T'ien Ch'i, and how they rule!

I have to say I didn't like T'ien Ch'i when I first played them. They were interesting, had alot of 'coolness' factors but ... lacked. I have to say they took some getting used to. I have to say bar none, I like the Spring and Autumn theme the best.

Reasons:

Master of the Five Elements.

These guys are great. You just hope you don't get a pick in Astral. They get to use all those crazy spells you never really got to use before. Like Sulpher Haze, Acid Haze, etc. You need to with this theme. Or at least how I play them. You need every bit of help you can muster for your small, tenacious little armies. Every mage has a different spell line and you need it all and a little extra to get the job done.

Archers.

Archers, Demons of the Heavenly Flame, and to a lesser extent Horse Archers. You have to use them, you can't get around it. You have no other real troops to soften up the enemy (and hopefully rout) while your crack team of ... 1 recruitable heavy infantry, Demons of the Heavenly River and summons try to hold that front line. I have alot more appreciation for Archers because I've been playing both T'ien Ch'i and Man.

Celestial Masters.

Sure they can die to a Sage with an astral pick. Sure they are hard as hell to protect and if you are up against Pythium, Arco, Squidies, or anyone who happens to want to be Astral King you can count them as fodder (unless you beat them first). BUT, they can fly, have great magic and are like Masters of the Five Elements on crack if you don't have to fight an astrally powerful nation.

Spirit Mastery.

Man this really starts to kick in once you discover sites. The ancestors are pissed and are some of the only fodder you have that is cheap and plentiful. Too bad you have to get 3 or 4 commanders to drive over a good army of them!

(Hero) of the Iron Crutch.

A guy with leprosy that is an immortal leader. If he wasn't so valuable you wouldn't gouge out your eyes if you accidentally placed him near all your other commanders. Or if he runs up to them for some obscure reason. Must be Illwinter's idea of a joke .

All in all, I love this race. I'll play them in more and more MP games, though hopefully they won't be as hard if they give Mind Duel less of a 'instakill' factor.

Kudos on the design.

[Tiltowait]

I agree, I have been having great fun with T'ien Ch'i durring spring and autumn.

Is it just me, or does the master with the iron crutch sometimes ignore your orders even off the battle field? I love how he occassionally goes feebleminded and makes an *** of himself in the war tent for a few turns before recovering his senses.

[Daynarr]

T'ien Chi is certainly a race that needs to be played in very different way comparing to all other races.
First of they are one of the best if not THE best race with long-range weapons (2 types of archers, both usefull, and crossbows to deal with HI). Man's longbows are better then composite bows, but Man doesn't have crossbows.
Secondly, Celestial Master is your weapon for early expansion where only a few levels in evocation will make him a deadly force. He’s also a supplement for RM so you can specialize your pretender in 1 or 2 paths of magic and still get a lot of great magic sites. Of course, magic duel is their weakness but if they had no weakness what would stop them? Their infantry certainly isn't the best in the game (better then Man's, though) but you can try to go for the numbers over there. Falchioners are better choice IMHO since they have better ATT/DEF stats then spear HI. If you compare Man and T’ien Chi you will find that T’ien Chi has better infantry, better mages, better priests and better summons and also have a weapon to deal with armored troops. The only thing that Man has better are longbows (marginally better) and cavalry.

I find default theme to be most powerfull. They get a chance to improve defenses in their provinces for free (only if you have order dominion and that is only possible in default theme) and they get Celestial Servant (not that great but cheap and good bodyguard) and Celestial Soldiers, which are simply great. They are also sacred so if you picked a powerfull pretender (e.g. 9 in fire or water) you can boost them to really high levels. Not only that but you can start summoning them very early in game so you will get great boost in expansion. Celestial Soldiers are one of most powerfull and cost effective summons (consider their stats, size, sacred status, not eating and the fact that you get 5 of them for only 20 air gems - 4 air gems each). Also, since you will lose so few of them in expansion, you will mass a sizable force before you start fighting other players.

I believe T'ien Chi's biggest strength is their flexibility. They can counter almost anything with proper use of their units and summons.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Tiltowait:
I agree, I have been having great fun with T'ien Ch'i durring spring and autumn.

Is it just me, or does the master with the iron crutch sometimes ignore your orders even off the battle field? I love how he occassionally goes feebleminded and makes an *** of himself in the war tent for a few turns before recovering his senses.

Immortal units get a chance of recovering from affliction each turn. In your case, my guess is that he got an battle affliction and then recovered.

The reason I don't prefer the normal theme of T'ien Ch'i is because their only real mage is the Celestial Master who is forced to use Astral. Thus you have to walk into battle without mages if you are fighting an Astrally powerful nation. Spring and Autumn allows you to circumvent that with the Master of the Five Elements.

I do think one minor improvement could be the increase of number of summons from the "Demon of" variety. Double or Triple the power/number of effects of the spell. So you don't have to commit a huge number of Celestial Masters to forge your army.

Edit: I don't mean double or triple the power without the cost of gems, just double or triple the formula. 9 Fire Gems for 3 Demons of Celestial Fire.

[ December 02, 2003, 19:09: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Tiltowait]

Originally posted by ywl:
Immortal units get a chance of recovering from affliction each turn. In your case, my guess is that he got an battle affliction and then recovered.

Yes, the difference with the master is that he seems to gain them every turn as well

[Keir Maxwell]

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

[ywl]

Originally posted by Tiltowait:

quote:

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Originally posted by ywl:
Immortal units get a chance of recovering from affliction each turn. In your case, my guess is that he got an battle affliction and then recovered.

Yes, the difference with the master is that he seems to gain them every turn as well

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Really? I never noticed that. All I saw was one affliction when he first came. But of course, I wasn't paying the most attention to him. I was more impressed by the healing Ho and the flying Lui.

[Raen]

In the Spring and Autumn theme, is there any point at all to building Horsemen, other than perhaps as patrol and/or raid units? They don't seem to work with my main armies.

The only reason I have built Horsemen in S&A is from distant provinces with forts to reinforce the frontline. In S&A money is a precious commodity and more often than not it's cheaper to build a fort near a fighting line and produce archer/HI there along with flying your summoning army to the new stronghold for faster replentishment of armies.

Hope that helps.