Request: Tips for LA T'ien Chi

jutetrea · #1 May 11th, 2007, 01:28 AM

Anyone have a link to a strategy/hint guide for LA T'ien chi? I like the sacreds, and have tried a W9N4/6 bless in SP. They do alright, but super expensive for the value. Tried a F9/W9 bless but the nasty scales really suck. Worth trying a bunch of lvl 4 blesses or just go with medium/good scales and 1 or 2 lvl 4 blesses?

Love EA T'ien chi, but rarely play them bless.

Pretender advice?

Jazzepi · #2 May 11th, 2007, 02:15 AM

I really enjoyed my Imprisoned Lady of the river with W8 for a light bless. I had 6-7 dominion and great scales. The most important thing about the sacred horse guys, to me, is their high protection and defense. All you really need besides that is quickness, and the different between 21-22 defense is probably negligible because at that point a standard unit swinging at your scared units with a sword is already going to have to hit 6 on their opened ended DRN before they get a chance to hit you.

LA T'ien Ch'i has some great battle mages too. The E2 guys can forge themselves some boots of earth, and cast summon earth power, so that they can spam blade wind. The D2 guys can spam the raise skeletons out the door without any equipment. I usually build a ton of them to begin with.

Jazzepi

jutetrea · #3 May 11th, 2007, 02:27 AM

I was disappointed when I found out F9 doesn't affect ranged, otherwise 2 nice flaming volleys and then flaming lance/hooves would have been nice. I'm still a wicked noob when it comes to blesses so I'll play around a bit. In SP it seemed I had to sacrifice quite a bit to get them a good bless and could only recruit 2-3 on initial resources.

Jazzepi · #4 May 11th, 2007, 02:53 AM

The key to getting a bless cheaply is to find a pretender that has 3 levels of the type of bless you already want and a dominion score of 2-3. It's important to remember that increasing the magic skill of a pretender is exponentially more expensive based on where you started from.

Increasing your W skill from 1-2 is not as expensive as from 8-9. So a pretender that starts with W3 and goes to W9 pays a lot less than a pretender that starts with W1 or no water magic at all. A lot of times you can makeup for the extra points that pretenders with higher levels of magic because they end up being cheaper to get a single or a dual bless.

Jazzepi

SlipperyJim · #5 May 11th, 2007, 09:40 AM

Call me a heretic, but I don't think that LA TC is really a bless nation. Yes, the sacred cavalry are cool, but they're also cap-only and quite expensive. More importantly, the Barbarian Kings don't have any decent priests, so applying your blessing is a bit tricky.

I'd go for a minor bless and concentrate on good scales. LA TC's real strengths are its magical diversity (outstanding for a LA nation!), composite archers, and amazing cavalry that you can recruit anywhere. Minor blesses to consider are: E4 to reinvigorate your sacred mages and/or N4 to help protect your sacred units from battle afflictions.

thejeff · #6 May 11th, 2007, 09:58 AM

LA TC is the nation for a Death bless. Unlike F9 the extra afflictions part of the Death bless works with arrows, and with battle magic.
I've used W9D8.
A few rounds of fear and affliction causing arrows, then they reach your lines and hit the nasty quickened heavy cavalry.

They can get off 2 volleys of arrows with the water bless too.

jutetrea · #7 May 11th, 2007, 10:10 AM

How abominable were your scales though?

That's kind of what I mean, they seem to be a good bless chassis, but not perfect (I think higher HP or prot would make them unreal).

Then they have some cool mages, heck most of the battle mages even have decent protection, good site searching still, etc.

So, I'm torn. Bless noob, so wanted to try it out but the scales make me cringe.

I could go with a dormant GH, lvl 4 magic in everything but earth/blood, moderate scales. So, +2 atk, +2 def, 20 AS, +100 afflic, +5% regen...nothing amazing but keep ok scales and get SOME bonuses. I think the scales would be order 0, prod 0, heat/cold 3, death 3, luck 2, drain 2. Obviously rather not take death 3 or drain 2 but its a bit resource intensive. thoughts?

thejeff · #8 May 11th, 2007, 10:54 AM

I don't remember what I used. I'll try to see if I can recreate it tonight.
With the right pretender you should be able to get a good bless without crippling scales.

Rytek · #9 May 11th, 2007, 01:03 PM

Try an awake D9 Prince of death with Dominion 9. Expanding is a piece of cake and you get decent scales and a nasty bless. Dont use the prince early vs knights, lizards (curse) and crossbows. Once you equip it with a lucky pendant, blacksteel armor and shield any inde is possible. Early on put the prince in a back corner and script hold hold attack archers.

One other options if you want a better bless with better scales is a Dormant D9,N4 PoD with a dom of 6.

jutetrea · #10 May 11th, 2007, 01:10 PM

How about in relation to summons? TC has some pretty beefy summons with the soldiers, fire and rivers. Does anyone ever shift their bless strategy to take advantage of the summons? I'm not a big summoner, rather use my gems for crafting/spells...but these 3 look pretty nice. The dogs and whatever that other one is don't look as impressive.