Speeding Up Tien Chi Spring and Autumn ?!

[Boron]

don't change tien chi s&a they are already good .

i wouldn't use my nobles first frontline . they just get killed .

you need to gamble furthermore .
scales : turmoil 3 , sloth 3 , cold 3 , death 3 , magic 3 , luck 3 .
castle : watch tower
pretender : vq
this way you can e.g. take :
a3 , w 2 , e3 , d6 , b3
dominion 8

the vq either takes 1 prov / turn from turn 5 on or 1 prov / 2 turns + sitesearch the prov . with these picks she finds something like 50% .

if you just build the archers + give them a few water / fire demons they can take out the weaker indeps and at least conquer 1 province every 2 turns to from turn 5 on .

the luck is really a big gamble but you will quite often get the needed + gold just when you need it .
and if you get a +water or +fire gems event in the first 5 turns that are some additional fire / water demons .

you are somewhat dependent from luck but with turmoil 3 + luck 3 you get really many events and most are good .

if you need money you can even pillage a province since you only need money for your mages and almost not for national troops .
sure with these "horror" scales you have something about 1/3 of the income of one with order 3 productivity 3 growths 3 but in early game luck compensates .
lategame you have only to spend money on temples , castles + mages .

with magic 3 you research fast enough and should manage a top 5 position in research at least .

so what not to like ?
you even can bloodhunt with your random blood picks .
if you take water 3 on your vq she can summon :
ice devils and vampire lords .
if you don't get early some lucky random blood picks don't research blood but conjuration .
with d6 your vq needs only 1 empower item to summon tartarians and can summon the whole rest without empower .
you can lower d6 on your vq to d4 or 5 and instead take water 3 + earth 4 .

that way you can focus on blood heavyly and summon father illearth , vampire lords , the ice devils .

so construction , blood and/or conjuration are key areas .

[Rainbow]

I agree with Boron that the theme is fine as is, it just takes some creativity to use it well. Unforunately I must admit that I am currently in an MP game playing Tien Chi S&A, and doing bad because of a bad starting location combined with tough indies. This is my fault however, and nothing to do with the theme.

Personallly I think the fire demons are lousy. I know there are some that disagree, but my experience is that the fire demons accuracy is so bad that they can only damage large enemy armies with lots of fodder, and there must be a 1000 other and better ways to obliterate an army like that.

The river demons are much more useful, but not worth the gems, nor the time, which needs to be invested to summon them.

The real strength of the theme are the flying celestial masters. Between all the great and creative dominions players we have, it would be easy to write up an entire strategy guide about this unit alone.

If you worry about the celestrial masters being mind duel fodder, make an astral king pretender and put a flying item on it if it can't fly naturally. Script the pretender to do a couple of mind duels at the start of any battle where you expect enemy astral mages.

/Rainbow

[Boron]

Originally posted by Rainbow:
I agree with Boron that the theme is fine as is, it just takes some creativity to use it well. Unforunately I must admit that I am currently in an MP game playing Tien Chi S&A, and doing bad because of a bad starting location combined with tough indies. This is my fault however, and nothing to do with the theme.

/Rainbow

great ideas too rainbow

tien chis crap national units are rather a benefit than a curse for indep smashing they are just enough but nothing more .
so even if you don't like my horror scales at least taking death 3 sloth 3 is obvious .
so you have an almost as strong pretender as ermor or pan cw but don't need to worry about banishment , dust to dust , wither bones and all the other good undead mass destroyers .
celestial masters are just great .

i would put in a top 5 national mages list with main focus on general usefulness the following :
-demonbred
-arch theurg
-celestial master s&a
-starspawn
-mystic

i should have extended it to top 10

i am not absolutely sure but i guess i would put the celestial master at least on number 3 more likely on number 2 or 1

[Cainehill]

One problem with the "Misfortune 3, Luck 3, Magic 3" plan is that the way Luck works, you're all too likely to lose your lab or temple in the first 10 turns (sometimes the first turn), or have a catastrophe wipe out 40% of your capital's population, etc.

If having a high luck was modified to at least protect against catastrophes in the first 5-10 turns, _then_ it might be viable.

Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one who despises the concept that a theme is only going to be viable if you totally trash your scales and make an ungodly SC, especially a VQ.

[Boron]

luck is always a issue .

with tien chi you are most luck dependant .
but because of luck 3 you have at least some control .
there are many factors though for which no nation has control . i list some :

-starting location (center,edges...)
-neighbors
-indep province guards
-population of neighbors
-site search ( expect accashic )
-resources of neighbors
-landscape of neighbor provinces ( strat movement for nonflying )

if e.g. ermor starts in the center it is bad for ermor and his neighbors .
ermor will spread his dominion to a larger area than starting in an edgeposition and have more neighbors to deal with .
so more provinces will be corrupted but ermor will have to deal with more attackers early .

if you are dependant on blood randomness can be a pain and a bless .
scenario 1 :
abysia has 5 neighbors :
2 rich 20k+ farmlands
3 poor mountains 5-10k population

so 2 incomegenerating + 3 blood hunt provinces . ideal

scenario 2 :
1 rich farmland but guarded by knights + xbows or special monsters like gargoyles ...
1 5-10k rich mountain
3 0-4k swamps / forests .

