) to finally start laying the smack down around turn 4. With a synthetic communion your slaves are laying out thunderstrike’s and blade winds turn one or two while the communion master casts something nasty *before* the enemy can lay antimagic, or stone rain, or whatever they were gonna do. Turn one action is such an immense advantage for big fights it’s hard to overstate.

Just consider what those imperial alchemists look like now as a slave. All their paths have been boosted by one from the crystal shield. Fire, Earth, and Nature can be boosted again with an appropriate spell, and water bracelets are cheap so matching up the right guys with the random paths that sounds a lot like a bunch of level 4 guys (5 in nature) with access to all the nasty multipath spells like magma eruption and acid rain which they switch to after dropping legions of steel, wooden warriors, etc on that cavalry you’ve got screening your archers. The master, on the other hand, as all that *plus* the 2 level boost to everything for having a mere 4 communion slaves so I can comfortably say stuff like follow your quagmire with flaming arrows and arrow fend – the same mage can cast them all (and it’s all in the same research path)! :) This is, of course, before you pass out a single conventional booster…

You should have a lot more slave matrixes than alchemists (every one should have one), and there’s no reason to limit yourself to capital only mages. At first imperial geomancers seem like an obvious choice because they’ve already got an astral path, and indeed they’re your goto guys if you’re (against all odds) sucking wind in the E/S gem department for slave matrixes. These guys lack the synergy with the crystal shield opening, but they can do a pretty decent job using celestial masters and no slave matrixes at all if you need to. They also give you gift from heaven spammers as reverse communicants, which can be just what the doctor…er alchemist ordered.

If you’ve got the slave matrixes though (which you generally should) I say use those cheap ministers of magic you’ve got coming out your ears. Use them in matched sets of 5+ (all with the same random path), slave matrixes with the master holding a crystal shield. The best of these is the earth groups, the master casts summon earth power and those 70 gold mages are now spamming destruction or blade wind plus the obligatory continuing mention of legions of steel/strength of giants while the master lays down weapons of sharpness and army of lead, and don’t neglect the potential of 5+ guys spamming out earth elementals (match them with a ‘helper’ guy to buff each elemental with body ethereal or quickness or haste or gift of flight or…well, you get the idea).. Water groups can spam lots of fun stuff from ice blast to numbness to cleansing water, or pass out water bracelets and falling frost while the master lays out quickening or niefel flames. The air and astral communions are somewhat less useful, but certainly have their niches (air master casts storm then storm power and now your slaves are spamming thunderstrike while the master drops fog warriors, etc., astral guys are spamming soul slay after a light of the northern star)

Much like your troops, your research is going to need to be pointed in the right direction or you’re going to fail to have what you need. You’ve got powerful options in evocation, alteration, enchantment, and construction (lightless lanterns, weapons of sharpness, golems) with some nice stuff you’ll want to pick up in conjuration and thaumaturgy. You’ve got a powerful research engine but you’ve still got to decide in what order to pick this stuff up, which depends strongly on what you’ll be facing. Do you go for flaming arrows/arrow fend/quagmire, or destruction/wooden warriors/legions of steel, or magma blast/gifts from heaven/acid rain? You’ll eventually have it all, but it makes a big difference what you have available for your first fight. Again, “experts only”, you have to really be able to anticipate and plan. The good news though, is your enemy doesn’t know what you’re going to throw at him next.

One more thing to put on the roadmap is conjurations. You’ve got two nice national summons which give you some good diversity. Celestial hounds are some nice flying troops at a reasonable price, and celestial soldiers are very cost effective heavy hitters. You’ll also want to get up to conj-6 fairly early to round out your magic diversity.

I haven’t mentioned your pretender yet as there hasn’t really been a hole yet he needs to plug. There are two glaring holes in your arsenal though, death and blood magic. You’ve also got a great nature income from all those alchemists site searching without much spending. To me, this screams lamia queens, and your pretender is the only way this is going to happen. In short order these ladies will supply you with some nice undead thug/SC chasises, and can add a welcome blood component to your communions. R-E-I-N-V-I-G-O-R-A-T-I-O-N, that’s how I spell relief. This also lets you drop nice stuff like blood rain and rush of strength as you pull into end game.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

All those archer cavalry is nice but they need to be combined with Vine bows. With an Attack of 10 they re unable to hit any half-decent thugs - or opposing cavalry for that matter.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I personally have had good luck (in cbm) with an awake general of the east with A4E4 he expands well against indies and over time builds quite a respectable army from his auto summons while also giving you access to a semi useful minor earth bless and an air booster forger

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

The lack of Thugs is a problem for MA TC. As is the weakness of their very varied communionable mages (inc. with matrixes the expensive Imperial Alchemists). Like all these all rounder mages they can cast just about anything in battle with enough slaves but little outside it. So globals, overland spells and decent forging is a problem.

