EA T'ien Chi

[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.

[SelfishGene]

EA Tien Chi almost has to go 3 Turmoil, 3 Luck, and a 9-Water Pretender. Reasons?

Turmoil/Luck nets you tons of free gems (probably close to an average of 10/turn over the length of the game.) Combine with Tien Chis awesome magical versatility, and you have a ton of options. Tien Chi has great national troops, but these units are limited in the long run.

9W blessed Sacred Warriors are excellent units, useful against almost every nation, and are cheap to buy and maintain. After turn 3, you can start expanding easily with 20 of these guys and a 9W bless without fear.

The only problem Tien Chi has is in the late game; water is (imo) kind of a dead-end path, although it is always nice to have to go into the oceans. You are going to end up with tons of earth and nature and death gems you have no obvious use for, and it's hard for Tien Chi (or really expensive) to turn that versitility into late game power. Thats where you get...

Your three immortal heroes. Each one offers an huge improvement to you magical versatility (3S, 2D, healing). I'd say you almost NEED the man with the iron crutch.

[Shovah32]

Are you sending your W9 Dragon in to attack? You should get him to hold or fire for a few turns to soften up the front and then attack rear/archers.

[Crafty]

Ah... that's the key...

[Crafty]

>EA Tien Chi almost has to go 3 Turmoil, 3 Luck,

I tried this. Very very nice. Got tons of gold early game (1000 Gold on turn 2!) plus lots of gems, i almost never ran out of gold thanks to these kinds of events... (maybe I was very very lucky?? lol).

I combined it with an awake Ghost king domain 6, water 4 and death 4 i think.

Funny, the archers weren't that powerful in this game even with wind guide, they kept routing against the AI...

In the end it was the Ghost king SC, armed with various stuff (to boast defense and protection) that won pretty much every battle. Not that the GhostKing killed a lot, just that the combination of luck, twist fate, mirror image plus high domain (Hitpoint raised from 35 to 77 due to domain!!!),meant it was hardly damaged, so eventually the enemy just routed after me killing maybe 3-5 units. (due to fear??)

First few times I tried this unkillable SC was a failure, I sent the Ghost king out with some archers and milita, and they just routed quickly, and I assume cos the archers and milita routed, the pretender eventually routed too??? Is the pretender more likely to rout, if the other units rout?

But when i just send the pretender alone he wins!! weird.

In the end i pretty much pushed him back to 1-2 provinces with ghostking plus the rest of the army cutting off his retreat.. but i wanted to prolong the game to see what spells there were (plus I'm nervous about his main fortress), but I made the mistake of building tons of temples and won by domain...

Also I didn't get any free ghosts except once in the capital, despite the fact that a lot of provinces had high domains of 5+

Gots the 3 immortal heroes too. Not too impressed, just kept sendin them out to die, they are immortal in my domiain right?? Maybe I'm using them wrong...

PS I'm playing a small map, that's why the game usually ends pretty quick. once i managed to push the AI back and hold the line with me owning 10 provinces or so.

[MaxWilson]

Yes, once 75% of the forces are dead everybody routs, and I'm about 80% sure that routed forces count as "dead" for that calculation.

-Max

[Crafty]

Thank game, a duel blessed F9/W9 Helheim ...