Speeding Up Tien Chi Spring and Autumn ?!

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Boron:
4th : you most likely get your first +500 or +1000 gold event in the first 5 turns .

I don't think so. As Zen may recall, I used to think that Disorder 3 / Luck 3 was a good idea quite some time ago. I still rarely saw a really great income event in the first ten turns; maybe in the first 20. But I _did_ see temples and labs burning to the ground, and I did watch 40% of my capital's population wiped out on turn 2 or 3. IMO, you're not going to get your income that way.

In addition - with death 3, Disorder 3, you're going to have a good amount of events killing population, plus a steady decrease of population. Guess what? When you run out of population in your capital, it's going to be hard to recruit there. Okay - you think to only recruit CMs there, 1 resource point, and even with 0 population you seem to still have 2 resource points.

Still - it's going to be hard to have the income for it, especially as you have to rebuild temples and labs.

with a vq + really few archers + 1 or 2 celestial masters using fire flies and the like you still can expand 2 provinces / turn .

Have you been playing with the default settings? Independent strength 3, some archers and fire flies may be able to take some of the provinces, but you get up to indie 6 (seemingly the most common MP setting), archers and fire flies are going to get butchered. Also, your VQ isn't going to expand so well either until you get a fair amount of research done - alteration 3, maybe some enchantment.

If you manage to get those 10+ provinces you talk about, thus allowing you to recruit some researchers and get a gem income going, you might do okay, but that's a big if.

[Vynd]

Whether Boron's strategy would work or not, to present it as an example of how S&A is a prefectly good theme seems silly to me. You can take terrible scales and a super-charged Pretender with any nation and any theme. So playing S&A this way is almost like playing no theme at all. Actually, it is worse than that, I think. Because there are other themes that actually reward you for having, say, a heavy cold scale, and thus are better at this sort of strategy than S&A is.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Vynd:
Whether Boron's strategy would work or not, to present it as an example of how S&A is a prefectly good theme seems silly to me. You can take terrible scales and a super-charged Pretender with any nation and any theme. So playing S&A this way is almost like playing no theme at all. Actually, it is worse than that, I think. Because there are other themes that actually reward you for having, say, a heavy cold scale, and thus are better at this sort of strategy than S&A is.

no other theme has as bad national troops as tien chi s&a .

so with forced at least turmoil 1 scale your income is anyway very bad compared to others .

[pinko commie]

Originally posted by Boron:

quote:

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Originally posted by Vynd:
Whether Boron's strategy would work or not, to present it as an example of how S&A is a prefectly good theme seems silly to me. You can take terrible scales and a super-charged Pretender with any nation and any theme. So playing S&A this way is almost like playing no theme at all. Actually, it is worse than that, I think. Because there are other themes that actually reward you for having, say, a heavy cold scale, and thus are better at this sort of strategy than S&A is.

no other theme has as bad national troops as tien chi s&a .

so with forced at least turmoil 1 scale your income is anyway very bad compared to others .

---

What? Tien Chi doesnt have the worst national troops!! The archers are great, the cav is decent, and even the footmen and pikemen are ok for their cost (nothing to write home about, but not utter crap). I dont see how you can say this.

The scales you suggest are for Ermor. Only Ermor or maybe Pan CW can recruit researchers without money. If you have about 100 gold a turn, you can get a MotD every now and then, but you wont be able to recruit anything else, cant build temples or labs or forts, and have not a heck of a lot to research with or even make your summons or preach. Thus you will be purely vq-based and just have to hope that your dominion will be good enough to make sure she survives. Just sounds odd to me, not much like Tien Chi at all, sounds like Ermor without the theme and the undead. But I suppose the main question is: Is it fun??

[Pickles]

Originally posted by pinko commie:
" But I suppose the main question is: Is it fun?? "

for you & your opponents

Pickles

[Boron]

Originally posted by pinko commie:
What? Tien Chi doesnt have the worst national troops!! The archers are great, the cav is decent, and even the footmen and pikemen are ok for their cost (nothing to write home about, but not utter crap). I dont see how you can say this.

The scales you suggest are for Ermor. Only Ermor or maybe Pan CW can recruit researchers without money. If you have about 100 gold a turn, you can get a MotD every now and then, but you wont be able to recruit anything else, cant build temples or labs or forts, and have not a heck of a lot to research with or even make your summons or preach. Thus you will be purely vq-based and just have to hope that your dominion will be good enough to make sure she survives. Just sounds odd to me, not much like Tien Chi at all, sounds like Ermor without the theme and the undead. But I suppose the main question is: Is it fun??

i didn't write tien chi their troops are not bad i wrote tien chi s&a . really hard to find any other nation / theme who has worse troops than tien chi s&a .

if you don't have to much bad luck in the beginning with negative events although you chose luck 3 it is fun imho .

[rabelais]

My experience with S+A has been quite different from the Boards. It rocks right out of the box.

I have had the most success going uber scales....

T1/P3/temp0/G3/L3/M1 citadel magicless nata. Sure you don't get sacred bonuses, but you don't need 'em.

Your income, while not initally fabulous, is quite adequate, your nata is easily equipable (ice swords, etc) and/or disposable.

If a nomagic nata with sacred mages makes you nervous, an Earth 4 nata works well, but them you have to be VERY careful with it. At least until the healing heroine arrives.

The citadel keeps you off the early victim list in crowded conditions, and you can get a CM every turn after very mild expansion. And the spirits fodder are invaluable.

I *do* think the S+A sacred troops need a boost, in terms of the number that can be summoned per mage turn. As it is they are not cost effective.

Also, as a pet peeve, I'm not sure why the water spirits are *POOR* amphibians... They are elemental critters, I'd think they'd get a bonus in solution!

The DoHW are actually more accessible, since a lucky MotW can summon them. The DoHF, while lovely in theory... are much too difficult to obtain.


Rabe the S+A Fan