LA T'ien Ch'i, Barbarian Kings

The celestial empire is crumbling. Constant invasions from the barbaric Khans have all but destroyed the Imperial Bureaucracy. The Imperial family have been replaced by the Barbarian Kings. The Imperial Guard is no more and the cavalry of old has been replaced by skilled barbarian horsemen. Ancestral worship is popular once more and priest-mages of barbarian heritage who lead the Ancestor Cult are replacing the priests of the Bureaucracy. With the displacement of the eunuchs from power, conscription has fallen out of use.

T'ien Ch'i is obviously influenced by China. I couldn't even resist the name Spring and Autumn, from the period of the same name in Chinese history. Chinese history is rich and there is plenty to draw upon. Daoism and its five elements, inner alchemy, and quest for longevity inspired the Masters of the Way as did the T'ien Shih—celestial master—of institutional Daoism convert into the Celestial Master of T'ien Ch'i. Heroes come in plenty in the Chinese tales and the Seven Immortals are all interesting figures. Sun Wukong and his friends are perhaps even more so. There is plenty of stuff to expand on should I or a merry modder find the time. Finally, T'ien Ch'i has been inspired movies from Hong Kong, China, and Korea. - Ilwinter

Things kind of went back to the Early Ages when the Huns (or Mongols) overthrew the Bureaucracy, destroying the highly organized infrastructure that supported elite soldiers with advanced equipment, alongside specialized administrators and mages. It has been replaced by the rule of nomads on horseback, and the forgotten ancestor worship has returned with a vengeance.

This nation has access to a wide selection of magic paths, but (ignoring 10% randoms) can't recruit mages with any path higher than level 2. This means the nation will have to rely on communions or magic booster items to cast higher level spells.
Communions are a little tricky to do, since only the capital only Celestial Master has guaranteed astral magic. All other mages have only a 1/4 chance of 1. This does mean that T'ien Ch'i can potentially put any of its six available magic paths into a communion, but finding enough communion slaves fit for the task can be difficult. Extra fatigue is generated for communion slaves who don't have the paths for the spells their masters cast.
Since the nation does have the earth/astral crosspath, it is possible to craft the Crystal Matrix and Slave Matrix for communions, and extra boosters such as the Crystal Coin and the Crystal Shield.

When it comes to troops, this nation has access to mostly the same infantry as early age and middle Age T'ien Ch'i. These are still functional, if not quite as impressive as in the previous ages, simply because most nations and independent forces have better troops in the late age. However, T'ien Ch'i in the late age has access to Barbarian Heavy Horsemen, a cheap heavy cavalry unit that can also be recruited outside of forts. This means that it is feasible to build fewer forts as this nation and still produce decent armies. Late Age T'ien Ch'i also has an off-fort Mage.

Another interesting feature of this nation is the access to the Call Ancestor and Wrath of the Ancestors spells. These are combat spells that summon Ancestral Spirits. These spirits have poor stats, with 0 protection and 1 hp. On the other hand, they are also ethereal, sacred, and in possession of an armor negating paralysis attack. Making these spirits fearsome with your bless is an option; even without a bless, though, Wrath of the Ancestors can be useful as a Swarm alternative.

The nation has two classes of units. First, you have the traditional T'ien Ch'i units present since the Early Age (General, Ceremonial Master, the various Footman and Heavy Footman variants, Master of the Way, and Celestial Master).

Second, you have the Mongol-themed barbarians (notably the Barbarian Heavy Horseman, a foreign recruit heavy cavalry unit that costs only 20 , and the sacred Ancestor Vessel) with their ancestor mages.

The ancestor mages are notable for being an interesting collection of recruit-anywhere 4-path mages with at least 1, high morale, excellent base stats, and magic gear. These properties mean they are some of the more resilient recruitable mages against assassin and seduction.

The national heroes of T'ien ch'i are immortal mages, unchanged across the ages.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Ho Hsien-Ku - Immortal	12 11 Sacred immortal Supply Bonus(20) Healer(1) Ethereal flying Female	A flying immortal with paths available on your air random Spirit Master. Can be used as a highly mobile Swarm raider, but her main value is the Healer ability, which is especially useful on a nation with many old mages. Ethereal means she's less likely to die to archers than other unarmored human mages.
	Lu Tung-Pin - Immortal	11232 19 Sacred immortal ambidextrous(3)	A very useful hero, providing Astral 3, as well as your only national fire access. The fire/water cross path can be used for Manifest Vitriol, and with a fire booster, Rune Smashers and acid magic. Your only national mage who can lead big armies, and could be used as an assassin-resistant commander.
	Li T'ieh-Kuai - Master With The Iron Crutch	222 17 Sacred immortal Fear(7) Old-Age(865\500) Spirit-Sight plague carrier(5) Start Affliction(100)	An extremely old mage. His individual paths are available on national mages, but immortality can be very useful. One interesting application is to Cloud Trapeze onto an enemy army and cast Power of the Spheres followed by Wind of Death, without risking any gear.

