Re: T\'ien Ch\'i, and how they rule!
I have been playing around with Tien Ch'i again and having alot of fun - though I'm still not sure they are that good.
Playing main theme I find the foot archers mediocre but useful and the LC archers worse - I think Man has much better shooters in the Longbow. HC have a heap of cool factor and are cheap lancers - I can't stay away from them. Celestial masters are very useful early combat mages.
The coolest thing is that I'm having a good time with the Barbarian Kings. I have taken Fortune as my Pretender and she has done me proud. With random events rare (I know I should have made them commen) I'm getting a positive event every two turns + and no bad ones. There has also been enough extra gold from events to keep me from hurting much from the Turmoil3. While its along way from being as fast as Arco/Pythium/C'tis its working in a fashion. And Spirit Mastery is really good.
I must try again with Spring and Autumn as I just love the chariots.
I still thing Barbarian Kings should be able to recruit LC through conquest and need the extra strength this would give them in MP. Spring and Autumn could do with the ability to raise more than just commander chariots. While Tien Ch'i main theme is the strongest I think it is well short of Man as Man has awesome mages, Longbow the best missile troops around, and Wardens are great. Nothing in the Tien Ch'i arsnel of main troops compares to these IMO.
What Tien Ch'i has that no-one can top is flavour. All the themes ooze flavour. I just love them. Mictlan also scores highly here while the third new race Machaka performs better but has less flavour for me as it performs in a more traditional fashion. The great thing about Mictlan and Tien Ch'i is the uniqueness of their approach. If these two do recieve any up-powering then it should not be such as to make them more like the main stream.
Cheers
Keir
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