MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!

[ExHeretic]

First i want to thank Baalz for another great guide All of ur guides are just awesome...

Second i want to say that im sorry for my ****ty english...

I wanted to add some of my own thoughts in to the conversation. Somethings i see little difrently then Baalz but on those points im probaply wrong becouse Baalz is lightyers ahead of me in the game skills

I play vanilla version of the game so that changes some things... I usually play heads up and that changes other things in the game =P In my opinion dominions is best when played heads up on map whit 50-80 provinces. In that kind of games there is no bad starting locations or gangin up on opponents or other that kind of things... Luck matters less and tactics and strategies decide the game... Because of this my strategies are geared more towards early and mid game.

Scales
I go to war whit tien using production 3. The strategic flexibility this gives u is critical and in early game there is never too many arrows in the sky... Order 3 is another must have. There is never enought money in dominions. I usually take cold 1 it gives bit problems for opponents whit coldblood and is almost free points. I like to take 1 or 2 growth because its so painfull to loose those great cap only mages to old age. Misfortune is not nice but its necessary for the points it gives. I take only 2 if i can afford it. Magic 1 is must have because u really need that researts whit tien and magic 3 is too expencive to get whit those other high scales.

Pretender
Whit those scales i dont have too many points to spend on the pretender. But like Baalz said there is not so much use for him anyway. Death magic is the most important thing that i want and 2 of it is quite enough. Whit dark knowledge and revenants death is very easy path to add for nation... I use lots of boosters and i want them early when playing tien so hammers are important. I dont buy so many alchemists (more on that later) so i usually take earth magic for the pretender. Minor earth bless is nice for the celestial masters so i take it if i feel i can afford it. Fire whit death gives fire skulls and those are pretty good for tien. I dont take nature because tien has good acess to it anyway and i dont use lamia queens. in my opinion lamias only add blood and i usually either go heavy on blood or not at all... If i would take nature i would consider minor bless. Regen would be nice for celestial masters for the afliction reduction and because it is nice protection from poisons. Air 4 would be nice for the boosters but often i dont have points for it. I usually take sleeping pretender because i really need the points. So my pretender would be cheap sleeping rainbow whit paths like F2E4D3 or something close to that...

Mages
In the beginning of game i buy almost only celestial masters. Biggest reason for using masters is money. Master is 50g cheaper to buy than alchemist. The upkeep costs are 8.3 gold for master and 20 gold for alchemist. In ten turns the difrence of bying master every turn compared to alchemist is 1100g. In 20 turns the difrence is almost 3.5 thousand gold... Three forts in two years... Thats lot. Another big thing is that masters can use normal communions. I really need those communions fast and no need to researts and forge stuff for communions is big difrence. I buy one or two alchemists for site searching and later in the game for random paths and combinations. Only thing that i really loose here is some acess to fire and earth but i usually have those at the pretender.

From other castles i buy masters of the way and geomancers. I dont use ministers because they are only good at research. In vanilla ministers are 70g and 5 rp. Masters of the way are 100g sacred and 4 rp. So the way dudes are the way to go on long term cheap research Way masters whit astral can be used as communion slaves whitout items and the dudes whit 2 water are good whit bracelets as cheap artillery. They also benefit from the bless. Geaomancers are good for forging stuff and communion slaves. Geomancers can also protect the castles thay are in quite effectively. Put them on patroll whit some pd and give litlle suprise to the opponent whit reversed communion and bladewind/gifts/arcanebolt/soulslay/opposition (for the astral 3 stuff use light of the northernstar). Dude will think twice before attacking ur "undefendet" castle again...

Communions
Battle magics whit tien is all about communions. For beginners go to read Baalz awesome guide on communions. For experts go to reread Baalz guide on communions... Its all in there =P In early game i use normal communions whit 2-4 masters and 4 slaves. Make sure that one of the masters act before slaves to save some unvanted fatigue. This is fast and easy way to acess strong batle magics.

When i get some researts done i will switch this to reversed communions. I always use crystal matrixes whit communion masters. This lets me boost the communion on first battle turn. I use two masters so i can cast power of the spheres and earthpower on first turn. I use much of geomancer communions. They are cheap and very powerful. I dont use much artificial communions because of the extra micro and gem costs.

One thing to note is that the masters of big reversed communions get nice boost in all paths but one should be carefull of how to use this. Casting wrong spells can ruin the communion easily. Casting powerfull spells whit paths the communion slaves dont have will make it sleep very fast.

Protcting the communion against nasty stuff is hard and important... Master casting twist of fate can help in some situations. If u know that opponent has one mage who can cast rain of stones u can take extra master and script him to cast it every round. Mist form is great and u can cast it too again every round. Airshield is no brainer against arrows but it works agains some other stuff too. Like blade winds. Personal regeneration, elemental fortitude, personal luck, resist magic, ironskin and other protection spell are good too. And the elemental ones are useful too.

Research
I go first thaum 2 for communions and site searching. Next i go evocation all the way to 5. Important ones are falling frost and gifts. I need battle magics soon to countter possible rushes. Then i take some conjuration for reversed communions. Next is construction for boosters... After those i need bit of everything =P The order that i research the rest depends on what my opponent is using.

