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

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

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*.

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.