LA Tien Chi: Barbarian Kings Strategy Guide 2.0

[DonCorazon]

vfb, thanks - that was probably a typo. Unfortunately, when I try to edit the guide now that it is in the "upgraded" forums, it seems it is now "too much text" for one post. So I will have to leave it alone until I figure out the best way to clean it up.

[Horst F. JENS]

Thank you for this excellent guide

[militarist]

Ancestor Vessels are cool for 2 reasons - stats and magical frightening arrows.

But really, getting to account their low price and the fact they are cap only, I believe you need high dominion, as you would prefer to have them a lot. Because of arrows, I believe it is better to have many non-blessed of them then small amount of blessed. For arrows bless doesn't matter, unless you choose death, but it's risky.

So, if you have high dominion.. your maximum synergy will be : good scales, high dominion, two-headed awake regenerating pretender, who spreads dominion from turn 1 and who , with high dominion (9-10) adds to points spend on this dominion a lot of sense.
So, no blesses!

[cleveland]

As DC says, any bless would really be for your mages, which you'll be getting more mileage out of. Even a lowly E4 bless will have a noticeable impact on their battlefield longevity.

But I agree the ancestor vessels are cool, probably cool enough to allow you to safely take an awake pretender.

[militarist]

Yes, it would be cool to have wyrm with 4d or 4e, both benefit sacreds and wyrm greatly..but it is hard to beat mentioned synergies.Just some people proposed different blesses here. 4E is nice.But you will have just 2 times larger empire with wyrm that without it in 10, sometimes in 20 turns.It means more money, more castles, more of any units.. It is hard to believe that +2 reinvig would beat it at any phase of the game.
In the beginning - whyrm is much better then any bless.
In midgame you are not going to put your sacreds on first line, so they never fight..just shoot. And it means you would prefer more of them then blessed..And you don't have so many mages yet that they would make weather.
In endgame you just will buy more of anything, because you have more gold, gems, armies, castles, magic, research. So +2 reinvigoration will never compensate it even here.

It is hard to imagine, what exactly should be sacrificed without loosing all synergies, to get this E4

[cleveland]

Having 20 provinces by year 2 is great. If you can hold them.

Per DC, one of TC's strengths is their perceived weakness. Nobody's going to feel too threatened by you early, unless you make a meteoric rise up the province graph. Then they'll be coming out of the woodwork to tagteam you.

Best to have an unassuming opening that you can properly defend. Give yourself a chance to let that research develop, then surprise everyone when your battle magic comes online.

[DonCorazon]

LA TC seems to have risen in profile since I wrote the guide, but at the time it was a rather unassuming nation. I endorse Cleveland's comments though. In the real world, ultra rapid expansion just means you are public enemy one and TC can expand pretty fast as it is just with its core units. Anyway, I prefer a more subtle approach than a rampaging Wyrm and I see a pretender as one of the best late game units you can have so don't much like the Wyrm tactic.

And the E bless means every one of those awesome non-capital battle mages is going to survive and keep ticking a lot longer than they would otherwise. The Ancestor Vessels are just icing on the cake, but I wouldn't take a bless for them. My thesis here was to capitalize on LA TCs awesome battle mages.

[militarist]

Interesting. I'll try my build in MP , whiсh just starts on llama and report here then

[Maerlande]

I disagree greatly with you militarist. I am on turn 79 of my LA TC game and in a near fight for the win with Jomon. It's not clear who has the advantage at the moment.

Here are some comments:

I took an imprisoned master lich with E9D9 wacky scales and Dom6. Its amazing. I don't recommend that build again but some parts of it are wonderful. You have near the best mages in LA all of which are sacred and a bunch of them excellent thugs with no gear and a bless.

For expansion, an ancestor smith leading 5 blessed ancestor vessels can take any independent province without losses. You can make one of those every turn with only Dom 5
That's 6 expansion parties by turn 6. Your initial expansion far surpasses a single awake pretender who can still only take one province a turn. I killed my first opponent by the end of year 1. It was Caelum and 5 of my AV's killed 10 of his mammoths with support troops. Until someone can field evocations, AV's are unstoppable with a bless.

You also have dirt cheap recruitable thugs under CBM. Khans have fear. With 5 heavy cavalry a Khan can take out a very large chaff army. And so what if he dies? He cost you zero gems. Or if you want, stick a demon whip on him for fun.

Ancestor smiths make great thugs with just Alt 3 and Conj 3.

The death bless is not required. However, there is nothing quite as satisfying as 20 AV's set to fire crippling 50 giants before they close. And when they close the AV's eat them. Add that to some evocations or mind burns and you have a lot of dead giants.

I sent AV's at a ratio of about 1:2 against vans. Almost lossless for me and the only Vans leaving were terribly crippled.

When my game is over I plan to write a new guide. The point of this build was massed magic with a few AV's. I never did make a lot but since I expanded fastest of everyone I just rushed people. My opponent with Jomon has gone with a turtle strategy and that may win. It's very hard to tell. However, TC is a mage bless nation IMO and any mage bless does wonders for AV's which is just gravy.

[Aleph]

Originally Posted by Maerlande

For expansion, an ancestor smith leading 5 blessed ancestor vessels can take any independent province without losses. You can make one of those every turn with only Dom 5
That's 6 expansion parties by turn 6.

Edit: Oops, I'm dumb.