Late Age Tien Chi's specialty is being able to site search 6 paths at level 2 (or 9 if you can afford remote site searching) and then use those gems to put up a full suite of major battlefield spell in the game using just 25% randoms on recruitable mages, boosters, and crystal communions (immune to magic duel).

• Be careful when using traditional communions in major battles in multiplayer games. Your astral mages are largely expensive 25% randoms with 1, and thus are highly vulnerable to Magic Duel. As detailed below, those astral randoms are valuable for forging, so don't be sad they exist, but keep in mind that many Late Age nations have cheap astral mages and might consider it a good trade to magic duel you.

• An 21 Spirit Master with a Thistle Mace can cast Strength of Gaia and be 4 in battle. With enough nature gems, he can cast big nature magic, like Mass Protection, Relief, Serpent's Blessing, Mass Regeneration and Howl. You'll save a lot of gems per fight if you make a Moonvine Bracelet with an 21 Spirit Master, but it's not required.

• An 11 Master of the Way with a Thistle Mace can cast Foul Vapors.

• An 21 Ancestor Smith with a Starshine Skullcap and Crystal Coin can cast Golem Construction. Give your Golem that Starshire Skullcap and Crystal Coin and a lot of astral pearls, and he can cast (with immunity from magic duel) the big astral spells like Antimagic, Will of the Fates, and Doom. Casting Power of the Spheres will gems when casting all of these, but sometimes casting at least Antimagic on the first turn is better.

• A 2 Master of the Way with a Water Bracelet can cast Grip of Winter, Quickening, Warriors of Niefelheim, and other major water magic buffs. A Robe of the Sea will save gems in the long run if you're casting this full script in many fights.

• Your 21 Ancestor Smith are hard to use in battle because of magic Magic Duel, but are a key strength of the nation. Keep them safe in labs. With a Dwarven Hammer, they can make Crystal Matrix and Slave Matrix for E3S4. You can never have enough of these, because sometimes you want to make 4 Slave Matrix in a single turn.

• Form a crystal matrix communion with 4 x Slave Matrix. A range of options works, but a good option can be to use a mix of 211 random Ancestor Smith and 211 Ancestor Guide, which lets you cast Earth/Death/Air battlefield magic (Fog Warriors, Army of Gold, Weapons of Sharpness, Arrow Fend, Mass Flight or Storm, Darkness and Rigor Mortis etc.) in an on path communion.

• You can also make the Crystal Shield where useful. Note that because Power of the Spheres is a self buff, putting this item on a mage with a Crystal Matrix will apply it the start of the battle to all mages who have a Slave Matrix as well.

• If you plan to do crystal communions, keep in mind that the above costs a lot of Earth/Astral gems (especially if you count the investment in a supply of Dwarven Hammers).

• Don't forget that your lab mages can cast Magic Duel in a pinch. If your opponent has only the exact number of communion slaves he needs to cast Fog Warriors or Will of the Fates, sacrificing a few Astral random ancestors to prevent your opponent from casting major buffs can change the outcome of a battle involving dozens of mages and hundreds of troops.

Major ritual magic is more of a weakness for the nation, due to the lack of paths above 2:

• Pretender design largely determines which globals you'll be able to economically cast.

• An 2 random Celestial Master can make your Starshine Skullcap, which lets an Ancestor Smith make a Crystal Coin, getting you up to 4 outside combat.

• With a Naiad you can get 5 or 5 with boosters. Which also gets you Faerie Court for a higher 3, which is great for Summon Great Eagle and other ritual magic.

• The nation can naturally forge a Thistle Mace and Moonvine Bracelet, which lets a Spirit Master cast Awaken Ivy King. Your new Ivy King can use those boosters to forge a Treelord's Staff, with which a 22 Spirit Master randoms can summon a Lamia Queen to dip into blood magic for the late game. You can skip the Treelord's Staff if your Pretender can forge you a Ring of Sorcery.

• All Spirit Masters can all cast Charm, and all Ancestor Guides can cast Control the Dead. You only need to charm or enslave one blood mage to start a small blood economy.

• As nation with recruit anywhere 2, forging a few Blood Stone can be a good goal for a small blood economy, since that gets you 4 for rituals like Wizard's Tower (or even the big 5 rituals like Crumble and Iron Walls with a Staff of Elemental Mastery). An Ancestor Smith with a Blood Stone and Earth Boots is 5 in combat and thus can cast Weapons of Sharpness and Petrify without spending gems.

