how would you play Mictlan

[Pocus]

The race is rather fragile, so what is your style when you start with?
So far I have tried the blood full speed approach : recruiting the cheap blood 1 priests, to get many slaves, thus allowing the strengthening of dominions + summoning of lower demons.

Any other options (the recruit priest/mages path)?

Their blessed units desserve a whole chapter too. Numerous types, with differing usages. The Pretender has a strong role to play with them.

The nation is very difficult to master IMHO. If you have an educated opinion, please share here.

[Nerfix]

Even their better units are dirt-cheap in resources. I use the warriors with Javelins and Feathered Warriors. With a decent income you can crank out huge numbers of troops and Priest Kings can forge Wineskins and Cauldrons. If you need to build sacred troops, sacrifice before building them as you can get more of them if you have higher dominion. The "full-speed blood" aproach isn't bad, but i research some conjuration and construction to get Vine Ogres, Ivy Crowns, Thistle Maces, and Cauldrons/Wineskins.

You should take Order and Growth with Mictlan. Magic is also good and they can even tolerate Sloth.

[Teleolurian]

I found their basic (non-sacred) units so fragile that in an Indy 6 game, I expanded at about the same rate as an Ulm on Easy AI (sad). I too tried full speed blood, since that was what presented itself naturally. I daresay that once you establish a hunting grounds they can get all the uniques significantly earlier than everyone else. As soon as I could afford to mix in sacred units, I set my early expansion tribal king-slaves armies to patrolling provinces to keep down unrest.

Ah Mictian, Mictian, Mictian.

So versitile, so hard to play effectively.

The part that always gets me about them is trying to get their blood sacrificing to work. It seems to spread such slow dominion that it really hurts Mic.

The only way I've been able to beat through Impossible AI's (I've only played them once in MP I was on top; but killing units by the droves) is to focus almost totally on Blood Magic and Construction since most of your researchers are going to be blood hunting to summon demons.

If you get lucky and get a Library fairly fast you can switch things up; but I'm never lucky enough to get one in my first 4 provinces.

Their sacred units are very fragile and if you play them with that in mind; it's not hard to play with them. One of the keys to remember is that they are capital only and the best (the Sun Warriors) have 1 movement, while the Eagle (and the nearly useless Jaguar ones) move 2.

I never had enough points to use the Lord of the Night successfully; though I'm sure you could.

Strategic armies of demon summoners are the key.

[Keir Maxwell]

The best way to play Mictlan?

On top of the pyramid with the sacrficial knife in your hand. The blood must flow. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

I have tried a few approaches and hears what a list of likes and dislikes.

Dislikes

1. Coppper armour. Makes the boys slow and weak. Pity they couldn't have got some bronze - access to tin through contact with all the other cultures. The copper makes them slow and vunerable while the latest research on bronze points to it being comparable to good iron but alot more expensive due to the rarity of Tin. The Machakans get Plate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

2. Slings - keep killing my boys and no good versus the other side. Blame it on the crappy armour.

3. Slow, high cost, early spread of Dominion. Haven't gone far enough to say what its like later.

4. Slings - the fact that I start with so many of the buggers.

What I like:

1. Access to an excellent variety of blood magic using sacred mages who can benifit from bless effects such as reinvigoration or quickness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

2. Cool theme, great outfits. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

3. Jade knives - buld them, use them. The blood must flow.

4. Sun Warriors are a semi-decent troop type and given some serious bless boosts (Say water9 Blood4) can do serious damage. If only the starting troops you have to use with them didn't have slings.

5. Spine devils early - always wanted to try these. If they had taken on my suggestions of getting maybe 2 spine devils for a higher blood cost . . .

Originally posted by Zen:
focus almost totally on Blood Magic and Construction since most of your researchers are going to be blood hunting to summon demons.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree. I'm quite happy to have a seriously empowered Fountain of Blood or similar researching construction in the capital while the Sun Warriors take advantage of its bless effects. The Jade Knife (con 2) allows normal priest to spread you dominion 3x as fast and con 4 opens up a raft of magic boosters and gives you the the must have accessory for any fashion conscious priest - the Sanguine Dosing Rod.

In terms of early expansion what T've got to is deciding to be cautious. I don't want to rush it and take high casualties or the armed forces will never build up and the best troops are capital only.

