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

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Dragar

This strategy sounds awesome for SP, but I have concerns with that strategy in a MP game…

TC troops are fine for early expansion, but won’t stand up well without magic against an early bless rush. Sending 3 cap only mages out site searching early will slow research a lot and make you look very tasty if charts are on. I think hitting a few key levels of research first is critical, Alt 4 in particular for wind guide. If you’re sending out your first 3 mages, and then going with ministers in order to save money for castles, your research output in the first year will be pitiful – sure it will catch up nicely once the forts are all churning out ministers, and your gem income will be huge, but survival to that point would be very chancy

One key benefit TC has is healing on several mages. To a large extent that’s wasted with no recruitable thugs or individually powerful units, so my opinion is an SC pretender is warranted to take advantage and to deter in early to mid game rushes. A dormant nataraja or deva or other fits the bill nicely. Awake is unnecessary as you can expand ok and I don’t think an awake pretender would risk hitting you early until they have some decent equipment. Once your pretender is out, levels 3-4 in alteration, conjuration and construction will kit him out as a powerful SC – may take a few turns after he awakens, can research or site search in the meantime. With healing readily available the risk in using your pretender as an SC is a lot lower, and you are now a very uninviting target until such time as your gem income and research give you a lot more options. You can focus heavily on site searching once you have your pretender, I’d recommend only having one out site searching in the first year.

To pay for the pretender I feel Prod 3 can be done away with. It is certainly useful, but with none of your good units cap only, and the intention to build a lot of forts, production shouldn’t be limiting as long as you don’t take sloth. The production would certainly be useful, and let you recruit your troops exactly where you want them rather than have to move them around, but I can’t see it being worth the design points

The late game is where I have my big concern with TC due to low path levels on mages. The communion using matrices would certainly be powerful, but a large number of cap only mages each with those items? Opponents would be twitching to hit you with earthquakes and the like in battle, or big evoc remotes once available. And protection from good assassins (summoned and normal) would be tough. That investment in matrices I think would be better off invested in summoning thugs or path boosters. Ensure you have S3 or 4 on your pretender so you can get to the rings, at which point other path boosters become a lot easier to obtain. It shouldn’t be too hard to get a few mages in a big army to cast the buffs you need.

Ah, sorry, missed this post while I was replying to other things. I think I've addressed part of this (or at least given my opinion FWIW). I think a production-3 scale with a couple extra forts up gives you a stronger position than a combat pretender, not only does it let you get more troops where you need them, it also lets you respond much quicker to whatever your opponent is fielding. I just really don't see the threat of an early rush against this nation assuming it's played by someone willing to match the right troops to the right job. Several people have mentioned this rush-threat, and I think its based on a real underestimation of what these troops can do when properly deployed. Can you give me a specific nation and troop you feel would give TC's troops a lot of trouble supported by nothing but a couple early construction items? Wind guide is great to be sure, but what exactly is rushing you that is susceptible to your massed archers only after you add wind guide? 100 point blank x-bows is still plenty effective before wind guide...

Sure, you're going to be at a slight disadvantage in some matchups against nations really geared to immidiate, out-the-gate power (triple blessed sacreds, etc) but certainly not to the level they're gonna steamroll you before you can get any research done. Most of the best MA sacreds are vulnerable to massed archery (x-bows in particular), right? Eagle warriors, woodsmen, vans...elephants to. I can't off the top of my head think of any rush that would be really difficult to put up a good fight to with no battlemages at all.

As to the healing, I think this falls into the same category as their sacred cavalry, at least in context of the angle I'm writing this guide - taking advantage of this capability has too much of an opportunity cost, you're better off ignoring it. Don't worry about cranking out thugs, play the nation with it's strengths. You've got great anti-thug/anti-SC capabilities and great powerful armies - you can play a game perfectly effectively without having many thugs.

As to the enemy trying to kill your mages, yeah that's a pretty standard tactic that every nation will have to deal with. It's not hard to drop some armor, a booster or two, and a lucky pendant on each alchemist as you're only getting one per turn and have a solid gem income, and I tried to illustrate that your non-cap mages can also be very effective when supported by your nice troops. All in all it's usually easier said than done to kill off all the good enemy mages, even when they're 10 hp humans.

[rdonj]

In noobs vs vets 1 I had to fight triple blessed mictlan (9w/6or8n/4or6b) as la tien chi (o3/p3 at that). I was massing light cavalry, had an awake celestial general producing blockers and had fordo boggit's elite warriors. The map was pretty cramped so we both had only 1 fort. When the battle ensued, I had 140 units altogether and he had... maybe 80? With 40 jaguar warriors and some eagle warriors set to attack rear, plus a bunch of normal warriors with slings. My army was pretty well deployed for the battle, with the unfortunate error of having some of my light cavalry on one flank set to attack rear to try to kill his commander, which unfortunately ran straight into a group of jaguars which butchered them. Long story short I killed 20 of the jaguar warriors and probably about as much of his chaff infantry, losing 100 of my units. Probably about 2/3 of my archers survived, with everything else demolished. I attacked him instead of being on defense, trying to spare my ally losses as I had seen a rather unfortunate looking battle result the previous turn or so which made his chances look pretty bad if he tried to take on that army.

The turn after the demolition of my army, he ran into 30 pd and died a horrible, horrible death. Anyway, my suggestion for this is mictlan jaguar warriors.



Regarding Rain of Stones: Llamabeast demonstrated to me rather effectively that communions can survive rain of stones fairly easily if you have fog warriors/iron skin/luck cast on them.

[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*.

[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.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Baalz

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.

IIRC, if unrest gets too high (over 100?) it unlocks the bad event which can let a province revolt and become independent again.

-Max