1 hard to take province , only 1 adept for blood hunting and 3 rather worthless sites .
so very punishing starting conditions for abysia .

so the only difference is that you have to rely on luck even a bit more with tien chi but you have at least some control by taking luck 3 .
you are only 20-30% more luck dependant than everyone else .

if you look at the opposing scenario : you take or are forced to take misfortune 1-3 .
often you are lucky and get no too bad events in the first 10-15 turns where they harm you most .

but if you get blown up your temple / lab on turn 2 via misfortune event or the plague event which kills 50% population in your capitol you are really handicapped .

edit : lol caine you were faster with the same thoughts although i guess i started writing mine earlier lol

[ July 29, 2004, 13:08: Message edited by: Boron ]

[tinkthank]

I really don't think S&A need a boost, at least not as a priority. I quite enjoy them as is and would worry that they would get broken with increased power. I certainly think Tien BK is more in need of tweakage.

Originally posted by Boron:
you need to gamble furthermore .
scales : turmoil 3 , sloth 3 , cold 3 , death 3 , magic 3 , luck 3 .
castle : watch tower
pretender : vq

To each his own! I certainly could never ever play this build. How will you ever recruit anything? Are you going to go mass MotD and mass spirits? Why even bother playing S&A then? This is the perfect Ermor build, why don't you play Ermor? Ah, no VQ for Ermor any more. Tant pis!

[Thufir]

As a newbie, I'm speaking out of school here, but I just can't help myself

One question out of the box: what does 'MM' mean?

Originally posted by tinkthank:
I really don't think S&A need a boost, at least not as a priority. I quite enjoy them as is and would worry that they would get broken with increased power. I certainly think Tien BK is more in need of tweakage.

I can't argue against BK being more in need of tweakage, but I am still inclined to think that Tien S&A could be better than it is (without being unbalanced). From my rather limited experience, I would have to guess that few people are winning MP games with S&A - am I wrong?

It seems to me that the design intent of Tien AS is to be the best, of the mage oriented races/themes. I started my first SP game w/ TC after reading Zen's guide on the race (on Sunray's now locked site), and aesthetically it made it look like the kind setup I'd most enjoy in Dom 2.

If S&A were successfully implemented, I'd expect that in an MP game where no one gets screwed in the opening turns and the players are roughly equal, that S&A would be at a slight disadvantage in taking indies, and at a significant advantage in acquiring gem income and developing large numbers of useful mages.

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one who despises the concept that a theme is only going to be viable if you totally trash your scales and make an ungodly SC, especially a VQ.

I agree completely. Boron, with all due respect, I'd have to say that if your aproach is necessary to make the theme viable, then the theme is truly broken.

I don't have enough Dom2 game experience to pronounce a solution to adjusting S&A, but I would certainly like to see this theme be tweaked to the extent that it is a reasonable choice, oft taken and (reasonably) oft won with in MP play. Also, I'd say that a successful tweakage of S&A would mean that good play with this position was less SC dependent, and more mage dependent than others. I imagine that good play with S&A would probably require clever scripting with large numbers of CMs.

One ingredient of a well implemented S&A theme should include Heavenly Demons that are useful in MP play, at least into midgame. Arralen, based on your post, I think we should be asking for the following code level fixes in an upcoming patch (would 2.13 be optimistic? )

1) Increase accuracy of Demons of Heavenly Fire? I certainly have noticed their inaccuracy in SP play, and I'd think that would be crippling in MP play.

2) Increase the number of Demons of Heavenly River per summoning - perhaps with increased gem cost? It might be reasonable to do the same for DHF, as well.

Also, CMs must be viable in a well implemented S&A, but so far, I can't say that this is not the case. In SP play at least, the odds that my CMs get either a second air (giving them lightning bolt), or an earth pick (giving magma bolt) out of their impressive two randoms, are pretty good. Together with boosting items, it to me that CMs are viable as is, though I'd defer to those with more experience. As to their expense, it would seem to me reasonable that S&A must face a difficult choice of paying for their very valuable mages, and never having enough mundane troops (especially in the opening game). One thing I've been wondering - would it be reasonable for Mot5E to be recruitable in non-capital provinces?

I understand Arralen you are suggesting a fix via mod, but I'd guess I'd like to see S&A tweaked in a patch, in which case doing code level patches for the celestial demons becomes an option. I would have to guess that these are easy code changes to make, and if there were broad agreement, I'd imagine we could get these into a patch.

I would also say that adding to S&A's gem income goes in the wrong direction. S&A can start it's clam hoarding earlier and easier than any other nation. On top of that, with a combination of a CM plus Mot5E, it gets a broad search team very easily, so should find it easier to search for sites than other nations. All in all, I expect that S&A would tend to be more gem rich than any other nation, as is.

All that said, Arralen, if you produce a mod that strengthens S&A (my favorite theme ), I'll be more than happy to try it out!

[ July 29, 2004, 16:56: Message edited by: Thufir ]