For example I don't think you have a reasonable shot at a Hammer builder (Const 2 but Earth 3). So that means you have to go top Const 4 for the boots (just earth 2?) before you can build the hammers to start cranking out the cheap matrixes. That's a significant detor for a power that needs some mages backing its armies with decent combat magic as soon as it meets anyone with a decent sacred or elite troop. Or thugs. Or an awake SC Pretender....

Do you think you need an awake SC Pretender? With Blood or Death of course :p To keep the wolves from your door at the beginning? You can expand vs indies especially with Prod 3 but can you really fight off an early attack. Or rather persuade your neighbours not to attack you. Especially as your gem income should be expanding fairly early with your strategy.



Lastly the Imperial Alchemists (I think) have nature 2 and sometimes more. Plus high upkeep. So even the nature 2s with a mace (which it will probably lose) or a moonvine bracelet (that it should keep) are these not perfect candidates for transformation? Unlike Pans or Capricorns you are likely to have plenty of decent Astral mages knocking around to put off mind hunts. And in battle you are likely to have plenty of proper mages along to make enemy targetting of the magical moose at the back more problematic than with some other nations that commonly try this tactic.

I have always considered them a bit like a MA version of pre patched Jomon. Nice but resource hungry troops but no real killer units. Great communionable mages but they are frail and generally weak outside of combat for forging and overland spells. Thugs hard to come by. You want a dormant rainbow to round out the overland weaknesses and missing schools but really need an awake SC for defence. And you have no points as you want decent scales. Plus a minor earth/nature bless for you expensive sacred or shrouded battle mages (many soon get old age too) would be nice but basically unaffordable with the other things you need.

Anyway great guide as always :) I had never considered half the archers before - just defaulting to the cheap composite in most cases. But the fire and charge (especially with wind guide etc to make them hit something and some buffs) on the cavalry is something to try. And of course, like most people I suppose, I would have assumed the Celestial Master with its sacredness the automatic first choice. But the Alchemist has some advantages I had not considered like its extra move.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

This strategy sounds awesome for SP, but I have concerns with that strategy in a MP game…

TC troops are fine for early expansion, but won’t stand up well without magic against an early bless rush. Sending 3 cap only mages out site searching early will slow research a lot and make you look very tasty if charts are on. I think hitting a few key levels of research first is critical, Alt 4 in particular for wind guide. If you’re sending out your first 3 mages, and then going with ministers in order to save money for castles, your research output in the first year will be pitiful – sure it will catch up nicely once the forts are all churning out ministers, and your gem income will be huge, but survival to that point would be very chancy

One key benefit TC has is healing on several mages. To a large extent that’s wasted with no recruitable thugs or individually powerful units, so my opinion is an SC pretender is warranted to take advantage and to deter in early to mid game rushes. A dormant nataraja or deva or other fits the bill nicely. Awake is unnecessary as you can expand ok and I don’t think an awake pretender would risk hitting you early until they have some decent equipment. Once your pretender is out, levels 3-4 in alteration, conjuration and construction will kit him out as a powerful SC – may take a few turns after he awakens, can research or site search in the meantime. With healing readily available the risk in using your pretender as an SC is a lot lower, and you are now a very uninviting target until such time as your gem income and research give you a lot more options. You can focus heavily on site searching once you have your pretender, I’d recommend only having one out site searching in the first year.

To pay for the pretender I feel Prod 3 can be done away with. It is certainly useful, but with none of your good units cap only, and the intention to build a lot of forts, production shouldn’t be limiting as long as you don’t take sloth. The production would certainly be useful, and let you recruit your troops exactly where you want them rather than have to move them around, but I can’t see it being worth the design points

The late game is where I have my big concern with TC due to low path levels on mages. The communion using matrices would certainly be powerful, but a large number of cap only mages each with those items? Opponents would be twitching to hit you with earthquakes and the like in battle, or big evoc remotes once available. And protection from good assassins (summoned and normal) would be tough. That investment in matrices I think would be better off invested in summoning thugs or path boosters. Ensure you have S3 or 4 on your pretender so you can get to the rings, at which point other path boosters become a lot easier to obtain. It shouldn’t be too hard to get a few mages in a big army to cast the buffs you need.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Well, that's rather a big part of my point, isn't it? That's the the wrong tool for that job. Against high defense troops I'd suggest Imperial Horsemen with 3 attacks apiece, or Imperial Guards to just hold them there while your mages, bows or xbows do the damage.

@Hoplosternum - I disagree that lack of solid thugs is an innate problem. Thugs are useful if you've got them, but not every nation should play the same. You could as easily complain that Neifelheim has a limited ability to drop battlefield evocations.

