EA T'ien Chi

[Crafty]

Megablob, jutetrea I don't want to try a rainbow pretender cos I already did so in my first game with C'Tis where I did a blessed strategy (multiple paths). Didn't know what to do besides using divine bless and lots of blessed units and running up the construction tree to craft items for my lizard king prophet and later enchantment cos I wanted gift of health and thesis's blessing to go kill the silly R'yth.

Now I read it isn't considered a good strategy, but i managed to win and it's only SP right?

I read the AI can't really handle SC strategies , so if my strategy is slightly sub-optimal it doesn't hurt I hope.

Are nationals spell generally stronger than the normal ones? The last time I totally ignored them. Should I make a special effort to get them and cast them?

W9 Dragon looks interesting...

[Shovah32]

National spells can be very strong(read umbrals and seraphs) but most are there for flavour or to add something to a nation(tien chi gets some sacreds who can really take and dish out damage that go well with their fragile sacred warriors).
If you give your W9 Dragon a ring of regen and a pendant of luck he will be a killing machine. You have some great infantry(low resource tower shields, composite bows and good damage sacreds). Site search early and often with both manual(flying CMs) and remote(you have alot of level 2's) searching and use these gems both to outfit thugs and SCs(sleepers and elemental royalty are nice) and to forge boosters(get a wing of wizardry and a staff of elemental mastery on a CM, theres not much he cant forge ) and maybe get up globals; forge of the ancients in particular is very powerful for EA tien chi's versatile mages.

Also make good, sorry, i mean great use of battle magic. You have acid spells, magma spells aswell as possible clouds(sulphur/freezing are good early against the glamour nations) and other elemental spells such as falling fires/frost, bladewind and thunder strike. Your versatile(and flying if using CMs) mages with boosters, spell boosters and gems if neccesary can really put the hurt on your enemy and help defend you early on along with your dragon(in a mp game which i thought was lost i beat a double blessed lankan army almost purely with battlemagic).

[Gandalf Parker]

National spells offer thematic flavor to a nation. It can be powerful but I dont think that is the original purpose of them.

[Rytek]

If you want a SC for SP try an awake Cyclops with a dominion of 9. Forge him a blacksteel shield and any kind of weapon and he can route most level 9 indies. The exception being undead who will fatigue you to death and watch for indies with sleep vines/ sleep spell.

Add a robe of etherealness, lucky pendant at const level 2.

You may want to consider going earth 4/ nature 4. The computer opponents dont really contest globals and if your Cyclops gets some afflictions you can concentrate on getting gift of health up which is easy enough with a thistle mace. The regen is bless is nice on your summoned sacreds later on.

[Shovah32]

E4N4 is a handy bless for mages(minor reinvig, can put a shroud of the battle-saint on important diseased mages) and gives you access to a vew nice globals like gift of health and the awesome forge of the ancients. His protection, however, will be a good bit lower than the E9 varient(although E9N4 is VERY nice and can also give your mages and celestial soldiers a powerful bless).

My favourite thing about EA tien chi is its versatility both magically and in how you play them. With versatile mages capable of forging boosters, good sacreds both recruitable and summonable and a good national army they can be played almost any way you can imagine and with their versatile magic and variety of useful troops they have alot of in-game versatility aswell.

[Crafty]

>You may want to consider going earth 4/ nature 4. The computer opponents dont really contest globals and if your Cyclops gets some afflictions you can concentrate on getting gift of health up which is easy enough with a thistle mace. The regen is bless is nice on your summoned sacreds later on

Game 1 : Tried a W9 Dragon, first battle first turn got afflication (got hit with that vine spell a few times, but still won but got hit a few damage)!!! I don't seem to be able to cure that, or cast gift of life.. So restart

Game 2 : Tried that pretender that reduces bad luck + negative luck scales, got stuck in a map where i was on 2 land surrounded by sea and r'yleah... bah... restart , i want to face someone else.

Game 3 : Tried a great druid with paths in Astral 4, Air 4 and Fire 3 plus magic scales. Tried to research early for flaming arrow and Wind guide. Recruited lots of Celestial Masters for research and then Master of the Five Elements (for NN and EE and site search spell casting)

On hindsight, should have done Thaumaturgy to level 2 first for site search spells, since i need the gems.

Meanwhile the archers alone seem strong enough to kill the independies without much losses.

Quite lucky with search site spells, managed to get quite a bit of gems rolling in...

This game seemed to be working until i got my head handed to me, trying to beat the AI when I invaded his 110 army with my 80 archers + Pretender casting flaming arrow.

Oops..

This game is hard... I guess because there are so many spells, it's hard to get a sense what the right researching strategy is...

[llamabeast]

There is lots to learn, but it sounds like you have the right kind of idea. Despite the fact that there are loads of spells, it's often a good idea to focus a strategy on a particular one or two - Flaming Arrows is an excellent example of a spell to base an early strategy around.

It takes a bit of practise to know which spells are good and worth concentrating on though.