A few random questions re: MA TC

[Rytek]

Usually the large army stacks the computer puts together are horrible morale due to all the starvation. This is doubly so with the Spiders of Machaka because they are large and eat more supplies. Try using large groups of mages casting Panic to force a retreat. Try to do it in an area where you can cut off its retreat paths and the large armies start to disapear.

Pd is usefull against the AI. Start recruiting indep commanders everywhere. Merge them with your armies and have small blocks of 5-10 shield infantry guarding them while your commanders use HoldX5 or you can give them bows and have them fire closest. Have 3 or 4 of these blocks spread across your front. Behind your front should be your archers. The horse archers are probably not the most efficient vs the AI. Better to make the cheapest archers to have more of them. The AI will never target them as long as something is closer.

Spiders actually have a hard time killing because of their low damage and big size. Crushers (construction) and Wood Golems make good blockers and will pile up spiders around them.

[Stryke11]

Thanks!

All those Nature 2 guys an I never thought to cast panic.

I restarted with the General of the East pretender and just gave up on Lamia Queens or diversity and just gave him a ton of air and earth. First I had him make a dwarven hammer for himself, then a few other guys, and now he's pumping out staffs of elemental mastery for all the alchemists. It's cheap and I can't think of any other units in the game that would benefit from it more.

Still haven't played around with communions because a) it's complicated and b) I have micro problems in that it's hard to get all the right people together (ministers with the same random, etc).

Really, even now with a more successful game (order 3 prod 3 this time, and no cold, I had my pretender imprisoned) the only "grown up" strategy I'm using is having a scout travel with my armies to feed air gems one at a time to my 2A Alkies or Celestial Masters to cast wind guide. With the help of my elemental staffs I have some 3F Alkies and either by empowerment or the forge spell I'm going to get flaming helmets for them so I can start casting fire arrows. Crystal shields is another option. If Celestial Masters don't get earth randoms then I can use the geomancers to make them with some boosts. It's SP so I don't have to be too efficient.

[Jarkko]

Regarding Machaka: Slow the spiders down. Especially Prison of Fire and Quagmire, but also False Fetters, Encase in Ice, Earth Meld and Storm of Thorns (if you've made it that high in Evo) are the things to stop the spiders. Your missile troops and evocations will make short work of spiders as long as they do not get into contact with you.

MA TC has *beautiful* paths for some amazing combat magic. The Acid thingies, Magma thingies and Gifts from Heaven, you have all those at use.

As an example, lets take a situation where you have no items and very limited gold at use. Recruit five Imperial Geomancers. Script the four Geomancers highest on the list with Communion Slave, Hold, Body Ethereal, Gifts from Heaven x 2, Spells. The geomancer lowest on the list is scripted, Communion Master, Power of the Spheres, Summon Earth Power, Body Ethereal, Personal Luck, Spells. Each of the slave geomancers are thus boosted to E3S2, while the master is E5S4. Each Geomancer will get off about two GfH before they pass out, and that should be enough unless you are facing a massive enemy army (and then you wouldn't just field five Geomancers, would you ).

Another example. You mentioned you have lots of Imperial Alchemists and lots of hammers at use. You can craft a bunch of Slave Matrixes and a Crystal Matrixes, as well as a Crystal Shield. Give any mages high on the commander list Slave Matrixes and an Imperial Alchemist low on the list the Crystal Matrix and Crystal Shield. When this bunch enters combat, they all are in an instant communion with Power of the Spheres in effect; that is to say all of the mages with a Slave Matrix start with +1 to the magic paths without any fatigue. Now the communion slaves are scripted with whatever you want them to do, while the Communion master does the buffing (Summon Earth Power, Summon Phoenix Power, Mistform, Eagle Eyes or Wind Guide (if you have large enough communion so that the communion slaves do not pass out by the fatigue caused by the Wind Guide), Strength of Gaia etc. Notice that you can add in more slaves (Geomancers) who are scripted with Communion Slave, Holdx4, Stay behind troops, they will help to spread out the fatigue from the Communion masters spells so that the Imperial Alchemists won't get too much fatigue from the buffs. If you add in more communion slaves this way, you should consider handing out more Crystal Matrixes to get more Communion masters, to speed up the buffing. Anyway, you should end up with Imperial Alchemists with effective spells elemental levels at four (and more if you handed out to them items to buff their spells levels; water bracelets, earth boots etc). Nothing in the world the AI will be able to throw against you will be able to handle the storm of Flaming Arrows, varios Acid and Magma spells, Falling Fire and Frost, while your effectively Nature 5 mages take care of the army wide buffs (Relief, Mass Protection, Mass Regeneration, etc).

