Help Design my EA TC Setup?.(CBM 1.71)

[rabelais]

I decided to get back into MP after a two year absence and signed up for a nation I remembered incorrectly.


Essentially I thought I was getting MA's troops and affliction repair with EA's mages and forgot about the whole spring thing on EA's sacreds.

Other than CBM the only other relevant parameter is magic sites are going to be 60, presumably to help compensate for the lack of hammers.


So my initial plan was to get an a9-10 bless off the lord of sky (awakening to be decided later) have decent scales and well that's the problem really I don't have astral or death in any quantity.

Oh, the other problem is I don't have access to the a4 lord of the sky and cant find a cheap a9. I guess the closest I can come would be an a9e4 titan (when did these stop being a3?) but it really isn't cheap. the e4 is fine for my sacred mages, but I still don't have a plan. The map is asia twist, so I was thinking something that can go in the water (sacred statue, wyrm) might be handy, but I'm used to being such a scales whore that I will probably be out before it frees itself.

I also notice composite bows are range 30 now. I was playing sauromantia in SP and noticed their bows are range 35 with nonblockable poison. This makes me even less happy about the difficulty with the bless. In vanilla shortbows are 30 composite are 35 and longbows 40. Why was this done?

Nevermind it doesn't matter. Though in my opinion Mot5E should get a 10% extra path chance, while I'm whining about my nation, which I'm sure is fine, I just don't have the expertise.

Someone more versed in modern MP help me with a plan please?

Thanks,

Rabe

[Warhammer]

I would say take W9 for quickness, shorten the time they are exposed to the arrows, and the extra attacks don't hurt either. Take luck, hope you get the man with the iron crutch so you can bootstrap into death. With astral you have some, but you are not an astral power. But, if astral powers are not in the game, you can fill that position.

[LDiCesare]

A9 looks like a real waste. W9 or S9, or W9S9 are much better. D9,F9,E4+,N4+ are also interesting, but Air is definitely not.

A9 will only help your warriors of the 5 elements if you send them alone against archers, and maybe a little bit your demons of heavenly fires. W9 will help your demons of heavenly waters and celestial soldiers. S9,E4+ will help all, including your mages. N4+ will help your demons and celestial soldiers.

I never have had problems with archers when playing EA TC. Just don't send your warriors of the 5 elements against archers. You have tons of tower-shield equipped troops to suck arrow fire, so the Wot5E should never be in any danger of these, so an air bless is a total waste of points in my opinion.
Of course, if you back your warriors with your own archers, you may get some collateral damage. There's an easy solution to that: Don't do it, or use aim.

[rabelais]

I was mostly interested in the a9 bless because it gave my Wot5E 125% lightning protection whick witha strong air pretender could be fun. Plus once they expected nothing but lightning I could change it up. I'm not trying to be a superweenie optimizer, I just want some kind of interesting synergy.

But I realize the problem with EA TC isn't pretenders (even though these are largely meh and bad for blesses) but that their single recruitable archer is 14 resources and is still totally useless in melee and hasn't enough protection(9)to survive an arrow fusillade.

I'll figure something out I'm sure, but except for map move 2 these are terrible units (and to paraphrase woody allen) you can recruit so few of them. are there worse national archers in EA? Make me feel better, tell me about them.

I thought about the water bless, but the only water 2 pretender I get just got nerfed in 1.7 and I don't know enough about their summons to judge if it is worth the points. Is there an updated summoned creature or national spell resource somewhere?



Thanks for all replies.

[LDiCesare]

I don't know if there were changes in latest CBM to the summons, but basically demons of heavenly rivers are sacred berserkers who kick ***, and demons of heavenly fire are extremely powerful flying fireball throwers that your flying celestial masters can move along the map as they like.
Planning a 125% shock resistance is a nice idea, but that won't be very helpful since that will only help capital-only commanders.