Giving up one of the first conquered provinces to blood hunting is important though I've generally found the 200gps for a lab tough to come by - thats what you get with low resource troops.

So watch the speed of expansion and make sure it doesn't get to fast as you will probably be losing to many troops. Picking provinces to take and leave is more than usually important - a measure approach to expansion.

Not that I have done particularily well yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif This is just what I'm going to try next time I stop in Mictlan.

Look forward to more peoples ideas/experiances.

cheers

Keir

[ November 29, 2003, 02:09: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Slingers can be very handy if your neighbor is pythium or arcos. They dont damage but they do rout things well. Especially things like elephants.

What I think I would do is put some serious thought into trying to create a pretender with abolutely the MOST blessing bonuses possible. But I havent really tried that yet.

One point that may have been overlooked or assumed;

Mass Produce Blood Contracts on your mobile Summoning Army.

Those things pay for themselves in more ways than one.

[apoger]

So far I have been running into a wall with Mictlan. I can make them work with much the same tactics as other nations just by being efficient, however not by using anything uniquely "Mictlan".

The troops are disaterously lightweight.
The pre-researched blood summons are just not efficient enough (loss of mage-time).
The dominion via sacrifice system is a pain in the rear.

If anyone can get Mictlan working in it's own way... let us know. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by apoger:
The dominion via sacrifice system is a pain in the rear.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Shft-M thing to put the action on repeater might help. Its kindof a bummer that he has to have the slaves in his inventory. If he could make use of the Lab if its in the same province then that would help alot.

[apoger]

>The Shft-M thing to put the action on repeater might help.

It repeats normally, so this is not an issue.

>Its kindof a bummer that he has to have the slaves in his inventory.

That's the issue. Just to keep dominion in check I need to ferry slaves to the sacrificers all the time. The gem distribution system isn't the highpoint of the Dom2 interface, and having to access it often is frustrating.

If the province contains a lab, the slaves should come from the pool automatically.

It's small interface issues like this that are really grinding me down. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by apoger:
>The Shft-M thing to put the action on repeater might help.

It repeats normally, so this is not an issue.

>Its kindof a bummer that he has to have the slaves in his inventory.

That's the issue. Just to keep dominion in check I need to ferry slaves to the sacrificers all the time. The gem distribution system isn't the highpoint of the Dom2 interface, and having to access it often is frustrating.

If the province contains a lab, the slaves should come from the pool automatically.

It's small interface issues like this that are really grinding me down. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If the province contains a lab the slaves do come from the pool automatically. You just have to equip the priest with the number of slaves you want him to sacrifice from then on, after that he keeps reequipping and sacrificing that number of slaves every turn. This way you can choose the number of slaves you wish to sacrifice. Once started, under the condition you have sufficent amounts of slaves, you need not bother with the priest again until you for some reason want him to perform another order.

[ November 30, 2003, 22:24: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Graeme Dice]

What effect does each sacrificed slave have on Dominion spreading?

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
What effect does each sacrificed slave have on Dominion spreading? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Each sacrificed slave counts as one non-Mictlan temple (or prophet, or home province). This means that the effectiveness of sacrifice depends on the God's dominion strength (including boosts from number of temples).

Obviously the ability to make each of your temples count as five (for HPotS with Jade Knife, not counting prophets or national heroes) could be quite spectacular, however, the cost is pretty steep. Maybe Mictlan priests should get a blood hunting bonus similar to Fountain of Blood (not as powerful of course).

Does anyone know why Mictlan is allowed to take the Ceremonial Faith theme (its only effect is to raise the effectiveness of preaching, which Mictlan can't do at all)? Also, how does Restless Worshipers work with Mictlan - does it spread your dominion for free (could be very valuable)?

Of course, as scales currently stand, the Last thing an already weak nation needs is a turmoil scale...

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
What effect does each sacrificed slave have on Dominion spreading? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Each sacrificed slave counts as one non-Mictlan temple (or prophet, or home province). This means that the effectiveness of sacrifice depends on the God's dominion strength (including boosts from number of temples).

Obviously the ability to make each of your temples count as five (for HPotS with Jade Knife, not counting prophets or national heroes) could be quite spectacular, however, the cost is pretty steep. Maybe Mictlan priests should get a blood hunting bonus similar to Fountain of Blood (not as powerful of course).

