Caelum vs. T'ien Ch'i

[alexti]

Caelum mages have another very important advantage: they can fly. Another advantage of Caelum is their cold scales.

MotW is pretty good though, don't discount halved maintenance. Plus, priest levels are more valuable then it looks. With Caelum you have to buy both mages and priests, with TC you need much less priests.

The weakness of TC is somewhat more complex that just costs. As you said S1 is one of the problems. Another one is that TC doesn't have good battle mages worth of mass production. CM are too expensive for what they do (flexibility is nice, but not at that cost). First few CM are really valuable (for searching, forging, summoning etc). But more CMs don't bring much. MotW are more cost-efficient, but most of them won't have good spells to cast.

I dislike idea of increasing Caelum costs, I'd rather took random from high seraphs, making them A3W3. They'd still have their flavour, and good cheap mages, but they'd also get very specialized, but without any randoms and only 2 paths covered it would call for specific strategies.

[The Panther]

alexti said:
I dislike idea of increasing Caelum costs, I'd rather took random from high seraphs, making them A3W3. They'd still have their flavour, and good cheap mages, but they'd also get very specialized, but without any randoms and only 2 paths covered it would call for specific strategies.

If you do this, then Caelum has no random picks, just like Ulm (which could be the subject of another post ) This might work, though, if you also change the Seraphs to A1W1?1.

The simple fact remains, both the Seraphs and the High Seraphs are simply too good for the cost, making Caelum the best race. And building High Seraphs everywhere is like piling on!

Of course, it is impossible to fully balance 17 different races. So we might as well continue to have Caelum picked in every game and TC picked rarely. Right?

Has anybody actually played an MP game with 10 or more players in which T'ien Ch'i won? Anybody?

Can you imangine the odds you would get in Las Vegas betting on T'ien Ch'i as compared to Caelum in a 10 player game with people of approximately equal skills?

[Zen]

The Panther said:
Has anybody actually played an MP game with 10 or more players in which T'ien Ch'i won? Anybody?

Yes. I have.

Can you imangine the odds you would get in Las Vegas betting on T'ien Ch'i as compared to Caelum in a 10 player game with people of approximately equal skills?

Probably not very good, I wouldn't start betting until I saw the starting positions. Your nation and Pretender set the stage on which the game is played, and while certainly some nations have the upper hand on this dynamic it doesn't mean that TC 'can't' win, but that it has to have strength in the areas to circumvent their weaknesses (Diplomacy, Timing, etc).

[Arryn]

Zen said:

Yes. I have.

Were you the TC player in that game? Another important consideration is whether the game was a blitz (VP) game or something more normal?

[Zen]

Arryn said:
Were you the TC player in that game?

Yes, but that hardly matters.

Another important consideration is whether the game was a blitz (VP) game or something more normal?

It was a normal slugathon. No house rules and Lasted into turn 70something. How it was won, was exactly what I stated, a combination of Timing and Diplomacy. As well as cold-hearted unmerciful morale killing blitz attacks that would render an opponent stunned while not flipping my hand too early. I purposfully left terrain undefended so that neighboring smallish nations would gobble up useless provinces or commit forces that could then be targeted by my quickstrike brigades.

MoTW are great for stopping Ghost Riders even chained in high numbers.

[Chazar]

I think Caelum's main bonus is the possibility to fly: You can quickly respond to any threat that arises unforseen! This is a huge strategical advantage. I'd like to see a non-magic all-flying nation and see how that would work out...

[Peter Ebbesen]

Zen said:
MoTW are great for stopping Ghost Riders even chained in high numbers.

Ah, the Quickened Banishment brigade. It is always tough on undead.

MotW is a favourite unit of mine:

1. It is cheap: 100 gold
2. Has a low upkeep due to being sacred
3. Can research: one of the best researchers in the game for its cost and upkeep.
4. Can call god
5. Can cast quickness
6. Can cast frozen heart
7. Can cast banishment
8. Is affected by blessings (E4 is always really nice on mages (and priests if facing the risen dead)[/i])
9. Sometimes comes with a useful random)

It is like having a sage-lite, who can also double as combat mage, holy inquisition, or banishment specialist when needed. You can never have too many MotWs.

