spring and autumn suggestions

[Boron]

i am no expert too but i like tien chi spring + autumn
i would try a strong pretender and go growth 3 but turmoil / sloth 3 + watchtower as castle .
the fire demons are excellent only drawback you can only summon 1 / mage and have a low fire gem income . i would try them mainly as magic power .
if you are lucky and find fire sites early you can summon a nice second army of the fire demons at around turn 10 . i would try a combat pretender and research construction 2 as first and then start forging clams . then conjuration 5 for accashic record . so in the beginning you are weak but if you survive you are one of the best magic races of all . i just love the flying wizards
i think luck 3 is a good idea because your heroes are good and finding some fire gems or 1500 gold luck event are really nice too
only problem ihmo are the quite weak troops of spring + autumn tien chi .
so you are a bit forced to take a SC pretender if you play with strong indies .

[SelfishGene]

I prefer BK and vanila Tien Chi, since im rather indifferent to magic if i can help it. Personally i love vanilla over the others (contrary to most of the forum-goers here) because Imperial archers and crossbows are my favorite ranged troops in the game.

BK has the 20-15 lance/composite bow cavalry; hard to say no to that.

S&A? Lots and lots of lvl 1 magic paths. And crappy base Tien Chi troops.

Vanilla Tien Chi is probably my favorite theme overall in Dominions 2.

[Vicious Love]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
But as to my choice of scales, that really depends on my enemies. If I am up against Ermor, I might just take a point of growth and productivity anyhow, just to counteract any dominion of his -- plus the extra cash helps, even a little.

AE and SG Ermor's killer dominions are WAY more lethal than a death-3 scale, and independent of scales, to boot. If Ermor has dominion in your lands, you're screwed, even without the scales changing. And a supply bonus won't help you invade Ermor's lands, even if you can push your dominion into them.
Much, much safer to invest in ceremonial faith or a higher base dominion.

[Duncanish]

I'm another of the people who likes S&A over the base theme. It's very (very!) nifty and flavourful. Sure it gets rid of the 'good' infantry from TC, but it doesn't really matter. Most of the time when I play base TC I just use Imperial archers and those footmen with a falchion/shield combo, so getting rid of all those excess infantry didn't bother me much. Plus, you gain the two Demons which, in my opinion, are better than the Celestial Servants/Soldiers of base TC. When I play S&A, I like to take magic-3 and luck-3, for a boost to my already uber mages and a better chance to get my heroes out. And S&A does have good heroes. A 1-Air 2-Nature mage with immortality and the Heal command. That one guy with the "Annoying Fly Whisk" who's damn fun. Load him with an army of Heavenly Fire demons and watch the fun. ^^; Then there's the old diseased guy, but I never cared for him much. I usually keep him in some secluded area researching or using Death rituals.

[rabelais]

T1/P3/g3/temp0/luck3/magic1 nata (no magic or e4) with citadel/or less if e4 always worked well for me.

If you want another option Earth mother isn't a bad pretender, given S+A's path distribution

Some would argue nuking the productivity for more +magic, but you are always having an income crunch with s+a, and you don't play it in low site% games, so the income boost is more important than the gems/research vis-a-vis short term boosts. Plus it gets you more archers for early expansion.


Rabe