Thugs
As said before tien dosent have many options for good thugs. One tactic i like to use is fully kitted bane lords. Because i researts construction and conjuration anyway i will have easy acces to all that i need for them. My early game strategy dosent use much gems so i often have enough of them. The gear i use is Brand, vine/gold/lead/charcoalshield, horrorhelm/none/starskullcap, full blacsteelarmour/marbleplate/rainbowarmor, wingedshoes, regenring/luck/antimagic/lightning ring. Whit right mix of those items u get flying light sc relatively early in the game. They are very expencive but what makes it worth it is how diffrent they are from stuff that i usually use. If my opponent is prepared to fight army whit archers and communed mages and i instead pop in one of this dudes it can seriosly ruin the opponents day. I usually make atleast 3 of them before showing them to the opponent. It might take only 2-3 turns for the opponent to counter this tactic but dominating the game for that long can easily win the day =P

Hmm when i started writing this i thought that i will put down just some ideas i have for this nice nation. Now 3 hours later i realised that i made a friking romany out of it =P

There are lots of things me and Baalz do the same way whit this nation but also some pretty big difrences. Im not saying that my way is better but it has worked well for me... And we all know that Baalz is the best anyway

I just hope that this ugly piece of text can give some ideas to the readers

[NooBliss]

Twist of fate, mistform... thats all good and fine, but when you're the attacker, Rain of Stones happens before you can cast anything, even with crystal matrix. RoS pretty much makes communions obsolete.

[ExHeretic]

U do have a point there... Defenders first turn makes communions easier to use on the defence. But there is some ways around the problem as attacker. Cheap armor works well on first turn when mages fatigue is still at 0 and there is no chanse for criticals. Using SoG takes gems so if u can make the opponent waste gems before the battle it wont be problem. Two ways i usully use for this... 1 remote attacks like that skeleton raiders spell which name i dont remember right now... 2 Teleportin thug to mess things up before the battle...

One nice counter to communions which my friend used on me on my last game was to use 20 astral 1 mages to magic duel the whole communion to death =P

After that i seriosly started to think about using Baalz type non astral communion

[Fantomen]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

more later, if I survive my two front war.

I did!

And as promised here are some more of my experiences so far:

I'm now using GOR:ed gargoyles as thugs, which MA TC have relatively early and easy access to (Alchemist with earth boots + Naiad with thistle mace). So far this has worked great to supplement my larger armies with flying raiders and semi-SC backup when needed.

The gargoyles are very tough when fully geared and one of the few thug chassises that are immune to both mind hunt and magic duel. This is crucial as I've been fighting astral nations. So far I haven't lost a single gargoyle, but I've been fairly careful avoiding real armies with strong mage support. They can easily kill a couple hundred normal troops though, marignons royal guards in my case.

My opponent also happened cast strands of astral power, which is when I found a situation to actually use the healing ability on the alchemists. Putting all the alchemists in a communion on heal during sieges in his dominion quite effectively heals up any feebleminded astral mages I brought along. This let's me use celestial masters and geomancers in my communions despite the SOAP, giving me those nice astral battle buffs (antimagic, doom, etc. )

I believe putting the alchemists on heal during sieges can be a good idea in general if your mages somehow got afflicted or diseased, they got nothing better to do while your troops tear the walls down anyway.

My armies apart from the communions have been mainly kydnides and celestial warriors backed by imperial crossbowmen (because I mainly fought royal guards and knights of the chalice). This has worked well. The main reason for this composition is because I was much smaller than my opponent when the war began and had more gems than I had gold and recources, so I haven't really had the chance to examine the other troops effectiveness yet. As I'm a lot bigger now I will be able to try other options out.

That's all for now.

[thejeff]

Healing is also good for your feebleminded Mind Hunters.

But if your mages are old, healing won't work.

[Baalz]

Here's one from the Baalz trick bag: N magic increases your max age. Mages with N magic who are just a little old can be bumped up to "not old" by giving them N boosters so that they can be healed. This includes afflictions caused by old age. So....no reason at all to lose any TC mages to old age regardless of your growth scales...

[thejeff]

Far be it from me to correct Baalz, but that trick only almost works.

Feebleminded mages don't have N magic. So it can't be boosted. In fact, having lost N magic, they'll be even worse off since their Max Age will have dropped.
It does work on other afflictions.

[Lingchih]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Healing is also good for your feebleminded Mind Hunters.

But if your mages are old, healing won't work.

It's not that tough to make your mages not old with TC. Sure, you might make them a bit crazy, but you have a national spell to decrease their age.

I'm speaking of Celestial Masters, btw. Imperial Alchemists have no problem getting younger.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Far be it from me to correct Baalz, but that trick only almost works.

Feebleminded mages don't have N magic. So it can't be boosted. In fact, having lost N magic, they'll be even worse off since their Max Age will have dropped.
It does work on other afflictions.

Good point, useful for removing old age disease but not so much with the feeble mind.

[ExHeretic]

The fact that healing dosent work on old units explains why one of my masters is dying on disease at my capital next turn. I thought healing works for not age related afflictions Well we play and learn... The hard way

Using gargoyles as light SC is something that i need to try on my current game. I am playing against R'lyeh so mindhunts and magic duels are bit too common for my taste... I was planning to try crushers but i think gargoyles will be better.

Nasty combo that mindhunt/dueling thing. Can't attack whit or whitout astral mages. I think i need sneaking astral mages. Is there others than spectres?

Anyone got any nice tips against R'lyeh?