Speeding Up Tien Chi Spring and Autumn ?!

[Arralen]

I'm looking into possibilities to strenghten S&A and make it a tad faster to start, and maybe reduce the MM a bit

So far, I have identified the following problems:

1) you start with Turmoil-1, but your better mages are rather expensive

2) your only standard commander is a chariot, leader/gold ratio is even worse, and they tend to get swarmed as soon as they start to trample the enemy. Even worse, one of T'Cs strength are archers and Fire Demons: Hits on any chariot moving through enemies ranks 100% guaranteed.

3) Heavenly Demons are a great asset, but cost too much mage-time, especially the Fire Demons which need either a Celestial Master or a very lucky Master Of The Way with fire-1 from random ..

4) Low-Level Astral Skills makes your mages Duel-fodder. Again you have to hope for a lucky draw on a Master Of Five Elements to get somewhat decent battle magic.

5) .. all those "lucky draws" mean you are spending time/turns and gold on buying mages, of which only 1/5 or so are really usable. And those are always the Last to show up.

6) While the starting gem income from the Sping and Autumn Gate is quite nice (1 fire, 2 water, 1 astral, 1 death), it's barely enough to let you summon 1 Demon/turn, and 15 spirits/4 turns (which need exactly 1 fight to get whacked). Thus you'll start conquering the world at turn 4 with 15 spirits and 2 river/fire demons each .. even when boosted with all the archers and medium inf you can afford it's just enough against Lvl-7 indies.


And there isn't much one can do about it:

• Turmoil-1 and Magic-1 is thematic in a very literal sense.
• Spell modding isn't there, so it's impossible to change the spells to summon 2 or more demons. No possible MM reduction and making them cheaper mage-time-wise.
• Gold needs boost income, but is very much fixed due to turmoil.

Only after some time it dawned to me, that simplest solution would be to add a site to the T'C starting prov which gives additional fire gems, which could either be used for a)speeding up the summoning, b) forging some items or c) conVersion to gold.

Looking through the list I found the Alchemists Guild, which seems to fit quite nice (1 earth, 1 fire). Even the alchemists IMHO is "in theme" for the feudal S&A, with magic, superstition and turmoil all across the land.

What do you think - would S&A be over-powered this way ?