Does anyone know why Mictlan is allowed to take the Ceremonial Faith theme (its only effect is to raise the effectiveness of preaching, which Mictlan can't do at all)? Also, how does Restless Worshipers work with Mictlan - does it spread your dominion for free (could be very valuable)?

Of course, as scales currently stand, the Last thing an already weak nation needs is a turmoil scale... </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">IIRC Ceremonial Faith is not allowed, it's just there and useless. It shouldn't be there at all.

Restless worshippers do not give additional spread points, but allows spreading dominion to easily reduce other dominions and is therefore as useful to Mictlan as to any other player.

[Keir Maxwell]

The sense I get from re-reading this thread is that everyones got a similar idea of what to do its just that no-one has managed to have much success with it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

C'mon Illwinter - 2 spine devils for 5-6 blood? It is a blood 2 ritual so it takes a costly mage to perform and if you only get one devil its hard to make the spell cheap enough in blood slaves to be efficient. If it only required blood1 it might be different.

And some bronze armour?

I feel that Illwinter have been somewhat cautious with their new nations and as a consequence only Machaka (which gets Plate) seems up to scratch. Its not that I want Mictlan and Tien Ch'i to be more like the classically successful races - I'd like them to be a bit better at what they do.

I believe that the central focus on balence redressing should be improving underpowered options not weakening useful options. The only exception I can think of at present would be a decrease in the finanicial effectiveness of Order as part of improving turmoil/luck races.

Cheers

Keir

[Gandalf Parker]

Presently Mictlan seems interesting to play using maximum blesses. Such as 4 in everything and 9 in astral

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
The sense I get from re-reading this thread is that everyones got a similar idea of what to do its just that no-one has managed to have much success with it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

C'mon Illwinter - 2 spine devils for 5-6 blood? It is a blood 2 ritual so it takes a costly mage to perform and if you only get one devil its hard to make the spell cheap enough in blood slaves to be efficient. If it only required blood1 it might be different.

And some bronze armour?

I feel that Illwinter have been somewhat cautious with their new nations and as a consequence only Machaka (which gets Plate) seems up to scratch. Its not that I want Mictlan and Tien Ch'i to be more like the classically successful races - I'd like them to be a bit better at what they do.

I believe that the central focus on balence redressing should be improving underpowered options not weakening useful options. The only exception I can think of at present would be a decrease in the finanicial effectiveness of Order as part of improving turmoil/luck races.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Even that, I think, is unnecessary - rather, the event reducing effectiveness of order should be reduced and/or event increase given to both ends of the luck scale (as in Dom I), plus most disasters shouldn't occur at or above a given level of luck (differs depending on the magnitude of the disaster). This would make order/misfortune riskier and turmoil/luck more beneficial for their respective events, which IMO would go a long way toward balancing out the steady-state income reduction.

Luckily, instead of a severe flood, we just had a mild rainstorm. Thank God! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif


I do feel that Mictlan is rather weak - they have the problems endemic to light units, plus their copper armors are very inefficient in terms of protection/weight/resources. Low level blood summons aren't very useful because of the high cost of the mages necessary to perform them and the need to use slaves to maintain Last place in dominion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif . I'm not sure what could be done to help them, other than multiplying the blood summons (i.e. 2-3x the demons for 2-3x the slaves). Maybe a blood hunting bonus for their priests (like Fountain of Blood only not as strong)? Or maybe they just need to have more javelins and less slings? Javelins are quite effective in Dom II, but slings are still worthless. An improvement to sling precision/damage across the board would be interesting - few other nations use slings, and those are usually weak (Man militia comes to mind).

T'ien Ch'i isn't so bad except for the magic duel weakness - their special themes suffer from the current order/luck imbalance, but assuming that is fixed, they wouldn't need much more. Barbarian Kings will benefit a lot from the rumored change to fire and flee, and (if it is implemented) firing during hold and attack (or a fire and attack order). I think they don't need any nation specific changes right now as they stand to benefit from some game-wide changes.

