MA T'ien Ch'i - a little of this, a little of that and BAM!

[Fantomen]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

more later, if I survive my two front war.

I did!

And as promised here are some more of my experiences so far:

I'm now using GOR:ed gargoyles as thugs, which MA TC have relatively early and easy access to (Alchemist with earth boots + Naiad with thistle mace). So far this has worked great to supplement my larger armies with flying raiders and semi-SC backup when needed.

The gargoyles are very tough when fully geared and one of the few thug chassises that are immune to both mind hunt and magic duel. This is crucial as I've been fighting astral nations. So far I haven't lost a single gargoyle, but I've been fairly careful avoiding real armies with strong mage support. They can easily kill a couple hundred normal troops though, marignons royal guards in my case.

My opponent also happened cast strands of astral power, which is when I found a situation to actually use the healing ability on the alchemists. Putting all the alchemists in a communion on heal during sieges in his dominion quite effectively heals up any feebleminded astral mages I brought along. This let's me use celestial masters and geomancers in my communions despite the SOAP, giving me those nice astral battle buffs (antimagic, doom, etc. )

I believe putting the alchemists on heal during sieges can be a good idea in general if your mages somehow got afflicted or diseased, they got nothing better to do while your troops tear the walls down anyway.

My armies apart from the communions have been mainly kydnides and celestial warriors backed by imperial crossbowmen (because I mainly fought royal guards and knights of the chalice). This has worked well. The main reason for this composition is because I was much smaller than my opponent when the war began and had more gems than I had gold and recources, so I haven't really had the chance to examine the other troops effectiveness yet. As I'm a lot bigger now I will be able to try other options out.

That's all for now.