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 by movies from Hong Kong, China, and Korea. – Illwinter

The Celestial Empire has not yet been founded. The magic of The Way permeates the realm and reclusive mages conjure Celestial Beings to do their bidding. Nobles wage war upon each other for honor and glory. A few chosen warriors and mages dedicate their lives to training in the Way of the Five Elements. The deceased are worshipped and village priests conjure the dead to ask for guidance and aid. It is a time of legends. – Nation Description

If you are considering picking this nation to play, what should you know?

Magic Access	Alt. Access	Unit Summary	Core Abilities	Buildings
2 2 (Rare 3) 3 (Rare 4) 2 2 (Rare 3) 1 2 2 (Rare 3) 2 Cap-only 1 in Forts	Heroes 12 11232 222 Summons 13150% 50% 25% (req. 2)	Well-equipped Units for EA Chariots Long-lived mages with wide magic spread	Combat Caster Need Not Eat Trample	Standard Fortresses

Capitol Gems: 1221

The Gate of Spring and Autumn: Boosts astral ritual range in the capital by 1 province .

T'ien Ch'i has one of the best human line troops of the early age with a very flexible cap and Forien Recruit mages.

Variety in commanders is limited. Only one troop leader, though decent, can be expensive. Is pretty clear which mages you should be recruiting off-fort, in-fort, and in Cap.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Scout 35 4 1	Stealthy (50) Mountain Survival Forest Survival	Standard scout; identical to indie Scouts.
	Noble Commander 135 52 1		A fairly durable, if expensive, 100-leadership commander
	Cataphracted Chariot	Animal Trample
	Student of the Sword 70 5 2	1100% 3 Combat Caster	A cheap mage, but lacks a niche due to being a worse mage and fighter than the Master of the Sword, having poor research ability, and there just generally being more useful mages to recruit in forts.
	Master of the Sword 170 5 2 Non-fort Forests Only Non-fort Mountain Only	2200% 5 Combat Caster Mountain Survival Forest Survival Need not Eat	The upgrade over the Student of the Sword, the Master of the Sword has excellent melee skills (15/16 Attack/Defence Skill!) and the Combat Caster ability, as well as guaranteed useful magic due to their linked random paths. While they are poor researchers, and somewhat expensive for their paths, Masters of the Sword are probably T'ien Ch'i's most reliable off-cap mages, and their only requiring a mountain or forest lab to recruit makes them even better. While their stats suggest army thugging/frontline casting as a possibility, they require gear to fix their extremely low Protection, and T'ien Ch'i already has a lot of ways to spend gems to get killing power via its summons.
	Student of the Five Elements 85 1 2 Non-fort Only	1100% 7 Sacred	Students of the Five Elements are one of three sacred foreign-recruit mages. Of the three, they are the cheapest but also have the least reliably useful paths. Potentially workable as a cheap researcher, but lacking in combat ability.
	Master of the Dead 100 2 2	11 7 Sacred Spirit Sight	Masters of the Dead are cheap mages that can cast T'ien Ch'i's Ancestor-related spells - Call Ancestor and Wrath of the Ancestors - in addition to summoning small numbers of undead like other weak Death mages, allowing them to generate a lot of chaff fairly cheaply at high research levels. They are not particularly good at combat outside of this.
	Student of the Way 120 1 2 Non-fort Recruit Available	11100% 9 Sacred Need not Eat	Students of the Way can be recruited in both forted and unforted labs, though they require a temple as well. They are fairly efficient researchers for 120 gold, especially due to their sacred status. They have useful randoms; while Air is mostly a dud, Astral randoms can join communions or cast Body Ethereal/Twist Fate, Natures can cast Mossbody, and Glamours can cast Luck. All of them can cast Frozen Body due to their base 1 path. They are also pretty efficient researchers. However, their randomness also means you might need to recruit many of them to be able to have the magic you want.
	Master of the Way 265 1 2 Non-fort Only	12100% 100% 11 Sacred Need not Eat	Masters of the Way are considerably more expensive than Students of the Way, making them far less efficient researchers, and their paths are so random that they are not necessarily always more useful. The best Masters of the Way will luck into randoming two of the same path: 2s can Foul Vapours with a Thistle Mace, 3s can do high Water magic, 2s are good for Antimagic and the Astral kill spells, etc. While many of them will random Astral and be useable in communions, Masters of the Way require careful planning and a lot of sorting to reach their full potential.
	Master of the Five Elements 355 1 2 Capital Only	1111 111100% 17 Sacred Supply Bonus (10)	Masters of the Five Elements are one of the fastest ways to turn CP into research in the game; the only 2 CP commander that has more research is the Royal Mallqui, which costs an eye-watering 1200 gold! They provide a lot of useful crosspaths for forging, and they make very good site searchers too. However, as combat mages they are rather expensive in comparison to their actual casting power - while they provide flexibility, most of the paths will probably not see use in a given battle.
	Celestial Master 485 2 4 Capital Only	1121 122100% 100% 10% 21 Sacred Need-Not-Eat Spirit Sight Flying	Celestial Masters are expensive but powerful and highly mobile mages, meaning they can be where you need them to be, when you need them there. Their Astral path means they can always bring their paths into a communion, allowing them to cast high-level spells in all of their paths. Wailing Winds, Wind of Death, Acid Storm and much more are all available to Celestial Masters, providing a huge amount of threat variability to T'ien Ch'i's toolkit, though a lot of it is dependent on having disposable communion slaves.