I don't think getting to constr-4 without battlefield mage support is much of a problem, you've got a very solid troop lineup and production-3 scales - and several things you can construct to give you a good edge against a lone SC or small group of super-elites. What SC enemy pretender is going to give you any trouble at all in year one with my suggested xbows + a couple vine bows? What sacreds are going to come in sufficient numbers to ignore every type of troop you've got - from lances to bows to glaives while being hammered by a pair of ice pebble staffs? Or thunder bows? Or piercers? When you're talking about an early rush by 10-30 uber sacreds plunking off one or two per round while they chew through your 100+ [whatever-seems-most-likely-to-work] will be quite effective. You really should have several castles up before even an early rush is threatening, and with production-3 scales you're going to outnumber any rusher *significantly* while fielding fairly good troops yourself. What specifically would you be worried about? I find TC (particularly if you are on the ball with your troop mixes) to have a pretty solid early game with no need of an awake pretender or immediate mage support for any fight. This is not Marverni or Bandar, TC's troops can hold their own (particularly if they have a good numerical advantage).

Transformation is a poor choice for capital only units who will be used in combat. Against any halfway clever opponent it will significantly increase your casualty rate because of your lobotomized MR. You're only ever going to get one alchemist per turn (less than that as you'll also want a few CMs) so I generally see you being more worried about keeping them alive than their upkeep.

I really don't see any need for an awake pretender, nor a blessing for your sacreds (ignore them). Something like a dormant master lich with D + N + one level of fire will get you blood & death (through lamia queens) and fire skulls. You can forge almost every booster in the game, assuming you empower once from 2->3 in astral you can forge a ring of sorcery & wizardry, so I'm thinking:

Fire skull + ring of wizardry on a 2F alchemist -> fire helm -> elemental staff = F6

Water bracelet + robe + ring + staff + 3W celestial ->W7

Thistle mace + moonvine + ring + ring + 3N alchemist -> N7

A2 alchemist + ring + staff -> air helm + bag of winds -> A6

S3 Astral guy you just empowered + cap + ring -> S5

boots + staff + ring + E2 alchemist -> E5 (you'll eventually toss in a blood stone via lamia queens)

If your pretender doesn't cover you, the lamia queens will leverage you to liches and whatever D you wanted by late game.

I'm just not seeing any trouble casting anything much. Yeah, you're probably not spamming earth attacks or anything specialized like that, but you shouldn't have any difficulty doing big summonings, casting globals, forging artifacts, etc.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

What is your opinion on Conscription?

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

not sure if this makes sense, but I was thinking,

I guess one thing that seems particularly nasty against this would be rain of stones/earthquake right? aren't a ton of 10hp mages really tasty targets for rain of stones kamakazies?

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

>> The lack of Thugs is a problem for MA TC.

Golems.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Conscription is neat thematically, but strategically insignificant.

@FrozenLama - stone rain is the typical anti-communion goto spell. Check out my guide to communions for a more detailed discussion on several communion topics, Cliff's notes on this one: stick cheap armor on your mages.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I thought rain of stones hit the head especially, largely bypassing body armour? This may just be my imagination though.

Conscription to my mind makes order turmoil slightly less painful, because your core provinces which you hold for quite a while can build up enough pd to see off the small barbarain attacks. It's not a really big deal, but there's some synergy there.

I also want to reinforce that MA TC really does have very nice troops in the early game. Sure they aren't going to pose a massive challenge to some crazy MA Van bless rush, but they pretty specialised and you've got all the ingredients that make other nations troops awesome, just not all in one or two places. Imperial Guard I find really solid (under cbm), almost as good as the heavy infantry from the roman nations and let us not forget troops with patrol bonus to go with eunuchs - you can crank significantly more gold right when you need it using tax patrolling. Couple this with the spies you send out and I think winning an economic grind war is totally doable.

They really, really need to get forts up though and I think patrol taxing early is a good way to get those going.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Yeah, another thing that I wanted to mention was the lack of 800 gold forts. You do get them in swamps (and you'd be foolish not to plop one up in every swamp to crank out ministers), but when your choices are between a 1000 gold fort or a 1200 gold fort I find it's usually worthwhile to go ahead and spend the extra gold to put up that nice 50 admin fortified city on the (hypothetical) farmland bordering two mountains and a forest. You get a nice permanent income boost and you actually pull in more resources (because of the admin) than you would plunking up a dinky fort on a mountain province. With the suggested scales you really should have a really good early troop output.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I think conscription is tied to an order scale.