[Pocus]

Perhaps one of the beta, or even the devs, can share with us how they envision Mictlan, and how we could play them? The race appears so fragile that I have yet to come with a successful Mictlan specific strategy.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Pocus:
Perhaps one of the beta, or even the devs, can share with us how they envision Mictlan, and how we could play them? The race appears so fragile that I have yet to come with a successful Mictlan specific strategy. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Arent they the highest at having blessable units? Have you tried playing with maximum blessings? 4/4/4/4/9/4/4/4

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Pocus:
Perhaps one of the beta, or even the devs, can share with us how they envision Mictlan, and how we could play them? The race appears so fragile that I have yet to come with a successful Mictlan specific strategy. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Arent they the highest at having blessable units? Have you tried playing with maximum blessings? 4/4/4/4/9/4/4/4 </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Could you give an example that isn't too crippled economically? Say, we want at least 180 income with 30000 pop in turn 1?

[Gandalf Parker]

Based on discussions of "why take xxxxx scale" and "why take low dominion". I like testing the "who would ever choose this" stuff.

Smoking Mirror pretender
5/5/5/5/9/5/5/5 magics
dominion strength 2
43 research each turn
Watchtower castle

scales all -3 (well heat +3 in my case but either way, I just hate snow)


Generally I put the troops to patrol and crank the taxes to 200% on the first turn which will get me the gold you wanted. The concept here would be to gain ground and get beyond your dominion by turn 10 (when the really bad events can kick in). Creating labs outside of the domain, and not pushing domain, would be part of the plan. The biggest problem Im having so far is that the "holy" points keep me from making as many blessed troops as I can.

Obviously Im testing extremes but this isnt turning out so bad. Would play well vs people who are using strong AIs. Let them flood your provinces. Just maintain dominion at the capital and protect your pretender from random events.

I figure that after finding the breaking point on this design (looks like it might be late game) I will start trying to reach a balance between alot of blessings chosen for specifically for the nation, and SOME reasonable scales. Its actually not hard to get 44449444, Ive gotten 55559555 and 44449449 depending on the pretender you start with. Surprisingly 0 cost pretenders, and cost 10 to start new magic, arent necessrily the ones that get the farthest.

[ December 02, 2003, 18:18: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Kristoffer O]

It is widely believed that Gandalf is mad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Pocus]

Something along this line is perhaps less extreme, with the blessed units still very potent:

Smoking Mirror
dominion 5
Mausoleum (admin 20)
order +3 produc -3 heat 1 growth -1 luck -3 magic -3
give 177 gold at capitol
magic : fire 9, water 4, earth 4, nature 4, death 4, blood 4 (28 RP in drain 3)

the idea would be to set the research area outside the dominions, which is easily done with Mictlan. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

You get 56 resources at capitol on first turn, you can buy 3 sun warriors and 2 Eagles. Rince& repeat. Complement your blessed units with demons, forget about the light infantry (which cost too much as others LI). As soon as you get at least 5 slaves a turn outside your capitol, have a moon mage summon a fiend of darkness a turn.

Just tried that a few turns. Not astonishingly potent, but seemed to works somehow.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
It is widely believed that Gandalf is mad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And Ive never argued that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Oh well, who in their right mind would want to be normal? Average?

[Pocus]

The Jaguar warrior is indeed of few uses. He is supposed to be a melee units which deal good damages, but as he has only 12 hits and 4 prot, he either dont survive the first hit, or if it does, he shapechanges into a jaguar wich is 90% dead, and generally with an affliction.

Ah Pocus joins the converted. Notice that little tidbit too?

The real sinker is they cost 20 gold for being nearly useless. I had hoped that they would have a 'pack' mentality that couldn't be gauged just by looking at them. I had about 50 together in an attack flank, and they still got slaughtered.

Oh well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Saber Cherry]

I was going to say they have the best light infantry in the game, in terms of being super-cheap in gold and resources for their protection, while still having shields and missile weapons... quite awesome really... but then, I realized they are not light infantry, but medium infantry, and have 1 strategic move, not 2. They're still great, though, as light-medium infantry go, 9 gold, super-low resources, and shields (which protect against arrows). If only we could see how effective shields are=)

I would say their infantry were great if at least the lighter ones (spears, slings, and mictlan armor) had 2 strategic moves, but as it stands... hmm.

Anyway, I looked at the slaves. After some analysis, I determined the hidden cost of slaves: 2 gold! Not bad=) That means slave upkeep is a paltry .133 gold per turn, or a squad of 50 slaves costs as much upkeep as 11 warriors (and would probably destroy them). Their only problem is supply=)

[Pocus]

I think it is better to use slaves as patrollers, at least until you have cranked taxes to 130% in every province producing some significant gold.