Caelum vs. T'ien Ch'i

[Thufir]

Alneyan said:
My only problem with T'ien Ch'i is their capitol-only Mages, especially in Spring & Autumn. I can get the money to recruit two Celestial Masters/Master of the Five Elements every turn, but only have a single capitol (duh!). I am not sure if allowing either of them to be recruited everywhere is a good idea though.

I'm a big fan of TC S&A, though I haven't figured out quite how to play them competitively in MP play (yet, that is!). I do think they are somewhat underpowered, but I don't think they're as pathetic as they're generally made out to be.

While I'm too much of a newbie to make claims about what tweaks should or should not be done, I will anyhow!

My suggested tweaks to S&A are:

1) Make summons for Demons of Heavenly Fire and River produce more than one demon per summons. The gem cost can be kept on a proportional basis, or perhaps at a slightly lower cost per demon.

2) Make MoT5E not capital only. When I've suggested this previously, it was said that this was "not thematic". I don't quite get that, but I find that when I'm playing S&A, I recruit very few MoT5E (which I use only for site searching), as it usually seems better to recruit Celestial Masters every turn in my capital. I don't think it's a good idea to make CMs non-capital only, but to the extent that my limited experience guides me, it would seem reasonable to make MoT5E non-capital only.

[Vynd]

Thufir said:

1) Make summons for Demons of Heavenly Fire and River produce more than one demon per summons. The gem cost can be kept on a proportional basis, or perhaps at a slightly lower cost per demon.

I think it is interesting that it took until well into this thread before anyone even mentioned T'ien Chi's unique summons. I think that it goes to show that aren't having much of an impact. So I agree that it would be nice for these to be made more cost effective and/or powerful.

[Cainehill]

Vynd said:

I think it is interesting that it took until well into this thread before anyone even mentioned T'ien Chi's unique summons. I think that it goes to show that aren't having much of an impact. So I agree that it would be nice for these to be made more cost effective and/or powerful.

Just like people rarely speak of Marignon's Conquerors of the Sea getting a benefit from its starting spell of Holy Pyre.

The mages can rarely cast the spells, therefor the spells really don't do much for the nation. The paths on the mages ought to be adjusted in TC's case, or the spells changed (definately in CotS case, possibly TCs as well).

As things stand, I think TC can't get enough casters capable of summoning the demons until mid to late game, by which point it's too little too late to build up enough demons to be effective. True, the pretender can take up some of the slack - but it's a waste of the pretender's time to be doing low-to-medium level summonses.