I won't swear to it, but I think somebody ran a test a while back and concluded body armor helps against rain of stones.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Ah, sorry, missed this post while I was replying to other things. I think I've addressed part of this (or at least given my opinion FWIW). I think a production-3 scale with a couple extra forts up gives you a stronger position than a combat pretender, not only does it let you get more troops where you need them, it also lets you respond much quicker to whatever your opponent is fielding. I just really don't see the threat of an early rush against this nation assuming it's played by someone willing to match the right troops to the right job. Several people have mentioned this rush-threat, and I think its based on a real underestimation of what these troops can do when properly deployed. Can you give me a specific nation and troop you feel would give TC's troops a lot of trouble supported by nothing but a couple early construction items? Wind guide is great to be sure, but what exactly is rushing you that is susceptible to your massed archers only after you add wind guide? 100 point blank x-bows is still plenty effective before wind guide...

Sure, you're going to be at a slight disadvantage in some matchups against nations really geared to immidiate, out-the-gate power (triple blessed sacreds, etc) but certainly not to the level they're gonna steamroll you before you can get any research done. Most of the best MA sacreds are vulnerable to massed archery (x-bows in particular), right? Eagle warriors, woodsmen, vans...elephants to. I can't off the top of my head think of any rush that would be really difficult to put up a good fight to with no battlemages at all.

As to the healing, I think this falls into the same category as their sacred cavalry, at least in context of the angle I'm writing this guide - taking advantage of this capability has too much of an opportunity cost, you're better off ignoring it. Don't worry about cranking out thugs, play the nation with it's strengths. You've got great anti-thug/anti-SC capabilities and great powerful armies - you can play a game perfectly effectively without having many thugs.

As to the enemy trying to kill your mages, yeah that's a pretty standard tactic that every nation will have to deal with. It's not hard to drop some armor, a booster or two, and a lucky pendant on each alchemist as you're only getting one per turn and have a solid gem income, and I tried to illustrate that your non-cap mages can also be very effective when supported by your nice troops. All in all it's usually easier said than done to kill off all the good enemy mages, even when they're 10 hp humans.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

In noobs vs vets 1 I had to fight triple blessed mictlan (9w/6or8n/4or6b) as la tien chi (o3/p3 at that). I was massing light cavalry, had an awake celestial general producing blockers and had fordo boggit's elite warriors. The map was pretty cramped so we both had only 1 fort. When the battle ensued, I had 140 units altogether and he had... maybe 80? With 40 jaguar warriors and some eagle warriors set to attack rear, plus a bunch of normal warriors with slings. My army was pretty well deployed for the battle, with the unfortunate error of having some of my light cavalry on one flank set to attack rear to try to kill his commander, which unfortunately ran straight into a group of jaguars which butchered them. Long story short I killed 20 of the jaguar warriors and probably about as much of his chaff infantry, losing 100 of my units. Probably about 2/3 of my archers survived, with everything else demolished. I attacked him instead of being on defense, trying to spare my ally losses as I had seen a rather unfortunate looking battle result the previous turn or so which made his chances look pretty bad if he tried to take on that army.

The turn after the demolition of my army, he ran into 30 pd and died a horrible, horrible death. Anyway, my suggestion for this is mictlan jaguar warriors.



Regarding Rain of Stones: Llamabeast demonstrated to me rather effectively that communions can survive rain of stones fairly easily if you have fog warriors/iron skin/luck cast on them.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I agree with most of your guide, but I believe you've overlooked some aspects.

I believe TienChi should use a hit and run strategy. Use consorts to over throw key provinces. Use remote summons to take others. Drive the province defense sky high (you'll have the money) so that it takes him 2-3 attempts to retake a province.

Also, your eunuchs and city guard have patrol bonuses, so that one eunuch and 10 guards can easily maintain tax rates of 140 or so. Take growth.

Build at lease one alchemist fairly early for those odd turns you need to alchemize gems.

Rdonj has it exacty right. Attack strategically, defend copiously, *using PD*.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

LA TC has a different troop makeup if I recall correctly, more emphasis on the cavalry. Cavalry seems like a sub-optimal deployment against Mictlan in particular. Against a mixed group of jaguar and eagle warriors plus some chaff I'd think you'd just want arrows, arrows and more arrows with a couple of blockers (who can shoot arrows). If you've got the production for it (production-3 scales and a couple early castles) I'd say mostly Imperial Archers are the way to go here (supplement with regular archers to the back if you're short on production). Those 100 horse archers would be more like 200 foot archers for the same gold. With the assumption you had a good idea of your enemy's troop makeup (spies) split them into about 3 blocks in your back row scripted to fire flyers. My guess is you'd take a few casualties in the eagle warrior's first attack (though your scale mail will help a good deal), inflict enough casualties in your first volley to route the eagle warriors, then spend a couple turns decimating the jaguars as they closed. If I'm wrong and it takes a couple turns to kill the eagles and the jaguars close without significant casualties, they still will likely engage one block of your (scalemail and short sword wielding) archers while the other two blocks hammer them. Meanwhile any slingers the opponent is using will probably inflict more friendly casualties than do anything useful. It'd probably also be worthwhile to put some small clumps of tower shield blockers out front just to tangle up your opponents and probably gain another turn of archery.