[Amorphous]

Reading guides here on the boards is a very good way to learn, but you need to keep in mind that in some ways SP and MP differ a lot. In SP there are a lot of things you do not need to worry about from the AI (like effective SCs and good mage usage), but on the other hand some MP techniques do not work that well (like light raiding thugs).

As you have noticed the AI recruits a lot of troops, so you need to be able to scale up whatever you do. Now, TC has a lot of good mages and that is what you should concentrate on. Your troops are there to defend them and mop up the pieces of the enemy once the mages are done. Buy and buff your troops accordingly. Buffs like Wooden Warriors and Legions of Steel make even the low cost, low resource troops adequate defenders and that with relatively low encumbrance. That last is important, because in drawn out battles fatigue is a killer. Also it saves you a lot of money.

Same really goes for your glaive troops, but here it is about offence. They are not there to defend, so go with the cheap ones and buff them with Strength of Giants (and Weapons of Sharpness when you have it) for some extra punch.

Then you can start helping your troops by de-buffing their opponents. Consider Curse of Stones here, tired troops are easier to hit and have trouble hitting you.

As Jarkko said, slowing the Machakan spiders down is important as it gives your mages, bow- and crossbowmen time to finish them off. Jarkko gave a number of good suggestion and you should look through the spell list to find out what suits you and your mages. You do not always need powerful mages to get the job done - Swarm is e.g. a great spell for slowing down armies and the caster only needs to have N1.

This brings me to my next point which is the importance of not just using your top mages. You can only hire one Imperial Alchemist or Celestial Master per turn, which is far from enough when fighting multi-front wars against the AI. There are plenty of ways to use your non-capital mages, even if they do not have (enough) magic paths especially suitable to the situation at hand.

To take an example the Master of Ways always has a water pick, which means he can cast quicken self. If his other pick is not of any use in the current fight, hand out an Ice Pebble Staff. A couple of quickened Master of Ways with Ice Pebble Staffs can freeze a number of enemy squares very quickly.

Communions are great, but if you have trouble bringing it together there are plenty of things you can do with S1 casters without it. Have a higher level astral mage cast Light of the Northern Star. Your S1 casters are now S2, which gives them a lot of options. Against the AI hordes you could consider Stellar Cascades. It is a S2 spell with decent range, good area coverage and relatively cheap fatigue-wise. It does AP stun damage, so a number of mages spamming this will quickly make large swaths of the enemy troops very easy to hit and crit, if not pass out completely.

When you use decent numbers of cheap mages, a lot of spells that seem to weak on their own start to look very enticing.

[Stryke11]

Thanks to everyone for the help. It's amazing how you can come up with these strategies that are so elegant and seem so simple to read them and yet I'd be flailing around forever and never think of them.

Final question: Are their any thug chassis (aside from the generic ones every nation gets) that people have used for TC? Are the Prince Generals any good? Or the fox summon? I didn't purposely select a bless but just from my paths I do have reinvig +3 and air shield 30%-ish and the PGs and the summons are sacred. The spring power thing seems cool but it's only good 1/4 of the time and I'm not even sure when the spring is in the game.