• Any Ancestor Guide can make a Skull Staff bringing him to 3. He can summon a Mound Field, who with the Skull Staff is 4. If you want 5 for Lichcraft, options include a 4 pretender, a 4 pretender who can make a Ring of Sorcery with boosters you can natively forge, or empowering.

• Call Ancestor: Conjuration 1, 1. ( Ancestral Spiritx1). All of your ancestor mages can cast this; creates a weak sacred ghost with poor stats and a paralyzing attack. Note that summoned sacreds are not automatically blessed unless your pretender is present in friendly Dominion.

• Wrath of the Ancestors: Conjuration 7, 1 1. ( Ancestral Spiritx20+[2/lv]). Improved Call Ancestor, summons 20+ Ancestral Spirit for a death gem. Can be used like Swarm for distraction chaff. Summonable sacreds, even with weak stats, can be quite dangerous with various blesses (weapon blesses, death explosion, Charged Body, Fire Shield, Heat Aura, etc.). As with Call Ancestor, your summoned sacreds are not automatically blessed.

• Celestial Servant: Conjuration 1, 11 1. ( Celestial Servant x 1) is primarily a thematic spell. It is hard to find a strong military reason to have a Celestial Master or Ancestor Smith turn to summon a single unit with a lot of hp and strength, no armor, and a one-handed rake.

• Herd of Buffaloes: 2 Conjuration 3 for 10 ( Buffalox5 + 1/2 [lv]). [Berserker|Berserking]] high hp animals with trample.

• Celestial Hounds: Conjuration 4, 11 4. ( Celestial Houndx2). Flying sacred magic dogs with a high patrol bonus. Useful for patrolling, interrupting thug buff scripts, and to hit the rear of an enemy formation.

• Call Celestial Soldiers: Conjuration 6, 21 15. ( Celestial Soldierx5) Your 21 Celestial Masters can cast this to summon several elite sacred giants with excellent stats and the nation's signature hard-hitting glaive. Great as late-game linemen, especially if you took a strong bless.

• Internal Alchemy: Alteration 5, 21 10. Primarily a thematic spell. Reduces the caster's age by -15 years but has a chance to give the caster insanity. One of the very few ways to reduce a unit's age in Dominions, but it's hard to come up with a situation where you'd want to cast this for any reason other than role-playing. It's at least more-useful for this era than in the other eras, since your Celestial Masters who have 10% randoms will typically be old – provided that they don't have 1, anyway.

• Celestial Chastisement: Evocation 5, 3. A less fatiguing version of Control that critically doesn't cost gems to cast. Inficts guaranteed armor negating damage and then attempts to enslave a magic being. Many powerful units and mages, including summoned elementals, are magic beings and thus vulnerable to this spell. Held back by short range and the nation's limited high astral access.

What is the best spell you can use in combat. What spells the best support your national lineup, Is there weakness that you need to fix? Any tricks you should be aware you have?

Earth, Death, Nature are your main combat paths, with Air, Water, and Astral as sides.

Your main butter is spamming old men with reliable magic paths. Only 1 in 4 will get astral magic, but you only need 5 mages and one booster to cast the fun late-game stuff, which also doesn't seem so bad as you should be spamming Ancestors from every fort.

Earth Grants useful protection and while destroying the enemy's armor, like Marble Warriors, Maws of the Earth, and Destruction.

if you can get rid of enemy hats, go Rain of Stones.

Nature can grant some other buffs, like increased size and recovery for your summoned army and mages.

With communions, it is possible to perform some higher-level Air magic like Storm & Fog Warriors, though T'ien Ch'i has a tougher time gathering potential Slaves than most Communion Nations (since only its capital Mages are guaranteed that 1).

All Ancestors know some death magic, so many can Shadow Blast and spam ghost or skeletons when they go off-script. Wailing Winds and Fields of the Dead are some late-game death. Soul Vortex with regenerating bodyguards around your communion mages will help with turbo communions.

If you recruit Masters of the Way, you can use them to spam Frozen Heart.

LA T'ien Ch'i is a nation with a normal Death endgame despite Blood being the Defining power of the late age.

As most mages are Death, finding every death gem with Dark Knowledge is important in this Gem scarce game mode.

Summoning Trolls or Lamia are can be used as additional communion batteries for your Ancestors with Soul Vortex.

It cost a lot of earth gems and requires holding a cave or Wasteland, hidden-in-terrain spells give you mages.

Your troops are behind in the trends of the age so transitioning to summoned troops is a good idea. Spirit Masters can Construct Manikins and Mandragoras.
Corpse Constructs are subjectively good chaff depending on who you talk to and how buffed they are given how many you can make with Storm Spool and Lightning Rod using only a single .