There is such a large difference in effectiveness against different troops across MA TC's varied lineup. You really have to bring the right tool to the fight.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Eh, I don't know, I suppose you could though that seems pretty situational to me. MA TC's PD is decent, but it's not awesome (LA TC's sure is though!) and you don't really have any good remote attack spells which will conquer much more than 1PD (and sometimes not even that). I'm not sure what you mean about consorts overthrowing a province, as far as I know all they can do is raise unrest which reduces your opponents income and if you can get it over 100 shuts down production in that province. Raiding can and should be part of every nation's playbook, but I don't really see MA TC as being a particularly effective blitzer in this fashion. I think you run a very real risk of losing more money than your opponent if you're counting on PD to stop him much.

Patrolling with a higher tax rate and growth scales are a personal preference which can work with this strategy. I tend to dislike the extra micro, lost mage recruitment, opportunity cost of taking growth scales, and long term damage to the economy, but I can imagine it could be effective enough if it's your cup of tea.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Hmm. Well, in that game I literally could not have had any more arrows flying, since light cavalry and archers cost exactly the same amount of resources and I was being fed gold by some of my teammates. However you are absolutely right, in a normal game with more than one fort per person I could have had quite a few more archers than horsemen (no one had more than one fort at that point in the game). I also apparently only had about 75 archers altogether, so I had a slightly excessive number of blockers from my mercenary group plus the heavy infantry freespawn.

I only had that insane of a pd because there was literally no way for anyone who attacked me to not go through that province. Otherwise that just would have been crazy. Anyway, thanks for your input. The further away from that game I get the more I see things I did wrong....

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

It's worth mentioning that the Noobs Vs Vets 1 game in which rdonj killed all those jaguar warriors with PD was a late era game, which Baalz mentions has awesome PD.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I actually think MA TC should get boosted PD since it's supposed to be a feature of the nation - currently it's decent, but it's not one of the standout best ones, which it perhaps should be.

Has anyone created an advantage from MA TC's varied healers?

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Use it in a "fetish factory".

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

IIRC, if unrest gets too high (over 100?) it unlocks the bad event which can let a province revolt and become independent again.

-Max

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

But that's not something I'd want to plan on. Province revolts are rare even with high unrest.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

The magic number seems to be 255..

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Baalz, as usual I really enjoyed reading your guide. It got me thinking of all sorts of new (to me) possible directions and options. IMHO, this is the trademark of a great guide, that it makes a lasting impact on the reader.

I have two comments though.
Re. massing archers. There are so many counters to that. I personally would not advise going too heavy on that. First and foremost counter is the most accessible and simple: decoys. Then there are the (somewhat) more sophisticated counters such as arrow fend, storm, flyers and flankers.
A combined arms approach, such as you have mentioned, is the way to go IMO.

Re. taking production. I can see the merit of that in the context of your guide, however I find the loss of 240 design points to be staggering. There's so much you could do with and contrary to production those 240 points can go into areas that won't have diminishing returns as the game progresses.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I can't imagine how you'd play this nation with sloth-3 Wraithlord, or what you'd spend those points on that would give you a better payout. Production scales buy you:

A much faster initial expansion than you would have on the back of an expansion pretender and few troops.

A stronger hand in an early war/rush than a combat pretender.

Extra income, +18% compared to sloth-3. The gold compounds with the faster expansion, giving you not just more troops but more castles and more research.

Ability to adjust your troop mix much quicker. This is very important because as you point out going in just one direction with TC's troops leaves you very vulnerable to a counter. All of TC's troops are not very hard to counter resoundingly if used by themselves in a predictable manner (ie mass archers and march around waiting for your enemy to do something about it). MA TC has so many great options other than archers I think I need to do an addendum to the guide since I think I give the impression that you have to focus on massing archers here.

You've got glaives - light, medium and heavy depending on what you need. They deal 20 damage before you drop a single buff and scream to have strength of giants, quickness, weapons of sharpness, touch of madness, mass flight (or haste if they're dropping storm) for some chop-a-matic-4000 action - particularly combined with the armor destruction you're already been emphasizing. Imagine how many glaives you can field in a turn or two's notice at 9 gold and 11 resources out of several castes with production-3 scales and imagine those quickened, hasted/flying dudes wrapping all the way around a formation of elite enemies.