Line troops are made up of 3 tiers of body armour. (Full Leather: port 9 Def -1 Enc 1, -2 mapmove) (Scale mail Cuirass: Same but +1 Prot Iron and +3 Resources) (Full Scale Mail: Prot 15 Def -3 Enc 3 -6 mapmove Iron) Even the lighter armored grunts are well protected from arrows. Regardless of the Armor worn, almost all troops wear Half Helmets (Prot 18 Iron), which negates most damage inflicted to the head.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Footman 10 9 9		T'ien Ch'i's Light Footmen are very cheap, but have armour light enough that even Short Bow fire will pierce through (18 head protection, 9 body). They come in three varieties: The Pike wielders don't have to deal with repel checks from most enemies and deal reasonable damage; the Glaive variety deals high damage but with low Attack Skill; finally, the Spear-and-Shield variety is slightly more durable than his peers, especially against ranged fire.
	Footman 10 11 9
	Footman 10 11 9
	Archer 10 12 9		T'ien Ch'i's archers distinguish themselves from their independent equivalent by carrying a Composite Bow, which deals a bit more damage (13) than an ordinary human Short Bow (11).
	Medium Footman 10 14 9		Medium Footmen have only slightly higher resource cost than Light Footmen, and fittingly have only very slightly better protection (+1 on body). They also come in Glaive and Spear-and-Shield varieties.
	Medium Footman 10 14 9
	Heavy Footman 10 20 9		T'ien Ch'i's Heavy Footmen have 15 protection on their body armour and cost about twice the resources compared to the Light Footmen. While they are more durable, they have the same mediocre melee skills as the lighter varieties of infantry and have considerably lower Map Move.
	Heavy Footman 10 20 9
	Horseman 25 17 24	Skilled Rider (1) Mobile Archer	Horsemen are in an odd place: as archers, they are a lot more expensive than T'ien Ch'i's unmounted archers, and they lack the durability and damage to function as melee cavalry. They could work as mobile Fire and keep distance archers, but provide much less volume of fire for their gold cost than regular archers.
	Armored Steppe Horse	Animal
	Noble 40 52 31		As relatively inexpensive tramplers with decent protection, Nobles are great at killing independent troops and make good expansion troops. However, they are not as strong into some of the true threats of Early Age, especially since giants of size 6 or higher cannot be trampled by them at all.
	Cataphracted Chariot	Animal Trample no-move-penalty-for-armor
	Warrior of the Five Elements 35 6 31 Capital Only	Sacred Fire Resistance (5) Cold Resistance (5) Poison Resistance (5) Shock Resistance (5) Strength of the Spring (50) Ambidextrous (2)	Warriors of the Five Elements have great melee skills and a smattering of elemental resists, but their low protection and lack of shield makes them very vulnerable to ranged fire, and their medium-damage attacks (16 damage) lack the punchiness to deal with some of the bigger threats of the Early Age. At the same time, with a good bless they function as T'ien Ch'i's main answer to enemy sacreds that Nobles can't deal with.