Mound Fiends a good spamming undead with the limited magic sites. Ziz are also fun as siege units.
Call Celestial Soldiers Give Quality troops especially with all the earth and nature buffs you can give.

The Ancestor Smith mages are great forgers; with a Dwarven Hammer, they can forge cheap items for just 5 gems (it's the late age, so saving gems is particularly valuable). National mages have good thug paths and stats on an old, human chassis. They can make excellent counter thugs and can be used as light thugs with an Unaging bless, and could be strong after using Transformation or Twiceborn to get a stronger chassis.

• Sword of the Five Elements: Const2, 11, 22. Grants the user Reinvigoration and a lot of Attack and Defence skill. Notable for being a weapon slot item that grants Reinvigoration. Unlike earlier eras of the nation, you don't have the paths required to forge this, but it's cheap to forge if you do find indies who can.
• Armor of the Five Elements: Const2, 11, 22. Light but high prot armour that grants additional minor resistance to Fire, Shock, Cold, and Magic. Useful on thugs.

T'ien Ch'i's Barbarian Heavy Horseman is perhaps the best scales expansion unit of the Late Age.

• With good scales, high resource provinces like forests can often recruit multiple Barbarian Heavy Horseman per turn; set enough provinces on repeat recruit, and you can quickly mass an army of these elite units. Gathering your cavalry efficiently requires recruiting extra commanders.
• If you're planning for your capital to maximize Ancestor Vessel production, consider making 3 Ceremonial Master on your first turn and another on the second, while you don't have yet the resources to use all your holy points on sacred troops. You'll use them to bless parties of sacreds during expansion, and in the meantime, the extra commanders will be invaluable for gathering your foreign recruits. (A bit later, site searchers can gather cavalry while passing through).
• Because the Khan is very expensive and the General requires capital resources and a commander point, it can be valuable to recruit a couple independent Mounted Commander leaders for logistics later in expansion.
• With Order 2 Production 2, it's possible to be recruiting 20-25 heavy cavalry a turn by turn 7.

During expansion, you'll often want to place your heavy cavalry in a line on hold and attack, so they fire a couple arrows and then charge into melee. (This generally performs better than trading arrow fire with independent crossbowmen). If you have any Ceremonial Master commanders in the squad, make sure they are far behind other units while still being close enough to bless your Ancestor Vessels.

The tactical AI for the T'ien Ch'i cavalry (and all other mixed archer/melee units) can be quite problematic if your goal is to use them as heavy cavalry, not archers. The problem is that cavalry on attack orders will often switch to firing their bow after killing or routing the squad they initially targeted. In large battles, this can often lead to unexpected defeats, where a weaker enemy force that would be easily beaten by massed cavalry is able to surround and kill your cavalry units individually while 90% of your force fires mostly ineffective arrows.

There is a workaround for this tactical problem: If you include a unit without a bow in a squad containing horse archers, the entire squad will generally continue fighting in melee. You can use the infantry in your starting army for this purpose, and it is a good reason to recruit a few independent Heavy Cavalry to mix into your squads.

The fact that your Ancestor Vessels have a bow can be quite tactically useful as the game progresses for protecting your sacreds in long battles. Usually, the only way to keep elite troops from charging into battle is to give them a Guard Commander order.

If you put squads of Ancestor Vessel and Barbarian Heavy Horseman on Hold and Fire, they will stay put, giving you as much time as you like to cast buffs while contributing somewhat to the fight with their bows. When they run out of ammunition, they'll all charge in together and hit enemies that may already be disorganized or fatigued from fighting any other troops your brought (infantry, province defense, mercenaries). Firing bows in Dominions does generate any fatigue for the archer, so your ancestors will be hitting the enemy fresh. The downside is that your elite melee troops will not be fighting in melee for the first 10 turns of the battle; this tactic can be counterproductive without the right mage support.

One way to use this hold-and-fire strategy is as a way to buy your mages time to paint point buffs like Mossbody and Luck with all 5 scripting slots (and possibly more with off script casting). (Unfortunately, Quickness will make archers fire two arrows per turn, resulting in the quickened units running out of ammunition early and thus charging alone).

Later on, this tactic can be particularly nice in combination with a fatigue play (using some combination of Curse of Stones, Grip of Winter, Rigor Mortis, Relief, Quagmire, and delaying spells like Swarm) as a way to ensure most of your attrition falls on your more easily replaced units. Fatigue plays combine particularly well with this tactic, because enemy troops have to walk across the entire battlefield in order to close with your ancestors.

List some example pretender builds. Try to use the following format to keep authorship and pretender design rationale clear.

Youtuber Saquenay discussing and playing the nation (2020)
Youtuber GeneralConfusion discussing and playing the nation(2019)
Exercise in Masochism by TiredTaleTeller.

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia