More Tien Chi !

[TheSelfishGene]

Tien Chi vanilla can do alright in the early game if you can stomach taking some Productivity scales. Like Arco or Pythium they need time to build an effective standard army, and time is (it seems) the commodity in shortest supply in Dom2. A Crossbow front screened by Imperial Spearmen does quite well against basically everything - Composite Bowmen only work better against Barbs and Blowpipe provinces. If you can throw in some of their great cheap cavalry as a flanking force. Build the cheaper Pikemen if your expecting a Knight province to soak up the lances (although militia, if available, work even better obviously).

I like to take a Dragon with Tien Chi, as its somewhat thematic and gives you a way to knock out Indies reliably in the early game as well as be able to cast the occasional global, and not too expensive; and Tien Chi are the only other nation that has a chance of getting a healer naturally so you need not lose the casting ability of the Dragon permanently to bad luck. Natas are better overall but take longer (imo) to get up to speed. Fire Dragons can be taking Indies from the moment they research Fire Shield.