As T'ien Ch'i, you get Immortal Mages. They have human stats but still useful for light thugging and casting spells. Keep them way from Soul Slayers.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Ho Hsien-Ku - Immortal	1211 Sacred Immortal Supply Bonus (20) Healer (1) Ethereal Flying Female	Not particularly exciting except for her Healer ability. Use Ho Hsien-Ku to restore the health of old or wounded mages.
	Lu Tung-Pin - Immortal	1123 219 Sacred Immortal Ambidextrous (3) Flying	A Celestial Master without Glamour magic who randomed Astral, and comes with excellent melee skill (15/16 Attack/Defence).
	Li T'ieh-Kuai - Master With The Iron Crutch	22217 Sacred Immortal Fear (7) Old-Age (865\500) Spirit Sight Plague Carrier (5) Start Affliction (100)	Li T'ieh-Kuai has slightly higher death magic than is otherwise available to T'ien Ch'i, allowing the forging of a Skull Staff for a total of 3.

• Celestial Chastisement: (Evocation 5) 3
  A gem-less version of Control, inficts some damage and then takes control of the target. Only works against Magic Beings. A lot of good units are Magic Beings.

• Internal Alchemy: (Alteration 5) 21 and 10
  Reduces the caster's age by 15 years but has a chance to give the caster insanity. Your troop lineup is unlikely to get old unless hit with Decay, but it is occasionally useful if you luck into a strong indie with the given paths.

• Sword of the Five Elements: (Construction 3) 11 and 22
  Grants the user Reinvigoration and a lot of Attack and Defense. Useful on a Mage to protect himself and reduce Fatigue; because of the low price, you could mass-produce them to give to all of your Communion mages. Other weapons have better DPS effects.
• Armor of the Five Elements: (Construction 3) 11 and 22
  Light but high-PROT armor that grants +4 HP plus minor resistance to Fire, Shock, Cold, and Magic. It's useful on thugs since the resistances it provides offer some survivability against a broad array of thug-killers (Incinerate, Lightning Bolt, Frozen Heart, Mind Burn, etc.).

• Chi Shoes: (Construction 3) 1 and 4
  Provides the wearer with an additional attack per round. This is useful on high-strength units who can already get around quickly; unfortunately, your Flying Mages aren't that strong, while your strong commanders aren't that mobile (or can't wear shoes).

T'ien Ch'i Magic is characterized by a wide-but-shallow spread of paths. For lower levels of Research, this is pretty neat, since you'll be able to use almost any spell that isn't Blood Magic. Later on, however, other nations will be able to take advantage of their higher-level path access, and you'll have to do some "ladder-climbing" with Summons and/or Items to catch up. The following is how to climb, barring Predender design, Empowerment, Charm stealing, or PvP trade deals.

Water is your deepest path by far, thanks to your Celestial Masters and the relative ease of Boosting the path. You'll have a Robe of the Sea by Construction 5 & a Water Bracelet by Construction 7, allowing you to boost roughly a fourth of your Masters to 5, which will allow you to cast almost any pure-Water Combat Spell or Ritual you could think of. Expanding underwater will allow you to summon a Queen of Elemental Water at Conjuration 8, if it's not too late in the game, who will be able to use your Boosters to reach 7 and cast all of those pure-Water Rituals you weren't able to cast beforehand.

Glamour Your other deepest path. Celestial Masters can random 2, but your nature randomed 5-element mages can cast Contact Huli Jing at Conjuration 6. Every Huli Jing has 13 with a 5 in 100 chance of 4. About 25% with Random an Earth, Getting boost boosters of Gossamer Veil (const 5) and Mirage Crystal (const 7), ending with a foxgirl with 5.

Fire is your second-easiest path to climb, unfortunately (that's not to demean Fire, but to demean how tough it is to climb other paths as this nation). A quarter of Celestial Masters will have 11, allowing you to Forge a Skull of Fire at Construction 7, which an 2 Mage in your nation can use to get to 3. Though 3 already gets you Fire Elementals and other cool stuff, the ladder doesn't end there; you can then cast Summon Flame Spirit at Conjuration 6 and equip your fresh Flame Spirit with the Skull, who will then be able to Forge a Flame Helmet and boost itself to 5. From there, you can summon a King of Elemental Fire and boost them to 7.

