Speeding Up Tien Chi Spring and Autumn ?!

[peasant]

I like Tien Chi, but never tried S&A seriously until this thread. Tested in SP

Boy, is it fun! Went with nekkid Nataraja, and good scales, plus castle. Even poor provinces end up at decent income after a while, and your site searching is awesome.

The base troops are OK - esp the archers. Fire demons are good artillery, if annoying to summon. Water demons are a bit bleh, just using normal footsoldiers is usually enough of a shield while your mages do their stuff.

Flying commando CM's with rainbow armour/other reinvig items = Fun! Nataraj with 4 totem shields = hilarious support! (he's now gone SC, with lucky shield/ carbon shield/ wraith sword/ flying boots/ ring of regen/ horror helmet, but I found that the curses and arrows meant that large proportion of enemy were dead/ badly afflicted by time they hit the meat shield)

MoT5D's = every toy you want for mini SC's!

S&A heroes, with luck scale +1/2 turn up. The priestess to patch up the nataraj, the leper to cause havoc, and fly wisk guy to be an uber CM. Immortals all...

So, leave S&A as it is. It may not be uber, but I found myself laughing when playing it.

Loss of the "economy destroyer" stealth unit is a pain, but that only really works to shut down AI anyway, as players patrol.

[Boron]

thnx rabe but you left out my main question
i wanted to know how you get in midgame additional "highclass" sc's with your naked nataraja strat

my strategy has it's issues as you have proven

but i am really curious how you get higher summons midgame :

heros included with your naked nataraja you can get maximum the following paths :

A3(1/64probability with cm)
E2(1/8 probability with MoT5E)
W4 (1/64 probability with cm , w3 with 1/8 cm thats easy and enough for sea kings court )
F3 ( again 1/64 with cm )
S3 ( hero lu tung pin )
N2 ( 1/8 MoT5E , hero ho hsien-ku )
B2 ( 1/64 probability on cm )
D2 ( 1/64 probability cm , hero li tie kuai )

so you seem quite limited midgame on firbolgs / sea trolls because most path increasing items require path 3 to forge .
Nature 2 is enough for thistle mace . thats enough for firbolgs .

with lamia queens you can forge death items then and get access to e.g. demilichs + wraithlords .
lucky lamia queens (2 random sorceries ) can summon bane lords without path increase .

so you are quite dependent on nature magic imho . you have no starting nature gem income so you need luck and find nature sites .

hmm ok with much luck you get your d2 hero early he can forge for 10 deathgems then a +1 deathstaff or wraith swords .
but even with luck 3 you get only with 3% probability a hero each turn iirc .
because you have 3 heros it can take a pretty long time to get him .
empowering a death 1 mage to d2 costs 30 deathgems iirc so not cheap too .

so the problem i have with your strat :
you need much luck with random paths or getting heros for the much needed death summons / items .

not so serious but similiar to get into nature .

tien chi s&a is hard .
my attempt is not good because no money .
but with your attempt you have to sacrifice almost all points for building your economy scales and still have only slightly higher income than any other nation with complete flat scales .
any nation with order 3 and perhaps growth 3 has much higher income than you as tien chi s&a .

so imho as hard as you try doesn't prevent you from beeing one of the easier targets early - midgame if you don't have much luck .

[Agrajag]

"but even with luck 3 you get only with 3% probability a hero each turn iirc ."
IIRC, the chances of a national hero are 3% without any luck scales, +1% for every luck scale and -1% for every misfortune one, so with luck+3 its 6% per turn.
Still, after 10 turns, that's just [1 - (0.94)^10]% = 46.1384885% that any hero will turn up after 10 turns.
For 30 turns its 84.3744393%, and if you aim for only one of them, thats really unreliable...
EDIT: Just to make myself clear, that's not exactly the % of getting a hero because you are limited to 3 heroes, you have 84% that 1-30 heroes will show up, and since you only have 3 heroes available, thats not precise, but still pretty close to the actual odds.
And still unreliable as a strat...

[ August 04, 2004, 13:21: Message edited by: Agrajag ]

[Arralen]

I'm pondering for ages now how to make S&A start faster, and today it struck me like a carrier

Most nations have a spy/scout from start, but S&A doesn't. Being a slow starter, it has to look out for weak indies. That means either wasting a turn on buying a scout, or wsting more turns by attacking into the wrong direction on the 3rd or 4th turn..

Most nations start with their standard, if not their best infantry. S&A starts with a bunch of pike footmen without any armor to speak of. Ressource are most likely low, so buying a decent sized squad of heavy inf needs 5 turns or more...

Than there's no cheap non-magic commander available, so massing medium inf and archers isn't possible, too.

Sadly, all those things cannot be corrected AFAIK, as it would mean modding things special to the theme, and you can't do that, do you?

[Saber Cherry]

AFAIK, themes still cannot be modded, which is why I didn't add a "Third Tier" to BF Ulm, capable of summoning Vampire Counts. You can still "scout" by attacking with a commander set to retreat, but...

[Scott Hebert]

Cherry, couldn't you mod BF Ulm's units so that the First Tier/Second Tier/Fortuneteller turn into First Tier (spy), Second Tier (bad event-avoider)/Third Tier (Count Summoner)?

As for TC S&A... reduce the cost of their mages to a reasonable level, and they'd do better.

[Arralen]

Scott Hebert said:
As for TC S&A... reduce the cost of their mages to a reasonable level, and they'd do better.

Their mages are very reasonable priced, they're among the most versatile mages in the game.

And price isn't an issue - you can only buy 1/turn anyway at start.

The problem is - you would need a scout and a 2nd "normal" commander as well, which costs you 2 turns of buying mages. And you need some time for the mages to get really useful (research, gems).

By that time, you have build some HI as well. Sadly, you're 4 turns behind at that point.


But the idea about switching to troops (numbers) could work, I'll have to test that ...