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

[Baalz]

I can't imagine how you'd play this nation with sloth-3 Wraithlord, or what you'd spend those points on that would give you a better payout. Production scales buy you:

A much faster initial expansion than you would have on the back of an expansion pretender and few troops.

A stronger hand in an early war/rush than a combat pretender.

Extra income, +18% compared to sloth-3. The gold compounds with the faster expansion, giving you not just more troops but more castles and more research.

Ability to adjust your troop mix much quicker. This is very important because as you point out going in just one direction with TC's troops leaves you very vulnerable to a counter. All of TC's troops are not very hard to counter resoundingly if used by themselves in a predictable manner (ie mass archers and march around waiting for your enemy to do something about it). MA TC has so many great options other than archers I think I need to do an addendum to the guide since I think I give the impression that you have to focus on massing archers here.

You've got glaives - light, medium and heavy depending on what you need. They deal 20 damage before you drop a single buff and scream to have strength of giants, quickness, weapons of sharpness, touch of madness, mass flight (or haste if they're dropping storm) for some chop-a-matic-4000 action - particularly combined with the armor destruction you're already been emphasizing. Imagine how many glaives you can field in a turn or two's notice at 9 gold and 11 resources out of several castes with production-3 scales and imagine those quickened, hasted/flying dudes wrapping all the way around a formation of elite enemies.

You've got light pikes - only 8 gold and 9 resources. They do a decent amount of damage as well while having a better attack and a length of 6 which will repel average morale troops fairly well. Combine with panic and deploy against the right type of enemies fighting out of dominion (no archers, lighter armored) and these can be very cost effective troops. Great for repelling light cavalry/flyers trying to flank to your archers (pikes are longer than lances).

You've got light, medium, heavy, and elite tower shield infantry every bit as good as the well respected Romanesque infantry. 15 defense + 14 production before you drop a buff along with falchion and 12 attack skill, there are certainly worse troops to mass. Who cares if your enemy deploys archer screens if they mostly end up massed up against your blockers for a dozen turns? Heck, these guys are perfectly viable to use with no archers at all once you drop a couple buffs on them. Or just use them as blockers for your heavy duty magical artillery.

You've got some of the best heavy cavalry in the game along with extremely capable switch hitter cavalry which can immediately switch to a flanking charge if archery isn't effective or just punch a hole straight through the center. Their protection of 14 climbs into the 20s with legions of steel and wooden warriors, which along with their 15 defense bringing them on par with most other elite cavalry while being significantly cheaper (and thus outnumbering, say Black Knights or Knights of Avalon by 2 or 3 to 1). Haste doesn't help with your first strike damage, but it does let you blaze across the battlefield amazingly fast for flanking.

Heck, with a well placed castle and production scales you can crank out 30-50+ light horsemen in a turn *per castle*, which means you're counting your first strike lances by the hundreds. When your enemy shows up with his clever archer counters and instead encounters two hundred charging cavalry after you've just dropped iron bane trust me, you'll believe in the flexibility of TC with production-3 scales.

[WraithLord]

Thank you for the elaborate and convincing response

I could be argumentative and say things like - "put more magic on your pretender", "get a minor bless", "take an awake SC with great scales apart from sloth", "Crank up many castles so sloth wouldn't prevent you from mass recruiting". Instead of saying any such things I think I'll take your excellent advise and just setup two SP games - one that will follow your advise to the letter and a 2nd that would dump those sloth points on something else (I'll try to come up with something good). I suspect it is very likely that the first game will look up much better - Regardless, this is the first nation that I ever consider taking prod-3 a valid choice. Up until now I have never taken anything other than sloth 3, be it SP or MP. I thank you for helping me see the good side of the production scale.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Thank you for the elaborate and convincing response

I could be argumentative and say things like - "put more magic on your pretender", "get a minor bless", "take an awake SC with great scales apart from sloth", "Crank up many castles so sloth wouldn't prevent you from mass recruiting". Instead of saying any such things I think I'll take your excellent advise and just setup two SP games - one that will follow your advise to the letter and a 2nd that would dump those sloth points on something else (I'll try to come up with something good). I suspect it is very likely that the first game will look up much better - Regardless, this is the first nation that I ever consider taking prod-3 a valid choice. Up until now I have never taken anything other than sloth 3, be it SP or MP. I thank you for helping me see the good side of the production scale.

Cool, let us know how it goes. A couple suggestions:

As much as possible you should match your troops vs enemy troops even during initial indie expansion. Send composite bows vs barbarians, lizards, tribal archers, light infantry, etc. Send Imperial Horsemen or mixed infantry (glaives & tower shields) against heavier infantry and against strong indies (heavy cav farmlands, etc.) send critical mass of Imperial Cavalry (with some tower shield chaff to catch lances for the real big indie masses). You can really have a pretty good expansion, but you'll have a hard time doing it efficiently with homogeneous expansion groups.

Once you've got 3-4 good expansion parties (depending on how many indie territories you expect to be able to take) stop recruiting anything other than ministers of magic for a few turns. The gold will pile up incredibly fast allowing you to plop up around a fort per turn.

If you're comparing my suggested dormant master lich, once he wakes up send him out site searching, specifically to the territories you've put up castles. This is a great way to get at least a minimal dominion to push your production scales without building many temples.

Speaking of which, make sure you push your fabulous order 3/production 3 scales to every province you own, temples pay for themselves pretty fast if they're keeping your territories in dominion.