Help! strats using T'ien Chi's Celestial Mages ...

[KissBlade]

Seriously, I read about how effective these guys are and I can't find a use for them besides site searching. Sure they fly but their summons don't seem as effective as Death mages, their battle isn't that great since the most useful spell I use with them seems to be battle fortunes. Should I just rig them with gems to make them useful or what? I played a game where I had like 20 of them just sitting at home researching and that's about it. I'm trying to learn S&A and Celestial Soldiers waayyy out do my Demons. Not to mention, base theme has a pretty nice military while S&A has like .. diddly besides archers and footmen. Which I can't evne recruit effectively since nobles have a leadership of 25?!

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

Admittedly, Spring and Autumn has a devil of a time just getting out of the blocks...
I'd suggest being active in the mercenary market while you still have the gold to do so early on.
Send Nobles out in pairs (or one and a merc crew), each with 5 Heavy Foot (Shield/spear), 10 archers, 10 Heavy Foot (glaive). If that's not working vs non-cavalry, send a third noble, put him on the wing with orders to Attack Archers (Nobles trample remember). This guy will often get into the Hall of Fame cheaply... with luck getting something like Valor or (even better) Awesome Presence (either of these means: there goes your low leadership problem). Battle Bellow is fun too, drop a Skull Standard, Horror Helmet on him and he'll even scare you...
Now that I've addressed the second question, I'll come back to the first... I much prefer Masters of the Five Elements to lead Heavenly Demons (do a search for Magic Duel to get an idea why). The Master of the Way is the more cost-effective researcher (but it's close). I might not even hire a CM until I have the gems to summon up a DHR/DHF pair per turn with spare capacity.
Other things I've thought of with this group: Make sure renaming is ON. Add a symbol on each CM and M5E showing where their randoms landed. Makes it really easy to figure out who to set to forging what. An M5E will automatically be able to cast the site-searching spell of his random pick (except Blood, but you so rarely have use for that). Use a B random to do the cursory first-level search (also to bootstrap production of Earth, Air, and Nature gems for the real searching)
Take a fairly high base dominion level so the Immortals will have some room to work with (and so your conventionals have a +1 morale to opponent's -1... can make or break a battle).
My preferred pretender here is an Oracle-- +2(!) pearls per turn means when it's time to stick Rings of Wizardry on people, you've got the raw material. (How else ya gonna make a guy with six 1s in his magical portfolio worthwhile?) You'll need the Oracle (built up at start to S6 or above) to start the process, but once you find a way to get a CM to S5, hand him a Dwarven Hammer and have some fun... or the Hammer of the Forge Lord and go nuts. Use Earth and Air gems to make Staffs of Elemental Mastery for your M5Es, they run the holder's Protection to ~15 to go with the 50% Shock Resist. An M5E with both of these items now shows (all elements) 3 N2 and either (another sorcery)2 or N3 or (some element)4... which is just one boost away from the Elemental Royals. Or picture this: D random goes to 2, Ring of Sorcery (3), Skull Staff (4), Skullface (5), Sceptre of Dark Regency replaces staff... (7, welcome Tartarians!) You're starting to get the idea that once you get going, you can throw such variety of raw stuff at the other nations that they simply have to make a choice of what to defend against... which means sooner or later they'll guess wrong. And you'll own them.
Of course, all this is assuming that there's a fairly high magic site frequency about. If not it gets really painful. And it assumes you survive long enough to get to all those gem-producing sites.

[shovah]

also, a w9 blessing makes those fire demons (when massed) amazingly strong (unless vrs abysia or such). also its quite possible to clam with tien chi even under CB 5.2 iirc

[KissBlade]

I already use the oracle for base. I use the stupid Lady for S&A cause I don't like the forced turmoil. I should probably switch though ... she's a little too expensive for just the luck scale. I seriously don't see the appeal of S&A vs. base though. The only difference seems to be you have more mage options but at the cost of losing all your military early on. And if M5E is better, why the heck would I care about flying CM's?

[Turin]

I use a w9 dragon. Can reliable expand on turn 2, is quite cheap and gives an awesome bless for all your mages/demons.
Research body ethereal and you can soon expand with smallish squads of etherealed blessed heavenly demons.
That�s with cb 5.2 of course, else the masters are just too vulnerable to make the theme viable.

[shovah]

because they can fly tactically flexible. also i seem to like my w9 fire demon (and with clam hoarding you can spam them out)

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

KB: Division of labor: Celestials summon Heavenly Demons, M5Es take them places. The standard build-out of an M5E I noted earlier can lead anywhere from 70 to 100 magic beings (70 if ?=D, 100 if ?=S because Starshine Skullcap is too obvious, anything else 75 barring further one-path boost items). Note that I didn't say one or the other was outright "better." And which "stupid Lady" are you referring to? (Just checked: the Lady of Fortune is the guess...)
BTW: Whoever is in charge of the Tome needs their eyes checked. In it, the Oracle is referred to as a large blue... spider? It's a fountain forpretender'ssake!
Personally, I do a happy-dance when Li T'ieh-Kuai shows up. Nether-Darts-o-rama. Just make sure there's something in front of him so the enemy archers don't key on him...
Another use of CMs once you have the research: Gateway (THAU 5, same level as Soul Slay). Picture this: M5E gets into major battle and loses most of his force. Solution: Load the current crop of demons on a CM item-ed to S4, Gate to the nearest lab, pass the force over, and Teleport back. (Yes it's expensive gem-wise, about 12 S all told, but look at all that time saved.) No other really good ways to shift forces from one front to the other, short of the Flying Ship (unique, but you should win the race to it).

[Truper]

To my mind, Celestial Masters are all about Evocations. Unpredictable Evocations. Depending on how the randoms fall, they are capable of casting most anything, even odd things like Sulphur Haze, and doing it while Quickened.

[KissBlade]

Yeah I spoke with Ironhawk yesterday and he gave me similar advice. However, it seems to be that T'ien Chi S&A is really a big paper tiger. They can dish it out but they seriously can't take it. Their military, is a little subpar and they really can't conjure anything worthwhile at all unless you get a lucky roll and then make some boosters to help out. =(

[Sandman]

Playing S&A, I can scarcely be bothered to summon their demons. Are they really worth it?