Nature is next. Each Master of the Five Elements has a 20% chance to have 2, allowing them to Forge a Thistle Mace at Construction 5 & Contact Huli Jing at Conjuration 6. Every Huli Jing has 13, Letting them summon Faery Queens at Conjuration 8 with a booster, and around (1-in-4?) (real percent?) of them have at least21, allowing them to Forge a Moonvine Bracelet at Construction 6. With that, you have 5, allowing you to switch out the Thistle Mace for a Treelord's Staff and reach 6 on a Faery Queen or Ivy King. Alternatively, if you're focused entirely on Celestial Masters, 1-in-4 of them will have 21 and will be able to Contact Naiads at Conjuration 5 with a booster or even no booster if you get lucky, allowing you to skip the green-shirted Masters. Though you cap out a little lower (on average) than with Water & Fire, at least you won't need to rush for Kings or Queens(?).

Death is actually easier to ascend than the next three paths, despite the lowly stature of your Death Mages. The same Celestial Masters that have 11 will also have 21, which can be Boosted to 41 if you got a 3 by the time you reached Construction 6. The Celestial Master of Death can then cast Streams from Hades at Conjuration 6 to secure a Kokythiad, who will have 3 and full equipment slots. You can then try to abuse the Twiceborn Ritual at Enchantment 4 to get a 4 Wight Mage, who will be able to craft the Skullface with a Skull Staff that she probably already crafted while she was alive, allowing you to graciously top out at 6 with a little luck. If you're not willing to burn Water Gems to roll the dice (Twiceborn path-boosting has about a 20% chance of happening), however, you'll still have 4 through the Kokythiad & her Skull Staff.

Earth doesn't beget many avenues for climbing, but it's straightforward to climb. Each green-shirted or sword Master might have 2 (20% chance) they can forge Earth Boots, they can summon a Troll King's Court to get a natural 3 Mage, the Troll King can wear Boots, and presto, 4.

Astral is unfortunately convoluted to climb, in spite of the Celestial insights. At least a fourth of your Celestial Masters will have 2, allowing them to Forge a Starshine Skullcap and reach 3. About 1/90 of them will have 3 to start out with, but they're 4-point capital-only Mages, not exactly "spammable" for that random path. To climb higher, you'll need help from other paths: the Huli Jing has a small-but-not-insignificant chance of having 11 and will be able to craft the Crystal Coin with the appropriate already-mentioned Boosters (a smaller portion might have 21 or 12, boosting your 3 Celestial Masters to 4. Roughly 1-in-12 of your Celestial Masters will have 21, and can be boosted to 41 to open an Ether Gate for 90, summoning an Ether Lord that always has 32 and has a 1-in-4 chance of having 4 to start out with, allowing you to reach either 5 or 6 depending on how lucky and/or loaded you are. If you get the 6 and still have Astral Pearls to spare, you can craft the Ring of Sorcery to boost to 7 (and/or to get 7/8 if you're lucky/7) if you were also pushing the ladder on those), and then you can get the Ring of Wizardry with your remaining Astral savings to boost yourself in the Elements (8, 8, & 6, if you have/can-still-get Royals) and Death (8).

That leaves Air; despite being a favorite secondary for your Mages, They can't get the Boosters they need. Realistically you are caped at more than 1 in 4 Celestial Masters being 2 outside of battles, and 4 in 1000 being a 3. Late game With the Ring of Wizardry and a Staff of Elemental Mastery, you get 4 on a 1 in 4 Celestial Master, which lets you forge the Winged Helmet and then the Horn of Storms for 5, which can all be held by a Queen of Elemental Air (if you were fast enough to edge out the Air Nations in summoning one) for 9.

If you can't wait & pay for Ether Lords, a Pretender with paths to forge Staff of Elemental Mastery and or Rings is a boon to your wide path cap mages. Also Celestial Masters or Huli Jing with boosters can cast Lore of Legends Boosting all thier paths at the cost of 20 for 1 turn, so use the most of that short time frame.

Add links to guides or other overviews for this nation here. How Zan Reviews a Nation, featuring EA TienChi Dom5 by Zan

Dominions 6 EA T'ien Ch'i SIMPLIFIED by AO Reaper

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Pyrène, • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Muspelheim • 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 • Pyrène • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Nidavangr • 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 • Feminie • Piconye • Andramania • Pyrène • Zemaitia • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia