[ywl]

Originally posted by Truper:
To me Tien Chi magic seems very... muddled. Examples: The Celestial Masters are best at water magic, though their nation is neither underwater nor cold-loving. Their home province does not provide an income of water gems. One of their national specials is summoning Celestial Soldiers, which requires an Air 2 Astral 1 mage, but they do not have any such mages until/unless a Celestial Master gets his random pick in air. A couple of people have mentioned their national heroes - but another of their national specials is that they get province defence for free in provinces with Order, so it seems natural to want to maximize Order which of course means they are very unlikely to see any of the heroes. In my curent test game, I'm playing them with order +3, I am on turn 19, and have yet to get an event of any kind (random events are rare), much less a hero, although I did take luck +1 partially in hope of seeing them. Celestial masters have intrinsic fire magic, and not intrinsic earth magic, but their home province does not provide a fire gem income while it does provide an earth gem income. The likelyhood that a CM has a lot of paths at 1 but only water at 2 makes them terrible site searchers.

Their most interesting troops are all expensive and hideously resource intensive, making them something of an Ulm of the East. You really want lots of order, lots of productivity and lots of administration, which is going to leave damn few design points for the pretender or anything else.

In short, I have no clue how to play these guys But I am working on it.

I took order 0 (or -1) and luck +3. I got all three before turn 30 (or 20, I've forgotten . Random increase of local defense is nice but I don't find them very useful. Spending 1 to 2 gold on each province can be easily afforded.

Thier units are not resource intensive...

Their heavy horseman is 25 gold and 28 resource. It is equivalent to Emerald Guards. They don't fight as well, but they shoot, charge and run away fast if things don't go their way. I don't mind using them as the bulk of my army.

The higher protection imperial footman is 13/18 and imperial guard is 15/21 - neither is cheap but quite affordable. The cheapest archers are 10/9 - not that much worse than Man's Longbow (12/6) while their composite bow is comparable.

Red guard is 70/42. I don't find them very impressive. But comparing to the other holy cavalries (Knight of the Chalice, Black Templar), I guess you can say that they're at least cheaper (but weak).

I think Tien-Chi regular army units have among the best combinations.

As you said, they do get funny magic choices. The way following the Water is supposingly inspired by Chinese philosophy. It's a superficial way to put it but well it's just a game. Yes, I'm Chinese .

Master of the Way give you one water and thus quickness. They also have one random pick - quite a good buy for secondary mage. I'm still thinking how to use them effectively. Frozen Heart will be a possibility but that spell is not very destructive. Celestial Master is hard to use. I don't know how yet.

The three heroes of Tien-Chi are:
Ho Hsien-Ku: 2 nature, 1 air, heal afflictions, ethereal, flight and immortal.
Lu Tung-Pi: 1 fire, 1 air, 2 water, 3 astral, 3 holy, flight, yes and also immortal.
Li Tieh-Kuai: 2 death, 2 astral, 2 air, another immortal and your Celestial Solider Summoner.