Why whould you ever choose Mictlan?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

My mistake, I didn't because I thought that's what you were implying yourself. First you assume a bloodhunter's life expectancy is 30 turns, then you write

...and here I assumed you were comparing both types' costs over 20 turns (thus the 20 vs 30 confusion) - but I was wrong: 107 is actually the cost of a Mictlan priest over only 10 turns. It makes your 56% figure look even more unfair to the Acolyte. What do you mean with these 56%? That a Mictlan priest who's alive for 10 turns and dead for another 10 turns is 56% more useful than an Acolyte who can harvest slaves for 20 turns? This comparison doesn't make sense to me.

I was comparing 10 turns vs 10 turns as an alternative to the 30 turns vs 30 turns first postulated by me. I.e. in both cases, I was assuming that Acolytes and Priests had essentially the same average lifetime, but, since the longer life expectancy one examines the more the equations favour Mictlan, I chose to consider the special case of an insanely low low life expectancy (10) compared to the one I usually use (30). In other words, even in a heavy spell and battle environment where you can only expect a blood hunter to survive for 10 turns, you are still getting significantly more blood for the buck as Mictlan.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
I was comparing 10 turns vs 10 turns as an alternative to the 30 turns vs 30 turns first postulated by me.

Then, unless I missed something, your calculations are wrong: an Acolyte only costs 134 gold over 10 turns, 167 is for 20 turns. Then, your statement

even a mere 10 round life expectancy changes the relative costs to 107 vs 167, or a cost of 56% more.

doesn't make any sense at all, since relative costs over the same amount of time are independent of time: the total cost a sacred unit X over T turns is

TotalCost(X,T) = BaseCost(X) + (BaseCost(X)/30 * T)

Thus

TotalCost(MictPriest,T) / TotalCost(SangAcol,T)

= (BaseCost(MictPriest) + (BaseCost(MictPriest)/30 * T)) / (BaseCost(SangAcol) + (BaseCost(SangAcol)/30 * T))

= BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) / BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/30 * T)

= BaseCost(MictPriest) / BaseCost(SangAcol)

= 0.8

As you see, the relative costs remain the same (20% less, or 25% more) whatever value you give to T. So, where do these 56% come from?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Then, unless I missed something, your calculations are wrong: an Acolyte only costs 134 gold over 10 turns, 167 is for 20 turns. Then, your statement

[/quote]
My bad - I completely forgot that a Sanguine Acolyte was sacred as well (was thinking in terms of the non-sacred diabolist) and calculated 100 + (10*100/15) = 167!

This changes the situation completely and you may just have a discussion-winner.

doesn't make any sense at all, since relative costs over the same amount of time are independent of time: the total cost a sacred unit X over T turns is

TotalCost(X,T) = BaseCost(X) + (BaseCost(X)/30 * T)

Thus

TotalCost(MictPriest,T) / TotalCost(SangAcol,T)

= (BaseCost(MictPriest) + (BaseCost(MictPriest)/30 * T)) / (BaseCost(SangAcol) + (BaseCost(SangAcol)/30 * T))

= BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) / BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/30 * T)

= BaseCost(MictPriest) / BaseCost(SangAcol)

= 0.8

As you see, the relative costs remain the same (20% less, or 25% more) whatever value you give to T. So, where do these 56% come from?

The 56% was based on the mistaken assumption that an Acolyte was not sacred. When one is sacred and the other non-sacred, things do not cancel out as nicely as they do when both are sacred, i.e. I was looking at

BaseCost(MictPriest) * (1 + 1/30 * T) vs. BaseCost(SangAcol) * (1 + 1/15 * T)

where, for T = 10, BaseCost(MictPriest)=80, BaseCost(SangAcol)=100, you get

80*(1 + 1/30 * 10) vs 100*(1 + 1/15 * 10) i.e. 107 vs 167 which you can use to see either 107/167 = 0.64 (i.e. a Mictlan priest being 46% cheaper over ten rounds) or 167/107 = 1.56 (i.e. given that you get the same amount of blood from each priest/acolyte, you get 56% more blood from the Mictlan priest per buck).

Anyhow, you just won this discussion hands down for the Sanguine Acolyte (but not for the Diabolist yet ). With both being sacred the advantage is indeed a fixed 20% in cost or 25% in blood, which given the slightly higher vulnerability of Mictlan's priests and the fact that blood sacrifice is essential for Mictlan it is likely to be parlayed into a meager 0-10% advantage in each Category.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Peter Ebbesen said:
My bad - I completely forgot that a Sanguine Acolyte was sacred as well (was thinking in terms of the non-sacred diabolist) and calculated 100 + (10*100/15) = 167!

Duh - I should have thought about this, no wonder I was completely lost about what you were trying to demonstrate!

[Peter Ebbesen]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Duh - I should have thought about this, no wonder I was completely lost about what you were trying to demonstrate!

Well, you could hardly have been assumed to guess that I had not looked up the Acolyte in the unitattributes.xls recently and thus was discussing based on an incorrect assumption

So. The verdict in this point in time is that the Sanguine Acolyte does indeed come close - very close - to the effectiveness of the Mictlan priest. You now have a 100% victory on the original question (does anybody come close to the Mictlan priest?) and at least 50% on the combined Acolyte+Diabolist ticket.

I am more doubtful of the Diabolist, since the arguments regarding him were based more on overall economic performance and savings on temples, which is alleviated by Mictlan being able to earn much more money per moneyearning province via the order scale.