Good Pretender for T'ien C'hi?

[KainWeylin]

Hey! I am new to the game and was wondering what a good build for a T'ien C'hi pretender was. I am currently using the Mother of the Sea (or whatever she is called) with 7 Water and Astral, 3 Order, 1 Death, 3 Misfortune (her good luck outweighs this quite nicely.) Thanks in advance!

[Hadrian_II]

I think 2 paths of 7 each are not very efficient, id try to get at least one up to 9 for better bless or dont set the magic too high and go for scales.

Im not sure if you mean the "Lady of Fortune" (the one with luck and astral/water)or The "Mother of Rivers" (the one with the matching name) but on both it is possible to get W9 bless, and on Lady of Fortune you can even get a W9S9 Bless but you would have to imprison her.

Tien Chi has lots of Sacred Summons, so a Bless might work.

[jutetrea]

I know the idea is generally looked down upon, but for SP a rainbow works well (as many 4's as possible without killing your scales). I went 3turmoil/3luck/2heat/1death/1sloth/1drain/sleeping I think. Very tough and slow early but I got my initial surroundings then straightlined it to my opponents to make a strong border.

After that I took the rest of the indys within the border, did some heavy site searching and took the magical lead (with 4 in almost everything I was able to produce enough boosters between summons and construction to cast/build pretty much everything). It was easy after that.

[SelfishGene]

Which era of Tien Chi are you trying? It's a neat idea to combine a luck Pretender with misfortune, however i generally combine luck and a luck Pretender to really max luck out.

For a thematic, if not necessarily efficient, Early Era Pretender, i like the Sage with 4E-4A-4W-4N-4F-4S, sleeping, as this gives your Warriors of the Five Elements, well, five elemental bonuses.

For SP only, in the Middle Era, i like taking the Luck Goddess with 4S-2W, and really max out the scales, taking 3-Order,2-Productivity,2-Growth,2-Luck, and 2-Drain as the only negative scale.

In Multiplayer, i'd consider a Pretender having 3 or 4 Fire a necessity, as it gives you easy access to fire arrows to help out your already good ranged archers. A Phoenix with 9F and maybe 4~6A, in any era would be helpful to both your mages and your summonable sacreds.

[KissBlade]

Try to take sloth before death with Tien Chi. Also a generic w9 dragon with dom 4, order3, sloth 3, growth 1, magic 1, misfortune is a pretty standard build across the build for Tien Chi. THough MA Tien Chi, you might want to go imprisoned oracle uber scales instead.

[KainWeylin]

Early era. Any tips for starting out?

[Lord_Bob]

LA T'ien Ch'i has no need of a pretender! T'ien Ch'i KILL! T'ien Ch'i CRUSH PUNY NATIONS! HA! HA!

Really, given that you have such magic versitility and an awesome sacred, and mighty army, insane PD.... your pretender should boost your nation.

[Edratman]

I play MA T'ien C'hi a lot. This probably is terrible MP advice, but it works for me in SP.

I use a sleeping crone with rainbow 4's in E,A,S,D and N. I think I have 5 candles and 1 magic. This ensures that I forge all the boosts required to upgrade the recruitable rainbow mages into potent battle mages/forgers and also Cast Forge,Gift of Health and Natures Bounty with appropiate boosts on the Crone.

[Torin]

for access to avery magic i think you could use:

F3 (burning skull + Flaming helm)

A4 (minimum for helm and Bag)

W2 (ring of water + Armor of the sea)

E2 (earth boots + probably blood stone)

D2 (skull staff + ring of sorcery + skull helm)

N2 (staff of nature +1 + amulet of nature+1 + ring of sorcery + 2 handed staff of nature +2)

S4 (neat to have big here, i think you need S6 to ring of wizardy wich you get with the astral cap and the amulet and later get to S9 to wish. minimum S3)

B2 (could be B1 since you couldnt use blood without blood slaves anyway. with blood 2 you can get to blood 4 with both amulets, sorcery and wizardy)


I dont remember how much you need yo get each of the 2 staff of elemental magic. it was 4F 4W and 4A 4E
its in page 282 of the manual.

[DrPraetorious]

I've been studying pretender design for MA T'ien Ch'i, and this is my advice:
- You have healers. This means you want a living, awake, out-of-the-box, supercombatant pretender, non-undead. There are merits to either the Cyclops or the Wyrm - the Wyrm is much cheaper.
- Order is great. You get national bonuses for Order on top of that, so take Order.
- You also get bonuses for Fortune - specifically, you get very efficient bad-event prevention out of the minister of rituals, and you get a number of really cool unit-triggered events. So take Fortune.
- Your army is effective without being too resource intensive, and your mages (with the exception of the geomancer, who is kinda useless anyway, at least as far as I can tell) are not old, so you take Sloth and Death.
- You have every magic path except death and blood covered, so you don't really need magic on your pretender.

So, you can afford:
A domstr 10 Awake Wyrm, with 3 Order, 3 Sloth, 2 Death, 3 Luck and 1 Magic. For long games, consider 2 Drain and 1 Growth, instead.
A domstr 10 Awake Cyclops, with a 4th point of earth magic, 3 Order, 3 Sloth, 2 Death, 3 Luck and 2 Drain. Note that this guy gives your communion mages a bit of recuperation, which is not entirely shabby.

Attack blind with these units, when they get afflictions, send them home to be healed! Build up a massive force of archers, you can cast flaming arrows and wind guide as a mid game strategy.