You've got light pikes - only 8 gold and 9 resources. They do a decent amount of damage as well while having a better attack and a length of 6 which will repel average morale troops fairly well. Combine with panic and deploy against the right type of enemies fighting out of dominion (no archers, lighter armored) and these can be very cost effective troops. Great for repelling light cavalry/flyers trying to flank to your archers (pikes are longer than lances).

You've got light, medium, heavy, and elite tower shield infantry every bit as good as the well respected Romanesque infantry. 15 defense + 14 production before you drop a buff along with falchion and 12 attack skill, there are certainly worse troops to mass. Who cares if your enemy deploys archer screens if they mostly end up massed up against your blockers for a dozen turns? Heck, these guys are perfectly viable to use with no archers at all once you drop a couple buffs on them. Or just use them as blockers for your heavy duty magical artillery.

You've got some of the best heavy cavalry in the game along with extremely capable switch hitter cavalry which can immediately switch to a flanking charge if archery isn't effective or just punch a hole straight through the center. Their protection of 14 climbs into the 20s with legions of steel and wooden warriors, which along with their 15 defense bringing them on par with most other elite cavalry while being significantly cheaper (and thus outnumbering, say Black Knights or Knights of Avalon by 2 or 3 to 1). Haste doesn't help with your first strike damage, but it does let you blaze across the battlefield amazingly fast for flanking.

Heck, with a well placed castle and production scales you can crank out 30-50+ light horsemen in a turn *per castle*, which means you're counting your first strike lances by the hundreds. When your enemy shows up with his clever archer counters and instead encounters two hundred charging cavalry after you've just dropped iron bane trust me, you'll believe in the flexibility of TC with production-3 scales. :)

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

8 gold and 9 resources for pikes? In CBM? I can't check right now but that doesn't sound right at all. I was playing MA TC the other day and I don't remember them being that cheap.

And do the light horsemen have lances or light lances. There's a pretty big damage difference.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Thank you for the elaborate and convincing response :)

I could be argumentative and say things like - "put more magic on your pretender", "get a minor bless", "take an awake SC with great scales apart from sloth", "Crank up many castles so sloth wouldn't prevent you from mass recruiting". Instead of saying any such things I think I'll take your excellent advise and just setup two SP games - one that will follow your advise to the letter and a 2nd that would dump those sloth points on something else (I'll try to come up with something good). I suspect it is very likely that the first game will look up much better - Regardless, this is the first nation that I ever consider taking prod-3 a valid choice. Up until now I have never taken anything other than sloth 3, be it SP or MP. I thank you for helping me see the good side of the production scale.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

The pikes are the leather armor guys, your second cheapest unit. I'm at work right now, but had the game up when I typed my original response, and it was with CBM 1.5.

They have light lances which according to Cleveland in the "Did you know" thread do more damage than heavy lances under strength of giants:
At any rate, number crunching aside they do plenty of damage from actual testing with no buffs at all with the numbers you're fielding. As I mention though, they don't hold up too well in toe to toe fighting.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Cool, let us know how it goes. A couple suggestions:

As much as possible you should match your troops vs enemy troops even during initial indie expansion. Send composite bows vs barbarians, lizards, tribal archers, light infantry, etc. Send Imperial Horsemen or mixed infantry (glaives & tower shields) against heavier infantry and against strong indies (heavy cav farmlands, etc.) send critical mass of Imperial Cavalry (with some tower shield chaff to catch lances for the real big indie masses). You can really have a pretty good expansion, but you'll have a hard time doing it efficiently with homogeneous expansion groups.

Once you've got 3-4 good expansion parties (depending on how many indie territories you expect to be able to take) stop recruiting anything other than ministers of magic for a few turns. The gold will pile up incredibly fast allowing you to plop up around a fort per turn.

If you're comparing my suggested dormant master lich, once he wakes up send him out site searching, specifically to the territories you've put up castles. This is a great way to get at least a minimal dominion to push your production scales without building many temples.

Speaking of which, make sure you push your fabulous order 3/production 3 scales to every province you own, temples pay for themselves pretty fast if they're keeping your territories in dominion.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I guess I'll be building more MA TC pikemen from now on!

Although light lance can beat lance in damage output with SoG, lance allows the cavalry to also use their main weapon in the first round of combat, which almost certainly does more than the 3 damage light lance does (often it's a sword which does 7) and while that doesn't get the charge bonus, it gets the SoG bonus. So light lance with SoG could theoretically be better than lance vs targets with super high prot (high enough that SoG + a sword doesn't crack it and neither does the 16 damage + charge bonus lance) but the vast majority of the time lance charge is far more damaging than light lance charge.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Good point, but the other consideration (at least in this case) is you'll be fielding twice as many light horsemen compared to Imperial, so you're getting twice as many lance attacks at the expense of a falchion attack, and also an additional hoof attack which helps drop defense and knock armor off under iron bane. Don't get me wrong, the Imperials are much more effective in a more drawn out fight, but for the gold I think the light horsemen generally give a more devastating first contact. Plus, they get bows which they can fire before charging, which can be quite effective depending on the enemy.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