I like Caelum's Seraph too - a very good unit and the quickness/lightning combination (or wrathful skies) can be deadly - but even with the added strength of strategic flight it comes up short compared to the MotW in overall usefulness because of low versatility.

But, then again, I am a player who prefers versatility over specialisation as I prefer to have a host of less powerful options available rather than one or two powerful ones, so I guess it is natural that I like T'ien C'hi despite their weaknesses. I much prefer to keep the opposition guessing as to what I will field next rather than having them know what it is through a strong, known, one or two-dimensional threat. Sometimes it pays off (the opposition tries to counter all your possible options thus diverting resources, the opposition fails to block one of the less obvious strategies), sometimes it does not (the opposition bulldozes me with its brute force approach).

Hmm. Began as an answer concerning the MotW and ended up a paean to versatility. These things happen.

[Cainehill]

Another way to weaken Caelum slightly would be to change their random to be random elemental only. Sure, it means they get more A4s, but it also makes it tougher for them to get nature, death, and astral, all of which are quite valuable. (This would seem to make some sense, since Caelum's mages are definately elemental based - it makes more sense, imo, than Arco's mystics only having elemental randoms.)

The priest side of TC's mages is definately something of a bonus - if your pretender dies, you easily bring him back. Caelum may well have to build a bunch of seraphine priests all of a sudden, which are of dubious value unless menaced by undead.

Giving CM's an extra random (and increased cost) might help, imo.

Thing is, T'ien C'hi has better troops than Caelum, but yes, it's mages are lacking (except Spring and Autumn).

Frankly, if Water was improved the way it should be then TC's mages would be a lot more viable. That's how I'd like to seem them fixed, especially rather than nerfing Caelum.

[Boron]

If Tien Chi S&A wouldn't be forced turmoil 1 but could chase order/turmoil scale freely i think they would be a top 5 nation .

Marignon Diabolic faith is similiar but there i fear if they would be able to chose turmoil/order scale freely then they would be probably the best bloodnation , better than Mictlan and Abysia . Tien Chi S&A has still the weakness of mind duel + their CMs are capitol only so there i think simply removing the forced turmoil 1 would make them a nice nation .

Cainehill said:
Thing is, T'ien C'hi has better troops than Caelum, but yes, it's mages are lacking (except Spring and Autumn).

How do you come to this conclusion ? Caelum has good archers + mammoths . So their troops are superior to Tien Chi S&A and about on par with base Tien Chi .

[Chazar]

Boron said:
Caelum has good archers + mammoths . So their troops are superior to Tien Chi S&A and about on par with base Tien Chi .

The mammoth is nice during earlier stages of the game, but it is useless once the game has progressed and your armies start to count substantial numbers of mages among their ranks:

• First the mammoth disables strategical flight
• Second a trampling and routing mammoth will cause more losses among your mages than the enemy - and severely restricts the mages tactical placement. (and the high-moral but captial-only and hence limited and really-crappy-otherwise wingless do not change this for mid-game purposes)

So a mammoth isnt worth its high upkeep apart from initial expansion and early game blitzkriegs. The mammoth is just Caelums ticket to survive the early game stages.
(Maybe the mammoth could be made more useful if the seraphs would be allowed to target routing units - the Mammoths are used to friendly fire anyway... )

Well, and the Caelian Archers are nice, sure, but in later game stages their short bow becomes useless due to the constant storm produced by the obligatory staffs of storms (even despite of wind guide) and the increased protection of the enemies you are facing. Still they have their place in end game, since they are nice meatshields for the mages: They do allow strategical flight and they stay put in their tactical place thanks to the fire command. Give me the tactical 'hold only'-command and I will use any other size 3 flying troop. So they are just there to prevent the enemy to target my precious mages with "attack fliers" or "attack large" orders.