Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral strats?
 

So far, I've been having fun with these two themes focusing on Astral magic. However, I've been mainly playing SP to figure out this game for a bit and I was curious, so far, my main strat has been to trying to expand a bit while heavy research for steller focus and then summoning lots of angelic hosts to keep raiding inside opponent's territories to tear up his infrastructure while dodging his front line armies. Is this any effective in MP or is the AI just not used to handling this sort of tactic?

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral strats?
 

I'm not familiar with the specifics of your research strategies, but remote-army spells like Horde from Hell and your Angelic Hosts are quite popular in multiplayer as well. Horde probably moreso. Raiding is an extremely effective strategy, though more difficult obviously since the AI is more predictable in its strategic movement.

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral strats?
 

Stellar Focus is not really an effective research goal as it only yields 5 pearls/turn. Not bad, of course, but not worth spending 10-20 turns of research in order to get.

Also, expanding "a bit" is not good in MP. If you only expand a little and your neighbor expands at 2-3/provs per turn... then you will very quickly begin to look like an appetizer for them. With rare exceptions you should expand as much and as fast as you can.

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral strats?
 

I was thinking, I thought in multiplayer, you don't want to look too aggressive with your expansions? Or is it more every man for himself a la Manifest Destiny?

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral strats?
 

but chances are as ryleh you wont be the fastest expander and there-fore not look too aggressive. also consider this: you expand 1 provine per turn while researching while your opponent expands 2 per turn. it dosnt sound like much but he is on average gaining twice as much income as you each turn: 1 turn he is 20-50 income ahead, 2 turns 40-100, 5 turns he should be hundreds of income ahead of you, allowing him to recruit more and probably out-research you aswell (although being very aggressive may make people team up on you)

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral str
 

In MP the aim is to get as many indy provinces as quickly as possible. A war in earlygame is normally very very risky so most players avoid it unless they have a very specific early game oriented rush build like a dual bless.

So if you can get 50% more indy provinces than your opponent(s) this is already a nice advantage. In our blitzes QM normally is the fastest expander and he wins most of the blitzes too.

Ryleh can turtle and clamhoard though so with them you can try a lategame wish strat. It is very risky though because while hoarding you are vulnerable but often you can persuade your neighbors to stay at peace with you by bribing them or giving them good trades and the like. Also while hoarding you look very innocent and like a minor threat http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
I only recommend hoarding strats with vanilla, if you play CB there hoarding is only very rarely worth it...

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral str
 

hoarding is still quite possible in cb imo but i would just suggest about 20 mind blasters min per hoarding province

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral str
 

I thought Conceptual Balance mods severely raised the cost of Clams to make it much more expensive to hoard... So while you might be able to get back your initial resources, it would take too long to noticeably help in the forging of the next clam, and the chain reaction would take too long to be viable in any normal MP game.

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral str
 

Not too severely - 15 gems per clam instead of 10. The bigger obstacle is that you now need 2 water 1 nature to make one, which means you'd need to be pretty lucky to have more than one forger out of 20 starspawns (1/32 chance of getting the 2 ?s to line up just right) - although you can add water bracelets, that means you can't start clamming until you hit Con 6. Or I guess if your pretender has a high water, he could forge a couple water robes at con 4, but that's still a lot of extra fuss for a clamming strategy.

Jotun Skrattis have pretty good odds of being clam-forgers under CB (1/4) - among independents, amber clan mages are all clam-forgers, and jade amazon sorceresses have a pretty good shot at it. Atlantis, Caelum and Tien Chi (I think) also have decent shots at clam-forgers among their recruitable mages.

Re: Tien Chi, Spring & Autumn or R\'yleh Astral str
 

yes. it is more difficult to hoard but imo it just balances it instead on just making it worthless