That's true if your imperials would not be maxing out frontage - one of the problems I sometimes have with massed light lance cav is that they can get stuck and the ones at the back never even get to use their charge bonus. There's a point at which numbers don't help you that much offensively. Though I suppose if they're getting killed in melee, the ones at the back will filter through and still get their charge bonus attack.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Yeah, I find haste/mass flight helps out with that depending on enemy troop placement. If they aren't shoulder to shoulder (which sounds like time to break out the archers/xbows/evocations to me and not go with a glass cannon charge) you can often get a good bit of wrapping around them. Break your cavalry up in a few groups spread around with "attack rearmost" while not perfect, will help mitigate that.

Plus, having too many lances to all connect immediately isn't the worst problem to have. :)

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Thanks baalz. I have often noticed the spread when you tell flying units to attack rear. But I never considered mass flight as a mechanism to maximize lance damage. ++

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I have performed a few tests.
First, comparing prod3 to sloth3 early game development. For the prod3 I took a Dom-7 imprisoned lich with D3N4. For the sloth3 I took a sleeping SC chasis, an E4N4 Dom-8 Nataraja.
My setup games all have the same settings, hard research and indep. strength of 9.

The prod3 setup does have better early game results in terms of income and expansion. The sleeping SC doesn't awake early enough to offset the prod3 advantage. I could take an awake SC with sloth3 but I don't think MA TC really needs an awake SC. It has very good army and mage lineup that can stand it's own even in early game.

I then tried a different pretender - a scales astral king pretender and one of my favs for nations that have good military lineups - the oracle. With the oracle I took O3P3H0G3Mf2M1 Dom-9 S6E4. Under this one I got best early game results. It is true that I'm giving up on death and blood (unless I luck out during the game to find the right indie. mages) but what I gain is out of the box (with boosters) wisher/ANer and an awesome master enslaver/undead dominator.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Yeah, the pretender choice (based on the vector of this guide) is fairly open to whatever your personal preference is - there's just not a lot of holes he needs to plug. The critical portion of pretender design is Order-3 Production-3 Magic-1 and not terrible other scales, anything that allows you to afford this should work pretty well with this guide.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

In terms of thug potential, what about Prince Generals (with attendant priests to bless then retreat)? They wouldn't be as good as those of many nations, but would they be useful at all (especially with a few cavalry as attendants)?

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

As a man who loves to play MA Pythium with a scales approach (it is one of the few nations where I can allow myself the guilty pleasure of an order 3, production 3 approach and feel that I am not giving up anything important compared to what I gain), thanks for the guide, Baalz. It contains a couple of good reminders.

The ability to field huge fairly tough armies designed to counter whatever threat is currently facing me on a very short notice coupled with an economy strong enough that plopping down 1200g castles everywhere appropriate (in terrain and population level) is one of the greatest joys of the game. Some nations in the game use small elite militaries, special operations teams capable of dealing with practically anything - T'ien C'hi MA uses the enlisted man, drilled to perfection and good at his job but relying on the military as a whole to deal with threats not in his purview. :D

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

One problem with Prince Generals is the seasonal variation of their hitpoints. Just like the Red Guard cavalry, one has to be careful fielding them in the wintertime.

In spring the Prince Generals have +50% hitpoints but it declines to -50% hitpoints in the early winter, a variation from 19hp to 6 hp. Sure, they have excellent defense and protection, but the number of things that can kill a 6-7 hitpoint unit or commander, even a well protected one, in one blow are many.

Thus I tend to occasionally field Red Guards as a strategic reserve for the few situations where their higher morale, magic resistance, and defense over the Imperial Horseman may make a difference but I do not use Prince Generals as thugs or in general. They are just too fragile if used at the wrong time, and I do not want to kit out thugs that are only seasonally truly useful - thugs that additionally are capital only and take the place of recruiting an imperial alchemist or celestial master (one can never get too many imperial alchemists).

I do tend to buy one early Prince General and make him my prophet as a luxury. If he gets one of the two heroic abilities that boost hitpoints he becomes a great commander in some turns, even with the -50% hitpoints at the yearly ebb of his strength. If not - well, as T'ien C'hi I can afford having wasted a bit of gold and one turn of capital recruitment on the long shot that is a random heroic ability.