Regarding archers, TC archers are expensive, but their bows are composite bow, so I would say they are inferior to Sauromatians and Kailasa (but the latter are expensive in gold). Maybe Yomi's aka-oni if you see them as firethrowers. Otherwise, they are rather better than average.
Ulm has warrior maidens: short bow/prot 11 for 11 res or prot 4 for 4 resources.
Sauromatia has composite bow/prot 4 for 7 resources, and poison archers.
TC has prot 9 composite bow for 14 resources. Plus a good helmet.
Caelum has short bow plus prot 5 or 7 for 5 or 9 resources.
Kailasa has 9 gold/3 resources prot 1 shortbows and 20 gold/10 resources prot 3 9 precision longbows plus sacred longbowmen.
Yomi has 9 gold/2 resources prot 2 shortbows.

Composite bows are precision 1, have a range of 30, deal 12 damage. They are far better than any other bow in this era, except for poison bows and sacred Kailasa bowmen. The ape longbows are twice as expensive and have crap precision (9 vs 10+1).
Overall, I'd say TC archers are not very massable but are the best in the era.

[rdonj]

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn

I would say that probably any normal shortbow archer is worse, because shortbows don't really do damage to much. Composite bows at least do pack some punch, even if they are harder to mass.

[Rytek]

Well, If you wanted to try your A9 blessing you could try A dormant Jade Emperor. A9,W4,S5 Dom 7. This puts you 1 scale back. I recomment O3,S3,D2L3,D2
This will give you your A9 bless, which will give you your lightning immune sacreds. In any mid game this trick should work well. The S5 can get you thru the late game. Even without a hammer, TC screams for a way to make rings of Wizardry and rings of Sorcery and you should use your S gems for this purpose.

Early game you may struggle a bit, but with some creative scripting your sacreds should be just fine. This also gives you a Titan chasis coming to your defense on begining of the 2nd year. If you research straight to Alt 3, you have some good buffs at your disposal. Body ethereal/personal luck/mistform/quickness.
And then of course you want your evocs. Shockwave, etc.

One thing to try is your flying capitol mages can use this script:
Blessing/ironskin/lighting resist/(mistform/body ethereal/personal luck) not all of the last 3 but the appropriate ones. you can put them up front in the fight and they can be pretty hardy shockwave/orblightning spammers.

[rabelais]

Thank you for your replies, they have all been very helpful.

W/r/t the last suggested bless... I can't do it. a9s4(5)W4 would obliterate my scales. my sacreds are initially cap only and they suck half the year. Plus it doesn't help them in combat that much. Feh. I'd rather go with the titan and take my chances that I can bootstrap something endgame. Or maybe just a cheap dormant/imprisoned sacred statue with mad scales?

I'm glad you all think my archers are fabulous, but I would trade for something naked with shortbows very happily, as long as they were mapmove 2.

anyone know the exact paths on the nature mage +extras I get fairly far down the Conj tree? still looking for death 2 as a fallback.

also I have been prophetizing my scout so I can overtax/patrol with my noble first turn in my test games. Bad idea? I agree the noble has a little thug potential, but in a 19 nation game there wont be too many HoF slots available. seems like a waste when what I really want is an extra castle to pump out more research/troops.

Particularly if I take a level 9 bless.

Also which do you like for points heat 1 or cold 1? cold one is more likely to get negated early by summer. but one of my sacred demons may have heat power. Wish I knew whether niefel on Hinnom would be rushing me....

Thanks again. learning quite a bit.

[Warhammer]

Keep in mind, TC is one of the prime candidates for going with Turmoil 3. There is no real need for Order with them. I would say luck is a huge plus, production is nice, but not essential. I would try and get T3G1L3M1

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

I don't know if there were changes in latest CBM to the summons, but basically demons of heavenly rivers are sacred berserkers who kick ***, and demons of heavenly fire are extremely powerful flying fireball throwers that your flying celestial masters can move along the map as they like.

Don't the demons of heavenly fires have 0 prot? Everytime I used them, they dropped like flies. Or are they supposed to sit back like archers?