EDIT: Good lord, just loaded up MA TC with CBM 1.6. Last time I played them was in vanilla and now they seem to get five celestial soldiers for 8 astral gems! That's incredible! - and very, very, affordable. They have always been very nice elite troops (even when there's not a single 4 or higher magic on the pretender) mostly limited to niche uses by the premium value of astral gems but that price is only half what I am used to. I want to play MA TC in my next game. :D

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Regarding Earthquake and other battlefield wide attacks. All communion masters should be able to cast (very early in the game too) mistform and/or bark/stone/ironskin and/or Elemental Fortitude or one of the spesific anti-elemental spells (plus personal regen) and/or Twist Fate+Luck. Effectively the battlefield wide attack spells should thus only be a concern on attack (because the defender gets the first round), but perhaps one should use special attack-forces (mages with some cheap armour and/or elemental rings, for example) when attacking a foe expected to use such spells.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I was rushed by MA Ermor twice in MP...
If the capitals of two player near too close to search site and expansing and the sacred troop of Ermor which is ETHEREAL,the troop of MA TC cannot do any effective damage to the enemy.
Face the plenty undead and the casting of raise skeleton and dead and 9S sacred, what can the weak TC priest do?

Maybe the strategy could do many things but in early rush.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Evo 1 gets you Geyser, which every Imperial Alchemist can cast. It's AOE 1, and ignores the etherealness, and at 6 damage is going to be pretty effective vs. those 9hp vestals.

Evo 1 also gets you Cold Bolt & Cold Blast, which every Celestial Master can cast. Since Vestals aren't cold immune, these spells (Blast = AOE 1, Bolt = Range 45 w/ Prec 8) are one-hit knockouts for those vestals.

Hope that helps.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I don't think you'd have sufficient mages to stop or even significantly hurt vestals with those spells. The issue is more that they'll be taking your territory anyway - if you go chasing them with squads of mages what happens to your research?

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I definately wouldn't go picking a fight with those spells, but they're castable by the mages you're buying per Baalz' guide, and you can dial them up in 3 turns of research. And I'll guarantee they're effective against 0prot troops.

You don't have to go chasing them, you just need one proper deployment to convince the Ermor player that the opportunity cost of rushing you is too high.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

Also, if you're being rushed by Ermor it is a good idea to switch to Celetial Masters rather than Alechmists. Assuming you B-lined to construction, pass out a a couple void eyes and communion up. Just 4 slaves and your masters are H4 with a huge banishment area and +3 penetration - which will lay some serious smackage down on all those undead horsies that will be following. Sure, shadow vestials have a decent MR and S blessings are common, but they also have a mediocre offense so take awhile to chew through your troops...while you CMs are chewing through them. Solar Rays is also easy pickings and a real vestial popper, which conveniently enough you can pop out with herald lances if that's what's convenient. Just 2-3 scouts running around with herald lances set to cast 5X then retreat is going to make taking territory with vestials incredibly expensive. For the big battles use S1 guys as slaves, then have your celestial master communion masters drop power of the spheres so your slave point defense can drop a bunch of solar rays while the big cannons fire off giant banishments.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

What about massed archers? 3/4 of the shots will miss, but the 1/4 remaining will be hitting low-HP 0-protection troops.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I don't know,... when you inflict a surprising military defeat on a rusher is it really likely to make them leave you alone and go elsewhere? They're bound to have already taken a bunch of your territory so you're probably still the weakest neighbour and now they may well feel more like they're in a war with you and thus need to put you down. Once people start wars in dom3 they don't tend to end them unless they feel forced to by a more pressing problem, like a clear leader nation attacking them or running away with the game.

Re: MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!
 

I am currently trying this strategy in MP, entering midgame. So far I found it works great, and I'd like to add a few points that showed up already.

The nature death pretender suggested is great, but I tried taking the communion strat all the way instead with an awake lord of plenty. This gives you the gems, crystal shields, hammers and earth boots you need to get artificial communions going super fast. For me this turned out well, I was unlucky early on and would be dead by now if taking a less offensive route like sleeping lich. I'm hoping that easier access to rings and golems will help me withstand the lack of Lamia queens. we'll see.

Intercepting enemy armies with one of those alchemist communions in a province where you simultanously boost PD works great when your troops are elsewhere. Don't forget you can move your matrixes through labs and turn any group of mages into a killing machine at any time.

As cool as finding the perfect setup of is, just throwing matrixes on any mix of mages you happen to have around is often enough, especially when defending. Make sure to have some geomancers in all castles, as precision boosted gift of heavens is a great counter to stuff that your normal evocations can't beat.

If you have spare water gems, which is likely, Naiad warriors are great to beef up your frontline and get you underwater.

Strenght of Gaia+mistform is a good base protection package for your alchemist communions. The regen from SoG ends up at 5hp/turn on the slaves with your boosted nature path, enough to withstand lots of attacks. More nature magic is great as well of course.

Above all, playing such a complex nation is extremely fun!

more later, if I survive my two front war.